XIV.
THE OBLITERATED MAN.
I was--you shall hear immediately why I am not now--Egbert CraddockCummins. The name remains. I am still (Heaven help me!) Dramatic Critic tothe _Fiery Cross_. What I shall be in a little while I do not know. Iwrite in great trouble and confusion of mind. I will do what I can to makemyself clear in the face of terrible difficulties. You must bear with me alittle. When a man is rapidly losing his own identity, he naturally findsa difficulty in expressing himself. I will make it perfectly plain in aminute, when once I get my grip upon the story. Let me see--where_am_ I? I wish I knew. Ah, I have it! Dead self! Egbert CraddockCummins!
In the past I should have disliked writing anything quite so full of "I"as this story must be. It is full of "I's" before and behind, like thebeast in Revelation--the one with a head like a calf, I am afraid. But mytastes have changed since I became a Dramatic Critic and studied themasters--G.A.S., G.B.S., G.R.S., and the others. Everything has changedsince then. At least the story is about myself--so that there is someexcuse for me. And it is really not egotism, because, as I say, sincethose days my identity has undergone an entire alteration.
That past!... I was--in those days--rather a nice fellow, rather shy--taste for grey in my clothes, weedy little moustache, face "interesting,"slight stutter which I had caught in my early life from a schoolfellow.Engaged to a very nice girl, named Delia. Fairly new, she was--cigarettes--liked me because I was human and original. Considered I waslike Lamb--on the strength of the stutter, I believe. Father, an eminentauthority on postage stamps. She read a great deal in the British Museum.(A perfect pairing ground for literary people, that British Museum--youshould read George Egerton and Justin Huntly M'Carthy and Gissing and therest of them.) We loved in our intellectual way, and shared the brightesthopes. (All gone now.) And her father liked me because I seemed honestlyeager to hear about stamps. She had no mother. Indeed, I had the happiestprospects a young man could have. I never went to theatres in those days.My Aunt Charlotte before she died had told me not to.
Then Barnaby, the editor of the _Fiery Cross_, made me--in spite ofmy spasmodic efforts to escape--Dramatic Critic. He is a fine, healthyman, Barnaby, with an enormous head of frizzy black hair and a convincingmanner, and he caught me on the staircase going to see Wembly. He had beendining, and was more than usually buoyant. "Hullo, Cummins!" he said. "Thevery man I want!" He caught me by the shoulder or the collar or something,ran me up the little passage, and flung me over the waste-paper basketinto the arm-chair in his office. "Pray be seated," he said, as he did so.Then he ran across the room and came back with some pink and yellowtickets and pushed them into my hand. "Opera Comique," he said, "Thursday;Friday, the Surrey; Saturday, the Frivolity. That's all, I think."
"But--" I began.
"Glad you're free," he said, snatching some proofs off the desk andbeginning to read.
"I don't quite understand," I said.
"_Eigh_?" he said, at the top of his voice, as though he thought Ihad gone and was startled at my remark.
"Do you want me to criticise these plays?"
"Do something with 'em... Did you think it was a treat?"
"But I can't."
"Did you call me a fool?"
"Well, I've never been to a theatre in my life."
"Virgin soil."
"But I don't know anything about it, you know."
"That's just it. New view. No habits. No _cliches_ in stock. Ours isa live paper, not a bag of tricks. None of your clockwork professionaljournalism in this office. And I can rely on your integrity----"
"But I've conscientious scruples----"
He caught me up suddenly and put me outside his door. "Go and talk toWembly about that," he said. "He'll explain."
As I stood perplexed, he opened the door again, said, "I forgot this,"thrust a fourth ticket into my hand (it was for that night--in twentyminutes' time) and slammed the door upon me. His expression was quitecalm, but I caught his eye.
I hate arguments. I decided that I would take his hint and become (to myown destruction) a Dramatic Critic. I walked slowly down the passage toWembly. That Barnaby has a remarkable persuasive way. He has made fewsuggestions during our very pleasant intercourse of four years that he hasnot ultimately won me round to adopting. It may be, of course, that I amof a yielding disposition; certainly I am too apt to take my colour frommy circumstances. It is, indeed, to my unfortunate susceptibility to vividimpressions that all my misfortunes are due. I have already alluded to theslight stammer I had acquired from a schoolfellow in my youth. However,this is a digression... I went home in a cab to dress.
I will not trouble the reader with my thoughts about the first-nightaudience, strange assembly as it is,--those I reserve for my Memoirs,--northe humiliating story of how I got lost during the _entr'acte_ in alot of red plush passages, and saw the third act from the gallery. Theonly point upon which I wish to lay stress was the remarkable effect ofthe acting upon me. You must remember I had lived a quiet and retiredlife, and had never been to the theatre before, and that I am extremelysensitive to vivid impressions. At the risk of repetition I must insistupon these points.
