“Oh but surely. Surely you won’t do it if you don’t wish to. That would never do. Can’t we hire some young fellow—?” And he turned to Mr. Houghton with a note of query.
“Alvina can play as well as anybody in Woodhouse,” said James. “We mustn’t add to our expenses. And wages in particular—”
“But surely Miss Houghton will have her wage. The labourer is worthy of his hire. Surely! Even of her hire, to put it in the feminine. And for the same wage you could get some unimportant fellow with strong wrists. I’m afraid it will tire Miss Houghton to death—”
“I don’t think so,” said James. “I don’t think so. Many of the turns she will not need to accompany—”
“Well, if it comes to that,” said Mr. May, “I can accompany some of them myself, when I’m not operating the film. I’m not an expert pianist—but I can play a little, you know—” And he trilled his fingers up and down an imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina, cocking his eye at her smiling a little archly.
“I’m sure,” he continued, “I can accompany anything except a man juggling dinner-plates—and then I’d be afraid of making him drop the plates. But songs—oh, songs! Con molto espressione!”
And again he trilled the imaginary keyboard, and smiled his rather fat cheeks at Alvina.
She began to like him. There was something a little dainty about him, when you knew him better—really rather fastidious. A showman, true enough! Blatant too. But fastidiously so.
He came fairly frequently to Manchester House after this. Miss Pinnegar was rather stiff with him and he did not like her. But he was very happy sitting chatting tête-à-tête with Alvina.
“Where is your wife?” said Alvina to him.
“My wife! Oh, don’t speak of her,” he said comically. “She’s in London.”
“Why not speak of her?” asked Alvina.
“Oh, every reason for not speaking of her. We don’t get on at all well, she and I.”
“What a pity,” said Alvina.
“Dreadful pity! But what are you to do?” He laughed comically. Then he became grave. “No,” he said. “She’s an impossible person.”
“I see,” said Alvina.
“I’m sure you don’t see,” said Mr. May. “Don’t—” and here he laid his hand on Alvina’s arm—“don’t run away with the idea that she’s immoral! You’d never make a greater mistake. Oh dear me, no. Morality’s her strongest point. Live on three lettuce leaves, and give the rest to the char. That’s her. Oh, dreadful times we had in those first years. We only lived together for three years. But dear me! how awful it was!”
“Why?”
“There was no pleasing the woman. She wouldn’t eat. If I said to her ‘What shall we have for supper, Grace?’ as sure as anything she’d answer ‘Oh, I shall take a bath when I go to bed—that will be my supper.’ She was one of these advanced vegetarian women, don’t you know.”
“How extraordinary!” said Alvina.
“Extraordinary! I should think so. Extraordinary hard lines on me. And she wouldn’t let me eat either. She followed me to the kitchen in a fury while I cooked for myself. Why imagine! I prepared a dish of champignons: oh, most beautiful champignons, beautiful—and I put them on the stove to fry in butter: beautiful young champignons. I’m hanged if she didn’t go into the kitchen while my back was turned, and pour a pint of old carrot-water into the pan. I was furious. Imagine!—beautiful fresh young champignons—”
“Fresh mushrooms,” said Alvina.
“Mushrooms—most beautiful things in the world. Oh! don’t you think so?” And he rolled his eyes oddly to heaven.
“They are good,” said Alvina.
“I should say so. And swamped—swamped with her dirty old carrot water. Oh I was so angry. And all she could say was, ‘Well, I didn’t want to waste it!’ Didn’t want to waste her old carrot water, and so ruined my champignons. Can you imagine such a person?”
“It must have been trying.”
“I should think it was. I lost weight. I lost I don’t know how many pounds, the first year I was married to that woman. She hated me to eat. Why, one of her great accusations against me, at the last, was when she said: ‘I’ve looked round the larder,’ she said to me, ‘and seen it was quite empty, and I thought to myself: Now he can’t cook a supper! And then you did!’ There! What do you think of that? The spite of it! ‘And then you did!’ ”
“What did she expect you to live on?” asked Alvina.
“Nibble a lettuce leaf with her, and drink water from the tap—and then elevate myself with a Bernard Shaw pamphlet. That was the sort of woman she was. All it gave me was gas in the stomach.”
“So overbearing!” said Alvina.
“Oh!” he turned his eyes to heaven, and spread his hands. “I didn’t believe my senses. I didn’t know such people existed. And her friends! Oh the dreadful friends she had—these Fabians! Oh, their eugenics. They wanted to examine my private morals, for eugenic reasons. Oh, you can’t imagine such a state. Worse than the Spanish Inquisition. And I stood it for three years. How I stood it, I don’t know—”
“Now don’t you see her?”
“Never! I never let her know where I am! But I support her, of cauce.”
“And your daughter?”
“Oh, she’s the dearest child in the world. I saw her at a friend’s when I came back from America. Dearest little thing in the world. But of cauce suspicious of me. Treats me as if she didn’t know me—”
“What a pity!”
“Oh—unbearable!” He spread his plump, manicured hands, on one finger of which was a green intaglio ring.
“How old is your daughter?”
“Fourteen.”
“What is her name?”
“Gemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud Callum, the danseuse.”
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
