Poor Caroline (23 page)

'Mr. Macafee. I'm so glad to find you disengaged. I want
to introduce you to Miss de la Roux, my cousin, whose name
I think you know already. Now, Eleanor, see that Mr. Maca
fee gets some coffee, will you? I always think that men are so helpless at this sort of function, and I've just seen
dear
Father Mortimer
with
Father Lasseter, so very good of them
to come when they are both such busy men, so I must
fly
!'

Miss Denton-Smyth flew, trailing conversation like her
scarves and beads and lorgnette cords behind her. Hugh
was left facing the grave scrutiny of a very small brown-haired girl.

'Good evening, Mr. Macafee!' she said. 'I think it was you who invented the Tona Perfecta Film, wasn't it?'

'I did,' he replied, still looking for a resting-place for his
empty plate.

'Give me that. Thanks! Do you want any coffee?'

Hugh did want coffee, and said so.

Til get you some. Will you wait there? Bag those two seats. I'll get a tray. If you come too, we'll lose the seats.'

She was gone, picking her way neatly between the shifting
throng, and returning almost immediately with a tray,
which she placed on the radiator.

'Now we can eat in peace,' she said. 'Thanks for keeping
the chairs. I wanted to feed, because I shan't have any
supper to-night. I'm driving a speaker out to Goswell Gar
den City, and they never give refreshments there.'

'I'm missing supper too,' said Hugh.

'Good! Then we can both feed properly. Do you like ham
sandwiches? I loathe them. I've learned they're the staple food of propagandists.'

'Are you a propagandist?'

She lifted her serious face to his and considered for a
moment. Then her eyes twinkled. 'Well, I don't know. I
work for the I.L.P. It's all very interesting. But I think
sometimes that I should have stuck to science. You know
where you are in a laboratory.'

'Science?'

'I was reading for my B.Sc. in South Africa. You did
chemistry, I suppose.'

'And engineering.'

'Edinburgh?'

'And then Germany.'

She nodded. 'I want to go to Germany. There seems so
much to learn.'

'It's a country where they take serious things seriously,'
said Hugh.

She twinkled again. 'What are serious things?' Then,
seeing his frown because he hated rhetorical questions and
irony and all conversational evasions, she added gravely:
'But I think I know what you mean. Try one of these buns.
They're not bad really, and they fill up the corners. Of
course, you really know everything there is to be known
about films, don't you?'

'Most things that are known at present,' he said calmly,
meaning what he said. He was inclined to like this girl who reminded him in many ways of the only other young woman
he had really respected, a student of chemistry in Berlin,
with whom he could talk for a whole afternoon without
being made aware that she was not a man. This Miss de la
Roux, with her short boyish hair, and her boyish tweed coat,
and her queer husky voice with the South African accent,
might have been a small dandified young man.

'I wish you'd tell me about the Tona Perfecta. Why is it
different from other films? How do you secure perfect syn
chronization? Isn't that partly a matter for the producers?
Caroline has tried to tell me, but she doesn't make technical
subjects awfully clear, you know.'

Hugh was happy. He turned his back upon the disturbing
hall, consumed large currant buns and two plates full of
sandwiches, and gave this restful, intelligent listener a full account of the innovations distinguishing the Tona Perfecta.

'Do you know,' she said at last. 'This makes me feel quite
differently about the company? I wanted to do something
about it before because of Caroline, but now I think I
really
want it to succeed for its own sake.'

He was pleased. He, who had scorned all pleasure but
that which comes from work well done, felt a
warm glow of
satisfaction. He remembered that this little creature was an
heiress. She could put down three thousand pounds as easy
as three pence, Johnson said. And she was keen about the
Tona Perfecta. She might be interested in his new and yet
unrevealed invention. She might put down more thousands.

He blushed. He actually blushed.

'Well, then,' he said, and was about to invite her to come
and see it for herself in his laboratory at Annerley, when Miss Denton-Smyth was again upon them.

'Oh, Mr. Macafee, I want you to meet Father Mortimer.
Father Mortimer is, I hope, going to be of the very
greatest
help to us. He is using his influence with the Bishop of Kensington-Gore. This is the man who made our
wonderful
Tona Perfecta, Father. One of the cleverest inventors now
living, I believe. And this is my young cousin from South
Africa, Eleanor de la Roux.'

Hugh looked with disgust at the interrupter of his conversation. He saw that Miss Denton-Smyth thus addressed as 'Father' a man young enough to be her son, if not her grandson, a tall, slim, debonair young man, whose black clerical
cassock accentuated his height, his slenderness, and his
youth, a handsome enough young fellow, damn him. Hugh hated all parsons categorically, and parsons who interrupted
him particularly.

