Miss Julia Wainwright might be sentimental, and she might be jealous, but she was shrewd, and she understood intuitively the relationship between Charles and Clara. At first she refused to believe that they were married, as Charles was notoriously careless in these matters, but when she was faced with the fact her warm heart warned her of tragedy and she took it upon herself to inform Clara of the mysterious difficulties of married life, especially for two sensitive people.
'Charles wants a stupid woman and you want a stupid man,' she said.
Clara, of course, refused to believe that, and said that with a stupid woman Charles would just rot away in a studio and grow more and more unintelligible.
'Never mind, then,' said Miss Wainwright. 'I'll show you round. If you are meant for the theatre nothing can keep you away from it. The only thing I can see against you is that you're a lady.'
'Is that against me?' asked Clara, a little astonished.
'Well,' replied Miss Wainwright, 'we're different.'
And indeed Clara discovered very soon that actors and actresses were different from other people, because they concealed nothing. Their personalities were entirely on view, and exposed for sale. They reserved nothing. Such as they were, they were for the theatre and for no other purpose, but to be moved at a moment's notice from theatre to theatre, from town to town, from country to country. They were refreshing in their frank simplicity, compared with which life with Charles was oppressive in its complexity.
As she surveyed the two, Clara was torn asunder for a time and was reluctant to take the plunge, and yet she knew that this was the world to which Charles belonged, this world of violent contrasts, of vivid light and shadowy darkness, of painted illusion and the throbbing reality of the audience, of idle days and feverish nights. His mind was soaked in it, and his soul, all except that obscure part of it that delighted in flowers and in her own youth, hungered for it, and yet it seemed she had to force him into it.... If only he had a little more will, a little more intelligence.
Often she found herself thinking of him as 'poor Charles,' and then she set her teeth, and shook back her hair, and vowed that no one should ever think of her as 'poor Clara.' ... Life had been so easy when they had drifted together from studio to studio, but it threatened to be mighty difficult now that they had squared up to life and to this huge London....
Ivanhoestaggered on for six weeks and then collapsed, and an old successful melodrama was revived to carry the Imperium over the early summer months. In this production, as a protégée of Miss Wainwright's, Clara played a small part in which she had ten words to say.... She was quite inaudible though she seemed to herself to be using every atom of voice in her slim young body, but always her voice seemed to fill her own head until it must surely burst.
'Nerves,' said Miss Wainwright. 'You'll get your technique all right, and then you won't hear yourself speak any more than you do when you are talking in a room. It's just a question of losing yourself, and that you learn to do unconsciously.... It'll come all right, dearie. It'll come all right.'
Clara was determined that it should come all right, though she knew it would not until she had overcome her loathing of painting her face, and pencilling her eyes, and dabbing red paint into the corners of them. So much did she detest this at first that her personality repudiated this false projection of herself and left her helpless. Over and over again she said to herself,—
'I shall never be an actress. I shall never be an actress....' But then again she said, 'I will.'
There was a violence in appearing in the glaring light before so many people which offended her deeply, and yet she knew that she was wrong to be offended, because the people had come not to look at her, Clara Day, but at the false projection of Clara Day which was needed for the play.... Her objection was moral, and so strong that it made her really ill, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could keep going at all, but not a word did she say to a soul. She fought through it with clenched teeth, going through agony night after night, smiling when it was over, going home exhausted, and dreading the coming of the morrow when it would all have to be borne again....
She used to look at the others and wonder if they had been through the same thing, but it was plain to her clear eyes that they had nearly all accepted without a struggle, and had surrendered to the false projection of themselves which the theatre needed. Stage-fright they knew, but not this moral struggle in which, determined not to be beaten, she fought on.
Rehearsals she enjoyed. Then the actors were at their indolent best, and the half-lit stage was full of a dim, suggestive beauty, which entirely disappeared by the time the scene-painter, the lime-light man, and the stage-carpenter had done their work. Often at rehearsal, words would give her the shock of truth that in performance would just puzzle her by their banality; voices would seem to come from some remote recess of life; movements would take on dignity; the players seemed indeed to move and live in an enchanted world.... And so, off the stage, they did.
