Mummery: A Tale of Three Idealists

by Gilbert Cannan

XIV

VERSCHOYLE FORGETS HIMSELF

Lord Verschoyle had imagined that by making for Art he would be able to shake free of predatory designs. It was not long before he discovered his mistake and that he had plunged into the very heart of the Society which he desired to avoid, for the Imperium, as used by Lady Butcher and Lady Bracebridge, was a powerful engine in the politico-financial world which dominated London. Verschoyle in his simplicity had seen the metropolis as consisting of purposeful mammas and missish daughters bearing down upon him from all sides. Now he discovered that there was more in it than that and that marriage was only one of many moves in a complicated game.... Lady Bracebridge had a daughter. Lady Butcher had a son whom she designed for a political career, upon which he had entered as assistant secretary to an under-secretary. Perceiving that Verschoyle easily lost his head, as in his apparent relations with Clara Day, they designed to draw him into political society where heads are finally and irrevocably lost.... He loathed politics and could not understand them, but young Butcher haunted him, and Lady Bracebridge cast about him a net of invitations which he could find no way of evading. They justified themselves by saying that it was necessary to save him from Clara, and he found himself drawn further and further away, and more and more submitted to an increasing pressure, the aim of which seemed to be to commit him to supporting the Imperium and the Fleischmann group which had some mysterious share in its control.... He knew enough about finance to realise that there was more in all this than met the eye, and upon investigation he found that the Fleischmann group were unloading Argentines all over monied London, and in due course he was offered a block of shares which, after an admirable dinner at the Bracebridges, he amiably accepted.

The network was too complicated for him to unravel, but, as the result of putting two and two together, he surmised that the Imperium must have been losing rather more than it was worth to the Fleischmann group, and that therefore sacrifice must be offered up. He was the sacrifice. He did not mind that. It would infuriate his trustees when at last he had to give them an account of this adventure, but he did object to Charles and Clara being used to make a desperate bid to revive the languishing support of the public.

Charles and Clara were so entirely innocent of all intrigue. They gave simply what was in them without calculation of future profit, and with the most guileless trust in others, never suspecting that they were not as simple as themselves. Therefore Verschoyle cursed his own indolence which had committed him both to the Imperium and the Fleischmann group.

As he pondered the problem, he saw that Charles and Clara could be dropped, and probably would be as soon as it was convenient. The real controller of the Imperium was Lady Bracebridge, whose skill in intrigue was said to be worth ten thousand a year to Sir Julius Fleischmann. She played upon Lady Butcher, Lady Butcher played upon Sir Henry, who, with Mr Gillies crying 'Give, give,' was between the upper and the nether millstone, and could only put up a sham fight.... Verschoyle understood, too late, that The Tempest was to be produced not to present Clara and Charles to the British public, but to capture himself. Like a fool, in his eagerness to help Clara, he had let himself be captured, and now he thought he owed her amends.... He did not know how difficult the situation had become. The danger point, as he saw the problem, was her position with regard to Charles, who, fortunately, respected her wishes and made no attempt to force her hand. All the same there the awkward fact was and at any moment might trip her up.

Verschoyle did not mind a scandal, and he did not care a hang whether Charles went to prison or not. It might give him the instruction in the elementary facts of existence which he needed to make him learn to begin at the beginning instead of the middle or the end.... What Verschoyle dreaded was a sudden shock which might blast the delicate bud of Clara's youth, which to him was far more precious than any other quality, and the only thing which in all his life had moved him out of his timid dilettantism. To him it was a more valuable thing than the whole of London, and compared with its vivid reality the Imperium, with its firm hold on the affections of the public, and its generation of advertising behind it, was a blown bubble.

He had tea with her on the day after her supper with Sir Henry, and found her disastrously altered, hurt, and puzzled.

'What is the matter?' he asked. 'Rehearsals not going well?'

'Oh, yes. They are going very well.... But I am worried about Charles. He has been borrowing money again.'

'Will you be happy again if I promise to look after Charles?'

'He ought not to expect to be looked after. He is very famous now, and should be able to make money.'

'Surely, like everything else, it is a matter of practice. You don't expect him to beat Sir Henry at his own game.'

'No-o,' she said. 'But I think I did expect Charles's game to beat Sir Henry's.'

'Surely it has done so.'

'No.'

They were in her rooms, which were now most charmingly furnished; bright, gay, and delicate in colouring, tranquil and cosy with books.

'Has anything happened?'

She told him.

