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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lost Girl, by D. H. Lawrence
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Lost Girl
+
+Author: D. H. Lawrence
+
+Release Date: December 3, 2007 [eBook #23727]
+[Most recently updated: October 15, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Roger Frank, Roberta Staehlin, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST GIRL ***
+
+
+
+
+The Lost Girl
+
+By D. H. Lawrence
+
+New York: Thomas Seltzer
+
+1921
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ CHAPTER I. THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
+ CHAPTER II. THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON
+ CHAPTER III. THE MATERNITY NURSE
+ CHAPTER IV. TWO WOMEN DIE
+ CHAPTER V. THE BEAU
+ CHAPTER VI. HOUGHTON’S LAST ENDEAVOUR
+ CHAPTER VII. NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA
+ CHAPTER VIII. CICCIO
+ CHAPTER IX. ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE
+ CHAPTER X. THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
+ CHAPTER XI. HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT
+ CHAPTER XII. ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED
+ CHAPTER XIII. THE WEDDED WIFE
+ CHAPTER XIV. THE JOURNEY ACROSS
+ CHAPTER XV. THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO
+ CHAPTER XVI. SUSPENSE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
+
+
+Take a mining townlet like Woodhouse, with a population of ten thousand
+people, and three generations behind it. This space of three
+generations argues a certain well-established society. The old “County”
+has fled from the sight of so much disembowelled coal, to flourish on
+mineral rights in regions still idyllic. Remains one great and
+inaccessible magnate, the local coal owner: three generations old, and
+clambering on the bottom step of the “County,” kicking off the mass
+below. Rule him out.
+
+A well established society in Woodhouse, full of fine shades, ranging
+from the dark of coal-dust to grit of stone-mason and sawdust of
+timber-merchant, through the lustre of lard and butter and meat, to the
+perfume of the chemist and the disinfectant of the doctor, on to the
+serene gold-tarnish of bank-managers, cashiers for the firm, clergymen
+and such-like, as far as the automobile refulgence of the
+general-manager of all the collieries. Here the _ne plus ultra_. The
+general manager lives in the shrubberied seclusion of the so-called
+Manor. The genuine Hall, abandoned by the “County,” has been taken over
+as offices by the firm.
+
+Here we are then: a vast substratum of colliers; a thick sprinkling of
+tradespeople intermingled with small employers of labour and
+diversified by elementary schoolmasters and nonconformist clergy; a
+higher layer of bank-managers, rich millers and well-to-do ironmasters,
+episcopal clergy and the managers of collieries, then the rich and
+sticky cherry of the local coal-owner glistening over all.
+
+Such the complicated social system of a small industrial town in the
+Midlands of England, in this year of grace 1920. But let us go back a
+little. Such it was in the last calm year of plenty, 1913.
+
+A calm year of plenty. But one chronic and dreary malady: that of the
+odd women. Why, in the name of all prosperity, should every class but
+the lowest in such a society hang overburdened with Dead Sea fruit of
+odd women, unmarried, unmarriageable women, called old maids? Why is it
+that every tradesman, every school-master, every bank-manager, and
+every clergyman produces one, two, three or more old maids? Do the
+middle-classes, particularly the lower middle-classes, give birth to
+more girls than boys? Or do the lower middle-class men assiduously
+climb up or down, in marriage, thus leaving their true partners
+stranded? Or are middle-class women very squeamish in their choice of
+husbands?
+
+However it be, it is a tragedy. Or perhaps it is not.
+
+Perhaps these unmarried women of the middle-classes are the famous
+sexless-workers of our ant-industrial society, of which we hear so
+much. Perhaps all they lack is an occupation: in short, a job. But
+perhaps we might hear their own opinion, before we lay the law down.
+
+In Woodhouse, there was a terrible crop of old maids among the “nobs,”
+the tradespeople and the clergy. The whole town of women, colliers’
+wives and all, held its breath as it saw a chance of one of these
+daughters of comfort and woe getting off. They flocked to the
+well-to-do weddings with an intoxication of relief. For let
+class-jealousy be what it may, a woman hates to see another woman left
+stalely on the shelf, without a chance. They all _wanted_ the
+middle-class girls to find husbands. Every one wanted it, including the
+girls themselves. Hence the dismalness.
+
+Now James Houghton had only one child: his daughter Alvina. Surely
+Alvina Houghton—
+
+But let us retreat to the early eighties, when Alvina was a baby: or
+even further back, to the palmy days of James Houghton. In his palmy
+days, James Houghton was _crême de la crême_ of Woodhouse society. The
+house of Houghton had always been well-to-do: tradespeople, we must
+admit; but after a few generations of affluence, tradespeople acquire a
+distinct _cachet_. Now James Houghton, at the age of twenty-eight,
+inherited a splendid business in Manchester goods, in Woodhouse. He was
+a tall, thin, elegant young man with side-whiskers, genuinely refined,
+somewhat in the Bulwer style. He had a taste for elegant conversation
+and elegant literature and elegant Christianity: a tall, thin, brittle
+young man, rather fluttering in his manner, full of facile ideas, and
+with a beautiful speaking voice: most beautiful. Withal, of course, a
+tradesman. He courted a small, dark woman, older than himself, daughter
+of a Derbyshire squire. He expected to get at least ten thousand pounds
+with her. In which he was disappointed, for he got only eight hundred.
+Being of a romantic-commercial nature, he never forgave her, but always
+treated her with the most elegant courtesy. To seehim peel and prepare
+an apple for her was an exquisite sight. But that peeled and quartered
+apple was her portion. This elegant Adam of commerce gave Eve her own
+back, nicely cored, and had no more to do with her. Meanwhile Alvina
+was born.
+
+Before all this, however, before his marriage, James Houghton had built
+Manchester House. It was a vast square building—vast, that is, for
+Woodhouse—standing on the main street and high-road of the small but
+growing town. The lower front consisted of two fine shops, one for
+Manchester goods, one for silk and woollens. This was James Houghton’s
+commercial poem.
+
+For James Houghton was a dreamer, and something of a poet: commercial,
+be it understood. He liked the novels of George Macdonald, and the
+fantasies of that author, extremely. He wove one continual fantasy for
+himself, a fantasy of commerce. He dreamed of silks and poplins,
+luscious in texture and of unforeseen exquisiteness: he dreamed of
+carriages of the “County” arrested before his windows, of exquisite
+women ruffling charmed, entranced to his counter. And charming,
+entrancing, he served them his lovely fabrics, which only he and they
+could sufficiently appreciate. His fame spread, until Alexandra,
+Princess of Wales, and Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, the two
+best-dressed women in Europe, floated down from heaven to the shop in
+Woodhouse, and sallied forth to show what could be done by purchasing
+from James Houghton.
+
+We cannot say why James Houghton failed to become the Liberty or the
+Snelgrove of his day. Perhaps he had too much imagination. Be that as
+it may, in those early days when he brought his wife to her new home,
+his window on the Manchester side was a foam and a may-blossom of
+muslins and prints, his window on the London side was an autumn evening
+of silks and rich fabrics. What wife could fail to be dazzled! But she,
+poor darling, from her stone hall in stony Derbyshire, was a little bit
+repulsed by the man’s dancing in front of his stock, like David before
+the ark.
+
+The home to which he brought her was a monument. In the great bedroom
+over the shop he had his furniture _built_: built of solid mahogany: oh
+too, too solid. No doubt he hopped or skipped himself with satisfaction
+into the monstrous matrimonial bed: it could only be mounted by means
+of a stool and chair. But the poor, secluded little woman, older than
+he, must have climbed up with a heavy heart, to lie and face the gloomy
+Bastille of mahogany, the great cupboard opposite, or to turn wearily
+sideways to the great cheval mirror, which performed a perpetual and
+hideous bow before her grace. Such furniture! It could never be removed
+from the room.
+
+The little child was born in the second year. And then James Houghton
+decamped to a small, half-furnished bedroom at the other end of the
+house, where he slept on a rough board and played the anchorite for the
+rest of his days. His wife was left alone with her baby and the
+built-in furniture. She developed heart disease, as a result of nervous
+repressions.
+
+But like a butterfly James fluttered over his fabrics. He was a tyrant
+to his shop-girls. No French marquis in a Dickens’ novel could have
+been more elegant and _raffiné_ and heartless. The girls detested him.
+And yet, his curious refinement and enthusiasm bore them away. They
+submitted to him. The shop attracted much curiosity. But the
+poor-spirited Woodhouse people were weak buyers. They wearied James
+Houghton with their demand for common zephyrs, for red flannel which
+they would scallop with black worsted, for black alpacas and bombazines
+and merinos. He fluffed out his silk-striped muslins, his India
+cotton-prints. But the natives shied off as if he had offered them the
+poisoned robes of Herakles.
+
+There was a sale. These sales contributed a good deal to Mrs.
+Houghton’s nervous heart-disease. They brought the first signs of wear
+and tear into the face of James Houghton. At first, of course, he
+merely marked down, with discretion, his less-expensive stock of prints
+and muslins, nuns-veilings and muslin delaines, with a few fancy
+braidings and trimmings in guimp or bronze to enliven the affair. And
+Woodhouse bought cautiously.
+
+After the sale, however, James Houghton felt himself at liberty to
+plunge into an orgy of new stock. He flitted, with a tense look on his
+face, to Manchester. After which huge bundles, bales and boxes arrived
+in Woodhouse, and were dumped on the pavement of the shop. Friday
+evening came, and with it a revelation in Houghton’s window: the first
+piqués, the first strangely-woven and honey-combed toilet covers and
+bed quilts, the first frill-caps and aprons for maid-servants: a wonder
+in white. That was how James advertised it. “A Wonder in White.” Who
+knows but that he had been reading Wilkie Collins’ famous novel!
+
+As the nine days of the wonder-in-white passed and receded, James
+disappeared in the direction of London. A few Fridays later he came out
+with his Winter Touch. Weird and wonderful winter coats, for
+ladies—everything James handled was for ladies, he scorned the coarser
+sex—: weird and wonderful winter coats for ladies, of thick, black,
+pockmarked cloth, stood and flourished their bear-fur cuffs in the
+background, while tippets, boas, muffs and winter-fancies coquetted in
+front of the window-space. Friday-night crowds gathered outside: the
+gas-lamps shone their brightest: James Houghton hovered in the
+background like an author on his first night in the theatre. The result
+was a sensation. Ten villages stared and crushed round the plate glass.
+It was a sensation: but what sensation! In the breasts of the crowd,
+wonder, admiration, _fear_, and ridicule. Let us stress the word fear.
+The inhabitants of Woodhouse were afraid lest James Houghton should
+impose his standards upon them. His goods were in excellent taste: but
+his customers were in as bad taste as possible. They stood outside and
+pointed, giggled, and jeered. Poor James, like an author on his first
+night, saw his work fall more than flat.
+
+But still he believed in his own excellence: and quite justly. What he
+failed to perceive was that the crowd hated excellence. Woodhouse
+wanted a gently graduated progress in mediocrity, a mediocrity so stale
+and flat that it fell outside the imagination of any sensitive mortal.
+Woodhouse wanted a series of vulgar little thrills, as one tawdry
+mediocrity was imported from Nottingham or Birmingham to take the place
+of some tawdry mediocrity which Nottingham and Birmingham had already
+discarded. That Woodhouse, as a very condition of its own being, hated
+any approach to originality or real taste, this James Houghton could
+never learn. He thought he had not been clever enough, when he had been
+far, far too clever already. He always thought that Dame Fortune was a
+capricious and fastidious dame, a sort of Elizabeth of Austria or
+Alexandra, Princess of Wales, elegant beyond his grasp. Whereas Dame
+Fortune, even in London or Vienna, let alone in Woodhouse, was a vulgar
+woman of the middle and lower middle-class, ready to put her heavy foot
+on anything that was not vulgar, machine-made, and appropriate to the
+herd. When he saw his delicate originalities, as well as his faint
+flourishes of draper’s fantasy, squashed flat under the calm and solid
+foot of vulgar Dame Fortune, he fell into fits of depression bordering
+on mysticism, and talked to his wife in a vague way of higher
+influences and the angel Israfel. She, poor lady, was thoroughly scared
+by Israfel, and completely unhooked by the vagaries of James.
+
+At last—we hurry down the slope of James’ misfortunes—the real days of
+Houghton’s Great Sales began. Houghton’s Great Bargain Events were
+really events. After some years of hanging on, he let go splendidly. He
+marked down his prints, his chintzes, his dimities and his veilings
+with a grand and lavish hand. Bang went his blue pencil through 3/11,
+and nobly he subscribed 1/0-3/4. Prices fell like nuts. A lofty
+one-and-eleven rolled down to six-three, 1/6 magically shrank into
+4-3/4d, whilst good solid prints exposed themselves at 3-3/4d per yard.
+
+Now this was really an opportunity. Moreover the goods, having become a
+little stale during their years of ineffectuality, were beginning to
+approximate to the public taste. And besides, good sound stuff it was,
+no matter what the pattern. And so the little Woodhouse girls went to
+school in petties and drawers made of material which James had destined
+for fair summer dresses: petties and drawers of which the little
+Woodhouse girls were ashamed, for all that. For if they should chance
+to turn up their little skirts, be sure they would raise a chorus among
+their companions: “Yah-h-h, yer’ve got Houghton’s threp’ny draws on!”
+
+All this time James Houghton walked on air. He still saw the Fata
+Morgana snatching his fabrics round her lovely form, and pointing him
+to wealth untold. True, he became also Superintendent of the Sunday
+School. But whether this was an act of vanity, or whether it was an
+attempt to establish an Entente Cordiale with higher powers, who shall
+judge.
+
+Meanwhile his wife became more and more an invalid; the little Alvina
+was a pretty, growing child. Woodhouse was really impressed by the
+sight of Mrs. Houghton, small, pale and withheld, taking a walk with
+her dainty little girl, so fresh in an ermine tippet and a muff. Mrs.
+Houghton in shiny black bear’s-fur, the child in the white and spotted
+ermine, passing silent and shadowy down the street, made an impression
+which the people did not forget.
+
+But Mrs. Houghton had pains at her heart. If, during her walk, she saw
+two little boys having a scrimmage, she had to run to them with pence
+and entreaty, leaving them dumfounded, whilst she leaned blue at the
+lips against a wall. If she saw a carter crack his whip over the ears
+of the horse, as the horse laboured uphill, she had to cover her eyes
+and avert her face, and all her strength left her.
+
+So she stayed more and more in her room, and the child was given to the
+charge of a governess. Miss Frost was a handsome, vigorous young woman
+of about thirty years of age, with grey-white hair and gold-rimmed
+spectacles. The white hair was not at all tragical: it was a family
+_trait_.
+
+Miss Frost mattered more than any one else to Alvina Houghton, during
+the first long twenty-five years of the girl’s life. The governess was
+a strong, generous woman, a musician by nature. She had a sweet voice,
+and sang in the choir of the chapel, and took the first class of girls
+in the Sunday-School of which James Houghton was Superintendent. She
+disliked and rather despised James Houghton, saw in him elements of a
+hypocrite, detested his airy and gracious selfishness, his lack of
+human feeling, and most of all, his fairy fantasy. As James went
+further into life, he became a dreamer. Sad indeed that he died before
+the days of Freud. He enjoyed the most wonderful and fairy-like dreams,
+which he could describe perfectly, in charming, delicate language. At
+such times his beautifully modulated voice all but sang, his grey eyes
+gleamed fiercely under his bushy, hairy eyebrows, his pale face with
+its side-whiskers had a strange _lueur_, his long thin hands fluttered
+occasionally. He had become meagre in figure, his skimpy but genteel
+coat would be buttoned over his breast, as he recounted his
+dream-adventures, adventures that were half Edgar Allan Poe, half
+Andersen, with touches of Vathek and Lord Byron and George Macdonald:
+perhaps more than a touch of the last. Ladies were always struck by
+these accounts. But Miss Frost never felt so strongly moved to
+impatience as when she was within hearing.
+
+For twenty years, she and James Houghton treated each other with a
+courteous distance. Sometimes she broke into open impatience with him,
+sometimes he answered her tartly: “Indeed, indeed! Oh, indeed! Well,
+well, I’m sorry you find it so—” as if the injury consisted in her
+finding it so. Then he would flit away to the Conservative Club, with a
+fleet, light, hurried step, as if pressed by fate. At the club he
+played chess—at which he was excellent—and conversed. Then he flitted
+back at half-past twelve, to dinner.
+
+The whole morale of the house rested immediately on Miss Frost. She saw
+her line in the first year. She must defend the little Alvina, whom she
+loved as her own, and the nervous, petulant, heart-stricken woman, the
+mother, from the vagaries of James. Not that James had any vices. He
+did not drink or smoke, was abstemious and clean as an anchorite, and
+never lowered his fine tone. But still, the two unprotected ones must
+be sheltered from him. Miss Frost imperceptibly took into her hands the
+reins of the domestic government. Her rule was quiet, strong, and
+generous. She was not seeking her own way. She was steering the poor
+domestic ship of Manchester House, illuminating its dark rooms with her
+own sure, radiant presence: her silver-white hair, and her pale, heavy,
+reposeful face seemed to give off a certain radiance. She seemed to
+give weight, ballast, and repose to the staggering and bewildered home.
+She controlled the maid, and suggested the meals—meals which James ate
+without knowing what he ate. She brought in flowers and books, and,
+very rarely, a visitor. Visitors were out of place in the dark
+sombreness of Manchester House. Her flowers charmed the petulant
+invalid, her books she sometimes discussed with the airy James: after
+which discussions she was invariably filled with exasperation and
+impatience, whilst James invariably retired to the shop, and was heard
+raising his musical voice, which the work-girls hated, to one or other
+of the work-girls.
+
+James certainly had an irritating way of speaking of a book. He talked
+of incidents, and effects, and suggestions, as if the whole thing had
+just been a sensational-æsthetic attribute to himself. Not a grain of
+human feeling in the man, said Miss Frost, flushing pink with
+exasperation. She herself invariably took the human line.
+
+Meanwhile the shops began to take on a hopeless and frowsy look. After
+ten years’ sales, spring sales, summer sales, autumn sales, winter
+sales, James began to give up the drapery dream. He himself could not
+bear any more to put the heavy, pock-holed black cloth coat, with wild
+bear cuffs and collar, on to the stand. He had marked it down from five
+guineas to one guinea, and then, oh ignoble day, to ten-and-six. He
+nearly kissed the gipsy woman with a basket of tin saucepan-lids, when
+at last she bought it for five shillings, at the end of one of his
+winter sales. But even she, in spite of the bitter sleety day, would
+not put the coat on in the shop. She carried it over her arm down to
+the Miners’ Arms. And later, with a shock that really hurt him, James,
+peeping bird-like out of his shop door, saw her sitting driving a dirty
+rag-and-bone cart with a green-white, mouldy pony, and flourishing her
+arms like some wild and hairy-decorated squaw. For the long bear-fur,
+wet with sleet, seemed like a _chevaux de frise_ of long porcupine
+quills round her fore-arms and her neck. Yet such good, such wonderful
+material! James eyed it for one moment, and then fled like a rabbit to
+the stove in his back regions.
+
+The higher powers did not seem to fulfil the terms of treaty which
+James hoped for. He began to back out from the Entente. The Sunday
+School was a great trial to him. Instead of being carried away by his
+grace and eloquence, the nasty louts of colliery boys and girls openly
+banged their feet and made deafening noises when he tried to speak. He
+said many acid and withering things, as he stood there on the rostrum.
+But what is the good of saying acid things to those little fiends and
+gall-bladders, the colliery children. The situation was saved by Miss
+Frost’s sweeping together all the big girls, under her surveillance,
+and by her organizing that the tall and handsome blacksmith who taught
+the lower boys should extend his influence over the upper boys. His
+influence was more than effectual. It consisted in gripping any
+recalcitrant boy just above the knee, and jesting with him in a jocular
+manner, in the dialect. The blacksmith’s hand was all a blacksmith’s
+hand need be, and his dialect was as broad as could be wished. Between
+the grip and the homely idiom no boy could endure without squealing. So
+the Sunday School paid more attention to James, whose prayers were
+beautiful. But then one of the boys, a protegé of Miss Frost, having
+been left for half an hour in the obscure room with Mrs. Houghton, gave
+away the secret of the blacksmith’s grip, which secret so haunted the
+poor lady that it marked a stage in the increase of her malady, and
+made Sunday afternoon a nightmare to her. And then James Houghton
+resented something in the coarse Scotch manner of the minister of that
+day. So that the superintendency of the Sunday School came to an end.
+
+At the same time, Solomon had to divide his baby. That is, he let the
+London side of his shop to W. H. Johnson, the tailor and haberdasher, a
+parvenu little fellow whose English would not bear analysis. Bitter as
+it was, it had to be. Carpenters and joiners appeared, and the premises
+were completely severed. From her room in the shadows at the back the
+invalid heard the hammering and sawing, and suffered. W. H. Johnson
+came out with a spick-and-span window, and had his wife, a shrewd,
+quiet woman, and his daughter, a handsome, loud girl, to help him on
+Friday evenings. Men flocked in—even women, buying their husbands a
+sixpence-halfpenny tie. They could have bought a tie for four-three
+from James Houghton. But no, they would rather give sixpence-halfpenny
+for W.H. Johnson’s fresh but rubbishy stuff. And James, who had tried
+to rise to another successful sale, saw the streams pass into the other
+doorway, and heard the heavy feet on the hollow boards of the other
+shop: his shop no more.
+
+After this cut at his pride and integrity he lay in retirement for a
+while, mystically inclined. Probably he would have come to Swedenborg,
+had not his clipt wings spread for a new flight. He hit upon the
+brilliant idea of working up his derelict fabrics into ready-mades: not
+men’s clothes, oh no: women’s, or rather, ladies’. Ladies’ Tailoring,
+said the new announcement.
+
+James Houghton was happy once more. A zig-zag wooden stair-way was
+rigged up the high back of Manchester House. In the great lofts
+sewing-machines of various patterns and movements were installed. A
+manageress was advertised for, and work-girls were hired. So a new
+phase of life started. At half-past six in the morning there was a
+clatter of feet and of girls’ excited tongues along the back-yard and
+up the wooden stair-way outside the back wall. The poor invalid heard
+every clack and every vibration. She could never get over her nervous
+apprehension of an invasion. Every morning alike, she felt an invasion
+of some enemy was breaking in on her. And all day long the low, steady
+rumble of sewing-machines overhead seemed like the low drumming of a
+bombardment upon her weak heart. To make matters worse, James Houghton
+decided that he must have his sewing-machines driven by some
+extra-human force. He installed another plant of machinery—acetylene or
+some such contrivance—which was intended to drive all the little
+machines from one big belt. Hence a further throbbing and shaking in
+the upper regions, truly terrible to endure. But, fortunately or
+unfortunately, the acetylene plant was not a success. Girls got their
+thumbs pierced, and sewing machines absolutely refused to stop sewing,
+once they had started, and absolutely refused to start, once they had
+stopped. So that after a while, one loft was reserved for disused and
+rusty, but expensive engines.
+
+Dame Fortune, who had refused to be taken by fine fabrics and fancy
+trimmings, was just as reluctant to be captured by ready-mades. Again
+the good dame was thoroughly lower middle-class. James Houghton
+designed “robes.” Now Robes were the mode. Perhaps it was Alexandra,
+Princess of Wales, who gave glory to the slim, glove-fitting Princess
+Robe. Be that as it may, James Houghton designed robes. His work-girls,
+a race even more callous than shop-girls, proclaimed the fact that
+James tried on his own inventions upon his own elegant thin person,
+before the privacy of his own cheval mirror. And even if he did, why
+not? Miss Frost, hearing this legend, looked sideways at the
+enthusiast.
+
+Let us remark in time that Miss Frost had already ceased to draw any
+maintenance from James Houghton. Far from it, she herself contributed
+to the upkeep of the domestic hearth and board. She had fully decided
+never to leave her two charges. She knew that a governess was an
+impossible item in Manchester House, as things went. And so she trudged
+the country, giving music lessons to the daughters of tradesmen and of
+colliers who boasted pianofortes. She even taught heavy-handed but
+dauntless colliers, who were seized with a passion to “play.” Miles she
+trudged, on her round from village to village: a white-haired woman
+with a long, quick stride, a strong figure, and a quick, handsome smile
+when once her face awoke behind her gold-rimmed glasses. Like many
+short-sighted people, she had a certain intent look of one who goes her
+own way.
+
+The miners knew her, and entertained the highest respect and admiration
+for her. As they streamed in a grimy stream home from pit, they
+diverged like some magic dark river from off the pavement into the
+horse-way, to give her room as she approached. And the men who knew her
+well enough to salute her, by calling her name “Miss Frost!” giving it
+the proper intonation of salute, were fussy men indeed. “She’s a lady
+if ever there was one,” they said. And they meant it. Hearing her name,
+poor Miss Frost would flash a smile and a nod from behind her
+spectacles, but whose black face she smiled to she never, or rarely
+knew. If she did chance to get an inkling, then gladly she called in
+reply “Mr. Lamb,” or “Mr. Calladine.” In her way she was a proud woman,
+for she was regarded with cordial respect, touched with veneration, by
+at least a thousand colliers, and by perhaps as many colliers’ wives.
+That is something, for any woman.
+
+Miss Frost charged fifteen shillings for thirteen weeks’ lessons, two
+lessons a week. And at that she was considered rather dear. She was
+supposed to be making money. What money she made went chiefly to
+support the Houghton household. In the meanwhile she drilled Alvina
+thoroughly in theory and pianoforte practice, for Alvina was naturally
+musical, and besides this she imparted to the girl the elements of a
+young lady’s education, including the drawing of flowers in
+water-colour, and the translation of a Lamartine poem.
+
+Now incredible as it may seem, fate threw another prop to the falling
+house of Houghton, in the person of the manageress of the work-girls,
+Miss Pinnegar. James Houghton complained of Fortune, yet to what other
+man would Fortune have sent two such women as Miss Frost and Miss
+Pinnegar, _gratis_? Yet there they were. And doubtful if James was ever
+grateful for their presence.
+
+If Miss Frost saved him from heaven knows what domestic débâcle and
+horror, Miss Pinnegar saved him from the workhouse. Let us not mince
+matters. For a dozen years Miss Frost supported the heart-stricken,
+nervous invalid, Clariss Houghton: for more than twenty years she
+cherished, tended and protected the young Alvina, shielding the child
+alike from a neurotic mother and a father such as James. For nearly
+twenty years she saw that food was set on the table, and clean sheets
+were spread on the beds: and all the time remained virtually in the
+position of an outsider, without one grain of established authority.
+
+And then to find Miss Pinnegar! In her way, Miss Pinnegar was very
+different from Miss Frost. She was a rather short, stout,
+mouse-coloured, creepy kind of woman with a high colour in her cheeks,
+and dun, close hair like a cap. It was evident she was not a lady: her
+grammar was not without reproach. She had pale grey eyes, and a padding
+step, and a soft voice, and almost purplish cheeks. Mrs. Houghton, Miss
+Frost, and Alvina did not like her. They suffered her unwillingly.
+
+But from the first she had a curious ascendancy over James Houghton.
+One would have expected his æsthetic eye to be offended. But no doubt
+it was her voice: her soft, near, sure voice, which seemed almost like
+a secret touch upon her hearer. Now many of her hearers disliked being
+secretly touched, as it were beneath their clothing. Miss Frost
+abhorred it: so did Mrs. Houghton. Miss Frost’s voice was clear and
+straight as a bell-note, open as the day. Yet Alvina, though in loyalty
+she adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, did not really mind the quiet
+suggestive power of Miss Pinnegar. For Miss Pinnegar was not vulgarly
+insinuating. On the contrary, the things she said were rather clumsy
+and downright. It was only that she seemed to weigh what she said,
+secretly, before she said it, and then she approached as if she would
+slip it into her hearer’s consciousness without his being aware of it.
+She seemed to slide her speeches unnoticed into one’s ears, so that one
+accepted them without the slightest challenge. That was just her manner
+of approach. In her own way, she was as loyal and unselfish as Miss
+Frost. There are such poles of opposition between honesties and
+loyalties.
+
+Miss Pinnegar had the _second_ class of girls in the Sunday School, and
+she took second, subservient place in Manchester House. By force of
+nature, Miss Frost took first place. Only when Miss Pinnegar spoke to
+Mr. Houghton—nay, the very way she addressed herself to him—“What do
+_you_ think, Mr. Houghton?”—then there seemed to be assumed an
+immediacy of correspondence between the two, and an unquestioned
+priority in their unison, his and hers, which was a cruel thorn in Miss
+Frost’s outspoken breast. This sort of secret intimacy and secret
+exulting in having, _really_, the chief power, was most repugnant to
+the white-haired woman. Not that there was, in fact, any secrecy, or
+any form of unwarranted correspondence between James Houghton and Miss
+Pinnegar. Far from it. Each of them would have found any suggestion of
+such a possibility repulsive in the extreme. It was simply an implicit
+correspondence between their two psyches, an immediacy of understanding
+which preceded all expression, tacit, wireless.
+
+Miss Pinnegar lived in: so that the household consisted of the invalid,
+who mostly sat, in her black dress with a white lace collar fastened by
+a twisted gold brooch, in her own dim room, doing nothing, nervous and
+heart-suffering; then James, and the thin young Alvina, who adhered to
+her beloved Miss Frost, and then these two strange women. Miss Pinnegar
+never lifted up her voice in household affairs: she seemed, by her
+silence, to admit her own inadequacy in culture and intellect, when
+topics of interest were being discussed, only coming out now and then
+with defiant platitudes and truisms—for almost defiantly she took the
+commonplace, vulgarian point of view; yet after everything she would
+turn with her quiet, triumphant assurance to James Houghton, and start
+on some point of business, soft, assured, ascendant. The others shut
+their ears.
+
+Now Miss Pinnegar had to get her footing slowly. She had to let James
+run the gamut of his creations. Each Friday night new wonders, robes
+and ladies’ “suits”—the phrase was very new—garnished the window of
+Houghton’s shop. It was one of the sights of the place, Houghton’s
+window on Friday night. Young or old, no individual, certainly no
+female left Woodhouse without spending an excited and usually hilarious
+ten minutes on the pavement under the window. Muffled shrieks of young
+damsels who had just got their first view, guffaws of sympathetic
+youths, continued giggling and expostulation and “Eh, but what price
+the umbrella skirt, my girl!” and “You’d like to marry me in _that_, my
+boy—what? not half!”—or else “Eh, now, if you’d seen me in _that_ you’d
+have fallen in love with me at first sight, shouldn’t you?”—with a
+probable answer “I should have fallen over myself making haste to get
+away”—loud guffaws:—all this was the regular Friday night’s
+entertainment in Woodhouse. James Houghton’s shop was regarded as a
+weekly comic issue. His piqué costumes with glass buttons and sort of
+steel-trimming collars and cuffs were immortal.
+
+But why, once more, drag it out. Miss Pinnegar served in the shop on
+Friday nights. She stood by her man. Sometimes when the shrieks grew
+loudest she came to the shop door and looked with her pale grey eyes at
+the ridiculous mob of lasses in tam-o-shanters and youths half buried
+in caps. And she imposed a silence. They edged away.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Pinnegar pursued the sober and even tenor of her own
+way. Whilst James lashed out, to use the local phrase, in robes and
+“suits,” Miss Pinnegar steadily ground away, producing strong,
+indestructible shirts and singlets for the colliers, sound, serviceable
+aprons for the colliers’ wives, good print dresses for servants, and so
+on. She executed no flights of fancy. She had her goods made to suit
+her people. And so, underneath the foam and froth of James’ creative
+adventure flowed a slow but steady stream of output and income. The
+women of Woodhouse came at last to _depend_ on Miss Pinnegar. Growing
+lads in the pit reduce their garments to shreds with amazing
+expedition. “I’ll go to Miss Pinnegar for thy shirts this time, my
+lad,” said the harassed mothers, “and see if _they’ll_ stand thee.” It
+was almost like a threat. But it served Manchester House.
+
+James bought very little stock in these days: just remnants and pieces
+for his immortal robes. It was Miss Pinnegar who saw the travellers and
+ordered the unions and calicoes and grey flannel. James hovered round
+and said the last word, of course. But what was his last word but an
+echo of Miss Pinnegar’s penultimate! He was not interested in unions
+and twills.
+
+His own stock remained on hand. Time, like a slow whirlpool churned it
+over into sight and out of sight, like a mass of dead sea-weed in a
+backwash. There was a regular series of sales fortnightly. The display
+of “creations” fell off. The new entertainment was the Friday-night’s
+sale. James would attack some portion of his stock, make a wild jumble
+of it, spend a delirious Wednesday and Thursday marking down, and then
+open on Friday afternoon. In the evening there was a crush. A good
+moiré underskirt for one-and-eleven-three was not to be neglected, and
+a handsome string-lace collarette for six-three would iron out and be
+worth at least three-and-six. That was how it went: it would nearly all
+of it iron out into something really nice, poor James’ crumpled stock.
+His fine, semi-transparent face flushed pink, his eyes flashed as he
+took in the sixpences and handed back knots of tape or packets of pins
+for the notorious farthings. What matter if the farthing change had
+originally cost him a halfpenny! His shop was crowded with women
+peeping and pawing and turning things over and commenting in loud,
+unfeeling tones. For there were still many comic items. Once, for
+example, he suddenly heaped up piles of hats, trimmed and untrimmed,
+the weirdest, sauciest, most screaming shapes. Woodhouse enjoyed itself
+that night.
+
+And all the time, in her quiet, polite, think-the-more fashion Miss
+Pinnegar waited on the people, showing them considerable forbearance
+and just a tinge of contempt. She became very tired those evenings—her
+hair under its invisible hairnet became flatter, her cheeks hung down
+purplish and mottled. But while James stood she stood. The people did
+not like her, yet she influenced them. And the stock slowly wilted,
+withered. Some was scrapped. The shop seemed to have digested some of
+its indigestible contents.
+
+James accumulated sixpences in a miserly fashion. Luckily for her
+work-girls, Miss Pinnegar took her own orders, and received payments
+for her own productions. Some of her regular customers paid her a
+shilling a week—or less. But it made a small, steady income. She
+reserved her own modest share, paid the expenses of her department, and
+left the residue to James.
+
+James had accumulated sixpences, and made a little space in his shop.
+He had desisted from “creations.” Time now for a new flight. He decided
+it was better to be a manufacturer than a tradesman. His shop, already
+only half its original size, was again too big. It might be split once
+more. Rents had risen in Woodhouse. Why not cut off another shop from
+his premises?
+
+No sooner said than done. In came the architect, with whom he had
+played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one
+good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left a
+little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present
+space. But as we age we dwindle.
+
+More hammering and alterations, and James found himself cooped in a
+long, long narrow shop, very dark at the back, with a high oblong
+window and a door that came in at a pinched corner. Next door to him
+was a cheerful new grocer of the cheap and florid type. The new grocer
+whistled “Just Like the Ivy,” and shouted boisterously to his shop-boy.
+In his doorway, protruding on James’ sensitive vision, was a pyramid of
+sixpence-halfpenny tins of salmon, red, shiny tins with pink halved
+salmons depicted, and another yellow pyramid of four-pence-halfpenny
+tins of pineapple. Bacon dangled in pale rolls _almost_ over James’
+doorway, whilst straw and paper, redolent of cheese, lard, and stale
+eggs filtered through the threshold.
+
+This was coming down in the world, with a vengeance. But what James
+lost downstairs he tried to recover upstairs. Heaven knows what he
+would have done, but for Miss Pinnegar. She kept her own work-rooms
+against him, with a soft, heavy, silent tenacity that would have beaten
+stronger men than James. But his strength lay in his pliability. He
+rummaged in the empty lofts, and among the discarded machinery. He
+rigged up the engines afresh, bought two new machines, and started an
+elastic department, making elastic for garters and for hat-chins.
+
+He was immensely proud of his first cards of elastic, and saw Dame
+Fortune this time fast in his yielding hands. But, becoming used to
+disillusionment, he almost welcomed it. Within six months he realized
+that every inch of elastic cost him exactly sixty per cent. more than
+he could sell it for, and so he scrapped his new department. Luckily,
+he sold one machine and even gained two pounds on it.
+
+After this, he made one last effort. This was hosiery webbing, which
+could be cut up and made into as-yet-unheard-of garments. Miss Pinnegar
+kept her thumb on this enterprise, so that it was not much more than
+abortive. And then James left her alone.
+
+Meanwhile the shop slowly churned its oddments. Every Thursday
+afternoon James sorted out tangles of bits and bobs, antique garments
+and occasional finds. With these he trimmed his window, so that it
+looked like a historical museum, rather soiled and scrappy. Indoors he
+made baskets of assortments: threepenny, sixpenny, ninepenny and
+shilling baskets, rather like a bran pie in which everything was a
+plum. And then, on Friday evening, thin and alert he hovered behind the
+counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his narrow chest, his face
+agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers, so that they only grew
+becomingly as low as his ears. His rather large, grey moustache was
+brushed off his mouth. His hair, gone very thin, was brushed frail and
+floating over his baldness. But still a gentleman, still courteous,
+with a charming voice he suggested the possibilities of a pad of green
+parrots’ tail-feathers, or of a few yards of pink-pearl trimming or of
+old chenille fringe. The women would pinch the thick, exquisite old
+chenille fringe, delicate and faded, curious to feel its softness. But
+they wouldn’t give threepence for it. Tapes, ribbons, braids, buttons,
+feathers, jabots, bussels, appliqués, fringes, jet-trimmings,
+bugle-trimmings, bundles of old coloured machine-lace, many bundles of
+strange cord, in all colours, for old-fashioned braid-patterning,
+ribbons with H.M.S. Birkenhead, for boys’ sailor caps—everything that
+nobody wanted, did the women turn over and over, till they chanced on a
+find. And James’ quick eyes watched the slow surge of his flotsam, as
+the pot boiled but did not boil away. Wonderful that he did not think
+of the days when these bits and bobs were new treasures. But he did
+not.
+
+And at his side Miss Pinnegar quietly took orders for shirts, discussed
+and agreed, made measurements and received instalments.
+
+The shop was now only opened on Friday afternoons and evenings, so
+every day, twice a day, James was seen dithering bare-headed and
+hastily down the street, as if pressed by fate, to the Conservative
+Club, and twice a day he was seen as hastily returning, to his meals.
+He was becoming an old man: his daughter was a young woman: but in his
+own mind he was just the same, and his daughter was a little child, his
+wife a young invalid whom he must charm by some few delicate
+attentions—such as the peeled apple.
+
+At the club he got into more mischief. He met men who wanted to extend
+a brickfield down by the railway. The brickfield was called Klondyke.
+James had now a new direction to run in: down hill towards Bagthorpe,
+to Klondyke. Big penny-daisies grew in tufts on the brink of the yellow
+clay at Klondyke, yellow eggs-and-bacon spread their midsummer mats of
+flower. James came home with clay smeared all over him, discoursing
+brilliantly on grit and paste and presses and kilns and stamps. He
+carried home a rough and pinkish brick, and gloated over it. It was a
+_hard_ brick, it was a non-porous brick. It was an ugly brick,
+painfully heavy and parched-looking.
+
+This time he was sure: Dame Fortune would rise like Persephone out of
+the earth. He was all the more sure, because other men of the town were
+in with him at this venture: sound, moneyed grocers and plumbers. They
+were all going to become rich.
+
+Klondyke lasted a year and a half, and was not so bad, for in the end,
+all things considered, James had lost not more than five per cent. of
+his money. In fact, all things considered, he was about square. And yet
+he felt Klondyke as the greatest blow of all. Miss Pinnegar would have
+aided and abetted him in another scheme, if it would but have cheered
+him. Even Miss Frost was nice with him. But to no purpose. In the year
+after Klondyke he became an old man, he seemed to have lost all his
+feathers, he acquired a plucked, tottering look.
+
+Yet he roused up, after a coal-strike. Throttle-Ha’penny put new life
+into him. During a coal-strike the miners themselves began digging in
+the fields, just near the houses, for the surface coal. They found a
+plentiful seam of drossy, yellowish coal behind the Methodist New
+Connection Chapel. The seam was opened in the side of a bank, and
+approached by a footrill, a sloping shaft down which the men walked.
+When the strike was over, two or three miners still remained working
+the soft, drossy coal, which they sold for eight-and-sixpence a ton—or
+sixpence a hundredweight. But a mining population scorned such dirt, as
+they called it.
+
+James Houghton, however, was seized with a desire to work the
+Connection Meadow seam, as he called it. He gathered two miner
+partners—he trotted endlessly up to the field, he talked, as he had
+never talked before, with inumerable colliers. Everybody he met he
+stopped, to talk Connection Meadow.
+
+And so at last he sank a shaft, sixty feet deep, rigged up a
+corrugated-iron engine-house with a winding-engine, and lowered his men
+one at a time down the shaft, in a big bucket. The whole affair was
+ricketty, amateurish, and twopenny. The name Connection Meadow was
+forgotten within three months. Everybody knew the place as
+Throttle-Ha’penny. “What!” said a collier to his wife: “have we got no
+coal? You’d better get a bit from Throttle-Ha’penny.” “Nay,” replied
+the wife, “I’m sure I shan’t. I’m sure I shan’t burn that muck, and
+smother myself with white ash.”
+
+It was in the early Throttle-Ha’penny days that Mrs. Houghton died.
+James Houghton cried, and put a black band on his Sunday silk hat. But
+he was too feverishly busy at Throttle-Ha’penny, selling his
+hundredweights of ash-pit fodder, as the natives called it, to realize
+anything else.
+
+He had three men and two boys working his pit, besides a superannuated
+old man driving the winding engine. And in spite of all jeering, he
+flourished. Shabby old coal-carts rambled up behind the New Connection,
+and filled from the pit-bank. The coal improved a little in quality: it
+was cheap and it was handy. James could sell at last fifty or sixty
+tons a week: for the stuff was easy getting. And now at last he was
+actually handling money. He saw millions ahead.
+
+This went on for more than a year. A year after the death of Mrs.
+Houghton, Miss Frost became ill and suddenly died. Again James Houghton
+cried and trembled. But it was Throttle-Ha’penny that made him tremble.
+He trembled in all his limbs, at the touch of success. He saw himself
+making noble provision for his only daughter.
+
+But alas—it is wearying to repeat the same thing over and over. First
+the Board of Trade began to make difficulties. Then there was a fault
+in the seam. Then the roof of Throttle-Ha’penny was so loose and soft,
+James could not afford timber to hold it up. In short, when his
+daughter Alvina was about twenty-seven years old, Throttle-Ha’penny
+closed down. There was a sale of poor machinery, and James Houghton
+came home to the dark, gloomy house—to Miss Pinnegar and Alvina.
+
+It was a pinched, dreary house. James seemed down for the last time.
+But Miss Pinnegar persuaded him to take the shop again on Friday
+evening. For the rest, faded and peaked, he hurried shadowily down to
+the club.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON
+
+
+The heroine of this story is Alvina Houghton. If we leave her out of
+the first chapter of her own story it is because, during the first
+twenty-five years of her life, she really was left out of count, or so
+overshadowed as to be negligible. She and her mother were the phantom
+passengers in the ship of James Houghton’s fortunes.
+
+In Manchester House, every voice lowered its tone. And so from the
+first Alvina spoke with a quiet, refined, almost convent voice. She was
+a thin child with delicate limbs and face, and wide, grey-blue, ironic
+eyes. Even as a small girl she had that odd ironic tilt of the eyelids
+which gave her a look as if she were hanging back in mockery. If she
+were, she was quite unaware of it, for under Miss Frost’s care she
+received no education in irony or mockery. Miss Frost was
+straightforward, good-humoured, and a little earnest. Consequently
+Alvina, or Vina as she was called, understood only the explicit mode of
+good-humoured straightforwardness.
+
+It was doubtful which shadow was greater over the child: that of
+Manchester House, gloomy and a little sinister, or that of Miss Frost,
+benevolent and protective. Sufficient that the girl herself worshipped
+Miss Frost: or believed she did.
+
+Alvina never went to school. She had her lessons from her beloved
+governess, she worked at the piano, she took her walks, and for social
+life she went to the Congregational Chapel, and to the functions
+connected with the chapel. While she was little, she went to Sunday
+School twice and to Chapel once on Sundays. Then occasionally there was
+a magic lantern or a penny reading, to which Miss Frost accompanied
+her. As she grew older she entered the choir at chapel, she attended
+Christian Endeavour and P.S.A., and the Literary Society on Monday
+evenings. Chapel provided her with a whole social activity, in the
+course of which she met certain groups of people, made certain friends,
+found opportunity for strolls into the country and jaunts to the local
+entertainments. Over and above this, every Thursday evening she went to
+the subscription library to change the week’s supply of books, and
+there again she met friends and acquaintances. It is hard to
+overestimate the value of church or chapel—but particularly chapel—as a
+social institution, in places like Woodhouse. The Congregational Chapel
+provided Alvina with a whole outer life, lacking which she would have
+been poor indeed. She was not particularly religious by inclination.
+Perhaps her father’s beautiful prayers put her off. So she neither
+questioned nor accepted, but just let be.
+
+She grew up a slim girl, rather distinguished in appearance, with a
+slender face, a fine, slightly arched nose, and beautiful grey-blue
+eyes over which the lids tilted with a very odd, sardonic tilt. The
+sardonic quality was, however, quite in abeyance. She was ladylike, not
+vehement at all. In the street her walk had a delicate, lingering
+motion, her face looked still. In conversation she had rather a quick,
+hurried manner, with intervals of well-bred repose and attention. Her
+voice was like her father’s, flexible and curiously attractive.
+
+Sometimes, however, she would have fits of boisterous hilarity, not
+quite natural, with a strange note half pathetic, half jeering. Her
+father tended to a supercilious, sneering tone. In Vina it came out in
+mad bursts of hilarious jeering. This made Miss Frost uneasy. She would
+watch the girl’s strange face, that could take on a gargoyle look. She
+would see the eyes rolling strangely under sardonic eyelids, and then
+Miss Frost would feel that never, never had she known anything so
+utterly alien and incomprehensible and unsympathetic as her own beloved
+Vina. For twenty years the strong, protective governess reared and
+tended her lamb, her dove, only to see the lamb open a wolf’s mouth, to
+hear the dove utter the wild cackle of a daw or a magpie, a strange
+sound of derision. At such times Miss Frost’s heart went cold within
+her. She dared not realize. And she chid and checked her ward, restored
+her to the usual impulsive, affectionate demureness. Then she dismissed
+the whole matter. It was just an accidental aberration on the girl’s
+part from her own true nature. Miss Frost taught Alvina thoroughly the
+qualities of her own true nature, and Alvina believed what she was
+taught. She remained for twenty years the demure, refined creature of
+her governess’ desire. But there was an odd, derisive look at the back
+of her eyes, a look of old knowledge and deliberate derision. She
+herself was unconscious of it. But it was there. And this it was,
+perhaps, that scared away the young men.
+
+Alvina reached the age of twenty-three, and it looked as if she were
+destined to join the ranks of the old maids, so many of whom found cold
+comfort in the Chapel. For she had no suitors. True there were
+extraordinarily few young men of her class—for whatever her condition,
+she had certain breeding and inherent culture—in Woodhouse. The young
+men of the same social standing as herself were in some curious way
+outsiders to her. Knowing nothing, yet her ancient sapience went deep,
+deeper than Woodhouse could fathom. The young men did not like her for
+it. They did not like the tilt of her eyelids.
+
+Miss Frost, with anxious foreseeing, persuaded the girl to take over
+some pupils, to teach them the piano. The work was distasteful to
+Alvina. She was not a good teacher. She persevered in an off-hand way,
+somewhat indifferent, albeit dutiful.
+
+When she was twenty-three years old, Alvina met a man called Graham. He
+was an Australian, who had been in Edinburgh taking his medical degree.
+Before going back to Australia, he came to spend some months practising
+with old Dr. Fordham in Woodhouse—Dr. Fordham being in some way
+connected with his mother.
+
+Alexander Graham called to see Mrs. Houghton. Mrs. Houghton did not
+like him. She said he was creepy. He was a man of medium height, dark
+in colouring, with very dark eyes, and a body which seemed to move
+inside his clothing. He was amiable and polite, laughed often, showing
+his teeth. It was his teeth which Miss Frost could not stand. She
+seemed to see a strong mouthful of cruel, compact teeth. She declared
+he had dark blood in his veins, that he was not a man to be trusted,
+and that never, never would he make any woman’s life happy.
+
+Yet in spite of all, Alvina was attracted by him. The two would stay
+together in the parlour, laughing and talking by the hour. What they
+could find to talk about was a mystery. Yet there they were, laughing
+and chatting, with a running insinuating sound through it all which
+made Miss Frost pace up and down unable to bear herself.
+
+The man was always running in when Miss Frost was out. He contrived to
+meet Alvina in the evening, to take a walk with her. He went a long
+walk with her one night, and wanted to make love to her. But her
+upbringing was too strong for her.
+
+“Oh no,” she said. “We are only friends.”
+
+He knew her upbringing was too strong for him also.
+
+“We’re more than friends,” he said. “We’re more than friends.”
+
+“I don’t think so,” she said.
+
+“Yes we are,” he insisted, trying to put his arm round her waist.
+
+“Oh, don’t!” she cried. “Let us go home.”
+
+And then he burst out with wild and thick protestations of love, which
+thrilled her and repelled her slightly.
+
+“Anyhow I must tell Miss Frost,” she said.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he answered. “Yes, yes. Let us be engaged at once.”
+
+As they passed under the lamps he saw her face lifted, the eyes
+shining, the delicate nostrils dilated, as of one who scents battle and
+laughs to herself. She seemed to laugh with a certain proud, sinister
+recklessness. His hands trembled with desire.
+
+So they were engaged. He bought her a ring, an emerald set in tiny
+diamonds. Miss Frost looked grave and silent, but would not openly deny
+her approval.
+
+“You like him, don’t you? You don’t dislike him?” Alvina insisted.
+
+“I don’t dislike him,” replied Miss Frost. “How can I? He is a perfect
+stranger to me.”
+
+And with this Alvina subtly contented herself. Her father treated the
+young man with suave attention, punctuated by fits of jerky hostility
+and jealousy. Her mother merely sighed, and took sal volatile.
+
+To tell the truth, Alvina herself was a little repelled by the man’s
+love-making. She found him fascinating, but a trifle repulsive. And she
+was not sure whether she hated the repulsive element, or whether she
+rather gloried in it. She kept her look of arch, half-derisive
+recklessness, which was so unbearably painful to Miss Frost, and so
+exciting to the dark little man. It was a strange look in a refined,
+really virgin girl—oddly sinister. And her voice had a curious
+bronze-like resonance that acted straight on the nerves of her hearers:
+unpleasantly on most English nerves, but like fire on the different
+susceptibilities of the young man—the darkie, as people called him.
+
+But after all, he had only six weeks in England, before sailing to
+Sydney. He suggested that he and Alvina should marry before he sailed.
+Miss Frost would not hear of it. He must see his people first, she
+said.
+
+So the time passed, and he sailed. Alvina missed him, missed the
+extreme excitement of him rather than the human being he was. Miss
+Frost set to work to regain her influence over her ward, to remove that
+arch, reckless, almost lewd look from the girl’s face. It was a
+question of heart against sensuality. Miss Frost tried and tried to
+wake again the girl’s loving heart—which loving heart was certainly not
+occupied by _that man_. It was a hard task, an anxious, bitter task
+Miss Frost had set herself.
+
+But at last she succeeded. Alvina seemed to thaw. The hard shining of
+her eyes softened again to a sort of demureness and tenderness. The
+influence of the man was revoked, the girl was left uninhabited, empty
+and uneasy.
+
+She was due to follow her Alexander in three months’ time, to Sydney.
+Came letters from him, en route—and then a cablegram from Australia. He
+had arrived. Alvina should have been preparing her trousseau, to
+follow. But owing to her change of heart, she lingered indecisive.
+
+“_Do_ you love him, dear?” said Miss Frost with emphasis, knitting her
+thick, passionate, earnest eyebrows. “Do you love him sufficiently?
+_That’s_ the point.”
+
+The way Miss Frost put the question implied that Alvina did not and
+could not love him—because Miss Frost could not. Alvina lifted her
+large, blue eyes, confused, half-tender towards her governess, half
+shining with unconscious derision.
+
+“I don’t really know,” she said, laughing hurriedly. “I don’t really.”
+
+Miss Frost scrutinized her, and replied with a meaningful:
+
+“Well—!”
+
+To Miss Frost it was clear as daylight. To Alvina not so. In her
+periods of lucidity, when she saw as clear as daylight also, she
+certainly did not love the little man. She felt him a terrible
+outsider, an inferior, to tell the truth. She wondered how he could
+have the slightest attraction for her. In fact she could not understand
+it at all. She was as free of him as if he had never existed. The
+square green emerald on her finger was almost non-sensical. She was
+quite, quite sure of herself.
+
+And then, most irritating, a complete _volte face_ in her feelings. The
+clear-as-daylight mood disappeared as daylight is bound to disappear.
+She found herself in a night where the little man loomed large,
+terribly large, potent and magical, while Miss Frost had dwindled to
+nothingness. At such times she wished with all her force that she could
+travel like a cablegram to Australia. She felt it was the only way. She
+felt the dark, passionate receptivity of Alexander overwhelmed her,
+enveloped her even from the Antipodes. She felt herself going
+distracted—she felt she was going out of her mind. For she could not
+act.
+
+Her mother and Miss Frost were fixed in one line. Her father said:
+
+“Well, of course, you’ll do as you think best. There’s a great risk in
+going so far—a great risk. You would be entirely unprotected.”
+
+“I don’t mind being unprotected,” said Alvina perversely.
+
+“Because you don’t understand what it means,” said her father.
+
+He looked at her quickly. Perhaps he understood her better than the
+others.
+
+“Personally,” said Miss Pinnegar, speaking of Alexander, “I don’t care
+for him. But every one has their own taste.”
+
+Alvina felt she was being overborne, and that she was letting herself
+be overborne. She was half relieved. She seemed to nestle into the
+well-known surety of Woodhouse. The other unknown had frightened her.
