THE BEAU
Throttle-Ha’penny worked fitfully through the winter, and in the spring
broke down. By this time James Houghton had a pathetic, childish look
which touched the hearts of Alvina and Miss Pinnegar. They began to
treat him with a certain feminine indulgence, as he fluttered round,
agitated and bewildered. He was like a bird that has flown into a room
and is exhausted, enfeebled by its attempts to fly through the false
freedom of the window-glass. Sometimes he would sit moping in a corner,
with his head under his wing. But Miss Pinnegar chased him forth, like
the stealthy cat she was, chased him up to the work-room to consider
some detail of work, chased him into the shop to turn over the old
débris of the stock. At one time he showed the alarming symptom of
brooding over his wife’s death. Miss Pinnegar was thoroughly scared.
But she was not inventive. It was left to Alvina to suggest: “Why
doesn’t father let the shop, and some of the house?”
Let the shop! Let the last inch of frontage on the street! James
thought of it. Let the shop! Permit the name of Houghton to disappear
from the list of tradesmen? Withdraw? Disappear? Become a nameless
nobody, occupying obscure premises?
He thought about it. And thinking about it, became so indignant at the
thought that he pulled his scattered energies together within his frail
frame. And then he came out with the most original of all his schemes.
Manchester House was to be fitted up as a boarding-house for the better
classes, and was to make a fortune catering for the needs of these
gentry, who had now nowhere to go. Yes, Manchester House should be
fitted up as a sort of quiet family hotel for the better classes. The
shop should be turned into an elegant hall-entrance, carpeted, with a
hall-porter and a wide plate-glass door, round-arched, in the round
arch of which the words: “Manchester House” should appear large and
distinguished, making an arch also, whilst underneath, more refined and
smaller, should show the words: “Private Hotel.” James was to be
proprietor and secretary, keeping the books and attending to
correspondence: Miss Pinnegar was to be manageress, superintending the
servants and directing the house, whilst Alvina was to occupy the
equivocal position of “hostess.” She was to shake hands with the
guests: she was to play the piano, and she was to nurse the sick. For
in the prospectus James would include: “Trained nurse always on the
premises.”
“Why!” cried Miss Pinnegar, for once brutally and angrily hostile to
him: “You’ll make it sound like a private lunatic asylum.”
“Will you explain why?” answered James tartly.
For himself, he was enraptured with the scheme. He began to tot up
ideas and expenses. There would be the handsome entrance and hall:
there would be an extension of the kitchen and scullery: there would be
an installing of new hot-water and sanitary arrangements: there would
be a light lift-arrangment from the kitchen: there would be a handsome
glazed balcony or loggia or terrace on the first floor at the back,
over the whole length of the back-yard. This loggia would give a
wonderful outlook to the south-west and the west. In the immediate
foreground, to be sure, would be the yard of the livery-stables and the
rather slummy dwellings of the colliers, sloping downhill. But these
could be easily overlooked, for the eye would instinctively wander
across the green and shallow valley, to the long upslope opposite,
showing the Manor set in its clump of trees, and farms and haystacks
pleasantly dotted, and moderately far off coal-mines with twinkling
headstocks and narrow railwaylines crossing the arable fields, and
heaps of burning slag. The balcony or covered terrace—James settled
down at last to the word _terrace_—was to be one of the features of the
house: _the_ feature. It was to be fitted up as a sort of elegant
lounging restaurant. Elegant teas, at two-and-six per head, and elegant
suppers, at five shillings without wine, were to be served here.
As a teetotaller and a man of ascetic views, James, in his first
shallow moments, before he thought about it, assumed that his house
should be entirely non-alcoholic. A temperance house! Already he
winced. We all know what a provincial Temperance Hotel is. Besides,
there is magic in the sound of wine. _Wines Served_. The legend
attracted him immensely—as a teetotaller, it had a mysterious, hypnotic
influence. He must have wines. He knew nothing about them. But Alfred
Swayn, from the Liquor Vaults, would put him in the running in five
minutes.
It was most curious to see Miss Pinnegar turtle up at the mention of
this scheme. When first it was disclosed to her, her colour came up
like a turkey’s in a flush of indignant anger.
“It’s ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous!” she blurted, bridling and
ducking her head and turning aside, like an indignant turkey.
“Ridiculous! Why? Will you explain why!” retorted James, turtling also.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous!” she repeated, unable to do more than
splutter.
“Well, we’ll see,” said James, rising to superiority.
And again he began to dart absorbedly about, like a bird building a
nest. Miss Pinnegar watched him with a sort of sullen fury. She went to
the shop door to peep out after him. She saw him slip into the Liquor
Vaults, and she came back to announce to Alvina:
“He’s taken to drink!”
“Drink?” said Alvina.
“That’s what it is,” said Miss Pinnegar vindictively. “Drink!”
Alvina sank down and laughed till she was weak. It all seemed really
too funny to her—too funny.
“I can’t see what it is to laugh at,” said Miss Pinnegar.
“Disgraceful—it’s disgraceful! But I’m not going to stop to be made a
fool of. I shall be no manageress, I tell you. It’s absolutely
ridiculous. Who does he think will come to the place? He’s out of his
mind—and it’s drink; that’s what it is! Going into the Liquor Vaults at
ten o’clock in the morning! That’s where he gets his ideas—out of
whiskey—or brandy! But he’s not going to make a fool of me—”
“Oh dear!” sighed Alvina, laughing herself into composure and a little
weariness. “I know it’s _perfectly_ ridiculous. We shall have to stop
him.”
“I’ve said all I can say,” blurted Miss Pinnegar.
As soon as James came in to a meal, the two women attacked him.
“But father,” said Alvina, “there’ll be nobody to come.”
“Plenty of people—plenty of people,” said her father. “Look at The
Shakespeare’s Head, in Knarborough.”
“Knarborough! Is this Knarborough!” blurted Miss Pinnegar. “Where are
the business men here? Where are the foreigners coming here for
business, where’s our lace-trade and our stocking-trade?”
“There _are_ business men,” said James. “And there are ladies.”
“Who,” retorted Miss Pinnegar, “is going to give half-a-crown for a
tea? They expect tea and bread-and-butter for fourpence, and cake for
sixpence, and apricots or pineapple for ninepence, and ham-and-tongue
for a shilling, and fried ham and eggs and jam and cake as much as they
can eat for one-and-two. If they expect a knife-and-fork tea for a
shilling, what are you going to give them for half-a-crown?”
“I know what I shall offer,” said James. “And we may make it two
shillings.” Through his mind flitted the idea of 1/11-1/2—but he
rejected it. “You don’t realize that I’m catering for a higher class of
custom—”
“But there _isn’t_ any higher class in Woodhouse, father,” said Alvina,
unable to restrain a laugh.
“If you create a supply you create a demand,” he retorted.
“But how can you create a supply of better class people?” asked Alvina
mockingly.
James took on his refined, abstracted look, as if he were preoccupied
on higher planes. It was the look of an obstinate little boy who poses
on the side of the angels—or so the women saw it.
