Chapter VI: Houghton’s Last Endeavour (1)

The trouble with her ship was that it would _not_ sail. It rode water-logged in the rotting port of home. All very well to have wild, reckless moods of irony and independence, if you have to pay for them by withering dustily on the shelf.

Alvina fell again into humility and fear: she began to show symptoms of her mother’s heart trouble. For day followed day, month followed month, season after season went by, and she grubbed away like a housemaid in Manchester House, she hurried round doing the shopping, she sang in the choir on Sundays, she attended the various chapel events, she went out to visit friends, and laughed and talked and played games. But all the time, what was there actually in her life? Not much. She was withering towards old-maiddom. Already in her twenty-eighth year, she spent her days grubbing in the house, whilst her father became an elderly, frail man still too lively in mind and spirit. Miss Pinnegar began to grow grey and elderly too, money became scarcer and scarcer, there was a black day ahead when her father would die and the home be broken up, and she would have to tackle life as a worker.

There lay the only alternative: in work. She might slave her days away teaching the piano, as Miss Frost had done: she might find a subordinate post as nurse: she might sit in the cash-desk of some shop. Some work of some sort would be found for her. And she would sink into the routine of her job, as did so many women, and grow old and die, chattering and fluttering. She would have what is called her independence. But, seriously faced with that treasure, and without the option of refusing it, strange how hideous she found it.

Work!—a job! More even than she rebelled against the Withams did she rebel against a job. Albert Witham was distasteful to her—or rather, he was not exactly distasteful, he was chiefly incongruous. She could never get over the feeling that he was mouthing and smiling at her through the glass wall of an aquarium, he being on the watery side. Whether she would ever be able to take to his strange and dishuman element, who knows? Anyway it would be some sort of an adventure: better than a job. She rebelled with all her backbone against the word _job_. Even the substitutes, _employment_ or _work_, were detestable, unbearable. Emphatically, she did not want to work for a wage. It was too humiliating. Could anything be more _infra dig_ than the performing of a set of special actions day in day out, for a life-time, in order to receive some shillings every seventh day. Shameful! A condition of shame. The most vulgar, sordid and humiliating of all forms of slavery: so mechanical. Far better be a slave outright, in contact with all the whims and impulses of a human being, than serve some mechanical routine of modern work.

She trembled with anger, impotence, and fear. For months, the thought of Albert was a torment to her. She might have married him. He would have been strange, a strange fish. But were it not better to take the strange leap, over into his element, than to condemn oneself to the routine of a job? He would have been curious and dishuman. But after all, it would have been an experience. In a way, she liked him. There was something odd and integral about him, which she liked. He was not a liar. In his own line, he was honest and direct. Then he would take her to South Africa: a whole new _milieu_. And perhaps she would have children. She shivered a little. No, not his children! He seemed so curiously cold-blooded. And yet, why not? Why not his curious, pale, half cold-blooded children, like little fishes of her own? Why not? Everything was possible: and even desirable, once one could see the strangeness of it. Once she could plunge through the wall of the aquarium! Once she could kiss him!

Therefore Miss Pinnegar’s quiet harping on the string was unbearable.

“I can’t understand that you disliked Mr. Witham so much?” said Miss Pinnegar.

“We never can understand those things,” said Alvina. “I can’t understand why I dislike tapioca and arrowroot—but I do.”

“That’s different,” said Miss Pinnegar shortly.

“It’s no more easy to understand,” said Alvina.

“Because there’s no need to understand it,” said Miss Pinnegar.

“And is there need to understand the other?”

“Certainly. I can see nothing wrong with him,” said Miss Pinnegar.

Alvina went away in silence. This was in the first months after she had given Albert his dismissal. He was at Oxford again—would not return to Woodhouse till Christmas. Between her and the Woodhouse Withams there was a decided coldness. They never looked at her now—nor she at them.

None the less, as Christmas drew near Alvina worked up her feelings. Perhaps she would be reconciled to him. She would slip across and smile to him. She would take the plunge, once and for all—and kiss him and marry him and bear the little half-fishes, his children. She worked herself into quite a fever of anticipation.

But when she saw him, the first evening, sitting stiff and staring flatly in front of him in Chapel, staring away from everything in the world, at heaven knows what—just as fishes stare—then his dishumanness came over her again like an arrest, and arrested all her flights of fancy. He stared flatly in front of him, and flatly set a wall of oblivion between him and her. She trembled and let be.

After Christmas, however, she had nothing at all to think forward to. And it was then she seemed to shrink: she seemed positively to shrink.

“You never spoke to Mr. Witham?” Miss Pinnegar asked.

“He never spoke to me,” replied Alvina.

“He raised his hat to me.”

“_You_ ought to have married him, Miss Pinnegar,” said Alvina. “He would have been right for you.” And she laughed rather mockingly.

“There is no need to make provision for me,” said Miss Pinnegar.

And after this, she was a long time before she forgave Alvina, and was really friendly again. Perhaps she would never have forgiven her if she had not found her weeping rather bitterly in her mother’s abandoned sitting-room.

Now so far, the story of Alvina is commonplace enough. It is more or less the story of thousands of girls. They all find work. It is the ordinary solution of everything. And if we were dealing with an ordinary girl we should have to carry on mildly and dully down the long years of employment; or, at the best, marriage with some dull school-teacher or office-clerk.

But we protest that Alvina is not ordinary. Ordinary people, ordinary fates. But extraordinary people, extraordinary fates. Or else no fate at all. The all-to-one-pattern modern system is too much for most extraordinary individuals. It just kills them off or throws them disused aside.

