Poor Caroline

by Winifred Holtby

  'Service,' he cried. 'Science and Art walk hand in hand in Service. I'm British. C'nadian. Lived in the States, but my heart's with the Lil' old Home Country. What I wanna see is the British sound film circling the world from Huddersfield to Honolulu. While we had the silent movies, Hollywood got 'em. Climate gets away with it every time. But now we've got the Talkies, Culture counts more than Climate. I wanna see Science counteracting Climate an' puttin' the British culture on the map. I'm writin' a book now - like to see part of it? dictate two hours every morning to my sec'try before I go down to the Schools. I'm gonna prove the English film 'll put Old England back as the hub of the universe. . . . The speech of Shakespeare against the California sun.' On and on it flowed. Hugh's mind detached single phrases. 'Midwife to ideas.' 'Science the handmaid of beauty.' Art. Science. Psychol'gy. Absolute Form. Design. The Christian Cinema Company. Hugh was unaware that he had contributed any sentence to this rhapsody, yet it seemed to him as though the Christian Cinema Company and its vast ideas swept round him in a fiery flood.

  'Of course. The Tona Perfecta's jussa thing we need. . . . Synthesis of sound an' form. Abstract patterns of sound an' movement. Have another whisky? Gotta meet St. Denis. Whassatelephonenurra? Give youring.'

  Like warm swirling waters, Johnson's eloquence closed over Hugh's head. He was not actually drunk. When at last he rose from the leather chair, he found that he could stand and walk quite steadily. But he was not master of his speech. The whisky acting upon his empty stomach had robbed him of his habitual secretiveness. As he walked homeward through the emptying streets he realized that he had committed himself to go and see a paragon called St. Denis about the sale of the Tona Perfecta design to the Christian Cinema Company.

  §3

  Hugh lay awake in bed that night, calling himself every kind of fool. He had wasted an entire evening. He had acquired a headache. Instead of eating a sensible dinner, he had drunk too much whisky. The pangs of hunger gnawing at his vitals rivalled the hammers of headache tapping behind his eyes. If he chose to drag himself out of bed and grope his way to the inverted packing-case which was his larder, he could quell his hunger with part of his breakfast loaf. But he could not recall his lost evening, his sense of dignified isolation, nor his opportunity of acquiring without expenditure of time or money Powell's Experiments in Lighting. He had forgotten the one thing he set out to obtain. The book which he had taken such trouble to borrow still lay in Johnson's flat at Battersea.

  'I've got nothing out of the fellow but a headache!' raged Hugh.

  He was mistaken. Two days later, while working at his laboratory, he was interrupted by knocking and voices. He shouted to his decrepit assistant.

  'Go and tell whoever it is to get to Hell out of here!' He was unaware that he had learned this phrase from Johnson.

  Campbell opened the door, but before his message could be given Johnson pushed his way past him and rolled forward into the room, followed by a tall, slim, dignified, blond gentleman to whom Macafee took an immediate dislike.

  'You thought you gonna getta way from me?' shouted Johnson effusively. 'But here we are. Aw! The Hellova time we had to find you. Mr. Hugh Macafee, inventor of the Tona Perfecta Cinema Film, meet Mr. Basil St. Denis, Chairman of the Christian Cinema Company. Now, I hope we're going to do business. I hope this is going to be a real historic occasion.' He looked round him with dramatic expressions of wonder and admiration. 'Now, then, where's this wonderful sound film of yours? Can't you fix us up a little private demonstration?'

  'I'd hate to disturb you,' said the tall fair gentleman. 'But Mr. Johnson, before whom I am as a babe when it comes to technical matters, assures me that you have done something marvellous.'

  Hugh looked at Campbell. The experimental film prepared for National Cinema Products Limited was there. The apparatus for trying it out was there; but the acoustical properties of the laboratory were imperfect. He began to explain this with angry emphasis. Johnson interrupted him.

  'Aw, cut that. Cut that. We know all about laboratory trials. We're willing to take fifty per cent, for granted. What we want is something new and something safe. You say your films are non-inflammable?'

  'Compared with the ordinary film on the market, yes. I wouldn't guarantee it fireproof if you threw it on a furnace.'

  'That's good enough for us. If we can advertise films safe for the kiddies - morally and physically we've got the matinee market!'

  Hugh saw no harm in exhibiting his treasure. He needed money. His new ideas on colour photography had just reached that stage when the first delicious movement of creation stirs the faculties. Afterwards would come labour and disappointment, but at the moment no details clouded the fluid and radiant vision of achievement. And just because of this, he needed money. He would require more apparatus, more materials, more assistance, more leisure, before he could bring to birth his new conception. If the Christian Cinema Company would pay him cash for use of the Tona Perfecta, he was prepared to tolerate even the acquaintance of the too-effusive Johnson and the dandified St. Denis.

  It appeared that the two directors of the Christian Cinema Company were satisfied with what they saw. Three days later Hugh received an invitation from the company, signed by St. Denis, asking him to join the Board. If that was the first step, Hugh was prepared to take it. He could endure the attendance of a monthly meeting. He could look after himself in a nest of villains. But he wished that he knew more of company law and the ways of the world.

