Mummery Part 34

'DEAR MADAM,--Either you grant me a profitable interview after the performance or the police will be informed to-morrow morning.

'CLAUDE c.u.mBERLAND.')

'I only wanted,' said Rodd, 'to ask you to convey my very best wishes to Miss Day. Just that. Nothing more.'

Verschoyle stared at him, and Rodd laughed.

'No. I am not what you think. I have been and am always at your service. To-night has been one of the most wretched of her life. I have been watching the performance. Butcher and his audience have been too much for them.'

'But the success was hers.'

'You do not know her well, if you imagine that such a success is what she desires.'

An attendant came up to them with a note from Clara enclosing c.u.mberland's. Verschoyle handed it to Rodd, who crumpled it up and said,--

'I knew that was the danger-point. Will you take me to see her? I know these people. I have done what I could. I kicked that fellow out just after you had gone.'

'There is a supper in Sir Henry's room,' said Verschoyle, with an uneasy glance at Rodd's shabby evening clothes. 'I will take you there. Are you an actor?'

'No. I write. I remember you at the Hall when I was at Pembroke.'

That rea.s.sured Verschoyle. He liked this deep, quiet man, and felt that he knew more than he allowed to appear, half-guessed indeed that he had played some great and secret part in Clara's life. He introduced him to Lady Bracebridge and her daughter, who had stayed to watch the huge audience melt away and to hold a little reception with congratulations on the success of 'their' play. Lady Bracebridge noticed Rodd's boots at once, an old pair of cracked patent leathers, but her daughter chattered to him,--

'Wasn't it all too sweet? I adore _The Tempest_. Caliban is such a dear, isn't he?'

Rodd smiled grimly but politely.

They made their way on to the stage where they found Charles Mann tipping the stage-hands. The stairs up from the stage were thronged with brilliant personages, all happy, excited, drinking in the atmosphere of success.... In Sir Henry's room Lady Butcher stood to receive her guests. 'Too delightful! ... The most charming production! ... Exquisite! ... Quite too awfully Ballet Russe!'

The players in their costumes, their eyes dilated with nervous excitement, their lips trembling with their hunger for praise, moved among the Jews, politicians, journalists, major and minor celebrities.... Sir Henry moved from group to group. He was at his most brilliantly witty.

But there was no Ariel. Several ladies who desired to ask her to lunch in their anxiety to invest capital in the new star, clamoured to see her.

'She is tired, poor child,' said Sir Henry, with an amorously proprietary air.

'But she _must_ come,' said Lady Butcher, eager to exploit the interest Clara had aroused, and she bustled away.

Charles Mann came in at that moment and he was at once surrounded with twittering women.

'You must tell him,' said Rodd to Verschoyle, 'he must get out....

Will you let her go with him?'

'Never,' said Verschoyle, and awaiting his chance, he plucked Charles by the sleeve, took him into a corner and gave him c.u.mberland's note.

Charles's face went a greeny gray.

'What does he mean?'

'Blackmail,' replied Verschoyle. 'You can't ask her to go on living with that hanging over her head.'

'I can pay,' said Charles.

'She'll pay on for ever.'

'What else can I do?'

'Clear out, give her a chance. Let her make her own life so that it can't touch her--whatever happens to you.'

'But I ...'

'Can you only think of yourself?'

'My work.'

'Look here, Mann. I've paid six hundred to keep this quiet. It hasn't done it. I suppose they've squabbled over the spoils.'

'Six hundred.'

'Yes. What can you do? These people ask more and more and more.'

'It's ruin.'

'Yes. If you don't clear out.'

Charles began to look elderly and flabby.

'All right,' he said. 'When?'

'To-morrow morning. I'll see that you have money and you'll get as much work as you like now--thanks to her.'

'You don't know what she's been to me, Verschoyle.'

'No. But I know what any other man would have been to her. You ought to have told her.'

'To-morrow morning,' said Charles. 'I'll go.'

He turned away and basked in the smiles and congratulations of the Bracebridge-Butcher set.

Verschoyle returned to Rodd,--

'That's all right,' he said. 'I was afraid that with this success he'd want to stick it out. These idealists are so infernally self-righteous.'

Lady Butcher returned with Clara, looking very pale and slender in a little black silk frock. Sir Henry came up to her at once and took possession of her. He whispered in her ear,--

'Did you get my flowers?'

'Yes.'