There have been enough stories about ordinary people. I should think the Duke of Clarence must even have found malmsey nauseating, when he choked and went purple and was really asphyxiated in a butt of it. And ordinary people are no malmsey. Just ordinary tap-water. And we have been drenched and deluged and so nearly drowned in perpetual floods of ordinariness, that tap-water tends to become a really hateful fluid to us. We loathe its out-of-the-tap tastelessness. We detest ordinary people. We are in peril of our lives from them: and in peril of our souls too, for they would damn us one and all to the ordinary. Every individual should, by nature, have his extraordinary points. But nowadays you may look for them with a microscope, they are so worn-down by the regular machine-friction of our average and mechanical days.

There was no hope for Alvina in the ordinary. If help came, it would have to come from the extraordinary. Hence the extreme peril of her case. Hence the bitter fear and humiliation she felt as she drudged shabbily on in Manchester House, hiding herself as much as possible from public view. Men can suck the heady juice of exalted self-importance from the bitter weed of failure—failures are usually the most conceited of men: even as was James Houghton. But to a woman, failure is another matter. For her it means failure to live, failure to establish her own life on the face of the earth. And this is humiliating, the ultimate humiliation.

And so the slow years crept round, and the completed coil of each one was a further heavy, strangling noose. Alvina had passed her twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and even her twenty-ninth year. She was in her thirtieth. It ought to be a laughing matter. But it isn’t.

Ach, schon zwanzig Ach, schon zwanzig Immer noch durch’s Leben tanz’ ich Jeder, Jeder will mich küssen Mir das Leben zu versüssen.

Ach, schon dreissig Ach, schon dreissig Immer Mädchen, Mädchen heiss’ ich. In dem Zopf schon graue Härchen Ach, wie schnell vergehn die Jährchen.

Ach, schon vierzig Ach, schon vierzig Und noch immer Keiner find ’sich. Im gesicht schon graue Flecken Ach, das muss im Spiegel stecken.

Ach, schon fünfzig
Ach, schon fünfzig
Und noch immer Keiner will ’mich;
Soll ich mich mit Bänden zieren
Soll ich einen Schleier führen?
Dann heisst’s, die Alte putzt sich,
Sie ist fu’fzig, sie ist fu’fzig.

True enough, in Alvina’s pig-tail of soft brown the grey hairs were already showing. True enough, she still preferred to be thought of as a girl. And the slow-footed years, so heavy in passing, were so imperceptibly numerous in their accumulation.

But we are not going to follow our song to its fatal and dreary conclusion. Presumably, the _ordinary_ old-maid heroine nowadays is destined to die in her fifties, she is not allowed to be the long-liver of the by-gone novels. Let the song suffice her.

James Houghton had still another kick in him. He had one last scheme up his sleeve. Looking out on a changing world, it was the popular novelties which had the last fascination for him. The Skating Rink, like another Charybdis, had all but entangled him in its swirl as he pushed painfully off from the rocks of Throttle-Ha’penny. But he had escaped, and for almost three years had lain obscurely in port, like a frail and finished bark, selling the last of his bits and bobs, and making little splashes in warehouse-oddments. Miss Pinnegar thought he had really gone quiet.

But alas, at that degenerated and shabby, down-at-heel club he met another tempter: a plump man who had been in the music-hall line as a sort of agent. This man had catered for the little shows of little towns. He had been in America, out West, doing shows there. He had trailed his way back to England, where he had left his wife and daughter. But he did not resume his family life. Wherever he was, his wife was a hundred miles away. Now he found himself more or less stranded in Woodhouse. He had _nearly_ fixed himself up with a music-hall in the Potteries—as manager: he had all-but got such another place at Ickley, in Derbyshire: he had forced his way through the industrial and mining townlets, prospecting for any sort of music-hall or show from which he could get a picking. And now, in very low water, he found himself at Woodhouse.

Woodhouse had a cinema already: a famous Empire run-up by Jordan, the sly builder and decorator who had got on so surprisingly. In James’s younger days, Jordan was an obscure and illiterate nobody. And now he had a motor car, and looked at the tottering James with sardonic contempt, from under his heavy, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He was rather stout, frail in health, but silent and insuperable, was A. W. Jordan.

“I missed a chance there,” said James, fluttering. “I missed a rare chance there. I ought to have been first with a cinema.”

He admitted as much to Mr. May, the stranger who was looking for some sort of “managing” job. Mr. May, who also was plump and who could hold his tongue, but whose pink, fat face and light-blue eyes had a loud look, for all that, put the speech in his pipe and smoked it. Not that he smoked a pipe: always cigarettes. But he seized on James’s admission, as something to be made the most of.

Now Mr. May’s mind, though quick, was pedestrian, not winged. He had come to Woodhouse not to look at Jordan’s “Empire,” but at the temporary wooden structure that stood in the old Cattle Market—“Wright’s Cinematograph and Variety Theatre.” Wright’s was not a superior show, like the Woodhouse Empire. Yet it was always packed with colliers and work-lasses. But unfortunately there was no chance of Mr. May’s getting a finger in the Cattle Market pie. Wright’s was a family affair. Mr. and Mrs. Wright and a son and two daughters with their husbands: a tight old lock-up family concern. Yet it was the kind of show that appealed to Mr. May: pictures between the turns. The cinematograph was but an item in the program, amidst the more thrilling incidents—to Mr. May—of conjurors, popular songs, five-minute farces, performing birds, and comics. Mr. May was too human to believe that a show should consist entirely of the dithering eye-ache of a film.

He was becoming really depressed by his failure to find any opening. He had his family to keep—and though his honesty was of the variety sort, he had a heavy conscience in the direction of his wife and daughter. Having been so long in America, he had acquired American qualities, one of which was this heavy sort of private innocence, coupled with complacent and natural unscrupulousness in “matters of business.” A man of some odd sensitiveness in material things, he liked to have his clothes neat and spick, his linen immaculate, his face clean-shaved like a cherub. But alas, his clothes were now old-fashioned, so that their rather expensive smartness was detrimental to his chances, in spite of their scrupulous look of having come almost new out of the bandbox that morning. His rather small felt hats still curved jauntily over his full pink face. But his eyes looked lugubrious, as if he felt he had not deserved so much bad luck, and there were bilious lines beneath them.

