“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?”
“Lemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud Callum, the danseuse.”
Curious the intimacy Mr. May established with Alvina at once. But it was all purely verbal, descriptive. He made no physical advances. On the contrary, he was like a dove-grey, disconsolate bird pecking the crumbs of Alvina’s sympathy, and cocking his eye all the time to watch that she did not advance one step towards him. If he had seen the least sign of coming-on-ness in her, he would have fluttered off in a great dither. Nothing horrified him more than a woman who was coming-on towards him. It horrified him, it exasperated him, it made him hate the whole tribe of women: horrific two-legged cats without whiskers. If he had been a bird, his innate horror of a cat would have been such. He liked the angel, and particularly the angel-mother in woman. Oh! — that he worshipped. But coming-on-ness!
So he never wanted to be seen out-of-doors with Alvina; if he met her in the street he bowed and passed on: bowed very deep and reverential, indeed, but passed on, with his little back a little more strutty and assertive than ever. Decidedly he turned his back on her in public.
But Miss Pinnegar, a regular old, grey, dangerous she-puss, eyed him from the corner of her pale eye, as he turned tail.
“So unmanly!” she murmured. “In his dress, in his way, in everything — so unmanly.”
“If I was you, Alvina,” she said, “I shouldn’t see so much of Mr. May, in the drawing-room. People will talk.”
“I should almost feel flattered,” laughed Alvina.
“What do you mean?” snapped Miss Pinnegar.
None the less, Mr. May was dependable in matters of business. He was up at half-past five in the morning, and by seven was well on his way. He sailed like a stiff little ship before a steady breeze, hither and thither, out of Woodhouse and back again, and across from side to side. Sharp and snappy, he was, on the spot. He trussed himself up, when he was angry or displeased, and sharp, snip-snap came his words, rather like scissors.
“But how is it — ” he attacked Arthur Witham — ”that the gas isn’t connected with the main yet? It was to be ready yesterday.”
“We’ve had to wait for the fixings for them brackets,” said Arthur.
“Had to wait for _fixings!_ But didn’t you know a fortnight ago that you’d want the fixings?”
“I thought we should have some as would do.”
“Oh! you thought so! Really! Kind of you to think so. And have you just thought about those that are coming, or have you made sure?”
Arthur looked at him sullenly. He hated him. But Mr. May’s sharp touch was not to be foiled.
“I hope you’ll go further than thinking,” said Mr. May. “Thinking seems such a slow process. And when do you expect the fittings — ?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What! Another day! Another day _still!_ But you’re strangely indifferent to time, in your line of business. Oh! _Tomorrow!_ Imagine it! Two days late already, and then _tomorrow!_ Well I hope by tomorrow you mean Wednesday, and not tomorrow’s tomorrow, or some other absurd and fanciful date that you’ve just thought about. But now, do have the thing finished by tomorrow — ” here he laid his hand cajoling on Arthur’s arm. “You promise me it will all be ready by tomorrow, don’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll do it if anybody could do it.”
“Don’t say ‘if anybody could do it.’ Say it shall be done.”
“It shall if I can possibly manage it — ”
“Oh — very well then. Mind you manage it — and thank you very much. I shall be most obliged, if it is done.”
Arthur was annoyed, but he was kept to the scratch. And so, early in October the place was ready, and Woodhouse was plastered with placards announcing “Houghton’s Pleasure Palace.” Poor Mr. May could not but see an irony in the Palace part of the phrase. “We can guarantee the pleasure,” he said. “But personally, I feel I can’t take the responsibility for the palace.”
But James, to use the vulgar expression, was in his eye-holes. “Oh, father’s in his eye-holes,” said Alvina to Mr. May.
“Oh!” said Mr. May, puzzled and concerned.
But it merely meant that James was having the time of his life. He was drawing out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion strips, with the mystic script, in big black letters: Houghton’s Picture Palace, underneath which, quite small: Opens at Lumley on October 7th, at 6:30 P.M. Everywhere you went, these vermilion and black bars sprang from the wall at you. Then there were other notices, in delicate pale-blue and pale red, like a genuine theatre notice, giving full programs. And beneath these a broad-letter notice announced, in green letters on a yellow ground: “Final and Ultimate Clearance Sale at Houghton’s, Knarborough Road, on Friday, September 30th. Come and Buy Without Price.”
James was in his eye-holes. He collected all his odds and ends from every corner of Manchester House. He sorted them in heaps, and marked the heaps in his own mind. And then he let go. He pasted up notices all over the window and all over the shop: “Take what you want and Pay what you Like.”
He and Miss Pinnegar kept shop. The women flocked in. They turned things over. It nearly killed James to take the prices they offered. But take them he did. But he exacted that they should buy one article at a time. “One piece at a time, if you don’t mind,” he said, when they came up with their three-a-penny handfuls. It was not till later in the evening that he relaxed this rule.
