Mummery Part 30

'Charley's girl.'

'Whose?'

'Charley's. Charley Mann's. He's my husband.'

Rodd was silent for some moments while he took this in.

'Who is this other--man?' asked Rodd kindly, beginning slowly to piece the story together.

'That's Claude.... He was a lodger of mother's before she went broke and had to come to live with me. He never let me alone. I wanted to go straight, I did really.... Charley's not bad, and I thought I should never see him again. I never thought he would make money. I never thought we should see him sw.a.n.king it in the papers, or I'd never have had a word to say to Claude. I wouldn't really. Only Charley getting married to the other girl----'

It struck Rodd like a blow in the face. Kitty did not mark the effect of her story, and was not concerned with it. All she felt was relief in the telling.

'I wanted money to send mother out of England. I couldn't stand it any more. If it hadn't been for her there wouldn't have been Claude, and a girl at the theatre can have a good time on her own nowadays even with a kiddie. I've often wanted to tell you.'

'Does she know?'

'Charley's girl? Yes. She knows. It's a nice mix-up. Isn't it? And Charley's not bad. He'll just lose you same as he would his hat. No offence meant.'

She laughed hysterically.

'Who gave you the money?'

'A swell.'

'To keep your mouth shut?'

'Yes. Charley would have to go to prison. Claude's been in prison.

That's why he'd like Charley to go. Everybody who's been to prison is like that. It makes them sly and hard.... But I say that Charley's paid: six hundred. I'd never have got that out of him if I'd stayed with him, would I?'

'I suppose not.... If there's any more trouble will you come to me?'

'I'd love to,' she said, perking up and casting at him the sorrowful languis.h.i.+ng glances with which she had pursued him for so long.

'Claude says he's pushed her on so quick and he ought to have done the same for me.... Claude was at their wedding. I didn't know him then.

He's a friend of mother's. We thought he had money but he hasn't got a bean.'

'I'll deal with Claude,' said Rodd. 'And if there is any more trouble, mind you come to me.'

'It was all after my baby died,' said Kitty, as if to excuse herself, but Rodd had accepted the story, and had no thought of excuse or forgiveness. His thought was all for Clara.

How comic it was that he should have given her Mann's book! Did she love Mann? She must have done. She could not have married him else.... But then what was Verschoyle to her, that he should have paid so large a sum in hush-money? A furious jealousy swept away what was left of Rodd's intellectual world and released at last his pa.s.sions.

His mind worked swiftly through the story, picking it up in time with every thread.

Was she only an actress? Was the perfection which he had wors.h.i.+pped a figment, a projection of herself in the character most pleasing to his idealism? Impossible! There can be no feigning of purity, honesty, joy. That is where the pretences of humanity collapse. In such a pretence as that simulated pa.s.sion--the ultimate baseness, breaks down, creates no illusion, and is foiled.

But on the face of it, what an appalling story! It brought him violently to earth. He could not move, but sat staring at the woman, wanting to tell her that she lied, but knowing that she had spoken according to the truth of the letter. Of the truth of the spirit she could most patently know nothing. Her world was composed of dull facts and smouldering emotions. She could know nothing of the world where emotions flamed into pa.s.sion to burn the facts into golden emblems of truth. And that was Clara's world: the world in which for two days he had been privileged to dwell, a world in which soul could speak to soul and laugh at all the confusion of fact and detail in which they must otherwise be ensnared.... Mann, Verschoyle, a swift success in the theatre--the facts were of the kind that had induced the horror in which until he met her he had lived. His meeting with her had dispelled his horror, but the facts remained. He in his solitude might ignore them and dream on, but could she? Surely he owed it to her to offer her what through her he had won.... And then--to buy off the wretched woman, surely she could never have submitted to that!

He began to think of Charles Mann with a blistering, jealous hatred.

'I think I'd have killed myself,' said Kitty, 'if it had gone on. I don't wish them any harm now that he's paid up.... I wouldn't have said a word about it to any one, only she's so young. It did give me a bit of a shock, and Charles getting on, too. He's quite gray and has a bit of a stomach. I never thought he'd be the one to get fat. I'm all skin and bone. Look at my arms.'