So Mr. May, in his room in the Moon and Stars, which was the best inn in Woodhouse—he must have a good hötel—lugubriously considered his position. Woodhouse offered little or nothing. He must go to Alfreton. And would he find anything there? Ah, where, where in this hateful world was there refuge for a man saddled with responsibilities, who wanted to do his best and was given no opportunity? Mr. May had travelled in his Pullman car and gone straight to the best hotel in the town, like any other American with money—in America. He had done it smart, too. And now, in this grubby penny-picking England, he saw his boots being worn-down at the heel, and was afraid of being stranded without cash even for a railway ticket. If he had to clear out without paying his hotel bill—well, that was the world’s fault. He had to live. But he must perforce keep enough in hand for a ticket to Birmingham. He always said his wife was in London. And he always walked down to Lumley to post his letters. He was full of evasions.

So again he walked down to Lumley to post his letters. And he looked at Lumley. And he found it a damn god-forsaken hell of a hole. It was a long straggle of a dusty road down in the valley, with a pale-grey dust and spatter from the pottery, and big chimneys bellying forth black smoke right by the road. Then there was a short cross-way, up which one saw the iron foundry, a black and rusty place. A little further on was the railway junction, and beyond that, more houses stretching to Hathersedge, where the stocking factories were busy. Compared with Lumley, Woodhouse, whose church could be seen sticking up proudly and vulgarly on an eminence, above trees and meadow-slopes, was an idyllic heaven.

Mr. May turned in to the Derby Hotel to have a small whiskey. And of course he entered into conversation.

“You seem somewhat quiet at Lumley,” he said, in his odd, refined-showman’s voice. “Have you _nothing at all_ in the way of amusement?”

“They all go up to Woodhouse, else to Hathersedge.”

“But couldn’t you support some place of your own—some _rival_ to Wright’s Variety?”

“Ay—’appen—if somebody started it.”

And so it was that James was inoculated with the idea of starting a cinema on the virgin soil of Lumley. To the women he said not a word. But on the very first morning that Mr. May broached the subject, he became a new man. He fluttered like a boy, he fluttered as if he had just grown wings.

“Let us go down,” said Mr. May, “and look at a site. You pledge yourself to nothing—you don’t compromise yourself. You merely have a site in your mind.”

And so it came to pass that, next morning, this oddly assorted couple went down to Lumley together. James was very shabby, in his black coat and dark grey trousers, and his cheap grey cap. He bent forward as he walked, and still nipped along hurriedly, as if pursued by fate. His face was thin and still handsome. Odd that his cheap cap, by incongruity, made him look more a gentleman. But it did. As he walked he glanced alertly hither and thither, and saluted everybody.

By his side, somewhat tight and tubby, with his chest out and his head back, went the prim figure of Mr. May, reminding one of a consequential bird of the smaller species. His plumbago-grey suit fitted exactly—save that it was perhaps a little tight. The jacket and waistcoat were bound with silk braid of exactly the same shade as the cloth. His soft collar, immaculately fresh, had a dark stripe like his shirt. His boots were black, with grey suède uppers: but a _little_ down at heel. His dark-grey hat was jaunty. Altogether he looked very spruce, though a _little_ behind the fashions: very pink faced, though his blue eyes were bilious beneath: very much on the spot, although the spot was the wrong one.

They discoursed amiably as they went, James bending forward, Mr. May bending back. Mr. May took the refined man-of-the-world tone.

“Of course,” he said—he used the two words very often, and pronounced the second, rather mincingly, to rhyme with _sauce_: “Of course,” said Mr. May, “it’s a disgusting place—_disgusting_! I never was in a worse, in all the _cauce_ of my travels. But _then_—that isn’t the point—”

He spread his plump hands from his immaculate shirt-cuffs.

“No, it isn’t. Decidedly it isn’t. That’s beside the point altogether. What we want—” began James.

“Is an audience—of _cauce_—! And we have it—! Virgin soil—!

“Yes, decidedly. Untouched! An unspoiled market.”

“An unspoiled market!” reiterated Mr. May, in full confirmation, though with a faint flicker of a smile. “How very _fortunate_ for us.”

“Properly handled,” said James. “Properly handled.”

“Why yes—of _cauce_! Why _shouldn’t_ we handle it properly!”

“Oh, we shall manage that, we shall manage that,” came the quick, slightly husky voice of James.

“Of _cauce_ we shall! Why bless my life, if we can’t manage an audience in Lumley, what _can_ we do.”

“We have a guide in the matter of their taste,” said James. “We can see what Wright’s are doing—and Jordan’s—and we can go to Hathersedge and Knarborough and Alfreton—beforehand, that is—”

“Why certainly—if you think it’s _necessary_. I’ll do all that for you. _And_ I’ll interview the managers and the performers themselves—as if I were a journalist, don’t you see. I’ve done a fair amount of journalism, and nothing easier than to get cards from various newspapers.”

“Yes, that’s a good suggestion,” said James. “As if you were going to write an account in the newspapers—excellent.”

“And so simple! You pick up just _all_ the information you require.”

“Decidedly—decidedly!” said James.

And so behold our two heroes sniffing round the sordid backs and wasted meadows and marshy places of Lumley. They found one barren patch where two caravans were standing. A woman was peeling potatoes, sitting on the bottom step of her caravan. A half-caste girl came up with a large pale-blue enamelled jug of water. In the background were two booths covered up with coloured canvas. Hammering was heard inside.