Miss Wainwright and Mr Freeland Moore, who had played together for so many years, were idyllic lovers, though he had a wife in America, and she a husband who had gone his ways. To them there were no further stages of love than those which are shown to the Anglo-American public. For them there were but Romeo and Juliet at the ball with no contending houses to plague them. They lived in furnished flats and paid their way, impervious to every conspiracy of life to bring them down to earth.... Both adored Clara, both soon accepted her and Charles as lovers even more perfect than themselves, because younger, and both were never tired of thinking what kindness they could next do to help their friends.
And Clara struggled on. Sometimes she could have screamed with rage against the theatre, and these people whose enchantment had been won by the sacrifice of the fiery essence of themselves, so that they accepted meekly insults from the manager, from the stage-manager, from the very dressing-room staff of the theatre, who could make their lives uncomfortable. She understood then what it was that had driven Charles out, and made him so reluctant to return, and why his immense talent, which should have been expressed in terms of the theatre, was reduced to making what, after all, were only notes on paper. Convinced that she could help to bring him back from exile, she struggled on, though the strain increased as more and more fiercely she had to pit her will against the powerful machinery of the theatre.
Everybody was kind to her, though many were alarmed by the intent force with which she set about her work. Very often she had no energy left for conversation, and would then take refuge in a book, a volume of Meredith, or Bernard Shaw, Schopenhauer or Browning, who had been the poet of her first discovery of the world of books. That frightened off the young men, who were at first greatly taken with her charm. They were subdued themselves as everybody was, from the business manager down, but her silence chilled and alarmed them.... Except those she bought herself, she never saw a book in the theatre.
At first, full of Charles's fierce denunciation of Sir Henry Butcher, she detested the man, who seemed to her like some monster who absorbed all the vitality of the rest and used it to inflate his egoism. He never spoke to her for some weeks, and she avoided meeting him, did not wish to speak to him, felt, indeed, that she was perhaps using him a little unfairly in turning his theatre to her own ends, forcing herself to accept it in order to make things easier for Charles, to whom she used to go with a most vivid caricature of Sir Henry at rehearsals.
Until he appeared there was a complete languor upon the stage. The actors and actresses still had upon them the mood of breakfast-in-bed; some looked as though they were living in the day before yesterday and had given up all hope of catching up with the rest of the world; some of the men talked sport; all the women chattered scandal; some read their letters, others the telegrams by which their correspondence was conducted. In none was the slightest indication of preparedness for work, for the thoughts of all were obviously miles away from the theatre.... Stagehands moved noisily about. They, at least, were conscious of earning their living. Messages were brought in from the stage-door. Back cloths were let down: the fire-proof curtain descended slowly, and remained shutting out the vast and gloomy spaces of the auditorium, also a melancholy gray-haired lady who was the widow of the author of the melodrama in rehearsal.
Sir Henry appeared with a bald-headed Frenchman, with a red ribbon in his button-hole, his secretary, carrying a shorthand notebook, and a stout, thick-set Jew, who waited obsequiously for the great actor to take further notice of him. Sir Henry talked volubly and laughed uproariously. He was very happy and he beamed round the stage at his company. The ladies said,—
'Good-morning, Sir Henry.'
The gentlemen said,—
'Morning.'
Sir Henry gesticulating violently turned away and began in French to tell a humorous story to which the Frenchman said, 'Oui, oui,' and the Jew said, 'Oui, oui,' while Clara, who could speak French as fluently as English, understood not a word of it; but this morning she liked Sir Henry because he was so happy and because he was so full of vitality.
His business with the Jew and the Frenchman was soon settled fairly to their satisfaction. They went away, and Sir Henry began to collect his thoughts. He turned to his secretary and asked,—
'We are rehearsing a play, eh? All these ladies and gentlemen are not here for nothing, eh? What play?'
