“Excuse an interruption,” he said, “but if you want to know what Staithley will think to-morrow, look there.” He slowed the car and pointed to the cinema across the Square. A man on a ladder was hand-printing in large letters on a white sheet above the door “Tomorrow. Mary Arden in...”
“That’s enterprise, isn’t it? The fellow can’t have heard more than half an hour ago that I was here, then he’d to think of you and he must have been busy on the ’phone to have made sure of getting that film here tomorrow.”
“Rupert, how awful for you. They will never forget what I was now.”
“Never. Thank God.”
“Don’t you care?”
“Oh, yes, I care and if I cared cheaply, I should thank you for being my propagandist. I should thank you for making me popular because you are popular and I’m your husband. You can’t deny there’s that in it, Mary, but there’s more. There’s the bridging of a gulf. There’s a breach made in a bad tradition. We Hepple-stalls must drop being Olympian. Aloofness; that’s to go and it’ll get a shove when Lady Hepplestall is seen on the screen in Staithley. What do a thousand Gertrudes matter if we can bridge the gulf? We’ve got to get together, we’ve got to reach those men who hissed. Do you see that cinema as a cheap way? I don’t. It’s a modern way if you like and it isn’t a way I made but one you made for me. It’s a reach-me-down, and I shan’t stop at ways that are ready-made. I’ll find my own. Up on the Edge I asked what I would add to Hepplestall’s. I’ll add this if I can—I’ll add humanity.”
“And I can help. Music, for instance.”
“You’ll make me jealous soon. You have so many advantages of me. I’m not even sure if I’m good enough for Lancashire League cricket. It’s good stuff, I can tell you. Whereas you...”
“Am I to manage Staithley Mills?”
“Nor I, for years. Never, if I’m unequal to it. But you’re right. The mills are the important thing, the rest’s decoration and decoration won’t go far. Staithley won’t stand you and me as Lady and Lord Bountiful. Those hissing friends of ours—circuses won’t satisfy them and I’d think the worse of them if they would. I’ll talk to William to-night and I expect he’ll snap my head off. He’s of the old gang, William is. There’s the war between William and me, but, Lord, he’ll know, he’ll know it all and I know nothing. I’m so young.”