“Good-morning!” said Mr. May, stopping before the woman. “’Tisn’t fair time, is it?”

“No, it’s no fair,” said the woman.

“I see. You’re just on your own. Getting on all right?”

“Fair,” said the woman.

“Only fair! Sorry. Good-morning.”

Mr. May’s quick eye, roving round, had seen a negro stoop from under the canvas that covered one booth. The negro was thin, and looked young but rather frail, and limped. His face was very like that of the young negro in Watteau’s drawing—pathetic, wistful, north-bitten. In an instant Mr. May had taken all in: the man was the woman’s husband—they were acclimatized in these regions: the booth where he had been hammering was a Hoop-La. The other would be a cocoanut-shy. Feeling the instant American dislike for the presence of a negro, Mr. May moved off with James.

They found out that the woman was a Lumley woman, that she had two children, that the negro was a most quiet and respectable chap, but that the family kept to itself, and didn’t mix up with Lumley.

“I should think so,” said Mr. May, a little disgusted even at the suggestion.

Then he proceeded to find out how long they had stood on this ground—three months—how long they would remain—only another week, then they were moving off to Alfreton fair—who was the owner of the pitch—Mr. Bows, the butcher. Ah! And what was the ground used for? Oh, it was building land. But the foundation wasn’t very good.

“The very thing! Aren’t we _fortunate_!” cried Mr. May, perking up the moment they were in the street. But this cheerfulness and brisk perkiness was a great strain on him. He missed his eleven o’clock whiskey terribly—terribly—his pick-me-up! And he daren’t confess it to James, who, he knew, was T-T. So he dragged his weary and hollow way up to Woodhouse, and sank with a long “Oh!” of nervous exhaustion in the private bar of the Moon and Stars. He wrinkled his short nose. The smell of the place was distasteful to him. The _disgusting_ beer that the colliers drank. Oh!—he _was_ so tired. He sank back with his whiskey and stared blankly, dismally in front of him. Beneath his eyes he looked more bilious still. He felt thoroughly out of luck, and petulant.

None the less he sallied out with all his old bright perkiness, the next time he had to meet James. He hadn’t yet broached the question of costs. When would he be able to get an advance from James? He _must_ hurry the matter forward. He brushed his crisp, curly brown hair carefully before the mirror. How grey he was at the temples! No wonder, dear me, with such a life! He was in his shirt-sleeves. His waistcoat, with its grey satin back, fitted him tightly. He had filled out—but he hadn’t developed a corporation. Not at all. He looked at himself sideways, and feared dismally he was thinner. He was one of those men who carry themselves in a birdie fashion, so that their tail sticks out a little behind, jauntily. How wonderfully the satin of his waistcoat had worn! He looked at his shirt-cuffs. They were going. Luckily, when he had had the shirts made he had secured enough material for the renewing of cuffs and neckbands. He put on his coat, from which he had flicked the faintest suspicion of dust, and again settled himself to go out and meet James on the question of an advance. He simply must have an advance.

He didn’t get it that day, none the less. The next morning he was ringing for his tea at six o’clock. And before ten he had already flitted to Lumley and back, he had already had a word with Mr. Bows, about that pitch, and, overcoming all his repugnance, a word with the quiet, frail, sad negro, about Alfreton fair, and the chance of buying some sort of collapsible building, for his cinematograph.

With all this news he met James—not at the shabby club, but in the deserted reading-room of the so-called Artizans Hall—where never an artizan entered, but only men of James’s class. Here they took the chessboard and pretended to start a game. But their conversation was rapid and secretive.

Mr. May disclosed all his discoveries. And then he said, tentatively:

“Hadn’t we better think about the financial part now? If we’re going to look round for an erection”—curious that he always called it an erection—“we shall have to know what we are going to spend.”

“Yes—yes. Well—” said James vaguely, nervously, giving a glance at Mr. May. Whilst Mr. May abstractedly fingered his black knight.

“You see at the moment,” said Mr. May, “I have no funds that I can represent in cash. I have no doubt a little _later_—if we need it—I can find a few hundreds. Many things are _due_—numbers of things. But it is so difficult to _collect_ one’s dues, particularly from America.” He lifted his blue eyes to James Houghton. “Of course we can _delay_ for some time, until I get my supplies. Or I can act just as your manager—you can _employ_ me—”

He watched James’s face. James looked down at the chessboard. He was fluttering with excitement. He did not want a partner. He wanted to be in this all by himself. He hated partners.

“You will agree to be manager, at a fixed salary?” said James hurriedly and huskily, his fine fingers slowly rubbing each other, along the sides.

“Why yes, willingly, if you’ll give me the option of becoming your partner upon terms of mutual agreement, later on.”

James did not quite like this.

“What terms are you thinking of?” he asked.

“Well, it doesn’t matter for the moment. Suppose for the moment I enter an engagement as your manager, at a salary, let us say, of—of what, do you think?”

“So much a week?” said James pointedly.

“Hadn’t we better make it monthly?”

The two men looked at one another.

“With a month’s notice on either hand?” continued Mr. May.

“How much?” said James, avaricious.

Mr. May studied his own nicely kept hands.

“Well, I don’t see how I can do it under twenty pounds a month. Of course it’s ridiculously low. In America I _never_ accepted less than three hundred dollars a month, and that was my poorest and lowest. But of _cauce_, England’s not America—more’s the pity.”

But James was shaking his head in a vibrating movement.

“Impossible!” he replied shrewdly. “Impossible! Twenty pounds a month? Impossible. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t think of it.”

“Then name a figure. Say what you _can_ think of,” retorted Mr. May, rather annoyed by this shrewd, shaking head of a doddering provincial, and by his own sudden collapse into mean subordination.

“I can’t make it more than ten pounds a month,” said James sharply.