+
+Miss Frost now took a definite line.
+
+“I feel you don’t love him, dear. I’m almost sure you don’t. So now you
+have to choose. Your mother dreads your going—she dreads it. I am
+certain you would never see her again. She says she can’t bear it—she
+can’t bear the thought of you out there with Alexander. It makes her
+shudder. She suffers dreadfully, you know. So you will have to choose,
+dear. You will have to choose for the best.”
+
+Alvina was made stubborn by pressure. She herself had come fully to
+believe that she did not love him. She was quite sure she did not love
+him. But out of a certain perversity, she wanted to go.
+
+Came his letter from Sydney, and one from his parents to her and one to
+her parents. All seemed straightforward—not _very_ cordial, but
+sufficiently. Over Alexander’s letter Miss Frost shed bitter tears. To
+her it seemed so shallow and heartless, with terms of endearment stuck
+in like exclamation marks. He semed to have no thought, no feeling for
+the girl herself. All he wanted was to hurry her out there. He did not
+even mention the grief of her parting from her English parents and
+friends: not a word. Just a rush to get her out there, winding up with
+“And now, dear, I shall not be myself till I see you here in
+Sydney—Your ever-loving Alexander.” A selfish, sensual creature, who
+would forget the dear little Vina in three months, if she did not turn
+up, and who would neglect her in six months, if she did. Probably Miss
+Frost was right.
+
+Alvina knew the tears she was costing all round. She went upstairs and
+looked at his photograph—his dark and impertinent muzzle. Who was _he_,
+after all? She did not know him. With cold eyes she looked at him, and
+found him repugnant.
+
+She went across to her governess’s room, and found Miss Frost in a
+strange mood of trepidation.
+
+“Don’t trust me, dear, don’t trust what I say,” poor Miss Frost
+ejaculated hurriedly, even wildly. “Don’t notice what I have said. Act
+for yourself, dear. Act for yourself entirely. I am sure I am wrong in
+trying to influence you. I know I am wrong. It is wrong and foolish of
+me. Act just for yourself, dear—the rest doesn’t matter. The rest
+doesn’t matter. Don’t take _any_ notice of what I have said. I know I
+am wrong.”
+
+For the first time in her life Alvina saw her beloved governess
+flustered, the beautiful white hair looking a little draggled, the
+grey, near-sighted eyes, so deep and kind behind the gold-rimmed
+glasses, now distracted and scared. Alvina immediately burst into tears
+and flung herself into the arms of Miss Frost. Miss Frost also cried as
+if her heart would break, catching her indrawn breath with a strange
+sound of anguish, forlornness, the terrible crying of a woman with a
+loving heart, whose heart has never been able to relax. Alvina was
+hushed. In a second, she became the elder of the two. The terrible
+poignancy of the woman of fifty-two, who now at last had broken down,
+silenced the girl of twenty-three, and roused all her passionate
+tenderness. The terrible sound of “Never now, never now—it is too
+late,” which seemed to ring in the curious, indrawn cries of the elder
+woman, filled the girl with a deep wisdom. She knew the same would ring
+in her mother’s dying cry. Married or unmarried, it was the same—the
+same anguish, realized in all its pain after the age of fifty—the loss
+in never having been able to relax, to submit.
+
+Alvina felt very strong and rich in the fact of her youth. For her it
+was not too late. For Miss Frost it was for ever too late.
+
+“I don’t want to go, dear,” said Alvina to the elder woman. “I know I
+don’t care for him. He is nothing to me.”
+
+Miss Frost became gradually silent, and turned aside her face. After
+this there was a hush in the house. Alvina announced her intention of
+breaking off her engagement. Her mother kissed her, and cried, and
+said, with the selfishness of an invalid:
+
+“I couldn’t have parted with you, I couldn’t.” Whilst the father said:
+
+“I think you are wise, Vina. I have thought a lot about it.”
+
+So Alvina packed up his ring and his letters and little presents, and
+posted them over the seas. She was relieved, really: as if she had
+escaped some very trying ordeal. For some days she went about happily,
+in pure relief. She loved everybody. She was charming and sunny and
+gentle with everybody, particularly with Miss Frost, whom she loved
+with a deep, tender, rather sore love. Poor Miss Frost seemed to have
+lost a part of her confidence, to have taken on a new wistfulness, a
+new silence and remoteness. It was as if she found her busy contact
+with life a strain now. Perhaps she was getting old. Perhaps her proud
+heart had given way.
+
+Alvina had kept a little photograph of the man. She would often go and
+look at it. Love?—no, it was not love! It was something more primitive
+still. It was curiosity, deep, radical, burning curiosity. How she
+looked and looked at his dark, impertinent-seeming face. A flicker of
+derision came into her eyes. Yet still she looked.
+
+In the same manner she would look into the faces of the young men of
+Woodhouse. But she never found there what she found in her photograph.
+They all seemed like blank sheets of paper in comparison. There was a
+curious pale surface-look in the faces of the young men of Woodhouse:
+or, if there was some underneath suggestive power, it was a little
+abject or humiliating, inferior, common. They were all either blank or
+common.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+THE MATERNITY NURSE
+
+
+Of course Alvina made everybody pay for her mood of submission and
+sweetness. In a month’s time she was quite intolerable.
+
+“I can’t stay here all my life,” she declared, stretching her eyes in a
+way that irritated the other inmates of Manchester House extremely. “I
+know I can’t. I can’t bear it. I simply can’t bear it, and there’s an
+end of it. I can’t, I tell you. I can’t bear it. I’m buried
+alive—simply buried alive. And it’s more than I can stand. It is,
+really.”
+
+There was an odd clang, like a taunt, in her voice. She was trying them
+all.
+
+“But what do you want, dear?” asked Miss Frost, knitting her dark brows
+in agitation.
+
+“I want to go away,” said Alvina bluntly.
+
+Miss Frost gave a slight gesture with her right hand, of helpless
+impatience. It was so characteristic, that Alvina almost laughed.
+
+“But where do you want to go?” asked Miss Frost.
+
+“I don’t know. I don’t care,” said Alvina. “Anywhere, if I can get out
+of Woodhouse.”
+
+“Do you wish you had gone to Australia?” put in Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“No, I don’t wish I had gone to Australia,” retorted Alvina with a rude
+laugh. “Australia isn’t the only other place besides Woodhouse.”
+
+Miss Pinnegar was naturally offended. But the curious insolence which
+sometimes came out in the girl was inherited direct from her father.
+
+“You see, dear,” said Miss Frost, agitated: “if you knew what you
+wanted, it would be easier to see the way.”
+
+“I want to be a nurse,” rapped out Alvina.
+
+Miss Frost stood still, with the stillness of a middle-aged
+disapproving woman, and looked at her charge. She believed that Alvina
+was just speaking at random. Yet she dared not check her, in her
+present mood.
+
+Alvina was indeed speaking at random. She had never thought of being a
+nurse—the idea had never entered her head. If it had she would
+certainly never have entertained it. But she had heard Alexander speak
+of Nurse This and Sister That. And so she had rapped out her
+declaration. And having rapped it out, she prepared herself to stick to
+it. Nothing like leaping before you look.
+
+“A nurse!” repeated Miss Frost. “But do you feel yourself fitted to be
+a nurse? Do you think you could bear it?”
+
+“Yes, I’m sure I could,” retorted Alvina. “I want to be a maternity
+nurse—” She looked strangely, even outrageously, at her governess. “I
+want to be a maternity nurse. Then I shouldn’t have to attend
+operations.” And she laughed quickly.
+
+Miss Frost’s right hand beat like a wounded bird. It was reminiscent of
+the way she beat time, insistently, when she was giving music lessons,
+sitting close beside her pupils at the piano. Now it beat without time
+or reason. Alvina smiled brightly and cruelly.
+
+“Whatever put such an idea into your head, Vina?” asked poor Miss
+Frost.
+
+“I don’t know,” said Alvina, still more archly and brightly.
+
+“Of course you don’t mean it, dear,” said Miss Frost, quailing.
+
+“Yes, I do. Why should I say it if I don’t.”
+
+Miss Frost would have done anything to escape the arch, bright, cruel
+eyes of her charge.
+
+“Then we must think about it,” she said, numbly. And she went away.
+
+Alvina floated off to her room, and sat by the window looking down on
+the street. The bright, arch look was still on her face. But her heart
+was sore. She wanted to cry, and fling herself on the breast of her
+darling. But she couldn’t. No, for her life she couldn’t. Some little
+devil sat in her breast and kept her smiling archly.
+
+Somewhat to her amazement, he sat steadily on for days and days. Every
+minute she expected him to go. Every minute she expected to break down,
+to burst into tears and tenderness and reconciliation. But no—she did
+not break down. She persisted. They all waited for the old loving Vina
+to be herself again. But the new and recalcitrant Vina still shone
+hard. She found a copy of _The Lancet_, and saw an advertisement of a
+home in Islington where maternity nurses would be fully trained and
+equipped in six months’ time. The fee was sixty guineas. Alvina
+declared her intention of departing to this training home. She had two
+hundred pounds of her own, bequeathed by her grandfather.
+
+In Manchester House they were all horrified—not moved with grief, this
+time, but shocked. It seemed such a repulsive and indelicate step to
+take. Which it was. And which, in her curious perverseness, Alvina must
+have intended it to be. Mrs. Houghton assumed a remote air of silence,
+as if she did not hear any more, did not belong. She lapsed far away.
+She was really very weak. Miss Pinnegar said: “Well really, if she
+wants to do it, why, she might as well try.” And, as often with Miss
+Pinnegar, this speech seemed to contain a veiled threat.
+
+“A maternity nurse!” said James Houghton. “A maternity nurse! What
+exactly do you mean by a maternity nurse?”
+
+“A trained mid-wife,” said Miss Pinnegar curtly. “That’s it, isn’t it?
+It is as far as I can see. A trained mid-wife.”
+
+“Yes, of course,” said Alvina brightly.
+
+“But—!” stammered James Houghton, pushing his spectacles up on to his
+forehead, and making his long fleece of painfully thin hair uncover his
+baldness. “I can’t understand that any young girl of any—any
+upbringing, any upbringing whatever, should want to choose such a—such
+an—occupation. I can’t understand it.”
+
+“Can’t you?” said Alvina brightly.
+
+“Oh well, if she _does_—” said Miss Pinnegar cryptically.
+
+Miss Frost said very little. But she had serious confidential talks
+with Dr. Fordham. Dr. Fordham didn’t approve, certainly he didn’t—but
+neither did he see any great harm in it. At that time it was rather the
+thing for young ladies to enter the nursing profession, if their hopes
+had been blighted or checked in another direction! And so, enquiries
+were made. Enquiries were made.
+
+The upshot was, that Alvina was to go to Islington for her six months’
+training. There was a great bustle, preparing her nursing outfit.
+Instead of a trousseau, nurse’s uniforms in fine blue-and-white stripe,
+with great white aprons. Instead of a wreath of orange blossom, a
+rather chic nurse’s bonnet of blue silk, and for a trailing veil, a
+blue silk fall.
+
+Well and good! Alvina expected to become frightened, as the time drew
+near. But no, she wasn’t a bit frightened. Miss Frost watched her
+narrowly. Would there not be a return of the old, tender, sensitive,
+shrinking Vina—the exquisitely sensitive and nervous, loving girl? No,
+astounding as it may seem, there was no return of such a creature.
+Alvina remained bright and ready, the half-hilarious clang remained in
+her voice, taunting. She kissed them all good-bye, brightly and
+sprightlily, and off she set. She wasn’t nervous.
+
+She came to St. Pancras, she got her cab, she drove off to her
+destination—and as she drove, she looked out of the window. Horrid,
+vast, stony, dilapidated, crumbly-stuccoed streets and squares of
+Islington, grey, grey, greyer by far than Woodhouse, and interminable.
+How exceedingly sordid and disgusting! But instead of being repelled
+and heartbroken, Alvina enjoyed it. She felt her trunk rumble on the
+top of the cab, and still she looked out on the ghastly dilapidated
+flat facades of Islington, and still she smiled brightly, as if there
+were some charm in it all. Perhaps for her there was a charm in it all.
+Perhaps it acted like a tonic on the little devil in her breast.
+Perhaps if she had seen tufts of snowdrops—it was February—and
+yew-hedges and cottage windows, she would have broken down. As it was,
+she just enjoyed it. She enjoyed glimpsing in through uncurtained
+windows, into sordid rooms where human beings moved as if sordidly
+unaware. She enjoyed the smell of a toasted bloater, rather burnt. So
+common! so indescribably common! And she detested bloaters, because of
+the hairy feel of the spines in her mouth. But to smell them like this,
+to know that she was in the region of “penny beef-steaks,” gave her a
+perverse pleasure.
+
+The cab stopped at a yellow house at the corner of a square where some
+shabby bare trees were flecked with bits of blown paper, bits of paper
+and refuse cluttered inside the round railings of each tree. She went
+up some dirty-yellowish steps, and rang the “Patients’” bell, because
+she knew she ought not to ring the “Tradesmen’s.” A servant, not
+exactly dirty, but unattractive, let her into a hall painted a dull
+drab, and floored with cocoa-matting, otherwise bare. Then up bare
+stairs to a room where a stout, pale, common woman with two warts on
+her face, was drinking tea. It was three o’clock. This was the matron.
+The matron soon deposited her in a bedroom, not very small, but bare
+and hard and dusty-seeming, and there left her. Alvina sat down on her
+chair, looked at her box opposite her, looked round the uninviting
+room, and smiled to herself. Then she rose and went to the window: a
+very dirty window, looking down into a sort of well of an area, with
+other wells ranging along, and straight opposite like a reflection
+another solid range of back-premises, with iron stair-ways and horrid
+little doors and washing and little W. C.’s and people creeping up and
+down like vermin. Alvina shivered a little, but still smiled. Then
+slowly she began to take off her hat. She put it down on the
+drab-painted chest of drawers.
+
+Presently the servant came in with a tray, set it down, lit a naked
+gas-jet, which roared faintly, and drew down a crackly dark-green
+blind, which showed a tendency to fly back again alertly to the
+ceiling.
+
+“Thank you,” said Alvina, and the girl departed.
+
+Then Miss Houghton drank her black tea and ate her bread and margarine.
+
+Surely enough books have been written about heroines in similar
+circumstances. There is no need to go into the details of Alvina’s six
+months in Islington.
+
+The food was objectionable—yet Alvina got fat on it. The air was
+filthy—and yet never had her colour been so warm and fresh, her skin so
+soft. Her companions were almost without exception vulgar and
+coarse—yet never had she got on so well with women of her own age—or
+older than herself. She was ready with a laugh and a word, and though
+she was unable to venture on indecencies herself, yet she had an
+amazing faculty for _looking_ knowing and indecent beyond words,
+rolling her eyes and pitching her eyebrows in a certain way—oh, it was
+quite sufficient for her companions! And yet, if they had ever actually
+demanded a dirty story or a really open indecency from her, she would
+have been floored.
+
+But she enjoyed it. Amazing how she enjoyed it. She did not care _how_
+revolting and indecent these nurses were—she put on a look as if she
+were in with it all, and it all passed off as easy as winking. She
+swung her haunches and arched her eyes with the best of them. And they
+behaved as if she were exactly one of themselves. And yet, with the
+curious cold tact of women, they left her alone, one and all, in
+private: just ignored her.
+
+It is truly incredible how Alvina became blooming and bouncing at this
+time. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was always ready with
+her hard, nurse’s laugh and her nurse’s quips. No one was better than
+she at _double-entendres._ No one could better give the nurse’s leer.
+She had it all in a fortnight. And never once did she feel anything but
+exhilarated and in full swing. It seemed to her she had not a moment’s
+time to brood or reflect about things—she was too much in the swing.
+Every moment, in the swing, living, or active in full swing. When she
+got into bed she went to sleep. When she awoke, it was morning, and she
+got up. As soon as she was up and dressed she had somebody to answer,
+something to say, something to do. Time passed like an express
+train—and she seemed to have known no other life than this.
+
+Not far away was a lying-in hospital. A dreadful place it was. There
+she had to go, right off, and help with cases. There she had to attend
+lectures and demonstrations. There she met the doctors and students.
+Well, a pretty lot they were, one way and another. When she had put on
+flesh and become pink and bouncing she was just their sort: just their
+very ticket. Her voice had the right twang, her eyes the right roll,
+her haunches the right swing. She seemed altogether just the ticket.
+And yet she wasn’t.
+
+It would be useless to say she was not shocked. She was profoundly and
+awfully shocked. Her whole state was perhaps largely the result of
+shock: a sort of play-acting based on hysteria. But the dreadful things
+she saw in the lying-in hospital, and afterwards, went deep, and
+finished her youth and her tutelage for ever. How many infernos deeper
+than Miss Frost could ever know, did she not travel? the inferno of the
+human animal, the human organism in its convulsions, the human social
+beast in its abjection and its degradation.
+
+For in her latter half she had to visit the slum cases. And such cases!
+A woman lying on a bare, filthy floor, a few old coats thrown over her,
+and vermin crawling everywhere, in spite of sanitary inspectors. But
+what did the woman, the sufferer, herself care! She ground her teeth
+and screamed and yelled with pains. In her calm periods she lay stupid
+and indifferent—or she cursed a little. But abject, stupid indifference
+was the bottom of it all: abject, brutal indifference to
+everything—yes, everything. Just a piece of female functioning, no
+more.
+
+Alvina was supposed to receive a certain fee for these cases she
+attended in their homes. A small proportion of her fee she kept for
+herself, the rest she handed over to the Home. That was the agreement.
+She received her grudged fee callously, threatened and exacted it when
+it was not forthcoming. Ha!—if they didn’t have to pay you at all,
+these slum-people, they would treat you with more contempt than if you
+were one of themselves. It was one of the hardest lessons Alvina had to
+learn—to bully these people, in their own hovels, into some sort of
+obedience to her commands, and some sort of respect for her presence.
+She had to fight tooth and nail for this end. And in a week she was as
+hard and callous to them as they to her. And so her work was well done.
+She did not hate them. There they were. They had a certain life, and
+you had to take them at their own worth in their own way. What else! If
+one should be gentle, one was gentle. The difficulty did not lie there.
+The difficulty lay in being sufficiently rough and hard: that was the
+trouble. It cost a great struggle to be hard and callous enough. Glad
+she would have been to be allowed to treat them quietly and gently,
+with consideration. But pah—it was not their line. They wanted to be
+callous, and if you were not callous to match, they made a fool of you
+and prevented your doing your work.
+
+Was Alvina her own real self all this time? The mighty question arises
+upon us, what is one’s own real self? It certainly is not what we think
+we are and ought to be. Alvina had been bred to think of herself as a
+delicate, tender, chaste creature with unselfish inclinations and a
+pure, “high” mind. Well, so she was, in the more-or-less exhausted part
+of herself. But high-mindedness had really come to an end with James
+Houghton, had really reached the point, not only of pathetic, but of
+dry and anti-human, repulsive quixotry. In Alvina high-mindedness was
+already stretched beyond the breaking point. Being a woman of some
+flexibility of temper, wrought through generations to a fine, pliant
+hardness, she flew back. She went right back on high-mindedness. Did
+she thereby betray it?
+
+We think not. If we turn over the head of the penny and look at the
+tail, we don’t thereby deny or betray the head. We do but adjust it to
+its own complement. And so with high-mindedness. It is but one side of
+the medal—the crowned reverse. On the obverse the three legs still go
+kicking the soft-footed spin of the universe, the dolphin flirts and
+the crab leers.
+
+So Alvina spun her medal, and her medal came down tails. Heads or
+tails? Heads for generations. Then tails. See the poetic justice.
+
+Now Alvina decided to accept the decision of her fate. Or rather, being
+sufficiently a woman, she didn’t decide anything. She _was_ her own
+fate. She went through her training experiences like another being. She
+was not herself, said Everybody. When she came home to Woodhouse at
+Easter, in her bonnet and cloak, everybody was simply knocked out.
+Imagine that this frail, pallid, diffident girl, so ladylike, was now a
+rather fat, warm-coloured young woman, strapping and strong-looking,
+and with a certain bounce. Imagine her mother’s startled, almost
+expiring:
+
+“Why, Vina dear!”
+
+Vina laughed. She knew how they were all feeling.
+
+“At least it agrees with your _health_,” said her father,
+sarcastically, to which Miss Pinnegar answered:
+
+“Well, that’s a good deal.”
+
+But Miss Frost said nothing the first day. Only the second day, at
+breakfast, as Alvina ate rather rapidly and rather well, the
+white-haired woman said quietly, with a tinge of cold contempt:
+
+“How changed you are, dear!”
+
+“Am I?” laughed Alvina. “Oh, not really.” And she gave the arch look
+with her eyes, which made Miss Frost shudder.
+
+Inwardly, Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from questioning. Alvina
+was always speaking of the doctors: Doctor Young and Doctor Headley and
+Doctor James. She spoke of theatres and music-halls with these young
+men, and the jolly good time she had with them. And her blue-grey eyes
+seemed to have become harder and greyer, lighter somehow. In her
+wistfulness and her tender pathos, Alvina’s eyes would deepen their
+blue, so beautiful. And now, in her floridity, they were bright and
+arch and light-grey. The deep, tender, flowery blue was gone for ever.
+They were luminous and crystalline, like the eyes of a changeling.
+
+Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from question. She wanted, she
+_needed_ to ask of her charge: “Alvina, have you betrayed yourself with
+any of these young men?” But coldly her heart abstained from asking—or
+even from seriously thinking. She left the matter untouched for the
+moment. She was already too much shocked.
+
+Certainly Alvina represented the young doctors as very nice, but rather
+fast young fellows. “My word, you have to have your wits about you with
+them!” Imagine such a speech from a girl tenderly nurtured: a speech
+uttered in her own home, and accompanied by a florid laugh, which would
+lead a chaste, generous woman like Miss Frost to imagine—well, she
+merely abstained from imagining anything. She had that strength of
+mind. She never for one moment attempted to answer the question to
+herself, as to whether Alvina had betrayed herself with any of these
+young doctors, or not. The question remained stated, but completely
+unanswered—coldly awaiting its answer. Only when Miss Frost kissed
+Alvina good-bye at the station, tears came to her eyes, and she said
+hurriedly, in a low voice:
+
+“Remember we are all praying for you, dear!”
+
+“No, don’t do that!” cried Alvina involuntarily, without knowing what
+she said.
+
+And then the train moved out, and she saw her darling standing there on
+the station, the pale, well-modelled face looking out from behind the
+gold-rimmed spectacles, wistfully, the strong, rather stout figure
+standing very still and unchangeable, under its coat and skirt of dark
+purple, the white hair glistening under the folded dark hat. Alvina
+threw herself down on the seat of her carriage. She loved her darling.
+She would love her through eternity. She knew she was right—amply and
+beautifully right, her darling, her beloved Miss Frost. Eternally and
+gloriously right.
+
+And yet—and yet—it was a right which was fulfilled. There were other
+rights. There was another side to the medal. Purity and
+high-mindedness—the beautiful, but unbearable tyranny. The beautiful,
+unbearable tyranny of Miss Frost! It was time now for Miss Frost to
+die. It was time for that perfected flower to be gathered to
+immortality. A lovely _immortel_. But an obstruction to other, purple
+and carmine blossoms which were in bud on the stem. A lovely
+edelweiss—but time it was gathered into eternity. Black-purple and red
+anemones were due, real Adonis blood, and strange individual orchids,
+spotted and fantastic. Time for Miss Frost to die. She, Alvina, who
+loved her as no one else would ever love her, with that love which goes
+to the core of the universe, knew that it was time for her darling to
+be folded, oh, so gently and softly, into immortality. Mortality was
+busy with the day after her day. It was time for Miss Frost to die. As
+Alvina sat motionless in the train, running from Woodhouse to Tibshelf,
+it decided itself in her.
+
+She was glad to be back in Islington, among all the horrors of her
+confinement cases. The doctors she knew hailed her. On the whole, these
+young men had not any too deep respect for the nurses as a whole. Why
+drag in respect? Human functions were too obviously established to make
+any great fuss about. And so the doctors put their arms round Alvina’s
+waist, because she was plump, and they kissed her face, because the
+skin was soft. And she laughed and squirmed a little, so that they felt
+all the more her warmth and softness under their arm’s pressure.
+
+“It’s no use, you know,” she said, laughing rather breathless, but
+looking into their eyes with a curious definite look of unchangeable
+resistance. This only piqued them.
+
+“What’s no use?” they asked.
+
+She shook her head slightly.
+
+“It isn’t any use your behaving like that with me,” she said, with the
+same challenging definiteness, finality: a flat negative.
+
+“Who’re you telling?” they said.
+
+For she did not at all forbid them to “behave like that.” Not in the
+least. She almost encouraged them. She laughed and arched her eyes and
+flirted. But her backbone became only the stronger and firmer. Soft and
+supple as she was, her backbone never yielded for an instant. It could
+not. She had to confess that she liked the young doctors. They were
+alert, their faces were clean and bright-looking. She liked the sort of
+intimacy with them, when they kissed her and wrestled with her in the
+empty laboratories or corridors—often in the intervals of most critical
+and appalling cases. She liked their arm round her waist, the kisses as
+she reached back her face, straining away, the sometimes desperate
+struggles. They took unpardonable liberties. They pinched her haunches
+and attacked her in unheard-of ways. Sometimes her blood really came up
+in the fight, and she felt as if, with her hands, she could tear any
+man, any male creature, limb from limb. A super-human, voltaic force
+filled her. For a moment she surged in massive, inhuman, female
+strength. The men always wilted. And invariably, when they wilted, she
+touched them with a sudden gentle touch, pitying. So that she always
+remained friends with them. When her curious Amazonic power left her
+again, and she was just a mere woman, she made shy eyes at them once
+more, and treated them with the inevitable female-to-male homage.
+
+The men liked her. They cocked their eyes at her, when she was not
+looking, and wondered at her. They wondered over her. They had been
+beaten by her, every one of them. But they did not openly know it. They
+looked at her, as if she were Woman itself, some creature not quite
+personal. What they noticed, all of them, was the way her brown hair
+looped over her ears. There was something chaste, and noble, and
+war-like about it. The remote quality which hung about her in the midst
+of her intimacies and her frequencies, nothing high or lofty, but
+something given to the struggle and as yet invincible in the struggle,
+made them seek her out.
+
+They felt safe with her. They knew she would not let them down. She
+would not intrigue into marriage, or try and make use of them in any
+way. She didn’t care about them. And so, because of her isolate
+self-sufficiency in the fray, her wild, overweening backbone, they were
+ready to attend on her and serve her. Headley in particular hoped he
+might overcome her. He was a well-built fellow with sandy hair and a
+pugnacious face. The battle-spirit was really roused in him, and he
+heartily liked the woman. If he could have overcome her he would have
+been mad to marry her.
+
+With him, she summoned up all her mettle. She had never to be off her
+guard for a single minute. The treacherous suddenness of his attack—for
+he was treachery itself—had to be met by the voltaic suddenness of her
+resistance and counter-attack. It was nothing less than magical the way
+the soft, slumbering body of the woman could leap in one jet into
+terrible, overwhelming voltaic force, something strange and massive, at
+the first treacherous touch of the man’s determined hand. His strength
+was so different from hers—quick, muscular, lambent. But hers was deep
+and heaving, like the strange heaving of an earthquake, or the heave of
+a bull as it rises from earth. And by sheer non-human power, electric
+and paralysing, she could overcome the brawny red-headed fellow.
+
+He was nearly a match for her. But she did not like him. The two were
+enemies—and good acquaintances. They were more or less matched. But as
+he found himself continually foiled, he became sulky, like a bear with
+a sore head. And then she avoided him.
+
+She really liked Young and James much better. James was a quick,
+slender, dark-haired fellow, a gentleman, who was always trying to
+catch her out with his quickness. She liked his fine, slim limbs, and
+his exaggerated generosity. He would ask her out to ridiculously
+expensive suppers, and send her sweets and flowers, fabulously
+recherché. He was always immaculately well-dressed.
+
+“Of course, as a lady _and_ a nurse,” he said to her, “you are two
+sorts of women in one.”
+
+But she was not impressed by his wisdom.
+
+She was most strongly inclined to Young. He was a plump young man of
+middle height, with those blue eyes of a little boy which are so
+knowing: particularly of a woman’s secrets. It is a strange thing that
+these childish men have such a deep, half-perverse knowledge of the
+other sex. Young was certainly innocent as far as acts went. Yet his
+hair was going thin at the crown already.
+
+He also played with her—being a doctor, and she a nurse who encouraged
+it. He too touched her and kissed her: and did _not_ rouse her to
+contest. For his touch and his kiss had that nearness of a little
+boy’s, which nearly melted her. She could almost have succumbed to him.
+If it had not been that with him there was no question of succumbing.
+She would have had to take him between her hands and caress and cajole
+him like a cherub, into a fall. And though she would have like to do
+so, yet that inflexible stiffness of her backbone prevented her. She
+could not do as she liked. There was an inflexible fate within her,
+which shaped her ends.
+
+Sometimes she wondered to herself, over her own virginity. Was it worth
+much, after all, behaving as she did? Did she care about it, anyhow?
+Didn’t she rather despise it? To sin in thought was as bad as to sin in
+act. If the thought was the same as the act, how much more was her
+behaviour equivalent to a whole committal? She wished she were wholly
+committed. She wished she had gone the whole length.
+
+But sophistry and wishing did her no good. There she was, still
+isolate. And still there was that in her which would preserve her
+intact, sophistry and deliberate intention notwithstanding. Her time
+was up. She was returning to Woodhouse virgin as she had left it. In a
+measure she felt herself beaten. Why? Who knows. But so it was, she
+felt herself beaten, condemned to go back to what she was before. Fate
+had been too strong for her and her desires: fate which was not an
+external association of forces, but which was integral in her own
+nature. Her own inscrutable nature was her fate: sore against her will.
+
+It was August when she came home, in her nurse’s uniform. She was
+beaten by fate, as far as chastity and virginity went. But she came
+home with high material hopes. Here was James Houghton’s own daughter.
+She had an affluent future ahead of her. A fully-qualified maternity
+nurse, she was going to bring all the babies of the district easily and
+triumphantly into the world. She was going to charge the regulation fee
+of two guineas a case: and even on a modest estimate of ten babies a
+month, she would have twenty guineas. For well-to-do mothers she would
+charge from three to five guineas. At this calculation she would make
+an easy three hundred a year, without slaving either. She would be
+independent, she could laugh every one in the face.
+
+She bounced back into Woodhouse to make her fortune.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+TWO WOMEN DIE
+
+
+It goes without saying that Alvina Houghton did not make her fortune as
+a maternity nurse. Being her father’s daughter, we might almost expect
+that she did not make a penny. But she did—just a few pence. She had
+exactly four cases—and then no more.
+
+The reason is obvious. Who in Woodhouse was going to afford a
+two-guinea nurse, for a confinement? And who who was going to engage
+Alvina Houghton, even if they were ready to stretch their
+purse-strings? After all, they all knew her as _Miss_ Houghton, with a
+stress on the _Miss_, and they could not conceive of her as Nurse
+Houghton. Besides, there seemed something positively indecent in
+technically engaging one who was so much part of themselves. They all
+preferred either a simple mid-wife, or a nurse procured out of the
+unknown by the doctor.
+
+If Alvina wanted to make her fortune—or even her living—she should have
+gone to a strange town. She was so advised by every one she knew. But
+she never for one moment reflected on the advice. She had become a
+maternity nurse in order to practise in Woodhouse, just as James
+Houghton had purchased his elegancies to sell in Woodhouse. And father
+and daughter alike calmly expected Woodhouse demand to rise to their
+supply. So both alike were defeated in their expectations.
+
+For a little while Alvina flaunted about in her nurse’s uniform. Then
+she left it off. And as she left it off she lost her bounce, her
+colour, and her flesh. Gradually she shrank back to the old, slim,
+reticent pallor, with eyes a little too large for her face. And now it
+seemed her face was a little too long, a little gaunt. And in her
+civilian clothes she seemed a little dowdy, shabby. And altogether, she
+looked older: she looked more than her age, which was only twenty-four
+years. Here was the old Alvina come back, rather battered and
+deteriorated, apparently. There was even a tiny touch of the trollops
+in her dowdiness—so the shrewd-eyed collier-wives decided. But she was
+a lady still, and unbeaten. Undeniably she was a lady. And that was
+rather irritating to the well-to-do and florid daughter of W.H.
+Johnson, next door but one. Undeniably a lady, and undeniably
+unmastered. This last was irritating to the good-natured but
+easy-coming young men in the Chapel Choir, where she resumed her seat.
+These young men had the good nature of dogs that wag their tails and
+expect to be patted. And Alvina did not pat them. To be sure, a pat
+from such a shabbily-black-kid-gloved hand would not have been so
+flattering—she need not imagine it! The way she hung back and looked at
+them, the young men, as knowing as if she were a prostitute, and yet
+with the well-bred indifference of a lady—well, it was almost
+offensive.
+
+As a matter of fact, Alvina was detached for the time being from her
+interest in young men. Manchester House had settled down on her like a
+doom. There was the quartered shop, through which one had to worm one’s
+encumbered way in the gloom—unless one liked to go miles round a back
+street, to the yard entry. There was James Houghton, faintly powdered
+with coal-dust, flitting back and forth in a fever of nervous frenzy,
+to Throttle-Ha’penny—so carried away that he never saw his daughter at
+all the first time he came in, after her return. And when she reminded
+him of her presence, with her—“Hello, father!”—he merely glancied
+hurriedly at her, as if vexed with her interruption, and said:
+
+“Well, Alvina, you’re back. You’re back to find us busy.” And he went
+off into his ecstasy again.
+
+Mrs. Houghton was now very weak, and so nervous in her weakness that
+she could not bear the slightest sound. Her greatest horror was lest
+her husband should come into the room. On his entry she became blue at
+the lips immediately, so he had to hurry out again. At last he stayed
+away, only hurriedly asking, each time he came into the house, “How is
+Mrs. Houghton? Ha!” Then off into uninterrupted Throttle-Ha’penny
+ecstasy once more.
+
+When Alvina went up to her mother’s room, on her return, all the poor
+invalid could do was to tremble into tears, and cry faintly:
+
+“Child, you look dreadful. It isn’t you.”
+
+This from the pathetic little figure in the bed had struck Alvina like
+a blow.
+
+“Why not, mother?” she asked.
+
+But for her mother she had to remove her nurse’s uniform. And at the
+same time, she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a woman
+who came in, and the servant had been nursing the invalid between them.
+Miss Frost was worn and rather heavy: her old buoyancy and brightness
+was gone. She had become irritable also. She was very glad that Alvina
+had returned to take this responsibility of nursing off her shoulders.
+For her wonderful energy had ebbed and oozed away.
+
+Alvina said nothing, but settled down to her task. She was quiet and
+technical with her mother. The two loved one another, with a curious
+impersonal love which had not a single word to exchange: an almost
+after-death love. In these days Mrs. Houghton never talked—unless to
+fret a little. So Alvina sat for many hours in the lofty, sombre
+bedroom, looking out silently on the street, or hurriedly rising to
+attend the sick woman. For continually came the fretful murmur:
+
+“Vina!”
+
+To sit still—who knows the long discipline of it, nowadays, as our
+mothers and grandmothers knew. To sit still, for days, months, and
+years—perforce to sit still, with some dignity of tranquil bearing.
+Alvina was old-fashioned. She had the old, womanly faculty for sitting
+quiet and collected—not indeed for a life-time, but for long spells
+together. And so it was during these months nursing her mother. She
+attended constantly on the invalid: she did a good deal of work about
+the house: she took her walks and occupied her place in the choir on
+Sunday mornings. And yet, from August to January, she seemed to be
+seated in her chair in the bedroom, sometimes reading, but mostly quite
+still, her hands quietly in her lap, her mind subdued by musing. She
+did not even think, not even remember. Even such activity would have
+made her presence too disturbing in the room. She sat quite still, with
+all her activities in abeyance—except that strange will-to-passivity
+which was by no means a relaxation, but a severe, deep,
+soul-discipline.
+
+For the moment there was a sense of prosperity—or probable prosperity,
+in the house. And there was an abundance of Throttle-Ha’penny coal. It
+was dirty ashy stuff. The lower bars of the grate were constantly
+blanked in with white powdery ash, which it was fatal to try to poke
+away. For if you poked and poked, you raised white cumulus clouds of
+ash, and you were left at last with a few darkening and sulphurous
+embers. But even so, by continuous application, you could keep the room
+moderately warm, without feeling you were consuming the house’s meat
+and drink in the grate. Which was one blessing.
+
+The days, the months darkened past, and Alvina returned to her old
+thinness and pallor. Her fore-arms were thin, they rested very still in
+her lap, there was a ladylike stillness about them as she took her
+walk, in her lingering, yet watchful fashion. She saw everything. Yet
+she passed without attracting any attention.
+
+Early in the year her mother died. Her father came and wept
+self-conscious tears, Miss Frost cried a little, painfully. And Alvina
+cried also: she did not quite know why or wherefore. Her poor mother!
+Alvina had the old-fashioned wisdom to let be, and not to think. After
+all, it was not for her to reconstruct her parents’ lives. She came
+after them. Her day was not their day, their life was not hers.
+Returning up-channel to re-discover their course was quite another
+matter from flowing down-stream into the unknown, as they had done
+thirty years before. This supercilious and impertinent exploration of
+the generation gone by, by the present generation, is nothing to our
+credit. As a matter of fact, no generation repeats the mistakes of the
+generation ahead, any more than any river repeats its course. So the
+young need not be so proud of their superiority over the old. The young
+generation glibly makes its own mistakes: and _how_ detestable these
+new mistakes are, why, only the future will be able to tell us. But be
+sure they are quite as detestable, quite as full of lies and hypocrisy,
+as any of the mistakes of our parents. There is no such thing as
+_absolute_ wisdom.
+
+Wisdom has reference only to the past. The future remains for ever an
+infinite field for mistakes. You can’t know beforehand.
+
+So Alvina refrained from pondering on her mother’s life and fate.
+Whatever the fate of the mother, the fate of the daughter will be
+otherwise. That is organically inevitable. The business of the daughter
+is with her own fate, not with her mother’s.
+
+Miss Frost however meditated bitterly on the fate of the poor dead
+woman. Bitterly she brooded on the lot of woman. Here was Clariss
+Houghton, married, and a mother—and dead. What a life! Who was
+responsible? James Houghton. What ought James Houghton to have done
+differently? Everything. In short, he should have been somebody else,
+and not himself. Which is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of idealism. The
+universe should be something else, and not what it is: so the nonsense
+of idealistic conclusion. The cat should not catch the mouse, the mouse
+should not nibble holes in the table-cloth, and so on and so on, in the
+House that Jack Built.
+
+But Miss Frost sat by the dead in grief and despair. This was the end
+of another woman’s life: such an end! Poor Clariss: guilty James.
+
+Yet why? Why was James more guilty than Clariss? Is the only aim and
+end of a man’s life, to make some woman, or parcel of women, happy?
+Why? Why should anybody expect to be _made happy_, and develop
+heart-disease if she isn’t? Surely Clariss’ heart-disease was a more
+emphatic sign of obstinate self-importance than ever James’
+shop-windows were. She expected to be _made happy_. Every woman in
+Europe and America expects it. On her own head then if she is made
+unhappy: for her expectation is arrogant and impertinent. The be-all
+and end-all of life doesn’t lie in feminine happiness—or in any
+happiness. Happiness is a sort of soap-tablet—he won’t be happy till he
+gets it, and when he’s got it, the precious baby, it’ll cost him his
+eyes and his stomach. Could anything be more puerile than a mankind
+howling because it isn’t happy: like a baby in the bath!
+
+Poor Clariss, however, was dead—and if she had developed heart-disease
+because she wasn’t happy, well, she had died of her own heart-disease,
+poor thing. Wherein lies every moral that mankind can wish to draw.
+
+Miss Frost wept in anguish, and saw nothing but another woman betrayed
+to sorrow and a slow death. Sorrow and a slow death, because a man had
+married her. Miss Frost wept also for herself, for her own sorrow and
+slow death. Sorrow and slow death, because a man had _not_ married her.
+Wretched man, what is he to do with these exigeant and
+never-to-be-satisfied women? Our mothers pined because our fathers
+drank and were rakes. Our wives pine because we are virtuous but
+inadequate. Who is this sphinx, this woman? Where is the Oedipus that
+will solve her riddle of happiness, and then strangle her?—only to
+marry his own mother!
+
+In the months that followed her mother’s death, Alvina went on the
+same, in abeyance. She took over the housekeeping, and received one or
+two overflow pupils from Miss Frost, young girls to whom she gave
+lessons in the dark drawing-room of Manchester House. She was
+busy—chiefly with housekeeping. There seemed a great deal to put in
+order after her mother’s death.
+
+She sorted all her mother’s clothes—expensive, old-fashioned clothes,
+hardly worn. What was to be done with them? She gave them away, without
+consulting anybody. She kept a few private things, she inherited a few
+pieces of jewellery. Remarkable how little trace her mother left—hardly
+a trace.
+
+She decided to move into the big, monumental bedroom in front of the
+house. She liked space, she liked the windows. She was strictly
+mistress, too. So she took her place. Her mother’s little sitting-room
+was cold and disused.
+
+Then Alvina went through all the linen. There was still abundance, and
+it was all sound. James had had such large ideas of setting up house,
+in the beginning. And now he begrudged the household expenses,
+begrudged the very soap and candles, and even would have liked to
+introduce margarine instead of butter. This last degradation the women
+refused. But James was above food.
+
+The old Alvina seemed completely herself again. She was quiet, dutiful,
+affectionate. She appealed in her old, childish way to Miss Frost, and
+Miss Frost called her “Dear!” with all the old protective gentleness.
+But there was a difference. Underneath her appearance of appeal, Alvina
+was almost coldly independent. She did what she thought she would. The
+old manner of intimacy persisted between her and her darling. And
+perhaps neither of them knew that the intimacy itself had gone. But it
+had. There was no spontaneous interchange between them. It was a kind
+of deadlock. Each knew the great love she felt for the other. But now
+it was a love static, inoperative. The warm flow did not run any more.
+Yet each would have died for the other, would have done anything to
+spare the other hurt.
+
+Miss Frost was becoming tired, dragged looking. She would sink into a
+chair as if she wished never to rise again—never to make the effort.
+And Alvina quickly would attend on her, bring her tea and take away her
+music, try to make everything smooth. And continually the young woman
+exhorted the elder to work less, to give up her pupils. But Miss Frost
+answered quickly, nervously:
+
+“When I don’t work I shan’t live.”
+
+“But why—?” came the long query from Alvina. And in her expostulation
+there was a touch of mockery for such a creed.
+
+Miss Frost did not answer. Her face took on a greyish tinge.
+
+In these days Alvina struck up an odd friendship with Miss Pinnegar,
+after so many years of opposition. She felt herself more in sympathy
+with Miss Pinnegar—it was so easy to get on with her, she left so much
+unsaid. What was left unsaid mattered more to Alvina now than anything
+that was expressed. She began to hate outspokenness and direct
+speaking-forth of the whole mind. It nauseated her. She wanted tacit
+admission of difference, not open, wholehearted communication. And Miss
+Pinnegar made this admission all along. She never made you feel for an
+instant that she was one with you. She was never even near. She kept
+quietly on her own ground, and left you on yours. And across the space
+came her quiet commonplaces—but fraught with space.
+
+With Miss Frost all was openness, explicit and downright. Not that Miss
+Frost trespassed. She was far more well-bred than Miss Pinnegar. But
+her very breeding had that Protestant, northern quality which assumes
+that we have all the same high standards, really, and all the same
+divine nature, intrinsically. It is a fine assumption. But willy-nilly,
+it sickened Alvina at this time.
+
+She preferred Miss Pinnegar, and admired Miss Pinnegar’s humble wisdom
+with a new admiration. The two were talking of Dr. Headley, who, they
+read in the newspaper, had disgraced himself finally.
+
+“I suppose,” said Miss Pinnegar, “it takes his sort to make all sorts.”
+
+Such bits of homely wisdom were like relief from cramp and pain, to
+Alvina. “It takes his sort to make all sorts.” It took her sort too.
+And it took her father’s sort—as well as her mother’s and Miss Frost’s.
+It took every sort to make all sorts. Why have standards and a
+regulation pattern? Why have a human criterion? There’s the point! Why,
+in the name of all the free heavens, have human criteria? Why? Simply
+for bullying and narrowness.
+
+Alvina felt at her ease with Miss Pinnegar. The two women talked away
+to one another, in their quiet moments: and slipped apart like
+conspirators when Miss Frost came in: as if there was something to be
+ashamed of. If there was, heaven knows what it might have been, for
+their talk was ordinary enough. But Alvina liked to be with Miss
+Pinnegar in the kitchen. Miss Pinnegar wasn’t competent and masterful
+like Miss Frost: she was ordinary and uninspired, with quiet,
+unobserved movements. But she was deep, and there was some secret
+satisfaction in her very quality of secrecy.
+
+So the days and weeks and months slipped by, and Alvina was hidden like
+a mole in the dark chambers of Manchester House, busy with cooking and
+cleaning and arranging, getting the house in her own order, and
+attending to her pupils. She took her walk in the afternoon. Once and
+only once she went to Throttle-Ha’penny, and, seized with sudden
+curiosity, insisted on being wound down in the iron bucket to the
+little workings underneath. Everything was quite tidy in the short
+gang-ways down below, timbered and in sound order. The miners were
+competent enough. But water dripped dismally in places, and there was a
+stale feeling in the air.
+
+Her father accompanied her, pointed her to the seam of yellow-flecked
+coal, the shale and the bind, the direction of the trend. He had
+already an airy-fairy kind of knowledge of the whole affair, and seemed
+like some not quite trustworthy conjuror who had conjured it all up by
+sleight of hand. In the background the miners stood grey and ghostly,
+in the candle-light, and seemed to listen sardonically. One of them,
+facile in his subordinate way as James in his authoritative, kept
+chiming in:
+
+“Ay, that’s the road it goes, Miss Huffen—yis, yo’ll see th’ roof theer
+bellies down a bit—s’ loose. No, you dunna get th’ puddin’ stones i’
+this pit—s’ not deep enough. Eh, they come down on you plumb, as if th’
+roof had laid its egg on you. Ay, it runs a bit thin down here—six
+inches. You see th’ bed’s soft, it’s a sort o’ clay-bind, it’s not
+clunch such as you get deeper. Oh, it’s easy workin’—you don’t have to
+knock your guts out. There’s no need for shots, Miss Huffen—we bring it
+down—you see here—” And he stooped, pointing to a shallow, shelving
+excavation which he was making under the coal. The working was low, you
+must stoop all the time. The roof and the timbered sides of the way
+seemed to press on you. It was as if she were in her tomb for ever,
+like the dead and everlasting Egyptians. She was frightened, but
+fascinated. The collier kept on talking to her, stretching his bare,
+grey-black hairy arm across her vision, and pointing with his knotted
+hand. The thick-wicked tallow candles guttered and smelled. There was a
+thickness in the air, a sense of dark, fluid presence in the thick
+atmosphere, the dark, fluid, viscous voice of the collier making a
+broad-vowelled, clapping sound in her ear. He seemed to linger near her
+as if he knew—as if he knew—what? Something for ever unknowable and
+inadmissible, something that belonged purely to the underground: to the
+slaves who work underground: knowledge humiliated, subjected, but
+ponderous and inevitable. And still his voice went on clapping in her
+ear, and still his presence edged near her, and seemed to impinge on
+her—a smallish, semi-grotesque, grey-obscure figure with a naked
+brandished forearm: not human: a creature of the subterranean world,
+melted out like a bat, fluid. She felt herself melting out also, to
+become a mere vocal ghost, a presence in the thick atmosphere. Her
+lungs felt thick and slow, her mind dissolved, she felt she could cling
+like a bat in the long swoon of the crannied, underworld darkness.
+Cling like a bat and sway for ever swooning in the draughts of the
+darkness—
+
+When she was up on the earth again she blinked and peered at the world
+in amazement. What a pretty, luminous place it was, carved in
+substantial luminosity. What a strange and lovely place, bubbling
+iridescent-golden on the surface of the underworld. Iridescent
+golden—could anything be more fascinating! Like lovely glancing surface
+on fluid pitch. But a velvet surface. A velvet surface of golden light,
+velvet-pile of gold and pale luminosity, and strange beautiful
+elevations of houses and trees, and depressions of fields and roads,
+all golden and floating like atmospheric majolica. Never had the common
+ugliness of Woodhouse seemed so entrancing. She thought she had never
+seen such beauty—a lovely luminous majolica, living and palpitating,
+the glossy, svelte world-surface, the exquisite face of all the
+darkness. It was like a vision. Perhaps gnomes and subterranean
+workers, enslaved in the era of light, see with such eyes. Perhaps that
+is why they are absolutely blind to conventional ugliness. For truly
+nothing could be more hideous than Woodhouse, as the miners had built
+it and disposed it. And yet, the very cabbage-stumps and rotten fences
+of the gardens, the very back-yards were instinct with magic, molten as
+they seemed with the bubbling-up of the under-darkness, bubbling up of
+majolica weight and luminosity, quite ignorant of the sky, heavy and
+satisfying.
+
+Slaves of the underworld! She watched the swing of the grey colliers
+along the pavement with a new fascination, hypnotized by a new vision.
+Slaves—the underground trolls and iron-workers, magic, mischievous, and
+enslaved, of the ancient stories. But tall—the miners seemed to her to
+loom tall and grey, in their enslaved magic. Slaves who would cause the
+superimposed day-order to fall. Not because, individually, they wanted
+to. But because, collectively, something bubbled up in them, the force
+of darkness which had no master and no control. It would bubble and
+stir in them as earthquakes stir the earth. It would be simply
+disastrous, because it had no master. There was no dark master in the
+world. The puerile world went on crying out for a new Jesus, another
+Saviour from the sky, another heavenly superman. When what was wanted
+was a Dark Master from the underworld.
+
+So they streamed past her, home from work—grey from head to foot,
+distorted in shape, cramped, with curious faces that came out pallid
+from under their dirt. Their walk was heavy-footed and slurring, their
+bearing stiff and grotesque. A stream they were—yet they seemed to her
+to loom like strange, valid figures of fairy-lore, unrealized and as
+yet unexperienced. The miners, the iron-workers, those who fashion the
+stuff of the underworld.
+
+As it always comes to its children, the nostalgia of the repulsive,
+heavy-footed Midlands came over her again, even whilst she was there in
+the midst. The curious, dark, inexplicable and yet insatiable
+craving—as if for an earthquake. To feel the earth heave and shudder
+and shatter the world from beneath. To go down in the débâcle.
+
+And so, in spite of everything, poverty, dowdiness, obscurity, and
+nothingness, she was content to stay in abeyance at home for the time.
+True, she was filled with the same old, slow, dreadful craving of the
+Midlands: a craving insatiable and inexplicable. But the very craving
+kept her still. For at this time she did not translate it into a
+desire, or need, for love. At the back of her mind somewhere was the
+fixed idea, the fixed intention of finding love, a man. But as yet, at
+this period, the idea was in abeyance, it did not act. The craving that
+possessed her as it possesses everybody, in a greater or less degree,
+in those parts, sustained her darkly and unconsciously.
+
+A hot summer waned into autumn, the long, bewildering days drew in, the
+transient nights, only a few breaths of shadow between noon and noon,
+deepened and strengthened. A restlessness came over everybody. There
+was another short strike among the miners. James Houghton, like an
+excited beetle, scurried to and fro, feeling he was making his fortune.
+Never had Woodhouse been so thronged on Fridays with purchasers and
+money-spenders. The place seemed surcharged with life.
+
+Autumn lasted beautiful till end of October. And then suddenly, cold
+rain, endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through
+the wind and rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had
+seemed almost to blossom again in the long hot days, regaining a free
+cheerfulness that amounted almost to liveliness, and who even caused a
+sort of scandal by her intimacy with a rather handsome but common
+stranger, an insurance agent who had come into the place with a good,
+unused tenor voice—now she wilted again. She had given the rather
+florid young man tea in her room, and had laboured away at his fine,
+metallic voice, correcting him and teaching him and laughing with him
+and spending really a remarkable number of hours alone with him in her
+room in Woodhouse—for she had given up tramping the country, and had
+hired a music-room in a quiet street, where she gave her lessons. And
+the young man had hung round, and had never wanted to go away. They
+would prolong their tête-à-tête and their singing on till ten o’clock
+at night, and Miss Frost would return to Manchester House flushed and
+handsome and a little shy, while the young man, who was common, took on
+a new boldness in the streets. He had auburn hair, high colouring, and
+a rather challenging bearing. He took on a new boldness, his own
+estimate of himself rose considerably, with Miss Frost and his trained
+voice to justify him. He was a little insolent and condescending to the
+natives, who disliked him. For their lives they could not imagine what
+Miss Frost could find in him. They began even to dislike her, and a
+pretty scandal was started about the pair, in the pleasant room where
+Miss Frost had her piano, her books, and her flowers. The scandal was
+as unjust as most scandals are. Yet truly, all that summer and autumn
+Miss Frost had a new and slightly aggressive cheerfulness and humour.
+And Manchester House saw little of her, comparatively.
+
+And then, at the end of September, the young man was removed by his
+Insurance Company to another district. And at the end of October set in
+the most abominable and unbearable weather, deluges of rain and north
+winds, cutting the tender, summer-unfolded people to pieces. Miss Frost
+wilted at once. A silence came over her. She shuddered when she had to
+leave the fire. She went in the morning to her room, and stayed there
+all the day, in a hot, close atmosphere, shuddering when her pupils
+brought the outside weather with them to her.
+
+She was always subject to bronchitis. In November she had a bad
+bronchitis cold. Then suddenly one morning she could not get up. Alvina
+went in and found her semi-conscious.
+
+The girl was almost mad. She flew to the rescue. She despatched her
+father instantly for the doctor, she heaped the sticks in the bedroom
+grate and made a bright fire, she brough hot milk and brandy.
+
+“Thank you, dear, thank you. It’s a bronchial cold,” whispered Miss
+Frost hurriedly, trying to sip the milk. She could not. She didn’t want
+it.
