The Outcast and the Rite, page 15
When it was over she got up, aware that it was late, and that she must go indoors to bed.
The only lighted windows in the village were those of her lodging. As she approached them she halted. Voices, snarling, ugly, were loosed inside, and she could hear, but not understand, all the words that were flung like clots of spittle between the man and woman. The sounds came from a room on the left of the open door; she might have gone past it and upstairs. Instead she went towards it, and looked in.
The woman stood by a table, her hands clutching her breasts, her head forward, yelping at the man, who regarded her sullenly, backed against the stove. There was wine on the table and a litter of dirty plates; no movement in the room, only noise. Almost at once this ceased; they had seen her. The woman looked away, after one glance like a thrust; the man’s eyes rested on Elizabeth with an expression that was not insolent because it was so sure. The woman screamed some challenge; he withdrew his eyes, and gave an abrupt laugh and caught up something from the table. For a second a thin line of light showed, lying along his palm, before the hand shot forward with the fingers doubled to the shape of a snake’s head when it strikes. Elizabeth knew what came next; the sound of a whimper and a fall; afterwards footsteps advancing, a face half-lit, and her terrified eyes staring, as though it mattered, at a number written in metal, the same number but differently wrought, two X’s together; she knew that she screamed and pushed with the flat of her hands at a strength which disregarded her and by which she wished to be conquered. Something in her failed, something else laughed and was triumphant; then darkness, and yielding. Elizabeth knew with nightmare certainty that it must happen and how each step of it must go, but she fought desperately while she waited for the two sounds that were to be the beginning of the end. Her will rode shouting against the invading desire, and fell back; tradition was as easily overthrown. In her despair she found means to loose the hold which she had kept upon her mind, let pride go, and began the soundless, endless dwindling fall with naked suns about and within her that she knew now was prayer. Even in the abyss of light she waited for the two sounds.
They did not come. Slowly, as her soul ran murmuring back into its house, she became aware that something had happened to check the inevitable. Holding to the sides of the door she opened her eyes and looked.
The two stood as before, but as though they were posing, one with a hand stretched out in the act of throwing, the other with a hand held stiffly across her body to guard it. Both stared down at the floor, where lay a twig of olive that had gently touched the ribs of the woman and dropped at her feet.
‘But,’ I said when Elizabeth came to this point in her story, ‘I don’t understand.’
She went on, paying no attention.
‘And next morning the whole population of the village went off to church to give thanks for the miracle. There was a statue there, quite black, all pierced with swords, that everyone thought had done it. The man wanted to give it a silver-gilt olive branch, but they couldn’t find anything except a brooch shaped like a fern. He thought that was good enough, and put it on the statue’s cloak. Afterwards, when they all came back, he gave me my money.’
‘Had it come, then, after all?’
‘Yes, and he’d been keeping it. So I was able to get away.’
‘Your poor saint,’ I said, ‘she must have felt rather out of it.’
‘I don’t know,’ Elizabeth answered, ‘She’d gone. It was her miracle, of course. She’d got into heaven.’
‘Wasn’t she a saint at all, then?’ I asked.
‘Officially she was; they couldn’t allow the Church to seem to be in the wrong. But actually, no. That’s where the fire comes in. Purgatory. She wanted, you see—she let him— And she hated being martyred.’
‘But why should they canonize him, too?’
‘I suppose he got converted afterwards. My man did. I don’t know. It’s the way these things seem to go.’
‘It all sounds very real,’ I said, to please her.
‘It was real,’ Elizabeth answered; but her voice tilted it into a question.
8 A Curious Story
‘Yes,’ said the poet slowly, ‘that’s a very curious story.’
‘Curious?’ the author repeated, ‘Is that all? It’s damnable. Why should it happen to me? I don’t understand it. It’s not as if I were one of these imaginative fellers. I don’t drink, either.’
He pushed his glass away as though repudiating it; then, staring out of the window, fine brows drawn down and eyes fixed, he took it again and slowly, unconsciously, tilted it to his mouth. The whole gesture was magnificent; so might Tristan have looked out over the rim of the treacherous cup. This occurred to the poet, and amused him, but he knew the actor too well to smile. Instead he asked, ‘What’s to be done?’
‘How should I know? I don’t understand these things. Why to me? When I say I’m not imaginative, I don’t mean to say
I’ve no imagination. A man can’t play my parts without it.’
‘I know,’ murmured the poet.
‘What I mean, though,’ the actor went on, searching painfully, after the manner of a man unaccustomed to finding his own words, ‘what I mean is, I can imagine people; how they talk and move and look; give me the lines, and I’ll tell you how such and such a man would say them. I don’t understand how people feel, but I know how they show it. That’s imagination, isn’t it? Of a sort.’ He spoke almost wistfully, and the poet nodded. ‘I’m always watching, and remembering little things; tricks of the hands or the intonation of words. Then I make something out of all the things I’ve observed. That sounds like patchwork, but it hangs together, doesn’t it?’ Again the note of wistfulness, and again the poet nodded. ‘But, of course, I’m practical. And I’ve got to keep my eyes open. Now-a-days a man who doesn’t keep his eyes open in London—in a London theatre—is damned. Perpetually damned; and deserves it.’