Miss Pinnegar was prepared to combat him now by sheer weight of
opposition. She would pitch her dead negative will obstinately against
him. She would not speak to him, she would not observe his presence,
she was stone deaf and stone blind: there _was_ no James. This nettled
him. And she miscalculated him. He merely took another circuit, and
rose another flight higher on the spiral of his spiritual egotism. He
believed himself finely and sacredly in the right, that he was
frustrated by lower beings, above whom it was his duty to rise, to
soar. So he soared to serene heights, and his Private Hotel seemed a
celestial injunction, an erection on a higher plane.
He saw the architect: and then, with his plans and schemes, he saw the
builder and contractor. The builder gave an estimate of six or seven
hundred—but James had better see the plumber and fitter who was going
to instal the new hot water and sanitary system. James was a little
dashed. He had calculated much less. Having only a few hundred pounds
in possession after Throttle-Ha’penny, he was prepared to mortgage
Manchester House if he could keep in hand a sufficent sum of money for
the running of his establishment for a year. He knew he would have to
sacrifice Miss Pinnegar’s work-room. He knew, and he feared Miss
Pinnegar’s violent and unmitigated hostility. Still—his obstinate
spirit rose—he was quite prepared to risk everything on this last
throw.
Miss Allsop, daughter of the builder, called to see Alvina. The Allsops
were great Chapel people, and Cassie Allsop was one of the old maids.
She was thin and nipped and wistful looking, about forty-two years old.
In private, she was tyrannously exacting with the servants, and
spiteful, rather mean with her motherless nieces. But in public she had
this nipped, wistful look.
Alvina was surprised by this visit. When she found Miss Allsop at the
back door, all her inherent hostility awoke.
“Oh, is it you, Miss Allsop! Will you come in.”
They sat in the middle room, the common living room of the house.
“I called,” said Miss Allsop, coming to the point at once, and speaking
in her Sunday-school-teacher voice, “to ask you if you know about this
Private Hotel scheme of your father’s?”
“Yes,” said Alvina.
“Oh, you do! Well, we wondered. Mr. Houghton came to father about the
building alterations yesterday. They’ll be awfully expensive.”
“Will they?” said Alvina, making big, mocking eyes.
“Yes, very. What do _you_ think of the scheme?”
“I?—well—!” Alvina hesitated, then broke into a laugh. “To tell the
truth I haven’t thought much about it at all.”
“Well I think you should,” said Miss Allsop severely. “Father’s sure it
won’t pay—and it will cost I don’t know how much. It is bound to be a
dead loss. And your father’s getting on. You’ll be left stranded in the
world without a penny to bless yourself with. I think it’s an awful
outlook for you.”
“Do you?” said Alvina.
Here she was, with a bang, planked upon the shelf among the old maids.
“Oh, I do. Sincerely! I should do all I could to prevent him, if I were
you.”
Miss Allsop took her departure. Alvina felt herself jolted in her mood.
An old maid along with Cassie Allsop!—and James Houghton fooling about
with the last bit of money, mortgaging Manchester House up to the hilt.
Alvina sank in a kind of weary mortification, in which _her_ peculiar
obstinacy persisted devilishly and spitefully. “Oh well, so be it,”
said her spirit vindictively. “Let the meagre, mean, despicable fate
fulfil itself.” Her old anger against her father arose again.
Arthur Witham, the plumber, came in with James Houghton to examine the
house. Arthur Witham was also one of the Chapel men—as had been his
common, interfering, uneducated father before him. The father had left
each of his sons a fair little sum of money, which Arthur, the eldest,
had already increased ten-fold. He was sly and slow and uneducated
also, and spoke with a broad accent. But he was not bad-looking, a
tight fellow with big blue eyes, who aspired to keep his “h’s” in the
right place, and would have been a gentleman if he could.
Against her usual habit, Alvina joined the plumber and her father in
the scullery. Arthur Witham saluted her with some respect. She liked
his blue eyes and tight figure. He was keen and sly in business, very
watchful, and slow to commit himself. Now he poked and peered and crept
under the sink. Alvina watched him half disappear—she handed him a
candle—and she laughed to herself seeing his tight, well-shaped
hind-quarters protruding from under the sink like the wrong end of a
dog from a kennel. He was keen after money, was Arthur—and bossy,
creeping slyly after his own self-importance and power. He wanted
power—and he would creep quietly after it till he got it: as much as he
was capable of. His “h’s” were a barbed-wire fence and entanglement,
preventing his unlimited progress.
He emerged from under the sink, and they went to the kitchen and
afterwards upstairs. Alvina followed them persistently, but a little
aloof, and silent. When the tour of inspection was almost over, she
said innocently:
“Won’t it cost a great deal?”
Arthur Witham slowly shook his head. Then he looked at her. She smiled
rather archly into his eyes.
“It won’t be done for nothing,” he said, looking at her again.
“We can go into that later,” said James, leading off the plumber.
“Good morning, Miss Houghton,” said Arthur Witham.
“Good morning, Mr. Witham,” replied Alvina brightly.
But she lingered in the background, and as Arthur Witham was going she
heard him say: “Well, I’ll work it out, Mr. Houghton. I’ll work it out,
and let you know tonight. I’ll get the figures by tonight.”
The younger man’s tone was a little off-hand, just a little
supercilious with her father, she thought. James’s star was setting.
In the afternoon, directly after dinner, Alvina went out. She entered
the shop, where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty stood about,
varied by sheets of glass and fancy paper. Lottie Witham, Arthur’s
wife, appeared. She was a woman of thirty-five, a bit of a shrew, with
social ambitions and no children.
“Is Mr. Witham in?” said Alvina.
Mrs. Witham eyed her.
“I’ll see,” she answered, and she left the shop.
Presently Arthur entered, in his shirt-sleeves: rather
attractive-looking.
“I don’t know what you’ll think of me, and what I’ve come for,” said
Alvina, with hurried amiability. Arthur lifted his blue eyes to her,
and Mrs. Witham appeared in the background, in the inner doorway.
“Why, what is it?” said Arthur stolidly.
“Make it as dear as you can, for father,” said Alvina, laughing
nervously.
Arthur’s blue eyes rested on her face. Mrs. Witham advanced into the
shop.
“Why? What’s that for?” asked Lottie Witham shrewdly.
Alvina turned to the woman.
“Don’t say anything,” she said. “But we don’t want father to go on with
this scheme. It’s bound to fail. And Miss Pinnegar and I can’t have
anything to do with it anyway. I shall go away.”
“It’s bound to fail,” said Arthur Witham stolidly.
“And father has no money, I’m sure,” said Alvina.
Lottie Witham eyed the thin, nervous face of Alvina. For some reason,
she liked her. And of course, Alvina was considered a lady in
Woodhouse. That was what it had come to, with James’s declining
fortunes: she was merely _considered_ a lady. The consideration was no
longer indisputable.
“Shall you come in a minute?” said Lottie Witham, lifting the flap of
the counter. It was a rare and bold stroke on Mrs. Witham’s part.
Alvina’s immediate instinct was to refuse. But she liked Arthur Witham,
in his shirt sleeves.
“Well—I must be back in a minute,” she said, as she entered the
embrasure of the counter. She felt as if she were really venturing on
new ground. She was led into the new drawing-room, done in new
peacock-and-bronze brocade furniture, with gilt and brass and white
walls. This was the Withams’ new house, and Lottie was proud of it. The
two women had a short confidential chat. Arthur lingered in the doorway
a while, then went away.
