The Lost Girl Part 25

He watched her dismally.

"I can't believe they want nothing but pictures. I can't believe they want everything in the flat," he said, coaxing and miserable.

He himself was not interested in the film. His interest was still the human interest in living performers and their living feats.

"Why," he continued, "they are ever so much more excited after a good turn, than after any film."

"I know they are," said Alvina. "But I don't believe they want to be excited in that way."

"In what way?" asked Mr. May plaintively.

"By the things which the artistes do. I believe they're jealous."

"Oh nonsense!" exploded Mr. May, starting as if he had been shot.

Then he laid his hand on her arm. "But forgive my rudeness! I don't mean it, of _cauce_! But do you mean to say that these collier louts and factory girls are jealous of the things the artistes do, because they could never do them themselves?"

"I'm sure they are," said Alvina.

"But I _can't_ believe it," said Mr. May, pouting up his mouth and smiling at her as if she were a whimsical child. "What a low opinion you have of human nature!"

"Have I?" laughed Alvina. "I've never reckoned it up. But I'm sure that these common people here are jealous if anybody does anything or has anything they can't have themselves."

"I can't believe it," protested Mr. May. "Could they be so _silly_!

And then why aren't they jealous of the extraordinary things which are done on the film?"

"Because they don't see the flesh-and-blood people. I'm sure that's it. The film is only pictures, like pictures in the _Daily Mirror_.

And pictures don't have any feelings apart from their own feelings.

I mean the feelings of the people who watch them. Pictures don't have any life except in the people who watch them. And that's why they like them. Because they make them feel that they are everything."

"The pictures make the colliers and la.s.ses feel that they themselves are everything? But how? They identify themselves with the heroes and heroines on the screen?"

"Yes--they take it all to themselves--and there isn't anything except themselves. I know it's like that. It's because they can spread themselves over a film, and they _can't_ over a living performer. They're up against the performer himself. And they hate it."

Mr. May watched her long and dismally.

"I _can't_ believe people are like that!--sane people!" he said.

"Why, to me the whole joy is in the living personality, the curious _personality_ of the artiste. That's what I enjoy so much."

"I know. But that's where you're different from them."

"But _am_ I?"

"Yes. You're not as up to the mark as they are."

"Not up to the mark? What do you mean? Do you mean they are more intelligent?"

"No, but they're more modern. You like things which aren't yourself.

But they don't. They hate to admire anything that they can't take to themselves. They hate anything that isn't themselves. And that's why they like pictures. It's all themselves to them, all the time."

He still puzzled.

"You know I don't follow you," he said, a little mocking, as if she were making a fool of herself.

"Because you don't know them. You don't know the common people. You don't know how conceited they are."

He watched her a long time.

"And you think we ought to cut out the variety, and give nothing but pictures, like the Empire?" he said.

"I believe it takes best," she said.

"And costs less," he answered. "But _then_! It's so dull. Oh my _word_, it's so dull. I don't think I could bear it."

"And our pictures aren't good enough," she said. "We should have to get a new machine, and pay for the expensive films. Our pictures do shake, and our films are rather ragged."

"But then, _surely_ they're good enough!" he said.

That was how matters stood. The Endeavour paid its way, and made just a margin of profit--no more. Spring went on to summer, and then there was a very shadowy margin of profit. But James was not at all daunted. He was waiting now for the trams, and building up hopes since he could not build in bricks and mortar.

The navvies were busy in troops along the Knarborough Road, and down Lumley Hill. Alvina became quite used to them. As she went down the hill soon after six o'clock in the evening, she met them trooping home. And some of them she liked. There was an outlawed look about them as they swung along the pavement--some of them; and there was a certain lurking set of the head which rather frightened her because it fascinated her. There was one tall young fellow with a red face and fair hair, who looked as if he had fronted the seas and the arctic sun. He looked at her. They knew each other quite well, in pa.s.sing. And he would glance at perky Mr. May. Alvina tried to fathom what the young fellow's look meant. She wondered what he thought of Mr. May.

She was surprised to hear Mr. May's opinion of the navvy.

"_He's_ a handsome young man, now!" exclaimed her companion one evening as the navvies pa.s.sed. And all three turned round, to find all three turning round. Alvina laughed, and made eyes. At that moment she would cheerfully have gone along with the navvy. She was getting so tired of Mr. May's quiet prance.

On the whole, Alvina enjoyed the cinema and the life it brought her.

She accepted it. And she became somewhat vulgarized in her bearing.

She was _decla.s.see_: she had lost her cla.s.s altogether. The other daughters of respectable tradesmen avoided her now, or spoke to her only from a distance. She was supposed to be "carrying on" with Mr.

May.