‘Yes, I understand all that,’ said the poet, ‘but come back to the problem.’
‘That is the problem. Haven’t you been listening? Here am I, a man of—talent, shall we say?’
‘By all means.’
‘Anyhow, a man of some ability in his profession. A practical man, too, as I said before; business man as well as artist. I’m healthy. I don’t drink. I don’t overdo myself in any way. I’ve a useful imagination—not your wandering kind. I apply it only to my work. It doesn’t worry me. And yet in spite of all this I see things which are invisible to other people. That’s the problem, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t see how I can help,’ the poet said, slowly.
‘Well, you’re used to these things. Look at that stuff of yours, full of fantastic happenings. You might be able to interpret.’
‘Do you mean you want me to come and try to get into communication with her?’ the poet asked, flattered by the reference to his work from a man who boasted that he read one book a year.
‘That’s it. Come and see for yourself. You’re the sort of man—you might have more in common. She might answer you.’
‘You’ve spoken to her?’
‘I told you I had. Spoke to her—thought she must be one of my own people at first, in spite of the dress. Asked her what the hell she wanted; what she was doing hanging about outside my dressing room. Then she went away round the corner of the passage.’
‘And it was there you noticed about the shadow?’
‘It noticed itself. There’s a big light, hung low just round the corner. There are corners and turnings everywhere, by the way. It’s one of the older theatres. Well, this light throws a long shadow of anyone passing right into my room if the door’s open, as it always is. But she went away, and—nothing. Nothing at all. Gibbons thought I’d had too many, talking like that to somebody who wasn’t there. It’s annoying. I value Gibbons’ opinion. That’s why I didn’t say a word the second time. She looked ill, too, poor little soul; her face was chalk- white. There were two moles just at the left corner of her mouth.’
The poet, who had lighted a pipe, sat for a moment in silence, gravely considering the clouding whorls of smoke; he was inclined to accept the challenge and put his principles to the test, for he held and proclaimed that the function of poetry was to tackle the problems of the man in the street. Moreover, this was something in his own line.
‘What’s the time?’ the actor asked, breaking in upon his decisions.
‘Close on seven.’
‘Well, it’s no use talking. Look here, will you come back with me now? I’ve got to go.’
‘What about dinner?’
‘I’ll give you some sandwiches and a whisky and soda at the theatre.’
A little reluctantly, for he enjoyed his dinner, the poet agreed. They went out together and down the steps of the club, the actor walking easily, the poet’s thin shoulders huddled together as the night wind came shrewdly. Both loved this October hour; but while to one it was a prelude only, to the other these gleaming corridors of the streets themselves made the song. They walked silently, their steps falling together, and when some eddy of traffic made them pause, the rhythm between them was unbroken; both were thinking of the woman who had lingered outside the actor’s dressing-room two nights ago. The actor violently told himself that such things did not happen to normal people, and tried to believe that his nerves had tricked him. The poet pictured the woman, and heard already the distant voice which revealed the reason for her coming; he heard his own voice, too, splendidly talking.
They came soon to the theatre, whose dingy but impressive facade shone with the actor’s name. It stood on the site of an historic house, whose original building had suffered the common fate of theatres, and had been burned to the ground less than a hundred years ago as the result of a daring experiment with gas lights. Nobody experimented now. The lighting and accommodation were modern enough, the plays were the plays of the moment. The public knew what to expect, was satisfied, and at times enthusiastic. Receipts were steady. It was a business-like, traditional, creditable house of public entertainment, to which its lessee came daily with a little stir of pride and a feeling of continuity, for Charles Makebody, his grandfather, had played here for a time in the late sixties. He loved his theatre, and was angry that to-night, instead of pride, a feeling of apprehension and distrust invaded him as he went in past the doorkeeper. The poet, for whom a theatre was still the mysterious temple of joy he had known as a child, followed eagerly, staring at the shirt-sleeved men, recognising in the tall silhouette which for a moment blocked a narrow doorway the actress who shared with Makebody the chief opportunities of their polite, intelligent plays. When at last they reached the dressing-room he was almost afraid to enter, so crowded did it seem, so disconcerting were the mirrors which reflected him from every angle. He looked about him, sitting awkwardly in a low chair, and no longer wondered at the grace of the actor’s carriage, nor at the ordered perfection of his clothes.
‘Do you find it stuffy?’ the actor asked. ‘People do sometimes. I’m used to it.’
‘You’re at home here,’ said the poet, ‘It’s your setting.’
‘It ought to be. I was born on the stage—well, in the wings, anyhow. And my people have known this house pretty well for the last hundred years or so.’
‘So long!’ said the poet, seeking in this an explanation of the perplexing matter of the woman.
‘We’re an old family, as stage families go. As any family goes. And we’ve got our tradition. We’re better than half these little straddling squires without half an acre of land to their names. My great-grandmother played with Siddons once in Venice Preserv’d. And yet these mountebanks in the papers talk as though I were some kind of performing monkey.’