Well, by eleven o’clock he had cleared out a good deal — really, a very great deal — and many women had bought what they didn’t want, at their own figure. Feverish but content, James shut the shop for the last time. Next day, by eleven, he had removed all his belongings, the door that connected the house with the shop was screwed up fast, the grocer strolled in and looked round his bare extension, took the key from James, and immediately set his boy to paste a new notice in the window, tearing down all James’s announcements. Poor James had to run round, down Knarborough Road, and down Wellington Street as far as the Livery Stable, then down long narrow passages, before he could get into his own house, from his own shop.
But he did not mind. Every hour brought the first performance of his Pleasure Palace nearer. He was satisfied with Mr. May: he had to admit that he was satisfied with Mr. May. The Palace stood firm at last — oh, it was so ricketty when it arrived! — and it glowed with a new coat, all over, of dark-red paint, like ox-blood. It was tittivated up with a touch of lavender and yellow round the door and round the decorated wooden eaving. It had a new wooden slope up to the doors — and inside, a new wooden floor, with red-velvet seats in front, before the curtain, and old chapel-pews behind. The collier yout
hs recognized the pews.
“Hey! These ‘ere’s the pews out of the old Primitive Chapel.”
“Sorry ah! We’n come ter hear t’ parson.”
Theme for endless jokes. And the Pleasure Palace was christened, in some lucky stroke, Houghton’s Endeavour, a reference to that particular Chapel effort called the Christian Endeavour, where Alvina and Miss Pinnegar both figured.
“Wheer art off, Sorry?”
“Lumley.”
“Houghton’s Endeavour?”
“Ah.”
“Rotten.”
So, when one laconic young collier accosted another. But we anticipate.
Mr. May had worked hard to get a program for the first week. His pictures were: “The Human Bird,” which turned out to be a ski-ing film from Norway, purely descriptive; “The Pancake,” a humorous film: and then his grand serial: “The Silent Grip.” And then, for Turns, his first item was Miss Poppy Trherne, a lady in innumerable petticoats, who could whirl herself into anything you like, from an arum lily in green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and a cup-and-saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne. The next turn was The Baxter Brothers, who ran up and down each other’s backs and up and down each other’s front, and stood on each other’s heads and on their own heads, and perched for a moment on each other’s shoulders, as if each of them was a flight of stairs with a landing, and the three of them were three flights, three storeys up, the top flight continually running down and becoming the bottom flight, while the middle flight collapsed and became a horizontal corridor.
Alvina had to open the performance by playing an overture called “Welcome All”: a ridiculous piece. She was excited and unhappy. On the Monday morning there was a rehearsal, Mr. May conducting. She played “Welcome All,” and then took the thumbed sheets which Miss Poppy Traherne carried with her. Miss Poppy was rather exacting. As she whirled her skirts she kept saying: “A little faster, please” — ”A little slower” — in a rather haughty, official voice that was somewhat muffled by the swim of her drapery. “Can you give it _expression?_” she cried, as she got the arum lily in full blow, and there was a sound of real ecstasy in her tones. But why she should have called “Stronger! Stronger!” as she came into being as a cup and saucer, Alvina could not imagine: unless Miss Poppy was fancying herself a strong cup of tea.
However, she subsided into her mere self, panted frantically, and then, in a hoarse voice, demanded if she was in the bare front of the show. She scorned to count “Welcome All.” Mr. May said Yes. She was the first item. Whereupon she began to raise a dust. Mr. Houghton said, hurriedly interposing, that he meant to make a little opening speech. Miss Poppy eyed him as if he were a cuckoo-clock, and she had to wait till he’d finished cuckooing. Then she said:
“That’s not every night. There’s six nights to a week.” James was properly snubbed. It ended by Mr. May metamorphizing himself into a pug dog: he said he had got the “costoom” in his bag: and doing a lump-of-sugar scene with one of the Baxter Brothers, as a brief first item. Miss Poppy’s professional virginity was thus saved from outrage.
At the back of the stage there was half-a-yard of curtain screening the two dressing-rooms, ladies and gents. In her spare time Alvina sat in the ladies’ dressing room, or in its lower doorway, for there was not room right inside. She watched the ladies making up — she gave some slight assistance. She saw the men’s feet, in their shabby pumps, on the other side of the curtain, and she heard the men’s gruff voices. Often a slangy conversation was carried on through the curtain — for most of the turns were acquainted with each other: very affable before each other’s faces, very sniffy behind each other’s backs.
Poor Alvina was in a state of bewilderment. She was extremely nice — oh, much too nice with the female turns. They treated her with a sort of off-hand friendliness, and they snubbed and patronized her and were a little spiteful with her because Mr. May treated her with attention and deference. She felt bewildered, a little excited, and as if she was not herself.
The first evening actually came. Her father had produced a pink crêpe de Chine blouse and a back-comb massed with brilliants — both of which she refused to wear. She stuck to her black blouse and black shirt, and her simple hair-dressing. Mr. May said “Of cauce! She wasn’t intended to attract attention to herself.” Miss Pinnegar actually walked down the hill with her, and began to cry when she saw the oxblood red erection, with its gas-flares in front. It was the first time she had seen it. She went on with Alvina to the little stage door at the back, and up the steps into the scrap of dressing-room. But she fled out again from the sight of Miss Poppy in her yellow hair and green knickers with green-lace frills. Poor Miss Pinnegar! She stood outside on the trodden grass behind the Band of Hope, and really cried. Luckily she had put a veil on.