'The Golden Hawk.'
'Ah! Yes.... I have rehearsed so many plays.... I am thinking of my big Autumn success.... I can feel it in the air. I can always feel it. I felt thatIvanhoewas no good, but I was over-persuaded. My instinct is always right. The business men and the authors are always wrong....'
He flew into a sudden passion, and roared, 'Who the hell let down the fire-proof? I hate the thing. Take it away. How can a man rehearse to a fire-proof curtain? Take it away. Send it to the London County Council who inflicted it on me. I don't want it.'
The stage-manager shouted to a man in the flies,—
'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' forThe 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, Crème 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 hisTempest?'
'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 doThe Tempestat 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 readThe Tempestwith 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?
Clara could hardly remember ever having been unhappy before. All her life she had done exactly as she wished to do. Her grandfather had never gainsaid her: had always indulged her every caprice, and had supported her even when she had been to all outward seeming in the wrong. He used to say in his whimsical manner that explosions never did any one any harm.... 'It is all wrong,' thought she, as she left the sanctum, and she was alarmed for Charles as she was still vibrant from the hostility in the actor-manager. What was the occasion of it? She could not guess. It was incredible to her that any one could object to Charles, so kindly, so industrious, so simple in his work and his belief in himself. People laughed at him sometimes indulgently, but that was a very different thing to this hostility, this cold, implacable condemnation. That was beyond her, for she had been brought up in a school of absolute tolerance except of the vulgar and ill-mannered.
Her quick wits worked on this new situation. She divined that Sir Henry resented the intrusion of a personality as powerful as his own and the check upon his habit of exuding patronage. His theatre had always been animated with his own vitality, and he obviously resented a position in which he had to employ that of another and openly to acknowledge it.
'He wants to patronise Charles,' thought Clara, and then she decided that for once in a way it would be a good thing for Charles to submit to it. It must be either that or his chosen interminable procedure by committee.
She decided to take a walk to think it over, and as she moved along Piccadilly towards the Green Park, where she proposed to ponder her problem, she had a distressing idea that she was followed. Several times she turned and stopped, but she could see no one who could be pursuing her. Men stared at her, but none dared molest so purposeful a young woman.... She stayed for some time in the Green Park, turning over and over in her mind how best she could engage Sir Henry's interest without aggravating his hostility to Charles, and still she was aware of eyes upon her.... She walked away very fast, but as she turned out into the roadway in front of Buckingham Palace she turned, stopped, and was accosted by a little dark woman with a smouldering fury in her eyes.
'Are you Mrs Mann?' said the woman.
'Yes,' said Clara, at once on her guard.
'So am I,' rejoined the other woman.
'Oh, no!' said Clara, with a smile that barely concealed the catch at her heart.
'Oh, yes,' replied the other woman. 'I should think I was married to him before you were born. And I wasn't the only one. He left the country——'
Clara turned on her heel and walked away. The other woman followed her breathing heavily and gasping out details.
'You horrible woman,' cried Clara, unable at last to bear any more. 'Go away...' And in her heart she said—
'It is my fault. I made him marry me.'
Still the other woman was at her heels, babbling and gasping out her sordid little tragedy—-two children, no money, her mother to keep.
Clara was stunned and so nauseated that she could not speak. Only in her mind the thought went round and round,—
'It is my fault.... It is my fault.'
But Charles ought to have told her. He ought not to have been so will-less, so ready to fall in with every suggestion she made.
'I must have this out at once,' she said, and hailing a taxi she bundled the other woman into it and drove home. Charles was out. She ordered tea, and quickly had the whole story out—the lodgings in Birmingham, the intrigue, the ultimatum, Charles's catastrophic collapse and inertia, years of poverty in London going from studio to studio, lodging to lodging: his flight—with another woman: her struggles, her present hand to mouth existence on the outskirts of the musical comedy theatre.