The first effect was a profound amazement, not untinctured by alarm. Thephenomenal unnaturalness of acting is a thing discounted in the minds ofmost people by early visits to the theatre. They get used to the fantasticgestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings, melodioussnortings, agonising yelps, lip-gnawings, glaring horrors, and otheremotional symbolism of the stage. It becomes at last a mere deaf-and-dumblanguage to them, which they read intelligently _pari passu_ with thehearing of the dialogue. But all this was new to me. The thing was calleda modern comedy, the people were supposed to be English and were dressedlike fashionable Americans of the current epoch, and I fell into thenatural error of supposing that the actors were trying to represent humanbeings. I looked round on my first-night audience with a kind of wonder,discovered--as all new Dramatic Critics do--that it rested with me toreform the Drama, and, after a supper choked with emotion, went off to theoffice to write a column, piebald with "new paragraphs" (as all my stuffis--it fills out so) and purple with indignation. Barnaby was delighted.
But I could not sleep that night. I dreamt of actors--actors glaring,actors smiting their chests, actors flinging out a handful of extendedfingers, actors smiling bitterly, laughing despairingly, fallinghopelessly, dying idiotically. I got up at eleven with a slight headache,read my notice in the _Fiery Cross_, breakfasted, and went back to myroom to shave, (It's my habit to do so.) Then an odd thing happened. Icould not find my razor. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had notunpacked it the day before.
"Ah!" said I, in front of the looking-glass. Then "Hullo!"
Quite involuntarily, when I had thought of my portmanteau, I had flung upthe left arm (fingers fully extended) and clutched at my diaphragm with myright hand. I am an acutely self-conscious man at all times. The gesturestruck me as absolutely novel for me. I repeated it, for my ownsatisfaction. "Odd!" Then (rather puzzled) I turned to my portmanteau.
After shaving, my mind reverted to the acting I had seen, and Ientertained myself before the cheval glass with some imitations ofJafferay's more exaggerated gestures. "Really, one might think it adisease," I said--"Stage-Walkitis!" (There's many a truth spoken in jest.)Then, if I remember rightly, I went off to see Wembly, and afterwardslunched at the British Museum with Delia. We actually spoke about ourprospects, in the light of my new appointment.
But that appointment was the beginning of my downfall. From that day Inecessarily became a persistent theatre-goer, and almost insensibly Ibegan to change. The next thing I noticed after the gesture about therazor was to catch myself bowing ineffably when I met Delia, and stoopingin an old-fashioned, courtly way over her hand. Directly I caught myself,I straightened myself up and became very uncomfortable. I remember shelooked at me curiously. Then, in the office, I found myself doing "nervousbusiness," fingers on teeth, when Barnaby asked me a question I could notv
ery well answer. Then, in some trifling difference with Delia, I claspedmy hand to my brow. And I pranced through my social transactions at timessingularly like an actor! I tried not to--no one could be more keenlyalive to the arrant absurdity of the histrionic bearing. And I did!
It began to dawn on me what it all meant. The acting, I saw, was too muchfor my delicately-strung nervous system. I have always, I know, been tooamenable to the suggestions of my circumstances. Night after night ofconcentrated attention to the conventional attitudes and intonation of theEnglish stage was gradually affecting my speech and carriage. I was givingway to the infection of sympathetic imitation. Night after night myplastic nervous system took the print of some new amazing gesture, somenew emotional exaggeration--and retained it. A kind of theatrical veneerthreatened to plate over and obliterate my private individualityaltogether. I saw myself in a kind of vision. Sitting by myself one night,my new self seemed to me to glide, posing and gesticulating, across theroom. He clutched his throat, he opened his fingers, he opened his legs inwalking like a high-class marionette. He went from attitude to attitude.He might have been clockwork. Directly after this I made an ineffectualattempt to resign my theatrical work. But Barnaby persisted in talkingabout the Polywhiddle Divorce all the time I was with him, and I could getno opportunity of saying what I wished.
And then Delia's manner began to change towards me. The ease of ourintercourse vanished. I felt she was learning to dislike me. I grinned,and capered, and scowled, and posed at her in a thousand ways, andknew--with what a voiceless agony!--that I did it all the time. I tried toresign again, and Barnaby talked about "X" and "Z" and "Y" in the _NewReview,_ and gave me a strong cigar to smoke, and so routed me. Andthen I walked up the Assyrian Gallery in the manner of Irving to meetDelia, and so precipitated the crisis.
"Ah!--_Dear_!" I said, with more sprightliness and emotion in myvoice than had ever been in all my life before I became (to my ownundoing) a Dramatic Critic.
She held out her hand rather coldly, scrutinising my face as she did so. Iprepared, with a new-won grace, to walk by her side. "Egbert," she said,standing still, and thought. Then she looked at me.
I said nothing. I felt what was coming. I tried to be the old EgbertCraddock Cummins of shambling gait and stammering sincerity, whom sheloved, but I felt even as I did so that I was a new thing, a thing ofsurging emotions and mysterious fixity--like no human being that everlived, except upon the stage. "Egbert," she said, "you are not yourself."
"Ah!" Involuntarily I clutched my diaphragm and averted my head (as is theway with them).
"There!" she said.
"_What do you mean_?" I said, whispering in vocal italics--you knowhow they do it--turning on her, perplexity on face, right hand down, lefton brow. I knew quite well what she meant. I knew quite well the dramaticunreality of my behaviour. But I struggled against it in vain. "What doyou mean?" I said, and, in a kind of hoarse whisper, "I don't understand!"
