The Lost Girl Part 22

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 b.u.t.ter: 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 c.o.c.king 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 pa.s.sed on: bowed very deep and reverential, indeed, but pa.s.sed on, with his little back a little more strutty and a.s.sertive 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."