'I wouldn't have spoken,' said Kitty, 'if you hadn't been so young.'
'I should have thought that was a reason for keeping quiet,' replied Clara, who was now almost frozen with horror.
'You were bound to hear sooner or later.'
Charles came in followed by Mr Clott. He was in the highest spirits and called out,—
'Darling, Lord Verschoyle is interested.'
His jaw dropped as he saw Kitty there at tea. His pince-nez fell off his nose, and he stood pulling at his necktie for a few seconds. Then he gave Mr Clott a commission to perform, and stood looking with horror, disgust, and loathing at the unhappy Kitty.... It was Clara who first found her voice,—
'I ... I brought her here, Charles,' she said. 'I thought it would save us all—trouble.'
In a tone icy with fury he said,—
'If you will go quietly, I will write to you. Please leave your address, and I will write to you.'
Kitty hoped for a moment that he was talking to Clara, but his fury was so obviously concentrated on her that at last she rose and said meekly,—
'Yes, Charles.'
'You will find a writing-block by the telephone in the hall. Please leave your address there.'
'Yes, Charles.'
With that she left the room. Charles and Clara were too much for her. All her venom trickled away in a thin stream of dread as she felt the gathering rage in the two of them. At the same time she had some exultation in having produced a storm so much beyond her own capacity.
'You did not tell me,' said Clara, when Kitty had gone.
'Honestly, honestly I had forgotten.'
'Forgotten! You did not tell me. You did not need her to come into this house to remember.'
'No.'
'What do you mean, then? You had forgotten?'
'Honestly, I never thought of it until one day when I met her in the street.'
'Does everybody know?'
'Yes. I don't conceal these things.'
'You concealed it from me, from me, from me....'
'Yes. I never thought of it. She'd gone out of my life years ago.'
'Have many women gone out of your life?'
He blushed.
'A good many.... I never meant to conceal it. Truly I didn't. I just didn't mention it.... You were so happy, chicken; so was I. I hadn't been happy before—not like that.'
'She can ruin us.... Do you know that? She has only to go up to the nearest policeman and ruin us. Do you know that?'
'She won't.... She'd never dare.'
'She would.... I'm young. That's the unpardonable thing in a woman....'
'I don't understand,' said Charles, sitting down suddenly. And quite perceptibly he did not understand that any one, man or woman, could deliberately hurt another.
'But youmustunderstand,' she cried. 'You must understand.... You must protect yourself.'
'How can I?'
'She is your wife. You must give her what she wants.'
'Money? Oh, yes.'
'You fool,' said Clara, in exasperation, 'you've married me. If she moves at all you will be ruined. You will be sent to prison.'
'Do you want to get out of it?' he asked.
'I? No.... I want to protect you.... Oh, it's my fault. It's my fault I thought I could help you. I thought I could help you.... I could have helped you if only you had told me.... You must have known. You couldn't imagine that you could come back to London and not be——'
'But I did,' he said. 'I never thought of it. I never do think of anything except in terms of my work.... I'll tell Clott to see to it.'
Clara clenched her fists until her nails dug into the palms of her hands.
'I shall have to leave you,' she said at last. 'I shall have to leave you.'
She pulled off her wedding-ring
'Perhaps I'd better go away,' he muttered at last very slowly. 'It's a pity. Everything was going so well. Lord Verschoyle is deeply interested. He has two hundred thousand a year.'
Clara laughed at him.
'He is willing to sit on my committee.'
'Does he know?'
'No.'
'But can't you see that these people ought to know.'
'No. What has it got to do with my work?'
'To you nothing. To them everything. They can't support you if they know——'
'But they don't know.'
'You are in that woman's hands. So am I. You can't expect me to live upon her sanction.'
This was a new aspect of the matter to Charles, who had never admitted the right of any other person to interfere in his affairs. It hurt him terribly as it slowly dawned upon him that the miserable Kitty had behind her the whole force of the law.