+
+“I’ve sent for the doctor,” said Alvina, in her cool voice, wherein
+none the less there rang the old hesitancy of sheer love.
+
+Miss Frost lifted her eyes:
+
+“There’s no need,” she said, and she smiled winsomely at Alvina.
+
+It was pneumonia. Useless to talk of the distracted anguish of Alvina
+during the next two days. She was so swift and sensitive in her
+nursing, she seemed to have second sight. She talked to nobody. In her
+silence her soul was alone with the soul of her darling. The long
+semi-consciousness and the tearing pain of pneumonia, the anguished
+sickness.
+
+But sometimes the grey eyes would open and smile with delicate
+winsomeness at Alvina, and Alvina smiled back, with a cheery, answering
+winsomeness. But that costs something.
+
+On the evening of the second day, Miss Frost got her hand from under
+the bedclothes, and laid it on Alvina’s hand. Alvina leaned down to
+her.
+
+“Everything is for you, my love,” whispered Miss Frost, looking with
+strange eyes on Alvina’s face.
+
+“Don’t talk, Miss Frost,” moaned Alvina.
+
+“Everything is for you,” murmured the sick woman—“except—” and she
+enumerated some tiny legacies which showed her generous, thoughtful
+nature.
+
+“Yes, I shall remember,” said Alvina, beyond tears now.
+
+Miss Frost smiled with her old bright, wonderful look, that had a touch
+of queenliness in it.
+
+“Kiss me, dear,” she whispered.
+
+Alvina kissed her, and could not suppress the whimpering of her
+too-much grief.
+
+The night passed slowly. Sometimes the grey eyes of the sick woman
+rested dark, dilated, haggard on Alvina’s face, with a heavy, almost
+accusing look, sinister. Then they closed again. And sometimes they
+looked pathetic, with a mute, stricken appeal. Then again they
+closed—only to open again tense with pain. Alvina wiped her
+blood-phlegmed lips.
+
+In the morning she died—lay there haggard, death-smeared, with her
+lovely white hair smeared also, and disorderly: she who had been so
+beautiful and clean always.
+
+Alvina knew death—which is untellable. She knew that her darling
+carried away a portion of her own soul into death.
+
+But she was alone. And the agony of being alone, the agony of grief,
+passionate, passionate grief for her darling who was torn into
+death—the agony of self-reproach, regret; the agony of remembrance; the
+agony of the looks of the dying woman, winsome, and sinisterly
+accusing, and pathetically, despairingly appealing—probe after probe of
+mortal agony, which throughout eternity would never lose its power to
+pierce to the quick!
+
+Alvina seemed to keep strangely calm and aloof all the days after the
+death. Only when she was alone she suffered till she felt her heart
+really broke.
+
+“I shall never feel anything any more,” she said in her abrupt way to
+Miss Frost’s friend, another woman of over fifty.
+
+“Nonsense, child!” expostulated Mrs. Lawson gently.
+
+“I shan’t! I shall never have a heart to feel anything any more,” said
+Alvina, with a strange, distraught roll of the eyes.
+
+“Not like this, child. But you’ll feel other things—”
+
+“I haven’t the heart,” persisted Alvina.
+
+“Not yet,” said Mrs. Lawson gently. “You can’t expect—But time—time
+brings back—”
+
+“Oh well—but I don’t believe it,” said Alvina.
+
+People thought her rather hard. To one of her gossips Miss Pinnegar
+confessed:
+
+“I thought she’d have felt it more. She cared more for her than she did
+for her own mother—and her mother knew it. Mrs. Houghton complained
+bitterly, sometimes, that _she_ had _no_ love. They were everything to
+one another, Miss Frost and Alvina. I should have thought she’d have
+felt it more. But you never know. A good thing if she doesn’t, really.”
+
+Miss Pinnegar herself did not care one little bit that Miss Frost was
+dead. She did not feel herself implicated.
+
+The nearest relatives came down, and everything was settled. The will
+was found, just a brief line on a piece of notepaper expressing a wish
+that Alvina should have everything. Alvina herself told the verbal
+requests. All was quietly fulfilled.
+
+As it might well be. For there was nothing to leave. Just sixty-three
+pounds in the bank—no more: then the clothes, piano, books and music.
+Miss Frost’s brother had these latter, at his own request: the books
+and music, and the piano. Alvina inherited the few simple trinkets, and
+about forty-five pounds in money.
+
+“Poor Miss Frost,” cried Mrs. Lawson, weeping rather bitterly—“she
+saved nothing for herself. You can see why she never wanted to grow
+old, so that she couldn’t work. You can see. It’s a shame, it’s a
+shame, one of the best women that ever trod earth.”
+
+Manchester House settled down to its deeper silence, its darker gloom.
+Miss Frost was irreparably gone. With her, the reality went out of the
+house. It seemed to be silently waiting to disappear. And Alvina and
+Miss Pinnegar might move about and talk in vain. They could never
+remove the sense of waiting to finish: it was all just waiting to
+finish. And the three, James and Alvina and Miss Pinnegar, waited
+lingering through the months, for the house to come to an end. With
+Miss Frost its spirit passed away: it was no more. Dark, empty-feeling,
+it seemed all the time like a house just before a sale.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE BEAU
+
+
+Throttle-Ha’penny worked fitfully through the winter, and in the spring
+broke down. By this time James Houghton had a pathetic, childish look
+which touched the hearts of Alvina and Miss Pinnegar. They began to
+treat him with a certain feminine indulgence, as he fluttered round,
+agitated and bewildered. He was like a bird that has flown into a room
+and is exhausted, enfeebled by its attempts to fly through the false
+freedom of the window-glass. Sometimes he would sit moping in a corner,
+with his head under his wing. But Miss Pinnegar chased him forth, like
+the stealthy cat she was, chased him up to the work-room to consider
+some detail of work, chased him into the shop to turn over the old
+débris of the stock. At one time he showed the alarming symptom of
+brooding over his wife’s death. Miss Pinnegar was thoroughly scared.
+But she was not inventive. It was left to Alvina to suggest: “Why
+doesn’t father let the shop, and some of the house?”
+
+Let the shop! Let the last inch of frontage on the street! James
+thought of it. Let the shop! Permit the name of Houghton to disappear
+from the list of tradesmen? Withdraw? Disappear? Become a nameless
+nobody, occupying obscure premises?
+
+He thought about it. And thinking about it, became so indignant at the
+thought that he pulled his scattered energies together within his frail
+frame. And then he came out with the most original of all his schemes.
+Manchester House was to be fitted up as a boarding-house for the better
+classes, and was to make a fortune catering for the needs of these
+gentry, who had now nowhere to go. Yes, Manchester House should be
+fitted up as a sort of quiet family hotel for the better classes. The
+shop should be turned into an elegant hall-entrance, carpeted, with a
+hall-porter and a wide plate-glass door, round-arched, in the round
+arch of which the words: “Manchester House” should appear large and
+distinguished, making an arch also, whilst underneath, more refined and
+smaller, should show the words: “Private Hotel.” James was to be
+proprietor and secretary, keeping the books and attending to
+correspondence: Miss Pinnegar was to be manageress, superintending the
+servants and directing the house, whilst Alvina was to occupy the
+equivocal position of “hostess.” She was to shake hands with the
+guests: she was to play the piano, and she was to nurse the sick. For
+in the prospectus James would include: “Trained nurse always on the
+premises.”
+
+“Why!” cried Miss Pinnegar, for once brutally and angrily hostile to
+him: “You’ll make it sound like a private lunatic asylum.”
+
+“Will you explain why?” answered James tartly.
+
+For himself, he was enraptured with the scheme. He began to tot up
+ideas and expenses. There would be the handsome entrance and hall:
+there would be an extension of the kitchen and scullery: there would be
+an installing of new hot-water and sanitary arrangements: there would
+be a light lift-arrangment from the kitchen: there would be a handsome
+glazed balcony or loggia or terrace on the first floor at the back,
+over the whole length of the back-yard. This loggia would give a
+wonderful outlook to the south-west and the west. In the immediate
+foreground, to be sure, would be the yard of the livery-stables and the
+rather slummy dwellings of the colliers, sloping downhill. But these
+could be easily overlooked, for the eye would instinctively wander
+across the green and shallow valley, to the long upslope opposite,
+showing the Manor set in its clump of trees, and farms and haystacks
+pleasantly dotted, and moderately far off coal-mines with twinkling
+headstocks and narrow railwaylines crossing the arable fields, and
+heaps of burning slag. The balcony or covered terrace—James settled
+down at last to the word _terrace_—was to be one of the features of the
+house: _the_ feature. It was to be fitted up as a sort of elegant
+lounging restaurant. Elegant teas, at two-and-six per head, and elegant
+suppers, at five shillings without wine, were to be served here.
+
+As a teetotaller and a man of ascetic views, James, in his first
+shallow moments, before he thought about it, assumed that his house
+should be entirely non-alcoholic. A temperance house! Already he
+winced. We all know what a provincial Temperance Hotel is. Besides,
+there is magic in the sound of wine. _Wines Served_. The legend
+attracted him immensely—as a teetotaller, it had a mysterious, hypnotic
+influence. He must have wines. He knew nothing about them. But Alfred
+Swayn, from the Liquor Vaults, would put him in the running in five
+minutes.
+
+It was most curious to see Miss Pinnegar turtle up at the mention of
+this scheme. When first it was disclosed to her, her colour came up
+like a turkey’s in a flush of indignant anger.
+
+“It’s ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous!” she blurted, bridling and
+ducking her head and turning aside, like an indignant turkey.
+
+“Ridiculous! Why? Will you explain why!” retorted James, turtling also.
+
+“It’s absolutely ridiculous!” she repeated, unable to do more than
+splutter.
+
+“Well, we’ll see,” said James, rising to superiority.
+
+And again he began to dart absorbedly about, like a bird building a
+nest. Miss Pinnegar watched him with a sort of sullen fury. She went to
+the shop door to peep out after him. She saw him slip into the Liquor
+Vaults, and she came back to announce to Alvina:
+
+“He’s taken to drink!”
+
+“Drink?” said Alvina.
+
+“That’s what it is,” said Miss Pinnegar vindictively. “Drink!”
+
+Alvina sank down and laughed till she was weak. It all seemed really
+too funny to her—too funny.
+
+“I can’t see what it is to laugh at,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+“Disgraceful—it’s disgraceful! But I’m not going to stop to be made a
+fool of. I shall be no manageress, I tell you. It’s absolutely
+ridiculous. Who does he think will come to the place? He’s out of his
+mind—and it’s drink; that’s what it is! Going into the Liquor Vaults at
+ten o’clock in the morning! That’s where he gets his ideas—out of
+whiskey—or brandy! But he’s not going to make a fool of me—”
+
+“Oh dear!” sighed Alvina, laughing herself into composure and a little
+weariness. “I know it’s _perfectly_ ridiculous. We shall have to stop
+him.”
+
+“I’ve said all I can say,” blurted Miss Pinnegar.
+
+As soon as James came in to a meal, the two women attacked him.
+
+“But father,” said Alvina, “there’ll be nobody to come.”
+
+“Plenty of people—plenty of people,” said her father. “Look at The
+Shakespeare’s Head, in Knarborough.”
+
+“Knarborough! Is this Knarborough!” blurted Miss Pinnegar. “Where are
+the business men here? Where are the foreigners coming here for
+business, where’s our lace-trade and our stocking-trade?”
+
+“There _are_ business men,” said James. “And there are ladies.”
+
+“Who,” retorted Miss Pinnegar, “is going to give half-a-crown for a
+tea? They expect tea and bread-and-butter for fourpence, and cake for
+sixpence, and apricots or pineapple for ninepence, and ham-and-tongue
+for a shilling, and fried ham and eggs and jam and cake as much as they
+can eat for one-and-two. If they expect a knife-and-fork tea for a
+shilling, what are you going to give them for half-a-crown?”
+
+“I know what I shall offer,” said James. “And we may make it two
+shillings.” Through his mind flitted the idea of 1/11-1/2—but he
+rejected it. “You don’t realize that I’m catering for a higher class of
+custom—”
+
+“But there _isn’t_ any higher class in Woodhouse, father,” said Alvina,
+unable to restrain a laugh.
+
+“If you create a supply you create a demand,” he retorted.
+
+“But how can you create a supply of better class people?” asked Alvina
+mockingly.
+
+James took on his refined, abstracted look, as if he were preoccupied
+on higher planes. It was the look of an obstinate little boy who poses
+on the side of the angels—or so the women saw it.
+
+Miss Pinnegar was prepared to combat him now by sheer weight of
+opposition. She would pitch her dead negative will obstinately against
+him. She would not speak to him, she would not observe his presence,
+she was stone deaf and stone blind: there _was_ no James. This nettled
+him. And she miscalculated him. He merely took another circuit, and
+rose another flight higher on the spiral of his spiritual egotism. He
+believed himself finely and sacredly in the right, that he was
+frustrated by lower beings, above whom it was his duty to rise, to
+soar. So he soared to serene heights, and his Private Hotel seemed a
+celestial injunction, an erection on a higher plane.
+
+He saw the architect: and then, with his plans and schemes, he saw the
+builder and contractor. The builder gave an estimate of six or seven
+hundred—but James had better see the plumber and fitter who was going
+to instal the new hot water and sanitary system. James was a little
+dashed. He had calculated much less. Having only a few hundred pounds
+in possession after Throttle-Ha’penny, he was prepared to mortgage
+Manchester House if he could keep in hand a sufficent sum of money for
+the running of his establishment for a year. He knew he would have to
+sacrifice Miss Pinnegar’s work-room. He knew, and he feared Miss
+Pinnegar’s violent and unmitigated hostility. Still—his obstinate
+spirit rose—he was quite prepared to risk everything on this last
+throw.
+
+Miss Allsop, daughter of the builder, called to see Alvina. The Allsops
+were great Chapel people, and Cassie Allsop was one of the old maids.
+She was thin and nipped and wistful looking, about forty-two years old.
+In private, she was tyrannously exacting with the servants, and
+spiteful, rather mean with her motherless nieces. But in public she had
+this nipped, wistful look.
+
+Alvina was surprised by this visit. When she found Miss Allsop at the
+back door, all her inherent hostility awoke.
+
+“Oh, is it you, Miss Allsop! Will you come in.”
+
+They sat in the middle room, the common living room of the house.
+
+“I called,” said Miss Allsop, coming to the point at once, and speaking
+in her Sunday-school-teacher voice, “to ask you if you know about this
+Private Hotel scheme of your father’s?”
+
+“Yes,” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh, you do! Well, we wondered. Mr. Houghton came to father about the
+building alterations yesterday. They’ll be awfully expensive.”
+
+“Will they?” said Alvina, making big, mocking eyes.
+
+“Yes, very. What do _you_ think of the scheme?”
+
+“I?—well—!” Alvina hesitated, then broke into a laugh. “To tell the
+truth I haven’t thought much about it at all.”
+
+“Well I think you should,” said Miss Allsop severely. “Father’s sure it
+won’t pay—and it will cost I don’t know how much. It is bound to be a
+dead loss. And your father’s getting on. You’ll be left stranded in the
+world without a penny to bless yourself with. I think it’s an awful
+outlook for you.”
+
+“Do you?” said Alvina.
+
+Here she was, with a bang, planked upon the shelf among the old maids.
+
+“Oh, I do. Sincerely! I should do all I could to prevent him, if I were
+you.”
+
+Miss Allsop took her departure. Alvina felt herself jolted in her mood.
+An old maid along with Cassie Allsop!—and James Houghton fooling about
+with the last bit of money, mortgaging Manchester House up to the hilt.
+Alvina sank in a kind of weary mortification, in which _her_ peculiar
+obstinacy persisted devilishly and spitefully. “Oh well, so be it,”
+said her spirit vindictively. “Let the meagre, mean, despicable fate
+fulfil itself.” Her old anger against her father arose again.
+
+Arthur Witham, the plumber, came in with James Houghton to examine the
+house. Arthur Witham was also one of the Chapel men—as had been his
+common, interfering, uneducated father before him. The father had left
+each of his sons a fair little sum of money, which Arthur, the eldest,
+had already increased ten-fold. He was sly and slow and uneducated
+also, and spoke with a broad accent. But he was not bad-looking, a
+tight fellow with big blue eyes, who aspired to keep his “h’s” in the
+right place, and would have been a gentleman if he could.
+
+Against her usual habit, Alvina joined the plumber and her father in
+the scullery. Arthur Witham saluted her with some respect. She liked
+his blue eyes and tight figure. He was keen and sly in business, very
+watchful, and slow to commit himself. Now he poked and peered and crept
+under the sink. Alvina watched him half disappear—she handed him a
+candle—and she laughed to herself seeing his tight, well-shaped
+hind-quarters protruding from under the sink like the wrong end of a
+dog from a kennel. He was keen after money, was Arthur—and bossy,
+creeping slyly after his own self-importance and power. He wanted
+power—and he would creep quietly after it till he got it: as much as he
+was capable of. His “h’s” were a barbed-wire fence and entanglement,
+preventing his unlimited progress.
+
+He emerged from under the sink, and they went to the kitchen and
+afterwards upstairs. Alvina followed them persistently, but a little
+aloof, and silent. When the tour of inspection was almost over, she
+said innocently:
+
+“Won’t it cost a great deal?”
+
+Arthur Witham slowly shook his head. Then he looked at her. She smiled
+rather archly into his eyes.
+
+“It won’t be done for nothing,” he said, looking at her again.
+
+“We can go into that later,” said James, leading off the plumber.
+
+“Good morning, Miss Houghton,” said Arthur Witham.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Witham,” replied Alvina brightly.
+
+But she lingered in the background, and as Arthur Witham was going she
+heard him say: “Well, I’ll work it out, Mr. Houghton. I’ll work it out,
+and let you know tonight. I’ll get the figures by tonight.”
+
+The younger man’s tone was a little off-hand, just a little
+supercilious with her father, she thought. James’s star was setting.
+
+In the afternoon, directly after dinner, Alvina went out. She entered
+the shop, where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty stood about,
+varied by sheets of glass and fancy paper. Lottie Witham, Arthur’s
+wife, appeared. She was a woman of thirty-five, a bit of a shrew, with
+social ambitions and no children.
+
+“Is Mr. Witham in?” said Alvina.
+
+Mrs. Witham eyed her.
+
+“I’ll see,” she answered, and she left the shop.
+
+Presently Arthur entered, in his shirt-sleeves: rather
+attractive-looking.
+
+“I don’t know what you’ll think of me, and what I’ve come for,” said
+Alvina, with hurried amiability. Arthur lifted his blue eyes to her,
+and Mrs. Witham appeared in the background, in the inner doorway.
+
+“Why, what is it?” said Arthur stolidly.
+
+“Make it as dear as you can, for father,” said Alvina, laughing
+nervously.
+
+Arthur’s blue eyes rested on her face. Mrs. Witham advanced into the
+shop.
+
+“Why? What’s that for?” asked Lottie Witham shrewdly.
+
+Alvina turned to the woman.
+
+“Don’t say anything,” she said. “But we don’t want father to go on with
+this scheme. It’s bound to fail. And Miss Pinnegar and I can’t have
+anything to do with it anyway. I shall go away.”
+
+“It’s bound to fail,” said Arthur Witham stolidly.
+
+“And father has no money, I’m sure,” said Alvina.
+
+Lottie Witham eyed the thin, nervous face of Alvina. For some reason,
+she liked her. And of course, Alvina was considered a lady in
+Woodhouse. That was what it had come to, with James’s declining
+fortunes: she was merely _considered_ a lady. The consideration was no
+longer indisputable.
+
+“Shall you come in a minute?” said Lottie Witham, lifting the flap of
+the counter. It was a rare and bold stroke on Mrs. Witham’s part.
+Alvina’s immediate instinct was to refuse. But she liked Arthur Witham,
+in his shirt sleeves.
+
+“Well—I must be back in a minute,” she said, as she entered the
+embrasure of the counter. She felt as if she were really venturing on
+new ground. She was led into the new drawing-room, done in new
+peacock-and-bronze brocade furniture, with gilt and brass and white
+walls. This was the Withams’ new house, and Lottie was proud of it. The
+two women had a short confidential chat. Arthur lingered in the doorway
+a while, then went away.
+
+Alvina did not really like Lottie Witham. Yet the other woman was sharp
+and shrewd in the uptake, and for some reason she fancied Alvina. So
+she was invited to tea at Manchester House.
+
+After this, so many difficulties rose up in James Houghton’s way that
+he was worried almost out of his life. His two women left him alone.
+Outside difficulties multiplied on him till he abandoned his scheme—he
+was simply driven out of it by untoward circumstances.
+
+Lottie Witham came to tea, and was shown over Manchester House. She had
+no opinion at all of Manchester House—wouldn’t hang a cat in such a
+gloomy hole. _Still_, she was rather impressed by the sense of
+superiority.
+
+“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed as she stood in Alvina’s bedroom, and
+looked at the enormous furniture, the lofty tableland of the bed.
+
+“Oh my goodness! I wouldn’t sleep in _that_ for a trifle, by myself!
+Aren’t you frightened out of your life? Even if I had Arthur at one
+side of me, I should be that frightened on the other side I shouldn’t
+know what to do. Do you sleep here by yourself?”
+
+“Yes,” said Alvina laughing. “I haven’t got an Arthur, even for one
+side.”
+
+“Oh, my word, you’d want a husband on both sides, in that bed,” said
+Lottie Witham.
+
+Alvina was asked back to tea—on Wednesday afternoon, closing day.
+Arthur was there to tea—very ill at ease and feeling as if his hands
+were swollen. Alvina got on better with his wife, who watched closely
+to learn from her guest the secret of repose. The indefinable repose
+and inevitability of a lady—even of a lady who is nervous and
+agitated—this was the problem which occupied Lottie’s shrewd and
+active, but lower-class mind. She even did not resent Alvina’s laughing
+attempts to draw out the clumsy Arthur: because Alvina was a lady, and
+her tactics must be studied.
+
+Alvina really liked Arthur, and thought a good deal about him—heaven
+knows why. He and Lottie were quite happy together, and he was absorbed
+in his petty ambitions. In his limited way, he was invincibly
+ambitious. He would end by making a sufficient fortune, and by being a
+town councillor and a J.P. But beyond Woodhouse he did not exist. Why
+then should Alvina be attracted by him? Perhaps because of his
+“closeness,” and his secret determinedness.
+
+When she met him in the street she would stop him—though he was always
+busy—and make him exchange a few words with her. And when she had tea
+at his house, she would try to rouse his attention. But though he
+looked at her, steadily, with his blue eyes, from under his long
+lashes, still, she knew, he looked at her objectively. He never
+conceived any connection with her whatsoever.
+
+It was Lottie who had a scheming mind. In the family of three brothers
+there was one—not black sheep, but white. There was one who was
+climbing out, to be a gentleman. This was Albert, the second brother.
+He had been a school-teacher in Woodhouse: had gone out to South Africa
+and occupied a post in a sort of Grammar School in one of the cities of
+Cape Colony. He had accumulated some money, to add to his patrimony.
+Now he was in England, at Oxford, where he would take his belated
+degree. When he had got his degree, he would return to South Africa to
+become head of his school, at seven hundred a year.
+
+Albert was thirty-two years old, and unmarried. Lottie was determined
+he should take back to the Cape a suitable wife: presumably Alvina. He
+spent his vacations in Woodhouse—and he was only in his first year at
+Oxford. Well now, what could be more suitable—a young man at Oxford, a
+young lady in Woodhouse. Lottie told Alvina all about him, and Alvina
+was quite excited to meet him. She imagined him a taller, more
+fascinating, educated Arthur.
+
+For the fear of being an old maid, the fear of her own virginity was
+really gaining on Alvina. There was a terrible sombre futility,
+nothingness, in Manchester House. She was twenty-six years old. Her
+life was utterly barren now Miss Frost had gone. She was shabby and
+penniless, a mere household drudge: for James begrudged even a girl to
+help in the kitchen. She was looking faded and worn. Panic, the
+terrible and deadly panic which overcomes so many unmarried women at
+about the age of thirty, was beginning to overcome her. She would not
+care about marriage, if even she had a lover. But some sort of _terror_
+hunted her to the search of a lover. She would become loose, she would
+become a prostitute, she said to herself, rather than die off like
+Cassie Allsop and the rest, wither slowly and ignominiously and
+hideously on the tree. She would rather kill herself.
+
+But it needs a certain natural gift to become a loose woman or a
+prostitute. If you haven’t got the qualities which attract loose men,
+what are you to do? Supposing it isn’t in your nature to attract loose
+and promiscuous men! Why, then you can’t be a prostitute, if you try
+your head off: nor even a loose woman. Since _willing_ won’t do it. It
+requires a second party to come to an agreement.
+
+Therefore all Alvina’s desperate and profligate schemes and ideas fell
+to nought before the inexorable in her nature. And the inexorable in
+her nature was highly exclusive and selective, an inevitable negation
+of looseness or prostitution. Hence men were afraid of her—of her
+power, once they had committed themselves. She would involve and lead a
+man on, she would destroy him rather than not get of him what she
+wanted. And what she wanted was something serious and risky. Not mere
+marriage—oh dear no! But a profound and dangerous inter-relationship.
+As well ask the paddlers in the small surf of passion to plunge
+themselves into the heaving gulf of mid-ocean. Bah, with their trousers
+turned up to their knees it was enough for them to wet their toes in
+the dangerous sea. They were having nothing to do with such desperate
+nereids as Alvina.
+
+She had cast her mind on Arthur. Truly ridiculous. But there was
+something compact and energetic and wilful about him that she magnified
+ten-fold and so obtained, imaginatively, an attractive lover. She
+brooded her days shabbily away in Manchester House, busy with housework
+drudgery. Since the collapse of Throttle-Ha’penny, James Houghton had
+become so stingy that it was like an inflammation in him. A silver
+sixpence had a pale and celestial radiance which he could not forego, a
+nebulous whiteness which made him feel he had heaven in his hold. How
+then could he let it go. Even a brown penny seemed alive and pulsing
+with mysterious blood, potent, magical. He loved the flock of his busy
+pennies, in the shop, as if they had been divine bees bringing him
+sustenance from the infinite. But the pennies he saw dribbling away in
+household expenses troubled him acutely, as if they were live things
+leaving his fold. It was a constant struggle to get from him enough
+money for necessities.
+
+And so the household diet became meagre in the extreme, the coal was
+eked out inch by inch, and when Alvina must have her boots mended she
+must draw on her own little stock of money. For James Houghton had the
+impudence to make her an allowance of two shillings a week. She was
+very angry. Yet her anger was of that dangerous, half-ironical sort
+which wears away its subject and has no outward effect. A feeling of
+half-bitter mockery kept her going. In the ponderous, rather sordid
+nullity of Manchester House she became shadowy and absorbed, absorbed
+in nothing in particular, yet absorbed. She was always more or less
+busy: and certainly there was always something to be done, whether she
+did it or not.
+
+The shop was opened once a week, on Friday evenings. James Houghton
+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.
+
+Alvina looked at Arthur. Arthur was short and dark-haired and nicely
+coloured. But, now his brother was there, he too seemed to have a dumb,
+aqueous silence, fish-like and aloof, about him. He seemed to swim like
+a fish in his own little element. Strange it all was, like Alice in
+Wonderland. Alvina understood now Lottie’s strained sort of thinness, a
+haggard, sinewy, sea-weedy look. The poor thing was all the time
+swimming for her life.
+
+For Alvina it was a most curious tea-party. She listened and smiled and
+made vague answers to Albert, who leaned his broad, thin, brittle
+shoulders towards her. Lottie seemed rather shadowily to preside. But
+it was Arthur who came out into communication. And now, uttering his
+rather broad-mouthed speeches, she seemed to hear in him a quieter,
+subtler edition of his father. His father had been a little,
+terrifically loud-voiced, hard-skinned man, amazingly uneducated and
+amazingly bullying, who had tyrannized for many years over the Sunday
+School children during morning service. He had been an odd-looking
+creature with round grey whiskers: to Alvina, always a creature, never
+a man: an atrocious leprechaun from under the Chapel floor. And how he
+used to dig the children in the back with his horrible iron thumb, if
+the poor things happened to whisper or nod in chapel!
+
+These were his children—most curious chips of the old block. Who ever
+would have believed she would have been taking tea with them.
+
+“Why don’t you have a bicycle, and go out on it?” Arthur was saying.
+
+“But I can’t ride,” said Alvina.
+
+“You’d learn in a couple of lessons. There’s nothing in riding a
+bicycle.”
+
+“I don’t believe I ever should,” laughed Alvina.
+
+“You don’t mean to say you’re nervous?” said Arthur rudely and
+sneeringly.
+
+“I _am_,” she persisted.
+
+“You needn’t be nervous with me,” smiled Albert broadly, with his odd,
+genuine gallantry. “I’ll hold you on.”
+
+“But I haven’t got a bicycle,” said Alvina, feeling she was slowly
+colouring to a deep, uneasy blush.
+
+“You can have mine to learn on,” said Lottie. “Albert will look after
+it.”
+
+“There’s your chance,” said Arthur rudely. “Take it while you’ve got
+it.”
+
+Now Alvina did not want to learn to ride a bicycle. The two Miss
+Carlins, two more old maids, had made themselves ridiculous for ever by
+becoming twin cycle fiends. And the horrible energetic strain of
+peddling a bicycle over miles and miles of high-way did not attract
+Alvina at all. She was completely indifferent to sight-seeing and
+scouring about. She liked taking a walk, in her lingering indifferent
+fashion. But rushing about in any way was hateful to her. And then, to
+be taught to ride a bicycle by Albert Witham! Her very soul stood
+still.
+
+“Yes,” said Albert, beaming down at her from his strange pale eyes.
+“Come on. When will you have your first lesson?”
+
+“Oh,” cried Alvina in confusion. “I can’t promise. I haven’t time,
+really.”
+
+“Time!” exclaimed Arthur rudely. “But what do you do wi’ yourself all
+day?”
+
+“I have to keep house,” she said, looking at him archly.
+
+“House! You can put a chain round its neck, and tie it up,” he
+retorted.
+
+Albert laughed, showing all his teeth.
+
+“I’m sure you find plenty to do, with everything on your hands,” said
+Lottie to Alvina.
+
+“I do!” said Alvina. “By evening I’m quite tired—though you mayn’t
+believe it, since you say I do nothing,” she added, laughing confusedly
+to Arthur.
+
+But he, hard-headed little fortune-maker, replied:
+
+“You have a girl to help you, don’t you!”
+
+Albert, however, was beaming at her sympathetically.
+
+“You have too much to do indoors,” he said. “It would do you good to
+get a bit of exercise out of doors. Come down to the Coach Road
+tomorrow afternoon, and let me give you a lesson. Go on—”
+
+Now the coach-road was a level drive between beautiful park-like
+grass-stretches, down in the valley. It was a delightful place for
+learning to ride a bicycle, but open in full view of all the world.
+Alvina would have died of shame. She began to laugh nervously and
+hurriedly at the very thought.
+
+“No, I can’t. I really can’t. Thanks, awfully,” she said.
+
+“Can’t you really!” said Albert. “Oh well, we’ll say another day, shall
+we?”
+
+“When I feel I can,” she said.
+
+“Yes, when you feel like it,” replied Albert.
+
+“That’s more it,” said Arthur. “It’s not the time. It’s the
+nervousness.” Again Albert beamed at her sympathetically, and said:
+
+“Oh, I’ll hold you. You needn’t be afraid.”
+
+“But I’m not afraid,” she said.
+
+“You won’t _say_ you are,” interposed Arthur. “Women’s faults mustn’t
+be owned up to.”
+
+Alvina was beginning to feel quite dazed. Their mechanical, overbearing
+way was something she was unaccustomed to. It was like the jaws of a
+pair of insentient iron pincers. She rose, saying she must go.
+
+Albert rose also, and reached for his straw hat, with its coloured
+band.
+
+“I’ll stroll up with you, if you don’t mind,” he said. And he took his
+place at her side along the Knarborough Road, where everybody turned to
+look. For, of course, he had a sort of fame in Woodhouse. She went with
+him laughing and chatting. But she did not feel at all comfortable. He
+seemed so pleased. Only he was not pleased with _her_. He was pleased
+with himself on her account: inordinately pleased with himself. In his
+world, as in a fish’s, there was but his own swimming self: and if he
+chanced to have something swimming alongside and doing him credit, why,
+so much the more complacently he smiled.
+
+He walked stiff and erect, with his head pressed rather back, so that
+he always seemed to be advancing from the head and shoulders, in a flat
+kind of advance, horizontal. He did not seem to be walking with his
+whole body. His manner was oddly gallant, with a gallantry that
+completely missed the individual in the woman, circled round her and
+flew home gratified to his own hive. The way he raised his hat, the way
+he inclined and smiled flatly, even rather excitedly, as he talked, was
+all a little discomforting and comical.
+
+He left her at the shop door, saying:
+
+“I shall see you again, I hope.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” she replied, rattling the door anxiously, for it was locked.
+She heard her father’s step at last tripping down the shop.
+
+“Good-evening, Mr. Houghton,” said Albert suavely and with a certain
+confidence, as James peered out.
+
+“Oh, good-evening!” said James, letting Alvina pass, and shutting the
+door in Albert’s face.
+
+“Who was that?” he asked her sharply.
+
+“Albert Witham,” she replied.
+
+“What has _he_ got to do with you?” said James shrewishly.
+
+“Nothing, I hope.”
+
+She fled into the obscurity of Manchester House, out of the grey summer
+evening. The Withams threw her off her pivot, and made her feel she was
+not herself. She felt she didn’t know, she couldn’t feel, she was just
+scattered and decentralized. And she was rather afraid of the Witham
+brothers. She might be their victim. She intended to avoid them.
+
+The following days she saw Albert, in his Norfolk jacket and flannel
+trousers and his straw hat, strolling past several times and looking in
+through the shop door and up at the upper windows. But she hid herself
+thoroughly. When she went out, it was by the back way. So she avoided
+him.
+
+But on Sunday evening, there he sat, rather stiff and brittle in the
+old Withams’ pew, his head pressed a little back, so that his face and
+neck seemed slightly flattened. He wore very low, turn-down starched
+collars that showed all his neck. And he kept looking up at her during
+the service—she sat in the choir-loft—gazing up at her with apparently
+love-lorn eyes and a faint, intimate smile—the sort of _je-sais-tout_
+look of a private swain. Arthur also occasionally cast a judicious eye
+on her, as if she were a chimney that needed repairing, and he must
+estimate the cost, and whether it was worth it.
+
+Sure enough, as she came out through the narrow choir gate into
+Knarborough Road, there was Albert stepping forward like a policeman,
+and saluting her and smiling down on her.
+
+“I don’t know if I’m presuming—” he said, in a mock deferential way
+that showed he didn’t imagine he _could_ presume.
+
+“Oh, not at all,” said Alvina airily. He smiled with assurance.
+
+“You haven’t got any engagement, then, for this evening?” he said.
+
+“No,” she replied simply.
+
+“We might take a walk. What do you think?” he said, glancing down the
+road in either direction.
+
+What, after all, was she to think? All the girls were pairing off with
+the boys for the after-chapel stroll and spoon.
+
+“I don’t mind,” she said. “But I can’t go far. I’ve got to be in at
+nine.”
+
+“Which way shall we go?” he said.
+
+He steered off, turned downhill through the common gardens, and
+proposed to take her the not-very-original walk up Flint’s Lane, and
+along the railway line—the colliery railway, that is—then back up the
+Marlpool Road: a sort of circle. She agreed.
+
+They did not find a great deal to talk about. She questioned him about
+his plans, and about the Cape. But save for bare outlines, which he
+gave readily enough, he was rather close.
+
+“What do you do on Sunday nights as a rule?” he asked her.
+
+“Oh, I have a walk with Lucy Grainger—or I go down to Hallam’s—or go
+home,” she answered.
+
+“You don’t go walks with the fellows, then?”
+
+“Father would never have it,” she replied.
+
+“What will he say now?” he asked, with self-satisfaction.
+
+“Goodness knows!” she laughed.
+
+“Goodness usually does,” he answered archly.
+
+When they came to the rather stumbly railway, he said:
+
+“Won’t you take my arm?”—offering her the said member.
+
+“Oh, I’m all right,” she said. “Thanks.”
+
+“Go on,” he said, pressing a little nearer to her, and offering his
+arm. “There’s nothing against it, is there?”
+
+“Oh, it’s not that,” she said.
+
+And feeling in a false position, she took his arm, rather unwillingly.
+He drew a little nearer to her, and walked with a slight prance.
+
+“We get on better, don’t we?” he said, giving her hand the tiniest
+squeeze with his arm against his side.
+
+“Much!” she replied, with a laugh.
+
+Then he lowered his voice oddly.
+
+“It’s many a day since I was on this railroad,” he said.
+
+“Is this one of your old walks?” she asked, malicious.
+
+“Yes, I’ve been it once or twice—with girls that are all married now.”
+
+“Didn’t you want to marry?” she asked.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know. I may have done. But it never came off, somehow.
+I’ve sometimes thought it never would come off.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I don’t know, exactly. It didn’t seem to, you know. Perhaps neither of
+us was properly inclined.”
+
+“I should think so,” she said.
+
+“And yet,” he admitted slyly, “I should _like_ to marry—” To this she
+did not answer.
+
+“Shouldn’t you?” he continued.
+
+“When I meet the right man,” she laughed.
+
+“That’s it,” he said. “There, that’s just it! And you _haven’t_ met
+him?” His voice seemed smiling with a sort of triumph, as if he had
+caught her out.
+
+“Well—once I thought I had—when I was engaged to Alexander.”
+
+“But you found you were mistaken?” he insisted.
+
+“No. Mother was so ill at the time—”
+
+“There’s always something to consider,” he said.
+
+She kept on wondering what she should do if he wanted to kiss her. The
+mere incongruity of such a desire on his part formed a problem.
+Luckily, for this evening he formulated no desire, but left her in the
+shop-door soon after nine, with the request:
+
+“I shall see you in the week, shan’t I?”
+
+“I’m not sure. I can’t promise now,” she said hurriedly. “Good-night.”
+
+What she felt chiefly about him was a decentralized perplexity, very
+much akin to no feeling at all.
+
+“Who do you think took me for a walk, Miss Pinnegar?” she said,
+laughing, to her confidante.
+
+“I can’t imagine,” replied Miss Pinnegar, eyeing her.
+
+“You never would imagine,” said Alvina. “Albert Witham.”
+
+“Albert Witham!” exclaimed Miss Pinnegar, standing quite motionless.
+
+“It may well take your breath away,” said Alvina.
+
+“No, it’s not that!” hurriedly expostulated Miss Pinnegar. “Well—!
+Well, I declare!—” and then, on a new note: “Well, he’s very eligible,
+I think.”
+
+“Most eligible!” replied Alvina.
+
+“Yes, he is,” insisted Miss Pinnegar. “I think it’s very good.”
+
+“What’s very good?” asked Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar hesitated. She looked at Alvina. She reconsidered.
+
+“Of course he’s not the man I should have imagined for you, but—”
+
+“You think he’ll do?” said Alvina.
+
+“Why not?” said Miss Pinnegar. “Why shouldn’t he do—if you like him.”
+
+“Ah—!” cried Alvina, sinking on the sofa with a laugh. “That’s it.”
+
+“Of course you couldn’t have anything to do with him if you don’t care
+for him,” pronounced Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Albert continued to hang around. He did not make any direct attack for
+a few days. Suddenly one evening he appeared at the back door with a
+bunch of white stocks in his hand. His face lit up with a sudden, odd
+smile when she opened the door—a broad, pale-gleaming, remarkable
+smile.
+
+“Lottie wanted to know if you’d come to tea tomorrow,” he said straight
+out, looking at her with the pale light in his eyes, that smiled palely
+right into her eyes, but did not see her at all. He was waiting on the
+doorstep to come in.
+
+“Will you come in?” said Alvina. “Father is in.”
+
+“Yes, I don’t mind,” he said, pleased. He mounted the steps, still
+holding his bunch of white stocks.
+
+James Houghton screwed round in his chair and peered over his
+spectacles to see who was coming.
+
+“Father,” said Alvina, “you know Mr. Witham, don’t you?”
+
+James Houghton half rose. He still peered over his glasses at the
+intruder.
+
+“Well—I do by sight. How do you do?”
+
+He held out his frail hand.
+
+Albert held back, with the flowers in his own hand, and giving his
+broad, pleased, pale-gleaming smile from father to daughter, he said:
+
+“What am I to do with these? Will you accept them, Miss Houghton?” He
+stared at her with shining, pallid smiling eyes.
+
+“Are they for me?” she said, with false brightness. “Thank you.”
+
+James Houghton looked over the top of his spectacles, searchingly, at
+the flowers, as if they had been a bunch of white and sharp-toothed
+ferrets. Then he looked as suspiciously at the hand which Albert at
+last extended to him. He shook it slightly, and said:
+
+“Take a seat.”
+
+“I’m afraid I’m disturbing you in your reading,” said Albert, still
+having the drawn, excited smile on his face.
+
+“Well—” said James Houghton. “The light is fading.”
+
+Alvina came in with the flowers in a jar. She set them on the table.
+
+“Haven’t they a lovely scent?” she said.
+
+“Do you think so?” he replied, again with the excited smile. There was
+a pause. Albert, rather embarrassed, reached forward, saying:
+
+“May I see what you’re reading!” And he turned over the book. “‘Tommy
+and Grizel!’ Oh yes! What do you think of it?”
+
+“Well,” said James, “I am only in the beginning.”
+
+“I think it’s interesting, myself,” said Albert, “as a study of a man
+who can’t get away from himself. You meet a lot of people like that.
+What I wonder is why they find it such a drawback.”
+
+“Find what a drawback?” asked James.
+
+“Not being able to get away from themselves. That self-consciousness.
+It hampers them, and interferes with their power of action. Now I
+wonder why self-consciousness should hinder a man in his action? Why
+does it cause misgiving? I think I’m self-conscious, but I don’t think
+I have so many misgivings. I don’t see that they’re necessary.”
+
+“Certainly I think Tommy is a weak character. I believe he’s a
+despicable character,” said James.
+
+“No, I don’t know so much about that,” said Albert. “I shouldn’t say
+weak, exactly. He’s only weak in one direction. No, what I wonder is
+why he feels guilty. If you feel self-conscious, there’s no need to
+feel guilty about it, is there?”
+
+He stared with his strange, smiling stare at James.
+
+“I shouldn’t say so,” replied James. “But if a man never knows his own
+mind, he certainly can’t be much of a man.”
+
+“I don’t see it,” replied Albert. “What’s the matter is that he feels
+guilty for not knowing his own mind. That’s the unnecessary part. The
+guilty feeling—”
+
+Albert seemed insistent on this point, which had no particular interest
+for James.
+
+“Where we’ve got to make a change,” said Albert, “is in the feeling
+that other people have a right to tell us what we ought to feel and do.
+Nobody knows what another man ought to feel. Every man has his own
+special feelings, and his own right to them. That’s where it is with
+education. You ought not to want all your children to feel alike. Their
+natures are all different, and so they should all feel different, about
+practically everything.”
+
+“There would be no end to the confusion,” said James.
+
+“There needn’t be any confusion to speak of. You agree to a number of
+rules and conventions and laws, for social purposes. But in private you
+feel just as you do feel, without occasion for trying to feel something
+else.”
+
+“I don’t know,” said James. “There are certain feelings common to
+humanity, such as love, and honour, and truth.”
+
+“Would you call them feelings?” said Albert. “I should say what is
+common is the idea. The idea is common to humanity, once you’ve put it
+into words. But the feeling varies with every man. The same idea
+represents a different kind of feeling in every different individual.
+It seems to me that’s what we’ve got to recognize if we’re going to do
+anything with education. We don’t want to produce mass feelings. Don’t
+you agree?”
+
+Poor James was too bewildered to know whether to agree or not to agree.
+
+“Shall we have a light, Alvina?” he said to his daughter.
+
+Alvina lit the incandescent gas-jet that hung in the middle of the
+room. The hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as she
+reached up to it. But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly. It
+seemed as if his words came off him without affecting him at all. He
+did not think about what he was feeling, and he did not feel what he
+was thinking about. And therefore she hardly heard what he said. Yet
+she believed he was clever.
+
+It was evident Albert was quite blissfully happy, in his own way,
+sitting there at the end of the sofa not far from the fire, and talking
+animatedly. The uncomfortable thing was that though he talked in the
+direction of his interlocutor, he did not speak _to_ him: merely said
+his words towards him. James, however, was such an airy feather himself
+he did not remark this, but only felt a little self-important at
+sustaining such a subtle conversation with a man from Oxford. Alvina,
+who never expected to be interested in clever conversations, after a
+long experience of her father, found her expectation justified again.
+She was not interested.
+
+The man was quite nicely dressed, in the regulation tweed jacket and
+flannel trousers and brown shoes. He was even rather smart, judging
+from his yellow socks and yellow-and-brown tie. Miss Pinnegar eyed him
+with approval when she came in.
+
+“Good-evening!” she said, just a trifle condescendingly, as she shook
+hands. “How do you find Woodhouse, after being away so long?” Her way
+of speaking was so quiet, as if she hardly spoke aloud.
+
+“Well,” he answered. “I find it the same in many ways.”
+
+“You wouldn’t like to settle here again?”
+
+“I don’t think I should. It feels a little cramped, you know, after a
+new country. But it has its attractions.” Here he smiled meaningful.
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Pinnegar. “I suppose the old connections count for
+something.”
+
+“They do. Oh decidedly they do. There’s no associations like the old
+ones.” He smiled flatly as he looked towards Alvina.
+
+“You find it so, do you!” returned Miss Pinnegar. “You don’t find that
+the new connections make up for the old?”
+
+“Not altogether, they don’t. There’s something missing—” Again he
+looked towards Alvina. But she did not answer his look.
+
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar. “I’m glad we still count for something, in
+spite of the greater attractions. How long have you in England?”
+
+“Another year. Just a year. This time next year I expect I shall be
+sailing back to the Cape.” He smiled as if in anticipation. Yet it was
+hard to believe that it mattered to him—or that anything mattered.
+
+“And is Oxford agreeable to you?” she asked.
+
+“Oh, yes. I keep myself busy.”
+
+“What are your subjects?” asked James.
+
+“English and History. But I do mental science for my own interest.”
+
+Alvina had taken up a piece of sewing. She sat under the light,
+brooding a little. What _had_ all this to do with her. The man talked
+on, and beamed in her direction. And she felt a little important. But
+moved or touched?—not the least in the world.
+
+She wondered if any one would ask him to supper—bread and cheese and
+currant-loaf, and water, was all that offered. No one asked him, and at
+last he rose.
+
+“Show Mr. Witham out through the shop, Alvina,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Alvina piloted the man through the long, dark, encumbered way of the
+shop. At the door he said:
+
+“You’ve never said whether you’re coming to tea on Thursday.”
+
+“I don’t think I can,” said Alvina.
+
+He seemed rather taken aback.
+
+“Why?” he said. “What stops you?”
+
+“I’ve so much to do.”
+
+He smiled slowly and satirically.
+
+“Won’t it keep?” he said.
+
+“No, really. I can’t come on Thursday—thank you so much. Good-night!”
+She gave him her hand and turned quickly into the shop, closing the
+door. He remained standing in the porch, staring at the closed door.
+Then, lifting his lip, he turned away.
+
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar decidedly, as Alvina re-entered. “You can
+say what you like—but I think he’s _very pleasant_, _very_ pleasant.”
+
+“Extremely intelligent,” said James Houghton, shifting in his chair.
+
+“I was awfully bored,” said Alvina.
+
+They both looked at her, irritated.
+
+After this she really did what she could to avoid him. When she saw him
+sauntering down the street in all his leisure, a sort of anger
+possessed her. On Sunday, she slipped down from the choir into the
+Chapel, and out through the main entrance, whilst he awaited her at the
+small exit. And by good luck, when he called one evening in the week,
+she was out. She returned down the yard. And there, through the
+uncurtained window, she saw him sitting awaiting her. Without a
+thought, she turned on her heel and fled away. She did not come in till
+he had gone.
+
+“How late you are!” said Miss Pinnegar. “Mr. Witham was here till ten
+minutes ago.”
+
+“Yes,” laughed Alvina. “I came down the yard and saw him. So I went
+back till he’d gone.”
+
+Miss Pinnegar looked at her in displeasure:
+
+“I suppose you know your own mind,” she said.
+
+“How do you explain such behaviour?” said her father pettishly.
+
+“I didn’t want to meet him,” she said.
+
+The next evening was Saturday. Alvina had inherited Miss Frost’s task
+of attending to the Chapel flowers once a quarter. She had been round
+the gardens of her friends, and gathered the scarlet and hot yellow and
+purple flowers of August, asters, red stocks, tall Japanese sunflowers,
+coreopsis, geraniums. With these in her basket she slipped out towards
+evening, to the Chapel. She knew Mr. Calladine, the caretaker would not
+lock up till she had been.
+
+The moment she got inside the Chapel—it was a big, airy, pleasant
+building—she heard hammering from the organ-loft, and saw the flicker
+of a candle. Some workman busy before Sunday. She shut the baize door
+behind her, and hurried across to the vestry, for vases, then out to
+the tap, for water. All was warm and still.
+
+It was full early evening. The yellow light streamed through the side
+windows, the big stained-glass window at the end was deep and full of
+glowing colour, in which the yellows and reds were richest. Above in
+the organ-loft the hammering continued. She arranged her flowers in
+many vases, till the communion table was like the window, a tangle of
+strong yellow, and crimson, and purple, and bronze-green. She tried to
+keep the effect light and kaleidoscopic, an interplay of tossed pieces
+of strong, hot colour, vibrating and lightly intermingled. It was very
+gorgeous, for a communion table. But the day of white lilies was over.
+
+Suddenly there was a terrific crash and bang and tumble, up in the
+organ-loft, followed by a cursing.
+
+“Are you hurt?” called Alvina, looking up into space. The candle had
+disappeared.
+
+But there was no reply. Feeling curious, she went out of the Chapel to
+the stairs in the side porch, and ran up to the organ. She went round
+the side—and there she saw a man in his shirt-sleeves sitting crouched
+in the obscurity on the floor between the organ and the wall of the
+back, while a collapsed pair of steps lay between her and him. It was
+too dark to see who it was.
+
+“That rotten pair of steps came down with me,” said the infuriated
+voice of Arthur Witham, “and about broke my leg.”
+
+Alvina advanced towards him, picking her way over the steps. He was
+sitting nursing his leg.
+
+“Is it bad?” she asked, stooping towards him.
+
+In the shadow he lifted up his face. It was pale, and his eyes were
+savage with anger. Her face was near his.
+
+“It is bad,” he said furious because of the shock. The shock had thrown
+him off his balance.
+
+“Let me see,” she said.
+
+He removed his hands from clasping his shin, some distance above the
+ankle. She put her fingers over the bone, over his stocking, to feel if
+there was any fracture. Immediately her fingers were wet with blood.
+Then he did a curious thing. With both his hands he pressed her hand
+down over his wounded leg, pressed it with all his might, as if her
+hand were a plaster. For some moments he sat pressing her hand over his
+broken shin, completely oblivious, as some people are when they have
+had a shock and a hurt, intense on one point of consciousness only, and
+for the rest unconscious.
+
+Then he began to come to himself. The pain modified itself. He could
+not bear the sudden acute hurt to his shin. That was one of his
+sensitive, unbearable parts.
+
+“The bone isn’t broken,” she said professionally. “But you’d better get
+the stocking out of it.”
+
+Without a thought, he pulled his trouser-leg higher and rolled down his
+stocking, extremely gingerly, and sick with pain.
+
+“Can you show a light?” he said.
+
+She found the candle. And she knew where matches always rested, on a
+little ledge of the organ. So she brought him a light, whilst he
+examined his broken shin. The blood was flowing, but not so much. It
+was a nasty cut bruise, swelling and looking very painful. He sat
+looking at it absorbedly, bent over it in the candle-light.
+
+“It’s not so very bad, when the pain goes off,” she said, noticing the
+black hairs of his shin. “We’d better tie it up. Have you got a
+handkerchief?”
+
+“It’s in my jacket,” he said.
+
+She looked round for his jacket. He annoyed her a little, by being
+completely oblivious of her. She got his handkerchief and wiped her
+fingers on it. Then of her own kerchief she made a pad for the wound.
+
+“Shall I tie it up, then?” she said.
+
+But he did not answer. He sat still nursing his leg, looking at his
+hurt, while the blood slowly trickled down the wet hairs towards his
+ankle. There was nothing to do but wait for him.
+
+“Shall I tie it up, then?” she repeated at length, a little impatient.
+So he put his leg a little forward.
+
+She looked at the wound, and wiped it a little. Then she folded the pad
+of her own handkerchief, and laid it over the hurt. And again he did
+the same thing, he took her hand as if it were a plaster, and applied
+it to his wound, pressing it cautiously but firmly down. She was rather
+angry. He took no notice of her at all. And she, waiting, seemed to go
+into a dream, a sleep, her arm trembled a little, stretched out and
+fixed. She seemed to lose count, under the firm compression he imposed
+on her. It was as if the pressure on her hand pressed her into
+oblivion.
+
+“Tie it up,” he said briskly.
+
+And she, obedient, began to tie the bandage with numb fingers. He
+seemed to have taken the use out of her.
+
+When she had finished, he scrambled to his feet, looked at the organ
+which he was repairing, and looked at the collapsed pair of steps.
+
+“A rotten pair of things to have, to put a man’s life in danger,” he
+said, towards the steps. Then stubbornly, he rigged them up again, and
+stared again at his interrupted job.
+
+“You won’t go on, will you?” she asked.
+
+“It’s got to be done, Sunday tomorrow,” he said. “If you’d hold them
+steps a minute! There isn’t more than a minute’s fixing to do. It’s all
+done, but fixing.”
+
+“Hadn’t you better leave it,” she said.
