Free Poor Caroline by Winifred Holtby Page A

you want me to do?'
    'I've made a very reasonable offer, Isenbaum. I've said that if the company can show £3,000 capital raised before the New Year, I'll stick to it for a bit longer. If not, I go.'
    'And I thought,' panted Miss Denton-Smyth, 'that see ing you are sure to be putting some more capital in sooner or later, it would be just as easy for you to put in three thousand now just to show that you do believe in the com pany, and to convince Mr. Macafee that all his fears are simply the result of inexperience and over-anxiety."
    'This ought to have come before the Board. It's a very serious proposition.' Damn them, damn them. He'd paid enough already. They'd bleed him before they were through. God Almighty, there were other Etonians beside St. Denis. There were other schools beside Eton. Three thousand would almost pay for the boy's entire education.
    'I can't deal with a matter like this now,' he said brusquely. 'I'm very sorry you kept Mr. Macafee from raising it at the Board meeting. Naturally you know my interest in the com pany. But you can't deal with a matter of this importance now all in a hurry. When's the next Board meeting?'
    'Not in the ordinary course of things till after the New Year, you know. Oh, Mr. Isenbaum.'
    'Can't you wait, Macafee?'
    'No, I can't. And I won't. I'm seeing these British- American Movietone people. I want to know what to say to them.'
    'You'll have to call another Board meeting,' said Joseph. 'Of course this must come before the Board. I don't think you need have any fears, Macafee. Naturally I see your point of view. Let me know when a meeting has been arranged. Good night. Good night.'
    He took his hat. He ran down the stairs, his small feet in their patent-leather shoes twinkling below his rounded waist coat. He had got away very cleverly. He had done the adroit, the sensible thing. Postpone. Postpone. And then slip quietly out of further responsibility. After all, he was the only man who stood to lose. Five hundred was five hundred.
    He rang for the lift, climbed inside and shut the door. His eyes were just on a level with the corridor when Maca fee's worn brown shoes slouched into his vision. He did not reverse the lift, but shot down to the ground floor, let himself out of the lift, and out of the building. In order to make doubly sure his own escape, he left the lift door ajar. Maca fee would have to walk downstairs.
    Only when he jumped upon a bus, he remembered that unless Macafee closed the door - an unlikely courtesy for that gauche young man - Miss Denton-Smyth would have to walk down also. Well, after all, the Christian Cinema Company was her hobby, not his. She must take the rough with the smooth, he thought. Poor Caroline.

    Chapter 3 : Eleanor De La Roux

    §1

    in the autumn of 1928, Eleanor de la Roux came to stay with the Smiths of Marshington. She was the daughter of Mr. Smith's young sister, Agatha, who in 1903 had been sent for the sake of her health to South Africa with a school friend from the West Riding, whose father had business on the Rand. And there a terrible thing happened to her. She had fallen in love with a Boer veterinary surgeon, and mar ried him. A Boer. One of those fellows who lay in ambush to shoot on the white flag and the red cross and all that. And a veterinary surgeon. A common vet. It was incredible.
    Naturally the Smiths had been very much upset. There were family consultations at Marshington, cables to Pretoria, collapses at Kingsport, and visits to solicitors. The West Riding family were warned never to communicate with a Smith again. Three Smith ladies approached the brink of a nervous breakdown, and had to recuperate to gether at Torquay, where in the hotel lounge they discussed and rediscussed the astonishing folly of poor Agatha.
    Agatha herself, after her first long, rambling, joyful letter to tell of her engagement, only wrote home three times. The first letter described her marriage. The second de fended her husband, Hugo de la