'I thought it was going to be so simple. I felt that Charles and I were irresistible, and that we should conquer the theatre and make people admit that he is—what he is. Nothing can alter that. But it isn't simple at all. Other people want other things. They go on wanting the horrible things they have always wanted, and they expect us to help them to procure them. They don't understand. They think we want the same things.... I never thought I should be so unhappy. When it comes to the point they won't let the real things in people be put before the public.'

'Oh, come. He is just a vain old man who gets through his position what he could never have got for himself.'

'No, no, no,' she protested. 'It does mean what I say. It has made me hate the theatre and understand why Charles ran away from it.... Only, having forced him so far, what can I do? I have hurt him far more than he has hurt me. He was quite happy drifting from town to town abroad, and it was the life I had been brought up to, because my grandfather ran away from England, too. It wouldn't have mattered there how many wives Charles had in England.... But I wanted to see for myself, and I didn't want him to be wasted.... I can see perfectly well that Sir Henry wants if possible to discredit him and to prove that his ideas won't work.... We've all been very silly. These people are too clever for us. He's got your money and Charles's genius, and neither of you can raise a finger.'

Verschoyle looked rueful. He could not deny it.

'It's that damned old Bracebridge,' he said. 'She doesn't care a twopenny curse for art or for the public. She and her lot want any money that is floating loose and the whole social game in London has become a three-card trick in their hands. The theatre and newspapers are just the sharper's patter.'

Clara writhed.

'You can't do anything but go on,' he said. 'You are bound to get your success and they can't deny that. The old man knows that. Hence the trick to get you away from Charles.... If you succeed you'll pull Charles through, and—we can buy off anybody who wants to make trouble. I'll buy the Bracebridges, if necessary. I'm not particularly proud of my money. It comes from land for which I do absolutely nothing, but it's better than Fleischmann money which is got by the trickery of a lottery.'

'She's a horrible old woman,' said Clara.

'She intends that I shall marry her hen-brain of a daughter.... If the worst came to the worst, my dear, you could marry me.'

Clara was enraged. It infuriated her that he, of all people, whom she had so entirely trusted, should so far forget himself as to propose so trite and sentimental a solution. He could not help teasing her.

'It would save me, too,' he said. 'And as Lady Verschoyle you could give these people a Roland for their Oliver every time.'

'But I want to ignore them,' she said. 'Why won't you see that I don't want to win with my personality but with my art. That should be the irresistible thing.'

'It would be if they resisted it, but they don't. They ignore it.... I can't think of anything else, my dear. They've got my money: ten thousand in the Imperium and twenty in Argentinos, and they are using my name for all they are worth.'

'And if I hadn't asked you to stay after the birds and fishes it wouldn't have happened.'

'After all, it hasn't come to disaster yet.'

'But it will. It is all coming to a head, and Charles will have to be the one to suffer for it.'

'I promise you he shan't. He shall have a dozen committees and all the birds and fishes he requires.'

She could not help laughing. Perhaps, after all, her fears were exaggerated, but she dreaded Charles's helpless acquiescence in the plight to which he had been reduced by Mr Gillies's refusal to advance him a penny outside the terms mentioned in the contract.

'It certainly looks to me,' said Verschoyle, 'as if they wanted to break him. It wouldn't be any good my saying anything. They would simply point to their contract and shrug their shoulders at Charles's improvidence. How much did Mr Clott get away with?'

'A great deal. He had several hundreds in blackmail before he went. That is why we can't prosecute.'

Verschoyle whistled.

'It is a tangled skein,' he said. 'You'd much better marry me. I won't expect you to care for me.'

'Don't be ridiculous——'

There came a heavy thudding at the door, and Clara jumped nervously to her feet. Verschoyle opened the door, and Charles swept in like a whirlwind. His long hair hung in wisps about his face, his hat was awry, his cuffs hung down over his hands, his full tie was out over his waistcoat, and in both hands he held outstretched his walking stick and a crumpled piece of paper. He dropped the stick and smoothed the paper out on the table, and, in an almost sobbing voice, he said,—

'This has come. It is a wicked plot to ruin me. She demands a part in The Tempest or she will inform the police.... O God, chicken, that was a bad day when you made me marry you.'

Verschoyle picked up his stick and, beside himself with exasperated fury, laid about the unhappy Charles's shoulders and loins crying,—

'You hound, you cur, you filthy coward! You should have told her! You should have told her! You knew she was only a child!'

