Mummery Part 13

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 b.u.t.tercup.'

Clara smiled. Sir Henry, from excessive familiarity with n.o.ble 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 lords.h.i.+p 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 h.e.l.lenic 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 compet.i.tion. 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 showmans.h.i.+p, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.

Verschoyle said,--

'I'm only astonished that more men in my position don't go in for the theatre. There are so many of us and we can't think of anything better than racing and polo and big game.'