Alvina did not really like Lottie Witham. Yet the other woman was sharp
and shrewd in the uptake, and for some reason she fancied Alvina. So
she was invited to tea at Manchester House.
After this, so many difficulties rose up in James Houghton’s way that
he was worried almost out of his life. His two women left him alone.
Outside difficulties multiplied on him till he abandoned his scheme—he
was simply driven out of it by untoward circumstances.
Lottie Witham came to tea, and was shown over Manchester House. She had
no opinion at all of Manchester House—wouldn’t hang a cat in such a
gloomy hole. _Still_, she was rather impressed by the sense of
superiority.
“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed as she stood in Alvina’s bedroom, and
looked at the enormous furniture, the lofty tableland of the bed.
“Oh my goodness! I wouldn’t sleep in _that_ for a trifle, by myself!
Aren’t you frightened out of your life? Even if I had Arthur at one
side of me, I should be that frightened on the other side I shouldn’t
know what to do. Do you sleep here by yourself?”
“Yes,” said Alvina laughing. “I haven’t got an Arthur, even for one
side.”
“Oh, my word, you’d want a husband on both sides, in that bed,” said
Lottie Witham.
Alvina was asked back to tea—on Wednesday afternoon, closing day.
Arthur was there to tea—very ill at ease and feeling as if his hands
were swollen. Alvina got on better with his wife, who watched closely
to learn from her guest the secret of repose. The indefinable repose
and inevitability of a lady—even of a lady who is nervous and
agitated—this was the problem which occupied Lottie’s shrewd and
active, but lower-class mind. She even did not resent Alvina’s laughing
attempts to draw out the clumsy Arthur: because Alvina was a lady, and
her tactics must be studied.
Alvina really liked Arthur, and thought a good deal about him—heaven
knows why. He and Lottie were quite happy together, and he was absorbed
in his petty ambitions. In his limited way, he was invincibly
ambitious. He would end by making a sufficient fortune, and by being a
town councillor and a J.P. But beyond Woodhouse he did not exist. Why
then should Alvina be attracted by him? Perhaps because of his
“closeness,” and his secret determinedness.
When she met him in the street she would stop him—though he was always
busy—and make him exchange a few words with her. And when she had tea
at his house, she would try to rouse his attention. But though he
looked at her, steadily, with his blue eyes, from under his long
lashes, still, she knew, he looked at her objectively. He never
conceived any connection with her whatsoever.
It was Lottie who had a scheming mind. In the family of three brothers
there was one—not black sheep, but white. There was one who was
climbing out, to be a gentleman. This was Albert, the second brother.
He had been a school-teacher in Woodhouse: had gone out to South Africa
and occupied a post in a sort of Grammar School in one of the cities of
Cape Colony. He had accumulated some money, to add to his patrimony.
Now he was in England, at Oxford, where he would take his belated
degree. When he had got his degree, he would return to South Africa to
become head of his school, at seven hundred a year.
Albert was thirty-two years old, and unmarried. Lottie was determined
he should take back to the Cape a suitable wife: presumably Alvina. He
spent his vacations in Woodhouse—and he was only in his first year at
Oxford. Well now, what could be more suitable—a young man at Oxford, a
young lady in Woodhouse. Lottie told Alvina all about him, and Alvina
was quite excited to meet him. She imagined him a taller, more
fascinating, educated Arthur.
For the fear of being an old maid, the fear of her own virginity was
really gaining on Alvina. There was a terrible sombre futility,
nothingness, in Manchester House. She was twenty-six years old. Her
life was utterly barren now Miss Frost had gone. She was shabby and
penniless, a mere household drudge: for James begrudged even a girl to
help in the kitchen. She was looking faded and worn. Panic, the
terrible and deadly panic which overcomes so many unmarried women at
about the age of thirty, was beginning to overcome her. She would not
care about marriage, if even she had a lover. But some sort of _terror_
hunted her to the search of a lover. She would become loose, she would
become a prostitute, she said to herself, rather than die off like
Cassie Allsop and the rest, wither slowly and ignominiously and
hideously on the tree. She would rather kill herself.
But it needs a certain natural gift to become a loose woman or a
prostitute. If you haven’t got the qualities which attract loose men,
what are you to do? Supposing it isn’t in your nature to attract loose
and promiscuous men! Why, then you can’t be a prostitute, if you try
your head off: nor even a loose woman. Since _willing_ won’t do it. It
requires a second party to come to an agreement.
Therefore all Alvina’s desperate and profligate schemes and ideas fell
to nought before the inexorable in her nature. And the inexorable in
her nature was highly exclusive and selective, an inevitable negation
of looseness or prostitution. Hence men were afraid of her—of her
power, once they had committed themselves. She would involve and lead a
man on, she would destroy him rather than not get of him what she
wanted. And what she wanted was something serious and risky. Not mere
marriage—oh dear no! But a profound and dangerous inter-relationship.
As well ask the paddlers in the small surf of passion to plunge
themselves into the heaving gulf of mid-ocean. Bah, with their trousers
turned up to their knees it was enough for them to wet their toes in
the dangerous sea. They were having nothing to do with such desperate
nereids as Alvina.
She had cast her mind on Arthur. Truly ridiculous. But there was
something compact and energetic and wilful about him that she magnified
ten-fold and so obtained, imaginatively, an attractive lover. She
brooded her days shabbily away in Manchester House, busy with housework
drudgery. Since the collapse of Throttle-Ha’penny, James Houghton had
become so stingy that it was like an inflammation in him. A silver
sixpence had a pale and celestial radiance which he could not forego, a
nebulous whiteness which made him feel he had heaven in his hold. How
then could he let it go. Even a brown penny seemed alive and pulsing
with mysterious blood, potent, magical. He loved the flock of his busy
pennies, in the shop, as if they had been divine bees bringing him
sustenance from the infinite. But the pennies he saw dribbling away in
household expenses troubled him acutely, as if they were live things
leaving his fold. It was a constant struggle to get from him enough
money for necessities.
And so the household diet became meagre in the extreme, the coal was
eked out inch by inch, and when Alvina must have her boots mended she
must draw on her own little stock of money. For James Houghton had the
impudence to make her an allowance of two shillings a week. She was
very angry. Yet her anger was of that dangerous, half-ironical sort
which wears away its subject and has no outward effect. A feeling of
half-bitter mockery kept her going. In the ponderous, rather sordid
nullity of Manchester House she became shadowy and absorbed, absorbed
in nothing in particular, yet absorbed. She was always more or less
busy: and certainly there was always something to be done, whether she
did it or not.
The shop was opened once a week, on Friday evenings. James Houghton
prowled round the warehouses in Knarborough and picked up job lots of
stuff, with which he replenished his shabby window. But his heart was
not in the business. Mere tenacity made him hover on with it.
