The Supreme Artist
He came away from the stage after the final curtain, and went along to his dressing-room humming a tune to himself, thinking of nothing. The girl followed close behind, patting the lock of hair that had fallen over her face.
“You smudged your eye black when you cried this afternoon,” she told him, “it came off in streaks down the side of my neck—look how filthy it is. I suppose you must cry?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it before,” he said, “I’ll try something else tonight. We might alter the whole of the last act. What about wearing a beard? I’m sure one could give an entirely different performance in a beard.”
He turned to the looking-glass in his room, and squinted sideways at his profile.
“I should hate you in a beard,” she said, feeling his chin. “It would make you all heavy and middle-aged. Darling, promise me never to wear one?”
He picked up a hand-mirror and viewed himself from another angle.
“I’m not so sure,” he said doubtfully, and then called over his shoulder to his dresser, “Monkton, what about a beard for the last act?”
The man coughed politely behind his hand. “Well, Sir, it’s hardly for me to say, but I scarcely think it would be suitable. Not for this type of part, Sir.”
“P’r’aps you’re right. Why is it I’m never allowed to do as I like—’Oi, where are you going?”
She turned to him from the doorway. “Upstairs to change. Have you got the car outside?”
“Yes—want throwing out anywhere?”
“Take me back to the flat like an angel, unless you’ve got millions of people to see. I can easily find a bus …”
“Don’t be a mug, of course I’ll drive you anywhere. Buck up and get your things on. Monkton, there’s nobody waiting, is there?” He began taking off his coat.
“One minute, Sir, excuse me, but I believe there’s a lady wishes to see you. Here is her card, but she said you wouldn’t know the card, Sir. I said I knew you generally liked to get away quickly matinée days, and she seemed disappointed. Said she’d wait in case you could spare her a few minutes.”
“Give me the card.” He frowned over it, twisting it in his fingers. “Mrs. John Pearce—conveys nothing to me. What’s she like, Monkton?”
“Well, Sir—it’s rather difficult to describe. A middle-aged lady I should say, white hair, tall—dressed almost in county clothes if you will. A very pleasant-speaking voice.”
“Oh! Lord. Pour me out a drink and show her in.”
He lit a cigarette, and tried to remember the second bar of the tune that was haunting him.
Why are you so mean to me?
Why are you … ?
He had forgotten all about the woman, until the door closed suddenly, and she was standing there before him. She laughed at him, holding out her hands.
“You haven’t changed at all, have you?”
He saw someone with a mass of thick white hair under an ugly hat, someone with a bronzed, rather weather-beaten face. Her eyes were blue, and she was nice when she smiled. Her clothes were all wrong though, her ankles thick. She obviously did not care about these things. He started back in surprise, pretending to be overwhelmed with joy and astonishment.
Of course he had no idea who she was. “My dear,” he began, “but this is too marvellous. Why on earth didn’t you tell me you were in front?”
It seemed as though she could not move away from the doorway, but must stand there watching him, feeling his eyes with hers, uncertain of the truth of his words.
“I didn’t think you’d recognise me,” she began, “I was certain you wouldn’t have the remotest idea who I was. What is it—nearly thirty years? Think of all that’s happened since, so much and so much …”
“But you’re talking nonsense,” he interrupted, “course I knew you the moment you came into the room.”
He racked his memory for some light out of the past. Who on earth could she be? Mrs. John Pearce …
She loosened the scarf round her throat, and sat down on the edge of the sofa. “This is the first time I’ve ever been brave enough to come round,” she said. “I’ve wanted to so often, but something always prevented me, a sort of silly pride. A feeling you wouldn’t know me, wouldn’t remember. I come and see all your plays, you know. I’m still sentimental enough to cut out your notices and paste them in a book!”
She laughed at him, shaking her head. He made a little noise in his throat to save him the necessity of words. “You see, I live right down in the country now,” she went on. “It’s quite an expedition to come up to London. When I do, about twice a year, I make a point of seeing you act. I don’t know what it is, but the years don’t make any difference to you. To me, a tired middle-aged woman in the stalls, you are always the boy I knew, funny, excited, with his hair rumpled. That’s being a sentimentalist, isn’t it? Can I have a cigarette?”
She reached out for the box on the table. He wondered why she gave him no clue to her personality, and why she did not even bother to mention the names of people or of places. Apparently they must have known each other absurdly well. Bronzed face, white hair, Mrs. John Pearce.
