prowled round the warehouses in Knarborough and picked up job lots
of stuff, with which he replenished his shabby window. But his heart
was not in the business. Mere tenacity made him hover on with it.
In midsummer Albert Witham came to Woodhouse, and Alvina was invited
to tea. She was very much excited. All the time imagining Albert a
taller, finer Arthur, she had abstained from actually fixing her
mind upon this latter little man. Picture her disappointment when
she found Albert quite unattractive. He was tall and thin and
brittle, with a pale, rather dry, flattish face, and with curious
pale eyes. His impression was one of uncanny flatness, something
like a lemon sole. Curiously flat and fish-like he was, one might
have imagined his backbone to be spread like the backbone of a sole
or a plaice. His teeth were sound, but rather large and yellowish
and flat. A most curious person.
He spoke in a slightly mouthing way, not well bred in spite of
Oxford. There was a distinct Woodhouse twang. He would never be a
gentleman if he lived for ever. Yet he was not ordinary. Really an
odd fish: quite interesting, if one could get over the feeling that
one was looking at him through the glass wall of an aquarium: that
most horrifying of all boundaries between two worlds. In an aquarium
fish seem to come smiling broadly to the doorway, and there to stand
talking to one, in a mouthing fashion, awful to behold. For one
hears no sound from all their mouthing and staring conversation. Now
although Albert Witham had a good strong voice, which rang like
water among rocks in her ear, still she seemed never to hear a word
he was saying. He smiled down at her and fixed her and swayed his
head, and said quite original things, really. For he was a genuine
odd fish. And yet she seemed to hear no sound, no word from him:
nothing came to her. Perhaps as a matter of fact fish do actually
pronounce streams of watery words, to which we, with our
aerial-resonant ears, are deaf for ever.
The odd thing was that this odd fish seemed from the very first to
imagine she had accepted him as a follower. And he was quite
prepared to follow. Nay, from the very first moment he was smiling
on her with a sort of complacent delight--compassionate, one might
almost say--as if there was a full understanding between them. If
only she could have got into the right state of mind, she would
really rather have liked him. He smiled at her, and said really
interesting things between his big teeth. There was something rather
nice about him. But, we must repeat, it was as if the glass wall of
an aquarium divided them.
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