She went valiantly round to the front entrance, and climbed the steps. The crowd was just coming. There was James’s face peeping inside the little ticket-window.
“One!” he said officially, pushing out the ticket. And then he recognized her. “Oh,” he said, “_You’re_ not going to pay.”
“Yes I am,” she said, and she left her fourpence, and James’s coppery, grimy fingers scooped it in, as the youth behind Miss Pinnegar shoved her forward.
“Ail way down, fourpenny,” said the man at the door, poking her in the direction of Mr. May, who wanted to put her in the red velvet. But she marched down one of the pews, and took her seat.
The place was crowded with a whooping, whistling, excited audience. The curtain was down. James had let it out to his fellow tradesmen, and it represented a patchwork of local adverts. There was a fat porker and a fat pork-pie, and the pig was saying: “You all know where to find me. Inside the crust at Frank Churchill’s, Knarborough Road, Woodhouse.” Round about the name of W. H. Johnson floated a bowler hat, a collar-and-necktie, a pair of braces and an umbrella. And so on and so on. It all made you feel very homely. But Miss Pinnegar was sadly hot and squeezed in her pew.
Time came, and the colliers began to drum their feet. It was exactly the excited, crowded audience Mr. May wanted. He darted out to drive James round in front of the curtain. But James, fascinated by raking in the money so fast, could not be shifted from the pay-box, and the two men nearly had a fight. At last Mr. May was seen shooing James, like a scuffled chicken, down the side gangway and on to the stage.
James before the illuminated curtain of local adverts, bowing and beginning and not making a single word audible! The crowd quieted itself, the eloquence flowed on. The crowd was sick of James, and began to shuffle. “Come down, come down!” hissed Mr. May frantically from in front. But James did not move. He would flow on all night. Mr. May waved excitedly at Alvina, who sat obscurely at the piano, and darted on to the stage. He raised his voice and drowned James. James ceased to wave his penny-blackened hands, Alvina struck up “Welcome All” as loudly and emphatically as she could.
And all the time Miss Pinnegar sat like a sphinx — like a sphinx. What she thought she did not know herself. But stolidly she stared at James, and anxiously she glanced sideways at the pounding Alvina. She knew Alvina had to pound until she received the cue that Mr. May was fitted in his pug-dog “Costoom.”
A twitch of the curtain. Alvina wound up her final flourish, the curtain rose, and:
“Well really!” said Miss Pinnegar, out loud.
There was Mr. May as a pug dog begging, too lifelike and too impossible. The audience shouted. Alvina sat with her hands in her lap. The Pug was a great success.
Curtain! A few bars of Toreador — and then Miss Poppy’s sheets of music. Soft music. Miss Poppy was on the ground under a green scarf. And so the accumulating dilation, on to the whirling climax of the perfect arum lily. Sudden curtain, and a yell of ecstasy from the colliers. Of all blossoms, the arum, the arum lily is most mystical and portentous.
Now a crash and rumble from Alvina’s piano. This is the storm from whence the rainbow emerges. Up goes the curtain — Miss Pop
py twirling till her skirts lift as in a breeze, rise up and become a rainbow above her now darkened legs. The footlights are all but extinguished. Miss Poppy is all but extinguished also.
The rainbow is not so moving as the arum lily. But the Catherine wheel, done at the last moment on one leg and then an amazing leap into the air backwards, again brings down the house.
Miss Poppy herself sets all store on her cup and saucer. But the audience, vulgar as ever, cannot quite see it.
And so, Alvina slips away with Miss Poppy’s music-sheets, while Mr. May sits down like a professional at the piano and makes things fly for the up-and-down-stairs Baxter Bros. Meanwhile, Alvina’s pale face hovering like a ghost in the side darkness, as it were under the stage.
The lamps go out: gurglings and kissings — and then the dither on the screen: “The Human Bird,” in awful shivery letters. It’s not a very good machine, and Mr. May is not a very good operator. Audience distinctly critical. Lights up — an “Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a bar!” even as in Alvina’s dream — and then “The Pancake” — so the first half over. Lights up for the interval.
Miss Pinnegar sighed and folded her hands. She looked neither to right nor to left. In spite of herself, in spite of outraged shame and decency, she was excited. But she felt such excitement was not wholesome. In vain the boy most pertinently yelled “Chot-let” at her. She looked neither to right nor left. But when she saw Alvina nodding to her with a quick smile from the side gangway under the stage, she almost burst into tears. It was too much for her, all at once. And Alvina looked almost indecently excited. As she slipped across in front of the audience, to the piano, to play the seductive “Dream Waltz!” she looked almost fussy, like her father. James, needless to say, flittered and hurried hither and thither around the audience and the stage, like a wagtail on the brink of a pool.
The second half consisted of a comic drama acted by two Baxter Bros., disguised as women, and Miss Poppy disguised as a man — with a couple of locals thrown in to do the guardsman and the Count. This went very well. The winding up was the first instalment of “The Silent Grip.”
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 238