“Let’s see,” he threw his question into the air, “let’s see, how long is it really since I saw you last?”
She watched his expression with grave eyes. “I said thirty years just now, but maybe it’s a little less,” she answered. “Time is such a ridiculous thing. Do you know I’ve only got to relax, and throw my mind back, and I can hear the sound of your cab starting, and you driving away in it, hot and furious, with me lying on my bed imagining that nobody ever got over a broken heart.”
Oh! so they had been as intimate as that? Angry words—tears—and now he couldn’t remember her at all …
“I must have behaved like a swine,” he said angrily. “I can’t understand how we ever came to quarrel.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “You don’t mean to say you’ve thought it was because of a quarrel?” she asked him. “But we never had rows, you and I. You must remember that.”
“No. No, of course not.” He joined in her laugh, wondering whether she had noticed his slip. “I know we were the most wonderful friends in every way,” he continued.
She sat silent for a minute, considering the matter, her head on one side. “That’s where you’re wrong,” she told him, “it’s because we never struck a proper basis of friendship that the whole thing finished. I think we were too young to have any judgment—too young and too selfish. No sense of values. We were like greedy children who make themselves sick with overeating.”
He agreed solemnly, watching her over the rim of his glass. So this had been a passionate affair. Thirty years ago—he cast his mind back in vain. He had an uneasy feeling that he had behaved badly to this white-haired woman who sat before him. In a moment he was acquitted though.
“I shall never regret it,” she said suddenly, “never one second. Being in love—terribly in love—is the best thing in the world, don’t you think? The only moment I have sometimes regretted was sending you away as I did. We might have gone on being happy.”
Then it had not been his fault after all. Presumably he had gone from her brokenhearted. It was all rather touching. Why had he such an appalling memory? He was ready to cry over his youthful tragedy.
“I nearly blew my brains out at the time,” he said bitterly. “I suppose you never cared for one moment how it would affect me. I felt as if there was nothing to live for—nothing in life to hold on to.”
“I guessed it would be hard at first,” she smiled, “but look—you soon got over it.”
He was certain he had taken months in getting over it. For all he knew this woman had blasted his whole outlook thirty years ago.
They had obviously been passionately in love and she had given him the chuck, breaking his heart. He forgot her ugly hat and her tired, weather-beaten face. He began to imagine somebody young, somebody slim. He pictured to himself all sorts of mad, impossible things.
“Those long days together,” he began dreamily, “that frock you wore—and your hair brushed away from your face.”
She frowned, puzzled by his words. “But we scarcely saw each other in the daytime.”
“Nights I meant,” he said hurriedly. “Long, long nights. Sometimes there was a moon making patterns on the floor. You used to put your hands over your eyes to hide yourself from the light.”
“Did I really?”
“Yes—you know you did. And often we’d come back hungry—neither of us with any money in our pockets, Perhaps only enough to halve a ham sandwich. And you’d be cold—I’d have to give you my coat—but you’d wrinkle up your nose in contempt saying ‘Who wants to get warm that way.’ Then, because I loved you so much, I’d want to strangle you, and …”
He stopped short, dazzled by his own imagination, and a little hurt at the astonished expression on her face.
“I’ve forgotten all that,” she told him. “I’m sure you always had plenty of money. And we never halved ham sandwiches, we nearly always dined with Mother.”
He glared at her, shocked and confused. His ideas were so much more romantic. She was spoiling everything. Why must she drag in her relations?
“I always hated your Mother,” he said coldly, “we never got on. I didn’t like to tell you at the time.”
She stared at him blankly.
“But why ever didn’t you say so? You know it would have made all the difference in the world.”
He brushed her statement aside. He would not talk about her mother. He saw himself young, miserable, very much in love. This was the only thing that mattered.
“I tried drinking at first,” he went on gloomily, “but it wasn’t any good. I never could get your face out of my thoughts, never for a single instant, night and day. It was complete and utter hell—”
“What about your ambition, surely that gave you some sort of interest? And then when success came to you?”
“Ambition? Success?” He laughed scornfully, throwing his cigarette into the fireplace. “What were they compared with my love for you? Don’t you understand that after you sent me away I was broken, done in? You took from me the only chance of happiness I ever had. I was young, I had ideals, I believed in you more than anything in the world. Then, for some reason that I shall never know, you chucked me. You didn’t care what became of me, and you have the face to sit there and tell me that the fact of my being successful should have put you out of my mind. Don’t you know that success has not brought one grain of happiness to me, that always in the depth of my heart I’ve known that you were the only thing that mattered?”