  For when he first visited the offices in Victoria Street, his co-directors puzzled him. Miss Denton-Smyth might be cracked, but she seemed too poor to be a crook. Having been brought up on the morality of the 'Cotter's Saturday Night' Hugh cherished a naive illusion that honesty and poverty were interdependent qualities. Isenbaum was a Jew, and should therefore be rich and shrewd. Guerdon was a Quaker and should therefore be cautious and honourable. St. Denis was a dude, but possibly he could not help that, and Johnson was clearly a scoundrel, but he had the one merit of professing his boisterous belief in the qualities of the Tona Perfecta Film. Hugh was prepared to forgive more than he guessed to men who praised the Tona Perfecta and called him a great man.

  He listened to discussions about raising capital. It all seemed wonderfully easy.

  'We've only got to find a millionaire!' cried Miss Denton-Smyth.

  They talked in thousands and millions of pounds. It was only after Hugh had been a member of the Board for two months that he realized its hazardous pecuniary state. Its circulars provoked little interest and less money. Isenbaum's original investment was almost exhausted. The minimum sum required in order to induce the Ferens Milmer people to manufacture the film was thirty thousand pounds. 'A mere trifle!' roared Johnson. 'A bagatelle!' said St. Denis. 'Get it, then!' said Hugh. In the panic of anxiety for his invention, he devised an offer which filled him with admiration for his own business acumen. The Christian Cinema Company must show solid signs of its forthcoming prosperity. It must produce before the end of the year three thousand pounds, five hundred as retaining fee for Hugh, and two thousand five hundred as a guarantee of future payments. Miss Denton-Smyth invited him to lunch, thanked him for his generosity, but explained the difficulty of collecting cheques at Christmas. Hugh shrugged his shoulders and gave her grace until the last day of January. Then he returned to his own work and shut himself up in his laboratory.

  But his peace was broken. The affairs of the company could not be wholly excluded from his daily life. While he tramped back and forth between his bedroom and the works at Annerley, he would chuckle to himself, thinking of Basil St. Denis and the fat Jew, Isenbaum. He had 'em on a string. They'd to raise that money, or he'd make them all sit up. He'd break their pretty bubble. Company? They were a pack of children playing at the serious and important business of adults. Business? He'd show these business men what he thought about them. He brooded bitterly on the National Cinema Products Limited and their treatment of him. He reflected upon the inevitable loneliness of all
great men. He sat shivering in his wretched room, gloating over his power to break so futile and dishonest an illusion as the Christian Cinema Company.

  When the end of January arrived, and he found himself walking along Victoria Street towards the office for his last directors' meeting, he told himself that he had been infamously treated. He had been led on false pretences to believe that the company would pay him for his invention. He had given them liberal terms which they had not fulfilled. He had lost other possibilities of marketing his invention through their refusal to face reality, and reality meant for them the acknowledgment that their whole enterprise was an expensive farce. He worked himself up to a mood of righteous indignation as the lift carried him up past one floor and another.

  He opened the door and found the other members of the Board already assembled. Isenbaum was back, sleek and ingratiating and self-conscious. Hugh did not know that the Jew had now gained his object in joining the company, and that this was the last Board meeting which he would attend. Guerdon polished his pince-nez very timidly. St. Denis, a white carnation in his buttonhole, was softly chaffing Johnson, who greeted the new-comer with boisterous geniality.

  Hugh came forward and took his place at the table, Miss Denton-Smyth pushed the leather-bound attendance book towards him. He signed his name in his precise, legible writing, carrying back the tail of the final V under the other letters with malicious triumph.

  The chairman, in his habitually gentle voice, called the meeting to order. The minutes were read. The usual correspondence was discussed. Hugh waited impatiently. All this kind of thing was waste of time. Why couldn't they come to the point and tell him straight out that they could not raise the money?

  Miss Denton-Smyth put down her file.

  Her chains and beads rattled together. Her lorgnette tinkled. She snapped it open again with trembling fingers. She coughed. And then she spoke in her quick trembling voice:

  'Well, I ought perhaps to deal next with a communication which might otherwise have had a place in the agenda to itself, but I really had no time after it was officially made to alter the agenda, and I think the Board will give the clemency already suggested by the chairman that I should read it now.'

  She looked round the table. The papers rustled beneath her shaking fingers. But even a man so little expert in Psychol'gy as Hugh Macafee could not mistake her excitement for distress. There was no doubt about it. Miss Denton-Smyth was delighted about something.

  'I have received an application, that is to say, the company has received an application, from Miss Eleanor de la Roux, late of Pretoria, now of the Earl's Court Club, London, S.W-5, for three thousand pounds' worth of ordinary shares. I have already Miss de la Roux's cheque before me, and have made proper inquiries that the bank will honour it. And that at once disposes of another little item which is down on the agenda, the purchase of the Tona Perfecta design.' She beamed joyfully across at Hugh. 'What I mean to say is that the Board now is able to fulfil Mr. Macafee's conditions, and I suppose that we may congratulate ourselves on having prevented the breach of a relationship which we all value.'