'Do you remember coming with me to hear Father Mor
timer preach, Eleanor?' chirruped Miss Denton-Smyth.

'I'm not likely to forget,' said Eleanor. 'And I don't know
yet,' she twinkled, 'whether I'm likely to forgive!'

'Forgive?' asked the priest.

'It's a long and possibly absurd story, and in any case you
couldn't help it, so I suppose I must forgive you.' She smiled
at him, but he remained looking at her with a queer dis
turbed attention.

'I was telling Miss de la Roux about the Tona Perfecta,'
Hugh broke in abruptly. 'I was saying I want her to come
to my laboratory one day and see it. Will you, Miss de la Roux?'

'Thank you. I should like it very much.'

'You've seen it, Cousin Caroline, of course?' the girl
asked.

'No, I haven't, dear. Well, not exactly. Only the plans
and so on. It was Mr. Johnson and Mr. St. Denis who really
saw
it.'

'Can't we come down together, Mr. Macafee? I've got a
car.'

'And
Father Mortimer,' cried Miss Denton-Smyth. 'He's
going to help us. He ought to see the justification of our faith!'

'Well - perhaps. Is this a secret process, Macafee?' smiled
the priest.

Hugh was lost. Before he knew where he was he had com
mitted himself to show a car-load of the Christian Cinema
Company round his workshops and laboratory on the follow
ing Friday evening.

He meant to
qualify his offer; he meant to encircle it with such conditions that he would secure either Miss de la Roux
alone, or nobody. But at that moment, the buzzing conver
sation round him faded; Miss Denton-Smyth with a clink and a jingle sprang away and made off up the room, while
a small procession filed on to the platform. There was Mrs.
St. Denis, now holding a large bouquet of red carnations,
and a plump parson, and Johnson, and a tall emaciated
actress with scrupulously unreddened lips and emphatically
unparisian clothes, the sort of actress, though Hugh was un
aware of it, who compensates for lack of professional ability
by assiduous devotion to good works. Miss Denton-Smyth
brought up the rear, tripping up to her seat, bowing and
smiling from it, and beaming upon the company as though
she had achieved her heart's desire.

'Speeches,' murmured Eleanor de la Roux. 'And I'm
stewarding. Good-bye!'

She stole silently to her stand beside a pamphlet-laden
stall and left Hugh with Father Mortimer to watch Johnson
rise from his chair, spread his vast fingers on the green
baize table-cloth, and begin:

'My friends, ladies and gentlemen.'

The chairs screeched as their occupants turned to face the
speaker. A scattered fusillade of clapping drowned the
screeches. Hugh looked to see whether escape were possible,
but the way to the door was now completely blocked. He
stood with his arms folded, his eyes closed, leaning back
against the wall and hearing Johnson explain to the assembled company that among ail ways of saving this wicked
world, the quickest, cheapest, most spiritual and most artistic was the creation of a Christian Cinema Company. When
he turned to scrutinize Father Mortimer at his side, that
young man was again looking across the room to where Miss
de la Roux stood, a thin, childish, quiet sentinel upright
behind her laden stall.

§5

Very early in the morning after the Christian Cinema Company's At Home, Hugh Macafee woke up to the sound
of a cat's serenade on a neighbouring wall. He had tried to
train himself to constructive action, even when suddenly aroused from sleep, so that no waking hour of the night or day might be lost to him. That morning his Puritanism was rewarded by two excellent ideas flashing almost unsought into his mind. The first concerned a new arrangement of
chemical sensitizers to facilitate the colour reproduction for
which he was striving; the second concerned his own domes
tic arrangements. Why, he wondered, should he pay two
rents, when he coul
d perfectly well make himself some sort
of a bed at the laboratory? There he would be close beside
his work. He could economize in time and money. It was
absurd that he had never thought of this before.

Directly he had breakfasted he gave notice to his landlady
and hurried off to the chemical works. Now everything
went splendidly. He had been working along all the wrong
lines in his colour film.
What he wanted was a medium
which would reproduce not only tone but opacity and depth.
He began to study the crude elementary colour photography
of Joly, Ives and Lumiere, seeking for the right foundation for his own projected work. He became completely happy
and absorbed, moving about the
laboratory among his
newly acquired apparatus, delighted with his new financial
liberty. His only grievance lay against Campbell. Camp
bell did not care for colour photography. The definite and
practical purpose of the Tona Perfecta he could understand, but he could not see the importance of this colour business.
Hugh's desire to photograph more perfectly the subtle varia
tions of light and tone, to catch the sense of solidity or trans
parency in colour, appeared to Campbell as highfalutin'
nonsense. He became surly and obstructive until Hugh, in
a frenzy of impatience, paid him a week's wage in lieu of
notice, and told him to clear off.