In midsummer Albert Witham came to Woodhouse, and Alvina was invited to
tea. She was very much excited. All the time imagining Albert a taller,
finer Arthur, she had abstained from actually fixing her mind upon this
latter little man. Picture her disappointment when she found Albert
quite unattractive. He was tall and thin and brittle, with a pale,
rather dry, flattish face, and with curious pale eyes. His impression
was one of uncanny flatness, something like a lemon sole. Curiously
flat and fish-like he was, one might have imagined his backbone to be
spread like the backbone of a sole or a plaice. His teeth were sound,
but rather large and yellowish and flat. A most curious person.
He spoke in a slightly mouthing way, not well bred in spite of Oxford.
There was a distinct Woodhouse twang. He would never be a gentleman if
he lived for ever. Yet he was not ordinary. Really an odd fish: quite
interesting, if one could get over the feeling that one was looking at
him through the glass wall of an aquarium: that most horrifying of all
boundaries between two worlds. In an aquarium fish seem to come smiling
broadly to the doorway, and there to stand talking to one, in a
mouthing fashion, awful to behold. For one hears no sound from all
their mouthing and staring conversation. Now although Albert Witham had
a good strong voice, which rang like water among rocks in her ear,
still she seemed never to hear a word he was saying. He smiled down at
her and fixed her and swayed his head, and said quite original things,
really. For he was a genuine odd fish. And yet she seemed to hear no
sound, no word from him: nothing came to her. Perhaps as a matter of
fact fish do actually pronounce streams of watery words, to which we,
with our aerial-resonant ears, are deaf for ever.
The odd thing was that this odd fish seemed from the very first to
imagine she had accepted him as a follower. And he was quite prepared
to follow. Nay, from the very first moment he was smiling on her with a
sort of complacent delight—compassionate, one might almost say—as if
there was a full understanding between them. If only she could have got
into the right state of mind, she would really rather have liked him.
He smiled at her, and said really interesting things between his big
teeth. There was something rather nice about him. But, we must repeat,
it was as if the glass wall of an aquarium divided them.
Alvina looked at Arthur. Arthur was short and dark-haired and nicely
coloured. But, now his brother was there, he too seemed to have a dumb,
aqueous silence, fish-like and aloof, about him. He seemed to swim like
a fish in his own little element. Strange it all was, like Alice in
Wonderland. Alvina understood now Lottie’s strained sort of thinness, a
haggard, sinewy, sea-weedy look. The poor thing was all the time
swimming for her life.
For Alvina it was a most curious tea-party. She listened and smiled and
made vague answers to Albert, who leaned his broad, thin, brittle
shoulders towards her. Lottie seemed rather shadowily to preside. But
it was Arthur who came out into communication. And now, uttering his
rather broad-mouthed speeches, she seemed to hear in him a quieter,
subtler edition of his father. His father had been a little,
terrifically loud-voiced, hard-skinned man, amazingly uneducated and
amazingly bullying, who had tyrannized for many years over the Sunday
School children during morning service. He had been an odd-looking
creature with round grey whiskers: to Alvina, always a creature, never
a man: an atrocious leprechaun from under the Chapel floor. And how he
used to dig the children in the back with his horrible iron thumb, if
the poor things happened to whisper or nod in chapel!
These were his children—most curious chips of the old block. Who ever
would have believed she would have been taking tea with them.
“Why don’t you have a bicycle, and go out on it?” Arthur was saying.
“But I can’t ride,” said Alvina.
“You’d learn in a couple of lessons. There’s nothing in riding a
bicycle.”
“I don’t believe I ever should,” laughed Alvina.
“You don’t mean to say you’re nervous?” said Arthur rudely and
sneeringly.
“I _am_,” she persisted.
“You needn’t be nervous with me,” smiled Albert broadly, with his odd,
genuine gallantry. “I’ll hold you on.”
“But I haven’t got a bicycle,” said Alvina, feeling she was slowly
colouring to a deep, uneasy blush.
“You can have mine to learn on,” said Lottie. “Albert will look after
it.”
“There’s your chance,” said Arthur rudely. “Take it while you’ve got
it.”
Now Alvina did not want to learn to ride a bicycle. The two Miss
Carlins, two more old maids, had made themselves ridiculous for ever by
becoming twin cycle fiends. And the horrible energetic strain of
peddling a bicycle over miles and miles of high-way did not attract
Alvina at all. She was completely indifferent to sight-seeing and
scouring about. She liked taking a walk, in her lingering indifferent
fashion. But rushing about in any way was hateful to her. And then, to
be taught to ride a bicycle by Albert Witham! Her very soul stood
still.
“Yes,” said Albert, beaming down at her from his strange pale eyes.
“Come on. When will you have your first lesson?”
“Oh,” cried Alvina in confusion. “I can’t promise. I haven’t time,
really.”
“Time!” exclaimed Arthur rudely. “But what do you do wi’ yourself all
day?”
“I have to keep house,” she said, looking at him archly.
“House! You can put a chain round its neck, and tie it up,” he
retorted.
Albert laughed, showing all his teeth.
“I’m sure you find plenty to do, with everything on your hands,” said
Lottie to Alvina.
“I do!” said Alvina. “By evening I’m quite tired—though you mayn’t
believe it, since you say I do nothing,” she added, laughing confusedly
to Arthur.
But he, hard-headed little fortune-maker, replied:
“You have a girl to help you, don’t you!”
Albert, however, was beaming at her sympathetically.
“You have too much to do indoors,” he said. “It would do you good to
get a bit of exercise out of doors. Come down to the Coach Road
tomorrow afternoon, and let me give you a lesson. Go on—”
Now the coach-road was a level drive between beautiful park-like
grass-stretches, down in the valley. It was a delightful place for
learning to ride a bicycle, but open in full view of all the world.
Alvina would have died of shame. She began to laugh nervously and
hurriedly at the very thought.
“No, I can’t. I really can’t. Thanks, awfully,” she said.
“Can’t you really!” said Albert. “Oh well, we’ll say another day, shall
we?”
“When I feel I can,” she said.
“Yes, when you feel like it,” replied Albert.
“That’s more it,” said Arthur. “It’s not the time. It’s the
nervousness.” Again Albert beamed at her sympathetically, and said:
“Oh, I’ll hold you. You needn’t be afraid.”
“But I’m not afraid,” she said.
“You won’t _say_ you are,” interposed Arthur. “Women’s faults mustn’t
be owned up to.”
Alvina was beginning to feel quite dazed. Their mechanical, overbearing
way was something she was unaccustomed to. It was like the jaws of a
pair of insentient iron pincers. She rose, saying she must go.
Albert rose also, and reached for his straw hat, with its coloured
band.
“I’ll stroll up with you, if you don’t mind,” he said. And he took his
place at her side along the Knarborough Road, where everybody turned to
look. For, of course, he had a sort of fame in Woodhouse. She went with
him laughing and chatting. But she did not feel at all comfortable. He
seemed so pleased. Only he was not pleased with _her_. He was pleased
with himself on her account: inordinately pleased with himself. In his
world, as in a fish’s, there was but his own swimming self: and if he
chanced to have something swimming alongside and doing him credit, why,
so much the more complacently he smiled.
He walked stiff and erect, with his head pressed rather back, so that
he always seemed to be advancing from the head and shoulders, in a flat
kind of advance, horizontal. He did not seem to be walking with his
whole body. His manner was oddly gallant, with a gallantry that
completely missed the individual in the woman, circled round her and
flew home gratified to his own hive. The way he raised his hat, the way
he inclined and smiled flatly, even rather excitedly, as he talked, was
all a little discomforting and comical.