The poet laughed and suddenly looked away towards the door. The actor saw the direction of the glance and nodded.
‘That’s the place. Just outside.’
He slipped out of his coat, and said to the dresser who held it, ‘Now we’ll see. Thought I was off my head, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, no, Mr Makebody. But sometimes a gentleman gets these what I call notions.’
‘Oh, no, Gibbons. I wasn’t drunk, as you so politely hint. You’ve never known me drunk two nights running. We’ll see what Mr Dering makes of it. He’s used to such things. He knows how to deal with them.’
Gibbons looked doubtfully at the slight figure of the poet, uncomfortably huddled in his easy chair. The actor proceeded to his toilet, sitting full in the light before the dressing table. Gibbons stood behind, and the poet watched the man’s thin fingers rubbing grease into cheeks and chin with a caressing circular movement. They were silent, all three; and suddenly the poet remembered how as a boy he had lain for an hour by a hedge, waiting for a shy swift bird to return to its nest in the leaves above him.
The face was prepared. Gibbons opened a wooden box and took up a hare’s-foot from the table; the actor, gazing steadily at his own reflection, inclined his head so that the strong light fell upon his right cheek; Gibbons dipped the foot in brownish red powder and began to touch the lighted cheek with colour. The poet could see both faces in the glass and watched them there, a little distorted by the angle, idly watched, forgetting why he had come. But he was recalled by a gesture. Without any warning the actor put up his hand and caught Gibbons by the wrist, holding him still while he leaned forward, staring into the mirror. He spoke, very softly, as though he feared to alarm some hovering thing.
‘Look there; in the door.’
The poet shifted his eyes to the doorway. It was blank and empty, and the wall behind it betrayed no shadow. He looked back at the actor, who had risen, still clutching by the wrist the hand with the reddened hare’s-foot, his eyes still fixed upon the mirror; saw his lips move and heard the breath, ‘Speak to her. She’s going.’
Gibbons took a step backward as though to go to the door; instantly the clasp that held him tightened.
‘Quiet. Dering, speak to her.’
The poet obeyed. He saw nothing; but he knew that Makebody was gripped by some power that was neither drunkenness nor fantasy. He spoke towards the empty space of the doorway.
‘Why have you come?’
There was no sound. The poet spoke again into the silence. ‘Who are you? Can’t you speak to us? We don’t understand.’
They waited. A minute passed. Then the actor dropped back into his chair, saying, ‘Gone.’
He released the man’s wrist; Gibbons went at once to the door, and noisily banged it shut. He returned to the table and spoke briskly in his clipped London voice, ‘Now then, Mr Makebody, if you please. Don’t want to miss your entrance.’
The actor lay back in his chair, and with closed eyes endured the application of the rouge, the bronze, the blue eye-pencil, the touch of white at the temples. Then he rose. In silence the exquisite trousers were donned, the coat so delicately adjusted to shoulders and waist. He stood without self-consciousness before his mirrors, surveying his back by means of a hand- glass. Satisfied, he set it down and said with indifference, almost with gaiety, as though he had forgotten, ‘I must be on in two minutes. Wait, if you like. Gibbons will find you a spot of whisky.’
Once more he studied his clothes in the long glass, and went out, walking quickly away. The poet did not move. He felt a little foolish. The dresser caught his eye, grimaced, and jerked his head towards the sound of the footsteps.
‘I didn’t see anything,’ said the poet.
‘Nor anyone else,’ the man answered, setting the wooden trees in a pair of patent leather boots, ‘well, I’m sorry. I didn’t think to see Mr Makebody go that way. But you can never tell.’
‘No,’ said the poet.
‘He’s what I call a real actor,’ the man went on, ‘born to it, as they say. It’ll hurt him bad to give it up.’
‘Why should he give it up?’
‘He’ll get worse,’ said Gibbons briefly.
He began with quick mechanical movements to tidy the littered table, and talked on, his back to the poet.
‘He’s not, as you might say, a great actor. Hasn’t got the temper. More like an ordinary gent. Yet he goes over the edge just as if he was one of these geniuses. I’m not saying they’re all mad; not by no means. But they’ve got, as it were, a kind of a right to go off it a bit now and again. It don’t mean anything to them. But Mr Makebody, he’s ordinary, like you and me.’
‘This isn’t an ordinary delusion,’ said the poet.
‘You didn’t see anything,’ the man answered, as though he were sure.
‘No,’ said the poet, ‘and yet—’
The poet sat holding his pipe, grateful for the warmth of the bowl against a hand that had grown chilly. He was puzzled, and sorry for the actor. It was possible that something had stood there in the light; but whether it existed of itself, or took shape from the brain of the man, he could not be sure. Horrible, he thought, for a mind so to make its own agony visible; to see pain walking, moving in familiar places, making of this everyday passage something alien and forlorn. But if Makebody were sane, what then? He found no answer, and sat withdrawn in thought, while Gibbons folded and hung and concealed trousers and coats and handkerchiefs.