+
+“Would you mind holding the steps, so that they don’t let me down
+again,” he said. Then he took the candle, and hobbled stubbornly and
+angrily up again, with spanner and hammer. For some minutes he worked,
+tapping and readjusting, whilst she held the ricketty steps and stared
+at him from below, the shapeless bulk of his trousers. Strange the
+difference—she could not help thinking it—between the vulnerable hairy,
+and somehow childish leg of the real man, and the shapeless form of
+these workmen’s trousers. The kernel, the man himself—seemed so
+tender—the covering so stiff and insentient.
+
+And was he not going to speak to her—not one human word of recognition?
+Men are the most curious and unreal creatures. After all he had made
+use of her. Think how he had pressed her hand gently but firmly down,
+down over his bruise, how he had taken the virtue out of her, till she
+felt all weak and dim. And after that was he going to relapse into his
+tough and ugly workman’s hide, and treat her as if _she_ were a pair of
+steps, which might let him down or hold him up, as might be.
+
+As she stood clinging to the steps she felt weak and a little
+hysterical. She wanted to summon her strength, to have her own back
+from him. After all he had taken the virtue from her, he might have the
+grace to say thank you, and treat her as if she were a human being.
+
+At last he left off tinkering, and looked round.
+
+“Have you finished?” she said.
+
+“Yes,” he answered crossly.
+
+And taking the candle he began to clamber down. When he got to the
+bottom he crouched over his leg and felt the bandage.
+
+“That gives you what for,” he said, as if it were her fault.
+
+“Is the bandage holding?” she said.
+
+“I think so,” he answered churlishly.
+
+“Aren’t you going to make sure?” she said.
+
+“Oh, it’s all right,” he said, turning aside and taking up his tools.
+“I’ll make my way home.”
+
+“So will I,” she answered.
+
+She took the candle and went a little in front. He hurried into his
+coat and gathered his tools, anxious to get away. She faced him,
+holding the candle.
+
+“Look at my hand,” she said, holding it out. It was smeared with blood,
+as was the cuff of her dress—a black-and-white striped cotton dress.
+
+“Is it hurt?” he said.
+
+“No, but look at it. Look here!” She showed the bloodstains on her
+dress.
+
+“It’ll wash out,” he said, frightened of her.
+
+“Yes, so it will. But for the present it’s there. Don’t you think you
+ought to thank me?”
+
+He recoiled a little.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “I’m very much obliged.”
+
+“You ought to be more than that,” she said.
+
+He did not answer, but looked her up and down.
+
+“We’ll be going down,” he said. “We s’ll have folks talking.”
+
+Suddenly she began to laugh. It seemed so comical. What a position! The
+candle shook as she laughed. What a man, answering her like a little
+automaton! Seriously, quite seriously he said it to her—“We s’ll have
+folks talking!” She laughed in a breathless, hurried way, as they
+tramped downstairs.
+
+At the bottom of the stairs Calladine, the caretaker, met them. He was
+a tall thin man with a black moustache—about fifty years old.
+
+“Have you done for tonight, all of you?” he said, grinning in echo to
+Alvina’s still fluttering laughter.
+
+“That’s a nice rotten pair of steps you’ve got up there for a
+death-trap,” said Arthur angrily. “Come down on top of me, and I’m
+lucky I haven’t got my leg broken. It _is_ near enough.”
+
+“Come down with you, did they?” said Calladine good-humouredly. “I
+never knowed ’em come down wi’ me.”
+
+“You ought to, then. My leg’s as near broke as it can be.”
+
+“What, have you hurt yourself?”
+
+“I should think I have. Look here—” And he began to pull up his trouser
+leg. But Alvina had given the candle to Calladine, and fled. She had a
+last view of Arthur stooping over his precious leg, while Calladine
+stooped his length and held down the candle.
+
+When she got home she took off her dress and washed herself hard and
+washed the stained sleeve, thoroughly, thoroughly, and threw away the
+wash water and rinsed the wash-bowls with fresh water, scrupulously.
+Then she dressed herself in her black dress once more, did her hair,
+and went downstairs.
+
+But she could not sew—and she could not settle down. It was Saturday
+evening, and her father had opened the shop, Miss Pinnegar had gone to
+Knarborough. She would be back at nine o’clock. Alvina set about to
+make a mock woodcock, or a mock something or other, with cheese and an
+egg and bits of toast. Her eyes were dilated and as if amused, mocking,
+her face quivered a little with irony that was not all enjoyable.
+
+“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar entered. “The
+supper’s just done. I’ll ask father if he’ll close the shop.”
+
+Of course James would not close the shop, though he was merely wasting
+light. He nipped in to eat his supper, and started out again with a
+mouthful the moment he heard the ping of the bell. He kept his
+customers chatting as long as he could. His love for conversation had
+degenerated into a spasmodic passion for chatter.
+
+Alvina looked across at Miss Pinnegar, as the two sat at the meagre
+supper-table. Her eyes were dilated and arched with a mocking, almost
+satanic look.
+
+“I’ve made up my mind about Albert Witham,” said Alvina. Miss Pinnegar
+looked at her.
+
+“Which way?” she asked, demurely, but a little sharp.
+
+“It’s all off,” said Alvina, breaking into a nervous laugh.
+
+“Why? What has happened?”
+
+“Nothing has happened. I can’t stand him.”
+
+“Why?—suddenly—” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“It’s not sudden,” laughed Alvina. “Not at all. I can’t stand him. I
+never could. And I won’t try. There! Isn’t that plain?” And she went
+off into her hurried laugh, partly at herself, partly at Arthur, partly
+at Albert, partly at Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Oh, well, if you’re so sure—” said Miss Pinnegar rather bitingly.
+
+“I _am_ quite sure—” said Alvina. “I’m quite certain.”
+
+“Cock-sure people are often most mistaken,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“I’d rather have my own mistakes than somebody else’s rights,” said
+Alvina.
+
+“Then don’t expect anybody to pay for your mistakes,” said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+“It would be all the same if I did,” said Alvina.
+
+When she lay in bed, she stared at the light of the street-lamp on the
+wall. She was thinking busily: but heaven knows what she was thinking.
+She had sharpened the edge of her temper. She was waiting till
+tomorrow. She was waiting till she saw Albert Witham. She wanted to
+finish off with him. She was keen to cut clean through any
+correspondence with him. She stared for many hours at the light of the
+street-lamp, and there was a narrowed look in her eyes.
+
+The next day she did not go to Morning Service, but stayed at home to
+cook the dinner. In the evening she sat in her place in the choir. In
+the Withams’ pew sat Lottie and Albert—no Arthur. Albert kept glancing
+up. Alvina could not bear the sight of him—she simply could not bear
+the sight of him. Yet in her low, sweet voice she sang the alto to the
+hymns, right to the vesper:
+
+“Lord keep us safe this night
+Secure from all our fears,
+May angels guard us while we sleep
+Till morning light appears—”
+
+
+As she sang her alto, and as the soft and emotional harmony of the
+vesper swelled luxuriously through the chapel, she was peeping over her
+folded hands at Lottie’s hat. She could not bear Lottie’s hats. There
+was something aggressive and vulgar about them. And she simply detested
+the look of the back of Albert’s head, as he too stooped to the vesper
+prayer. It looked mean and rather common. She remembered Arthur had the
+same look, bending to prayer. There!—why had she not seen it before!
+That petty, vulgar little look! How could she have thought twice of
+Arthur. She had made a fool of herself, as usual. Him and his little
+leg. She grimaced round the chapel, waiting for people to bob up their
+heads and take their departure.
+
+At the gate Albert was waiting for her. He came forward lifting his hat
+with a smiling and familiar “Good evening!”
+
+“Good evening,” she murmured.
+
+“It’s ages since I’ve seen you,” he said. “And I’ve looked out for you
+everywhere.”
+
+It was raining a little. She put up her umbrella.
+
+“You’ll take a little stroll. The rain isn’t much,” he said.
+
+“No, thank you,” she said. “I must go home.”
+
+“Why, what’s your hurry! Walk as far as Beeby Bridge. Go on.”
+
+“No, thank you.”
+
+“How’s that? What makes you refuse?”
+
+“I don’t want to.”
+
+He paused and looked down at her. The cold and supercilious look of
+anger, a little spiteful, came into his face.
+
+“Do you mean because of the rain?” he said.
+
+“No. I hope you don’t mind. But I don’t want to take any more walks. I
+don’t mean anything by them.”
+
+“Oh, as for that,” he said, taking the words out of her mouth. “Why
+should you mean anything by them!” He smiled down on her.
+
+She looked him straight in the face.
+
+“But I’d rather not take any more walks, thank you—none at all,” she
+said, looking him full in the eyes.
+
+“You wouldn’t!” he replied, stiffening.
+
+“Yes. I’m quite sure,” she said.
+
+“As sure as all that, are you!” he said, with a sneering grimace. He
+stood eyeing her insolently up and down.
+
+“Good-night,” she said. His sneering made her furious. Putting her
+umbrella between him and her, she walked off.
+
+“Good-night then,” he replied, unseen by her. But his voice was
+sneering and impotent.
+
+She went home quivering. But her soul was burning with satisfaction.
+She had shaken them off.
+
+Later she wondered if she had been unkind to him. But it was done—and
+done for ever. _Vogue la galère._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+HOUGHTON’S LAST ENDEAVOUR
+
+
+The trouble with her ship was that it would _not_ sail. It rode
+water-logged in the rotting port of home. All very well to have wild,
+reckless moods of irony and independence, if you have to pay for them
+by withering dustily on the shelf.
+
+Alvina fell again into humility and fear: she began to show symptoms of
+her mother’s heart trouble. For day followed day, month followed month,
+season after season went by, and she grubbed away like a housemaid in
+Manchester House, she hurried round doing the shopping, she sang in the
+choir on Sundays, she attended the various chapel events, she went out
+to visit friends, and laughed and talked and played games. But all the
+time, what was there actually in her life? Not much. She was withering
+towards old-maiddom. Already in her twenty-eighth year, she spent her
+days grubbing in the house, whilst her father became an elderly, frail
+man still too lively in mind and spirit. Miss Pinnegar began to grow
+grey and elderly too, money became scarcer and scarcer, there was a
+black day ahead when her father would die and the home be broken up,
+and she would have to tackle life as a worker.
+
+There lay the only alternative: in work. She might slave her days away
+teaching the piano, as Miss Frost had done: she might find a
+subordinate post as nurse: she might sit in the cash-desk of some shop.
+Some work of some sort would be found for her. And she would sink into
+the routine of her job, as did so many women, and grow old and die,
+chattering and fluttering. She would have what is called her
+independence. But, seriously faced with that treasure, and without the
+option of refusing it, strange how hideous she found it.
+
+Work!—a job! More even than she rebelled against the Withams did she
+rebel against a job. Albert Witham was distasteful to her—or rather, he
+was not exactly distasteful, he was chiefly incongruous. She could
+never get over the feeling that he was mouthing and smiling at her
+through the glass wall of an aquarium, he being on the watery side.
+Whether she would ever be able to take to his strange and dishuman
+element, who knows? Anyway it would be some sort of an adventure:
+better than a job. She rebelled with all her backbone against the word
+_job_. Even the substitutes, _employment_ or _work_, were detestable,
+unbearable. Emphatically, she did not want to work for a wage. It was
+too humiliating. Could anything be more _infra dig_ than the performing
+of a set of special actions day in day out, for a life-time, in order
+to receive some shillings every seventh day. Shameful! A condition of
+shame. The most vulgar, sordid and humiliating of all forms of slavery:
+so mechanical. Far better be a slave outright, in contact with all the
+whims and impulses of a human being, than serve some mechanical routine
+of modern work.
+
+She trembled with anger, impotence, and fear. For months, the thought
+of Albert was a torment to her. She might have married him. He would
+have been strange, a strange fish. But were it not better to take the
+strange leap, over into his element, than to condemn oneself to the
+routine of a job? He would have been curious and dishuman. But after
+all, it would have been an experience. In a way, she liked him. There
+was something odd and integral about him, which she liked. He was not a
+liar. In his own line, he was honest and direct. Then he would take her
+to South Africa: a whole new _milieu_. And perhaps she would have
+children. She shivered a little. No, not his children! He seemed so
+curiously cold-blooded. And yet, why not? Why not his curious, pale,
+half cold-blooded children, like little fishes of her own? Why not?
+Everything was possible: and even desirable, once one could see the
+strangeness of it. Once she could plunge through the wall of the
+aquarium! Once she could kiss him!
+
+Therefore Miss Pinnegar’s quiet harping on the string was unbearable.
+
+“I can’t understand that you disliked Mr. Witham so much?” said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+“We never can understand those things,” said Alvina. “I can’t
+understand why I dislike tapioca and arrowroot—but I do.”
+
+“That’s different,” said Miss Pinnegar shortly.
+
+“It’s no more easy to understand,” said Alvina.
+
+“Because there’s no need to understand it,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“And is there need to understand the other?”
+
+“Certainly. I can see nothing wrong with him,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Alvina went away in silence. This was in the first months after she had
+given Albert his dismissal. He was at Oxford again—would not return to
+Woodhouse till Christmas. Between her and the Woodhouse Withams there
+was a decided coldness. They never looked at her now—nor she at them.
+
+None the less, as Christmas drew near Alvina worked up her feelings.
+Perhaps she would be reconciled to him. She would slip across and smile
+to him. She would take the plunge, once and for all—and kiss him and
+marry him and bear the little half-fishes, his children. She worked
+herself into quite a fever of anticipation.
+
+But when she saw him, the first evening, sitting stiff and staring
+flatly in front of him in Chapel, staring away from everything in the
+world, at heaven knows what—just as fishes stare—then his dishumanness
+came over her again like an arrest, and arrested all her flights of
+fancy. He stared flatly in front of him, and flatly set a wall of
+oblivion between him and her. She trembled and let be.
+
+After Christmas, however, she had nothing at all to think forward to.
+And it was then she seemed to shrink: she seemed positively to shrink.
+
+“You never spoke to Mr. Witham?” Miss Pinnegar asked.
+
+“He never spoke to me,” replied Alvina.
+
+“He raised his hat to me.”
+
+“_You_ ought to have married him, Miss Pinnegar,” said Alvina. “He
+would have been right for you.” And she laughed rather mockingly.
+
+“There is no need to make provision for me,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+And after this, she was a long time before she forgave Alvina, and was
+really friendly again. Perhaps she would never have forgiven her if she
+had not found her weeping rather bitterly in her mother’s abandoned
+sitting-room.
+
+Now so far, the story of Alvina is commonplace enough. It is more or
+less the story of thousands of girls. They all find work. It is the
+ordinary solution of everything. And if we were dealing with an
+ordinary girl we should have to carry on mildly and dully down the long
+years of employment; or, at the best, marriage with some dull
+school-teacher or office-clerk.
+
+But we protest that Alvina is not ordinary. Ordinary people, ordinary
+fates. But extraordinary people, extraordinary fates. Or else no fate
+at all. The all-to-one-pattern modern system is too much for most
+extraordinary individuals. It just kills them off or throws them
+disused aside.
+
+There have been enough stories about ordinary people. I should think
+the Duke of Clarence must even have found malmsey nauseating, when he
+choked and went purple and was really asphyxiated in a butt of it. And
+ordinary people are no malmsey. Just ordinary tap-water. And we have
+been drenched and deluged and so nearly drowned in perpetual floods of
+ordinariness, that tap-water tends to become a really hateful fluid to
+us. We loathe its out-of-the-tap tastelessness. We detest ordinary
+people. We are in peril of our lives from them: and in peril of our
+souls too, for they would damn us one and all to the ordinary. Every
+individual should, by nature, have his extraordinary points. But
+nowadays you may look for them with a microscope, they are so worn-down
+by the regular machine-friction of our average and mechanical days.
+
+There was no hope for Alvina in the ordinary. If help came, it would
+have to come from the extraordinary. Hence the extreme peril of her
+case. Hence the bitter fear and humiliation she felt as she drudged
+shabbily on in Manchester House, hiding herself as much as possible
+from public view. Men can suck the heady juice of exalted
+self-importance from the bitter weed of failure—failures are usually
+the most conceited of men: even as was James Houghton. But to a woman,
+failure is another matter. For her it means failure to live, failure to
+establish her own life on the face of the earth. And this is
+humiliating, the ultimate humiliation.
+
+And so the slow years crept round, and the completed coil of each one
+was a further heavy, strangling noose. Alvina had passed her
+twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and even her twenty-ninth
+year. She was in her thirtieth. It ought to be a laughing matter. But
+it isn’t.
+
+          Ach, schon zwanzig
+          Ach, schon zwanzig
+Immer noch durch’s Leben tanz’ ich
+Jeder, Jeder will mich küssen
+Mir das Leben zu versüssen.
+
+          Ach, schon dreissig
+          Ach, schon dreissig
+Immer Mädchen, Mädchen heiss’ ich.
+In dem Zopf schon graue Härchen
+Ach, wie schnell vergehn die Jährchen.
+
+          Ach, schon vierzig
+          Ach, schon vierzig
+Und noch immer Keiner find ’sich.
+Im gesicht schon graue Flecken
+Ach, das muss im Spiegel stecken.
+
+          Ach, schon fünfzig
+          Ach, schon fünfzig
+Und noch immer Keiner will ’mich;
+Soll ich mich mit Bänden zieren
+Soll ich einen Schleier führen?
+          Dann heisst’s, die Alte putzt sich,
+          Sie ist fu’fzig, sie ist fu’fzig.
+
+
+True enough, in Alvina’s pig-tail of soft brown the grey hairs were
+already showing. True enough, she still preferred to be thought of as a
+girl. And the slow-footed years, so heavy in passing, were so
+imperceptibly numerous in their accumulation.
+
+But we are not going to follow our song to its fatal and dreary
+conclusion. Presumably, the _ordinary_ old-maid heroine nowadays is
+destined to die in her fifties, she is not allowed to be the long-liver
+of the by-gone novels. Let the song suffice her.
+
+James Houghton had still another kick in him. He had one last scheme up
+his sleeve. Looking out on a changing world, it was the popular
+novelties which had the last fascination for him. The Skating Rink,
+like another Charybdis, had all but entangled him in its swirl as he
+pushed painfully off from the rocks of Throttle-Ha’penny. But he had
+escaped, and for almost three years had lain obscurely in port, like a
+frail and finished bark, selling the last of his bits and bobs, and
+making little splashes in warehouse-oddments. Miss Pinnegar thought he
+had really gone quiet.
+
+But alas, at that degenerated and shabby, down-at-heel club he met
+another tempter: a plump man who had been in the music-hall line as a
+sort of agent. This man had catered for the little shows of little
+towns. He had been in America, out West, doing shows there. He had
+trailed his way back to England, where he had left his wife and
+daughter. But he did not resume his family life. Wherever he was, his
+wife was a hundred miles away. Now he found himself more or less
+stranded in Woodhouse. He had _nearly_ fixed himself up with a
+music-hall in the Potteries—as manager: he had all-but got such another
+place at Ickley, in Derbyshire: he had forced his way through the
+industrial and mining townlets, prospecting for any sort of music-hall
+or show from which he could get a picking. And now, in very low water,
+he found himself at Woodhouse.
+
+Woodhouse had a cinema already: a famous Empire run-up by Jordan, the
+sly builder and decorator who had got on so surprisingly. In James’s
+younger days, Jordan was an obscure and illiterate nobody. And now he
+had a motor car, and looked at the tottering James with sardonic
+contempt, from under his heavy, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He was rather
+stout, frail in health, but silent and insuperable, was A. W. Jordan.
+
+“I missed a chance there,” said James, fluttering. “I missed a rare
+chance there. I ought to have been first with a cinema.”
+
+He admitted as much to Mr. May, the stranger who was looking for some
+sort of “managing” job. Mr. May, who also was plump and who could hold
+his tongue, but whose pink, fat face and light-blue eyes had a loud
+look, for all that, put the speech in his pipe and smoked it. Not that
+he smoked a pipe: always cigarettes. But he seized on James’s
+admission, as something to be made the most of.
+
+Now Mr. May’s mind, though quick, was pedestrian, not winged. He had
+come to Woodhouse not to look at Jordan’s “Empire,” but at the
+temporary wooden structure that stood in the old Cattle
+Market—“Wright’s Cinematograph and Variety Theatre.” Wright’s was not a
+superior show, like the Woodhouse Empire. Yet it was always packed with
+colliers and work-lasses. But unfortunately there was no chance of Mr.
+May’s getting a finger in the Cattle Market pie. Wright’s was a family
+affair. Mr. and Mrs. Wright and a son and two daughters with their
+husbands: a tight old lock-up family concern. Yet it was the kind of
+show that appealed to Mr. May: pictures between the turns. The
+cinematograph was but an item in the program, amidst the more thrilling
+incidents—to Mr. May—of conjurors, popular songs, five-minute farces,
+performing birds, and comics. Mr. May was too human to believe that a
+show should consist entirely of the dithering eye-ache of a film.
+
+He was becoming really depressed by his failure to find any opening. He
+had his family to keep—and though his honesty was of the variety sort,
+he had a heavy conscience in the direction of his wife and daughter.
+Having been so long in America, he had acquired American qualities, one
+of which was this heavy sort of private innocence, coupled with
+complacent and natural unscrupulousness in “matters of business.” A man
+of some odd sensitiveness in material things, he liked to have his
+clothes neat and spick, his linen immaculate, his face clean-shaved
+like a cherub. But alas, his clothes were now old-fashioned, so that
+their rather expensive smartness was detrimental to his chances, in
+spite of their scrupulous look of having come almost new out of the
+bandbox that morning. His rather small felt hats still curved jauntily
+over his full pink face. But his eyes looked lugubrious, as if he felt
+he had not deserved so much bad luck, and there were bilious lines
+beneath them.
+
+So Mr. May, in his room in the Moon and Stars, which was the best inn
+in Woodhouse—he must have a good hötel—lugubriously considered his
+position. Woodhouse offered little or nothing. He must go to Alfreton.
+And would he find anything there? Ah, where, where in this hateful
+world was there refuge for a man saddled with responsibilities, who
+wanted to do his best and was given no opportunity? Mr. May had
+travelled in his Pullman car and gone straight to the best hotel in the
+town, like any other American with money—in America. He had done it
+smart, too. And now, in this grubby penny-picking England, he saw his
+boots being worn-down at the heel, and was afraid of being stranded
+without cash even for a railway ticket. If he had to clear out without
+paying his hotel bill—well, that was the world’s fault. He had to live.
+But he must perforce keep enough in hand for a ticket to Birmingham. He
+always said his wife was in London. And he always walked down to Lumley
+to post his letters. He was full of evasions.
+
+So again he walked down to Lumley to post his letters. And he looked at
+Lumley. And he found it a damn god-forsaken hell of a hole. It was a
+long straggle of a dusty road down in the valley, with a pale-grey dust
+and spatter from the pottery, and big chimneys bellying forth black
+smoke right by the road. Then there was a short cross-way, up which one
+saw the iron foundry, a black and rusty place. A little further on was
+the railway junction, and beyond that, more houses stretching to
+Hathersedge, where the stocking factories were busy. Compared with
+Lumley, Woodhouse, whose church could be seen sticking up proudly and
+vulgarly on an eminence, above trees and meadow-slopes, was an idyllic
+heaven.
+
+Mr. May turned in to the Derby Hotel to have a small whiskey. And of
+course he entered into conversation.
+
+“You seem somewhat quiet at Lumley,” he said, in his odd,
+refined-showman’s voice. “Have you _nothing at all_ in the way of
+amusement?”
+
+“They all go up to Woodhouse, else to Hathersedge.”
+
+“But couldn’t you support some place of your own—some _rival_ to
+Wright’s Variety?”
+
+“Ay—’appen—if somebody started it.”
+
+And so it was that James was inoculated with the idea of starting a
+cinema on the virgin soil of Lumley. To the women he said not a word.
+But on the very first morning that Mr. May broached the subject, he
+became a new man. He fluttered like a boy, he fluttered as if he had
+just grown wings.
+
+“Let us go down,” said Mr. May, “and look at a site. You pledge
+yourself to nothing—you don’t compromise yourself. You merely have a
+site in your mind.”
+
+And so it came to pass that, next morning, this oddly assorted couple
+went down to Lumley together. James was very shabby, in his black coat
+and dark grey trousers, and his cheap grey cap. He bent forward as he
+walked, and still nipped along hurriedly, as if pursued by fate. His
+face was thin and still handsome. Odd that his cheap cap, by
+incongruity, made him look more a gentleman. But it did. As he walked
+he glanced alertly hither and thither, and saluted everybody.
+
+By his side, somewhat tight and tubby, with his chest out and his head
+back, went the prim figure of Mr. May, reminding one of a consequential
+bird of the smaller species. His plumbago-grey suit fitted exactly—save
+that it was perhaps a little tight. The jacket and waistcoat were bound
+with silk braid of exactly the same shade as the cloth. His soft
+collar, immaculately fresh, had a dark stripe like his shirt. His boots
+were black, with grey suède uppers: but a _little_ down at heel. His
+dark-grey hat was jaunty. Altogether he looked very spruce, though a
+_little_ behind the fashions: very pink faced, though his blue eyes
+were bilious beneath: very much on the spot, although the spot was the
+wrong one.
+
+They discoursed amiably as they went, James bending forward, Mr. May
+bending back. Mr. May took the refined man-of-the-world tone.
+
+“Of course,” he said—he used the two words very often, and pronounced
+the second, rather mincingly, to rhyme with _sauce_: “Of course,” said
+Mr. May, “it’s a disgusting place—_disgusting_! I never was in a worse,
+in all the _cauce_ of my travels. But _then_—that isn’t the point—”
+
+He spread his plump hands from his immaculate shirt-cuffs.
+
+“No, it isn’t. Decidedly it isn’t. That’s beside the point altogether.
+What we want—” began James.
+
+“Is an audience—of _cauce_—! And we have it—! Virgin soil—!
+
+“Yes, decidedly. Untouched! An unspoiled market.”
+
+“An unspoiled market!” reiterated Mr. May, in full confirmation, though
+with a faint flicker of a smile. “How very _fortunate_ for us.”
+
+“Properly handled,” said James. “Properly handled.”
+
+“Why yes—of _cauce_! Why _shouldn’t_ we handle it properly!”
+
+“Oh, we shall manage that, we shall manage that,” came the quick,
+slightly husky voice of James.
+
+“Of _cauce_ we shall! Why bless my life, if we can’t manage an audience
+in Lumley, what _can_ we do.”
+
+“We have a guide in the matter of their taste,” said James. “We can see
+what Wright’s are doing—and Jordan’s—and we can go to Hathersedge and
+Knarborough and Alfreton—beforehand, that is—”
+
+“Why certainly—if you think it’s _necessary_. I’ll do all that for you.
+_And_ I’ll interview the managers and the performers themselves—as if I
+were a journalist, don’t you see. I’ve done a fair amount of
+journalism, and nothing easier than to get cards from various
+newspapers.”
+
+“Yes, that’s a good suggestion,” said James. “As if you were going to
+write an account in the newspapers—excellent.”
+
+“And so simple! You pick up just _all_ the information you require.”
+
+“Decidedly—decidedly!” said James.
+
+And so behold our two heroes sniffing round the sordid backs and wasted
+meadows and marshy places of Lumley. They found one barren patch where
+two caravans were standing. A woman was peeling potatoes, sitting on
+the bottom step of her caravan. A half-caste girl came up with a large
+pale-blue enamelled jug of water. In the background were two booths
+covered up with coloured canvas. Hammering was heard inside.
+
+“Good-morning!” said Mr. May, stopping before the woman. “’Tisn’t fair
+time, is it?”
+
+“No, it’s no fair,” said the woman.
+
+“I see. You’re just on your own. Getting on all right?”
+
+“Fair,” said the woman.
+
+“Only fair! Sorry. Good-morning.”
+
+Mr. May’s quick eye, roving round, had seen a negro stoop from under
+the canvas that covered one booth. The negro was thin, and looked young
+but rather frail, and limped. His face was very like that of the young
+negro in Watteau’s drawing—pathetic, wistful, north-bitten. In an
+instant Mr. May had taken all in: the man was the woman’s husband—they
+were acclimatized in these regions: the booth where he had been
+hammering was a Hoop-La. The other would be a cocoanut-shy. Feeling the
+instant American dislike for the presence of a negro, Mr. May moved off
+with James.
+
+They found out that the woman was a Lumley woman, that she had two
+children, that the negro was a most quiet and respectable chap, but
+that the family kept to itself, and didn’t mix up with Lumley.
+
+“I should think so,” said Mr. May, a little disgusted even at the
+suggestion.
+
+Then he proceeded to find out how long they had stood on this
+ground—three months—how long they would remain—only another week, then
+they were moving off to Alfreton fair—who was the owner of the
+pitch—Mr. Bows, the butcher. Ah! And what was the ground used for? Oh,
+it was building land. But the foundation wasn’t very good.
+
+“The very thing! Aren’t we _fortunate_!” cried Mr. May, perking up the
+moment they were in the street. But this cheerfulness and brisk
+perkiness was a great strain on him. He missed his eleven o’clock
+whiskey terribly—terribly—his pick-me-up! And he daren’t confess it to
+James, who, he knew, was T-T. So he dragged his weary and hollow way up
+to Woodhouse, and sank with a long “Oh!” of nervous exhaustion in the
+private bar of the Moon and Stars. He wrinkled his short nose. The
+smell of the place was distasteful to him. The _disgusting_ beer that
+the colliers drank. Oh!—he _was_ so tired. He sank back with his
+whiskey and stared blankly, dismally in front of him. Beneath his eyes
+he looked more bilious still. He felt thoroughly out of luck, and
+petulant.
+
+None the less he sallied out with all his old bright perkiness, the
+next time he had to meet James. He hadn’t yet broached the question of
+costs. When would he be able to get an advance from James? He _must_
+hurry the matter forward. He brushed his crisp, curly brown hair
+carefully before the mirror. How grey he was at the temples! No wonder,
+dear me, with such a life! He was in his shirt-sleeves. His waistcoat,
+with its grey satin back, fitted him tightly. He had filled out—but he
+hadn’t developed a corporation. Not at all. He looked at himself
+sideways, and feared dismally he was thinner. He was one of those men
+who carry themselves in a birdie fashion, so that their tail sticks out
+a little behind, jauntily. How wonderfully the satin of his waistcoat
+had worn! He looked at his shirt-cuffs. They were going. Luckily, when
+he had had the shirts made he had secured enough material for the
+renewing of cuffs and neckbands. He put on his coat, from which he had
+flicked the faintest suspicion of dust, and again settled himself to go
+out and meet James on the question of an advance. He simply must have
+an advance.
+
+He didn’t get it that day, none the less. The next morning he was
+ringing for his tea at six o’clock. And before ten he had already
+flitted to Lumley and back, he had already had a word with Mr. Bows,
+about that pitch, and, overcoming all his repugnance, a word with the
+quiet, frail, sad negro, about Alfreton fair, and the chance of buying
+some sort of collapsible building, for his cinematograph.
+
+With all this news he met James—not at the shabby club, but in the
+deserted reading-room of the so-called Artizans Hall—where never an
+artizan entered, but only men of James’s class. Here they took the
+chessboard and pretended to start a game. But their conversation was
+rapid and secretive.
+
+Mr. May disclosed all his discoveries. And then he said, tentatively:
+
+“Hadn’t we better think about the financial part now? If we’re going to
+look round for an erection”—curious that he always called it an
+erection—“we shall have to know what we are going to spend.”
+
+“Yes—yes. Well—” said James vaguely, nervously, giving a glance at Mr.
+May. Whilst Mr. May abstractedly fingered his black knight.
+
+“You see at the moment,” said Mr. May, “I have no funds that I can
+represent in cash. I have no doubt a little _later_—if we need it—I can
+find a few hundreds. Many things are _due_—numbers of things. But it is
+so difficult to _collect_ one’s dues, particularly from America.” He
+lifted his blue eyes to James Houghton. “Of course we can _delay_ for
+some time, until I get my supplies. Or I can act just as your
+manager—you can _employ_ me—”
+
+He watched James’s face. James looked down at the chessboard. He was
+fluttering with excitement. He did not want a partner. He wanted to be
+in this all by himself. He hated partners.
+
+“You will agree to be manager, at a fixed salary?” said James hurriedly
+and huskily, his fine fingers slowly rubbing each other, along the
+sides.
+
+“Why yes, willingly, if you’ll give me the option of becoming your
+partner upon terms of mutual agreement, later on.”
+
+James did not quite like this.
+
+“What terms are you thinking of?” he asked.
+
+“Well, it doesn’t matter for the moment. Suppose for the moment I enter
+an engagement as your manager, at a salary, let us say, of—of what, do
+you think?”
+
+“So much a week?” said James pointedly.
+
+“Hadn’t we better make it monthly?”
+
+The two men looked at one another.
+
+“With a month’s notice on either hand?” continued Mr. May.
+
+“How much?” said James, avaricious.
+
+Mr. May studied his own nicely kept hands.
+
+“Well, I don’t see how I can do it under twenty pounds a month. Of
+course it’s ridiculously low. In America I _never_ accepted less than
+three hundred dollars a month, and that was my poorest and lowest. But
+of _cauce_, England’s not America—more’s the pity.”
+
+But James was shaking his head in a vibrating movement.
+
+“Impossible!” he replied shrewdly. “Impossible! Twenty pounds a month?
+Impossible. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t think of it.”
+
+“Then name a figure. Say what you _can_ think of,” retorted Mr. May,
+rather annoyed by this shrewd, shaking head of a doddering provincial,
+and by his own sudden collapse into mean subordination.
+
+“I can’t make it more than ten pounds a month,” said James sharply.
+
+“What!” screamed Mr. May. “What am I to live on? What is my wife to
+live on?”
+
+“I’ve got to make it pay,” said James. “If I’ve got to make it pay, I
+must keep down expenses at the beginning.”
+
+“No,—on the contrary. You must be prepared to spend something at the
+beginning. If you go in a pinch-and-scrape fashion in the beginning,
+you will get nowhere at all. Ten pounds a month! Why it’s impossible!
+Ten pounds a month! But how am I to _live_?”
+
+James’s head still vibrated in a negative fashion. And the two men came
+to no agreement _that_ morning. Mr. May went home more sick and weary
+than ever, and took his whiskey more biliously. But James was lit with
+the light of battle.
+
+Poor Mr. May had to gather together his wits and his sprightliness for
+his next meeting. He had decided he must make a percentage in other
+ways. He schemed in all known ways. He would accept the ten pounds—but
+really, did ever you hear of anything so ridiculous in your life, _ten
+pounds!_—dirty old screw, dirty, screwing old woman! He would accept
+the ten pounds; but he would get his own back.
+
+He flitted down once more to the negro, to ask him of a certain wooden
+show-house, with section sides and roof, an old travelling theatre
+which stood closed on Selverhay Common, and might probably be sold. He
+pressed across once more to Mr. Bows. He wrote various letters and drew
+up certain notes. And the next morning, by eight o’clock, he was on his
+way to Selverhay: walking, poor man, the long and uninteresting seven
+miles on his small and rather tight-shod feet, through country that had
+been once beautiful but was now scrubbled all over with mining
+villages, on and on up heavy hills and down others, asking his way from
+uncouth clowns, till at last he came to the Common, which wasn’t a
+Common at all, but a sort of village more depressing than usual: naked,
+high, exposed to heaven and to full barren view.
+
+There he saw the theatre-booth. It was old and sordid-looking, painted
+dark-red and dishevelled with narrow, tattered announcements. The grass
+was growing high up the wooden sides. If only it wasn’t rotten? He
+crouched and probed and pierced with his pen-knife, till a
+country-policeman in a high helmet like a jug saw him, got off his
+bicycle and came stealthily across the grass wheeling the same bicycle,
+and startled poor Mr. May almost into apoplexy by demanding behind him,
+in a loud voice:
+
+“What’re you after?”
+
+Mr. May rose up with flushed face and swollen neck-veins, holding his
+pen-knife in his hand.
+
+“Oh,” he said, “good-morning.” He settled his waistcoat and glanced
+over the tall, lanky constable and the glittering bicycle. “I was
+taking a look at this old erection, with a view to buying it. I’m
+afraid it’s going rotten from the bottom.”
+
+“Shouldn’t wonder,” said the policeman suspiciously, watching Mr. May
+shut the pocket knife.
+
+“I’m afraid that makes it useless for my purpose,” said Mr. May.
+
+The policeman did not deign to answer.
+
+“Could you tell me where I can find out about it, anyway?” Mr. May used
+his most affable, man of the world manner. But the policeman continued
+to stare him up and down, as if he were some marvellous specimen
+unknown on the normal, honest earth.
+
+“What, find out?” said the constable.
+
+“About being able to buy it,” said Mr. May, a little testily. It was
+with great difficulty he preserved his man-to-man openness and
+brightness.
+
+“They aren’t here,” said the constable.
+
+“Oh indeed! Where _are_ they? And _who_ are they?”
+
+The policeman eyed him more suspiciously than ever.
+
+“Cowlard’s their name. An’ they live in Offerton when they aren’t
+travelling.”
+
+“Cowlard—thank you.” Mr. May took out his pocket-book.
+“C-o-w-l-a-r-d—is that right? And the address, please?”
+
+“I dunno th’ street. But you can find out from the Three Bells. That’s
+Missis’ sister.”
+
+“The Three Bells—thank you. Offerton did you say?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Offerton!—where’s that?”
+
+“About eight mile.”
+
+“Really—and how do you get there?”
+
+“You can walk—or go by train.”
+
+“Oh, there is a station?”
+
+“Station!” The policeman looked at him as if he were either a criminal
+or a fool.
+
+“Yes. There _is_ a station there?”
+
+“Ay—biggest next to Chesterfield—”
+
+Suddenly it dawned on Mr. May.
+
+“Oh-h!” he said. “You mean _Alfreton_—”
+
+“Alfreton, yes.” The policeman was now convinced the man was a
+wrong-’un. But fortunately he was not a pushing constable, he did not
+want to rise in the police-scale: thought himself safest at the bottom.
+
+“And which is the way to the station here?” asked Mr. May.
+
+“Do yer want Pinxon or Bull’ill?”
+
+“Pinxon or Bull’ill?”
+
+“There’s two,” said the policeman.
+
+“For Selverhay?” asked Mr. May.
+
+“Yes, them’s the two.”
+
+“And which is the best?”
+
+“Depends what trains is runnin’. Sometimes yer have to wait an hour or
+two—”
+
+“You don’t know the trains, do you—?”
+
+“There’s one in th’ afternoon—but I don’t know if it’d be gone by the
+time you get down.”
+
+“To where?”
+
+“Bull’ill.”
+
+“Oh Bull’ill! Well, perhaps I’ll try. Could you tell me the way?”
+
+When, after an hour’s painful walk, Mr. May came to Bullwell Station
+and found there was no train till six in the evening, he felt he was
+earning every penny he would ever get from Mr. Houghton.
+
+The first intelligence which Miss Pinnegar and Alvina gathered of the
+coming adventure was given them when James announced that he had let
+the shop to Marsden, the grocer next door. Marsden had agreed to take
+over James’s premises at the same rent as that of the premises he
+already occupied, and moreover to do all alterations and put in all
+fixtures himself. This was a grand scoop for James: not a penny was it
+going to cost him, and the rent was clear profit.
+
+“But when?” cried Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“He takes possession on the first of October.”
+
+“Well—it’s a good idea. The shop isn’t worth while,” said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+“Certainly it isn’t,” said James, rubbing his hands: a sign that he was
+rarely excited and pleased.
+
+“And you’ll just retire, and live quietly,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“I shall see,” said James. And with those fatal words he wafted away to
+find Mr. May.
+
+James was now nearly seventy years old. Yet he nipped about like a leaf
+in the wind. Only, it was a frail leaf.
+
+“Father’s got something going,” said Alvina, in a warning voice.
+
+“I believe he has,” said Miss Pinnegar pensively. “I wonder what it is,
+now.”
+
+“I can’t imagine,” laughed Alvina. “But I’ll bet it’s something
+awful—else he’d have told us.”
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Pinnegar slowly. “Most likely he would. I wonder what
+it can be.”
+
+“I haven’t an idea,” said Alvina.
+
+Both women were so retired, they had heard nothing of James’s little
+trips down to Lumley. So they watched like cats for their man’s return,
+at dinner-time.
+
+Miss Pinnegar saw him coming along talking excitedly to Mr. May, who,
+all in grey, with his chest perkily stuck out like a robin, was looking
+rather pinker than usual. Having come to an agreement, he had ventured
+on whiskey and soda in honour, and James had actually taken a glass of
+port.
+
+“Alvina!” Miss Pinnegar called discreetly down the shop. “Alvina!
+Quick!”
+
+Alvina flew down to peep round the corner of the shop window. There
+stood the two men, Mr. May like a perky, pink-faced grey bird standing
+cocking his head in attention to James Houghton, and occasionally
+catching James by the lapel of his coat, in a vain desire to get a word
+in, whilst James’s head nodded and his face simply wagged with excited
+speech, as he skipped from foot to foot, and shifted round his
+listener.
+
+“Who _ever_ can that common-looking man be?” said Miss Pinnegar, her
+heart going down to her boots.
+
+“I can’t imagine,” said Alvina, laughing at the comic sight.
+
+“Don’t you think he’s dreadful?” said the poor elderly woman.
+
+“Perfectly impossible. Did ever you see such a pink face?”
+
+“_And_ the braid binding!” said Miss Pinnegar in indignation.
+
+“Father might almost have sold him the suit,” said Alvina.
+
+“Let us hope he hasn’t sold your father, that’s all,” said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+The two men had moved a few steps further towards home, and the women
+prepared to flee indoors. Of course it was frightfully wrong to be
+standing peeping in the high street at all. But who could consider the
+proprieties now?
+
+“They’ve stopped again,” said Miss Pinnegar, recalling Alvina.
+
+The two men were having a few more excited words, their voices just
+audible.
+
+“I do wonder who he can be,” murmured Miss Pinnegar miserably.
+
+“In the theatrical line, I’m sure,” declared Alvina.
+
+“Do you think so?” said Miss Pinnegar. “Can’t be! Can’t be!”
+
+“He couldn’t be anything else, don’t you think?”
+
+“Oh I _can’t_ believe it, I can’t.”
+
+But now Mr. May had laid his detaining hand on James’s arm. And now he
+was shaking his employer by the hand. And now James, in his cheap
+little cap, was smiling a formal farewell. And Mr. May, with a graceful
+wave of his grey-suède-gloved hand, was turning back to the Moon and
+Stars, strutting, whilst James was running home on tip-toe, in his
+natural hurry.
+
+Alvina hastily retreated, but Miss Pinnegar stood it out. James started
+as he nipped into the shop entrance, and found her confronting him.
+
+“Oh—Miss Pinnegar!” he said, and made to slip by her.
+
+“Who was that man?” she asked sharply, as if James were a child whom
+she could endure no more.
+
+“Eh? I beg your pardon?” said James, starting back.
+
+“Who was that man?”
+
+“Eh? Which man?”
+
+James was a little deaf, and a little husky.
+
+“The man—” Miss Pinnegar turned to the door. “There! That man!”
+
+James also came to the door, and peered out as if he expected to see a
+sight. The sight of Mr. May’s tight and perky back, the jaunty little
+hat and the grey suède hands retreating quite surprised him. He was
+angry at being introduced to the sight.
+
+“Oh,” he said. “That’s my manager.” And he turned hastily down the
+shop, asking for his dinner.
+
+Miss Pinnegar stood for some moments in pure oblivion in the shop
+entrance. Her consciousness left her. When she recovered, she felt she
+was on the brink of hysteria and collapse. But she hardened herself
+once more, though the effort cost her a year of her life. She had never
+collapsed, she had never fallen into hysteria.
+
+She gathered herself together, though bent a little as from a blow,
+and, closing the shop door, followed James to the living room, like the
+inevitable. He was eating his dinner, and seemed oblivious of her
+entry. There was a smell of Irish stew.
+
+“What manager?” said Miss Pinnegar, short, silent, and inevitable in
+the doorway.
+
+But James was in one of his abstractions, his trances.
+
+“What manager?” persisted Miss Pinnegar.
+
+But he still bent unknowing over his plate and gobbled his Irish stew.
+
+“Mr. Houghton!” said Miss Pinnegar, in a sudden changed voice. She had
+gone a livid yellow colour. And she gave a queer, sharp little rap on
+the table with her hand.
+
+James started. He looked up bewildered, as one startled out of sleep.
+
+“Eh?” he said, gaping. “Eh?”
+
+“Answer me,” said Miss Pinnegar. “What manager?”
+
+“Manager? Eh? Manager? What manager?”
+
+She advanced a little nearer, menacing in her black dress. James
+shrank.
+
+“What manager?” he re-echoed. “My manager. The manager of my cinema.”
+
+Miss Pinnegar looked at him, and looked at him, and did not speak. In
+that moment all the anger which was due to him from all womanhood was
+silently discharged at him, like a black bolt of silent electricity.
+But Miss Pinnegar, the engine of wrath, felt she would burst.
+
+“Cinema! Cinema! Do you mean to tell me—” but she was really
+suffocated, the vessels of her heart and breast were bursting. She had
+to lean her hand on the table.
+
+It was a terrible moment. She looked ghastly and terrible, with her
+mask-like face and her stony eyes and her bluish lips. Some fearful
+thunderbolt seemed to fall. James withered, and was still. There was
+silence for minutes, a suspension.
+
+And in those minutes, she finished with him. She finished with him for
+ever. When she had sufficiently recovered, she went to her chair, and
+sat down before her plate. And in a while she began to eat, as if she
+were alone.
+
+Poor Alvina, for whom this had been a dreadful and uncalled-for moment,
+had looked from one to another, and had also dropped her head to her
+plate. James too, with bent head, had forgotten to eat. Miss Pinnegar
+ate very slowly, alone.
+
+“Don’t you want your dinner, Alvina?” she said at length.
+
+“Not as much as I did,” said Alvina.
+
+“Why not?” said Miss Pinnegar. She sounded short, almost like Miss
+Frost. Oddly like Miss Frost.
+
+Alvina took up her fork and began to eat automatically.
+
+“I always think,” said Miss Pinnegar, “Irish stew is more tasty with a
+bit of Swede in it.”
+
+“So do I, really,” said Alvina. “But Swedes aren’t come yet.”
+
+“Oh! Didn’t we have some on Tuesday?”
+
+“No, they were yellow turnips—but they weren’t Swedes.”
+
+“Well then, yellow turnip. I like a little yellow turnip,” said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+“I might have put some in, if I’d known,” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes. We will another time,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Not another word about the cinema: not another breath. As soon as James
+had eaten his plum tart, he ran away.
+
+“What can he have been doing?” said Alvina when he had gone.
+
+“Buying a cinema show—and that man we saw is his manager. It’s quite
+simple.”
+
+“But what are we going to do with a cinema show?” said Alvina.
+
+“It’s what is _he_ going to do. It doesn’t concern me. It’s no concern
+of mine. I shall not lend him anything, I shall not think about it, it
+will be the same to me as if there _were_ no cinema. Which is all I
+have to say,” announced Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“But he’s gone and done it,” said Alvina.
+
+“Then let him go through with it. It’s no affair of mine. After all,
+your father’s affairs don’t concern me. It would be impertinent of me
+to introduce myself into them.”
+
+“They don’t concern _me_ very much,” said Alvina.
+
+“You’re different. You’re his daughter. He’s no connection of mine, I’m
+glad to say. I pity your mother.”
+
+“Oh, but he was always alike,” said Alvina.
+
+“That’s where it is,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+There was something fatal about her feelings. Once they had gone cold,
+they would never warm up again. As well try to warm up a frozen mouse.
+It only putrifies.
+
+But poor Miss Pinnegar after this looked older, and seemed to get a
+little round-backed. And the things she said reminded Alvina so often
+of Miss Frost.
+
+James fluttered into conversation with his daughter the next evening,
+after Miss Pinnegar had retired.
+
+“I told you I had bought a cinematograph building,” said James. “We are
+negotiating for the machinery now: the dynamo and so on.”
+
+“But where is it to be?” asked Alvina.
+
+“Down at Lumley. I’ll take you and show you the site tomorrow. The
+building—it is a frame-section travelling theatre—will arrive on
+Thursday—next Thursday.”
+
+“But who is in with you, father?”
+
+“I am quite alone—quite alone,” said James Houghton. “I have found an
+excellent manager, who knows the whole business thoroughly—a Mr. May.
+Very nice man. Very nice man.”
+
+“Rather short and dressed in grey?”
+
+“Yes. And I have been thinking—if Miss Pinnegar will take the cash and
+issue tickets: if she will take over the ticket-office: and you will
+play the piano: and if Mr. May learns the control of the machine—he is
+having lessons now—: and if I am the indoors attendant, we shan’t need
+any more staff.”
+
+“Miss Pinnegar won’t take the cash, father.”
+
+“Why not? Why not?”
+
+“I can’t say why not. But she won’t do anything—and if I were you I
+wouldn’t ask her.”
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“Oh, well,” said James, huffy. “She isn’t indispensable.”
+
+And Alvina was to play the piano! Here was a blow for her! She hurried
+off to her bedroom to laugh and cry at once. She just saw herself at
+that piano, banging off the _Merry Widow Waltz_, and, in tender
+moments, _The Rosary_. Time after time, _The Rosary_. While the
+pictures flickered and the audience gave shouts and some grubby boy
+called “Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a
+bar!” away she banged at another tune.
+
+What a sight for the gods! She burst out laughing. And at the same
+time, she thought of her mother and Miss Frost, and she cried as if her
+heart would break. And then all kinds of comic and incongruous tunes
+came into her head. She imagined herself dressing up with most
+priceless variations. _Linger Longer Lucy_, for example. She began to
+spin imaginary harmonies and variations in her head, upon the theme of
+_Linger Longer Lucy_.
+
+“Linger longer Lucy, linger longer Loo.
+How I love to linger longer linger long o’ you.
+Listen while I sing, love, promise you’ll be true,
+And linger longer longer linger linger longer Loo.”
+
+
+All the tunes that used to make Miss Frost so angry. All the Dream
+Waltzes and Maiden’s Prayers, and the awful songs.
+
+“For in Spooney-ooney Island
+Is there any one cares for me?
+In Spooney-ooney Island
+Why surely there ought to be—”
+
+
+Poor Miss Frost! Alvina imagined herself leading a chorus of collier
+louts, in a bad atmosphere of “Woodbines” and oranges, during the
+intervals when the pictures had collapsed.
+
+“How’d you like to spoon with me?
+How’d you like to spoon with me?
+                    (_Why ra-ther!_)
+
+Underneath the oak-tree nice and shady
+Calling me your tootsey-wootsey lady?
+How’d you like to hug and squeeze,
+                    (_Just try me!_)
+
+Dandle me upon your knee,
+Calling me your little lovey-dovey—
+How’d you like to spoon with me?
+                    (_Oh-h—Go on!_)”
+
+
+Alvina worked herself into quite a fever, with her imaginings.
+
+In the morning she told Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Pinnegar, “you see me issuing tickets, don’t you?
+Yes—well. I’m afraid he will have to do that part himself. And you’re
+going to play the piano. It’s a disgrace! It’s a disgrace! It’s a
+disgrace! It’s a mercy Miss Frost and your mother are dead. He’s lost
+every bit of shame—every bit—if he ever had any—which I doubt very
+much. Well, all I can say, I’m glad I am not concerned. And I’m sorry
+for you, for being his daughter. I’m heart sorry for you, I am. Well,
+well—no sense of shame—no sense of shame—”
+
+And Miss Pinnegar padded out of the room.
+
+Alvina walked down to Lumley and was shown the site and was introduced
+to Mr. May. He bowed to her in his best American fashion, and treated
+her with admirable American deference.
+
+“Don’t you think,” he said to her, “it’s an admirable scheme?”
+
+“Wonderful,” she replied.
+
+“Of cauce,” he said, “the erection will be a merely temporary one. Of
+cauce it won’t be anything to _look_ at: just an old wooden travelling
+theatre. But _then_—all we need is to make a start.”
+
+“And you are going to work the film?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” he said with pride, “I spend every evening with the operator at
+Marsh’s in Knarborough. Very interesting I find it—very interesting
+indeed. And _you_ are going to play the piano?” he said, perking his
+head on one side and looking at her archly.
+
+“So father says,” she answered.
+
+“But what do _you_ say?” queried Mr. May.
+
+“I suppose I don’t have any say.”
+
+“Oh but _surely_. Surely you won’t do it if you don’t wish to. That
+would never do. Can’t we hire some young fellow—?” And he turned to Mr.
+Houghton with a note of query.
+
+“Alvina can play as well as anybody in Woodhouse,” said James. “We
+mustn’t add to our expenses. And wages in particular—”
+
+“But surely Miss Houghton will have her wage. The labourer is worthy of
+his hire. Surely! Even of _her_ hire, to put it in the feminine. And
+for the same wage you could get some unimportant fellow with strong
+wrists. I’m afraid it will tire Miss Houghton to death—”
+
+“I don’t think so,” said James. “I don’t think so. Many of the turns
+she will not need to accompany—”
+
+“Well, if it comes to that,” said Mr. May, “I can accompany some of
+them myself, when I’m not operating the film. I’m not an expert
+pianist—but I can play a little, you know—” And he trilled his fingers
+up and down an imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina, cocking his eye
+at her smiling a little archly.
+
+“I’m sure,” he continued, “I can accompany anything except a man
+juggling dinner-plates—and then I’d be afraid of making him drop the
+plates. But songs—oh, songs! _Con molto espressione!_”
+
+And again he trilled the imaginary keyboard, and smiled his rather fat
+cheeks at Alvina.
+
+She began to like him. There was something a little dainty about him,
+when you knew him better—really rather fastidious. A showman, true
+enough! Blatant too. But fastidiously so.
+
+He came fairly frequently to Manchester House after this. Miss Pinnegar
+was rather stiff with him and he did not like her. But he was very
+happy sitting chatting tête-à-tête with Alvina.
+
+“Where is your wife?” said Alvina to him.
+
+“My wife! Oh, don’t speak of _her_,” he said comically. “She’s in
+London.”
+
+“Why not speak of her?” asked Alvina.
+
+“Oh, every reason for not speaking of her. We don’t get on at _all_
+well, she and I.”