He left her at the shop door, saying:
“I shall see you again, I hope.”
“Oh, yes,” she replied, rattling the door anxiously, for it was locked.
She heard her father’s step at last tripping down the shop.
“Good-evening, Mr. Houghton,” said Albert suavely and with a certain
confidence, as James peered out.
“Oh, good-evening!” said James, letting Alvina pass, and shutting the
door in Albert’s face.
“Who was that?” he asked her sharply.
“Albert Witham,” she replied.
“What has _he_ got to do with you?” said James shrewishly.
“Nothing, I hope.”
She fled into the obscurity of Manchester House, out of the grey summer
evening. The Withams threw her off her pivot, and made her feel she was
not herself. She felt she didn’t know, she couldn’t feel, she was just
scattered and decentralized. And she was rather afraid of the Witham
brothers. She might be their victim. She intended to avoid them.
The following days she saw Albert, in his Norfolk jacket and flannel
trousers and his straw hat, strolling past several times and looking in
through the shop door and up at the upper windows. But she hid herself
thoroughly. When she went out, it was by the back way. So she avoided
him.
But on Sunday evening, there he sat, rather stiff and brittle in the
old Withams’ pew, his head pressed a little back, so that his face and
neck seemed slightly flattened. He wore very low, turn-down starched
collars that showed all his neck. And he kept looking up at her during
the service—she sat in the choir-loft—gazing up at her with apparently
love-lorn eyes and a faint, intimate smile—the sort of _je-sais-tout_
look of a private swain. Arthur also occasionally cast a judicious eye
on her, as if she were a chimney that needed repairing, and he must
estimate the cost, and whether it was worth it.
Sure enough, as she came out through the narrow choir gate into
Knarborough Road, there was Albert stepping forward like a policeman,
and saluting her and smiling down on her.
“I don’t know if I’m presuming—” he said, in a mock deferential way
that showed he didn’t imagine he _could_ presume.
“Oh, not at all,” said Alvina airily. He smiled with assurance.
“You haven’t got any engagement, then, for this evening?” he said.
“No,” she replied simply.
“We might take a walk. What do you think?” he said, glancing down the
road in either direction.
What, after all, was she to think? All the girls were pairing off with
the boys for the after-chapel stroll and spoon.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “But I can’t go far. I’ve got to be in at
nine.”
“Which way shall we go?” he said.
He steered off, turned downhill through the common gardens, and
proposed to take her the not-very-original walk up Flint’s Lane, and
along the railway line—the colliery railway, that is—then back up the
Marlpool Road: a sort of circle. She agreed.
They did not find a great deal to talk about. She questioned him about
his plans, and about the Cape. But save for bare outlines, which he
gave readily enough, he was rather close.
“What do you do on Sunday nights as a rule?” he asked her.
“Oh, I have a walk with Lucy Grainger—or I go down to Hallam’s—or go
home,” she answered.
“You don’t go walks with the fellows, then?”
“Father would never have it,” she replied.
“What will he say now?” he asked, with self-satisfaction.
“Goodness knows!” she laughed.
“Goodness usually does,” he answered archly.
When they came to the rather stumbly railway, he said:
“Won’t you take my arm?”—offering her the said member.
“Oh, I’m all right,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Go on,” he said, pressing a little nearer to her, and offering his
arm. “There’s nothing against it, is there?”
“Oh, it’s not that,” she said.
And feeling in a false position, she took his arm, rather unwillingly.
He drew a little nearer to her, and walked with a slight prance.
“We get on better, don’t we?” he said, giving her hand the tiniest
squeeze with his arm against his side.
“Much!” she replied, with a laugh.
Then he lowered his voice oddly.
“It’s many a day since I was on this railroad,” he said.
“Is this one of your old walks?” she asked, malicious.
“Yes, I’ve been it once or twice—with girls that are all married now.”
“Didn’t you want to marry?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I may have done. But it never came off, somehow.
I’ve sometimes thought it never would come off.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, exactly. It didn’t seem to, you know. Perhaps neither of
us was properly inclined.”
“I should think so,” she said.
“And yet,” he admitted slyly, “I should _like_ to marry—” To this she
did not answer.
“Shouldn’t you?” he continued.
“When I meet the right man,” she laughed.
“That’s it,” he said. “There, that’s just it! And you _haven’t_ met
him?” His voice seemed smiling with a sort of triumph, as if he had
caught her out.
“Well—once I thought I had—when I was engaged to Alexander.”
“But you found you were mistaken?” he insisted.
“No. Mother was so ill at the time—”
“There’s always something to consider,” he said.
She kept on wondering what she should do if he wanted to kiss her. The
mere incongruity of such a desire on his part formed a problem.
Luckily, for this evening he formulated no desire, but left her in the
shop-door soon after nine, with the request:
“I shall see you in the week, shan’t I?”
“I’m not sure. I can’t promise now,” she said hurriedly. “Good-night.”
What she felt chiefly about him was a decentralized perplexity, very
much akin to no feeling at all.
“Who do you think took me for a walk, Miss Pinnegar?” she said,
laughing, to her confidante.
“I can’t imagine,” replied Miss Pinnegar, eyeing her.
“You never would imagine,” said Alvina. “Albert Witham.”
“Albert Witham!” exclaimed Miss Pinnegar, standing quite motionless.
“It may well take your breath away,” said Alvina.
“No, it’s not that!” hurriedly expostulated Miss Pinnegar. “Well—!
Well, I declare!—” and then, on a new note: “Well, he’s very eligible,
I think.”
“Most eligible!” replied Alvina.
“Yes, he is,” insisted Miss Pinnegar. “I think it’s very good.”
“What’s very good?” asked Alvina.
Miss Pinnegar hesitated. She looked at Alvina. She reconsidered.
“Of course he’s not the man I should have imagined for you, but—”
“You think he’ll do?” said Alvina.
“Why not?” said Miss Pinnegar. “Why shouldn’t he do—if you like him.”
“Ah—!” cried Alvina, sinking on the sofa with a laugh. “That’s it.”
“Of course you couldn’t have anything to do with him if you don’t care
for him,” pronounced Miss Pinnegar.
Albert continued to hang around. He did not make any direct attack for
a few days. Suddenly one evening he appeared at the back door with a
bunch of white stocks in his hand. His face lit up with a sudden, odd
smile when she opened the door—a broad, pale-gleaming, remarkable
smile.
“Lottie wanted to know if you’d come to tea tomorrow,” he said straight
out, looking at her with the pale light in his eyes, that smiled palely
right into her eyes, but did not see her at all. He was waiting on the
doorstep to come in.
“Will you come in?” said Alvina. “Father is in.”
“Yes, I don’t mind,” he said, pleased. He mounted the steps, still
holding his bunch of white stocks.
James Houghton screwed round in his chair and peered over his
spectacles to see who was coming.
“Father,” said Alvina, “you know Mr. Witham, don’t you?”
James Houghton half rose. He still peered over his glasses at the
intruder.
“Well—I do by sight. How do you do?”
He held out his frail hand.
