“I’m sure it’s a very nice place,” Violet observed. She was a judge, too. Henry agreed with her.
There was a spacious Victorianism about the interior, and especially about the ornate, branching staircase, which pleased both of them. Crowds moving to and fro! Crowds of plain people; no fashion, no distinction; but respectable people, solid people; no riffraff, no wastrels, adventurers, flighty persons.
“It is a very nice place,” Violet repeated. “And they’re much better than audiences at cinemas, I must say.”
Of course, she went through the common experience of mistaking a wax figure for a human being, and called herself a silly. Suddenly she clutched Henry’s arm. The clutch gave him a new, delightful sensation of owning and being owned, and also of being a protector.
“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed in alarm. “It gave me quite a turn.”
“What did?”
“I thought he was a wax figure, that young man there by the settee. I looked at him for ever so long, and he didn’t move; and then he moved! I wouldn’t like to come here alone. No! That I wouldn’t!” Thereupon, with a glance of trust, she loosed Henry.
For perhaps a couple of decades Henry had not been even moderately interested in any woman, and for over a decade not interested at all; he had been absorbed in his secret passion. And now, after a sort of Rip van Winkle sleep, he was on his honeymoon, and in full realization of the wonderfulness of being married. He felt himself to be exalted into some realm of romance surpassing his dreams. The very place was romantic and uplifted him. He blossomed slowly, late, but he blossomed. And in the crowds he was truly alone with this magical woman. He did not, then, want to kiss her. He would save the kissing. He would wait for it; he was a patient man, and enjoyed the exercise of patience. Quite unperturbed, he was convinced, and rightly, that none in the ingenuous crowds could guess the situation of himself and Violet. Such a staid, quiet, commonplace couple. He savoured with the most intense satisfaction that they were deceiving all the simple creatures who surrounded them. He laughed at youth, scorned it. Then his eye caught a sign, “Cinematograph Hall.” Ha! Was that a device to conjure extra sixpences and shillings from the unwary? He seemed to crouch in alarm, like a startled hare. But the entrance to the Cinematograph Hall was wide and had no barriers. The Cinematograph Hall was free. They walked into it. A board said, to empty seats, “Next performance four o’clock.”
“We must see that,” he told Violet urgently. She answered that they certainly must, and thereupon, Henry having looked at his watch, they turned into the Hall of Tableaux.
A restful and yet impressive affair, these reconstitutions of dramatic episodes in English history. And there was no disturbing preciosity in the attitude of the sightseers, who did not care a fig what “art” was, to whom, indeed, it would never have occurred to employ such a queer word as “art” even in their thoughts. Nor did they worry themselves about composition, lighting, or the theory of the right relation of subject to treatment. Nor did they criticize at all. They accepted, and if they could not accept they spared their brains the unhealthy excitement of trying to discover why they could not accept. They just left the matter and passed on. A poor-spirited lot, with not the slightest taste for hitting back against the challenge of the artist. But anyhow they had the wit to put art in its place and keep it there. What interested them was the stories told by the tableaux, and what interested them in the stories told was the “human” side, not the historic importance. King John signing Magna Charta under the menace of his bold barons, and so laying the foundation stone of British liberty? No! The picture could not move them. But the death of Nelson, Gordon’s last stand, the slip of a girl Victoria getting the news of her accession, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots? Yes! Hundred percent successes every one. Violet shed a diamond tear at sight of the last. Violet said:
“They do say, seeing’s believing.”
She was fully persuaded at last that English history really had happened. Henry’s demeanour was more reserved, and a little condescending. He said kindly that the tableaux were very clever, as they were. And he smiled to himself at Violet’s womanish simplicity—and liked her the better for it, because it increased her charm and gave to himself a secret superiority.
What all the sightseers did completely react to was the distorting mirrors, which induced a never-ceasing loud tinkle and guffaw of mirth through the entire afternoon. Violet laughed like anything at the horrid reflection of herself.
“Well,” she giggled, “they do say you wouldn’t know yourself if you met yourself in the street. I can believe it.”
Rather subtle, that, thought Henry, as he smiled blandly at her truly surprising gaiety. He hurried her away to the cinematograph. The hall was full. He had never in his life been to a picture-theatre. Why should he have gone? He had never felt the craving for “amusement.” He knew just what cinemas were and how they worked, but he did not lust after them. By long discipline he had strictly confined his curiosity to certain fields. But now that the cinema lay gratis to his hand he suddenly burned with a desire to judge it. He refrained from confessing to Violet that he had never been to a picture-theatre. As he had already decided that the cinema was a somewhat childish business, he found nothing in the show to affect this verdict. While it was proceeding he explained the mechanism to Violet, and also he gave her glimpses of the history of Madame Tussaud’s, which he had picked up from books about London. Violet was impressed; and, as she had seen many films