She really looked as though she disliked me. "What do you keep on posingfor?" she said. "I don't like it. You didn't use to."
"Didn't use to!" I said slowly, repeating this twice. I glared up and downthe gallery with short, sharp glances. "We are alone," I said swiftly."_Listen!_" I poked my forefinger towards her, and glared at her."I am under a curse."
I saw her hand tighten upon her sunshade. "You are under some badinfluence or other," said Delia. "You should give it up. I never knewanyone change as you have done."
"Delia!" I said, lapsing into the pathetic. "Pity me, Augh! Delia!_Pit_--y me!"
She eyed me critically. "_Why_ you keep playing the fool like this Idon't know," she said. "Anyhow, I really cannot go about with a man whobehaves as you do. You made us both ridiculous on Wednesday. Frankly, Idislike you, as you are now. I met you here to tell you so--as it's aboutthe only place where we can be sure of being alone together----"
"Delia!" said I, with intensity, knuckles of clenched hands white. "Youdon't mean----"
"I do," said Delia. "A woman's lot is sad enough at the best of times. Butwith you----"
I clapped my hand on my brow.
"So, good-bye," said Delia, without emotion.
"Oh, Delia!" I said. "Not _this_?"
"Good-bye, Mr. Cummins," she said.
By a violent effort I controlled myself and touched her hand. I tried tosay some word of explanation to her. She looked into my working face andwinced. "I _must_ do it," she said hopelessly. Then she turned fromme and began walking rapidly down the gallery.
Heavens! How the human agony cried within me! I loved Delia. But nothingfound expression--I was already too deeply crusted with my acquired self.
"Good-baye!" I said at last, watching her retreating figure. How I hatedmyself for doing it! After she had vanished, I repeated in a dreamy way,"Good-baye!" looking hopelessly round me. Then, with a kind ofheart-broken cry, I shook my clenched fists in the air, staggered to thepedestal of a winged figure, buried my face in my arms, and made myshoulders heave. Something within me said "Ass!" as I did so. (I had thegreatest difficulty in persuading the Museum policeman, who was attractedby my cry of agony, that I was not intoxicated, but merely suffering froma transient indisposition.)
But even this great sorrow has not availed to save me from my fate. I seeit; everyone sees it: I grow more "theatrical" every day. And no one couldbe more painfully aware of the pungent silliness of theatrical ways. Thequiet, nervous, but pleasing E.C. Cummins vanishes. I cannot save him. Iam driven like a dead leaf before the winds of March. My tailor evenenters into the spirit of my disorder. He has a peculiar sense of what isfitting. I tried to get a dull grey suit from him this spring, and hefoisted a brilliant blue upon me, and I see he has put braid down thesides of my new dress trousers. My hairdresser insists upon giving me a"wave."
I am beginning to associate with actors. I detest them, but it is only intheir company that I can feel I am not glaringly conspicuous. Their talkinfects me. I notice a growing tendency to dramatic brevity, to dashes andpauses in my style, to a punctuation of bows and attitudes. Barnaby hasremarked it too. I offended Wembly by calling him "Dear Boy" yesterday. Idread the end, but I cannot escape from it.
The fact is, I am being obliterated. Living a grey, retired life all myyouth, I came to the theatre a delicate sketch of a man, a thing of tintsand faint lines. Their gorgeous colouring has effaced me altogether.People forget how much mode of expression, method of movement, are amatter of contagion. I have heard of stage-struck people before, andthought it a figure of speech. I spoke of it jestingly, as a disease. Itis no jest. It is a disease. And I have got it badly! Deep down within meI protest against the wrong done to my personality--unavailingly. Forthree hours or more a week I have to go and concentrate my attention onsome fresh play, and the suggestions of the drama strengthen their awfulhold upon me. My manners grow so flamboyant, my passions so professional,that I doubt, as I said at the outset, whether it is really myself thatbehaves in such a manner. I feel merely the core to this dramatic casing,that grows thicker and presses upon me--me and mine. I feel like KingJohn's abbot in his cope of lead.
I doubt, indeed, whether I should not abandon the struggle altogether--leave this sad world of ordinary life for which I am so ill fitted,abandon the name of Cummins for some professional pseudonym, complete myself-effacement, and--a thing of tricks and tatters, of posing andpretence--go upon the stage. It seems my only resort--"to hold the mirrorup to Nature." For in the ordinary life, I will confess, no one now seemsto regard me as both sane and sober. Only upon the stage, I feelconvinced, will people take me seriously. That will be the end of it. I_know_ that will be the end of it. And yet ... I will frankly confess... all that marks off your actor from your common man ... I_detest_. I am still largely of my Aunt Charlotte's opinion, thatplay-acting is unworthy of a pure-minded man's attention, much moreparticipation. Even now I would resign my dramatic criticism and try arest. Only I can't get hold of Barnaby. Letters of resignation he nevernotices. He says it is against the etiq
uette of journalism to write toyour Editor. And when I go to see him, he gives me another big cigar andsome strong whisky and soda, and then something always turns up to preventmy explanation.