Albert held back, with the flowers in his own hand, and giving his
broad, pleased, pale-gleaming smile from father to daughter, he said:
“What am I to do with these? Will you accept them, Miss Houghton?” He
stared at her with shining, pallid smiling eyes.
“Are they for me?” she said, with false brightness. “Thank you.”
James Houghton looked over the top of his spectacles, searchingly, at
the flowers, as if they had been a bunch of white and sharp-toothed
ferrets. Then he looked as suspiciously at the hand which Albert at
last extended to him. He shook it slightly, and said:
“Take a seat.”
“I’m afraid I’m disturbing you in your reading,” said Albert, still
having the drawn, excited smile on his face.
“Well—” said James Houghton. “The light is fading.”
Alvina came in with the flowers in a jar. She set them on the table.
“Haven’t they a lovely scent?” she said.
“Do you think so?” he replied, again with the excited smile. There was
a pause. Albert, rather embarrassed, reached forward, saying:
“May I see what you’re reading!” And he turned over the book. “‘Tommy
and Grizel!’ Oh yes! What do you think of it?”
“Well,” said James, “I am only in the beginning.”
“I think it’s interesting, myself,” said Albert, “as a study of a man
who can’t get away from himself. You meet a lot of people like that.
What I wonder is why they find it such a drawback.”
“Find what a drawback?” asked James.
“Not being able to get away from themselves. That self-consciousness.
It hampers them, and interferes with their power of action. Now I
wonder why self-consciousness should hinder a man in his action? Why
does it cause misgiving? I think I’m self-conscious, but I don’t think
I have so many misgivings. I don’t see that they’re necessary.”
“Certainly I think Tommy is a weak character. I believe he’s a
despicable character,” said James.
“No, I don’t know so much about that,” said Albert. “I shouldn’t say
weak, exactly. He’s only weak in one direction. No, what I wonder is
why he feels guilty. If you feel self-conscious, there’s no need to
feel guilty about it, is there?”
He stared with his strange, smiling stare at James.
“I shouldn’t say so,” replied James. “But if a man never knows his own
mind, he certainly can’t be much of a man.”
“I don’t see it,” replied Albert. “What’s the matter is that he feels
guilty for not knowing his own mind. That’s the unnecessary part. The
guilty feeling—”
Albert seemed insistent on this point, which had no particular interest
for James.
“Where we’ve got to make a change,” said Albert, “is in the feeling
that other people have a right to tell us what we ought to feel and do.
Nobody knows what another man ought to feel. Every man has his own
special feelings, and his own right to them. That’s where it is with
education. You ought not to want all your children to feel alike. Their
natures are all different, and so they should all feel different, about
practically everything.”
“There would be no end to the confusion,” said James.
“There needn’t be any confusion to speak of. You agree to a number of
rules and conventions and laws, for social purposes. But in private you
feel just as you do feel, without occasion for trying to feel something
else.”
“I don’t know,” said James. “There are certain feelings common to
humanity, such as love, and honour, and truth.”
“Would you call them feelings?” said Albert. “I should say what is
common is the idea. The idea is common to humanity, once you’ve put it
into words. But the feeling varies with every man. The same idea
represents a different kind of feeling in every different individual.
It seems to me that’s what we’ve got to recognize if we’re going to do
anything with education. We don’t want to produce mass feelings. Don’t
you agree?”
Poor James was too bewildered to know whether to agree or not to agree.
“Shall we have a light, Alvina?” he said to his daughter.
Alvina lit the incandescent gas-jet that hung in the middle of the
room. The hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as she
reached up to it. But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly. It
seemed as if his words came off him without affecting him at all. He
did not think about what he was feeling, and he did not feel what he
was thinking about. And therefore she hardly heard what he said. Yet
she believed he was clever.
It was evident Albert was quite blissfully happy, in his own way,
sitting there at the end of the sofa not far from the fire, and talking
animatedly. The uncomfortable thing was that though he talked in the
direction of his interlocutor, he did not speak _to_ him: merely said
his words towards him. James, however, was such an airy feather himself
he did not remark this, but only felt a little self-important at
sustaining such a subtle conversation with a man from Oxford. Alvina,
who never expected to be interested in clever conversations, after a
long experience of her father, found her expectation justified again.
She was not interested.
The man was quite nicely dressed, in the regulation tweed jacket and
flannel trousers and brown shoes. He was even rather smart, judging
from his yellow socks and yellow-and-brown tie. Miss Pinnegar eyed him
with approval when she came in.
“Good-evening!” she said, just a trifle condescendingly, as she shook
hands. “How do you find Woodhouse, after being away so long?” Her way
of speaking was so quiet, as if she hardly spoke aloud.
“Well,” he answered. “I find it the same in many ways.”
“You wouldn’t like to settle here again?”
“I don’t think I should. It feels a little cramped, you know, after a
new country. But it has its attractions.” Here he smiled meaningful.
“Yes,” said Miss Pinnegar. “I suppose the old connections count for
something.”
“They do. Oh decidedly they do. There’s no associations like the old
ones.” He smiled flatly as he looked towards Alvina.
“You find it so, do you!” returned Miss Pinnegar. “You don’t find that
the new connections make up for the old?”
“Not altogether, they don’t. There’s something missing—” Again he
looked towards Alvina. But she did not answer his look.
“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar. “I’m glad we still count for something, in
spite of the greater attractions. How long have you in England?”
“Another year. Just a year. This time next year I expect I shall be
sailing back to the Cape.” He smiled as if in anticipation. Yet it was
hard to believe that it mattered to him—or that anything mattered.
“And is Oxford agreeable to you?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. I keep myself busy.”
“What are your subjects?” asked James.
“English and History. But I do mental science for my own interest.”
Alvina had taken up a piece of sewing. She sat under the light,
brooding a little. What _had_ all this to do with her. The man talked
on, and beamed in her direction. And she felt a little important. But
moved or touched?—not the least in the world.
She wondered if any one would ask him to supper—bread and cheese and
currant-loaf, and water, was all that offered. No one asked him, and at
last he rose.
“Show Mr. Witham out through the shop, Alvina,” said Miss Pinnegar.
Alvina piloted the man through the long, dark, encumbered way of the
shop. At the door he said:
“You’ve never said whether you’re coming to tea on Thursday.”
“I don’t think I can,” said Alvina.
He seemed rather taken aback.
“Why?” he said. “What stops you?”
“I’ve so much to do.”
He smiled slowly and satirically.
“Won’t it keep?” he said.
“No, really. I can’t come on Thursday—thank you so much. Good-night!”
She gave him her hand and turned quickly into the shop, closing the
door. He remained standing in the porch, staring at the closed door.
Then, lifting his lip, he turned away.
“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar decidedly, as Alvina re-entered. “You can
say what you like—but I think he’s _very pleasant_, _very_ pleasant.”
“Extremely intelligent,” said James Houghton, shifting in his chair.
“I was awfully bored,” said Alvina.
They both looked at her, irritated.
After this she really did what she could to avoid him. When she saw him
sauntering down the street in all his leisure, a sort of anger
possessed her. On Sunday, she slipped down from the choir into the
Chapel, and out through the main entrance, whilst he awaited her at the
small exit. And by good luck, when he called one evening in the week,
she was out. She returned down the yard. And there, through the
uncurtained window, she saw him sitting awaiting her. Without a
thought, she turned on her heel and fled away. She did not come in till
he had gone.