+
+“What a pity,” said Alvina.
+
+“Dreadful pity! But what are you to do?” He laughed comically. Then he
+became grave. “No,” he said. “She’s an impossible person.”
+
+“I see,” said Alvina.
+
+“I’m sure you _don’t_ see,” said Mr. May. “Don’t—” and here he laid his
+hand on Alvina’s arm—“don’t run away with the idea that she’s
+_immoral_! You’d never make a greater mistake. Oh dear me, no.
+Morality’s her strongest point. Live on three lettuce leaves, and give
+the rest to the char. That’s her. Oh, dreadful times we had in those
+first years. We only lived together for three years. But dear _me_! how
+awful it was!”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“There was no pleasing the woman. She wouldn’t eat. If I said to her
+‘What shall we have for supper, Grace?’ as sure as anything she’d
+answer ‘Oh, I shall take a bath when I go to bed—that will be my
+supper.’ She was one of these advanced vegetarian women, don’t you
+know.”
+
+“How extraordinary!” said Alvina.
+
+“Extraordinary! I should think so. Extraordinary hard lines on _me_.
+And she wouldn’t let _me_ eat either. She followed me to the kitchen in
+a _fury_ while I cooked for myself. Why imagine! I prepared a dish of
+champignons: oh, most _beautiful_ champignons, beautiful—and I put them
+on the stove to fry in butter: beautiful young champignons. I’m hanged
+if she didn’t go into the kitchen while my back was turned, and pour a
+pint of old carrot-water into the pan. I was _furious_.
+Imagine!—beautiful fresh young champignons—”
+
+“Fresh mushrooms,” said Alvina.
+
+“Mushrooms—most beautiful things in the world. Oh! don’t you think so?”
+And he rolled his eyes oddly to heaven.
+
+“They _are_ good,” said Alvina.
+
+“I should say so. And swamped—_swamped_ with her dirty old carrot
+water. Oh I was so angry. And all she could say was, ‘Well, I didn’t
+want to waste it!’ Didn’t want to waste her old carrot water, and so
+_ruined_ my champignons. _Can_ you imagine such a person?”
+
+“It must have been trying.”
+
+“I should think it was. I lost weight. I lost I don’t know how many
+pounds, the first year I was married to that woman. She hated me to
+eat. Why, one of her great accusations against me, at the last, was
+when she said: ‘I’ve looked round the larder,’ she said to me, ‘and
+seen it was quite empty, and I thought to myself: _Now_ he _can’t_ cook
+a supper! And _then_ you did!’ There! What do you think of that? The
+spite of it! ‘And _then_ you did!’”
+
+“What did she expect you to live on?” asked Alvina.
+
+“Nibble a lettuce leaf with her, and drink water from the tap—and then
+elevate myself with a Bernard Shaw pamphlet. That was the sort of woman
+she was. All it gave _me_ was gas in the stomach.”
+
+“So overbearing!” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh!” he turned his eyes to heaven, and spread his hands. “I didn’t
+believe my senses. I didn’t know such people existed. And her friends!
+Oh the dreadful friends she had—these Fabians! Oh, their eugenics. They
+wanted to examine my private morals, for eugenic reasons. Oh, you can’t
+imagine such a state. Worse than the Spanish Inquisition. And I stood
+it for three years. _How_ I stood it, I don’t know—”
+
+“Now don’t you see her?”
+
+“Never! I never let her know where I am! But I _support_ her, of
+cauce.”
+
+“And your daughter?”
+
+“Oh, she’s the dearest child in the world. I saw her at a friend’s when
+I came back from America. Dearest little thing in the world. But of
+_cauce_ suspicious of me. Treats me as if she didn’t _know_ me—”
+
+“What a pity!”
+
+“Oh—unbearable!” He spread his plump, manicured hands, on one finger of
+which was a green intaglio ring.
+
+“How old is your daughter?”
+
+“Fourteen.”
+
+“What is her name?”
+
+“Gemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud
+Callum, the _danseuse_.”
+
+Curious the intimacy Mr. May established with Alvina at once. But it
+was all purely verbal, descriptive. He made no physical advances. On
+the contrary, he was like a dove-grey, disconsolate bird pecking the
+crumbs of Alvina’s sympathy, and cocking his eye all the time to watch
+that she did not advance one step towards him. If he had seen the least
+sign of coming-on-ness in her, he would have fluttered off in a great
+dither. Nothing _horrified_ him more than a woman who was coming-on
+towards him. It horrified him, it exasperated him, it made him hate the
+whole tribe of women: horrific two-legged cats without whiskers. If he
+had been a bird, his innate horror of a cat would have been such. He
+liked the _angel_, and particularly the angel-mother in woman. Oh!—that
+he worshipped. But coming-on-ness!
+
+So he never wanted to be seen out-of-doors with Alvina; if he met her
+in the street he bowed and passed on: bowed very deep and reverential,
+indeed, but passed on, with his little back a little more strutty and
+assertive than ever. Decidedly he turned his back on her in public.
+
+But Miss Pinnegar, a regular old, grey, dangerous she-puss, eyed him
+from the corner of her pale eye, as he turned tail.
+
+“So unmanly!” she murmured. “In his dress, in his way, in everything—so
+unmanly.”
+
+“If I was you, Alvina,” she said, “I shouldn’t see so much of Mr. May,
+in the drawing-room. People will talk.”
+
+“I should almost feel flattered,” laughed Alvina.
+
+“What do you mean?” snapped Miss Pinnegar.
+
+None the less, Mr. May was dependable in matters of business. He was up
+at half-past five in the morning, and by seven was well on his way. He
+sailed like a stiff little ship before a steady breeze, hither and
+thither, out of Woodhouse and back again, and across from side to side.
+Sharp and snappy, he was, on the spot. He trussed himself up, when he
+was angry or displeased, and sharp, snip-snap came his words, rather
+like scissors.
+
+“But how is it—” he attacked Arthur Witham—“that the gas isn’t
+connected with the main yet? It was to be ready yesterday.”
+
+“We’ve had to wait for the fixings for them brackets,” said Arthur.
+
+“_Had_ to _wait_ for _fixings_! But didn’t you know a fortnight ago
+that you’d want the fixings?”
+
+“I thought we should have some as would do.”
+
+“Oh! you thought so! Really! Kind of you to think so. And have you just
+thought about those that are coming, or have you made sure?”
+
+Arthur looked at him sullenly. He hated him. But Mr. May’s sharp touch
+was not to be foiled.
+
+“I hope you’ll go further than _thinking_,” said Mr. May. “Thinking
+seems such a slow process. And when do you expect the fittings—?”
+
+“Tomorrow.”
+
+“What! Another day! Another day _still!_ But you’re strangely
+indifferent to time, in your line of business. Oh! _Tomorrow!_ Imagine
+it! Two days late already, and then _tomorrow!_ Well I hope by tomorrow
+you mean _Wednesday_, and not tomorrow’s tomorrow, or some other absurd
+and fanciful date that you’ve just _thought about_. But now, _do_ have
+the thing finished by tomorrow—” here he laid his hand cajoling on
+Arthur’s arm. “You promise me it will all be ready by tomorrow, don’t
+you?”
+
+“Yes, I’ll do it if anybody could do it.”
+
+“Don’t say ‘if anybody could do it.’ Say it shall be done.”
+
+“It shall if I can possibly manage it—”
+
+“Oh—very well then. Mind you manage it—and thank you _very_ much. I
+shall be _most_ obliged, if it _is_ done.”
+
+Arthur was annoyed, but he was kept to the scratch. And so, early in
+October the place was ready, and Woodhouse was plastered with placards
+announcing “Houghton’s Pleasure Palace.” Poor Mr. May could not but see
+an irony in the Palace part of the phrase. “We can guarantee the
+_pleasure_,” he said. “But personally, I feel I can’t take the
+responsibility for the palace.”
+
+But James, to use the vulgar expression, was in his eye-holes.
+
+“Oh, father’s in his eye-holes,” said Alvina to Mr. May.
+
+“Oh!” said Mr. May, puzzled and concerned.
+
+But it merely meant that James was having the time of his life. He was
+drawing out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion strips, with
+the mystic script, in big black letters: Houghton’s Picture Palace,
+underneath which, quite small: Opens at Lumley on October 7th, at 6:30
+P.M. Everywhere you went, these vermilion and black bars sprang from
+the wall at you. Then there were other notices, in delicate pale-blue
+and pale red, like a genuine theatre notice, giving full programs. And
+beneath these a broad-letter notice announced, in green letters on a
+yellow ground: “Final and Ultimate Clearance Sale at Houghton’s,
+Knarborough Road, on Friday, September 30th. Come and Buy Without
+Price.”
+
+James was in his eye-holes. He collected all his odds and ends from
+every corner of Manchester House. He sorted them in heaps, and marked
+the heaps in his own mind. And then he let go. He pasted up notices all
+over the window and all over the shop: “Take what you want and Pay what
+you Like.”
+
+He and Miss Pinnegar kept shop. The women flocked in. They turned
+things over. It nearly killed James to take the prices they offered.
+But take them he did. But he exacted that they should buy one article
+at a time. “One piece at a time, if you don’t mind,” he said, when they
+came up with their three-a-penny handfuls. It was not till later in the
+evening that he relaxed this rule.
+
+Well, by eleven o’clock he had cleared out a good deal—really, a very
+great deal—and many women had bought what they didn’t want, at their
+own figure. Feverish but content, James shut the shop for the last
+time. Next day, by eleven, he had removed all his belongings, the door
+that connected the house with the shop was screwed up fast, the grocer
+strolled in and looked round his bare extension, took the key from
+James, and immediately set his boy to paste a new notice in the window,
+tearing down all James’s announcements. Poor James had to run round,
+down Knarborough Road, and down Wellington Street as far as the Livery
+Stable, then down long narrow passages, before he could get into his
+own house, from his own shop.
+
+But he did not mind. Every hour brought the first performance of his
+Pleasure Palace nearer. He was satisfied with Mr. May: he had to admit
+that he was satisfied with Mr. May. The Palace stood firm at last—oh,
+it was so ricketty when it arrived!—and it glowed with a new coat, all
+over, of dark-red paint, like ox-blood. It was tittivated up with a
+touch of lavender and yellow round the door and round the decorated
+wooden eaving. It had a new wooden slope up to the doors—and inside, a
+new wooden floor, with red-velvet seats in front, before the curtain,
+and old chapel-pews behind. The collier youths recognized the pews.
+
+“Hey! These ’ere’s the pews out of the old Primitive Chapel.”
+
+“Sorry ah! We’n come ter hear t’ parson.”
+
+Theme for endless jokes. And the Pleasure Palace was christened, in
+some lucky stroke, Houghton’s Endeavour, a reference to that particular
+Chapel effort called the Christian Endeavour, where Alvina and Miss
+Pinnegar both figured.
+
+“Wheer art off, Sorry?”
+
+“Lumley.”
+
+“Houghton’s Endeavour?”
+
+“Ah.”
+
+“Rotten.”
+
+So, when one laconic young collier accosted another. But we anticipate.
+
+Mr. May had worked hard to get a program for the first week. His
+pictures were: “The Human Bird,” which turned out to be a ski-ing film
+from Norway, purely descriptive; “The Pancake,” a humorous film: and
+then his grand serial: “The Silent Grip.” And then, for Turns, his
+first item was Miss Poppy Traherne, a lady in innumerable petticoats,
+who could whirl herself into anything you like, from an arum lily in
+green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and a
+cup-and-saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne. The next turn was
+The Baxter Brothers, who ran up and down each other’s backs and up and
+down each other’s front, and stood on each other’s heads and on their
+own heads, and perched for a moment on each other’s shoulders, as if
+each of them was a flight of stairs with a landing, and the three of
+them were three flights, three storeys up, the top flight continually
+running down and becoming the bottom flight, while the middle flight
+collapsed and became a horizontal corridor.
+
+Alvina had to open the performance by playing an overture called
+“Welcome All”: a ridiculous piece. She was excited and unhappy. On the
+Monday morning there was a rehearsal, Mr. May conducting. She played
+“Welcome All,” and then took the thumbed sheets which Miss Poppy
+Traherne carried with her. Miss Poppy was rather exacting. As she
+whirled her skirts she kept saying: “A little faster, please”—“A little
+slower”—in a rather haughty, official voice that was somewhat muffled
+by the swim of her drapery. “Can you give it _expression_?” she cried,
+as she got the arum lily in full blow, and there was a sound of real
+ecstasy in her tones. But why she should have called “Stronger!
+Stronger!” as she came into being as a cup and saucer, Alvina could not
+imagine: unless Miss Poppy was fancying herself a strong cup of tea.
+
+However, she subsided into her mere self, panted frantically, and then,
+in a hoarse voice, demanded if she was in the bare front of the show.
+She scorned to count “Welcome All.” Mr. May said Yes. She was the first
+item. Whereupon she began to raise a dust. Mr. Houghton said, hurriedly
+interposing, that he meant to make a little opening speech. Miss Poppy
+eyed him as if he were a cuckoo-clock, and she had to wait till he’d
+finished cuckooing. Then she said:
+
+“That’s not every night. There’s six nights to a week.” James was
+properly snubbed. It ended by Mr. May metamorphizing himself into a pug
+dog: he said he had got the “costoom” in his bag: and doing a
+lump-of-sugar scene with one of the Baxter Brothers, as a brief first
+item. Miss Poppy’s professional virginity was thus saved from outrage.
+
+At the back of the stage there was half-a-yard of curtain screening the
+two dressing-rooms, ladies and gents. In her spare time Alvina sat in
+the ladies’ dressing room, or in its lower doorway, for there was not
+room right inside. She watched the ladies making up—she gave some
+slight assistance. She saw the men’s feet, in their shabby pumps, on
+the other side of the curtain, and she heard the men’s gruff voices.
+Often a slangy conversation was carried on through the curtain—for most
+of the turns were acquainted with each other: very affable before each
+other’s faces, very sniffy behind each other’s backs.
+
+Poor Alvina was in a state of bewilderment. She was extremely nice—oh,
+much too nice with the female turns. They treated her with a sort of
+off-hand friendliness, and they snubbed and patronized her and were a
+little spiteful with her because Mr. May treated her with attention and
+deference. She felt bewildered, a little excited, and as if she was not
+herself.
+
+The first evening actually came. Her father had produced a pink crêpe
+de Chine blouse and a back-comb massed with brilliants—both of which
+she refused to wear. She stuck to her black blouse and black shirt, and
+her simple hair-dressing. Mr. May said “Of cauce! She wasn’t intended
+to attract attention to herself.” Miss Pinnegar actually walked down
+the hill with her, and began to cry when she saw the ox-blood red
+erection, with its gas-flares in front. It was the first time she had
+seen it. She went on with Alvina to the little stage door at the back,
+and up the steps into the scrap of dressing-room. But she fled out
+again from the sight of Miss Poppy in her yellow hair and green
+knickers with green-lace frills. Poor Miss Pinnegar! She stood outside
+on the trodden grass behind the Band of Hope, and really cried. Luckily
+she had put a veil on.
+
+She went valiantly round to the front entrance, and climbed the steps.
+The crowd was just coming. There was James’s face peeping inside the
+little ticket-window.
+
+“One!” he said officially, pushing out the ticket. And then he
+recognized her. “Oh,” he said, “_You’re_ not going to pay.”
+
+“Yes I am,” she said, and she left her fourpence, and James’s coppery,
+grimy fingers scooped it in, as the youth behind Miss Pinnegar shoved
+her forward.
+
+“Arf way down, fourpenny,” said the man at the door, poking her in the
+direction of Mr. May, who wanted to put her in the red velvet. But she
+marched down one of the pews, and took her seat.
+
+The place was crowded with a whooping, whistling, excited audience. The
+curtain was down. James had let it out to his fellow tradesmen, and it
+represented a patchwork of local adverts. There was a fat porker and a
+fat pork-pie, and the pig was saying: “You all know where to find me.
+Inside the crust at Frank Churchill’s, Knarborough Road, Woodhouse.”
+Round about the name of W. H. Johnson floated a bowler hat, a
+collar-and-necktie, a pair of braces and an umbrella. And so on and so
+on. It all made you feel very homely. But Miss Pinnegar was sadly hot
+and squeezed in her pew.
+
+Time came, and the colliers began to drum their feet. It was exactly
+the excited, crowded audience Mr. May wanted. He darted out to drive
+James round in front of the curtain. But James, fascinated by raking in
+the money so fast, could not be shifted from the pay-box, and the two
+men nearly had a fight. At last Mr. May was seen shooing James, like a
+scuffled chicken, down the side gangway and on to the stage.
+
+James before the illuminated curtain of local adverts, bowing and
+beginning and not making a single word audible! The crowd quieted
+itself, the eloquence flowed on. The crowd was sick of James, and began
+to shuffle. “Come down, come down!” hissed Mr. May frantically from in
+front. But James did not move. He would flow on all night. Mr. May
+waved excitedly at Alvina, who sat obscurely at the piano, and darted
+on to the stage. He raised his voice and drowned James. James ceased to
+wave his penny-blackened hands, Alvina struck up “Welcome All” as
+loudly and emphatically as she could.
+
+And all the time Miss Pinnegar sat like a sphinx—like a sphinx. What
+she thought she did not know herself. But stolidly she stared at James,
+and anxiously she glanced sideways at the pounding Alvina. She knew
+Alvina had to pound until she received the cue that Mr. May was fitted
+in his pug-dog “Costoom.”
+
+A twitch of the curtain. Alvina wound up her final flourish, the
+curtain rose, and:
+
+“Well really!” said Miss Pinnegar, out loud.
+
+There was Mr. May as a pug dog begging, too lifelike and too
+impossible. The audience shouted. Alvina sat with her hands in her lap.
+The Pug was a great success.
+
+Curtain! A few bars of Toreador—and then Miss Poppy’s sheets of music.
+Soft music. Miss Poppy was on the ground under a green scarf. And so
+the accumulating dilation, on to the whirling climax of the perfect
+arum lily. Sudden curtain, and a yell of ecstasy from the colliers. Of
+all blossoms, the arum, the arum lily is most mystical and portentous.
+
+Now a crash and rumble from Alvina’s piano. This is the storm from
+whence the rainbow emerges. Up goes the curtain—Miss Poppy twirling
+till her skirts lift as in a breeze, rise up and become a rainbow above
+her now darkened legs. The footlights are all but extinguished. Miss
+Poppy is all but extinguished also.
+
+The rainbow is not so moving as the arum lily. But the Catherine wheel,
+done at the last moment on one leg and then an amazing leap into the
+air backwards, again brings down the house.
+
+Miss Poppy herself sets all store on her cup and saucer. But the
+audience, vulgar as ever, cannot quite see it.
+
+And so, Alvina slips away with Miss Poppy’s music-sheets, while Mr. May
+sits down like a professional at the piano and makes things fly for the
+up-and-down-stairs Baxter Bros. Meanwhile, Alvina’s pale face hovering
+like a ghost in the side darkness, as it were under the stage.
+
+The lamps go out: gurglings and kissings—and then the dither on the
+screen: “The Human Bird,” in awful shivery letters. It’s not a very
+good machine, and Mr. May is not a very good operator. Audience
+distinctly critical. Lights up—an “Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let,
+penny a bar!” even as in Alvina’s dream—and then “The Pancake”—so the
+first half over. Lights up for the interval.
+
+Miss Pinnegar sighed and folded her hands. She looked neither to right
+nor to left. In spite of herself, in spite of outraged shame and
+decency, she was excited. But she felt such excitement was not
+wholesome. In vain the boy most pertinently yelled “Chot-let” at her.
+She looked neither to right nor left. But when she saw Alvina nodding
+to her with a quick smile from the side gangway under the stage, she
+almost burst into tears. It was too much for her, all at once. And
+Alvina looked almost indecently excited. As she slipped across in front
+of the audience, to the piano, to play the seductive “Dream Waltz!” she
+looked almost fussy, like her father. James, needless to say, flittered
+and hurried hither and thither around the audience and the stage, like
+a wagtail on the brink of a pool.
+
+The second half consisted of a comic drama acted by two Baxter Bros.,
+disguised as women, and Miss Poppy disguised as a man—with a couple of
+locals thrown in to do the guardsman and the Count. This went very
+well. The winding up was the first instalment of “The Silent Grip.”
+
+When lights went up and Alvina solemnly struck “God Save Our Gracious
+King,” the audience was on its feet and not very quiet, evidently
+hissing with excitement like doughnuts in the pan even when the pan is
+taken off the fire. Mr. Houghton thanked them for their courtesy and
+attention, and hoped—And nobody took the slightest notice.
+
+Miss Pinnegar stayed last, waiting for Alvina. And Alvina, in her
+excitement, waited for Mr. May and her father.
+
+Mr. May fairly pranced into the empty hall.
+
+“Well!” he said, shutting both his fists and flourishing them in Miss
+Pinnegar’s face. “How did it go?”
+
+“I think it went very well,” she said.
+
+“Very well! I should think so, indeed. It went like a house on fire.
+What? Didn’t it?” And he laughed a high, excited little laugh.
+
+James was counting pennies for his life, in the cash-place, and
+dropping them into a Gladstone bag. The others had to wait for him. At
+last he locked his bag.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. May, “done well?”
+
+“Fairly well,” said James, huskily excited. “Fairly well.”
+
+“Only fairly? Oh-h!” And Mr. May suddenly picked up the bag. James
+turned as if he would snatch it from him. “Well! Feel that, for fairly
+well!” said Mr. May, handing the bag to Alvina.
+
+“Goodness!” she cried, handing it to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Would you believe it?” said Miss Pinnegar, relinquishing it to James.
+But she spoke coldly, aloof.
+
+Mr. May turned off the gas at the meter, came talking through the
+darkness of the empty theatre, picking his way with a flash-light.
+
+“C’est le premier pas qui coute,” he said, in a sort of American
+French, as he locked the doors and put the key in his pocket. James
+tripped silently alongside, bowed under the weight of his Gladstone bag
+of pennies.
+
+“How much have we taken, father?” asked Alvina gaily.
+
+“I haven’t counted,” he snapped.
+
+When he got home he hurried upstairs to his bare chamber. He swept his
+table clear, and then, in an expert fashion, he seized handfuls of coin
+and piled them in little columns on his board. There was an army of fat
+pennies, a dozen to a column, along the back, rows and rows of fat
+brown rank-and-file. In front of these, rows of slim halfpence, like an
+advance-guard. And commanding all, a stout column of half-crowns, a few
+stoutish and important florin-figures, like general and colonels, then
+quite a file of shillings, like so many captains, and a little cloud of
+silvery lieutenant sixpences. Right at the end, like a frail drummer
+boy, a thin stick of threepenny pieces.
+
+There they all were: burly dragoons of stout pennies, heavy and holding
+their ground, with a screen of halfpenny light infantry, officered by
+the immovable half-crown general, who in his turn was flanked by all
+his staff of florin colonels and shilling captains, from whom lightly
+moved the nimble sixpenny lieutenants all ignoring the wan, frail Joey
+of the threepenny-bits.
+
+Time after time James ran his almighty eye over his army. He loved
+them. He loved to feel that his table was pressed down, that it groaned
+under their weight. He loved to see the pence, like innumerable pillars
+of cloud, standing waiting to lead on into wildernesses of unopened
+resource, while the silver, as pillars of light, should guide the way
+down the long night of fortune. Their weight sank sensually into his
+muscle, and gave him gratification. The dark redness of bronze, like
+full-blooded fleas, seemed alive and pulsing, the silver was magic as
+if winged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA
+
+
+Mr. May and Alvina became almost inseparable, and Woodhouse buzzed with
+scandal. Woodhouse could not believe that Mr. May was absolutely final
+in his horror of any sort of coming-on-ness in a woman. It could not
+believe that he was only _so_ fond of Alvina because she was like a
+sister to him, poor, lonely, harassed soul that he was: a pure sister
+who really hadn’t any body. For although Mr. May was rather fond, in an
+epicurean way, of his own body, yet other people’s bodies rather made
+him shudder. So that his grand utterance on Alvina was: “She’s not
+physical, she’s mental.”
+
+He even explained to her one day how it was, in his naïve fashion.
+
+“There are two kinds of friendships,” he said, “physical and mental.
+The physical is a thing of the moment. Of cauce you quite _like_ the
+individual, you remain quite nice with them, and so on,—to keep the
+thing as decent as possible. It _is_ quite decent, so long as you keep
+it so. But it is a thing of the moment. Which you know. It may last a
+week or two, or a month or two. But you know from the beginning it is
+going to end—quite finally—quite soon. You take it for what it is. But
+it’s so different with the mental friendships. _They_ are lasting. They
+are eternal—if anything human (he said yuman) ever is eternal, ever
+_can_ be eternal.” He pressed his hands together in an odd cherubic
+manner. He was quite sincere: if man ever _can_ be quite sincere.
+
+Alvina was quite content to be one of his mental and eternal friends,
+or rather _friendships_—since she existed _in abstractu_ as far as he
+was concerned. For she did not find him at all physically moving.
+Physically he was not there: he was oddly an absentee. But his naïveté
+roused the serpent’s tooth of her bitter irony.
+
+“And your wife?” she said to him.
+
+“Oh, my wife! Dreadful thought! _There_ I made the great mistake of
+trying to find the two in one person! And _didn’t_ I fall between two
+stools! Oh dear, _didn’t_ I? Oh, I fell between the two stools
+beautifully, beautifully! And _then_—she nearly set the stools on top
+of me. I thought I should never get up again. When I was physical, she
+was mental—Bernard Shaw and cold baths for supper!—and when I was
+mental she was physical, and threw her arms round my neck. In the
+morning, mark you. Always in the morning, when I was on the alert for
+business. Yes, invariably. What do you think of it? Could the devil
+himself have invented anything more trying? Oh dear me, don’t mention
+it. Oh, what a time I had! Wonder I’m alive. Yes, really! Although you
+smile.”
+
+Alvina did more than smile. She laughed outright. And yet she remained
+good friends with the odd little man.
+
+He bought himself a new, smart overcoat, that fitted his figure, and a
+new velour hat. And she even noticed, one day when he was curling
+himself up cosily on the sofa, that he had pale blue silk underwear,
+and purple silk suspenders. She wondered where he got them, and how he
+afforded them. But there they were.
+
+James seemed for the time being wrapt in his undertaking—particularly
+in the takings part of it. He seemed for the time being contented—or
+nearly so, nearly so. Certainly there was money coming in. But then he
+had to pay off all he had borrowed to buy his erection and its
+furnishings, and a bulk of pennies sublimated into a very small £.s.d.
+account, at the bank.
+
+The Endeavour was successful—yes, it was successful. But not
+overwhelmingly so. On wet nights Woodhouse did not care to trail down
+to Lumley. And then Lumley was one of those depressed, negative spots
+on the face of the earth which have no pull at all. In that region of
+sharp hills with fine hill-brows, and shallow, rather dreary
+canal-valleys, it was the places on the hill-brows, like Woodhouse and
+Hathersedge and Rapton which flourished, while the dreary places down
+along the canals existed only for work-places, not for life and
+pleasure. It was just like James to have planted his endeavour down in
+the stagnant dust and rust of potteries and foundries, where no
+illusion could bloom.
+
+He had dreamed of crowded houses every night, and of raised prices. But
+there was no probability of his being able to raise his prices. He had
+to figure lower than the Woodhouse Empire. He was second-rate from the
+start. His hope now lay in the tramway which was being built from
+Knarborough away through the country—a black country indeed—through
+Woodhouse and Lumley and Hathersedge, to Rapton. When once this
+tramway-system was working, he would have a supply of youths and lasses
+always on tap, as it were. So he spread his rainbow wings towards the
+future, and began to say:
+
+“When we’ve got the trams, I shall buy a new machine and finer lenses,
+and I shall extend my premises.”
+
+Mr. May did not talk business to Alvina. He was terribly secretive with
+respect to business. But he said to her once, in the early year
+following their opening:
+
+“Well, how do you think we’re doing, Miss Houghton?”
+
+“We’re not doing any better than we did at first, I think,” she said.
+
+“No,” he answered. “No! That’s true. That’s perfectly true. But why?
+They seem to like the programs.”
+
+“I think they do,” said Alvina. “I think they like them when they’re
+there. But isn’t it funny, they don’t seem to want to come to them. I
+know they always talk as if we were second-rate. And they only come
+because they can’t get to the Empire, or up to Hathersedge. We’re a
+stop-gap. I know we are.”
+
+Mr. May looked down in the mouth. He cocked his blue eyes at her,
+miserable and frightened. Failure began to frighten him abjectly.
+
+“Why do you think that is?” he said.
+
+“I don’t believe they like the turns,” she said.
+
+“But _look_ how they applaud them! _Look_ how pleased they are!”
+
+“I know. I know they like them once they’re there, and they see them.
+But they don’t come again. They crowd the Empire—and the Empire is only
+pictures now; and it’s much cheaper to run.”
+
+He watched her dismally.
+
+“I can’t believe they want nothing but pictures. I can’t believe they
+want everything in the flat,” he said, coaxing and miserable. He
+himself was not interested in the film. His interest was still the
+human interest in living performers and their living feats. “Why,” he
+continued, “they are ever so much more excited after a good turn, than
+after any film.”
+
+“I know they are,” said Alvina. “But I don’t believe they want to be
+excited in that way.”
+
+“In what way?” asked Mr. May plaintively.
+
+“By the things which the artistes do. I believe they’re jealous.”
+
+“Oh nonsense!” exploded Mr. May, starting as if he had been shot. Then
+he laid his hand on her arm. “But forgive my rudeness! I don’t mean it,
+of _cauce_! But do you mean to say that these collier louts and factory
+girls are jealous of the things the artistes do, because they could
+never do them themselves?”
+
+“I’m sure they are,” said Alvina.
+
+“But I _can’t_ believe it,” said Mr. May, pouting up his mouth and
+smiling at her as if she were a whimsical child. “What a low opinion
+you have of human nature!”
+
+“Have I?” laughed Alvina. “I’ve never reckoned it up. But I’m sure that
+these common people here are jealous if anybody does anything or has
+anything they can’t have themselves.”
+
+“I can’t believe it,” protested Mr. May. “Could they be so _silly_! And
+then why aren’t they jealous of the extraordinary things which are done
+on the film?”
+
+“Because they don’t see the flesh-and-blood people. I’m sure that’s it.
+The film is only pictures, like pictures in the _Daily Mirror_. And
+pictures don’t have any feelings apart from their own feelings. I mean
+the feelings of the people who watch them. Pictures don’t have any life
+except in the people who watch them. And that’s why they like them.
+Because they make them feel that they are everything.”
+
+“The pictures make the colliers and lasses feel that they themselves
+are everything? But how? They identify themselves with the heroes and
+heroines on the screen?”
+
+“Yes—they take it all to themselves—and there isn’t anything except
+themselves. I know it’s like that. It’s because they can spread
+themselves over a film, and they _can’t_ over a living performer.
+They’re up against the performer himself. And they hate it.”
+
+Mr. May watched her long and dismally.
+
+“I _can’t_ believe people are like that!—sane people!” he said. “Why,
+to me the whole joy is in the living personality, the curious
+_personality_ of the artiste. That’s what I enjoy so much.”
+
+“I know. But that’s where you’re different from them.”
+
+“But _am_ I?”
+
+“Yes. You’re not as up to the mark as they are.”
+
+“Not up to the mark? What do you mean? Do you mean they are more
+intelligent?”
+
+“No, but they’re more modern. You like things which aren’t yourself.
+But they don’t. They hate to admire anything that they can’t take to
+themselves. They hate anything that isn’t themselves. And that’s why
+they like pictures. It’s all themselves to them, all the time.”
+
+He still puzzled.
+
+“You know I don’t follow you,” he said, a little mocking, as if she
+were making a fool of herself.
+
+“Because you don’t know them. You don’t know the common people. You
+don’t know how conceited they are.”
+
+He watched her a long time.
+
+“And you think we ought to cut out the variety, and give nothing but
+pictures, like the Empire?” he said.
+
+“I believe it takes best,” she said.
+
+“And costs less,” he answered. “But _then_! It’s so dull. Oh my _word_,
+it’s so dull. I don’t think I could bear it.”
+
+“And our pictures aren’t good enough,” she said. “We should have to get
+a new machine, and pay for the expensive films. Our pictures do shake,
+and our films are rather ragged.”
+
+“But then, _surely_ they’re good enough!” he said.
+
+That was how matters stood. The Endeavour paid its way, and made just a
+margin of profit—no more. Spring went on to summer, and then there was
+a very shadowy margin of profit. But James was not at all daunted. He
+was waiting now for the trams, and building up hopes since he could not
+build in bricks and mortar.
+
+The navvies were busy in troops along the Knarborough Road, and down
+Lumley Hill. Alvina became quite used to them. As she went down the
+hill soon after six o’clock in the evening, she met them trooping home.
+And some of them she liked. There was an outlawed look about them as
+they swung along the pavement—some of them; and there was a certain
+lurking set of the head which rather frightened her because it
+fascinated her. There was one tall young fellow with a red face and
+fair hair, who looked as if he had fronted the seas and the arctic sun.
+He looked at her. They knew each other quite well, in passing. And he
+would glance at perky Mr. May. Alvina tried to fathom what the young
+fellow’s look meant. She wondered what he thought of Mr. May.
+
+She was surprised to hear Mr. May’s opinion of the navvy.
+
+“_He’s_ a handsome young man, now!” exclaimed her companion one evening
+as the navvies passed. And all three turned round, to find all three
+turning round. Alvina laughed, and made eyes. At that moment she would
+cheerfully have gone along with the navvy. She was getting so tired of
+Mr. May’s quiet prance.
+
+On the whole, Alvina enjoyed the cinema and the life it brought her.
+She accepted it. And she became somewhat vulgarized in her bearing. She
+was _déclassée_: she had lost her class altogether. The other daughters
+of respectable tradesmen avoided her now, or spoke to her only from a
+distance. She was supposed to be “carrying on” with Mr. May.
+
+Alvina did not care. She rather liked it. She liked being _déclassée_.
+She liked feeling an outsider. At last she seemed to stand on her own
+ground. She laughed to herself as she went back and forth from
+Woodhouse to Lumley, between Manchester House and the Pleasure Palace.
+She laughed when she saw her father’s theatre-notices plastered about.
+She laughed when she saw his thrilling announcements in the _Woodhouse
+Weekly_. She laughed when she knew that all the Woodhouse youths
+recognized her, and looked on her as one of their inferior
+entertainers. She was off the map: and she liked it.
+
+For after all, she got a good deal of fun out of it. There was not only
+the continual activity. There were the artistes. Every week she met a
+new set of stars—three or four as a rule. She rehearsed with them on
+Monday afternoons, and she saw them every evening, and twice a week at
+matinees. James now gave two performances each evening—and he always
+had _some_ audience. So that Alvina had opportunity to come into
+contact with all the odd people of the inferior stage. She found they
+were very much of a type: a little frowsy, a little flea-bitten as a
+rule, indifferent to ordinary morality, and philosophical even if
+irritable. They were often very irritable. And they had always a
+certain fund of callous philosophy. Alvina did not _like_ them—you were
+not supposed, really, to get deeply emotional over them. But she found
+it amusing to see them all and know them all. It was so different from
+Woodhouse, where everything was priced and ticketed. These people were
+nomads. They didn’t care a straw who you were or who you weren’t. They
+had a most irritable professional vanity, and that was all. It was most
+odd to watch them. They weren’t very squeamish. If the young gentlemen
+liked to peep round the curtain when the young lady was in her
+knickers: oh, well, she rather roundly told them off, perhaps, but
+nobody minded. The fact that ladies wore knickers and black silk
+stockings thrilled nobody, any more than grease-paint or false
+moustaches thrilled. It was all part of the stock-in-trade. As for
+immorality—well, what did it amount to? Not a great deal. Most of the
+men cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about any more carnal
+vice, and most of the girls were good pals with each other, men were
+only there to act with: even if the act was a private love-farce of an
+improper description. What’s the odds? You couldn’t get excited about
+it: not as a rule.
+
+Mr. May usually took rooms for the artistes in a house down in Lumley.
+When any one particular was coming, he would go to a rather
+better-class widow in Woodhouse. He never let Alvina take any part in
+the making of these arrangements, except with the widow in Woodhouse,
+who had long ago been a servant at Manchester House, and even now came
+in to do cleaning.
+
+Odd, eccentric people they were, these entertainers. Most of them had a
+streak of imagination, and most of them drank. Most of them were
+middle-aged. Most of them had an abstracted manner; in ordinary life,
+they seemed left aside, somehow. Odd, extraneous creatures, often a
+little depressed, feeling life slip away from them. The cinema was
+killing them.
+
+Alvina had quite a serious flirtation with a man who played a flute and
+piccolo. He was about fifty years old, still handsome, and growing
+stout. When sober, he was completely reserved. When rather drunk, he
+talked charmingly and amusingly—oh, most charmingly. Alvina quite loved
+him. But alas, _how_ he drank! But what a charm he had! He went, and
+she saw him no more.
+
+The usual rather American-looking, clean-shaven, slightly pasty young
+man left Alvina quite cold, though he had an amiable and truly
+chivalrous _galanterie_. He was quite likeable. But so unattractive.
+Alvina was more fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did
+marvellous things with six ferrets, or the Jap who was tattooed all
+over, and had the most amazing strong wrists, so that he could throw
+down any collier, with one turn of the hand. Queer cuts these!—but just
+a little bit beyond her. She watched them rather from a distance. She
+wished she could jump across the distance. Particularly with the Jap,
+who was almost quite naked, but clothed with the most exquisite
+tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle that flew with terrible
+spread wings between his shoulders, or the strange mazy pattern that
+netted the roundness of his buttocks. He was not very large, but nicely
+shaped, and with no hair on his smooth, tattooed body. He was almost
+blue in colour—that is, his tattooing was blue, with pickings of
+brilliant vermilion: as for instance round the nipples, and in a
+strange red serpent’s-jaws over the navel. A serpent went round his
+loins and haunches. He told her how many times he had had
+blood-poisoning, during the process of his tattooing. He was a queer,
+black-eyed creature, with a look of silence and toad-like lewdness. He
+frightened her. But when he was dressed in common clothes, and was just
+a cheap, shoddy-looking European Jap, he was more frightening still.
+For his face—he was not tattooed above a certain ring low on his
+neck—was yellow and flat and basking with one eye open, like some
+age-old serpent. She felt he was smiling horribly all the time: lewd,
+unthinkable. A strange sight he was in Woodhouse, on a sunny morning; a
+shabby-looking bit of riff-raff of the East, rather down at the heel.
+Who could have imagined the terrible eagle of his shoulders, the
+serpent of his loins, his supple, magic skin?
+
+The summer passed again, and autumn. Winter was a better time for James
+Houghton. The trams, moreover, would begin to run in January.
+
+He wanted to arrange a good program for the week when the trams
+started. A long time ahead, Mr. May prepared it. The one item was the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe. The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe consisted of
+five persons, Madame Rochard and four young men. They were a strictly
+Red Indian troupe. But one of the young men, the German Swiss, was a
+famous yodeller, and another, the French Swiss, was a good comic with a
+French accent, whilst Madame and the German did a screaming two-person
+farce. Their great turn, of course, was the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Red
+Indian scene.
+
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were due in the third week in January, arriving
+from the Potteries on the Sunday evening. When Alvina came in from
+Chapel that Sunday evening, she found her widow, Mrs. Rollings, seated
+in the living room talking with James, who had an anxious look. Since
+opening the Pleasure Palace James was less regular at Chapel. And
+moreover, he was getting old and shaky, and Sunday was the one evening
+he might spend in peace. Add that on this particular black Sunday night
+it was sleeting dismally outside, and James had already a bit of a
+cough, and we shall see that he did right to stay at home.
+
+Mrs. Rollings sat nursing a bottle. She was to go to the chemist for
+some cough-cure, because Madame had got a bad cold. The chemist was
+gone to Chapel—he wouldn’t open till eight.
+
+Madame and the four young men had arrived at about six. Madame, said
+Mrs. Rollings, was a little fat woman, and she was complaining all the
+time that she had got a cold on her chest, laying her hand on her chest
+and trying her breathing and going “He-e-e-er! Herr!” to see if she
+could breathe properly. She, Mrs. Rollings, had suggested that Madame
+should put her feet in hot mustard and water, but Madame said she must
+have something to clear her chest. The four young men were four nice
+civil young fellows. They evidently liked Madame. Madame had insisted
+on cooking the chops for the young men. She herself had eaten one, but
+she laid her hand on her chest when she swallowed. One of the young men
+had gone out to get her some brandy, and he had come back with
+half-a-dozen large bottles of Bass as well.
+
+Mr. Houghton was very much concerned over Madame’s cold. He asked the
+same questions again and again, to try and make sure how bad it was.
+But Mrs. Rollings didn’t seem quite to know. James wrinkled his brow.
+Supposing Madame could not take her part! He was most anxious.
+
+“Do you think you might go across with Mrs. Rollings and see how this
+woman is, Alvina?” he said to his daughter.
+
+“I should think you’ll never turn Alvina out on such a night,” said
+Miss Pinnegar. “And besides, it isn’t right. Where is Mr. May? It’s his
+business to go.”
+
+“Oh!” returned Alvina. “_I_ don’t mind going. Wait a minute, I’ll see
+if we haven’t got some of those pastilles for burning. If it’s very
+bad, I can make one of those plasters mother used.”
+
+And she ran upstairs. She was curious to see what Madame and her four
+young men were like.
+
+With Mrs. Rollings she called at the chemist’s back door, and then they
+hurried through the sleet to the widow’s dwelling. It was not far. As
+they went up the entry they heard the sound of voices. But in the
+kitchen all was quiet. The voices came from the front room.
+
+Mrs. Rollings tapped.
+
+“Come in!” said a rather sharp voice. Alvina entered on the widow’s
+heels.
+
+“I’ve brought you the cough stuff,” said the widow. “And Miss Huff’n’s
+come as well, to see how you was.”
+
+Four young men were sitting round the table in their shirt-sleeves,
+with bottles of Bass. There was much cigarette smoke. By the fire,
+which was burning brightly, sat a plump, pale woman with dark bright
+eyes and finely-drawn eyebrows: she might be any age between forty and
+fifty. There were grey threads in her tidy black hair. She was neatly
+dressed in a well-made black dress with a small lace collar. There was
+a slight look of self-commiseration on her face. She had a cigarette
+between her drooped fingers.
+
+She rose as if with difficulty, and held out her plump hand, on which
+four or five rings showed. She had dropped the cigarette unnoticed into
+the hearth.
+
+“How do you do,” she said. “I didn’t catch your name.” Madame’s voice
+was a little plaintive and plangent now, like a bronze reed mournfully
+vibrating.
+
+“Alvina Houghton,” said Alvina.
+
+“Daughter of him as owns the thee-etter where you’re goin’ to act,”
+interposed the widow.
+
+“Oh yes! Yes! I see. Miss Houghton. I didn’t know how it was said.
+Huff-ton—yes? Miss Houghton. I’ve got a bad cold on my chest—” laying
+her plump hand with the rings on her plump bosom. “But let me introduce
+you to my young men—” A wave of the plump hand, whose forefinger was
+very slightly cigarette-stained, towards the table.
+
+The four young men had risen, and stood looking at Alvina and Madame.
+The room was small, rather bare, with horse-hair and white-crochet
+antimacassars and a linoleum floor. The table also was covered with a
+brightly-patterned American oil-cloth, shiny but clean. A naked gas-jet
+hung over it. For furniture, there were just chairs, arm-chairs, table,
+and a horse-hair antimacassar-ed sofa. Yet the little room seemed very
+full—full of people, young men with smart waistcoats and ties, but
+without coats.
+
+“That is Max,” said Madame. “I shall tell you only their names, and not
+their family names, because that is easier for you—”
+
+In the meantime Max had bowed. He was a tall Swiss with almond eyes and
+a flattish face and a rather stiff, ramrod figure.
+
+“And that is Louis—” Louis bowed gracefully. He was a Swiss Frenchman,
+moderately tall, with prominent cheekbones and a wing of glossy black
+hair falling on his temple.
+
+“And that is Géoffroi—Geoffrey—” Geoffrey made his bow—a
+broad-shouldered, watchful, taciturn man from Alpine France.
+
+“And that is Francesco—Frank—” Francesco gave a faint curl of his lip,
+half smile, as he saluted her involuntarily in a military fashion. He
+was dark, rather tall and loose, with yellow-tawny eyes. He was an
+Italian from the south. Madame gave another look at him. “He doesn’t
+like his English name of Frank. You will see, he pulls a face. No, he
+doesn’t like it. We call him Ciccio also—” But Ciccio was dropping his
+head sheepishly, with the same faint smile on his face, half grimace,
+and stooping to his chair, wanting to sit down.
+
+“These are my family of young men,” said Madame. “We are drawn from
+three races, though only Ciccio is not of our mountains. Will you
+please to sit down.”
+
+They all took their chairs. There was a pause.
+
+“My young men drink a little beer, after their horrible journey. As a
+rule, I do not like them to drink. But tonight they have a little beer.
+I do not take any myself, because I am afraid of inflaming myself.” She
+laid her hand on her breast, and took long, uneasy breaths. “I feel it.
+I feel it _here_.” She patted her breast. “It makes me afraid for
+tomorrow. Will you perhaps take a glass of beer? Ciccio, ask for
+another glass—” Ciccio, at the end of the table, did not rise, but
+looked round at Alvina as if he presumed there would be no need for him
+to move. The odd, supercilious curl of the lip persisted. Madame glared
+at him. But he turned the handsome side of his cheek towards her, with
+the faintest flicker of a sneer.
+
+“No, thank you. I never take beer,” said Alvina hurriedly.
+
+“No? Never? Oh!” Madame folded her hands, but her black eyes still
+darted venom at Ciccio. The rest of the young men fingered their
+glasses and put their cigarettes to their lips and blew the smoke down
+their noses, uncomfortably.
+
+Madame closed her eyes and leaned back a moment. Then her face looked
+transparent and pallid, there were dark rings under her eyes, the
+beautifully-brushed hair shone dark like black glass above her ears.
+She was obviously unwell. The young men looked at her, and muttered to
+one another.
+
+“I’m afraid your cold is rather bad,” said Alvina. “Will you let me
+take your temperature?”
+
+Madame started and looked frightened.
+
+“Oh, I don’t think you should trouble to do that,” she said.
+
+Max, the tall, highly-coloured Swiss, turned to her, saying:
+
+“Yes, you must have your temperature taken, and then we s’ll know,
+shan’t we. I had a hundred and five when we were in Redruth.”
+
+Alvina had taken the thermometer from her pocket. Ciccio meanwhile
+muttered something in French—evidently something rude—meant for Max.
+
+“What shall I do if I can’t work tomorrow!” moaned Madame, seeing
+Alvina hold up the thermometer towards the light. “Max, what shall we
+do?”
+
+“You will stay in bed, and we must do the White Prisoner scene,” said
+Max, rather staccato and official.
+
+Ciccio curled his lip and put his head aside. Alvina went across to
+Madame with the thermometer. Madame lifted her plump hand and fended
+off Alvina, while she made her last declaration:
+
+“Never—never have I missed my work, for a single day, for ten years.
+Never. If I am going to lie abandoned, I had better die at once.”
+
+“Lie abandoned!” said Max. “You know you won’t do no such thing. What
+are you talking about?”
+
+“Take the thermometer,” said Geoffrey roughly, but with feeling.
+
+“Tomorrow, see, you will be well. Quite certain!” said Louis. Madame
+mournfully shook her head, opened her mouth, and sat back with closed
+eyes and the stump of the thermometer comically protruding from a
+corner of her lips. Meanwhile Alvina took her plump white wrist and
+felt her pulse.
+
+“We can practise—” began Geoffrey.
+
+“Sh!” said Max, holding up his finger and looking anxiously at Alvina
+and Madame, who still leaned back with the stump of the thermometer
+jauntily perking up from her pursed mouth, while her face was rather
+ghastly.
+
+Max and Louis watched anxiously. Geoffrey sat blowing the smoke down
+his nose, while Ciccio callously lit another cigarette, striking a
+match on his boot-heel and puffing from under the tip of his rather
+long nose. Then he took the cigarette from his mouth, turned his head,
+slowly spat on the floor, and rubbed his foot on his spit. Max flapped
+his eyelids and looked all disdain, murmuring something about “ein
+schmutziges italienisches Volk,” whilst Louis, refusing either to see
+or to hear, framed the word “chien” on his lips.
+
+Then quick as lightning both turned their attention again to Madame.
+
+Her temperature was a hundred and two.
+
+“You’d better go to bed,” said Alvina. “Have you eaten anything?”
+
+“One little mouthful,” said Madame plaintively.
+
+Max sat looking pale and stricken, Louis had hurried forward to take
+Madame’s hand. He kissed it quickly, then turned aside his head because
+of the tears in his eyes. Geoffrey gulped beer in large throatfuls, and
+Ciccio, with his head bent, was watching from under his eyebrows.
+
+“I’ll run round for the doctor—” said Alvina.
+
+“Don’t! Don’t do that, my dear! Don’t you go and do that! I’m likely to
+a temperature—”
+
+“Liable to a temperature,” murmured Louis pathetically.
+
+“I’ll go to bed,” said Madame, obediently rising.
+
+“Wait a bit. I’ll see if there’s a fire in the bedroom,” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh, my dear, you are too good. Open the door for her, Ciccio—”
+
+Ciccio reached across at the door, but was too late. Max had hastened
+to usher Alvina out. Madame sank back in her chair.
+
+“Never for ten years,” she was wailing. “Quoi faire, ah, quoi faire!
+Que ferez-vous, mes pauvres, sans votre Kishwégin. Que vais-je faire,
+mourir dans un tel pays! La bonne demoiselle—la bonne demoiselle—elle a
+du coeur. Elle pourrait aussi être belle, s’il y avait un peu plus de
+chair. Max, liebster, schau ich sehr elend aus? Ach, oh jeh, oh jeh!”
+
+“Ach nein, Madame, ach nein. Nicht so furchtbar elend,” said Max.
+
+“Manca il cuore solamente al Ciccio,” moaned Madame. “Che natura
+povera, senza sentimento—niente di bello. Ahimé, che amico, che ragazzo
+duro, aspero—”
+
+“Trova?” said Ciccio, with a curl of the lip. He looked, as he dropped
+his long, beautiful lashes, as if he might weep for all that, if he
+were not bound to be misbehaving just now.
+
+So Madame moaned in four languages as she posed pallid in her
+arm-chair. Usually she spoke in French only, with her young men. But
+this was an extra occasion.
+
+“La pauvre Kishwégin!” murmured Madame. “Elle va finir au monde. Elle
+passe—la pauvre Kishwégin.”
+
+Kishwégin was Madame’s Red Indian name, the name under which she danced
+her Squaw’s fire-dance.
+
+Now that she knew she was ill, Madame seemed to become more ill. Her
+breath came in little pants. She had a pain in her side. A feverish
+flush seemed to mount her cheek. The young men were all extremely
+uncomfortable. Louis did not conceal his tears. Only Ciccio kept the
+thin smile on his lips, and added to Madame’s annoyance and pain.
+
+Alvina came down to take her to bed. The young men all rose, and kissed
+Madame’s hand as she went out: her poor jewelled hand, that was faintly
+perfumed with eau de Cologne. She spoke an appropriate good-night, to
+each of them.
+
+“Good-night, my faithful Max, I trust myself to you. Good-night, Louis,
+the tender heart. Good-night valiant Geoffrey. Ah Ciccio, do not add to
+the weight of my heart. Be good _braves_, all, be brothers in one
+accord. One little prayer for poor Kishwégin. Good-night!”
+
+After which valediction she slowly climbed the stairs, putting her hand
+on her knee at each step, with the effort.
+
+“No—no,” she said to Max, who would have followed to her assistance.
+“Do not come up. No—no!”
+
+Her bedroom was tidy and proper.
+
+“Tonight,” she moaned, “I shan’t be able to see that the boys’ rooms
+are well in order. They are not to be trusted, no. They need an
+overseeing eye: especially Ciccio; especially Ciccio!”
+
+She sank down by the fire and began to undo her dress.
+
+“You must let me help you,” said Alvina. “You know I have been a
+nurse.”
+
+“Ah, you are too kind, too kind, dear young lady. I am a lonely old
+woman. I am not used to attentions. Best leave me.”
+
+“Let me help you,” said Alvina.
+
+“Alas, ahimé! Who would have thought Kishwégin would need help. I
+danced last night with the boys in the theatre in Leek: and tonight I
+am put to bed in—what is the name of this place, dear?—It seems I don’t
+remember it.”
+
+“Woodhouse,” said Alvina.
+
+“Woodhouse! Woodhouse! Is there not something called Woodlouse? I
+believe. Ugh, horrible! Why is it horrible?”
+
+Alvina quickly undressed the plump, trim little woman. She seemed so
+soft. Alvina could not imagine how she could be a dancer on the stage,
+strenuous. But Madame’s softness could flash into wild energy, sudden
+convulsive power, like a cuttle-fish. Alvina brushed out the long black
+hair, and plaited it lightly. Then she got Madame into bed.
+
+“Ah,” sighed Madame, “the good bed! The good bed! But cold—it is so
+cold. Would you hang up my dress, dear, and fold my stockings?”
+
+Alvina quickly folded and put aside the dainty underclothing. Queer,
+dainty woman, was Madame, even to her wonderful threaded black-and-gold
+garters.
+
+“My poor boys—no Kishwégin tomorrow! You don’t think I need see a
+priest, dear? A priest!” said Madame, her teeth chattering.
+
+“Priest! Oh no! You’ll be better when we can get you warm. I think it’s
+only a chill. Mrs. Rollings is warming a blanket—”
+
+Alvina ran downstairs. Max opened the sitting-room door and stood
+watching at the sound of footsteps. His rather bony fists were clenched
+beneath his loose shirt-cuffs, his eyebrows tragically lifted.
+
+“Is she much ill?” he asked.
+
+“I don’t know. But I don’t think so. Do you mind heating the blanket
+while Mrs. Rollings makes thin gruel?”