He blew his nose noisily, and poured himself out another drink. His eyes were red and his hands trembled with emotion.
She rose from the sofa and laid her hand on his shoulder. “I’d no idea you felt it in that way,” she said gently, “please, please don’t reproach me like this. I believed I was doing it for your good. I thought I would be a drag on you.”
He refused to be comforted. He shook his head miserably.
“You were the sweetest influence in my life—the one reason for existence,” he said. He glanced down at the wedding ring on her hand, and was aware of his unreasoning jealousy. “Who is this fellow you’ve married, anyway?” he asked roughly. “This John Pearce—damn his eyes. So you couldn’t even be faithful to one …”
“I met him eighteen months after you went away,” she answered. “John and I have been married twenty-seven years now. Four grown-up children—just think of that! We lead a very peaceful life down in Devonshire. Don’t you remember how I always loved the country? That dream has come true, anyway. I have a snapshot of my youngest boy here in my bag. He’s rather a darling, don’t you think? He’s doing so well in Burma.”
He scarcely looked at the snapshot. He wasn’t interested in her children, or in her house in Devonshire.
“Does your husband know about us?”
She put the photo away in her bag.
“Oh! yes, I tell him everything.”
“Then he doesn’t mind?”
“Why should he? He’s scarcely likely to bother over something that happened thirty years ago! He’s always very interested in you. We read your notices together. He’s going to be terribly excited when I tell him I’ve been round to see you.”
He did not want it to be like this. He wanted a hulking brute of a husband who treated her badly, who never understood her. He wanted her to be lonely and unloved, leaning out of a window, watching for a star. He could not allow her to be married for twenty-seven years and have four grown-up children. She seemed to take it all for granted, too. She made no allowance for his feelings.
“So much for fidelity,” he said grimly, “so much for vows and promises, and all the things that go to make up belief. We used to hold each other and whisper words like ‘never’ and ‘forever.’ Just a silly little string of lies, that’s what they were. You’ve killed my last illusions today; you’ve made me feel as though nothing’s worth while.”
She shrugged her shoulders and began to draw the gloves on her large brown hands.
“You talk as though you had never made love to other women,” she laughed comfortably.
“Other women?” He waved the idea away. He would not even discuss it. In his mind he saw a meaningless procession, all to whom he had sworn the same things. The thought irritated him. He found it unattractive. He would have liked men and women to be as birds on a tree—the male bird dumb and inconsolable on a high branch, with its mate dead at the foot of the tree. The picture saddened him. He felt unhappy for no reason. She was standing now, the ugly hat crammed over her face, the scarf pulled anyhow on her shoulder.
He caught at her hand.
“I don’t want you to go,” he said. She smiled and made her way to the door.
“I must catch my train at Paddington, John and the children expect me. It made me so happy coming to see you. I shall sit in the train tonight and go through it all over again. It’s been a great excitement in my quiet, uneventful life, you know. God bless you, and take care of yourself, You don’t know how young you’ve made me feel.”
He looked at her white hair and the bronzed, weather-beaten face.
“You’re taking something away with you that belongs to me,” he said. “It’s something that has no name, but it means a great deal to me. I wish I knew what it was.”
But this time she laughed and would not believe what he was saying. “Now you’re just acting,” she told him.
“No,” he said. “No, that’s what you don’t understand.”
She went from him down the passage and out of the stage door. He heard her footsteps pass along the alley outside his window. He looked at himself in the mirror above the fireplace. He felt tired and listless.
“Monkton?” he called. “Monkton?”
When he had cleaned away his grease paint and washed, his face seemed thin and pale. There were little lines beneath his eyes. His hair was streaked with grey.
Somebody knocked at the door. It was the girl ready dressed, carrying her beret in her hand.
“Who on earth was that old lady with the white hair and the large bosom?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said, “as a matter of fact I haven’t the vaguest idea even now.”
“Did she keep you ages, poor darling? What a bore for you.”
He made no answer. She followed him to the car waiting in the street. When they came to a block in Piccadilly she looked at him, wondering what he was thinking about.
He was singing absently to himself, his thoughts miles away—
Why are you so mean to me?
Why are you … ?
He broke off in the middle of a bar. “Tell me,” he said suddenly, “that woman—did she seem old to you, really old?”