“What!” screamed Mr. May. “What am I to live on? What is my wife to live on?”

“I’ve got to make it pay,” said James. “If I’ve got to make it pay, I must keep down expenses at the beginning.”

“No,—on the contrary. You must be prepared to spend something at the beginning. If you go in a pinch-and-scrape fashion in the beginning, you will get nowhere at all. Ten pounds a month! Why it’s impossible! Ten pounds a month! But how am I to _live_?”

James’s head still vibrated in a negative fashion. And the two men came to no agreement _that_ morning. Mr. May went home more sick and weary than ever, and took his whiskey more biliously. But James was lit with the light of battle.

Poor Mr. May had to gather together his wits and his sprightliness for his next meeting. He had decided he must make a percentage in other ways. He schemed in all known ways. He would accept the ten pounds—but really, did ever you hear of anything so ridiculous in your life, _ten pounds!_—dirty old screw, dirty, screwing old woman! He would accept the ten pounds; but he would get his own back.

He flitted down once more to the negro, to ask him of a certain wooden show-house, with section sides and roof, an old travelling theatre which stood closed on Selverhay Common, and might probably be sold. He pressed across once more to Mr. Bows. He wrote various letters and drew up certain notes. And the next morning, by eight o’clock, he was on his way to Selverhay: walking, poor man, the long and uninteresting seven miles on his small and rather tight-shod feet, through country that had been once beautiful but was now scrubbled all over with mining villages, on and on up heavy hills and down others, asking his way from uncouth clowns, till at last he came to the Common, which wasn’t a Common at all, but a sort of village more depressing than usual: naked, high, exposed to heaven and to full barren view.

There he saw the theatre-booth. It was old and sordid-looking, painted dark-red and dishevelled with narrow, tattered announcements. The grass was growing high up the wooden sides. If only it wasn’t rotten? He crouched and probed and pierced with his pen-knife, till a country-policeman in a high helmet like a jug saw him, got off his bicycle and came stealthily across the grass wheeling the same bicycle, and startled poor Mr. May almost into apoplexy by demanding behind him, in a loud voice:

“What’re you after?”

Mr. May rose up with flushed face and swollen neck-veins, holding his pen-knife in his hand.

“Oh,” he said, “good-morning.” He settled his waistcoat and glanced over the tall, lanky constable and the glittering bicycle. “I was taking a look at this old erection, with a view to buying it. I’m afraid it’s going rotten from the bottom.”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” said the policeman suspiciously, watching Mr. May shut the pocket knife.

“I’m afraid that makes it useless for my purpose,” said Mr. May.

The policeman did not deign to answer.

“Could you tell me where I can find out about it, anyway?” Mr. May used his most affable, man of the world manner. But the policeman continued to stare him up and down, as if he were some marvellous specimen unknown on the normal, honest earth.

“What, find out?” said the constable.

“About being able to buy it,” said Mr. May, a little testily. It was with great difficulty he preserved his man-to-man openness and brightness.

“They aren’t here,” said the constable.

“Oh indeed! Where _are_ they? And _who_ are they?”

The policeman eyed him more suspiciously than ever.

“Cowlard’s their name. An’ they live in Offerton when they aren’t travelling.”

“Cowlard—thank you.” Mr. May took out his pocket-book. “C-o-w-l-a-r-d—is that right? And the address, please?”

“I dunno th’ street. But you can find out from the Three Bells. That’s Missis’ sister.”

“The Three Bells—thank you. Offerton did you say?”

“Yes.”

“Offerton!—where’s that?”

“About eight mile.”

“Really—and how do you get there?”

“You can walk—or go by train.”

“Oh, there is a station?”

“Station!” The policeman looked at him as if he were either a criminal or a fool.

“Yes. There _is_ a station there?”

“Ay—biggest next to Chesterfield—”

Suddenly it dawned on Mr. May.

“Oh-h!” he said. “You mean _Alfreton_—”

“Alfreton, yes.” The policeman was now convinced the man was a wrong-’un. But fortunately he was not a pushing constable, he did not want to rise in the police-scale: thought himself safest at the bottom.

“And which is the way to the station here?” asked Mr. May.

“Do yer want Pinxon or Bull’ill?”

“Pinxon or Bull’ill?”

“There’s two,” said the policeman.

“For Selverhay?” asked Mr. May.

“Yes, them’s the two.”

“And which is the best?”

“Depends what trains is runnin’. Sometimes yer have to wait an hour or two—”

“You don’t know the trains, do you—?”

“There’s one in th’ afternoon—but I don’t know if it’d be gone by the time you get down.”

“To where?”

“Bull’ill.”

“Oh Bull’ill! Well, perhaps I’ll try. Could you tell me the way?”

When, after an hour’s painful walk, Mr. May came to Bullwell Station and found there was no train till six in the evening, he felt he was earning every penny he would ever get from Mr. Houghton.

The first intelligence which Miss Pinnegar and Alvina gathered of the coming adventure was given them when James announced that he had let the shop to Marsden, the grocer next door. Marsden had agreed to take over James’s premises at the same rent as that of the premises he already occupied, and moreover to do all alterations and put in all fixtures himself. This was a grand scoop for James: not a penny was it going to cost him, and the rent was clear profit.

“But when?” cried Miss Pinnegar.

“He takes possession on the first of October.”

“Well—it’s a good idea. The shop isn’t worth while,” said Miss Pinnegar.

“Certainly it isn’t,” said James, rubbing his hands: a sign that he was rarely excited and pleased.

“And you’ll just retire, and live quietly,” said Miss Pinnegar.

“I shall see,” said James. And with those fatal words he wafted away to find Mr. May.

James was now nearly seventy years old. Yet he nipped about like a leaf in the wind. Only, it was a frail leaf.