+
+Max and Louis stood heating blankets. Louis’ trousers were cut rather
+tight at the waist, and gave him a female look. Max was straight and
+stiff. Mrs. Rollings asked Geoffrey to fill the coal-scuttles and carry
+one upstairs. Geoffrey obediently went out with a lantern to the
+coal-shed. Afterwards he was to carry up the horse-hair arm-chair.
+
+“I must go home for some things,” said Alvina to Ciccio. “Will you come
+and carry them for me?”
+
+He started up, and with one movement threw away his cigarette. He did
+not look at Alvina. His beautiful lashes seemed to screen his eyes. He
+was fairly tall, but loosely built for an Italian, with slightly
+sloping shoulders. Alvina noticed the brown, slender Mediterranean
+hand, as he put his fingers to his lips. It was a hand such as she did
+not know, prehensile and tender and dusky. With an odd graceful slouch
+he went into the passage and reached for his coat.
+
+He did not say a word, but held aloof as he walked with Alvina.
+
+“I’m sorry for Madame,” said Alvina, as she hurried rather breathless
+through the night. “She does think for you men.”
+
+But Ciccio vouchsafed no answer, and walked with his hands in the
+pockets of his water-proof, wincing from the weather.
+
+“I’m afraid she will never be able to dance tomorrow,” said Alvina.
+
+“You think she won’t be able?” he said.
+
+“I’m almost sure she won’t.”
+
+After which he said nothing, and Alvina also kept silence till they
+came to the black dark passage and encumbered yard at the back of the
+house.
+
+“I don’t think you can see at all,” she said. “It’s this way.” She
+groped for him in the dark, and met his groping hand.
+
+“This way,” she said.
+
+It was curious how light his fingers were in their clasp—almost like a
+child’s touch. So they came under the light from the window of the
+sitting-room.
+
+Alvina hurried indoors, and the young man followed.
+
+“I shall have to stay with Madame tonight,” she explained hurriedly.
+“She’s feverish, but she may throw it off if we can get her into a
+sweat.” And Alvina ran upstairs collecting things necessary. Ciccio
+stood back near the door, and answered all Miss Pinnegar’s entreaties
+to come to the fire with a shake of the head and a slight smile of the
+lips, bashful and stupid.
+
+“But do come and warm yourself before you go out again,” said Miss
+Pinnegar, looking at the man as he drooped his head in the distance. He
+still shook dissent, but opened his mouth at last.
+
+“It makes it colder after,” he said, showing his teeth in a slight,
+stupid smile.
+
+“Oh well, if you think so,” said Miss Pinnegar, nettled. She couldn’t
+make heads or tails of him, and didn’t try.
+
+When they got back, Madame was light-headed, and talking excitedly of
+her dance, her young men. The three young men were terrified. They had
+got the blankets scorching hot. Alvina smeared the plasters and applied
+them to Madame’s side, where the pain was. What a white-skinned, soft,
+plump child she seemed! Her pain meant a touch of pleurisy, for sure.
+The men hovered outside the door. Alvina wrapped the poor patient in
+the hot blankets, got a few spoonfuls of hot gruel and whiskey down her
+throat, fastened her down in bed, lowered the light and banished the
+men from the stairs. Then she sat down to watch. Madame chafed, moaned,
+murmured feverishly. Alvina soothed her, and put her hands in bed. And
+at last the poor dear became quiet. Her brow was faintly moist. She
+fell into a quiet sleep, perspiring freely. Alvina watched her still,
+soothed her when she suddenly started and began to break out of the
+bedclothes, quieted her, pressed her gently, firmly down, folded her
+tight and made her submit to the perspiration against which, in
+convulsive starts, she fought and strove, crying that she was
+suffocating, she was too hot, too hot.
+
+“Lie still, lie still,” said Alvina. “You must keep warm.”
+
+Poor Madame moaned. How she hated seething in the bath of her own
+perspiration. Her wilful nature rebelled strongly. She would have
+thrown aside her coverings and gasped into the cold air, if Alvina had
+not pressed her down with that soft, inevitable pressure.
+
+So the hours passed, till about one o’clock, when the perspiration
+became less profuse, and the patient was really better, really quieter.
+Then Alvina went downstairs for a moment. She saw the light still
+burning in the front room. Tapping, she entered. There sat Max by the
+fire, a picture of misery, with Louis opposite him, nodding asleep
+after his tears. On the sofa Geoffrey snored lightly, while Ciccio sat
+with his head on the table, his arms spread out, dead asleep. Again she
+noticed the tender, dusky Mediterranean hands, the slender wrists,
+slender for a man naturally loose and muscular.
+
+“Haven’t you gone to bed?” whispered Alvina. “Why?”
+
+Louis started awake. Max, the only stubborn watcher, shook his head
+lugubriously.
+
+“But she’s better,” whispered Alvina. “She’s perspired. She’s better.
+She’s sleeping naturally.”
+
+Max stared with round, sleep-whitened, owlish eyes, pessimistic and
+sceptical:
+
+“Yes,” persisted Alvina. “Come and look at her. But don’t wake her,
+whatever you do.”
+
+Max took off his slippers and rose to his tall height. Louis, like a
+scared chicken, followed. Each man held his slippers in his hand. They
+noiselessly entered and peeped stealthily over the heaped bedclothes.
+Madame was lying, looking a little flushed and very girlish, sleeping
+lightly, with a strand of black hair stuck to her cheek, and her lips
+lightly parted.
+
+Max watched her for some moments. Then suddenly he straightened
+himself, pushed back his brown hair that was brushed up in the German
+fashion, and crossed himself, dropping his knee as before an altar;
+crossed himself and dropped his knee once more; and then a third time
+crossed himself and inclined before the altar. Then he straightened
+himself again, and turned aside.
+
+Louis also crossed himself. His tears burst out. He bowed and took the
+edge of a blanket to his lips, kissing it reverently. Then he covered
+his face with his hand.
+
+Meanwhile Madame slept lightly and innocently on.
+
+Alvina turned to go. Max silently followed, leading Louis by the arm.
+When they got downstairs, Max and Louis threw themselves in each
+other’s arms, and kissed each other on either cheek, gravely, in
+Continental fashion.
+
+“She is better,” said Max gravely, in French.
+
+“Thanks to God,” replied Louis.
+
+Alvina witnessed all this with some amazement. The men did not heed
+her. Max went over and shook Geoffrey, Louis put his hand on Ciccio’s
+shoulder. The sleepers were difficult to wake. The wakers shook the
+sleeping, but in vain. At last Geoffrey began to stir. But in vain
+Louis lifted Ciccio’s shoulders from the table. The head and the hands
+dropped inert. The long black lashes lay motionless, the rather long,
+fine Greek nose drew the same light breaths, the mouth remained shut.
+Strange fine black hair, he had, close as fur, animal, and naked,
+frail-seeming, tawny hands. There was a silver ring on one hand.
+
+Alvina suddenly seized one of the inert hands that slid on the
+table-cloth as Louis shook the young man’s shoulders. Tight she pressed
+the hand. Ciccio opened his tawny-yellowish eyes, that seemed to have
+been put in with a dirty finger, as the saying goes, owing to the
+sootiness of the lashes and brows. He was quite drunk with his first
+sleep, and saw nothing.
+
+“Wake up,” said Alvina, laughing, pressing his hand again.
+
+He lifted his head once more, suddenly clasped her hand, his eyes came
+to consciousness, his hand relaxed, he recognized her, and he sat back
+in his chair, turning his face aside and lowering his lashes.
+
+“Get up, great beast,” Louis was saying softly in French, pushing him
+as ox-drivers sometimes push their oxen. Ciccio staggered to his feet.
+
+“She is better,” they told him. “We are going to bed.”
+
+They took their candles and trooped off upstairs, each one bowing to
+Alvina as he passed. Max solemnly, Louis gallant, the other two dumb
+and sleepy. They occupied the two attic chambers.
+
+Alvina carried up the loose bed from the sofa, and slept on the floor
+before the fire in Madame’s room.
+
+Madame slept well and long, rousing and stirring and settling off
+again. It was eight o’clock before she asked her first question. Alvina
+was already up.
+
+“Oh—alors—Then I am better, I am quite well. I can dance today.”
+
+“I don’t think today,” said Alvina. “But perhaps tomorrow.”
+
+“No, today,” said Madame. “I can dance today, because I am quite well.
+I am Kishwégin.”
+
+“You are better. But you must lie still today. Yes, really—you will
+find you are weak when you try to stand.”
+
+Madame watched Alvina’s thin face with sullen eyes.
+
+“You are an Englishwoman, severe and materialist,” she said.
+
+Alvina started and looked round at her with wide blue eyes.
+
+“Why?” she said. There was a wan, pathetic look about her, a sort of
+heroism which Madame detested, but which now she found touching.
+
+“Come!” said Madame, stretching out her plump jewelled hand. “Come, I
+am an ungrateful woman. Come, they are not good for you, the people, I
+see it. Come to me.”
+
+Alvina went slowly to Madame, and took the outstretched hand. Madame
+kissed her hand, then drew her down and kissed her on either cheek,
+gravely, as the young men had kissed each other.
+
+“You have been good to Kishwégin, and Kishwégin has a heart that
+remembers. There, Miss Houghton, I shall do what you tell me. Kishwégin
+obeys you.” And Madame patted Alvina’s hand and nodded her head sagely.
+
+“Shall I take your temperature?” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes, my dear, you shall. You shall bid me, and I shall obey.”
+
+So Madame lay back on her pillow, submissively pursing the thermometer
+between her lips and watching Alvina with black eyes.
+
+“It’s all right,” said Alvina, as she looked at the thermometer.
+“Normal.”
+
+“Normal!” re-echoed Madame’s rather guttural voice. “Good! Well, then
+when shall I dance?”
+
+Alvina turned and looked at her.
+
+“I think, truly,” said Alvina, “it shouldn’t be before Thursday or
+Friday.”
+
+“Thursday!” repeated Madame. “You say Thursday?” There was a note of
+strong rebellion in her voice.
+
+“You’ll be so weak. You’ve only just escaped pleurisy. I can only say
+what I truly think, can’t I?”
+
+“Ah, you Englishwomen,” said Madame, watching with black eyes. “I think
+you like to have your own way. In all things, to have your own way. And
+over all people. You are so good, to have your own way. Yes, you good
+Englishwomen. Thursday. Very well, it shall be Thursday. Till Thursday,
+then, Kishwégin does not exist.”
+
+And she subsided, already rather weak, upon her pillow again. When she
+had taken her tea and was washed and her room was tidied, she summoned
+the young men. Alvina had warned Max that she wanted Madame to be kept
+as quiet as possible this day.
+
+As soon as the first of the four appeared, in his shirt-sleeves and his
+slippers, in the doorway, Madame said:
+
+“Ah, there you are, my young men! Come in! Come in! It is not Kishwégin
+addresses you. Kishwégin does not exist till Thursday, as the English
+demoiselle makes it.” She held out her hand, faintly perfumed with eau
+de Cologne—the whole room smelled of eau de Cologne—and Max stooped his
+brittle spine and kissed it. She touched his cheek gently with her
+other hand.
+
+“My faithful Max, my support.”
+
+Louis came smiling with a bunch of violets and pinky anemones. He laid
+them down on the bed before her, and took her hand, bowing and kissing
+it reverently.
+
+“You are better, dear Madame?” he said, smiling long at her.
+
+“Better, yes, gentle Louis. And better for thy flowers, chivalric
+heart.” She put the violets and anemones to her face with both hands,
+and then gently laid them aside to extend her hand to Geoffrey.
+
+“The good Geoffrey will do his best, while there is no Kishwégin?” she
+said as he stooped to her salute.
+
+“Bien sûr, Madame.”
+
+“Ciccio, a button off thy shirt-cuff. Where is my needle?” She looked
+round the room as Ciccio kissed her hand.
+
+“Did you want anything?” said Alvina, who had not followed the French.
+
+“My needle, to sew on this button. It is there, in the silk bag.”
+
+“I will do it,” said Alvina.
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+While Alvina sewed on the button, Madame spoke to her young men,
+principally to Max. They were to obey Max, she said, for he was their
+eldest brother. This afternoon they would practise well the scene of
+the White Prisoner. Very carefully they must practise, and they must
+find some one who would play the young squaw—for in this scene she had
+practically nothing to do, the young squaw, but just sit and stand.
+Miss Houghton—but ah, Miss Houghton must play the piano, she could not
+take the part of the young squaw. Some other then.
+
+While the interview was going on, Mr. May arrived, full of concern.
+
+“Shan’t we have the procession!” he cried.
+
+“Ah, the procession!” cried Madame.
+
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe upon request would signalize its entry
+into any town by a procession. The young men were dressed as Indian
+_braves_, and headed by Kishwégin they rode on horseback through the
+main streets. Ciccio, who was the crack horseman, having served a very
+well-known horsey Marchese in an Italian cavalry regiment, did a bit of
+show riding.
+
+Mr. May was very keen on the procession. He had the horses in
+readiness. The morning was faintly sunny, after the sleet and bad
+weather. And now he arrived to find Madame in bed and the young men
+holding council with her.
+
+“How _very_ unfortunate!” cried Mr. May. “How _very_ unfortunate!”
+
+“Dreadful! Dreadful!” wailed Madame from the bed.
+
+“But can’t we do _anything_?”
+
+“Yes—you can do the White Prisoner scene—the young men can do that, if
+you find a dummy squaw. Ah, I think I must get up after all.”
+
+Alvina saw the look of fret and exhaustion in Madame’s face.
+
+“Won’t you all go downstairs now?” said Alvina. “Mr. Max knows what you
+must do.”
+
+And she shooed the five men out of the bedroom.
+
+“I _must_ get up. I won’t dance. I will be a dummy. But I must be
+there. It is too dre-eadful, too dre-eadful!” wailed Madame.
+
+“Don’t take any notice of them. They can manage by themselves. Men are
+such babies. Let them carry it through by themselves.”
+
+“Children—they are all children!” wailed Madame. “All children! And so,
+what will they do without their old _gouvernante_? My poor _braves_,
+what will they do without Kishwégin? It is too dreadful, too
+dre-eadful, yes. The poor Mr. May—so _disappointed_.”
+
+“Then let him _be_ disappointed,” cried Alvina, as she forcibly tucked
+up Madame and made her lie still.
+
+“You are hard! You are a hard Englishwoman. All alike. All alike!”
+Madame subsided fretfully and weakly. Alvina moved softly about. And in
+a few minutes Madame was sleeping again.
+
+Alvina went downstairs. Mr. May was listening to Max, who was telling
+in German all about the White Prisoner scene. Mr. May had spent his
+boyhood in a German school. He cocked his head on one side, and, laying
+his hand on Max’s arm, entertained him in odd German. The others were
+silent. Ciccio made no pretence of listening, but smoked and stared at
+his own feet. Louis and Geoffrey half understood, so Louis nodded with
+a look of deep comprehension, whilst Geoffrey uttered short, snappy
+“Ja!—Ja!—Doch!—Eben!” rather irrelevant.
+
+“I’ll be the squaw,” cried Mr. May in English, breaking off and turning
+round to the company. He perked up his head in an odd, parrot-like
+fashion. “_I’ll_ be the squaw! What’s her name? Kishwégin? I’ll be
+Kishwégin.” And he bridled and beamed self-consciously.
+
+The two tall Swiss looked down on him, faintly smiling. Ciccio, sitting
+with his arms on his knees on the sofa, screwed round his head and
+watched the phenomenon of Mr. May with inscrutable, expressionless
+attention.
+
+“Let us go,” said Mr. May, bubbling with new importance. “Let us go and
+rehearse _this morning_, and let us do the procession this afternoon,
+when the colliers are just coming home. There! What? Isn’t that exactly
+the idea? Well! Will you be ready at once, _now_?”
+
+He looked excitedly at the young men. They nodded with slow gravity, as
+if they were already _braves_. And they turned to put on their boots.
+Soon they were all trooping down to Lumley, Mr. May prancing like a
+little circus-pony beside Alvina, the four young men rolling ahead.
+
+“What do you think of it?” cried Mr. May. “We’ve saved the
+situation—what? Don’t you think so? Don’t you think we can congratulate
+ourselves.”
+
+They found Mr. Houghton fussing about in the theatre. He was on
+tenterhooks of agitation, knowing Madame was ill.
+
+Max gave a brilliant display of yodelling.
+
+“But I must _explain_ to them,” cried Mr. May. “I must _explain_ to
+them what yodel means.”
+
+And turning to the empty theatre, he began, stretching forth his hand.
+
+“In the high Alps of Switzerland, where eternal snows and glaciers
+reign over luscious meadows full of flowers, if you should chance to
+awaken, as I have done, in some lonely wooden farm amid the mountain
+pastures, you—er—you—let me see—if you—no—if you should chance to
+_spend the night_ in some lonely wooden farm, amid the upland pastures,
+dawn will awake you with a wild, inhuman song, you will open your eyes
+to the first gleam of icy, eternal sunbeams, your ears will be ringing
+with weird singing, that has no words and no meaning, but sounds as if
+some wild and icy god were warbling to himself as he wandered among the
+peaks of dawn. You look forth across the flowers to the blue snow, and
+you see, far off, a small figure of a man moving among the grass. It is
+a peasant singing his mountain song, warbling like some creature that
+lifted up its voice on the edge of the eternal snows, before the human
+race began—”
+
+During this oration James Houghton sat with his chin in his hand,
+devoured with bitter jealousy, measuring Mr. May’s eloquence. And then
+he started, as Max, tall and handsome now in Tyrolese costume, white
+shirt and green, square braces, short trousers of chamois leather
+stitched with green and red, firm-planted naked knees, naked ankles and
+heavy shoes, warbled his native Yodel strains, a piercing and
+disturbing sound. He was flushed, erect, keen tempered and fierce and
+mountainous. There was a fierce, icy passion in the man. Alvina began
+to understand Madame’s subjection to him.
+
+Louis and Geoffrey did a farce dialogue, two foreigners at the same
+moment spying a purse in the street, struggling with each other and
+protesting they wanted to take it to the policeman, Ciccio, who stood
+solid and ridiculous. Mr. Houghton nodded slowly and gravely, as if to
+give his measured approval.
+
+Then all retired to dress for the great scene. Alvina practised the
+music Madame carried with her. If Madame found a good pianist, she
+welcomed the accompaniment: if not, she dispensed with it.
+
+“Am I all right?” said a smirking voice.
+
+And there was Kishwégin, dusky, coy, with long black hair and a short
+chamois dress, gaiters and moccasins and bare arms: _so_ coy, and _so_
+smirking. Alvina burst out laughing.
+
+“But shan’t I do?” protested Mr. May, hurt.
+
+“Yes, you’re wonderful,” said Alvina, choking. “But I _must_ laugh.”
+
+“But why? Tell me why?” asked Mr. May anxiously. “Is it my _appearance_
+you laugh at, or is it only _me_? If it’s me I don’t mind. But if it’s
+my appearance, tell me so.”
+
+Here an appalling figure of Ciccio in war-paint strolled on to the
+stage. He was naked to the waist, wore scalp-fringed trousers, was
+dusky-red-skinned, had long black hair and eagle’s feathers—only two
+feathers—and a face wonderfully and terribly painted with white, red,
+yellow, and black lines. He was evidently pleased with himself. His
+curious soft slouch, and curious way of lifting his lip from his white
+teeth, in a sort of smile, was very convincing.
+
+“You haven’t got the girdle,” he said, touching Mr. May’s plump
+waist—“and some flowers in your hair.”
+
+Mr. May here gave a sharp cry and a jump. A bear on its hind legs,
+slow, shambling, rolling its loose shoulders, was stretching a paw
+towards him. The bear dropped heavily on four paws again, and a laugh
+came from its muzzle.
+
+“You won’t have to dance,” said Geoffrey out of the bear.
+
+“Come and put in the flowers,” said Mr. May anxiously, to Alvina.
+
+In the dressing-room, the dividing-curtain was drawn. Max, in deerskin
+trousers but with unpainted torso looked very white and strange as he
+put the last touches of war-paint on Louis’ face. He glanced round at
+Alvina, then went on with his work. There was a sort of nobility about
+his erect white form and stiffly-carried head, the semi-luminous brown
+hair. He seemed curiously superior.
+
+Alvina adjusted the maidenly Mr. May. Louis arose, a _brave_ like
+Ciccio, in war-paint even more hideous. Max slipped on a tattered
+hunting-shirt and cartridge belt. His face was a little darkened. He
+was the white prisoner.
+
+They arranged the scenery, while Alvina watched. It was soon done. A
+back cloth of tree-trunks and dark forest: a wigwam, a fire, and a
+cradle hanging from a pole. As they worked, Alvina tried in vain to
+dissociate the two _braves_ from their war-paint. The lines were drawn
+so cleverly that the grimace of ferocity was fixed and horrible, so
+that even in the quiet work of scene-shifting Louis’ stiffish, female
+grace seemed full of latent cruelty, whilst Ciccio’s more muscular
+slouch made her feel she would not trust him for one single moment.
+Awful things men were, savage, cruel, underneath their civilization.
+
+The scene had its beauty. It began with Kishwégin alone at the door of
+the wigwam, cooking, listening, giving an occasional push to the
+hanging cradle, and, if only Madame were taking the part, crooning an
+Indian cradle-song. Enter the _brave_ Louis with his white prisoner,
+Max, who has his hands bound to his side. Kishwégin gravely salutes her
+husband—the bound prisoner is seated by the fire—Kishwégin serves food,
+and asks permission to feed the prisoner. The _brave_ Louis, hearing a
+sound, starts up with his bow and arrow. There is a dumb scene of
+sympathy between Kishwégin and the prisoner—the prisoner wants his
+bonds cut. Re-enter the _brave_ Louis—he is angry with Kishwégin—enter
+the _brave_ Ciccio hauling a bear, apparently dead. Kishwégin examines
+the bear, Ciccio examines the prisoner. Ciccio tortures the prisoner,
+makes him stand, makes him caper unwillingly. Kishwégin swings the
+cradle. The prisoner is tripped up—falls, and cannot rise. He lies near
+the fallen bear. Kishwégin carries food to Ciccio. The two _braves_
+converse in dumb show, Kishwégin swings the cradle and croons. The men
+rise once more and bend over the prisoner. As they do so, there is a
+muffled roar. The bear is sitting up. Louis swings round, and at the
+same moment the bear strikes him down. Ciccio springs forward and stabs
+the bear, then closes with it. Kishwégin runs and cuts the prisoner’s
+bonds. He rises, and stands trying to lift his numbed and powerless
+arms, while the bear slowly crushes Ciccio, and Kishwégin kneels over
+her husband. The bear drops Ciccio lifeless, and turns to Kishwégin. At
+that moment Max manages to kill the bear—he takes Kishwégin by the hand
+and kneels with her beside the dead Louis.
+
+It was wonderful how well the men played their different parts. But Mr.
+May was a little too frisky as Kishwégin. However, it would do.
+
+Ciccio got dressed as soon as possible, to go and look at the horses
+hired for the afternoon procession. Alvina accompanied him, Mr. May and
+the others were busy.
+
+“You know I think it’s quite wonderful, your scene,” she said to
+Ciccio.
+
+He turned and looked down at her. His yellow, dusky-set eyes rested on
+her good-naturedly, without seeing her, his lip curled in a
+self-conscious, contemptuous sort of smile.
+
+“Not without Madame,” he said, with the slow, half-sneering, stupid
+smile. “Without Madame—” he lifted his shoulders and spread his hands
+and tilted his brows—“fool’s play, you know.”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “I think Mr. May is good, considering. What does
+Madame _do_?” she asked a little jealously.
+
+“Do?” He looked down at her with the same long, half-sardonic look of
+his yellow eyes, like a cat looking casually at a bird which flutters
+past. And again he made his shrugging motion. “She does it all, really.
+The others—they are nothing—what they are Madame has made them. And now
+they think they’ve done it all, you see. You see, that’s it.”
+
+“But how has Madame made it all? Thought it out, you mean?”
+
+“Thought it out, yes. And then _done_ it. You should see her dance—ah!
+You should see her dance round the bear, when I bring him in! Ah, a
+beautiful thing, you know. She claps her hand—” And Ciccio stood still
+in the street, with his hat cocked a little on one side, rather
+common-looking, and he smiled along his fine nose at Alvina, and he
+clapped his hands lightly, and he tilted his eyebrows and his eyelids
+as if facially he were imitating a dance, and all the time his lips
+smiled stupidly. As he gave a little assertive shake of his head,
+finishing, there came a great yell of laughter from the opposite
+pavement, where a gang of pottery lasses, in aprons all spattered with
+grey clay, and hair and boots and skin spattered with pallid spots, had
+stood to watch. The girls opposite shrieked again, for all the world
+like a gang of grey baboons. Ciccio turned round and looked at them
+with a sneer along his nose. They yelled the louder. And he was
+horribly uncomfortable, walking there beside Alvina with his rather
+small and effeminately-shod feet.
+
+“How stupid they are,” said Alvina. “I’ve got used to them.”
+
+“They should be—” he lifted his hand with a sharp, vicious
+movement—“_smacked_,” he concluded, lowering his hand again.
+
+“Who is going to do it?” said Alvina.
+
+He gave a Neapolitan grimace, and twiddled the fingers of one hand
+outspread in the air, as if to say: “There you are! You’ve got to thank
+the fools who’ve failed to do it.”
+
+“Why do you all love Madame so much?” Alvina asked.
+
+“How, love?” he said, making a little grimace. “We like her—we love
+her—as if she were a mother. You say _love_—” He raised his shoulders
+slightly, with a shrug. And all the time he looked down at Alvina from
+under his dusky eyelashes, as if watching her sideways, and his mouth
+had the peculiar, stupid, self-conscious, half-jeering smile. Alvina
+was a little bit annoyed. But she felt that a great instinctive
+good-naturedness came out of him, he was self-conscious and
+constrained, knowing she did not follow his language of gesture. For
+him, it was not yet quite natural to express himself in speech. Gesture
+and grimace were instantaneous, and spoke worlds of things, if you
+would but accept them.
+
+But certainly he was stupid, in her sense of the word. She could hear
+Mr. May’s verdict of him: “Like a child, you know, just as charming and
+just as tiresome and just as stupid.”
+
+“Where is your home?” she asked him.
+
+“In Italy.” She felt a fool.
+
+“Which part?” she insisted.
+
+“Naples,” he said, looking down at her sideways, searchingly.
+
+“It must be lovely,” she said.
+
+“Ha—!” He threw his head on one side and spread out his hands, as if to
+say—“What do you want, if you don’t find Naples lovely.”
+
+“I should like to see it. But I shouldn’t like to die,” she said.
+
+“What?”
+
+“They say ‘See Naples and die,’” she laughed.
+
+He opened his mouth, and understood. Then he smiled at her directly.
+
+“You know what that means?” he said cutely. “It means see Naples and
+die afterwards. Don’t die _before_ you’ve seen it.” He smiled with a
+knowing smile.
+
+“I see! I see!” she cried. “I never thought of that.”
+
+He was pleased with her surprise and amusement.
+
+“Ah Naples!” he said. “She is lovely—” He spread his hand across the
+air in front of him—“The sea—and Posilippo—and Sorrento—and Capri—Ah-h!
+You’ve never been out of England?”
+
+“No,” she said. “I should love to go.”
+
+He looked down into her eyes. It was his instinct to say at once he
+would take her.
+
+“You’ve seen nothing—nothing,” he said to her.
+
+“But if Naples is so lovely, how could you leave it?” she asked.
+
+“What?”
+
+She repeated her question. For answer, he looked at her, held out his
+hand, and rubbing the ball of his thumb across the tips of his fingers,
+said, with a fine, handsome smile:
+
+“Pennies! Money! You can’t earn money in Naples. Ah, Naples is
+beautiful, but she is poor. You live in the sun, and you earn fourteen,
+fifteen pence a day—”
+
+“Not enough,” she said.
+
+He put his head on one side and tilted his brows, as if to say “What
+are you to do?” And the smile on his mouth was sad, fine, and charming.
+There was an indefinable air of sadness or wistfulness about him,
+something so robust and fragile at the same time, that she was drawn in
+a strange way.
+
+“But you’ll go back?” she said.
+
+“Where?”
+
+“To Italy. To Naples.”
+
+“Yes, I shall go back to Italy,” he said, as if unwilling to commit
+himself. “But perhaps I shan’t go back to Naples.”
+
+“Never?”
+
+“Ah, never! I don’t say never. I shall go to Naples, to see my mother’s
+sister. But I shan’t go to live—”
+
+“Have you a mother and father?”
+
+“I? No! I have a brother and two sisters—in America. Parents, none.
+They are dead.”
+
+“And you wander about the world—” she said.
+
+He looked at her, and made a slight, sad gesture, indifferent also.
+
+“But you have Madame for a mother,” she said.
+
+He made another gesture this time: pressed down the corners of his
+mouth as if he didn’t like it. Then he turned with the slow, fine
+smile.
+
+“Does a man want two mothers? Eh?” he said, as if he posed a conundrum.
+
+“I shouldn’t think so,” laughed Alvina.
+
+He glanced at her to see what she meant, what she understood.
+
+“My mother is dead, see!” he said. “Frenchwomen—Frenchwomen—they have
+their babies till they are a hundred—”
+
+“What do you mean?” said Alvina, laughing.
+
+“A Frenchman is a little man when he’s seven years old—and if his
+mother comes, he is a little baby boy when he’s seventy. Do you know
+that?”
+
+“I _didn’t_ know it,” said Alvina.
+
+“But now—you do,” he said, lurching round a corner with her.
+
+They had come to the stables. Three of the horses were there, including
+the thoroughbred Ciccio was going to ride. He stood and examined the
+beasts critically. Then he spoke to them with strange sounds, patted
+them, stroked them down, felt them, slid his hand down them, over them,
+under them, and felt their legs.
+
+Then, he looked up from stooping there under the horses, with a long,
+slow look of his yellow eyes, at Alvina. She felt unconsciously
+flattered. His long, yellow look lingered, holding her eyes. She
+wondered what he was thinking. Yet he never spoke. He turned again to
+the horses. They seemed to understand him, to prick up alert.
+
+“This is mine,” he said, with his hand on the neck of the old
+thoroughbred. It was a bay with a white blaze.
+
+“I think he’s nice,” she said. “He seems so sensitive.”
+
+“In England,” he answered suddenly, “horses live a long time, because
+they _don’t_ live—never alive—see? In England railway-engines are
+alive, and horses go on wheels.” He smiled into her eyes as if she
+understood. She was a trifle nervous as he smiled at her from out of
+the stable, so yellow-eyed and half-mysterious, derisive. Her impulse
+was to turn and go away from the stable. But a deeper impulse made her
+smile into his face, as she said to him:
+
+“They like you to touch them.”
+
+“Who?” His eyes kept hers. Curious how _dark_ they seemed, with only a
+yellow ring of pupil. He was looking right into her, beyond her usual
+self, impersonal.
+
+“The horses,” she said. She was afraid of his long, cat-like look. Yet
+she felt convinced of his ultimate good-nature. He seemed to her to be
+the only passionately good-natured man she had ever seen. She watched
+him vaguely, with strange vague trust, implicit belief in him. In
+him—in what?
+
+That afternoon the colliers trooping home in the winter afternoon were
+rejoiced with a spectacle: Kishwégin, in her deerskin, fringed gaiters
+and fringed frock of deerskin, her long hair down her back, and with
+marvellous cloths and trappings on her steed, riding astride on a tall
+white horse, followed by Max in chieftain’s robes and chieftain’s long
+head-dress of dyed feathers, then by the others in war-paint and
+feathers and brilliant Navajo blankets. They carried bows and spears.
+Ciccio was without his blanket, naked to the waist, in war-paint, and
+brandishing a long spear. He dashed up from the rear, saluted the
+chieftain with his arm and his spear on high as he swept past, suddenly
+drew up his rearing steed, and trotted slowly back again, making his
+horse perform its paces. He was extraordinarily velvety and alive on
+horseback.
+
+Crowds of excited, shouting children ran chattering along the
+pavements. The colliers, as they tramped grey and heavy, in an
+intermittent stream uphill from the low grey west, stood on the
+pavement in wonder as the cavalcade approached and passed, jingling the
+silver bells of its trappings, vibrating the wonderful colours of the
+barred blankets and saddle cloths, the scarlet wool of the
+accoutrements, the bright tips of feathers. Women shrieked as Ciccio,
+in his war-paint, wheeled near the pavement. Children screamed and ran.
+The colliers shouted. Ciccio smiled in his terrifying war-paint,
+brandished his spear and trotted softly, like a flower on its stem,
+round to the procession.
+
+Miss Pinnegar and Alvina and James Houghton had come round into
+Knarborough Road to watch. It was a great moment. Looking along the
+road they saw all the shopkeepers at their doors, the pavements eager.
+And then, in the distance, the white horse jingling its trappings of
+scarlet hair and bells, with the dusky Kishwégin sitting on the
+saddle-blanket of brilliant, lurid stripes, sitting impassive and all
+dusky above that intermittent flashing of colour: then the chieftain,
+dark-faced, erect, easy, swathed in a white blanket, with scarlet and
+black stripes, and all his strange crest of white, tip-dyed feathers
+swaying down his back: as he came nearer one saw the wolfskin and the
+brilliant moccasins against the black sides of his horse; Louis and
+Goeffrey followed, lurid, horrid in the face, wearing blankets with
+stroke after stroke of blazing colour upon their duskiness, and sitting
+stern, holding their spears: lastly, Ciccio, on his bay horse with a
+green seat, flickering hither and thither in the rear, his feathers
+swaying, his horse sweating, his face ghastlily smiling in its
+war-paint. So they advanced down the grey pallor of Knarborough Road,
+in the late wintry afternoon. Somewhere the sun was setting, and far
+overhead was a flush of orange.
+
+“Well I never!” murmured Miss Pinnegar. “Well I never!”
+
+The strange savageness of the striped Navajo blankets seemed to her
+unsettling, advancing down Knarborough Road: she examined Kishwégin
+curiously.
+
+“Can you _believe_ that that’s Mr. May—he’s exactly like a girl. Well,
+well—it makes you wonder what is and what isn’t. But _aren’t_ they
+good? What? Most striking. Exactly like Indians. You can’t believe your
+eyes. My word what a terrifying race they—” Here she uttered a scream
+and ran back clutching the wall as Ciccio swept past, brushing her with
+his horse’s tail, and actually swinging his spear so as to touch Alvina
+and James Houghton lightly with the butt of it. James too started with
+a cry, the mob at the corner screamed. But Alvina caught the slow,
+mischievous smile as the painted horror showed his teeth in passing;
+she was able to flash back an excited laugh. She felt his yellow-tawny
+eyes linger on her, in that one second, as if negligently.
+
+“I call that too much!” Miss Pinnegar was crying, thoroughly upset.
+“Now that was unnecessary! Why it was enough to scare one to death.
+Besides, it’s dangerous. It ought to be put a stop to. I don’t believe
+in letting these show-people have liberties.”
+
+The cavalcade was slowly passing, with its uneasy horses and its flare
+of striped colour and its silent riders. Ciccio was trotting softly
+back, on his green saddle-cloth, suave as velvet, his dusky, naked
+torso beautiful.
+
+“Eh, you’d think he’d get his death,” the women in the crowd were
+saying.
+
+“A proper savage one, that. Makes your blood run cold—”
+
+“Ay, an’ a man for all that, take’s painted face for what’s worth. A
+tidy man, _I_ say.”
+
+He did not look at Alvina. The faint, mischievous smile uncovered his
+teeth. He fell in suddenly behind Geoffrey, with a jerk of his steed,
+calling out to Geoffrey in Italian.
+
+It was becoming cold. The cavalcade fell into a trot, Mr. May shaking
+rather badly. Ciccio halted, rested his lance against a lamp-post,
+switched his green blanket from beneath him, flung it round him as he
+sat, and darted off. They had all disappeared over the brow of Lumley
+Hill, descending. He was gone too. In the wintry twilight the crowd
+began, lingeringly, to turn away. And in some strange way, it
+manifested its disapproval of the spectacle: as grown-up men and women,
+they were a little bit insulted by such a show. It was an anachronism.
+They wanted a direct appeal to the mind. Miss Pinnegar expressed it.
+
+“Well,” she said, when she was safely back in Manchester House, with
+the gas lighted, and as she was pouring the boiling water into the
+tea-pot, “You may say what you like. It’s interesting in a way, just to
+show what savage Red-Indians were like. But it’s childish. It’s only
+childishness. I can’t understand, myself, how people can go on liking
+shows. Nothing happens. It’s not like the cinema, where you see it all
+and take it all in at once; you _know_ everything at a glance. You
+don’t know anything by looking at these people. You know they’re only
+men dressed up, for money. I can’t see why you should encourage it. I
+don’t hold with idle show-people, parading round, I don’t, myself. I
+like to go to the cinema once a week. It’s instruction, you take it all
+in at a glance, all you need to know, and it lasts you for a week. You
+can get to know everything about people’s actual lives from the cinema.
+I don’t see why you want people dressing up and showing off.”
+
+They sat down to their tea and toast and marmalade, during this
+harangue. Miss Pinnegar was always like a douche of cold water to
+Alvina, bringing her back to consciousness after a delicious
+excitement. In a minute Madame and Ciccio and all seemed to become
+unreal—the actual unrealities: while the ragged dithering pictures of
+the film were actual, real as the day. And Alvina was always put out
+when this happened. She really hated Miss Pinnegar. Yet she had nothing
+to answer. They _were_ unreal, Madame and Ciccio and the rest. Ciccio
+was just a fantasy blown in on the wind, to blow away again. The real,
+permanent thing was Woodhouse, the _semper idem_ Knarborough Road, and
+the unchangeable grubby gloom of Manchester House, with the stuffy,
+padding Miss Pinnegar, and her father, whose fingers, whose very soul
+seemed dirty with pennies. These were the solid, permanent fact. These
+were life itself. And Ciccio, splashing up on his bay horse and green
+cloth, he was a mountebank and an extraneous nonentity, a coloured old
+rag blown down the Knarborough Road into Limbo. Into Limbo. Whilst Miss
+Pinnegar and her father sat frowsily on for ever, eating their toast
+and cutting off the crust, and sipping their third cup of tea. They
+would never blow away—never, never. Woodhouse was there to eternity.
+And the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe was blowing like a rag of old paper
+into Limbo. Nothingness! Poor Madame! Poor gallant histrionic Madame!
+The frowsy Miss Pinnegar could crumple her up and throw her down the
+utilitarian drain, and have done with her. Whilst Miss Pinnegar lived
+on for ever.
+
+This put Alvina into a sharp temper.
+
+“Miss Pinnegar,” she said. “I do think you go on in the most
+unattractive way sometimes. You’re a regular spoil-sport.”
+
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar tartly. “I don’t approve of your way of
+sport, I’m afraid.”
+
+“You can’t disapprove of it as much as I hate your spoil-sport
+existence,” said Alvina in a flare.
+
+“Alvina, are you mad!” said her father.
+
+“Wonder I’m not,” said Alvina, “considering what my life is.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+CICCIO
+
+
+Madame did not pick up her spirits, after her cold. For two days she
+lay in bed, attended by Mrs. Rollings and Alvina and the young men. But
+she was most careful never to give any room for scandal. The young men
+might not approach her save in the presence of some third party. And
+then it was strictly a visit of ceremony or business.
+
+“Oh, your Woodhouse, how glad I shall be when I have left it,” she said
+to Alvina. “I feel it is unlucky for me.”
+
+“Do you?” said Alvina. “But if you’d had this bad cold in some places,
+you might have been much worse, don’t you think.”
+
+“Oh my dear!” cried Madame. “Do you think I could confuse you in my
+dislike of this Woodhouse? Oh no! You are not Woodhouse. On the
+contrary, I think it is unkind for you also, this place. You
+look—also—what shall I say—thin, not very happy.”
+
+It was a note of interrogation.
+
+“I’m sure I dislike Woodhouse much more than you can,” replied Alvina.
+
+“I am sure. Yes! I am sure. I see it. Why don’t you go away? Why don’t
+you marry?”
+
+“Nobody wants to marry me,” said Alvina.
+
+Madame looked at her searchingly, with shrewd black eyes under her
+arched eyebrows.
+
+“How!” she exclaimed. “How don’t they? You are not bad looking, only a
+little too thin—too haggard—”
+
+She watched Alvina. Alvina laughed uncomfortably.
+
+“Is there _nobody_?” persisted Madame.
+
+“Not now,” said Alvina. “Absolutely nobody.” She looked with a confused
+laugh into Madame’s strict black eyes. “You see I didn’t care for the
+Woodhouse young men, either. I _couldn’t_.”
+
+Madame nodded slowly up and down. A secret satisfaction came over her
+pallid, waxy countenance, in which her black eyes were like twin swift
+extraneous creatures: oddly like two bright little dark animals in the
+snow.
+
+“Sure!” she said, sapient. “Sure! How could you? But there are other
+men besides these here—” She waved her hand to the window.
+
+“I don’t meet them, do I?” said Alvina.
+
+“No, not often. But sometimes! sometimes!”
+
+There was a silence between the two women, very pregnant.
+
+“Englishwomen,” said Madame, “are so practical. Why are they?”
+
+“I suppose they can’t help it,” said Alvina. “But they’re not half so
+practical and clever as _you_, Madame.”
+
+“Oh la—la! I am practical differently. I am practical impractically—”
+she stumbled over the words. “But your Sue now, in Jude the Obscure—is
+it not an interesting book? And is she not always too practically
+practical. If she had been impractically practical she could have been
+quite happy. Do you know what I mean?—no. But she is ridiculous. Sue:
+so Anna Karénine. Ridiculous both. Don’t you think?”
+
+“Why?” said Alvina.
+
+“Why did they both make everybody unhappy, when they had the man they
+wanted, and enough money? I think they are both so silly. If they had
+been beaten, they would have lost all their practical ideas and
+troubles, merely forgot them, and been happy enough. I am a woman who
+says it. Such ideas they have are not tragical. No, not at all. They
+are nonsense, you see, nonsense. That is all. Nonsense. Sue and Anna,
+they are—non-sensical. That is all. No tragedy whatsoever. Nonsense. I
+am a woman. I know men also. And I know nonsense when I see it.
+Englishwomen are all nonsense: the worst women in the world for
+nonsense.”
+
+“Well, I am English,” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes, my dear, you are English. But you are not necessarily so
+non-sensical. Why are you at all?”
+
+“Nonsensical?” laughed Alvina. “But I don’t know what you call my
+nonsense.”
+
+“Ah,” said Madame wearily. “They never understand. But I like you, my
+dear. I am an old woman—”
+
+“Younger than I,” said Alvina.
+
+“Younger than you, because I am practical from the heart, and not only
+from the head. You are not practical from the heart. And yet you have a
+heart.”
+
+“But all Englishwomen have good hearts,” protested Alvina.
+
+“No! No!” objected Madame. “They are all ve-ry kind, and ve-ry
+practical with their kindness. But they have no heart in all their
+kindness. It is all head, all head: the kindness of the head.”
+
+“I can’t agree with you,” said Alvina.
+
+“No. No. I don’t expect it. But I don’t mind. You are very kind to me,
+and I thank you. But it is from the head, you see. And so I thank you
+from the head. From the heart—no.”
+
+Madame plucked her white fingers together and laid them on her breast
+with a gesture of repudiation. Her black eyes stared spitefully.
+
+“But Madame,” said Alvina, nettled, “I should never be half such a good
+business woman as you. Isn’t that from the head?”
+
+“Ha! of course! Of course you wouldn’t be a good business woman.
+Because you are kind from the head. I—” she tapped her forehead and
+shook her head—“I am not kind from the head. From the head I am
+business-woman, good business-woman. Of course I am a good
+business-woman—of course! But—” here she changed her expression,
+widened her eyes, and laid her hand on her breast—“when the heart
+speaks—then I listen with the heart. I do not listen with the head. The
+heart hears the heart. The head—that is another thing. But you have
+blue eyes, you cannot understand. Only dark eyes—” She paused and
+mused.
+
+“And what about yellow eyes?” asked Alvina, laughing.
+
+Madame darted a look at her, her lips curling with a very faint, fine
+smile of derision. Yet for the first time her black eyes dilated and
+became warm.
+
+“Yellow eyes like Ciccio’s?” she said, with her great watchful eyes and
+her smiling, subtle mouth. “They are the darkest of all.” And she shook
+her head roguishly.
+
+“Are they!” said Alvina confusedly, feeling a blush burning up her
+throat into her face.
+
+“Ha—ha!” laughed Madame. “Ha-ha! I am an old woman, you see. My heart
+is old enough to be kind, and my head is old enough to be clever. My
+heart is kind to few people—very few—especially in this England. My
+young men know that. But perhaps to you it is kind.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Alvina.
+
+“There! From the head _Thank you_. It is not well done, you see. You
+see!”
+
+But Alvina ran away in confusion. She felt Madame was having her on a
+string.
+
+Mr. May enjoyed himself hugely playing Kishwégin. When Madame came
+downstairs Louis, who was a good satirical mimic, imitated him. Alvina
+happened to come into their sitting-room in the midst of their bursts
+of laughter. They all stopped and looked at her cautiously.
+
+“Continuez! Continuez!” said Madame to Louis. And to Alvina: “Sit down,
+my dear, and see what a good actor we have in our Louis.”
+
+Louis glanced round, laid his head a little on one side and drew in his
+chin, with Mr. May’s smirk exactly, and wagging his tail slightly, he
+commenced to play the false Kishwégin. He sidled and bridled and
+ejaculated with raised hands, and in the dumb show the tall Frenchman
+made such a ludicrous caricature of Mr. Houghton’s manager that Madame
+wept again with laughter, whilst Max leaned back against the wall and
+giggled continuously like some pot involuntarily boiling. Geoffrey
+spread his shut fists across the table and shouted with laughter,
+Ciccio threw back his head and showed all his teeth in a loud laugh of
+delighted derision. Alvina laughed also. But she flushed. There was a
+certain biting, annihilating quality in Louis’ derision of the
+absentee. And the others enjoyed it so much. At moments Alvina caught
+her lip between her teeth, it was so screamingly funny, and so
+annihilating. She laughed in spite of herself. In spite of herself she
+was shaken into a convulsion of laughter. Louis was masterful—he
+mastered her psyche. She laughed till her head lay helpless on the
+chair, she could not move. Helpless, inert she lay, in her orgasm of
+laughter. The end of Mr. May. Yet she was hurt.
+
+And then Madame wiped her own shrewd black eyes, and nodded slow
+approval. Suddenly Louis started and held up a warning finger. They all
+at once covered their smiles and pulled themselves together. Only
+Alvina lay silently laughing.
+
+“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Rollings!” they heard Mr. May’s voice. “Your
+company is lively. Is Miss Houghton here? May I go through?”
+
+They heard his quick little step and his quick little tap.
+
+“Come in,” called Madame.
+
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras all sat with straight faces. Only poor Alvina
+lay back in her chair in a new weak convulsion. Mr. May glanced quickly
+round, and advanced to Madame.
+
+“Oh, good-morning, Madame, so glad to see you downstairs,” he said,
+taking her hand and bowing ceremoniously. “Excuse my intruding on your
+mirth!” He looked archly round. Alvina was still incompetent. She lay
+leaning sideways in her chair, and could not even speak to him.
+
+“It was evidently a good joke,” he said. “May I hear it too?”
+
+“Oh,” said Madame, drawling. “It was no joke. It was only Louis making
+a fool of himself, doing a turn.”
+
+“Must have been a good one,” said Mr. May. “Can’t we put it on?”
+
+“No,” drawled Madame, “it was nothing—just a non-sensical mood of the
+moment. Won’t you sit down? You would like a little whiskey?—yes?”
+
+Max poured out whiskey and water for Mr. May.
+
+Alvina sat with her face averted, quiet, but unable to speak to Mr.
+May. Max and Louis had become polite. Geoffrey stared with his big,
+dark-blue eyes stolidly at the newcomer. Ciccio leaned with his arms on
+his knees, looking sideways under his long lashes at the inert Alvina.
+
+“Well,” said Madame, “and are you satisfied with your houses?”
+
+“Oh yes,” said Mr. May. “Quite! The two nights have been excellent.
+Excellent!”
+
+“Ah—I am glad. And Miss Houghton tells me I should not dance tomorrow,
+it is too soon.”
+
+“Miss Houghton _knows_,” said Mr. May archly.
+
+“Of course!” said Madame. “I must do as she tells me.”
+
+“Why yes, since it is for your good, and not hers.”
+
+“Of course! Of course! It is very kind of her.”
+
+“Miss Houghton is _most_ kind—to _every one_,” said Mr. May.
+
+“I am sure,” said Madame. “And I am very glad you have been such a good
+Kishwégin. That is very nice also.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Mr. May. “I begin to wonder if I have mistaken my
+vocation. I should have been _on_ the boards, instead of behind them.”
+
+“No doubt,” said Madame. “But it is a little late—”
+
+The eyes of the foreigners, watching him, flattered Mr. May.
+
+“I’m afraid it is,” he said. “Yes. Popular taste is a mysterious thing.
+How do you feel, now? Do you feel they appreciate your work as much as
+they did?”
+
+Madame watched him with her black eyes.
+
+“No,” she replied. “They don’t. The pictures are driving us away.
+Perhaps we shall last for ten years more. And after that, we are
+finished.”
+
+“You think so,” said Mr. May, looking serious.
+
+“I am sure,” she said, nodding sagely.
+
+“But why is it?” said Mr. May, angry and petulant.
+
+“Why is it? I don’t know. I don’t know. The pictures are cheap, and
+they are easy, and they cost the audience nothing, no feeling of the
+heart, no appreciation of the spirit, cost them nothing of these. And
+so they like them, and they don’t like us, because they must _feel_ the
+things we do, from the heart, and appreciate them from the spirit.
+There!”
+
+“And they don’t want to appreciate and to feel?” said Mr. May.
+
+“No. They don’t want. They want it all through the eye, and
+finished—so! Just curiosity, impertinent curiosity. That’s all. In all
+countries, the same. And so—in ten years’ time—no more Kishwégin at
+all.”
+
+“No. Then what future have you?” said Mr. May gloomily.
+
+“I may be dead—who knows. If not, I shall have my little apartment in
+Lausanne, or in Bellizona, and I shall be a bourgeoise once more, and
+the good Catholic which I am.”
+
+“Which I am also,” said Mr. May.
+
+“So! Are you? An American Catholic?”
+
+“Well—English—Irish—American.”
+
+“So!”
+
+Mr. May never felt more gloomy in his life than he did that day. Where,
+finally, was he to rest his troubled head?
+
+There was not all peace in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara group either. For
+Thursday, there was to be a change of program—“Kishwégin’s Wedding—”
+(with the white prisoner, be if said)—was to take the place of the
+previous scene. Max of course was the director of the rehearsal. Madame
+would not come near the theatre when she herself was not to be acting.
+
+Though very quiet and unobtrusive as a rule, Max could suddenly assume
+an air of _hauteur_ and overbearing which was really very annoying.
+Geoffrey always fumed under it. But Ciccio it put into unholy,
+ungovernable tempers. For Max, suddenly, would reveal his contempt of
+the Eyetalian, as he called Ciccio, using the Cockney word.
+
+“Bah! quelle tête de veau,” said Max, suddenly contemptuous and angry
+because Ciccio, who really was slow at taking in the things said to
+him, had once more failed to understand.
+
+“Comment?” queried Ciccio, in his slow, derisive way.
+
+“_Comment_!” sneered Max, in echo. “_What?_ _What?_ Why what _did_ I
+say? Calf’s-head I said. Pig’s-head, if that seems more suitable to
+you.”
+
+“To whom? To me or to you?” said Ciccio, sidling up.
+
+“To you, lout of an Italian.”
+
+Max’s colour was up, he held himself erect, his brown hair seemed to
+rise erect from his forehead, his blue eyes glared fierce.
+
+“That is to say, to me, from an uncivilized German pig, ah? ah?”
+
+All this in French. Alvina, as she sat at the piano, saw Max tall and
+blanched with anger; Ciccio with his neck stuck out, oblivious and
+convulsed with rage, stretching his neck at Max. All were in ordinary
+dress, but without coats, acting in their shirt-sleeves. Ciccio was
+clutching a property knife.
+
+“Now! None of that! None of that!” said Mr. May, peremptory. But
+Ciccio, stretching forward taut and immobile with rage, was quite
+unconscious. His hand was fast on his stage knife.
+
+“A dirty Eyetalian,” said Max, in English, turning to Mr. May. “They
+understand nothing.”
+
+But the last word was smothered in Ciccio’s spring and stab. Max half
+started on to his guard, received the blow on his collar-bone, near the
+pommel of the shoulder, reeled round on top of Mr. May, whilst Ciccio
+sprang like a cat down from the stage and bounded across the theatre
+and out of the door, leaving the knife rattling on the boards behind
+him. Max recovered and sprang like a demon, white with rage, straight
+out into the theatre after him.
+
+“Stop—stop—!” cried Mr. May.
+
+“Halte, Max! Max, Max, attends!” cried Louis and Geoffrey, as Louis
+sprang down after his friend. Thud went the boards again, with the
+spring of a man.
+
+Alvina, who had been seated waiting at the piano below, started up and
+overturned her chair as Ciccio rushed past her. Now Max, white, with
+set blue eyes, was upon her.
+
+“Don’t—!” she cried, lifting her hand to stop his progress. He saw her,
+swerved, and hesitated, turned to leap over the seats and avoid her,
+when Louis caught him and flung his arms round him.
+
+“Max—attends, ami! Laisse le partir. Max, tu sais que je t’aime. Tu le
+sais, ami. Tu le sais. Laisse le partir.”
+
+Max and Louis wrestled together in the gangway, Max looking down with
+hate on his friend. But Louis was determined also, he wrestled as
+fiercely as Max, and at last the latter began to yield. He was panting
+and beside himself. Louis still held him by the hand and by the arm.
+
+“Let him go, brother, he isn’t worth it. What does he understand, Max,
+dear brother, what does he understand? These fellows from the south,
+they are half children, half animal. They don’t know what they are
+doing. Has he hurt you, dear friend? Has he hurt you? It was a dummy
+knife, but it was a heavy blow—the dog of an Italian. Let us see.”