'Oh, good God!' he said. 'I'm a criminal. Oh, good God! This is serious.'
'I'm glad you realise it at last,' said she.
He broke down and wept, and began to tumble out the whole ridiculous story of his life; his perpetual disappointment: his terror of being bound down to anything except the work in which he felt so free, so wholly master of himself and his destiny; his delight in at last finding in her a true companion who, unlike all other women, allowed him to be something more than her possession.
'I'm afraid,' he said in the end, 'that I have never understood women.'
'Leave it to me.' Poor Clara felt that if she tried to explain any more her head would burst.
He looked up at her gratefully and was at once happy again.
'It was my fault,' said Clara. 'It wouldn't have happened if I'd thought about life at all. But it was so wonderful being with you and making your work come to life that I never thought about the rest.... I never looked at it from the woman's point of view, as, being a woman, I ought to have done.... I think the shock has made me a woman.... I don't think anything will ever make you a man.'
Charles gaped at her, but was not the least bit hurt. He did not particularly want to be a man as manhood is generally understood.
'Yes,' he said, 'Lord Verschoyle is deeply interested, and he has two hundred thousand a year.'
'Wait a moment,' replied Clara, 'I'll go and see if she has left her address.'
She ran downstairs, but Kitty had left no address. As Clara, considering the matter, decided that meant either that she intended to make trouble or that she had good reason for waiting before she made it.
When she returned, Charles was lover-like in his gratitude, but she repulsed him, told him that he must get on with his designs forThe Tempestand she would see what could be done about his troubles. For the present, for a little while at all events, she proposed to leave him and to stay with Julia Wainwright.
'I may have to tell her,' she said, 'but I don't think so.... I won't let this woman ruin you, Charles.'
'I have hurt you far more than I have hurt her,' he said miserably. 'I suppose things will never be the same. You'll always feel that I am keeping things from you....'
'No. No. I know that is all that matters.... It is just the law that is somehow wrong, giving advantage to any one who is mean enough to take it.... But womenaremean.'
'Not you.'
'No. I do understand you, Charles, but I'm so hurt. I'm so tired I don't think I can stand much more.'
'I'll do anything you want.'
'Then leave it to me.... The chief thing is your work, Charles. That is all of you that matters.'
This was entirely Charles's view of himself, and, as he could not see, yet, the effect of the intrusion of Kitty upon the brave girl who had so childishly accepted his childishness he was unperturbed and free from all anxiety.... So far his new career in London had been a triumphant success, and it seemed to him incredible that it could be checked by such a trifle as a forgotten wife. He thought of the money that should come from the Imperium: money meant power, power meant the removal of all disagreeable obstacles from his path. He licked his lips.... England understood money and nothing else. He would talk to England in her own language and when he had caught her attention he would speak his own.... Things were going so splendidly: a man like himself was not going to be upset by trifles. He had worked in exile for so long: surely, surely he would be able to reap his reward.
Clara meanwhile was shocked almost out of her youth. She did not weep. There were no tears in her eyes in which there slowly gathered a fierce expression of passionate pain. The bloom of youth was on her cheeks, upon her lips, in all her still unformed features, but in her eyes suddenly was the knowledge of years, concentrated, tyrannous, and between this knowledge and her will there was set up a remorseless conflict, from which she found relief only in a new gaiety and love of fun.
It was impossible to discuss the matter any further with Charles, and without a word to him she went away to Miss Wainwright's flat. That good creature took her in without a word, without even a mute curiosity. People's troubles were their own affair, and she knew that they needed to be alone with them. She gave Clara her bedroom and absented herself as much as possible, and kept Freeland out of the way.