“Father’s got something going,” said Alvina, in a warning voice.

“I believe he has,” said Miss Pinnegar pensively. “I wonder what it is, now.”

“I can’t imagine,” laughed Alvina. “But I’ll bet it’s something awful—else he’d have told us.”

“Yes,” said Miss Pinnegar slowly. “Most likely he would. I wonder what it can be.”

“I haven’t an idea,” said Alvina.

Both women were so retired, they had heard nothing of James’s little trips down to Lumley. So they watched like cats for their man’s return, at dinner-time.

Miss Pinnegar saw him coming along talking excitedly to Mr. May, who, all in grey, with his chest perkily stuck out like a robin, was looking rather pinker than usual. Having come to an agreement, he had ventured on whiskey and soda in honour, and James had actually taken a glass of port.

“Alvina!” Miss Pinnegar called discreetly down the shop. “Alvina! Quick!”

Alvina flew down to peep round the corner of the shop window. There stood the two men, Mr. May like a perky, pink-faced grey bird standing cocking his head in attention to James Houghton, and occasionally catching James by the lapel of his coat, in a vain desire to get a word in, whilst James’s head nodded and his face simply wagged with excited speech, as he skipped from foot to foot, and shifted round his listener.

“Who _ever_ can that common-looking man be?” said Miss Pinnegar, her heart going down to her boots.

“I can’t imagine,” said Alvina, laughing at the comic sight.

“Don’t you think he’s dreadful?” said the poor elderly woman.

“Perfectly impossible. Did ever you see such a pink face?”

“_And_ the braid binding!” said Miss Pinnegar in indignation.

“Father might almost have sold him the suit,” said Alvina.

“Let us hope he hasn’t sold your father, that’s all,” said Miss Pinnegar.

The two men had moved a few steps further towards home, and the women prepared to flee indoors. Of course it was frightfully wrong to be standing peeping in the high street at all. But who could consider the proprieties now?

“They’ve stopped again,” said Miss Pinnegar, recalling Alvina.

The two men were having a few more excited words, their voices just audible.

“I do wonder who he can be,” murmured Miss Pinnegar miserably.

“In the theatrical line, I’m sure,” declared Alvina.

“Do you think so?” said Miss Pinnegar. “Can’t be! Can’t be!”

“He couldn’t be anything else, don’t you think?”

“Oh I _can’t_ believe it, I can’t.”

But now Mr. May had laid his detaining hand on James’s arm. And now he was shaking his employer by the hand. And now James, in his cheap little cap, was smiling a formal farewell. And Mr. May, with a graceful wave of his grey-suède-gloved hand, was turning back to the Moon and Stars, strutting, whilst James was running home on tip-toe, in his natural hurry.

Alvina hastily retreated, but Miss Pinnegar stood it out. James started as he nipped into the shop entrance, and found her confronting him.

“Oh—Miss Pinnegar!” he said, and made to slip by her.

“Who was that man?” she asked sharply, as if James were a child whom she could endure no more.

“Eh? I beg your pardon?” said James, starting back.

“Who was that man?”

“Eh? Which man?”

James was a little deaf, and a little husky.

“The man—” Miss Pinnegar turned to the door. “There! That man!”

James also came to the door, and peered out as if he expected to see a sight. The sight of Mr. May’s tight and perky back, the jaunty little hat and the grey suède hands retreating quite surprised him. He was angry at being introduced to the sight.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s my manager.” And he turned hastily down the shop, asking for his dinner.

Miss Pinnegar stood for some moments in pure oblivion in the shop entrance. Her consciousness left her. When she recovered, she felt she was on the brink of hysteria and collapse. But she hardened herself once more, though the effort cost her a year of her life. She had never collapsed, she had never fallen into hysteria.

She gathered herself together, though bent a little as from a blow, and, closing the shop door, followed James to the living room, like the inevitable. He was eating his dinner, and seemed oblivious of her entry. There was a smell of Irish stew.

“What manager?” said Miss Pinnegar, short, silent, and inevitable in the doorway.

But James was in one of his abstractions, his trances.

“What manager?” persisted Miss Pinnegar.

But he still bent unknowing over his plate and gobbled his Irish stew.

“Mr. Houghton!” said Miss Pinnegar, in a sudden changed voice. She had gone a livid yellow colour. And she gave a queer, sharp little rap on the table with her hand.

James started. He looked up bewildered, as one startled out of sleep.

“Eh?” he said, gaping. “Eh?”

“Answer me,” said Miss Pinnegar. “What manager?”

“Manager? Eh? Manager? What manager?”

She advanced a little nearer, menacing in her black dress. James shrank.

“What manager?” he re-echoed. “My manager. The manager of my cinema.”

Miss Pinnegar looked at him, and looked at him, and did not speak. In that moment all the anger which was due to him from all womanhood was silently discharged at him, like a black bolt of silent electricity. But Miss Pinnegar, the engine of wrath, felt she would burst.

“Cinema! Cinema! Do you mean to tell me—” but she was really suffocated, the vessels of her heart and breast were bursting. She had to lean her hand on the table.

It was a terrible moment. She looked ghastly and terrible, with her mask-like face and her stony eyes and her bluish lips. Some fearful thunderbolt seemed to fall. James withered, and was still. There was silence for minutes, a suspension.

And in those minutes, she finished with him. She finished with him for ever. When she had sufficiently recovered, she went to her chair, and sat down before her plate. And in a while she began to eat, as if she were alone.

Poor Alvina, for whom this had been a dreadful and uncalled-for moment, had looked from one to another, and had also dropped her head to her plate. James too, with bent head, had forgotten to eat. Miss Pinnegar ate very slowly, alone.

“Don’t you want your dinner, Alvina?” she said at length.

“Not as much as I did,” said Alvina.