  Hugh listened in amazement. He was so much overcome by surprise that he lost his head completely. Had he retained full possession of his faculties, he would undoubtedly have chosen this opportunity to escape completely from the company. But instead he heard his own voice saying: 'Well, gentlemen, I have no objection. I suppose this means that I sell you exclusive rights of reproduction for ten years for £500 cash down as a retaining fee, £2,000 when you begin to manufacture, and a royalty often per cent, on each 1,000 feet of film sold.'

  There was more talk. There were technical details and business details. The company was to launch forth into a great campaign of advertisement and propaganda. It was to make every effort within the next three months to raise the thirty thousand pounds. The company's fortune was as good as made already. The clergy and educationalists who had hung off a little, while the affair was still uncertain, would come rushing forward to buy shares now that its business prospects were secure. A bishop was to join the Board at once.

  'Well, I haven't exactly got his lordship's promise,'' said Miss Denton-Smyth. 'But the Reverend Father Mortimer, a very distinguished young priest and scholar, you know, who has been doing temporary duty at Saint Augustine's, he has said that he will speak to the Bishop of Kensington-Gore about it, and knowing Father Mortimer I may say that I am quite certain of success, indeed, I hope soon to add an archbishop to our list of directors.'

  'An archbishop?'

  'An archbishop, Mr. Johnson. Do you not remember that at our last meeting we decided to invite a number of distinguished ladies and gentlemen, representing the Stage, the Church, the Schools, the Universities, Art, Music and public service, to become directors so that when we send out our appeals we may make it quite clear that we have the highest possible authority behind us? My idea was, if possible, a Cabinet Minister, even the Premier might, being so greatly interested in English culture. I confess that I should like to see Mr. Baldwin's name upon our Board and possibly the Archbishop of Canterbury. I always say aim high and you may keep on the level.'

  Hugh listened in a dream. He learned that there were to be new directors, that there were to be new circulars, that there was to be a big public meeting. He heard Miss Denton-Smyth outlining her proposals for this final function.

  It was, if possible, to be held at the Albert Hall, that is to say, if Miss Smyth could induce the Prime Minister or Mr. Lloyd George, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Mr. Bernard Shaw to speak for them. 'A great public expression of protest against the present condition of the cinema,' said Miss Denton-Smyth. 'Possibly with extracts from some of the worst films to be shown, because I always think that a graphic example goes a long way, but of course avoid all that sex or stuff which can be more delicately handled verbally by the dear Archbishop.'

  'Aren't we being a little ambitious?' asked Guerdon sadly, repolishing his polished glasses.

  'Of course we are!" cried Miss Denton-Smyth, bringing down her open hand on the table with such emphasis that all her chains rattled again. 'Of course we are ambitious. And why else have we met together? I always say that great oaks from small acorns grow. What does it matter if there are very few of us who have the faith yet? We are few in number, but great, very great, in unity and in inspiration, and then look how our contagion spreads! When dear Eleanor — when Miss de la Roux approached me about the shares I knew our faith was justified. We shall go forward. Was there ever a great cause launched without a few apparently obscure people coming together in an upper chamber to deliberate about impossibilities? I always say that nothing is worth doing unless you do it when it seems impossible. We are going to raise England to get a clean cinema!'

  §4

  The world into which the Christian Cinema Company now led Hugh differed not only from the worlds which he had previously known, but from those also which he had any desire to know.

  He understood the farmer's life in Perthshire, its intimate relationship with heat and cold, and wind and weather, its simple animal necessities of hunger, fatigue, toil and mating, and its occasional excursions into the fear or fortitude of Calvinism. He understood the life of a modern university, with its intellectual emulation, its job-hunting and sublimated gossip. He knew the austere and excellent world of scientific order, which he entered each time he closed behind him the doors of his laboratory, and he knew now the semi-respectable poverty of his lodgings in Penge and the Free Library.

  But Miss Denton-Smyth's world was the world of uplift, good works and propaganda, and it was a world in itself. It had its own inhabitants, busy middle-aged women in drab clothes, elderly, rather querulous Quakers and Socialists, blossoming round-bellied Liberal Philanthropists, earnest young women with spectacles and pimples, clergymen with saccharine manners, social workers carrying bags heavy with reports and pamphlets. It had its own activities, committees, annual general meetings, public demonstrations, At Homes, bazaars and lec
tures. It spoke its own language. All round him, Hugh heard phrases such as 'educating public opinion,' 'creating the right atmosphere,' 'getting a good press,' 'non-party,' 'non-sectarian,' 'pioneer work,' and 'approaching the younger generation.' Especially he heard of appeals to the younger generation. What is it, thought he, about this younger generation which makes it so important? Why should the conversion of a young man of twenty-two to temperance or disarmament or public hygiene be more important than the conversion of an older man of fifty-five? Hugh looked round about him and observed that in spite of all this touching enthusiasm, one generation appeared very much like another. He considered that the young were sadly over-rated.