Charles roared lustily, but made no attempt to defend himself, although he was half a head taller than Verschoyle and twice as heavy. He merely said,—

'Oo-oh!' when a blow got home, and waited until the onslaught was over. Then he rubbed himself down and wriggled inside his clothes.

Clara stood aghast. It was horrible to her that this should have happened. Blows were as useless as argument with Charles.... He had done what he had done out of kindliness and childish obedience and, looking to motives rather than to results, could see no wrong in it.

Verschoyle was at once ashamed of himself.

'I lost my temper,' he said, and Charles, assured that the storm was over, smiled happily, ran his hands through his hair and said,—

'Do you think Sir Henry would give her a part?'

Verschoyle flung back his head and shouted with laughter. Such innocence was a supreme joke, especially coming after the serious conversation in which he and Clara had aired their fears as to the result of their incursion into theatrical politics.

'She used to be quite pretty,' added Charles. 'What delightful rooms you have, my dear. They're not so warm as my ham and beef shop.'

'Listen to me, Charles,' said Verschoyle. 'This is serious. I don't care about you. Nothing could hurt you. I don't believe you know half the time what is going on under your nose, but it is vitally serious for Clara. This business must be stopped.... If we can't buy these people off then I'll give you two hundred to clear out.'

'Clear out?' faltered Charles, 'but—my Tempest is just coming on. I'm——'

Verschoyle took up the letter and noted the address, one of the musical comedy theatres.

'Have you heard from Mr Clott lately?'

'No. His name is Cumberland now, you know. He came into money. He said he would come back to me when I had my own theatre.'

'Theatre be damned. I wanted to know if he's still blackmailing you.'

'Blackmail? Oh, no.'

'Don't you mind people blackmailing you?'

'If people are made like that.'

'Ah!' Verschoyle gave an indescribable gurgle of impatience. 'Look here, Mann, do try to realise the position. You can't get rid of this woman whatever she does because you have treated marriage as though you could take a wife as if it were no more than buying a packet of cigarettes.'

'I have never thought of Clara as my wife.'

'How then?'

'As Clara,' said Charles simply. 'She is a very great artist.'

Verschoyle was baffled, but Clara forgave Charles all his folly for the sake of his simplicity. It was true. The mistake was hers. What he said was unalterably true. She was Clara Day, an artist, and he had loved her as such. As woman he had not loved her or any other.... What in the ordinary world passed for love simply did not exist for him at all.

She turned to Verschoyle.

'Please do what you can for us,' she said. 'And Charles, please don't try to think of it in anybody else's way but your own. I won't let them send you to prison. They don't want to do that. They would much rather have you great and powerful so as to bleed you....'

'It has been very wonderful since you came, chicken,' he said. 'I'm ten times the man I was. It seems so stupid that because we went into a dingy office and gabbled a few words we shouldn't be able to be together.... I sometimes wish we were back in France or Italy in a studio, with a bird in a cage, and you dancing about, making me laugh with happiness....'

'I'll see my lawyer,' said Verschoyle.

'For Heaven's sake, don't!' cried Clara. 'Once the lawyers get hold of it, they'll heap the fire up and throw the fat on it.'

'I'm sorry I forgot myself.... You're a good fellow, Charles, but so damned silly that you don't deserve your luck.'

They shook hands on it and Verschoyle withdrew, leaving Charles and Clara to make what they could of the confusion in which they were plunged.... Charles's way out of it was simply to ignore it. If people would not or could not live in his fancy world, so much the worse for them. He did not believe that anything terrible could happen to him simply because, though calamities of the most serious nature had befallen him, he had hardly noticed them. He could forget so easily. He could withdraw and live completely within himself.

He sat at the table and began to draw, and was immediately entirely absorbed.

'Don't you feel it any more than that, Charles?' she asked.

'If people like to make a fuss, let them,' he said. 'It is their way of persuading themselves that they are important.... If they put me in prison, I should just draw on the walls with a nail, and the time would soon go by. The difference between us and them is that they are in a hurry and we are not. There won't be much left of my Tempest by the time they've done with it.... The electricians have secret instructions from Butcher. There was nothing about lighting in my contract, so it is to be his and not mine, as if a design could stand without the lighting planned for it.... There are to be spot-lines on Sir Henry and Miranda and you, if he is still pleased with you....'

Charles was talking in a cold, unmoved voice, but she knew that there must have been a furious tussle. She was up in arms at once,—

'It is disgraceful!' she cried. 'What is the good of his pretending to let you work in his theatre if you can have nothing as you wish it?'

