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