“Why not?” said Miss Pinnegar. She sounded short, almost like Miss Frost. Oddly like Miss Frost.

Alvina took up her fork and began to eat automatically.

“I always think,” said Miss Pinnegar, “Irish stew is more tasty with a bit of Swede in it.”

“So do I, really,” said Alvina. “But Swedes aren’t come yet.”

“Oh! Didn’t we have some on Tuesday?”

“No, they were yellow turnips—but they weren’t Swedes.”

“Well then, yellow turnip. I like a little yellow turnip,” said Miss Pinnegar.

“I might have put some in, if I’d known,” said Alvina.

“Yes. We will another time,” said Miss Pinnegar.

Not another word about the cinema: not another breath. As soon as James had eaten his plum tart, he ran away.

“What can he have been doing?” said Alvina when he had gone.

“Buying a cinema show—and that man we saw is his manager. It’s quite simple.”

“But what are we going to do with a cinema show?” said Alvina.

“It’s what is _he_ going to do. It doesn’t concern me. It’s no concern of mine. I shall not lend him anything, I shall not think about it, it will be the same to me as if there _were_ no cinema. Which is all I have to say,” announced Miss Pinnegar.

“But he’s gone and done it,” said Alvina.

“Then let him go through with it. It’s no affair of mine. After all, your father’s affairs don’t concern me. It would be impertinent of me to introduce myself into them.”

“They don’t concern _me_ very much,” said Alvina.

“You’re different. You’re his daughter. He’s no connection of mine, I’m glad to say. I pity your mother.”

“Oh, but he was always alike,” said Alvina.

“That’s where it is,” said Miss Pinnegar.

There was something fatal about her feelings. Once they had gone cold, they would never warm up again. As well try to warm up a frozen mouse. It only putrifies.

But poor Miss Pinnegar after this looked older, and seemed to get a little round-backed. And the things she said reminded Alvina so often of Miss Frost.

James fluttered into conversation with his daughter the next evening, after Miss Pinnegar had retired.

“I told you I had bought a cinematograph building,” said James. “We are negotiating for the machinery now: the dynamo and so on.”

“But where is it to be?” asked Alvina.

“Down at Lumley. I’ll take you and show you the site tomorrow. The building—it is a frame-section travelling theatre—will arrive on Thursday—next Thursday.”

“But who is in with you, father?”

“I am quite alone—quite alone,” said James Houghton. “I have found an excellent manager, who knows the whole business thoroughly—a Mr. May. Very nice man. Very nice man.”

“Rather short and dressed in grey?”

“Yes. And I have been thinking—if Miss Pinnegar will take the cash and issue tickets: if she will take over the ticket-office: and you will play the piano: and if Mr. May learns the control of the machine—he is having lessons now—: and if I am the indoors attendant, we shan’t need any more staff.”

“Miss Pinnegar won’t take the cash, father.”

“Why not? Why not?”

“I can’t say why not. But she won’t do anything—and if I were you I wouldn’t ask her.”

There was a pause.

“Oh, well,” said James, huffy. “She isn’t indispensable.”

And Alvina was to play the piano! Here was a blow for her! She hurried off to her bedroom to laugh and cry at once. She just saw herself at that piano, banging off the _Merry Widow Waltz_, and, in tender moments, _The Rosary_. Time after time, _The Rosary_. While the pictures flickered and the audience gave shouts and some grubby boy called “Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a bar!” away she banged at another tune.

What a sight for the gods! She burst out laughing. And at the same time, she thought of her mother and Miss Frost, and she cried as if her heart would break. And then all kinds of comic and incongruous tunes came into her head. She imagined herself dressing up with most priceless variations. _Linger Longer Lucy_, for example. She began to spin imaginary harmonies and variations in her head, upon the theme of _Linger Longer Lucy_.

“Linger longer Lucy, linger longer Loo. How I love to linger longer linger long o’ you. Listen while I sing, love, promise you’ll be true, And linger longer longer linger linger longer Loo.”

All the tunes that used to make Miss Frost so angry. All the Dream Waltzes and Maiden’s Prayers, and the awful songs.

“For in Spooney-ooney Island Is there any one cares for me? In Spooney-ooney Island Why surely there ought to be—”

Poor Miss Frost! Alvina imagined herself leading a chorus of collier louts, in a bad atmosphere of “Woodbines” and oranges, during the intervals when the pictures had collapsed.

“How’d you like to spoon with me? How’d you like to spoon with me? (_Why ra-ther!_)

Underneath the oak-tree nice and shady Calling me your tootsey-wootsey lady? How’d you like to hug and squeeze, (_Just try me!_)

Dandle me upon your knee, Calling me your little lovey-dovey— How’d you like to spoon with me? (_Oh-h—Go on!_)”

Alvina worked herself into quite a fever, with her imaginings.

In the morning she told Miss Pinnegar.

“Yes,” said Miss Pinnegar, “you see me issuing tickets, don’t you? Yes—well. I’m afraid he will have to do that part himself. And you’re going to play the piano. It’s a disgrace! It’s a disgrace! It’s a disgrace! It’s a mercy Miss Frost and your mother are dead. He’s lost every bit of shame—every bit—if he ever had any—which I doubt very much. Well, all I can say, I’m glad I am not concerned. And I’m sorry for you, for being his daughter. I’m heart sorry for you, I am. Well, well—no sense of shame—no sense of shame—”

And Miss Pinnegar padded out of the room.

Alvina walked down to Lumley and was shown the site and was introduced to Mr. May. He bowed to her in his best American fashion, and treated her with admirable American deference.

“Don’t you think,” he said to her, “it’s an admirable scheme?”

“Wonderful,” she replied.

“Of cauce,” he said, “the erection will be a merely temporary one. Of cauce it won’t be anything to _look_ at: just an old wooden travelling theatre. But _then_—all we need is to make a start.”