'He believes in actors,' said Charles, 'People with painted faces and painted souls, people whose minds are daubed with paint, whose eyes are sealed with it, whose ears are stopped with it....'

'Am I one of them?' she asked plaintively.

'No! Never! Never!' he said, looking up from his drawing. 'They'll turn us into a success, chicken, but they won't let us do what we want to do.... I shan't go near the place again. But you are Ariel, and without you there can be no Tempest.'

'I'll go through with it,' she said, her will setting. 'I'll go through with it, and I'll make nonsense of everything but you.... You've done all you can, Charles. Just go on working. That's the only thing, the only thing....'

As she said these words, she thought of Rodd with an acute hostility that amounted almost to hatred. It was the meeting with him that had so confounded all her aims, that sudden plunge into humanity with him that had so exposed her to love that even Verschoyle's tone had changed towards her.... With Charles, love was as impersonal as a bird's song. It was only a call to her swift joy and claimed nothing for himself, though, perhaps, everything for his art. That was where he was so baffling. He expected the whole world to accept service under his banner, and was so confident that in time it would do so that no rebuff ruffled him.

Clara was tempted to accept his point of view, and to run all risks to serve him; but she realised now, as he did not, the forces arrayed against him. There was no blinking the fact that what the Butcher-Bracebridge combination detested was being forced to take him seriously: him or anything else under the sun. Even the public upon which they fawned was only one of several factors in their calculations.

'It will all come right, Charles,' she said. 'I am sure it will all come right. We won't give in. They have diluted you——'

'Diluted?' he exclaimed. 'Butchered!'

She admired him for accepting even that, but, in spite of herself, it hurt her that he still had no thought for her, but to him only artistic problems were important. The problems of life must be left to solve themselves. She could not help saying,—

'You ought not to leave everything to me, Charles.'

'You can handle people. I can't. I thought I was going to be rich, but there's no money. And even if this affair is a success I shall be ashamed of it.... I think I shall write to the papers and repudiate it. But it is the same everywhere. People take my ideas and vulgarise them. Actors are the same everywhere. They will leave nothing to the audience. They want to be adored for the very qualities they have lost.'

'You don't blame me, then?'

'Blame? What's the good of blaming any one. It doesn't help. It makes one angry. There is a certain pleasure in that, but it doesn't help.'

It was brought home to her, then, that all her care for his helplessness was in vain. He neither needed nor looked for help. It was all one to him whether he lived in magnificence in a furnished house or in apartments over a cook-shop.

'I've a good mind to disown the whole production now,' he said.

'No. No. They will do all they can to hurt you then.... I think they know.'

'Know what?'

'That you have a wife.'

He brought his fist down with such a crash on the frail table that it cracked right across, and Clara was sickeningly alarmed when she saw his huge hands grip the table on either side and rend it asunder. There was something terrible and almost miraculous in his enormous physical vitality, and his waste of it now in such a petty act of rage forced her to admit that which she had been attempting to suppress, the thought of Rodd, and she was compelled now to compare the two men. So she saw Charles more clearly, and had to acknowledge to herself how fatally he lacked moral force. She trembled as it was made plain to her that the old happy days could never come again, and that the child who had believed in him so implicitly was gone for ever. She had the frame, the mind, the instinct of a woman, and these things could no longer be denied.

When his rage was spent, she determined to give him one more chance,—

'We can win through, Charles. We have Verschoyle backing us. I accept my responsibility, and I will be a wife to you.'

'For God's sake, don't talk like that. I want you to be as you were, adorable, happy, free.'

She shook her head slowly from side to side.

Charles, offended, went out. She heard him go blundering down the stairs and out into the street.

She turned to her couch by the window and lay looking at the sun setting behind the roofs, chimneys, and towers of London. Amethyst and ruddy was the sky: smoked yellow and amber: blue and green, speckled with little dark clouds. She drank in its beauty, and lost herself in the dying day, aching at heart because there was nowhere in humanity a beauty of equal power in which she could lose herself, but everywhere barriers of egoism, intrigue, selfish calculation.... She thought of the little bookseller in the Charing Cross Road.... 'Doing good to others is doing good to yourself....' Ay, but make very sure that you are doing good and not well-intentioned harm.

She had meant to help Charles, had sacrificed herself to him, and look what had come of it! Deep within her heart she knew that she had been at fault, and that the mischief had been done when she had imposed her will on him.... As a child she had been brought up in the Catholic faith, and she had still some remnants of a religious conscience, and to this now she whispered that this was the sin against the Holy Ghost, for one person to impose his will on that of another.