Alvina did not care. She rather liked it. She liked being _decla.s.see_. She liked feeling an outsider. At last she seemed to stand on her own ground. She laughed to herself as she went back and forth from Woodhouse to Lumley, between Manchester House and the Pleasure Palace. She laughed when she saw her father's theatre-notices plastered about. She laughed when she saw his thrilling announcements in the _Woodhouse Weekly_. She laughed when she knew that all the Woodhouse youths recognized her, and looked on her as one of their inferior entertainers. She was off the map: and she liked it.

For after all, she got a good deal of fun out of it. There was not only the continual activity. There were the artistes. Every week she met a new set of stars--three or four as a rule. She rehea.r.s.ed with them on Monday afternoons, and she saw them every evening, and twice a week at matinees. James now gave two performances each evening--and he always had _some_ audience. So that Alvina had opportunity to come into contact with all the odd people of the inferior stage. She found they were very much of a type: a little frowsy, a little flea-bitten as a rule, indifferent to ordinary morality, and philosophical even if irritable. They were often very irritable. And they had always a certain fund of callous philosophy. Alvina did not _like_ them--you were not supposed, really, to get deeply emotional over them. But she found it amusing to see them all and know them all. It was so different from Woodhouse, where everything was priced and ticketed. These people were nomads. They didn't care a straw who you were or who you weren't. They had a most irritable professional vanity, and that was all. It was most odd to watch them. They weren't very squeamish. If the young gentlemen liked to peep round the curtain when the young lady was in her knickers: oh, well, she rather roundly told them off, perhaps, but n.o.body minded. The fact that ladies wore knickers and black silk stockings thrilled n.o.body, any more than grease-paint or false moustaches thrilled. It was all part of the stock-in-trade.

As for immorality--well, what did it amount to? Not a great deal.

Most of the men cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about any more carnal vice, and most of the girls were good pals with each other, men were only there to act with: even if the act was a private love-farce of an improper description. What's the odds? You couldn't get excited about it: not as a rule.

Mr. May usually took rooms for the artistes in a house down in Lumley. When any one particular was coming, he would go to a rather better-cla.s.s widow in Woodhouse. He never let Alvina take any part in the making of these arrangements, except with the widow in Woodhouse, who had long ago been a servant at Manchester House, and even now came in to do cleaning.

Odd, eccentric people they were, these entertainers. Most of them had a streak of imagination, and most of them drank. Most of them were middle-aged. Most of them had an abstracted manner; in ordinary life, they seemed left aside, somehow. Odd, extraneous creatures, often a little depressed, feeling life slip away from them. The cinema was killing them.

Alvina had quite a serious flirtation with a man who played a flute and piccolo. He was about fifty years old, still handsome, and growing stout. When sober, he was completely reserved. When rather drunk, he talked charmingly and amusingly--oh, most charmingly.

Alvina quite loved him. But alas, _how_ he drank! But what a charm he had! He went, and she saw him no more.

The usual rather American-looking, clean-shaven, slightly pasty young man left Alvina quite cold, though he had an amiable and truly chivalrous _galanterie_. He was quite likeable. But so unattractive.

Alvina was more fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did marvellous things with six ferrets, or the j.a.p who was tattooed all over, and had the most amazing strong wrists, so that he could throw down any collier, with one turn of the hand. Queer cuts these!--but just a little bit beyond her. She watched them rather from a distance. She wished she could jump across the distance.

Particularly with the j.a.p, who was almost quite naked, but clothed with the most exquisite tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle that flew with terrible spread wings between his shoulders, or the strange mazy pattern that netted the roundness of his b.u.t.tocks. He was not very large, but nicely shaped, and with no hair on his smooth, tattooed body. He was almost blue in colour--that is, his tattooing was blue, with pickings of brilliant vermilion: as for instance round the nipples, and in a strange red serpent's-jaws over the navel. A serpent went round his loins and haunches. He told her how many times he had had blood-poisoning, during the process of his tattooing. He was a queer, black-eyed creature, with a look of silence and toad-like lewdness. He frightened her. But when he was dressed in common clothes, and was just a cheap, shoddy-looking European j.a.p, he was more frightening still. For his face--he was not tattooed above a certain ring low on his neck--was yellow and flat and basking with one eye open, like some age-old serpent. She felt he was smiling horribly all the time: lewd, unthinkable. A strange sight he was in Woodhouse, on a sunny morning; a shabby-looking bit of riff-raff of the East, rather down at the heel. Who could have imagined the terrible eagle of his shoulders, the serpent of his loins, his supple, magic skin?

The summer pa.s.sed again, and autumn. Winter was a better time for James Houghton. The trams, moreover, would begin to run in January.

He wanted to arrange a good program for the week when the trams started. A long time ahead, Mr. May prepared it. The one item was the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe. The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe consisted of five persons, Madame Rochard and four young men. They were a strictly Red Indian troupe. But one of the young men, the German Swiss, was a famous yodeller, and another, the French Swiss, was a good comic with a French accent, whilst Madame and the German did a screaming two-person farce. Their great turn, of course, was the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Red Indian scene.