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 leprecaun 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 i
n 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’sor 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. “Goodnight.”
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 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 repl
ied, 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.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 233