+
+So gradually Max was brought to stand still. From under the edge of his
+waistcoat, on the shoulder, the blood was already staining the shirt.
+
+“Are you cut, brother, brother?” said Louis. “Let us see.”
+
+Max now moved his arm with pain. They took off his waistcoat and pushed
+back his shirt. A nasty blackening wound, with the skin broken.
+
+“If the bone isn’t broken!” said Louis anxiously. “If the bone isn’t
+broken! Lift thy arm, frère—lift. It hurts you—so—. No—no—it is not
+broken—no—the bone is not broken.”
+
+“There is no bone broken, I know,” said Max.
+
+“The animal. He hasn’t done _that_, at least.”
+
+“Where do you imagine he’s gone?” asked Mr. May.
+
+The foreigners shrugged their shoulders, and paid no heed. There was no
+more rehearsal.
+
+“We had best go home and speak to Madame,” said Mr. May, who was very
+frightened for his evening performance.
+
+They locked up the Endeavour. Alvina was thinking of Ciccio. He was
+gone in his shirt sleeves. She had taken his jacket and hat from the
+dressing-room at the back, and carried them under her rain-coat, which
+she had on her arm.
+
+Madame was in a state of perturbation. She had heard some one come in
+at the back, and go upstairs, and go out again. Mrs. Rollings had told
+her it was the Italian, who had come in in his shirt-sleeves and gone
+out in his black coat and black hat, taking his bicycle, without saying
+a word. Poor Madame! She was struggling into her shoes, she had her hat
+on, when the others arrived.
+
+“What is it?” she cried.
+
+She heard a hurried explanation from Louis.
+
+“Ah, the animal, the animal, he wasn’t worth all my pains!” cried poor
+Madame, sitting with one shoe off and one shoe on. “Why, Max, why didst
+thou not remain man enough to control that insulting mountain temper of
+thine. Have I not said, and said, and said that in the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara there was but one nation, the Red Indian, and but one
+tribe, the tribe of Kishwe? And now thou hast called him a dirty
+Italian, or a dog of an Italian, and he has behaved like an animal. Too
+much, too much of an animal, too little _esprit_. But thou, Max, art
+almost as bad. Thy temper is a devil’s, which maybe is worse than an
+animal’s. Ah, this Woodhouse, a curse is on it, I know it is. Would we
+were away from it. Will the week never pass? We shall have to find
+Ciccio. Without him the company is ruined—until I get a substitute. I
+must get a substitute. And how?—and where?—in this country?—tell me
+that. I am tired of Natcha-Kee-Tawara. There is no true tribe of
+Kishwe—no, never. I have had enough of Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Let us break
+up, let us part, _mes braves_, let us say adieu here in this _funeste_
+Woodhouse.”
+
+“Oh, Madame, dear Madame,” said Louis, “let us hope. Let us swear a
+closer fidelity, dear Madame, our Kishwégin. Let us never part. Max,
+thou dost not want to part, brother, well-loved? Thou dost not want to
+part, brother whom I love? And thou, Geoffrey, thou—”
+
+Madame burst into tears, Louis wept too, even Max turned aside his
+face, with tears. Alvina stole out of the room, followed by Mr. May.
+
+In a while Madame came out to them.
+
+“Oh,” she said. “You have not gone away! We are wondering which way
+Ciccio will have gone, on to Knarborough or to Marchay. Geoffrey will
+go on his bicycle to find him. But shall it be to Knarborough or to
+Marchay?”
+
+“Ask the policeman in the market-place,” said Alvina. “He’s sure to
+have noticed him, because Ciccio’s yellow bicycle is so uncommon.”
+
+Mr. May tripped out on this errand, while the others discussed among
+themselves where Ciccio might be.
+
+Mr. May returned, and said that Ciccio had ridden off down the
+Knarborough Road. It was raining slightly.
+
+“Ah!” said Madame. “And now how to find him, in that great town. I am
+afraid he will leave us without pity.”
+
+“Surely he will want to speak to Geoffrey before he goes,” said Louis.
+“They were always good friends.”
+
+They all looked at Geoffrey. He shrugged his broad shoulders.
+
+“Always good friends,” he said. “Yes. He will perhaps wait for me at
+his cousin’s in Battersea. In Knarborough, I don’t know.”
+
+“How much money had he?” asked Mr. May.
+
+Madame spread her hands and lifted her shoulders.
+
+“Who knows?” she said.
+
+“These Italians,” said Louis, turning to Mr. May. “They have always
+money. In another country, they will not spend one sou if they can
+help. They are like this—” And he made the Neapolitan gesture drawing
+in the air with his fingers.
+
+“But would he abandon you all without a word?” cried Mr. May.
+
+“Yes! Yes!” said Madame, with a sort of stoic pathos. “_He_ would. He
+alone would do such a thing. But he would do it.”
+
+“And what point would he make for?”
+
+“What point? You mean where would he go? To Battersea, no doubt, to his
+cousin—and then to Italy, if he thinks he has saved enough money to buy
+land, or whatever it is.”
+
+“And so good-bye to him,” said Mr. May bitterly.
+
+“Geoffrey ought to know,” said Madame, looking at Geoffrey.
+
+Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, and would not give his comrade away.
+
+“No,” he said. “I don’t know. He will leave a message at Battersea, I
+know. But I don’t know if he will go to Italy.”
+
+“And you don’t know where to find him in Knarborough?” asked Mr. May,
+sharply, very much on the spot.
+
+“No—I don’t. Perhaps at the station he will go by train to London.” It
+was evident Geoffrey was not going to help Mr. May.
+
+“Alors!” said Madame, cutting through this futility. “Go thou to
+Knarborough, Geoffrey, and see—and be back at the theatre for work. Go
+now. And if thou can’st find him, bring him again to us. Tell him to
+come out of kindness to me. Tell him.”
+
+And she waved the young man away. He departed on his nine mile ride
+through the rain to Knarborough.
+
+“They know,” said Madame. “They know each other’s places. It is a
+little more than a year since we came to Knarborough. But they will
+remember.”
+
+Geoffrey rode swiftly as possible through the mud. He did not care very
+much whether he found his friend or not. He liked the Italian, but he
+never looked on him as a permanency. He knew Ciccio was dissatisfied,
+and wanted a change. He knew that Italy was pulling him away from the
+troupe, with which he had been associated now for three years or more.
+And the Swiss from Martigny knew that the Neapolitan would go, breaking
+all ties, one day suddenly back to Italy. It was so, and Geoffrey was
+philosophical about it.
+
+He rode into town, and the first thing he did was to seek out the
+music-hall artistes at their lodgings. He knew a good many of them.
+They gave him a welcome and a whiskey—but none of them had seen Ciccio.
+They sent him off to other artistes, other lodging-houses. He went the
+round of associates known and unknown, of lodgings strange and
+familiar, of third-rate possible public houses. Then he went to the
+Italians down in the Marsh—he knew these people always ask for one
+another. And then, hurrying, he dashed to the Midland Station, and then
+to the Great Central Station, asking the porters on the London
+departure platform if they had seen his pal, a man with a yellow
+bicycle, and a black bicycle cape. All to no purpose.
+
+Geoffrey hurriedly lit his lamp and swung off in the dark back to
+Woodhouse. He was a powerfully built, imperturbable fellow. He pressed
+slowly uphill through the streets, then ran downhill into the darkness
+of the industrial country. He had continually to cross the new
+tram-lines, which were awkward, and he had occasionally to dodge the
+brilliantly-illuminated tram-cars which threaded their way
+across-country through so much darkness. All the time it rained, and
+his back wheel slipped under him, in the mud and on the new tram-track.
+
+As he pressed in the long darkness that lay between Slaters Mill and
+Durbeyhouses, he saw a light ahead—another cyclist. He moved to his
+side of the road. The light approached very fast. It was a strong
+acetylene flare. He watched it. A flash and a splash and he saw the
+humped back of what was probably Ciccio going by at a great pace on the
+low racing machine.
+
+“Hi Cic’—! Ciccio!” he yelled, dropping off his own bicycle.
+
+“Ha-er-er!” he heard the answering shout, unmistakably Italian, way
+down the darkness.
+
+He turned—saw the other cyclist had stopped. The flare swung round, and
+Ciccio softly rode up. He dropped off beside Geoffrey.
+
+“Toi!” said Ciccio.
+
+“Hé! Où vas-tu?”
+
+“Hé!” ejaculated Ciccio.
+
+Their conversation consisted a good deal in noises variously
+ejaculated.
+
+“Coming back?” asked Geoffrey.
+
+“Where’ve you been?” retorted Ciccio.
+
+“Knarborough—looking for thee. Where have you—?”
+
+“Buckled my front wheel at Durbeyhouses.”
+
+“Come off?”
+
+“Hé!”
+
+“Hurt?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Max is all right.”
+
+“Merde!”
+
+“Come on, come back with me.”
+
+“Nay.” Ciccio shook his head.
+
+“Madame’s crying. Wants thee to come back.”
+
+Ciccio shook his head.
+
+“Come on, Cic’—” said Geoffrey.
+
+Ciccio shook his head.
+
+“Never?” said Geoffrey.
+
+“Basta—had enough,” said Ciccio, with an invisible grimace.
+
+“Come for a bit, and we’ll clear together.”
+
+Ciccio again shook his head.
+
+“What, is it adieu?”
+
+Ciccio did not speak.
+
+“Don’t go, comrade,” said Geoffrey.
+
+“Faut,” said Ciccio, slightly derisive.
+
+“Eh alors! I’d like to come with thee. What?”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Doesn’t matter. Thou’rt going to Italy?”
+
+“Who knows!—seems so.”
+
+“I’d like to go back.”
+
+“Eh alors!” Ciccio half veered round.
+
+“Wait for me a few days,” said Geoffrey.
+
+“Where?”
+
+“See you tomorrow in Knarborough. Go to Mrs. Pym’s, 6 Hampden Street.
+Gittiventi is there. Right, eh?”
+
+“I’ll think about it.”
+
+“Eleven o’clock, eh?”
+
+“I’ll think about it.”
+
+“Friends ever—Ciccio—eh?” Geoffrey held out his hand.
+
+Ciccio slowly took it. The two men leaned to each other and kissed
+farewell, on either cheek.
+
+“Tomorrow, Cic’—”
+
+“Au revoir, Gigi.”
+
+Ciccio dropped on to his bicycle and was gone in a breath. Geoffrey
+waited a moment for a tram which was rushing brilliantly up to him in
+the rain. Then he mounted and rode in the opposite direction. He went
+straight down to Lumley, and Madame had to remain on tenterhooks till
+ten o’clock.
+
+She heard the news, and said:
+
+“Tomorrow I go to fetch him.” And with this she went to bed.
+
+In the morning she was up betimes, sending a note to Alvina. Alvina
+appeared at nine o’clock.
+
+“You will come with me?” said Madame. “Come. Together we will go to
+Knarborough and bring back the naughty Ciccio. Come with me, because I
+haven’t all my strength. Yes, you will? Good! Good! Let us tell the
+young men, and we will go now, on the tram-car.”
+
+“But I am not properly dressed,” said Alvina.
+
+“Who will see?” said Madame. “Come, let us go.”
+
+They told Geoffrey they would meet him at the corner of Hampden Street
+at five minutes to eleven.
+
+“You see,” said Madame to Alvina, “they are very funny, these young
+men, particularly Italians. You must never let them think you have
+caught them. Perhaps he will not let us see him—who knows? Perhaps he
+will go off to Italy all the same.”
+
+They sat in the bumping tram-car, a long and wearying journey. And then
+they tramped the dreary, hideous streets of the manufacturing town. At
+the corner of the street they waited for Geoffrey, who rode up muddily
+on his bicycle.
+
+“Ask Ciccio to come out to us, and we will go and drink coffee at the
+Geisha Restaurant—or tea or something,” said Madame.
+
+Again the two women waited wearily at the street-end. At last Geoffrey
+returned, shaking his head.
+
+“He won’t come?” cried Madame.
+
+“No.”
+
+“He says he is going back to Italy?”
+
+“To London.”
+
+“It is the same. You can never trust them. Is he quite obstinate?”
+
+Geoffrey lifted his shoulders. Madame could see the beginnings of
+defection in him too. And she was tired and dispirited.
+
+“We shall have to finish the Natcha-Kee-Tawara, that is all,” she said
+fretfully.
+
+Geoffrey watched her stolidly, impassively.
+
+“Dost thou want to go with him?” she asked suddenly.
+
+Geoffrey smiled sheepishly, and his colour deepened. But he did not
+speak.
+
+“Go then—” she said. “Go then! Go with him! But for the sake of my
+honour, finish this week at Woodhouse. Can I make Miss Houghton’s
+father lose these two nights? Where is your shame? Finish this week and
+then go, go—But finish this week. Tell Francesco that. I have finished
+with him. But let him finish this engagement. Don’t put me to shame,
+don’t destroy my honour, and the honour of the Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Tell
+him that.”
+
+Geoffrey turned again into the house. Madame, in her chic little black
+hat and spotted veil, and her trim black coat-and-skirt, stood there at
+the street-corner staring before her, shivering a little with cold, but
+saying no word of any sort.
+
+Again Geoffrey appeared out of the doorway. His face was impassive.
+
+“He says he doesn’t want,” he said.
+
+“Ah!” she cried suddenly in French, “the ungrateful, the animal! He
+shall suffer. See if he shall not suffer. The low canaille, without
+faith or feeling. My Max, thou wert right. Ah, such canaille should be
+beaten, as dogs are beaten, till they follow at heel. Will no one beat
+him for me, no one? Yes. Go back. Tell him before he leaves England he
+shall feel the hand of Kishwégin, and it shall be heavier than the
+Black Hand. Tell him that, the coward, that causes a woman’s word to be
+broken against her will. Ah, canaille, canaille! Neither faith nor
+feeling, neither faith nor feeling. Trust them not, dogs of the south.”
+She took a few agitated steps down the pavement. Then she raised her
+veil to wipe away her tears of anger and bitter disappointment.
+
+“Wait a bit,” said Alvina. “I’ll go.” She was touched.
+
+“No. Don’t you!” cried Madame.
+
+“Yes I will,” she said. The light of battle was in her eyes. “You’ll
+come with me to the door,” she said to Geoffrey.
+
+Geoffrey started obediently, and led the way up a long narrow stair,
+covered with yellow-and-brown oil-cloth, rather worn, on to the top of
+the house.
+
+“Ciccio,” he said, outside the door.
+
+“Oui!” came the curly voice of Ciccio.
+
+Geoffrey opened the door. Ciccio was sitting on a narrow bed, in a
+rather poor attic, under the steep slope of the roof.
+
+“Don’t come in,” said Alvina to Geoffrey, looking over her shoulder at
+him as she entered. Then she closed the door behind her, and stood with
+her back to it, facing the Italian. He sat loose on the bed, a
+cigarette between his fingers, dropping ash on the bare boards between
+his feet. He looked up curiously at Alvina. She stood watching him with
+wide, bright blue eyes, smiling slightly, and saying nothing. He looked
+up at her steadily, on his guard, from under his long black lashes.
+
+“Won’t you come?” she said, smiling and looking into his eyes. He
+flicked off the ash of his cigarette with his little finger. She
+wondered why he wore the nail of his little finger so long, so very
+long. Still she smiled at him, and still he gave no sign.
+
+“Do come!” she urged, never taking her eyes from him.
+
+He made not the slightest movement, but sat with his hands dropped
+between his knees, watching her, the cigarette wavering up its blue
+thread of smoke.
+
+“Won’t you?” she said, as she stood with her back to the door. “Won’t
+you come?” She smiled strangely and vividly.
+
+Suddenly she took a pace forward, stooped, watching his face as if
+timidly, caught his brown hand in her own and lifted it towards
+herself. His hand started, dropped the cigarette, but was not
+withdrawn.
+
+“You will come, won’t you?” she said, smiling gently into his strange,
+watchful yellow eyes, that looked fixedly into hers, the dark pupil
+opening round and softening. She smiled into his softening round eyes,
+the eyes of some animal which stares in one of its silent, gentler
+moments. And suddenly she kissed his hand, kissed it twice, quickly, on
+the fingers and the back. He wore a silver ring. Even as she kissed his
+fingers with her lips, the silver ring seemed to her a symbol of his
+subjection, inferiority. She drew his hand slightly. And he rose to his
+feet.
+
+She turned round and took the door-handle, still holding his fingers in
+her left hand.
+
+“You are coming, aren’t you?” she said, looking over her shoulder into
+his eyes. And taking consent from his unchanging eyes, she let go his
+hand and slightly opened the door. He turned slowly, and taking his
+coat from a nail, slung it over his shoulders and drew it on. Then he
+picked up his hat, and put his foot on his half-smoked cigarette, which
+lay smoking still. He followed her out of the room, walking with his
+head rather forward, in the half loutish, sensual-subjected way of the
+Italians.
+
+As they entered the street, they saw the trim, French figure of Madame
+standing alone, as if abandoned. Her face was very white under her
+spotted veil, her eyes very black. She watched Ciccio following behind
+Alvina in his dark, hangdog fashion, and she did not move a muscle
+until he came to a standstill in front of her. She was watching his
+face.
+
+“Te voilà donc!” she said, without expression. “Allons boire un café,
+hé? Let us go and drink some coffee.” She had now put an inflection of
+tenderness into her voice. But her eyes were black with anger. Ciccio
+smiled slowly, the slow, fine, stupid smile, and turned to walk
+alongside.
+
+Madame said nothing as they went. Geoffrey passed on his bicycle,
+calling out that he would go straight to Woodhouse.
+
+When the three sat with their cups of coffee, Madame pushed up her veil
+just above her eyes, so that it was a black band above her brows. Her
+face was pale and full like a child’s, but almost stonily
+expressionless, her eyes were black and inscrutable. She watched both
+Ciccio and Alvina with her black, inscrutable looks.
+
+“Would you like also biscuits with your coffee, the two of you?” she
+said, with an amiable intonation which her strange black looks belied.
+
+“Yes,” said Alvina. She was a little flushed, as if defiant, while
+Ciccio sat sheepishly, turning aside his ducked head, the slow, stupid,
+yet fine smile on his lips.
+
+“And no more trouble with Max, hein?—you Ciccio?” said Madame, still
+with the amiable intonation and the same black, watching eyes. “No more
+of these stupid scenes, hein? What? Do you answer me.”
+
+“No more from me,” he said, looking up at her with a narrow, cat-like
+look in his derisive eyes.
+
+“Ho? No? No more? Good then! It is good! We are glad, aren’t we, Miss
+Houghton, that Ciccio has come back and there are to be no more
+rows?—hein?—aren’t we?”
+
+“_I’m_ awfully glad,” said Alvina.
+
+“Awfully glad—yes—awfully glad! You hear, you Ciccio. And you remember
+another time. What? Don’t you? Hé?”
+
+He looked up at her, the slow, derisive smile curling his lips.
+
+“Sure,” he said slowly, with subtle intonation.
+
+“Yes. Good! Well then! Well then! We are all friends. We are all
+friends, aren’t we, all the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Hé? What you think?
+What you say?”
+
+“Yes,” said Ciccio, again looking up at her with his yellow, glinting
+eyes.
+
+“All right! All right then! It is all right—forgotten—” Madame sounded
+quite frank and restored. But the sullen watchfulness in her eyes, and
+the narrowed look in Ciccio’s, as he glanced at her, showed another
+state behind the obviousness of the words. “And Miss Houghton is one of
+us! Yes? She has united us once more, and so she has become one of us.”
+Madame smiled strangely from her blank, round white face.
+
+“I should love to be one of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras,” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes—well—why not? Why not become one? Why not? What you say, Ciccio?
+You can play the piano, perhaps do other things. Perhaps better than
+Kishwégin. What you say, Ciccio, should she not join us? Is she not one
+of us?”
+
+He smiled and showed his teeth but did not answer.
+
+“Well, what is it? Say then? Shall she not?”
+
+“Yes,” said Ciccio, unwilling to commit himself.
+
+“Yes, so I say! So I say. Quite a good idea! We will think of it, and
+speak perhaps to your father, and you shall come! Yes.”
+
+So the two women returned to Woodhouse by the tram-car, while Ciccio
+rode home on his bicycle. It was surprising how little Madame and
+Alvina found to say to one another.
+
+Madame effected the reunion of her troupe, and all seemed pretty much
+as before. She had decided to dance the next night, the Saturday night.
+On Sunday the party would leave for Warsall, about thirty miles away,
+to fulfil their next engagement.
+
+That evening Ciccio, whenever he had a moment to spare, watched Alvina.
+She knew it. But she could not make out what his watching meant. In the
+same way he might have watched a serpent, had he found one gliding in
+the theatre. He looked at her sideways, furtively, but persistently.
+And yet he did not want to meet her glance. He avoided her, and watched
+her. As she saw him standing, in his negligent, muscular, slouching
+fashion, with his head dropped forward, and his eyes sideways,
+sometimes she disliked him. But there was a sort of _finesse_ about his
+face. His skin was delicately tawny, and slightly lustrous. The eyes
+were set in so dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing.
+And then one met the yellow pupils, sulphureous and remote. It was like
+meeting a lion. His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and
+curling lips seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture. He was
+waiting: silent there, with something muscular and remote about his
+very droop, he was waiting. What for? Alvina could not guess. She
+wanted to meet his eye, to have an open understanding with him. But he
+would not. When she went up to talk to him, he answered in his stupid
+fashion, with a smile of the mouth and no change of the eyes, saying
+nothing at all. Obstinately he held away from her. When he was in his
+war-paint, for one moment she hated his muscular, handsome,
+downward-drooping torso: so stupid and full. The fine sharp uprightness
+of Max seemed much finer, clearer, more manly. Ciccio’s velvety, suave
+heaviness, the very heave of his muscles, so full and softly powerful,
+sickened her.
+
+She flashed away angrily on her piano. Madame, who was dancing
+Kishwégin on the last evening, cast sharp glances at her. Alvina had
+avoided Madame as Ciccio had avoided Alvina—elusive and yet conscious,
+a distance, and yet a connection.
+
+Madame danced beautifully. No denying it, she was an artist. She became
+something quite different: fresh, virginal, pristine, a magic creature
+flickering there. She was infinitely delicate and attractive. Her
+_braves_ became glamorous and heroic at once, and magically she cast
+her spell over them. It was all very well for Alvina to bang the piano
+crossly. She could not put out the glow which surrounded Kishwégin and
+her troupe. Ciccio was handsome now: without war-paint, and roused,
+fearless and at the same time suggestive, a dark, mysterious glamour on
+his face, passionate and remote. A stranger—and so beautiful. Alvina
+flashed at the piano, almost in tears. She hated his beauty. It shut
+her apart. She had nothing to do with it.
+
+Madame, with her long dark hair hanging in finely-brushed tresses, her
+cheek burning under its dusky stain, was another creature. How soft she
+was on her feet. How humble and remote she seemed, as across a chasm
+from the men. How submissive she was, with an eternity of inaccessible
+submission. Her hovering dance round the dead bear was exquisite: her
+dark, secretive curiosity, her admiration of the massive, male strength
+of the creature, her quivers of triumph over the dead beast, her cruel
+exultation, and her fear that he was not really dead. It was a lovely
+sight, suggesting the world’s morning, before Eve had bitten any
+white-fleshed apple, whilst she was still dusky, dark-eyed, and still.
+And then her stealthy sympathy with the white prisoner! Now indeed she
+was the dusky Eve tempted into knowledge. Her fascination was ruthless.
+She kneeled by the dead _brave_, her husband, as she had knelt by the
+bear: in fear and admiration and doubt and exultation. She gave him the
+least little push with her foot. Dead meat like the bear! And a flash
+of delight went over her, that changed into a sob of mortal anguish.
+And then, flickering, wicked, doubtful, she watched Ciccio wrestling
+with the bear.
+
+She was the clue to all the action, was Kishwégin. And her dark
+_braves_ seemed to become darker, more secret, malevolent, burning with
+a cruel fire, and at the same time wistful, knowing their end. Ciccio
+laughed in a strange way, as he wrestled with the bear, as he had never
+laughed on the previous evenings. The sound went out into the audience,
+a soft, malevolent, derisive sound. And when the bear was supposed to
+have crushed him, and he was to have fallen, he reeled out of the
+bear’s arms and said to Madame, in his derisive voice:
+
+“Vivo sempre, Madame.” And then he fell.
+
+Madame stopped as if shot, hearing his words: “I am still alive,
+Madame.” She remained suspended motionless, suddenly wilted. Then all
+at once her hand went to her mouth with a scream:
+
+“The Bear!”
+
+So the scene concluded itself. But instead of the tender, half-wistful
+triumph of Kishwégin, a triumph electric as it should have been when
+she took the white man’s hand and kissed it, there was a doubt, a
+hesitancy, a nullity, and Max did not quite know what to do.
+
+After the performance, neither Madame nor Max dared say anything to
+Ciccio about his innovation into the play. Louis felt he had to
+speak—it was left to him.
+
+“I say, Cic’—” he said, “why did you change the scene? It might have
+spoiled everything if Madame wasn’t such a genius. Why did you say
+that?”
+
+“Why,” said Ciccio, answering Louis’ French in Italian, “I am tired of
+being dead, you see.”
+
+Madame and Max heard in silence.
+
+When Alvina had played _God Save the King_ she went round behind the
+stage. But Ciccio and Geoffrey had already packed up the property, and
+left. Madame was talking to James Houghton. Louis and Max were busy
+together. Mr. May came to Alvina.
+
+“Well,” he said. “That closes another week. I think we’ve done very
+well, in face of difficulties, don’t you?”
+
+“Wonderfully,” she said.
+
+But poor Mr. May spoke and looked pathetically. He seemed to feel
+forlorn. Alvina was not attending to him. Her eye was roving. She took
+no notice of him.
+
+Madame came up.
+
+“Well, Miss Houghton,” she said, “time to say good-bye, I suppose.”
+
+“How do you feel after dancing?” asked Alvina.
+
+“Well—not so strong as usual—but not so bad, you know. I shall be all
+right—thanks to you. I think your father is more ill than I. To me he
+looks very ill.”
+
+“Father wears himself away,” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes, and when we are no longer young, there is not so much to wear.
+Well, I must thank you once more—”
+
+“What time do you leave in the morning?”
+
+“By the train at half-past ten. If it doesn’t rain, the young men will
+cycle—perhaps all of them. Then they will go when they like—”
+
+“I will come round to say good-bye—” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh no—don’t disturb yourself—”
+
+“Yes, I want to take home the things—the kettle for the bronchitis, and
+those things—”
+
+“Oh thank you very much—but don’t trouble yourself. I will send Ciccio
+with them—or one of the others—”
+
+“I should like to say good-bye to you all,” persisted Alvina.
+
+Madame glanced round at Max and Louis.
+
+“Are we not all here? No. The two have gone. No! Well! Well what time
+will you come?”
+
+“About nine?”
+
+“Very well, and I leave at ten. Very well. Then _au revoir_ till the
+morning. Good-night.”
+
+“Good-night,” said Alvina. Her colour was rather flushed.
+
+She walked up with Mr. May, and hardly noticed he was there. After
+supper, when James Houghton had gone up to count his pennies, Alvina
+said to Miss Pinnegar:
+
+“Don’t you think father looks rather seedy, Miss Pinnegar?”
+
+“I’ve been thinking so a long time,” said Miss Pinnegar tartly.
+
+“What do you think he ought to do?”
+
+“He’s killing himself down there, in all weathers and freezing in that
+box-office, and then the bad atmosphere. He’s killing himself, that’s
+all.”
+
+“What can we do?”
+
+“Nothing so long as there’s that place down there. Nothing at all.”
+
+Alvina thought so too. So she went to bed.
+
+She was up in time, and watching the clock. It was a grey morning, but
+not raining. At five minutes to nine, she hurried off to Mrs. Rollings.
+In the back yard the bicycles were out, glittering and muddy according
+to their owners. Ciccio was crouching mending a tire, crouching
+balanced on his toes, near the earth. He turned like a quick-eared
+animal glancing up as she approached, but did not rise.
+
+“Are you getting ready to go?” she said, looking down at him. He
+screwed his head round to her unwillingly, upside down, his chin tilted
+up at her. She did not know him thus inverted. Her eyes rested on his
+face, puzzled. His chin seemed so large, aggressive. He was a little
+bit repellent and brutal, inverted. Yet she continued:
+
+“Would you help me to carry back the things we brought for Madame?”
+
+He rose to his feet, but did not look at her. He was wearing broken
+cycling shoes. He stood looking at his bicycle tube.
+
+“Not just yet,” she said. “I want to say good-bye to Madame. Will you
+come in half an hour?”
+
+“Yes, I will come,” he said, still watching his bicycle tube, which
+sprawled nakedly on the floor. The forward drop of his head was
+curiously beautiful to her, the straight, powerful nape of the neck,
+the delicate shape of the back of the head, the black hair. The way the
+neck sprang from the strong, loose shoulders was beautiful. There was
+something mindless but _intent_ about the forward reach of his head.
+His face seemed colourless, neutral-tinted and expressionless.
+
+She went indoors. The young men were moving about making preparations.
+
+“Come upstairs, Miss Houghton!” called Madame’s voice from above.
+Alvina mounted, to find Madame packing.
+
+“It is an uneasy moment, when we are busy to move,” said Madame,
+looking up at Alvina as if she were a stranger.
+
+“I’m afraid I’m in the way. But I won’t stay a minute.”
+
+“Oh, it is all right. Here are the things you brought—” Madame
+indicated a little pile—“and thank you _very_ much, _very_ much. I feel
+you saved my life. And now let me give you one little token of my
+gratitude. It is not much, because we are not millionaires in the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Just a little remembrance of our troublesome visit
+to Woodhouse.”
+
+She presented Alvina with a pair of exquisite bead moccasins, woven in
+a weird, lovely pattern, with soft deerskin soles and sides.
+
+“They belong to Kishwégin, so it is Kishwégin who gives them to you,
+because she is grateful to you for saving her life, or at least from a
+long illness.”
+
+“Oh—but I don’t want to take them—” said Alvina.
+
+“You don’t like them? Why?”
+
+“I think they’re lovely, lovely! But I don’t want to take them from
+you—”
+
+“If I give them, you do not take them from me. You receive them. Hé?”
+And Madame pressed back the slippers, opening her plump jewelled hands
+in a gesture of finality.
+
+“But I don’t like to take _these_,” said Alvina. “I feel they belong to
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. And I don’t want to rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara, do I? Do
+take them back.”
+
+“No, I have given them. You cannot rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara in taking a
+pair of shoes—impossible!”
+
+“And I’m sure they are much too small for me.”
+
+“Ha!” exclaimed Madame. “It is that! Try.”
+
+“I know they are,” said Alvina, laughing confusedly.
+
+She sat down and took off her own shoe. The moccasin was a little too
+short—just a little. But it was charming on the foot, charming.
+
+“Yes,” said Madame. “It is too short. Very well. I must find you
+something else.”
+
+“Please don’t,” said Alvina. “Please don’t find me anything. I don’t
+want anything. Please!”
+
+“What?” said Madame, eyeing her closely. “You don’t want? Why? You
+don’t want anything from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, or from Kishwégin? Hé? From
+which?”
+
+“Don’t give me anything, please,” said Alvina.
+
+“All right! All right then. I won’t. I won’t give you anything. I can’t
+give you anything you want from Natcha-Kee-Tawara.”
+
+And Madame busied herself again with the packing.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry you are going,” said Alvina.
+
+“Sorry? Why? Yes, so am I sorry we shan’t see you any more. Yes, so I
+am. But perhaps we shall see you another time—hé? I shall send you a
+post-card. Perhaps I shall send one of the young men on his bicycle, to
+bring you something which I shall buy for you. Yes? Shall I?”
+
+“Oh! I should be awfully glad—but don’t buy—” Alvina checked herself in
+time. “Don’t buy anything. Send me a little thing from
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. I _love_ the slippers—”
+
+“But they are too small,” said Madame, who had been watching her with
+black eyes that read every motive. Madame too had her avaricious side,
+and was glad to get back the slippers. “Very well—very well, I will do
+that. I will send you some small thing from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, and one
+of the young men shall bring it. Perhaps Ciccio? Hé?”
+
+“Thank you _so_ much,” said Alvina, holding out her hand. “Good-bye.
+I’m so sorry you’re going.”
+
+“Well—well! We are not going so very far. Not so very far. Perhaps we
+shall see each other another day. It may be. Good-bye!”
+
+Madame took Alvina’s hand, and smiled at her winsomely all at once,
+kindly, from her inscrutable black eyes. A sudden unusual kindness.
+Alvina flushed with surprise and a desire to cry.
+
+“Yes. I am sorry you are not with Natcha-Kee-Tawara. But we shall see.
+Good-bye. I shall do my packing.”
+
+Alvina carried down the things she had to remove. Then she went to say
+good-bye to the young men, who were in various stages of their toilet.
+Max alone was quite presentable.
+
+Ciccio was just putting on the outer cover of his front tire. She
+watched his brown thumbs press it into place. He was quick and sure,
+much more capable, and even masterful, than you would have supposed,
+seeing his tawny Mediterranean hands. He spun the wheel round, patting
+it lightly.
+
+“Is it finished?”
+
+“Yes, I think.” He reached his pump and blew up the tire. She watched
+his softly-applied force. What physical, muscular force there was in
+him. Then he swung round the bicycle, and stood it again on its wheels.
+After which he quickly folded his tools.
+
+“Will you come now?” she said.
+
+He turned, rubbing his hands together, and drying them on an old cloth.
+He went into the house, pulled on his coat and his cap, and picked up
+the things from the table.
+
+“Where are you going?” Max asked.
+
+Ciccio jerked his head towards Alvina.
+
+“Oh, allow me to carry them, Miss Houghton. He is not fit—” said Max.
+
+True, Ciccio had no collar on, and his shoes were burst.
+
+“I don’t mind,” said Alvina hastily. “He knows where they go. He
+brought them before.”
+
+“But I will carry them. I am dressed. Allow me—” and he began to take
+the things. “You get dressed, Ciccio.”
+
+Ciccio looked at Alvina.
+
+“Do you want?” he said, as if waiting for orders.
+
+“Do let Ciccio take them,” said Alvina to Max. “Thank you _ever_ so
+much. But let him take them.”
+
+So Alvina marched off through the Sunday morning streets, with the
+Italian, who was down at heel and encumbered with an armful of
+sick-room apparatus. She did not know what to say, and he said nothing.
+
+“We will go in this way,” she said, suddenly opening the hall door. She
+had unlocked it before she went out, for that entrance was hardly ever
+used. So she showed the Italian into the sombre drawing-room, with its
+high black bookshelves with rows and rows of calf-bound volumes, its
+old red and flowered carpet, its grand piano littered with music.
+Ciccio put down the things as she directed, and stood with his cap in
+his hands, looking aside.
+
+“Thank you so much,” she said, lingering.
+
+He curled his lips in a faint deprecatory smile.
+
+“Nothing,” he murmured.
+
+His eye had wandered uncomfortably up to a portrait on the wall.
+
+“That was my mother,” said Alvina.
+
+He glanced down at her, but did not answer.
+
+“I am so sorry you’re going away,” she said nervously. She stood
+looking up at him with wide blue eyes.
+
+The faint smile grew on the lower part of his face, which he kept
+averted. Then he looked at her.
+
+“We have to move,” he said, with his eyes watching her reservedly, his
+mouth twisting with a half-bashful smile.
+
+“Do you like continually going away?” she said, her wide blue eyes
+fixed on his face.
+
+He nodded slightly.
+
+“We have to do it. I like it.”
+
+What he said meant nothing to him. He now watched her fixedly, with a
+slightly mocking look, and a reserve he would not relinquish.
+
+“Do you think I shall ever see you again?” she said.
+
+“Should you like—?” he answered, with a sly smile and a faint shrug.
+
+“I should like awfully—” a flush grew on her cheek. She heard Miss
+Pinnegar’s scarcely audible step approaching.
+
+He nodded at her slightly, watching her fixedly, turning up the corners
+of his eyes slyly, his nose seeming slyly to sharpen.
+
+“All right. Next week, eh? In the morning?”
+
+“Do!” cried Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar came through the door. He glanced
+quickly over his shoulder.
+
+“Oh!” cried Miss Pinnegar. “I couldn’t imagine who it was.” She eyed
+the young fellow sharply.
+
+“Couldn’t you?” said Alvina. “We brought back these things.”
+
+“Oh yes. Well—you’d better come into the other room, to the fire,” said
+Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“I shall go along. Good-bye!” said Ciccio, and with a slight bow to
+Alvina, and a still slighter to Miss Pinnegar, he was out of the room
+and out of the front door, as if turning tail.
+
+“I suppose they’re going this morning,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE
+
+
+Alvina wept when the Natchas had gone. She loved them so much, she
+wanted to be with them. Even Ciccio she regarded as only one of the
+Natchas. She looked forward to his coming as to a visit from the
+troupe.
+
+How dull the theatre was without them! She was tired of the Endeavour.
+She wished it did not exist. The rehearsal on the Monday morning bored
+her terribly. Her father was nervous and irritable. The previous week
+had tried him sorely. He had worked himself into a state of nervous
+apprehension such as nothing would have justified, unless perhaps, if
+the wooden walls of the Endeavour had burnt to the ground, with James
+inside victimized like another Samson. He had developed a nervous
+horror of all artistes. He did not feel safe for one single moment
+whilst he depended on a single one of them.
+
+“We shall have to convert into all pictures,” he said in a nervous
+fever to Mr. May. “Don’t make any more engagements after the end of
+next month.”
+
+“Really!” said Mr. May. “Really! Have you quite decided?”
+
+“Yes quite! Yes quite!” James fluttered. “I have written about a new
+machine, and the supply of films from Chanticlers.”
+
+“Really!” said Mr. May. “Oh well then, in that case—” But he was filled
+with dismay and chagrin.
+
+“Of cauce,” he said later to Alvina, “I can’t _possibly_ stop on if we
+are nothing but a picture show!” And he arched his blanched and dismal
+eyelids with ghastly finality.
+
+“Why?” cried Alvina.
+
+“Oh—why!” He was rather ironic. “Well, it’s not my line at _all_. I’m
+not a _film-operator_!” And he put his head on one side with a grimace
+of contempt and superiority.
+
+“But you are, as well,” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes, _as well_. But not _only_! You _may_ wash the dishes in the
+scullery. But you’re not only the _char_, are you?”
+
+“But is it the same?” cried Alvina.
+
+“Of cauce!” cried Mr. May. “Of _cauce_ it’s the same.”
+
+Alvina laughed, a little heartlessly, into his pallid, stricken eyes.
+
+“But what will you do?” she asked.
+
+“I shall have to look for something else,” said the injured but
+dauntless little man. “There’s nothing _else_, is there?”
+
+“Wouldn’t you stay on?” she asked.
+
+“I wouldn’t think of it. I wouldn’t think of it.” He turtled like an
+injured pigeon.
+
+“Well,” she said, looking laconically into his face: “It’s between you
+and father—”
+
+“Of _cauce_!” he said. “Naturally! Where else—!” But his tone was a
+little spiteful, as if he had rested his last hopes on Alvina.
+
+Alvina went away. She mentioned the coming change to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar, judicious but aloof, “it’s a move in the
+right direction. But I doubt if it’ll do any good.”
+
+“Do you?” said Alvina. “Why?”
+
+“I don’t believe in the place, and I never did,” declared Miss
+Pinnegar. “I don’t believe any good will come of it.”
+
+“But why?” persisted Alvina. “What makes you feel so sure about it?”
+
+“I don’t know. But that’s how I feel. And I have from the first. It was
+wrong from the first. It was wrong to begin it.”
+
+“But why?” insisted Alvina, laughing.
+
+“Your father had no business to be led into it. He’d no business to
+touch this show business. It isn’t like him. It doesn’t belong to him.
+He’s gone against his own nature and his own life.”
+
+“Oh but,” said Alvina, “father was a showman even in the shop. He
+always was. Mother said he was like a showman in a booth.”
+
+Miss Pinnegar was taken aback.
+
+“Well!” she said sharply. “If _that’s_ what you’ve seen in him!”—there
+was a pause. “And in that case,” she continued tartly, “I think some of
+the showman has come out in his daughter! or show-woman!—which doesn’t
+improve it, to my idea.”
+
+“Why is it any worse?” said Alvina. “I enjoy it—and so does father.”
+
+“No,” cried Miss Pinnegar. “There you’re wrong! There you make a
+mistake. It’s all against his better nature.”
+
+“Really!” said Alvina, in surprise. “What a new idea! But which is
+father’s better nature?”
+
+“You may not know it,” said Miss Pinnegar coldly, “and if so, I can
+never tell you. But that doesn’t alter it.” She lapsed into dead
+silence for a moment. Then suddenly she broke out, vicious and cold:
+“He’ll go on till he’s killed himself, and _then_ he’ll know.”
+
+The little adverb _then_ came whistling across the space like a bullet.
+It made Alvina pause. Was her father going to die? She reflected. Well,
+all men must die.
+
+She forgot the question in others that occupied her. First, could she
+bear it, when the Endeavour was turned into another cheap and nasty
+film-shop? The strange figures of the artistes passing under her
+observation had really entertained her, week by week. Some weeks they
+had bored her, some weeks she had detested them, but there was always a
+chance in the coming week. Think of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras!
+
+She thought too much of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She knew it. And she
+tried to force her mind to the contemplation of the new state of
+things, when she banged at the piano to a set of dithering and boring
+pictures. There would be her father, herself, and Mr. May—or a new
+operator, a new manager. The new manager!—she thought of him for a
+moment—and thought of the mechanical factory-faced persons who
+_managed_ Wright’s and the Woodhouse Empire.
+
+But her mind fell away from this barren study. She was obsessed by the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. They seemed to have fascinated her. Which of them
+it was, or what it was that had cast the spell over her, she did not
+know. But she was as if hypnotized. She longed to be with them. Her
+soul gravitated towards them all the time.
+
+Monday passed, and Ciccio did not come: Tuesday passed: and Wednesday.
+In her soul she was sceptical of their keeping their promise—either
+Madame or Ciccio. Why should they keep their promise? She knew what
+these nomadic artistes were. And her soul was stubborn within her.
+
+On Wednesday night there was another sensation at the Endeavour. Mr.
+May found James Houghton fainting in the box-office after the
+performance had begun. What to do? He could not interrupt Alvina, nor
+the performance. He sent the chocolate-and-orange boy across to the
+Pear Tree for brandy.
+
+James revived. “I’m all right,” he said, in a brittle fashion. “I’m all
+right. Don’t bother.” So he sat with his head on his hand in the
+box-office, and Mr. May had to leave him to operate the film.
+
+When the interval arrived, Mr. May hurried to the box-office, a narrow
+hole that James could just sit in, and there he found the invalid in
+the same posture, semi-conscious. He gave him more brandy.
+
+“I’m all right, I tell you,” said James, his eyes flaring. “Leave me
+alone.” But he looked anything but all right.
+
+Mr. May hurried for Alvina. When the daughter entered the ticket place,
+her father was again in a state of torpor.
+
+“Father,” she said, shaking his shoulder gently. “What’s the matter.”
+
+He murmured something, but was incoherent. She looked at his face. It
+was grey and blank.
+
+“We shall have to get him home,” she said. “We shall have to get a
+cab.”
+
+“Give him a little brandy,” said Mr. May.
+
+The boy was sent for the cab, James swallowed a spoonful of brandy. He
+came to himself irritably.
+
+“What? What,” he said. “I won’t have all this fuss. Go on with the
+performance, there’s no need to bother about me.” His eye was wild.
+
+“You must go home, father,” said Alvina.
+
+“Leave me alone! Will you leave me alone! Hectored by women all my
+life—hectored by women—first one, then another. I won’t stand it—I
+won’t stand it—” He looked at Alvina with a look of frenzy as he lapsed
+again, fell with his head on his hands on his ticket-board. Alvina
+looked at Mr. May.
+
+“We must get him home,” she said. She covered him up with a coat, and
+sat by him. The performance went on without music. At last the cab
+came. James, unconscious, was driven up to Woodhouse. He had to be
+carried indoors. Alvina hurried ahead to make a light in the dark
+passage.
+
+“Father’s ill!” she announced to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Didn’t I say so!” said Miss Pinnegar, starting from her chair.
+
+The two women went out to meet the cab-man, who had James in his arms.
+
+“Can you manage?” cried Alvina, showing a light.
+
+“He doesn’t weigh much,” said the man.
+
+“Tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu!” went Miss Pinnegar’s tongue, in a rapid tut-tut
+of distress. “What have I said, now,” she exclaimed. “What have I said
+all along?”
+
+James was laid on the sofa. His eyes were half-shut. They made him
+drink brandy, the boy was sent for the doctor, Alvina’s bed was warmed.
+The sick man was got to bed. And then started another vigil. Alvina sat
+up in the sick room. James started and muttered, but did not regain
+consciousness. Dawn came, and he was the same. Pneumonia and pleurisy
+and a touch of meningitis. Alvina drank her tea, took a little
+breakfast, and went to bed at about nine o’clock in the morning,
+leaving James in charge of Miss Pinnegar. Time was all deranged.
+
+Miss Pinnegar was a nervous nurse. She sat in horror and apprehension,
+her eyebrows raised, starting and looking at James in terror whenever
+he made a noise. She hurried to him and did what she could. But one
+would have said she was repulsed, she found her task unconsciously
+repugnant.
+
+During the course of the morning Mrs. Rollings came up and said that
+the Italian from last week had come, and could he speak to Miss
+Houghton.
+
+“Tell him she’s resting, and Mr. Houghton is seriously ill,” said Miss
+Pinnegar sharply.
+
+When Alvina came downstairs at about four in the afternoon she found a
+package: a comb of carved bone, and a message from Madame: “To Miss
+Houghton, with kindest greetings and most sincere thanks from
+Kishwégin.”
+
+The comb with its carved, beast-faced serpent was her portion. Alvina
+asked if there had been any other message. None.
+
+Mr. May came in, and stayed for a dismal half-hour. Then Alvina went
+back to her nursing. The patient was no better, still unconscious. Miss
+Pinnegar came down, red eyed and sullen looking. The condition of James
+gave little room for hope.
+
+In the early morning he died. Alvina called Mrs. Rollings, and they
+composed the body. It was still only five o’clock, and not light.
+Alvina went to lie down in her father’s little, rather chilly chamber
+at the end of the corridor. She tried to sleep, but could not. At
+half-past seven she arose, and started the business of the new day. The
+doctor came—she went to the registrar—and so on.
+
+Mr. May came. It was decided to keep open the theatre. He would find
+some one else for the piano, some one else to issue the tickets.
+
+In the afternoon arrived Frederick Houghton, James’s cousin and nearest
+relative. He was a middle-aged, blond, florid, church-going draper from
+Knarborough, well-to-do and very _bourgeois_. He tried to talk to
+Alvina in a fatherly fashion, or a friendly, or a helpful fashion. But
+Alvina could not listen to him. He got on her nerves.
+
+Hearing the gate bang, she rose and hurried to the window. She was in
+the drawing-room with her cousin, to give the interview its proper air
+of solemnity. She saw Ciccio rearing his yellow bicycle against the
+wall, and going with his head forward along the narrow, dark way of the
+back yard, to the scullery door.
+
+“Excuse me a minute,” she said to her cousin, who looked up irritably
+as she left the room.
+
+She was just in time to open the door as Ciccio tapped. She stood on
+the doorstep above him. He looked up, with a faint smile, from under
+his black lashes.
+
+“How nice of you to come,” she said. But her face was blanched and
+tired, without expression. Only her large eyes looked blue in their
+tiredness, as she glanced down at Ciccio. He seemed to her far away.
+
+“Madame asks how is Mr. Houghton,” he said.
+
+“Father! He died this morning,” she said quietly.
+
+“He died!” exclaimed the Italian, a flash of fear and dismay going over
+his face.
+
+“Yes—this morning.” She had neither tears nor emotion, but just looked
+down on him abstractedly, from her height on the kitchen step. He
+dropped his eyes and looked at his feet. Then he lifted his eyes again,
+and looked at her. She looked back at him, as from across a distance.
+So they watched each other, as strangers across a wide, abstract
+distance.
+
+He turned and looked down the dark yard, towards the gate where he
+could just see the pale grey tire of his bicycle, and the yellow
+mud-guard. He seemed to be reflecting. If he went now, he went for
+ever. Involuntarily he turned and lifted his face again towards Alvina,
+as if studying her curiously. She remained there on the doorstep,
+neutral, blanched, with wide, still, neutral eyes. She did not seem to
+see him. He studied her with alert, yellow-dusky, inscrutable eyes,
+until she met his look. And then he gave the faintest gesture with his
+head, as of summons towards him. Her soul started, and died in her. And
+again he gave the slight, almost imperceptible jerk of the head,
+backwards and sideways, as if summoning her towards him. His face too
+was closed and expressionless. But in his eyes, which kept hers, there
+was a dark flicker of ascendancy. He was going to triumph over her. She
+knew it. And her soul sank as if it sank out of her body. It sank away
+out of her body, left her there powerless, soulless.
+
+And yet as he turned, with his head stretched forward, to move away: as
+he glanced slightly over his shoulder: she stepped down from the step,
+down to his level, to follow him. He went ducking along the dark yard,
+nearly to the gate. Near the gate, near his bicycle, was a corner made
+by a shed. Here he turned, lingeringly, to her, and she lingered in
+front of him.
+
+Her eyes were wide and neutral and submissive, with a new, awful
+submission as if she had lost her soul. So she looked up at him, like a
+victim. There was a faint smile in his eyes. He stretched forward over
+her.
+
+“You love me? Yes?—Yes?” he said, in a voice that seemed like a
+palpable contact on her.
+
+“Yes,” she whispered involuntarily, soulless, like a victim. He put his
+arm round her, subtly, and lifted her.
+
+“Yes,” he re-echoed, almost mocking in his triumph. “Yes. Yes!” And
+smiling, he kissed her, delicately, with a certain finesse of
+knowledge. She moaned in spirit, in his arms, felt herself dead, dead.
+And he kissed her with a finesse, a passionate finesse which seemed
+like coals of fire on her head.
+
+They heard footsteps. Miss Pinnegar was coming to look for her. Ciccio
+set her down, looked long into her eyes, inscrutably, smiling, and
+said:
+
+“I come tomorrow.”
+
+With which he ducked and ran out of the yard, picking up his bicycle
+like a feather, and, taking no notice of Miss Pinnegar, letting the
+yard-door bang to behind him.
+
+“Alvina!” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+But Alvina did not answer. She turned, slipped past, ran indoors and
+upstairs to the little bare bedroom she had made her own. She locked
+the door and kneeled down on the floor, bowing down her head to her
+knees in a paroxysm on the floor. In a paroxysm—because she loved him.
+She doubled herself up in a paroxysm on her knees on the floor—because
+she loved him. It was far more like pain, like agony, than like joy.
+She swayed herself to and fro in a paroxysm of unbearable sensation,
+because she loved him.
+
+Miss Pinnegar came and knocked at the door.
+
+“Alvina! Alvina! Oh, you are there! Whatever are you doing? Aren’t you
+coming down to speak to your cousin?”
+
+“Soon,” said Alvina.
+
+And taking a pillow from the bed, she crushed it against herself and
+swayed herself unconsciously, in her orgasm of unbearable feeling.
+Right in her bowels she felt it—the terrible, unbearable feeling. How
+could she bear it.
+
+She crouched over until she became still. A moment of stillness seemed
+to cover her like sleep: an eternity of sleep in that one second. Then
+she roused and got up. She went to the mirror, still, evanescent, and
+tidied her hair, smoothed her face. She was so still, so remote, she
+felt that nothing, nothing could ever touch her.
+
+And so she went downstairs, to that horrible cousin of her father’s.
+She seemed so intangible, remote and virginal, that her cousin and Miss
+Pinnegar both failed to make anything of her. She answered their
+questions simply, but did not talk. They talked to each other. And at
+last the cousin went away, with a profound dislike of Miss Alvina.
+
+She did not notice. She was only glad he was gone. And she went about
+for the rest of the day elusive and vague. She slept deeply that night,
+without dreams.
+
+The next day was Saturday. It came with a great storm of wind and rain
+and hail: a fury. Alvina looked out in dismay. She knew Ciccio would
+not be able to come—he could not cycle, and it was impossible to get by
+train and return the same day. She was almost relieved. She was
+relieved by the intermission of fate, she was thankful for the day of
+neutrality.
+
+In the early afternoon came a telegram: Coming both tomorrow morning
+deepest sympathy Madame. Tomorrow was Sunday: and the funeral was in
+the afternoon. Alvina felt a burning inside her, thinking of Ciccio.
+She winced—and yet she wanted him to come. Terribly she wanted him to
+come.
+
+She showed the telegram to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Good gracious!” said the weary Miss Pinnegar. “Fancy those people. And
+I warrant they’ll want to be at the funeral. As if he was anything to
+_them_—”
+
+“I think it’s very nice of her,” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh well,” said Miss Pinnegar. “If you think so. I don’t fancy he would
+have wanted such people following, myself. And what does she mean by
+_both_. Who’s the other?” Miss Pinnegar looked sharply at Alvina.
+
+“Ciccio,” said Alvina.
+
+“The Italian! Why goodness me! What’s _he_ coming for? I can’t make you
+out, Alvina. Is that his name, Chicho? I never heard such a name.
+Doesn’t sound like a name at all to me. There won’t be room for them in
+the cabs.”
+
+“We’ll order another.”
+
+“More expense. I never knew such impertinent people—”
+
+But Alvina did not hear her. On the next morning she dressed herself
+carefully in her new dress. It was black voile. Carefully she did her
+hair. Ciccio and Madame were coming. The thought of Ciccio made her
+shudder. She hung about, waiting. Luckily none of the funeral guests
+would arrive till after one o’clock. Alvina sat listless, musing, by
+the fire in the drawing-room. She left everything now to Miss Pinnegar
+and Mrs. Rollings. Miss Pinnegar, red-eyed and yellow-skinned, was
+irritable beyond words.