“How late you are!” said Miss Pinnegar. “Mr. Witham was here till ten
minutes ago.”
“Yes,” laughed Alvina. “I came down the yard and saw him. So I went
back till he’d gone.”
Miss Pinnegar looked at her in displeasure:
“I suppose you know your own mind,” she said.
“How do you explain such behaviour?” said her father pettishly.
“I didn’t want to meet him,” she said.
The next evening was Saturday. Alvina had inherited Miss Frost’s task
of attending to the Chapel flowers once a quarter. She had been round
the gardens of her friends, and gathered the scarlet and hot yellow and
purple flowers of August, asters, red stocks, tall Japanese sunflowers,
coreopsis, geraniums. With these in her basket she slipped out towards
evening, to the Chapel. She knew Mr. Calladine, the caretaker would not
lock up till she had been.
The moment she got inside the Chapel—it was a big, airy, pleasant
building—she heard hammering from the organ-loft, and saw the flicker
of a candle. Some workman busy before Sunday. She shut the baize door
behind her, and hurried across to the vestry, for vases, then out to
the tap, for water. All was warm and still.
It was full early evening. The yellow light streamed through the side
windows, the big stained-glass window at the end was deep and full of
glowing colour, in which the yellows and reds were richest. Above in
the organ-loft the hammering continued. She arranged her flowers in
many vases, till the communion table was like the window, a tangle of
strong yellow, and crimson, and purple, and bronze-green. She tried to
keep the effect light and kaleidoscopic, an interplay of tossed pieces
of strong, hot colour, vibrating and lightly intermingled. It was very
gorgeous, for a communion table. But the day of white lilies was over.
Suddenly there was a terrific crash and bang and tumble, up in the
organ-loft, followed by a cursing.
“Are you hurt?” called Alvina, looking up into space. The candle had
disappeared.
But there was no reply. Feeling curious, she went out of the Chapel to
the stairs in the side porch, and ran up to the organ. She went round
the side—and there she saw a man in his shirt-sleeves sitting crouched
in the obscurity on the floor between the organ and the wall of the
back, while a collapsed pair of steps lay between her and him. It was
too dark to see who it was.
“That rotten pair of steps came down with me,” said the infuriated
voice of Arthur Witham, “and about broke my leg.”
Alvina advanced towards him, picking her way over the steps. He was
sitting nursing his leg.
“Is it bad?” she asked, stooping towards him.
In the shadow he lifted up his face. It was pale, and his eyes were
savage with anger. Her face was near his.
“It is bad,” he said furious because of the shock. The shock had thrown
him off his balance.
“Let me see,” she said.
He removed his hands from clasping his shin, some distance above the
ankle. She put her fingers over the bone, over his stocking, to feel if
there was any fracture. Immediately her fingers were wet with blood.
Then he did a curious thing. With both his hands he pressed her hand
down over his wounded leg, pressed it with all his might, as if her
hand were a plaster. For some moments he sat pressing her hand over his
broken shin, completely oblivious, as some people are when they have
had a shock and a hurt, intense on one point of consciousness only, and
for the rest unconscious.
Then he began to come to himself. The pain modified itself. He could
not bear the sudden acute hurt to his shin. That was one of his
sensitive, unbearable parts.
“The bone isn’t broken,” she said professionally. “But you’d better get
the stocking out of it.”
Without a thought, he pulled his trouser-leg higher and rolled down his
stocking, extremely gingerly, and sick with pain.
“Can you show a light?” he said.
She found the candle. And she knew where matches always rested, on a
little ledge of the organ. So she brought him a light, whilst he
examined his broken shin. The blood was flowing, but not so much. It
was a nasty cut bruise, swelling and looking very painful. He sat
looking at it absorbedly, bent over it in the candle-light.
“It’s not so very bad, when the pain goes off,” she said, noticing the
black hairs of his shin. “We’d better tie it up. Have you got a
handkerchief?”
“It’s in my jacket,” he said.
She looked round for his jacket. He annoyed her a little, by being
completely oblivious of her. She got his handkerchief and wiped her
fingers on it. Then of her own kerchief she made a pad for the wound.
“Shall I tie it up, then?” she said.
But he did not answer. He sat still nursing his leg, looking at his
hurt, while the blood slowly trickled down the wet hairs towards his
ankle. There was nothing to do but wait for him.
“Shall I tie it up, then?” she repeated at length, a little impatient.
So he put his leg a little forward.
She looked at the wound, and wiped it a little. Then she folded the pad
of her own handkerchief, and laid it over the hurt. And again he did
the same thing, he took her hand as if it were a plaster, and applied
it to his wound, pressing it cautiously but firmly down. She was rather
angry. He took no notice of her at all. And she, waiting, seemed to go
into a dream, a sleep, her arm trembled a little, stretched out and
fixed. She seemed to lose count, under the firm compression he imposed
on her. It was as if the pressure on her hand pressed her into
oblivion.
“Tie it up,” he said briskly.
And she, obedient, began to tie the bandage with numb fingers. He
seemed to have taken the use out of her.
When she had finished, he scrambled to his feet, looked at the organ
which he was repairing, and looked at the collapsed pair of steps.
“A rotten pair of things to have, to put a man’s life in danger,” he
said, towards the steps. Then stubbornly, he rigged them up again, and
stared again at his interrupted job.
“You won’t go on, will you?” she asked.
“It’s got to be done, Sunday tomorrow,” he said. “If you’d hold them
steps a minute! There isn’t more than a minute’s fixing to do. It’s all
done, but fixing.”
“Hadn’t you better leave it,” she said.
“Would you mind holding the steps, so that they don’t let me down
again,” he said. Then he took the candle, and hobbled stubbornly and
angrily up again, with spanner and hammer. For some minutes he worked,
tapping and readjusting, whilst she held the ricketty steps and stared
at him from below, the shapeless bulk of his trousers. Strange the
difference—she could not help thinking it—between the vulnerable hairy,
and somehow childish leg of the real man, and the shapeless form of
these workmen’s trousers. The kernel, the man himself—seemed so
tender—the covering so stiff and insentient.
And was he not going to speak to her—not one human word of recognition?
Men are the most curious and unreal creatures. After all he had made
use of her. Think how he had pressed her hand gently but firmly down,
down over his bruise, how he had taken the virtue out of her, till she
felt all weak and dim. And after that was he going to relapse into his
tough and ugly workman’s hide, and treat her as if _she_ were a pair of
steps, which might let him down or hold him up, as might be.
As she stood clinging to the steps she felt weak and a little
hysterical. She wanted to summon her strength, to have her own back
from him. After all he had taken the virtue from her, he might have the
grace to say thank you, and treat her as if she were a human being.
At last he left off tinkering, and looked round.
“Have you finished?” she said.
“Yes,” he answered crossly.
And taking the candle he began to clamber down. When he got to the
bottom he crouched over his leg and felt the bandage.
“That gives you what for,” he said, as if it were her fault.
“Is the bandage holding?” she said.
“I think so,” he answered churlishly.