The flat was luxuriously but monstrously furnished. Its frank, opulent ugliness was a relief to the girl after the rarefied atmosphere of aesthetics in which for three years she had lived with Charles, upon whom all her thoughts were still concentrated. Of herself she had no thought. It did not concern her what she was called: wife or mistress. She was Clara Day and would remain so whatever happened to her. She had forced Charles to marry her in order to protect him and to help him, and she had brought him into danger of imprisonment.... It was perfectly true; Charles could not protect himself because he could not learn that others were not as kindly as himself. He had been trapped into marriage with that vulgar and venomous woman. He could not speak of it because he loathed it so much.... She found excuses for him, for herself she sought none, and at the back of all her thoughts was her firm will that he should succeed. Yes, she thought, it was a good thing to leave him for a while. She had been with him too much, too near him.
It was a great comfort to be with Julia and Freeland, that unreal Romeo and Juliet of middle age. They were very proud of her, and elated to have her with them, took her everywhere, introduced her to all their friends, and insisted upon her being photographed for the Press, and in due course she had the shock of seeing her own features, almost more than life-size, exhibited to the hurrying crowds on the station-platforms. She was called Clara Day, Sir Henry Butcher's youngest and prettiest recruit. From the shy, studious little girl who sat close and, if possible, hidden during rehearsals, she found that she had become in the estimation of the company one of themselves. It was known that she had had lunch alone with Sir Henry, and the publication of her photograph sealed her young reputation. With the interest of the Chief, and influence in the Press, it was accepted that she would go far. That she was Mrs Charles Mann was whispered, for apparently she only had been ignorant of the impediment.
She apprehended the situation instinctively. Her mind recoiled from it. She felt trapped. Whichever way she moved she would injure him.... She ought to have kept quietly in the background, and let him go his own way. By forcing him into the theatre he and his affairs were exposed to the glaring light of publicity through her own impetuous ambition for him.
Soon she was in an intolerable agony. She wrote to Charles every day, and saw him occasionally, but was tortured every moment with the idea that her mere presence was injurious to him, and might call down an attack from the jealous Kitty at any moment. On the other hand, at any moment some journalist might seize on the story of her arrival in London with Charles, and publish the fact of their marriage.... She stayed on with Julia, and let the days go by until at last she felt that it was unfair to her kind friends. One night, therefore, after the theatre, she went into Julia's bedroom, and sat perched at the end of her bed, with her knees tucked under her chin, and said,—
'I'm not Charles's wife, Julia.'
'I know that,' replied the kind creature.
'But Iammarried to him.'
'Good God!' Julia sat up and clasped her hand to her capacious bosom.... 'Not a ceremony!'
'Yes. In an office near the Strand.'
'My dear child, my dear, dear child,' Julia began to weep. 'It's ... it's ... it's ...'
'I know what it is,' said Clara, setting her jaw. 'I don't know what to do.'
'You must never see him again.'
'But I must. Iammarried to him inside me. He can't do anything without me. I've made him come over here....'
'Didn't you know?'
'I knew nothing except that I loved him.'
'But people can't love like that.'
'I do.'
'He ran away from all that—and there were other things.... Oh, my dear, dear child, have you nobody belonging to you?'
'Only Charles. And I've hurt him.'
'What does he say?'
'He doesn't seem to realise....'
'I'd like to thrash him within an inch of his life.... The only thing to be thankful for is that you are not married to him. Not realise, indeed! He walked out of his marriage like a man bilking his rent.'
'He is an artist. His work is more important to him than anybody.'
Julia wept and wailed. 'The scoundrel! The scoundrel! The blackguard!'
'I won't have you calling him names. I won't have it. I won't have it,' cried Clara, her feelings finding vent in an outburst of temper. 'And you're not to tell a soul, not even Freeland. I won't have anybody interfering. I will handle this myself because I know more about it than anybody else.... It doesn't help me at all to hear you abusing Charles. It only hurts me.... I've made a mistake, and I am going through with it.'
'But you can't live with him.'
'You live with Freeland.'
'Yes. But we're not married, so nobody worries; at least I am married, so is Freeland. That makes it all right. If people are married it is different.'