Rodd left her. When he opened the door he was relieved to find that the unpleasant Claude had gone. Mrs Messenger was sitting by the fire in the front room, her skirts tucked up about her knees, and a gla.s.s of port on the mantelpiece. She turned her head with a leer and said,--

'Good luck! I always thought she was keen on you.... It's time she settled down. She was born to be respectable, and to look after a man.

That's all most girls are fit for. But in the theatre a girl's got to look after number one or go down and out.'

The old woman with the painted face and dyed hair made Rodd's flesh creep. She seemed to him a symbol of all the evil in the world, decay, disruption, corruption, and with a flash of inspiration he discerned in her the source of all this pitiful tangle of lies. A tender sympathy entirely new to him took possession of his faculties and armed with this he determined that he would not fail in whatever part he was called upon to play in the drama of Clara's life.

He said to the old woman,--

'We have been talking it over. We have decided to book you a pa.s.sage to Canada and to give you a hundred pounds with which to keep yourself alive until you find work to do.'

'What?' she said, 'me leave London? Dear old London, dear old Leicester Square and the theatres? And leave you to do what you like with my daughter, you dirty dog? I've seen her nosing round on the stairs after you, a feller that lives on bread-and-cheese and grape-nuts. I know your sort, you dirty, interfering blackguard.

You've never given a girl as much as a drink in your life.'

'All the same,' said Rodd, 'your pa.s.sage will be booked, and if Mr Claude What's-his-name shows his face here there'll be a neck broken on the stairs.'

He walked out and heard the old woman gulp down a gla.s.s of port and say,--

'Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!'

Then, as he moved upstairs to his own room he heard her screaming,--

'Kitty, you filthy little claw-hammer----'

The door was slammed to, and he heard only their voices in bitter argument, tears, reproaches, curses; but at last, as he paced to and fro in his lonely room, the tumult died down and he could wrestle with the new turbulent thoughts awakened in him.... Work was out of the question. He had been clawed back into life. If he did not want to be destroyed he must be profoundly, pa.s.sionately, and scrupulously honest with himself. He must face his emotions as he had never done.

At first he thought of wildly heroic solutions. He would seize his opportunity with Kitty, take advantage of her soft grat.i.tude and sweep her out of harm's way..... But what was the good of that? It settled nothing, solved nothing. To act without Clara's knowledge would be to betray her. That he was sure was what Verschoyle had done.

Already he had interfered and there was no knowing what Claude's spite might lead to.... O G.o.d, what a tangle! What should be done, what could be done, for Clara? No one mattered but she. Mann, Verschoyle, himself, what did any of them matter? She was the unique, irreplaceable personality. Of that he was sure. It was through her glorious innocence that all these strange things had happened to her.

A less generous, a more experienced and calculating woman would have known instinctively that there was some queer story behind Charles Mann.... She could leap into a man's heart through his mind. That was where she was so dangerous to herself. The history of his purely physical emotions would concern her not at all. Her own emotions in their purity could recognise no separation between body and spirit, nor in others could they suspect any division.... Of that he was sure.

Without that the whole embroglio was fantastic and incredible. She could never in so short a time have achieved what she had done through calculation and intrigue. That kind of success took years of patience under checks, rebuffs, and insults.... Everywhere she offered her superb youth, and it was taken and used, used for purposes which she could not even suspect. Her youth would be taken, she would be given no room, no time in which to develop her talent or her personality.

The way of the world? It had been the way of the world too long, but the strong of heart and the worthy of soul had always resisted or ignored it.

Sometimes Rodd thought the only thing to do was to wait, to leave the situation to develop naturally. It would do Mann no great harm to get into trouble, but then--Clara would be marked. All her life she would have to fight against misunderstanding.... No, no. There could be no misunderstanding where she was concerned. Her personality answered everything. It would be fine, it would be splendid, to see her overriding all obstacles in her bounteous gift of the treasure that was in her to a world that in its wors.h.i.+p of self-help and material power had forgotten youth, courage, and the supreme power of joy.

XVI

ARIEL

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-s.h.i.+fter 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.'