“Aren’t you going to make sure?” she said.
“Oh, it’s all right,” he said, turning aside and taking up his tools.
“I’ll make my way home.”
“So will I,” she answered.
She took the candle and went a little in front. He hurried into his
coat and gathered his tools, anxious to get away. She faced him,
holding the candle.
“Look at my hand,” she said, holding it out. It was smeared with blood,
as was the cuff of her dress—a black-and-white striped cotton dress.
“Is it hurt?” he said.
“No, but look at it. Look here!” She showed the bloodstains on her
dress.
“It’ll wash out,” he said, frightened of her.
“Yes, so it will. But for the present it’s there. Don’t you think you
ought to thank me?”
He recoiled a little.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m very much obliged.”
“You ought to be more than that,” she said.
He did not answer, but looked her up and down.
“We’ll be going down,” he said. “We s’ll have folks talking.”
Suddenly she began to laugh. It seemed so comical. What a position! The
candle shook as she laughed. What a man, answering her like a little
automaton! Seriously, quite seriously he said it to her—“We s’ll have
folks talking!” She laughed in a breathless, hurried way, as they
tramped downstairs.
At the bottom of the stairs Calladine, the caretaker, met them. He was
a tall thin man with a black moustache—about fifty years old.
“Have you done for tonight, all of you?” he said, grinning in echo to
Alvina’s still fluttering laughter.
“That’s a nice rotten pair of steps you’ve got up there for a
death-trap,” said Arthur angrily. “Come down on top of me, and I’m
lucky I haven’t got my leg broken. It _is_ near enough.”
“Come down with you, did they?” said Calladine good-humouredly. “I
never knowed ’em come down wi’ me.”
“You ought to, then. My leg’s as near broke as it can be.”
“What, have you hurt yourself?”
“I should think I have. Look here—” And he began to pull up his trouser
leg. But Alvina had given the candle to Calladine, and fled. She had a
last view of Arthur stooping over his precious leg, while Calladine
stooped his length and held down the candle.
When she got home she took off her dress and washed herself hard and
washed the stained sleeve, thoroughly, thoroughly, and threw away the
wash water and rinsed the wash-bowls with fresh water, scrupulously.
Then she dressed herself in her black dress once more, did her hair,
and went downstairs.
But she could not sew—and she could not settle down. It was Saturday
evening, and her father had opened the shop, Miss Pinnegar had gone to
Knarborough. She would be back at nine o’clock. Alvina set about to
make a mock woodcock, or a mock something or other, with cheese and an
egg and bits of toast. Her eyes were dilated and as if amused, mocking,
her face quivered a little with irony that was not all enjoyable.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar entered. “The
supper’s just done. I’ll ask father if he’ll close the shop.”
Of course James would not close the shop, though he was merely wasting
light. He nipped in to eat his supper, and started out again with a
mouthful the moment he heard the ping of the bell. He kept his
customers chatting as long as he could. His love for conversation had
degenerated into a spasmodic passion for chatter.
Alvina looked across at Miss Pinnegar, as the two sat at the meagre
supper-table. Her eyes were dilated and arched with a mocking, almost
satanic look.
“I’ve made up my mind about Albert Witham,” said Alvina. Miss Pinnegar
looked at her.
“Which way?” she asked, demurely, but a little sharp.
“It’s all off,” said Alvina, breaking into a nervous laugh.
“Why? What has happened?”
“Nothing has happened. I can’t stand him.”
“Why?—suddenly—” said Miss Pinnegar.
“It’s not sudden,” laughed Alvina. “Not at all. I can’t stand him. I
never could. And I won’t try. There! Isn’t that plain?” And she went
off into her hurried laugh, partly at herself, partly at Arthur, partly
at Albert, partly at Miss Pinnegar.
“Oh, well, if you’re so sure—” said Miss Pinnegar rather bitingly.
“I _am_ quite sure—” said Alvina. “I’m quite certain.”
“Cock-sure people are often most mistaken,” said Miss Pinnegar.
“I’d rather have my own mistakes than somebody else’s rights,” said
Alvina.
“Then don’t expect anybody to pay for your mistakes,” said Miss
Pinnegar.
“It would be all the same if I did,” said Alvina.
When she lay in bed, she stared at the light of the street-lamp on the
wall. She was thinking busily: but heaven knows what she was thinking.
She had sharpened the edge of her temper. She was waiting till
tomorrow. She was waiting till she saw Albert Witham. She wanted to
finish off with him. She was keen to cut clean through any
correspondence with him. She stared for many hours at the light of the
street-lamp, and there was a narrowed look in her eyes.
The next day she did not go to Morning Service, but stayed at home to
cook the dinner. In the evening she sat in her place in the choir. In
the Withams’ pew sat Lottie and Albert—no Arthur. Albert kept glancing
up. Alvina could not bear the sight of him—she simply could not bear
the sight of him. Yet in her low, sweet voice she sang the alto to the
hymns, right to the vesper:
“Lord keep us safe this night
Secure from all our fears,
May angels guard us while we sleep
Till morning light appears—”
As she sang her alto, and as the soft and emotional harmony of the
vesper swelled luxuriously through the chapel, she was peeping over her
folded hands at Lottie’s hat. She could not bear Lottie’s hats. There
was something aggressive and vulgar about them. And she simply detested
the look of the back of Albert’s head, as he too stooped to the vesper
prayer. It looked mean and rather common. She remembered Arthur had the
same look, bending to prayer. There!—why had she not seen it before!
That petty, vulgar little look! How could she have thought twice of
Arthur. She had made a fool of herself, as usual. Him and his little
leg. She grimaced round the chapel, waiting for people to bob up their
heads and take their departure.
At the gate Albert was waiting for her. He came forward lifting his hat
with a smiling and familiar “Good evening!”
“Good evening,” she murmured.
“It’s ages since I’ve seen you,” he said. “And I’ve looked out for you
everywhere.”
It was raining a little. She put up her umbrella.
“You’ll take a little stroll. The rain isn’t much,” he said.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I must go home.”
“Why, what’s your hurry! Walk as far as Beeby Bridge. Go on.”
“No, thank you.”
“How’s that? What makes you refuse?”
“I don’t want to.”
He paused and looked down at her. The cold and supercilious look of
anger, a little spiteful, came into his face.
“Do you mean because of the rain?” he said.
“No. I hope you don’t mind. But I don’t want to take any more walks. I
don’t mean anything by them.”
“Oh, as for that,” he said, taking the words out of her mouth. “Why
should you mean anything by them!” He smiled down on her.
She looked him straight in the face.
“But I’d rather not take any more walks, thank you—none at all,” she
said, looking him full in the eyes.
“You wouldn’t!” he replied, stiffening.
“Yes. I’m quite sure,” she said.
“As sure as all that, are you!” he said, with a sneering grimace. He
stood eyeing her insolently up and down.
“Good-night,” she said. His sneering made her furious. Putting her
umbrella between him and her, she walked off.
“Good-night then,” he replied, unseen by her. But his voice was
sneering and impotent.
She went home quivering. But her soul was burning with satisfaction.
She had shaken them off.
Later she wondered if she had been unkind to him. But it was done—and
done for ever. _Vogue la galère._