The complications of the position were beyond Julia's intelligence, and she began to laugh hysterically. Clara laughed, too, but from genuine amusement. The world certainly did look very funny from the detachment now forced upon her: deliciously funny, and Charles appeared in her thoughts as a kind of Harlequin dancing through the world, peering into the houses where people were captive, tapping the doors with his wand so that they opened, but no one never came out.
'I'll take you to my lawyer,' said Julia, at last, with a fat sob.
'I want no lawyers,' snapped Clara defiantly. 'Charles hates that woman and she knows it. She won't try to get him back.'
'Yes. But she won't stand you're being with him.'
'Then I'll live alone, and help Charles in my own way.'
'Help yourself first, lovey; then you can help other people.'
'I don't believe it. If you help yourself, you are kept so busy doing it that you don't know the other people are there.'
Of course Julia told Freeland, and in the morning he came tapping at Clara's door. She admitted him. His rather faded, handsome face wore a very serious expression, more serious indeed than was warranted either by the feeling in his heart or the thought in his head. It was a very serious situation, and he had assumed the appropriate manner.... Clara had slept soundly, and her fund of healthy good spirits made it possible for her to regard the whole complication as, in itself, rather superficial. The sun was shining in upon the mirror of her dressing-table, upon her silver brushes, upon the portrait of Julia in a silver frame, and upon the new frock which had come only the day before from the dressmaker. With the sun shining, and the eager thought of Charles in her heart, Clara could have no anxiety. No problem was insoluble, no obstacle, she believed, could be irresistible. Therefore she smiled as Freeland came in treading more heavily than his wont. He stood and looked down at her.
'It's a bad business, kid,' he said, 'a bad, bad business.'
'Is it?'
'He has ruined your life. I feel like shooting him.'
'That wouldn't help me.'
'Can't you see how serious it is? You're neither married nor unmarried.'
'Can't I be just Clara Day?'
Freeland was rather taken aback. He was used to Julia's taking her cue from him. If a woman does not take the line proposed by the man in a situation, a scene, where is he? And, in fact, Freeland did not know where he was. His life had proceeded fairly smoothly from scene to scene and he was not used to being pulled up.
'No, no, kid,' he protested. 'It is too ghastly. Your position is impossible. Charles, damn him, can't protect you. The world is hard and cruel.... A man can play the lone hand, but I never heard of its being done by a woman: never.'
'I'm going to see Charles through,' said Clara, 'and you'll see how we shall make this old London of yours wake up.'
'But if there's a scandal....?'
'There shan't be.... And if there is: well ... well...'
Freeland in his turn began to weep. Clara seemed to him so pathetic, so innocent, so oblivious of all the hard facts of the world. She was like a wild bird, flying in ecstasy, flying higher and higher in the pain of her song. Indeed she was a most touching sight lying there in her innocence, full of faith, conscious of danger, busy with wary thoughts, but so eager, vital, and confident that all her belief in Charles and her love for him were based in the deeper and stronger forces of life.... She was roused to battle, and she was profoundly aware that the law and the other devices of society were contrived wholly to frustrate those deeper, stronger forces.... Freeland's sentimental sympathy seemed to her in her happy morning mood weak and irrelevant, yet charming and pathetic. He regarded her as a little girl and was entirely unconscious of all the passionate knowledge in her which moved so far and so swiftly beyond his capacity.
'Anything either of us can do,' he said, 'we shall do, always.' He stooped and took her in his arms and kissed her, and large tears fell upon her cheek. Tears came easily to these people: to Clara they came not. Indeed she rather exulted in her peril, which destroyed for her once and for all the superficiality of the life into which she had plunged in order to help Charles to conquer his kingdom, which was worlds away from this world of law and pretence, of spurious emotions and easy tears.
'I can't think how Charles could have done it,' said Freeland, drying his eyes.
'I made him,' said Clara, her eyes dancing with fun and mischief.