“And you are going to work the film?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said with pride, “I spend every evening with the operator at Marsh’s in Knarborough. Very interesting I find it—very interesting indeed. And _you_ are going to play the piano?” he said, perking his head on one side and looking at her archly.

“So father says,” she answered.

“But what do _you_ say?” queried Mr. May.

“I suppose I don’t have any say.”

“Oh but _surely_. Surely you won’t do it if you don’t wish to. That would never do. Can’t we hire some young fellow—?” And he turned to Mr. Houghton with a note of query.

“Alvina can play as well as anybody in Woodhouse,” said James. “We mustn’t add to our expenses. And wages in particular—”

“But surely Miss Houghton will have her wage. The labourer is worthy of his hire. Surely! Even of _her_ hire, to put it in the feminine. And for the same wage you could get some unimportant fellow with strong wrists. I’m afraid it will tire Miss Houghton to death—”

“I don’t think so,” said James. “I don’t think so. Many of the turns she will not need to accompany—”

“Well, if it comes to that,” said Mr. May, “I can accompany some of them myself, when I’m not operating the film. I’m not an expert pianist—but I can play a little, you know—” And he trilled his fingers up and down an imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina, cocking his eye at her smiling a little archly.

“I’m sure,” he continued, “I can accompany anything except a man juggling dinner-plates—and then I’d be afraid of making him drop the plates. But songs—oh, songs! _Con molto espressione!_”

And again he trilled the imaginary keyboard, and smiled his rather fat cheeks at Alvina.

She began to like him. There was something a little dainty about him, when you knew him better—really rather fastidious. A showman, true enough! Blatant too. But fastidiously so.

He came fairly frequently to Manchester House after this. Miss Pinnegar was rather stiff with him and he did not like her. But he was very happy sitting chatting tête-à-tête with Alvina.

“Where is your wife?” said Alvina to him.

“My wife! Oh, don’t speak of _her_,” he said comically. “She’s in London.”

“Why not speak of her?” asked Alvina.

“Oh, every reason for not speaking of her. We don’t get on at _all_ well, she and I.”

“What a pity,” said Alvina.

“Dreadful pity! But what are you to do?” He laughed comically. Then he became grave. “No,” he said. “She’s an impossible person.”

“I see,” said Alvina.

“I’m sure you _don’t_ see,” said Mr. May. “Don’t—” and here he laid his hand on Alvina’s arm—“don’t run away with the idea that she’s _immoral_! You’d never make a greater mistake. Oh dear me, no. Morality’s her strongest point. Live on three lettuce leaves, and give the rest to the char. That’s her. Oh, dreadful times we had in those first years. We only lived together for three years. But dear _me_! how awful it was!”

“Why?”

“There was no pleasing the woman. She wouldn’t eat. If I said to her ‘What shall we have for supper, Grace?’ as sure as anything she’d answer ‘Oh, I shall take a bath when I go to bed—that will be my supper.’ She was one of these advanced vegetarian women, don’t you know.”

“How extraordinary!” said Alvina.

“Extraordinary! I should think so. Extraordinary hard lines on _me_. And she wouldn’t let _me_ eat either. She followed me to the kitchen in a _fury_ while I cooked for myself. Why imagine! I prepared a dish of champignons: oh, most _beautiful_ champignons, beautiful—and I put them on the stove to fry in butter: beautiful young champignons. I’m hanged if she didn’t go into the kitchen while my back was turned, and pour a pint of old carrot-water into the pan. I was _furious_. Imagine!—beautiful fresh young champignons—”

“Fresh mushrooms,” said Alvina.

“Mushrooms—most beautiful things in the world. Oh! don’t you think so?” And he rolled his eyes oddly to heaven.

“They _are_ good,” said Alvina.

“I should say so. And swamped—_swamped_ with her dirty old carrot water. Oh I was so angry. And all she could say was, ‘Well, I didn’t want to waste it!’ Didn’t want to waste her old carrot water, and so _ruined_ my champignons. _Can_ you imagine such a person?”

“It must have been trying.”

“I should think it was. I lost weight. I lost I don’t know how many pounds, the first year I was married to that woman. She hated me to eat. Why, one of her great accusations against me, at the last, was when she said: ‘I’ve looked round the larder,’ she said to me, ‘and seen it was quite empty, and I thought to myself: _Now_ he _can’t_ cook a supper! And _then_ you did!’ There! What do you think of that? The spite of it! ‘And _then_ you did!’”

“What did she expect you to live on?” asked Alvina.

“Nibble a lettuce leaf with her, and drink water from the tap—and then elevate myself with a Bernard Shaw pamphlet. That was the sort of woman she was. All it gave _me_ was gas in the stomach.”

“So overbearing!” said Alvina.

“Oh!” he turned his eyes to heaven, and spread his hands. “I didn’t believe my senses. I didn’t know such people existed. And her friends! Oh the dreadful friends she had—these Fabians! Oh, their eugenics. They wanted to examine my private morals, for eugenic reasons. Oh, you can’t imagine such a state. Worse than the Spanish Inquisition. And I stood it for three years. _How_ I stood it, I don’t know—”

“Now don’t you see her?”

“Never! I never let her know where I am! But I _support_ her, of cauce.”

“And your daughter?”

“Oh, she’s the dearest child in the world. I saw her at a friend’s when I came back from America. Dearest little thing in the world. But of _cauce_ suspicious of me. Treats me as if she didn’t _know_ me—”

“What a pity!”

“Oh—unbearable!” He spread his plump, manicured hands, on one finger of which was a green intaglio ring.

“How old is your daughter?”

“Fourteen.”

“What is her name?”

“Gemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud Callum, the _danseuse_.”