+
+It was nearly mid-day when Alvina heard the gate. She hurried to open
+the front door. Madame was in her little black hat and her black
+spotted veil, Ciccio in a black overcoat was closing the yard door
+behind her.
+
+“Oh, my dear girl!” Madame cried, trotting forward with outstretched
+black-kid hands, one of which held an umbrella: “I am so shocked—I am
+so shocked to hear of your poor father. Am I to believe it?—am I
+really? No, I can’t.”
+
+She lifted her veil, kissed Alvina, and dabbed her eyes. Ciccio came up
+the steps. He took off his hat to Alvina, smiled slightly as he passed
+her. He looked rather pale, constrained. She closed the door and
+ushered them into the drawing-room.
+
+Madame looked round like a bird, examining the room and the furniture.
+She was evidently a little impressed. But all the time she was uttering
+her condolences.
+
+“Tell me, poor girl, how it happened?”
+
+“There isn’t much to tell,” said Alvina, and she gave the brief account
+of James’s illness and death.
+
+“Worn out! Worn out!” Madame said, nodding slowly up and down. Her
+black veil, pushed up, sagged over her brows like a mourning band. “You
+cannot afford to waste the stamina. And will you keep on the
+theatre—with Mr. May—?”
+
+Ciccio was sitting looking towards the fire. His presence made Alvina
+tremble. She noticed how the fine black hair of his head showed no
+parting at all—it just grew like a close cap, and was pushed aside at
+the forehead. Sometimes he looked at her, as Madame talked, and again
+looked at her, and looked away.
+
+At last Madame came to a halt. There was a long pause.
+
+“You will stay to the funeral?” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh my dear, we shall be too much—”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “I have arranged for you—”
+
+“There! You think of everything. But I will come, not Ciccio. He will
+not trouble you.”
+
+Ciccio looked up at Alvina.
+
+“I should like him to come,” said Alvina simply. But a deep flush began
+to mount her face. She did not know where it came from, she felt so
+cold. And she wanted to cry.
+
+Madame watched her closely.
+
+“Siamo di accordo,” came the voice of Ciccio.
+
+Alvina and Madame both looked at him. He sat constrained, with his face
+averted, his eyes dropped, but smiling.
+
+Madame looked closely at Alvina.
+
+“Is it true what he says?” she asked.
+
+“I don’t understand him,” said Alvina. “I don’t understand what he
+said.”
+
+“That you have agreed with him—”
+
+Madame and Ciccio both watched Alvina as she sat in her new black
+dress. Her eyes involuntarily turned to his.
+
+“I don’t know,” she said vaguely. “Have I—?” and she looked at him.
+
+Madame kept silence for some moments. Then she said gravely:
+
+“Well!—yes!—well!” She looked from one to another. “Well, there is a
+lot to consider. But if you have decided—”
+
+Neither of them answered. Madame suddenly rose and went to Alvina. She
+kissed her on either cheek.
+
+“I shall protect you,” she said.
+
+Then she returned to her seat.
+
+“What have you said to Miss Houghton?” she said suddenly to Ciccio,
+tackling him direct, and speaking coldly.
+
+He looked at Madame with a faint derisive smile. Then he turned to
+Alvina. She bent her head and blushed.
+
+“Speak then,” said Madame, “you have a reason.” She seemed mistrustful
+of him.
+
+But he turned aside his face, and refused to speak, sitting as if he
+were unaware of Madame’s presence.
+
+“Oh well,” said Madame. “I shall be there, Signorino.”
+
+She spoke with a half-playful threat. Ciccio curled his lip.
+
+“You do not know him yet,” she said, turning to Alvina.
+
+“I know that,” said Alvina, offended. Then she added: “Wouldn’t you
+like to take off your hat?”
+
+“If you truly wish me to stay,” said Madame.
+
+“Yes, please do. And will you hang your coat in the hall?” she said to
+Ciccio.
+
+“Oh!” said Madame roughly. “He will not stay to eat. He will go out to
+somewhere.”
+
+Alvina looked at him.
+
+“Would you rather?” she said.
+
+He looked at her with sardonic yellow eyes.
+
+“If you want,” he said, the awkward, derisive smile curling his lips
+and showing his teeth.
+
+She had a moment of sheer panic. Was he just stupid and bestial? The
+thought went clean through her. His yellow eyes watched her
+sardonically. It was the clean modelling of his dark, other-world face
+that decided her—for it sent the deep spasm across her.
+
+“I’d like you to stay,” she said.
+
+A smile of triumph went over his face. Madame watched him stonily as
+she stood beside her chair, one hand lightly balanced on her hip.
+Alvina was reminded of Kishwégin. But even in Madame’s stony mistrust
+there was an element of attraction towards him. He had taken his
+cigarette case from his pocket.
+
+“On ne fume pas dans le salon,” said Madame brutally.
+
+“Will you put your coat in the passage?—and do smoke if you wish,” said
+Alvina.
+
+He rose to his feet and took off his overcoat. His face was obstinate
+and mocking. He was rather floridly dressed, though in black, and wore
+boots of black patent leather with tan uppers. Handsome he was—but
+undeniably in bad taste. The silver ring was still on his finger—and
+his close, fine, unparted hair went badly with smart English clothes.
+He looked common—Alvina confessed it. And her heart sank. But what was
+she to do? He evidently was not happy. Obstinacy made him stick out the
+situation.
+
+Alvina and Madame went upstairs. Madame wanted to see the dead James.
+She looked at his frail, handsome, ethereal face, and crossed herself
+as she wept.
+
+“Un bel homme, cependant,” she whispered. “Mort en un jour. C’est trop
+fort, voyez!” And she sniggered with fear and sobs.
+
+They went down to Alvina’s bare room. Madame glanced round, as she did
+in every room she entered.
+
+“This was father’s bedroom,” said Alvina. “The other was mine. He
+wouldn’t have it anything but like this—bare.”
+
+“Nature of a monk, a hermit,” whispered Madame. “Who would have thought
+it! Ah, the men, the men!”
+
+And she unpinned her hat and patted her hair before the small mirror,
+into which she had to peep to see herself. Alvina stood waiting.
+
+“And now—” whispered Madame, suddenly turning: “What about this Ciccio,
+hein?” It was ridiculous that she would not raise her voice above a
+whisper, upstairs there. But so it was.
+
+She scrutinized Alvina with her eyes of bright black glass. Alvina
+looked back at her, but did not know what to say.
+
+“What about him, hein? Will you marry him? Why will you?”
+
+“I suppose because I like him,” said Alvina, flushing.
+
+Madame made a little grimace.
+
+“Oh yes!” she whispered, with a contemptuous mouth. “Oh yes!—because
+you like him! But you know nothing _of_ him—nothing. How can you like
+him, not knowing him? He may be a real bad character. How would you
+like him then?”
+
+“He isn’t, is he?” said Alvina.
+
+“I don’t know. I don’t know. He may be. Even I, I don’t know him—no,
+though he has been with me for three years. What is he? He is a man of
+the people, a boatman, a labourer, an artist’s model. He sticks to
+nothing—”
+
+“How old is he?” asked Alvina.
+
+“He is twenty-five—a boy only. And you? You are older.”
+
+“Thirty,” confessed Alvina.
+
+“Thirty! Well now—so much difference! How can you trust him? How can
+you? Why does he want to marry you—why?”
+
+“I don’t know—” said Alvina.
+
+“No, and I don’t know. But I know something of these Italian men, who
+are labourers in every country, just labourers and under-men always,
+always down, down, down—” And Madame pressed her spread palms
+downwards. “And so—when they have a chance to come up—” she raised her
+hand with a spring—“they are very conceited, and they take their
+chance. He will want to rise, by you, and you will go down, with him.
+That is how it is. I have seen it before—yes—more than one time—”
+
+“But,” said Alvina, laughing ruefully. “He can’t rise much because of
+me, can he?”
+
+“How not? How not? In the first place, you are English, and he thinks
+to rise by that. Then you are not of the lower class, you are of the
+higher class, the class of the masters, such as employ Ciccio and men
+like him. How will he not rise in the world by you? Yes, he will rise
+very much. Or he will draw you down, down—Yes, one or another. And then
+he thinks that now you have money—now your father is dead—” here Madame
+glanced apprehensively at the closed door—“and they all like money,
+yes, very much, all Italians—”
+
+“Do they?” said Alvina, scared. “I’m sure there won’t _be_ any money.
+I’m sure father is in debt.”
+
+“What? You think? Do you? Really? Oh poor Miss Houghton! Well—and will
+you tell Ciccio that? Eh? Hein?”
+
+“Yes—certainly—if it matters,” said poor Alvina.
+
+“Of course it matters. Of course it matters very much. It matters to
+him. Because he will not have much. He saves, saves, saves, as they all
+do, to go back to Italy and buy a piece of land. And if he has you, it
+will cost him much more, he cannot continue with Natcha-Kee-Tawara. All
+will be much more difficult—”
+
+“Oh, I will tell him in time,” said Alvina, pale at the lips.
+
+“You will tell him! Yes. That is better. And then you will see. But he
+is obstinate—as a mule. And if he will still have you, then you must
+think. Can you live in England as the wife of a labouring man, a dirty
+Eyetalian, as they all say? It is serious. It is not pleasant for you,
+who have not known it. I also have not known it. But I have seen—”
+Alvina watched with wide, troubled eyes, while Madame darted looks, as
+from bright, deep black glass.
+
+“Yes,” said Alvina. “I should hate being a labourer’s wife in a nasty
+little house in a street—”
+
+“In a house?” cried Madame. “It would not be in a house. They live many
+together in one house. It would be two rooms, or even one room, in
+another house with many people not quite clean, you see—”
+
+Alvina shook her head.
+
+“I couldn’t stand that,” she said finally.
+
+“No!” Madame nodded approval. “No! you could not. They live in a bad
+way, the Italians. They do not know the English home—never. They don’t
+like it. Nor do they know the Swiss clean and proper house. No. They
+don’t understand. They run into their holes to sleep or to shelter, and
+that is all.”
+
+“The same in Italy?” said Alvina.
+
+“Even more—because there it is sunny very often—”
+
+“And you don’t need a house,” said Alvina. “I should like that.”
+
+“Yes, it is nice—but you don’t know the life. And you would be alone
+with people like animals. And if you go to Italy he will beat you—he
+will beat you—”
+
+“If I let him,” said Alvina.
+
+“But you can’t help it, away there from everybody. Nobody will help
+you. If you are a wife in Italy, nobody will help you. You are his
+property, when you marry by Italian law. It is not like England. There
+is no divorce in Italy. And if he beats you, you are helpless—”
+
+“But why should he beat me?” said Alvina. “Why should he want to?”
+
+“They do. They are so jealous. And then they go into their ungovernable
+tempers, horrible tempers—”
+
+“Only when they are provoked,” said Alvina, thinking of Max.
+
+“Yes, but you will not know what provokes him. Who can _say_ when he
+will be provoked? And then he beats you—”
+
+There seemed to be a gathering triumph in Madame’s bright black eyes.
+Alvina looked at her, and turned to the door.
+
+“At any rate I know now,” she said, in rather a flat voice.
+
+“And it is _true_. It is all of it true,” whispered Madame
+vindictively. Alvina wanted to run from her.
+
+“I _must_ go to the kitchen,” she said. “Shall we go down?”
+
+Alvina did not go into the drawing-room with Madame. She was too much
+upset, and she had almost a horror of seeing Ciccio at that moment.
+
+Miss Pinnegar, her face stained carmine by the fire, was helping Mrs.
+Rollings with the dinner.
+
+“Are they both staying, or only one?” she said tartly.
+
+“Both,” said Alvina, busying herself with the gravy, to hide her
+distress and confusion.
+
+“The man as well,” said Miss Pinnegar. “What does the woman want to
+bring _him_ for? I’m sure I don’t know what your father would say—a
+common show-fellow, _looks_ what he is—and staying to dinner.”
+
+Miss Pinnegar was thoroughly out of temper as she tried the potatoes.
+Alvina set the table. Then she went to the drawing-room.
+
+“Will you come to dinner?” she said to her two guests.
+
+Ciccio rose, threw his cigarette into the fire, and looked round.
+Outside was a faint, watery sunshine: but at least it was out of doors.
+He felt himself imprisoned and out of his element. He had an
+irresistible impulse to go.
+
+When he got into the hall he laid his hand on his hat. The stupid,
+constrained smile was on his face.
+
+“I’ll go now,” he said.
+
+“We have set the table for you,” said Alvina.
+
+“Stop now, since you have stopped for so long,” said Madame, darting
+her black looks at him.
+
+But he hurried on his coat, looking stupid. Madame lifted her eyebrows
+disdainfully.
+
+“This is polite behaviour!” she said sarcastically.
+
+Alvina stood at a loss.
+
+“You return to the funeral?” said Madame coldly.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“When you are ready to go,” he said.
+
+“At four o’clock,” said Madame, “when the funeral has come home. Then
+we shall be in time for the train.”
+
+He nodded, smiled stupidly, opened the door, and went.
+
+“This is just like him, to be so—so—” Madame could not express herself
+as she walked down to the kitchen.
+
+“Miss Pinnegar, this is Madame,” said Alvina.
+
+“How do you do?” said Miss Pinnegar, a little distant and
+condescending. Madame eyed her keenly.
+
+“Where is the man? I don’t know his name,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“He wouldn’t stay,” said Alvina. “What _is_ his name, Madame?”
+
+“Marasca—Francesco. Francesco Marasca—Neapolitan.”
+
+“Marasca!” echoed Alvina.
+
+“It has a bad sound—a sound of a bad augury, bad sign,” said Madame.
+“Ma-rà-sca!” She shook her head at the taste of the syllables.
+
+“Why do you think so?” said Alvina. “Do you think there is a meaning in
+sounds? goodness and badness?”
+
+“Yes,” said Madame. “Certainly. Some sounds are good, they are for
+life, for creating, and some sounds are bad, they are for destroying.
+Ma-rà-sca!—that is bad, like swearing.”
+
+“But what sort of badness? What does it do?” said Alvina.
+
+“What does it do? It sends life down—down—instead of lifting it up.”
+
+“Why should things always go up? Why should life always go up?” said
+Alvina.
+
+“I don’t know,” said Madame, cutting her meat quickly. There was a
+pause.
+
+“And what about other names,” interrupted Miss Pinnegar, a little
+lofty. “What about Houghton, for example?”
+
+Madame put down her fork, but kept her knife in her hand. She looked
+across the room, not at Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Houghton—! Huff-ton!” she said. “When it is said, it has a sound
+_against_: that is, against the neighbour, against humanity. But when
+it is written _Hough-ton!_ then it is different, it is _for_.”
+
+“It is always pronounced _Huff-ton_,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“By us,” said Alvina.
+
+“We ought to know,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Madame turned to look at the unhappy, elderly woman.
+
+“You are a relative of the family?” she said.
+
+“No, not a relative. But I’ve been here many years,” said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+“Oh, yes!” said Madame. Miss Pinnegar was frightfully affronted. The
+meal, with the three women at table, passed painfully.
+
+Miss Pinnegar rose to go upstairs and weep. She felt very forlorn.
+Alvina rose to wipe the dishes, hastily, because the funeral guests
+would all be coming. Madame went into the drawing-room to smoke her sly
+cigarette.
+
+Mr. May was the first to turn up for the lugubrious affair: very tight
+and tailored, but a little extinguished, all in black. He never wore
+black, and was very unhappy in it, being almost morbidly sensitive to
+the impression the colour made on him. He was set to entertain Madame.
+
+She did not pretend distress, but sat black-eyed and watchful, very
+much her business self.
+
+“What about the theatre?—will it go on?” she asked.
+
+“Well I don’t know. I don’t know Miss Houghton’s intentions,” said Mr.
+May. He was a little stilted today.
+
+“It’s hers?” said Madame.
+
+“Why, as far as I understand—”
+
+“And if she wants to sell out—?”
+
+Mr. May spread his hands, and looked dismal, but distant.
+
+“You should form a company, and carry on—” said Madame.
+
+Mr. May looked even more distant, drawing himself up in an odd fashion,
+so that he looked as if he were trussed. But Madame’s shrewd black eyes
+and busy mind did not let him off.
+
+“Buy Miss Houghton out—” said Madame shrewdly.
+
+“Of cauce,” said Mr. May. “Miss Houghton herself must decide.”
+
+“Oh sure—! You—are you married?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Your wife here?”
+
+“My wife is in London.”
+
+“And children—?”
+
+“A daughter.”
+
+Madame slowly nodded her head up and down, as if she put thousands of
+two-and-two’s together.
+
+“You think there will be much to come to Miss Houghton?” she said.
+
+“Do you mean property? I really can’t say. I haven’t enquired.”
+
+“No, but you have a good idea, eh?”
+
+“I’m afraid I haven’t.
+
+“No! Well! It won’t be much, then?”
+
+“Really, I don’t know. I should say, not a _large_ fortune—!”
+
+“No—eh?” Madame kept him fixed with her black eyes. “Do you think the
+other one will get anything?”
+
+“The _other one_—?” queried Mr. May, with an uprising cadence. Madame
+nodded slightly towards the kitchen.
+
+“The old one—the Miss—Miss Pin—Pinny—what you call her.”
+
+“Miss Pinnegar! The manageress of the work-girls? Really, I don’t know
+at all—” Mr. May was most freezing.
+
+“Ha—ha! Ha—ha!” mused Madame quietly. Then she asked: “Which work-girls
+do you say?”
+
+And she listened astutely to Mr. May’s forced account of the work-room
+upstairs, extorting all the details she desired to gather. Then there
+was a pause. Madame glanced round the room.
+
+“Nice house!” she said. “Is it their own?”
+
+“So I _believe_—”
+
+Again Madame nodded sagely. “Debts perhaps—eh? Mortgage—” and she
+looked slyly sardonic.
+
+“Really!” said Mr. May, bouncing to his feet. “Do you mind if I go to
+speak to Mrs. Rollings—”
+
+“Oh no—go along,” said Madame, and Mr. May skipped out in a temper.
+
+Madame was left alone in her comfortable chair, studying details of the
+room and making accounts in her own mind, until the actual funeral
+guests began to arrive. And then she had the satisfaction of sizing
+them up. Several arrived with wreaths. The coffin had been carried down
+and laid in the small sitting-room—Mrs. Houghton’s sitting-room. It was
+covered with white wreaths and streamers of purple ribbon. There was a
+crush and a confusion.
+
+And then at last the hearse and the cabs had arrived—the coffin was
+carried out—Alvina followed, on the arm of her father’s cousin, whom
+she disliked. Miss Pinnegar marshalled the other mourners. It was a
+wretched business.
+
+But it was a great funeral. There were nine cabs, besides the
+hearse—Woodhouse had revived its ancient respect for the house of
+Houghton. A posse of minor tradesmen followed the cabs—all in black and
+with black gloves. The richer tradesmen sat in the cabs.
+
+Poor Alvina, this was the only day in all her life when she was the
+centre of public attention. For once, every eye was upon her, every
+mind was thinking about her. Poor Alvina! said every member of the
+Woodhouse “middle class”: Poor Alvina Houghton, said every collier’s
+wife. Poor thing, left alone—and hardly a penny to bless herself with.
+Lucky if she’s not left with a pile of debts. James Houghton ran
+through some money in his day. Ay, if she had her rights she’d be a
+rich woman. Why, her mother brought three or four thousands with her.
+Ay, but James sank it all in Throttle-Ha’penny and Klondyke and the
+Endeavour. Well, he was his own worst enemy. He paid his way. I’m not
+so sure about that. Look how he served his wife, and now Alvina. I’m
+not so sure he was his own worst enemy. He was bad enough enemy to his
+own flesh and blood. Ah well, he’ll spend no more money, anyhow. No, he
+went sudden, didn’t he? But he was getting very frail, if you noticed.
+Oh yes, why he fair seemed to totter down to Lumley. Do you reckon as
+that place pays its way? What, the Endeavour?—they say it does. They
+say it makes a nice bit. Well, it’s mostly pretty full. Ay, it is.
+Perhaps it won’t be now Mr. Houghton’s gone. Perhaps not. I wonder if
+he _will_ leave much. I’m sure he won’t. Everything he’s got’s
+mortgaged up to the hilt. He’ll leave debts, you see if he doesn’t.
+What is she going to do then? She’ll have to go out of Manchester
+House—her and Miss Pinnegar. Wonder what she’ll do. Perhaps she’ll take
+up that nursing. She never made much of that, did she—and spent a sight
+of money on her training, they say. She’s a bit like her father in the
+business line—all flukes. Pity some nice young man doesn’t turn up and
+marry her. I don’t know, she doesn’t seem to hook on, does she? Why
+she’s never had a proper boy. They make out she was engaged once. Ay,
+but nobody ever saw him, and it was off as soon as it was on. Can you
+remember she went with Albert Witham for a bit. Did she? No, I never
+knew. When was that? Why, when he was at Oxford, you know, learning for
+his head master’s place. Why didn’t she marry him then? Perhaps he
+never asked her. Ay, there’s that to it. She’d have looked down her
+nose at him, times gone by. Ay, but that’s all over, my boy. She’d snap
+at anybody now. Look how she carries on with that manager. Why,
+_that’s_ something awful. Haven’t you ever watched her in the Cinema?
+She never lets him alone. And it’s anybody alike. Oh, she doesn’t
+respect herself. I don’t consider. No girl who respected herself would
+go on as she does, throwing herself at every feller’s head. Does she,
+though? Ay, any performer or anybody. She’s a tidy age, though. She’s
+not much chance of getting off. How old do you reckon she is? Must be
+well over thirty. You never say. Well, she _looks_ it. She does beguy—a
+dragged old maid. Oh but she sprightles up a bit sometimes. Ay, when
+she thinks she’s hooked on to somebody. I wonder why she never did
+take? It’s funny. Oh, she was too high and mighty before, and now it’s
+too late. Nobody wants her. And she’s got no relations to go to either,
+has she? No, that’s her father’s cousin who she’s walking with. Look,
+they’re coming. He’s a fine-looking man, isn’t he? You’d have thought
+they’d have buried Miss Frost beside Mrs. Houghton. You would, wouldn’t
+you? I should think Alvina will lie by Miss Frost. They say the grave
+was made for both of them. Ay, she was a lot more of a mother to her
+than her own mother. She _was_ good to them, Miss Frost was. Alvina
+thought the world of her. That’s her stone—look, down there. Not a very
+grand one, considering. No, it isn’t. Look, there’s room for Alvina’s
+name underneath. Sh!—
+
+Alvina had sat back in the cab and watched from her obscurity the many
+faces on the street: so familiar, so familiar, familiar as her own
+face. And now she seemed to see them from a great distance, out of her
+darkness. Her big cousin sat opposite her—how she disliked his
+presence.
+
+In chapel she cried, thinking of her mother, and Miss Frost, and her
+father. She felt so desolate—it all seemed so empty. Bitterly she
+cried, when she bent down during the prayer. And her crying started
+Miss Pinnegar, who cried almost as bitterly. It was all rather
+horrible. The afterwards—the horrible afterwards.
+
+There was the slow progress to the cemetery. It was a dull, cold day.
+Alvina shivered as she stood on the bleak hillside, by the open grave.
+Her coat did not seem warm enough, her old black seal-skin furs were
+not much protection. The minister stood on the plank by the grave, and
+she stood near, watching the white flowers blowing in the cold wind.
+She had watched them for her mother—and for Miss Frost. She felt a
+sudden clinging to Miss Pinnegar. Yet they would have to part. Miss
+Pinnegar had been so fond of her father, in a quaint, reserved way.
+Poor Miss Pinnegar, that was all life had offered her. Well, after all,
+it had been a home and a home life. To which home and home life Alvina
+now clung with a desperate yearning, knowing inevitably she was going
+to lose it, now her father was gone. Strange, that he was gone. But he
+was weary, worn very thin and weary. He had lived his day. How
+different it all was, now, at his death, from the time when Alvina knew
+him as a little child and thought him such a fine gentleman. You live
+and learn and lose.
+
+For one moment she looked at Madame, who was shuddering with cold, her
+face hidden behind her black spotted veil. But Madame seemed immensely
+remote: so unreal. And Ciccio—what was his name? She could not think of
+it. What was it? She tried to think of Madame’s slow enunciation.
+Marasca—maraschino. Marasca! Maraschino! What was maraschino? Where had
+she heard it. Cudgelling her brains, she remembered the doctors, and
+the suppers after the theatre. And maraschino—why, that was the
+favourite white liqueur of the innocent Dr. Young. She could remember
+even now the way he seemed to smack his lips, saying the word
+_maraschino_. Yet she didn’t think much of it. Hot, bitterish
+stuff—nothing: not like green Chartreuse, which Dr. James gave her.
+Maraschino! Yes, that was it. Made from cherries. Well, Ciccio’s name
+was nearly the same. Ridiculous! But she supposed Italian words were a
+good deal alike.
+
+Ciccio, the marasca, the bitter cherry, was standing on the edge of the
+crowd, looking on. He had no connection whatever with the
+proceedings—stood outside, self-conscious, uncomfortable, bitten by the
+wind, and hating the people who stared at him. He saw the trim, plump
+figure of Madame, like some trim plump partridge among a flock of
+barn-yard fowls. And he depended on her presence. Without her, he would
+have felt too horribly uncomfortable on that raw hillside. She and he
+were in some way allied. But these others, how alien and uncouth he
+felt them. Impressed by their fine clothes, the English working-classes
+were none the less barbarians to him, uncivilized: just as he was to
+them an uncivilized animal. Uncouth, they seemed to him, all raw angles
+and harshness, like their own weather. Not that he thought about them.
+But he felt it in his flesh, the harshness and discomfort of them. And
+Alvina was one of them. As she stood there by the grave, pale and
+pinched and reserved looking, she was of a piece with the hideous cold
+grey discomfort of the whole scene. Never had anything been more
+uncongenial to him. He was dying to get away—to clear out. That was all
+he wanted. Only some southern obstinacy made him watch, from the
+duskiness of his face, the pale, reserved girl at the grave. Perhaps he
+even disliked her, at that time. But he watched in his dislike.
+
+When the ceremony was over, and the mourners turned away to go back to
+the cabs, Madame pressed forward to Alvina.
+
+“I shall say good-bye now, Miss Houghton. We must go to the station for
+the train. And thank you, thank you. Good-bye.”
+
+“But—” Alvina looked round.
+
+“Ciccio is there. I see him. We must catch the train.”
+
+“Oh but—won’t you drive? Won’t you ask Ciccio to drive with you in the
+cab? Where is he?”
+
+Madame pointed him out as he hung back among the graves, his black hat
+cocked a little on one side. He was watching. Alvina broke away from
+her cousin, and went to him.
+
+“Madame is going to drive to the station,” she said. “She wants you to
+get in with her.”
+
+He looked round at the cabs.
+
+“All right,” he said, and he picked his way across the graves to
+Madame, following Alvina.
+
+“So, we go together in the cab,” said Madame to him. Then: “Good-bye,
+my dear Miss Houghton. Perhaps we shall meet once more. Who knows? My
+heart is with you, my dear.” She put her arms round Alvina and kissed
+her, a little theatrically. The cousin looked on, very much aloof.
+Ciccio stood by.
+
+“Come then, Ciccio,” said Madame.
+
+“Good-bye,” said Alvina to him. “You’ll come again, won’t you?” She
+looked at him from her strained, pale face.
+
+“All right,” he said, shaking her hand loosely. It sounded hopelessly
+indefinite.
+
+“You will come, won’t you?” she repeated, staring at him with strained,
+unseeing blue eyes.
+
+“All right,” he said, ducking and turning away.
+
+She stood quite still for a moment, quite lost. Then she went on with
+her cousin to her cab, home to the funeral tea.
+
+“Good-bye!” Madame fluttered a black-edged handkerchief. But Ciccio,
+most uncomfortable in his four-wheeler, kept hidden.
+
+The funeral tea, with its baked meats and sweets, was a terrible
+affair. But it came to an end, as everything comes to an end, and Miss
+Pinnegar and Alvina were left alone in the emptiness of Manchester
+House.
+
+“If you weren’t here, Miss Pinnegar, I should be quite by myself,” said
+Alvina, blanched and strained.
+
+“Yes. And so should I without you,” said Miss Pinnegar doggedly. They
+looked at each other. And that night both slept in Miss Pinnegar’s bed,
+out of sheer terror of the empty house.
+
+During the days following the funeral, no one could have been more
+tiresome than Alvina. James had left everything to his daughter,
+excepting some rights in the work-shop, which were Miss Pinnegar’s. But
+the question was, how much did “everything” amount to? There was
+something less than a hundred pounds in the bank. There was a mortgage
+on Manchester House. There were substantial bills owing on account of
+the Endeavour. Alvina had about a hundred pounds left from the
+insurance money, when all funeral expenses were paid. Of that she was
+sure, and of nothing else.
+
+For the rest, she was almost driven mad by people coming to talk to
+her. The lawyer came, the clergyman came, her cousin came, the old,
+stout, prosperous tradesmen of Woodhouse came, Mr. May came, Miss
+Pinnegar came. And they all had schemes, and they all had advice. The
+chief plan was that the theatre should be sold up: and that Manchester
+House should be sold, reserving a lease on the top floor, where Miss
+Pinnegar’s work-rooms were: that Miss Pinnegar and Alvina should move
+into a small house, Miss Pinnegar keeping the work-room, Alvina giving
+music-lessons: that the two women should be partners in the work-shop.
+
+There were other plans, of course. There was a faction against the
+chapel faction, which favoured the plan sketched out above. The theatre
+faction, including Mr. May and some of the more florid tradesmen,
+favoured the risking of everything in the Endeavour. Alvina was to be
+the proprietress of the Endeavour, she was to run it on some sort of
+successful lines, and abandon all other enterprise. Minor plans
+included the election of Alvina to the post of parish nurse, at six
+pounds a month: a small private school; a small haberdashery shop; and
+a position in the office of her cousin’s Knarborough business. To one
+and all Alvina answered with a tantalizing: “I don’t know what I’m
+going to do. I don’t know. I can’t say yet. I shall see. I shall see.”
+Till one and all became angry with her. They were all so benevolent,
+and all so sure that they were proposing the very best thing she could
+do. And they were all nettled, even indignant that she did not jump at
+their proposals. She listened to them all. She even invited their
+advice. Continually she said: “Well, what do _you_ think of it?” And
+she repeated the chapel plan to the theatre group, the theatre plan to
+the chapel party, the nursing to the pianoforte proposers, the
+haberdashery shop to the private school advocates. “Tell me what _you_
+think,” she said repeatedly. And they all told her they thought _their_
+plan was best. And bit by bit she told every advocate the proposal of
+every other advocate “Well, Lawyer Beeby thinks—” and “Well now, Mr.
+Clay, the minister, advises—” and so on and so on, till it was all
+buzzing through thirty benevolent and officious heads. And thirty
+benevolently-officious wills were striving to plant each one its own
+particular scheme of benevolence. And Alvina, naïve and pathetic, egged
+them all on in their strife, without even knowing what she was doing.
+One thing only was certain. Some obstinate will in her own self
+absolutely refused to have her mind made up. She would _not_ have her
+mind made up for her, and she would not make it up for herself. And so
+everybody began to say “I’m getting tired of her. You talk to her, and
+you get no forrarder. She slips off to something else. I’m not going to
+bother with her any more.” In truth, Woodhouse was in a fever, for
+three weeks or more, arranging Alvina’s unarrangeable future for her.
+Offers of charity were innumerable—for three weeks.
+
+Meanwhile, the lawyer went on with the proving of the will and the
+drawing up of a final account of James’s property; Mr. May went on with
+the Endeavour, though Alvina did not go down to play; Miss Pinnegar
+went on with the work-girls: and Alvina went on unmaking her mind.
+
+Ciccio did not come during the first week. Alvina had a post-card from
+Madame, from Cheshire: rather far off. But such was the buzz and
+excitement over her material future, such a fever was worked up round
+about her that Alvina, the petty-propertied heroine of the moment, was
+quite carried away in a storm of schemes and benevolent suggestions.
+She answered Madame’s post-card, but did not give much thought to the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. As a matter of fact, she was enjoying a real moment
+of importance, there at the centre of Woodhouse’s rather domineering
+benevolence: a benevolence which she unconsciously, but systematically
+frustrated. All this scheming for selling out and making reservations
+and hanging on and fixing prices and getting private bids for
+Manchester House and for the Endeavour, the excitement of forming a
+Limited Company to run the Endeavour, of seeing a lawyer about the sale
+of Manchester House and the auctioneer about the sale of the furniture,
+of receiving men who wanted to pick up the machines upstairs cheap, and
+of keeping everything dangling, deciding nothing, putting everything
+off till she had seen somebody else, this for the moment fascinated
+her, went to her head. It was not until the second week had passed that
+her excitement began to merge into irritation, and not until the third
+week had gone by that she began to feel herself entangled in an
+asphyxiating web of indecision, and her heart began to sing because
+Ciccio had never turned up. Now she would have given anything to see
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras again. But she did not know where they were. Now
+she began to loathe the excitement of her property: doubtfully hers,
+every stick of it. Now she would give anything to get away from
+Woodhouse, from the horrible buzz and entanglement of her sordid
+affairs. Now again her wild recklessness came over her.
+
+She suddenly said she was going away somewhere: she would not say
+where. She cashed all the money she could: a hundred-and-twenty-five
+pounds. She took the train to Cheshire, to the last address of the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: she followed them to Stockport: and back to
+Chinley: and there she was stuck for the night. Next day she dashed
+back almost to Woodhouse, and swerved round to Sheffield. There, in
+that black town, thank heaven, she saw their announcement on the wall.
+She took a taxi to their theatre, and then on to their lodgings. The
+first thing she saw was Louis, in his shirt sleeves, on the landing
+above.
+
+She laughed with excitement and pleasure. She seemed another woman.
+Madame looked up, almost annoyed, when she entered.
+
+“I couldn’t keep away from you, Madame,” she cried.
+
+“Evidently,” said Madame.
+
+Madame was darning socks for the young men. She was a wonderful mother
+for them, sewed for them, cooked for them, looked after them most
+carefully. Not many minutes was Madame idle.
+
+“Do you mind?” said Alvina.
+
+Madame darned for some moments without answering.
+
+“And how is everything at Woodhouse?” she asked.
+
+“I couldn’t bear it any longer. I couldn’t bear it. So I collected all
+the money I could, and ran away. Nobody knows where I am.”
+
+Madame looked up with bright, black, censorious eyes, at the flushed
+girl opposite. Alvina had a certain strangeness and brightness, which
+Madame did not know, and a frankness which the Frenchwoman mistrusted,
+but found disarming.
+
+“And all the business, the will and all?” said Madame.
+
+“They’re still fussing about it.”
+
+“And there is some money?”
+
+“I have got a hundred pounds here,” laughed Alvina. “What there will be
+when everything is settled, I don’t know. But not very much, I’m sure
+of that.”
+
+“How much do you think? A thousand pounds?”
+
+“Oh, it’s just possible, you know. But it’s just as likely there won’t
+be another penny—”
+
+Madame nodded slowly, as always when she did her calculations.
+
+“And if there is nothing, what do you intend?” said Madame.
+
+“I don’t know,” said Alvina brightly.
+
+“And if there is something?”
+
+“I don’t know either. But I thought, if you would let me play for you,
+I could keep myself for some time with my own money. You said perhaps I
+might be with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. I wish you would let me.”
+
+Madame bent her head so that nothing showed but the bright black folds
+of her hair. Then she looked up, with a slow, subtle, rather jeering
+smile.
+
+“Ciccio didn’t come to see you, hein?”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “Yet he promised.”
+
+Again Madame smiled sardonically.
+
+“Do you call it a promise?” she said. “You are easy to be satisfied
+with a word. A hundred pounds? No more?”
+
+“A hundred and twenty—”
+
+“Where is it?”
+
+“In my bag at the station—in notes. And I’ve got a little here—” Alvina
+opened her purse, and took out some little gold and silver.
+
+“At the station!” exclaimed Madame, smiling grimly. “Then perhaps you
+have nothing.”
+
+“Oh, I think it’s quite safe, don’t you—?”
+
+“Yes—maybe—since it is England. And you think a hundred and twenty
+pounds is enough?”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“To satisfy Ciccio.”
+
+“I wasn’t thinking of him,” cried Alvina.
+
+“No?” said Madame ironically. “I can propose it to him. Wait one
+moment.” She went to the door and called Ciccio.
+
+He entered, looking not very good-tempered.
+
+“Be so good, my dear,” said Madame to him, “to go to the station and
+fetch Miss Houghton’s little bag. You have got the ticket, have you?”
+Alvina handed the luggage ticket to Madame. “Midland Railway,” said
+Madame. “And, Ciccio, you are listening—? Mind! There is a hundred and
+twenty pounds of Miss Houghton’s money in the bag. You hear? Mind it is
+not lost.”
+
+“It’s all I have,” said Alvina.
+
+“For the time, for the time—till the will is proved, it is all the cash
+she has. So mind doubly. You hear?”
+
+“All right,” said Ciccio.
+
+“Tell him what sort of a bag, Miss Houghton,” said Madame.
+
+Alvina told him. He ducked and went. Madame listened for his final
+departure. Then she nodded sagely at Alvina.
+
+“Take off your hat and coat, my dear. Soon we will have tea—when Cic’
+returns. Let him think, let him think what he likes. So much money is
+certain, perhaps there will be more. Let him think. It will make all
+the difference that there is so much cash—yes, so much—”
+
+“But would it _really_ make a difference to him?” cried Alvina.
+
+“Oh my dear!” exclaimed Madame. “Why should it not? We are on earth,
+where we must eat. We are not in Paradise. If it were a thousand
+pounds, then he would want very badly to marry you. But a hundred and
+twenty is better than a blow to the eye, eh? Why sure!”
+
+“It’s dreadful, though—!” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh la-la! Dreadful! If it was Max, who is sentimental, then no, the
+money is nothing. But all the others—why, you see, they are men, and
+they know which side to butter their bread. Men are like cats, my dear,
+they don’t like their bread without butter. Why should they? Nor do I,
+nor do I.”
+
+“Can I help with the darning?” said Alvina.
+
+“Hein? I shall give you Ciccio’s socks, yes? He pushes holes in the
+toes—you see?” Madame poked two fingers through the hole in the toe of
+a red-and-black sock, and smiled a little maliciously at Alvina.
+
+“I don’t mind which sock I darn,” she said.
+
+“No? You don’t? Well then, I give you another. But if you like I will
+speak to him—”
+
+“What to say?” asked Alvina.
+
+“To say that you have so much money, and hope to have more. And that
+you like him—Yes? Am I right? You like him very much?—hein? Is it so?”
+
+“And then what?” said Alvina.
+
+“That he should tell me if he should like to marry you also—quite
+simply. What? Yes?”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “Don’t say anything—not yet.”
+
+“Hé? Not yet? Not yet. All right, not yet then. You will see—”
+
+Alvina sat darning the sock and smiling at her own shamelessness. The
+point that amused her most of all was the fact that she was not by any
+means sure she wanted to marry him. There was Madame spinning her web
+like a plump prolific black spider. There was Ciccio, the unrestful
+fly. And there was herself, who didn’t know in the least what she was
+doing. There sat two of them, Madame and herself, darning socks in a
+stuffy little bedroom with a gas fire, as if they had been born to it.
+And after all, Woodhouse wasn’t fifty miles away.
+
+Madame went downstairs to get tea ready. Wherever she was, she
+superintended the cooking and the preparation of meals for her young
+men, scrupulous and quick. She called Alvina downstairs. Ciccio came in
+with the bag.
+
+“See, my dear, that your money is safe,” said Madame.
+
+Alvina unfastened her bag and counted the crisp white notes.
+
+“And now,” said Madame, “I shall lock it in my little bank, yes, where
+it will be safe. And I shall give you a receipt, which the young men
+will witness.”
+
+The party sat down to tea, in the stuffy sitting-room.
+
+“Now, boys,” said Madame, “what do you say? Shall Miss Houghton join
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Shall she be our pianist?”
+
+The eyes of the four young men rested on Alvina. Max, as being the
+responsible party, looked business-like. Louis was tender, Geoffrey
+round-eyed and inquisitive, Ciccio furtive.
+
+“With great pleasure,” said Max. “But can the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras afford
+to pay a pianist for themselves?”
+
+“No,” said Madame. “No. I think not. Miss Houghton will come for one
+month, to prove, and in that time she shall pay for herself. Yes? So
+she fancies it.”
+
+“Can we pay her expenses?” said Max.
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “Let me pay everything for myself, for a month. I
+should like to be with you, awfully—”
+
+She looked across with a look half mischievous, half beseeching at the
+erect Max. He bowed as he sat at table.
+
+“I think we shall all be honoured,” he said.
+
+“Certainly,” said Louis, bowing also over his tea-cup.
+
+Geoffrey inclined his head, and Ciccio lowered his eyelashes in
+indication of agreement.
+
+“Now then,” said Madame briskly, “we are all agreed. Tonight we will
+have a bottle of wine on it. Yes, gentlemen? What d’you say?
+Chianti—hein?”
+
+They all bowed above the table.
+
+“And Miss Houghton shall have her professional name, eh? Because we
+cannot say Miss Houghton—what?”
+
+“Do call me Alvina,” said Alvina.
+
+“Alvina—Al-vy-na! No, excuse me, my dear, I don’t like it. I don’t like
+this ‘vy’ sound. Tonight we shall find a name.”
+
+After tea they inquired for a room for Alvina. There was none in the
+house. But two doors away was another decent lodging-house, where a
+bedroom on the top floor was found for her.
+
+“I think you are very well here,” said Madame.
+
+“Quite nice,” said Alvina, looking round the hideous little room, and
+remembering her other term of probation, as a maternity nurse.
+
+She dressed as attractively as possible, in her new dress of black
+voile, and imitating Madame, she put four jewelled rings on her
+fingers. As a rule she only wore the mourning-ring of black enamel and
+diamond, which had been always on Miss Frost’s finger. Now she left off
+this, and took four diamond rings, and one good sapphire. She looked at
+herself in her mirror as she had never done before, really interested
+in the effect she made. And in her dress she pinned a valuable old ruby
+brooch.
+
+Then she went down to Madame’s house. Madame eyed her shrewdly, with
+just a touch of jealousy: the eternal jealousy that must exist between
+the plump, pale partridge of a Frenchwoman, whose black hair is so
+glossy and tidy, whose black eyes are so acute, whose black dress is so
+neat and _chic_, and the rather thin Englishwoman in soft voile, with
+soft, rather loose brown hair and demure, blue-grey eyes.
+
+“Oh—a difference—what a difference! When you have a little more
+flesh—then—” Madame made a slight click with her tongue. “What a good
+brooch, eh?” Madame fingered the brooch. “Old paste—old paste—antique—”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “They are real rubies. It was my
+great-grandmother’s.”
+
+“Do you mean it? Real? Are you sure—”
+
+“I think I’m quite sure.”
+
+Madame scrutinized the jewels with a fine eye.
+
+“Hm!” she said. And Alvina did not know whether she was sceptical, or
+jealous, or admiring, or really impressed.
+
+“And the diamonds are real?” said Madame, making Alvina hold up her
+hands.
+
+“I’ve always understood so,” said Alvina.
+
+Madame scrutinized, and slowly nodded her head. Then she looked into
+Alvina’s eyes, really a little jealous.
+
+“Another four thousand francs there,” she said, nodding sagely.
+
+“Really!” said Alvina.
+
+“For sure. It’s enough—it’s enough—”
+
+And there was a silence between the two women.
+
+The young men had been out shopping for the supper. Louis, who knew
+where to find French and German stuff, came in with bundles, Ciccio
+returned with a couple of flasks, Geoffrey with sundry moist papers of
+edibles. Alvina helped Madame to put the anchovies and sardines and
+tunny and ham and salami on various plates, she broke off a bit of fern
+from one of the flower-pots, to stick in the pork-pie, she set the
+table with its ugly knives and forks and glasses. All the time her
+rings sparkled, her red brooch sent out beams, she laughed and was gay,
+she was quick, and she flattered Madame by being very deferential to
+her. Whether she was herself or not, in the hideous, common, stuffy
+sitting-room of the lodging-house she did not know or care. But she
+felt excited and gay. She knew the young men were watching her. Max
+gave his assistance wherever possible. Geoffrey watched her rings, half
+spell-bound. But Alvina was concerned only to flatter the plump, white,
+soft vanity of Madame. She carefully chose for Madame the finest plate,
+the clearest glass, the whitest-hafted knife, the most delicate fork.
+All of which Madame saw, with acute eyes.
+
+At the theatre the same: Alvina played for Kishwégin, only for
+Kishwégin. And Madame had the time of her life.
+
+“You know, my dear,” she said afterward to Alvina, “I understand
+sympathy in music. Music goes straight to the heart.” And she kissed
+Alvina on both cheeks, throwing her arms round her neck dramatically.
+
+“I’m _so_ glad,” said the wily Alvina.
+
+And the young men stirred uneasily, and smiled furtively.
+
+They hurried home to the famous supper. Madame sat at one end of the
+table, Alvina at the other. Madame had Max and Louis by her side,
+Alvina had Ciccio and Geoffrey. Ciccio was on Alvina’s right hand: a
+delicate hint.
+
+They began with hors d’oeuvres and tumblers three parts full of
+Chianti. Alvina wanted to water her wine, but was not allowed to insult
+the sacred liquid. There was a spirit of great liveliness and
+conviviality. Madame became paler, her eyes blacker, with the wine she
+drank, her voice became a little raucous.
+
+“Tonight,” she said, “the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras make their feast of
+affiliation. The white daughter has entered the tribe of the
+Hirondelles, swallows that pass from land to land, and build their
+nests between roof and wall. A new swallow, a new Huron from the tents
+of the pale-face, from the lodges of the north, from the tribe of the
+Yenghees.” Madame’s black eyes glared with a kind of wild triumph down
+the table at Alvina. “Nameless, without having a name, comes the maiden
+with the red jewels, dark-hearted, with the red beams. Wine from the
+pale-face shadows, drunken wine for Kishwégin, strange wine for the
+_braves_ in their nostrils, Vaali, _à vous_.”
+
+Madame lifted her glass.
+
+“Vaali, drink to her—Boire à elle—” She thrust her glass forwards in
+the air. The young men thrust their glasses up towards Alvina, in a
+cluster. She could see their mouths all smiling, their teeth white as
+they cried in their throats: “Vaali! Vaali! Boire à vous.”
+
+Ciccio was near to her. Under the table he laid his hand on her knee.
+Quickly she put forward her hand to protect herself. He took her hand,
+and looked at her along the glass as he drank. She saw his throat move
+as the wine went down it. He put down his glass, still watching her.
+
+“Vaali!” he said, in his throat. Then across the table “Hé, Gigi—Viale!
+Le Petit Chemin! Comment? Me prends-tu? L’allée—”
+
+There came a great burst of laughter from Louis.
+
+“It is good, it is good!” he cried. “Oh Madame! Viale, it is Italian
+for the little way, the alley. That is too rich.”
+
+Max went off into a high and ribald laugh.
+
+“L’allée italienne!” he said, and shouted with laughter.
+
+“Alley or avenue, what does it matter,” cried Madame in French, “so
+long as it is a good journey.”
+
+Here Geoffrey at last saw the joke. With a strange determined flourish
+he filled his glass, cocking up his elbow.
+
+“A toi, Cic’—et bon voyage!” he said, and then he tilted up his chin
+and swallowed in great throatfuls.
+
+“Certainly! Certainly!” cried Madame. “To thy good journey, my Ciccio,
+for thou art not a great traveller—”
+
+“Na, pour _ça_, y’a plus d’une voie,” said Geoffrey.
+
+During this passage in French Alvina sat with very bright eyes looking
+from one to another, and not understanding. But she knew it was
+something improper, on her account. Her eyes had a bright,
+slightly-bewildered look as she turned from one face to another. Ciccio
+had let go her hand, and was wiping his lips with his fingers. He too
+was a little self-conscious.
+
+“Assez de cette éternelle voix italienne,” said Madame. “Courage,
+courage au chemin d’Angleterre.”
+
+“Assez de cette éternelle voix rauque,” said Ciccio, looking round.
+Madame suddenly pulled herself together.
+
+“They will not have my name. They will call you Allay!” she said to
+Alvina. “Is it good? Will it do?”
+
+“Quite,” said Alvina.
+
+And she could not understand why Gigi, and then the others after him,
+went off into a shout of laughter. She kept looking round with bright,
+puzzled eyes. Her face was slightly flushed and tender looking, she
+looked naïve, young.
+
+“Then you will become one of the tribe of Natcha-Kee-Tawara, of the
+name Allaye? Yes?”
+
+“Yes,” said Alvina.
+
+“And obey the strict rules of the tribe. Do you agree?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then listen.” Madame primmed and preened herself like a black pigeon,
+and darted glances out of her black eyes.
+
+“We are one tribe, one nation—say it.”
+
+“We are one tribe, one nation,” repeated Alvina.
+
+“Say all,” cried Madame.
+
+“We are one tribe, one nation—” they shouted, with varying accent.
+
+“Good!” said Madame. “And no nation do we know but the nation of the
+Hirondelles—”
+
+“No nation do we know but the nation of the Hirondelles,” came the
+ragged chant of strong male voices, resonant and gay with mockery.
+
+“Hurons—Hirondelles, means _swallows_,” said Madame.
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Alvina.
+
+“So! you know! Well, then! We know no nation but the Hirondelles. WE
+HAVE NO LAW BUT HURON LAW!”
+
+“We have no law but Huron law!” sang the response, in a deep, sardonic
+chant.
+
+“WE HAVE NO LAWGIVER EXCEPT KISHWÉGIN.”
+
+“We have no lawgiver except Kishwégin,” they sang sonorous.
+
+“WE HAVE NO HOME BUT THE TENT OF KISHWÉGIN.”
+
+“We have no home but the tent of Kishwégin.”
+
+“THERE IS NO GOOD BUT THE GOOD OF NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA.”
+
+“There is no good but the good of Natcha-Kee-Tawara.”
+
+“WE ARE THE HIRONDELLES.”
+
+“We are the Hirondelles.”
+
+“WE ARE KISHWÉGIN.”
+
+“We are Kishwégin.”
+
+“WE ARE MONDAGUA.”
+
+“We are Mondagua—”
+
+“WE ARE ATONQUOIS—”
+
+“We are Atonquois—”
+
+“WE ARE PACOHUILA—”
+
+“We are Pacohuila—”
+
+“WE ARE WALGATCHKA—”
+
+“We are Walgatchka—”
+
+“WE ARE ALLAYE—”
+
+“We are Allaye—”
+
+“La musica! Pacohuila, la musica!” cried Madame, starting to her feet
+and sounding frenzied.
+
+Ciccio got up quickly and took his mandoline from its case.
+
+“A—A—Ai—Aii—eee—ya—” began Madame, with a long, faint wail. And on the
+wailing mandoline the music started. She began to dance a slight but
+intense dance. Then she waved for a partner, and set up a tarantella
+wail. Louis threw off his coat and sprang to tarantella attention,
+Ciccio rang out the peculiar tarantella, and Madame and Louis danced in
+the tight space.
+
+“Brava—Brava!” cried the others, when Madame sank into her place. And
+they crowded forward to kiss her hand. One after the other, they kissed
+her fingers, whilst she laid her left hand languidly on the head of one
+man after another, as she sat slightly panting. Ciccio however did not
+come up, but sat faintly twanging the mandoline. Nor did Alvina leave
+her place.
+
+“Pacohuila!” cried Madame, with an imperious gesture. “Allaye! Come—”
+
+Ciccio laid down his mandoline and went to kiss the fingers of
+Kishwégin. Alvina also went forward. Madame held out her hand. Alvina
+kissed it. Madame laid her hand on the head of Alvina.
+
+“This is the squaw Allaye, this is the daughter of Kishwégin,” she
+said, in her Tawara manner.
+
+“And where is the _brave_ of Allaye, where is the arm that upholds the
+daughter of Kishwégin, which of the Swallows spreads his wings over the
+gentle head of the new one!”
+
+“Pacohuila!” said Louis.
+
+“Pacohuila! Pacohuila! Pacohuila!” said the others.
+
+“Spread soft wings, spread dark-roofed wings, Pacohuila,” said
+Kishwégin, and Ciccio, in his shirt-sleeves solemnly spread his arms.
+
+“Stoop, stoop, Allaye, beneath the wings of Pacohuila,” said Kishwégin,
+faintly pressing Alvina on the shoulder.
+
+Alvina stooped and crouched under the right arm of Pacohuila.
+
+“Has the bird flown home?” chanted Kishwégin, to one of the strains of
+their music.
+
+“The bird is home—” chanted the men.
+
+“Is the nest warm?” chanted Kishwégin.
+
+“The nest is warm.”
+
+“Does the he-bird stoop—?”
+
+“He stoops.”
+
+“Who takes Allaye?”
+
+“Pacohuila.”
+
+Ciccio gently stooped and raised Alvina to her feet.
+
+“C’est ça!” said Madame, kissing her. “And now, children, unless the
+Sheffield policeman will knock at our door, we must retire to our
+wigwams all—”
+
+Ciccio was watching Alvina. Madame made him a secret, imperative
+gesture that he should accompany the young woman.
+
+“You have your key, Allaye?” she said.
+
+“Did I have a key?” said Alvina.
+
+Madame smiled subtly as she produced a latch-key.
+
+“Kishwégin must open your doors for you all,” she said. Then, with a
+slight flourish, she presented the key to Ciccio. “I give it to him?
+Yes?” she added, with her subtle, malicious smile.
+
+Ciccio, smiling slightly, and keeping his head ducked, took the key.
+Alvina looked brightly, as if bewildered, from one to another.
+
+“Also the light!” said Madame, producing a pocket flash-light, which
+she triumphantly handed to Ciccio. Alvina watched him. She noticed how
+he dropped his head forward from his straight, strong shoulders, how
+beautiful that was, the strong, forward-inclining nape and back of the
+head. It produced a kind of dazed submission in her, the drugged sense
+of unknown beauty.
+
+“And so good-night, Allaye—bonne nuit, fille des Tawara.” Madame kissed
+her, and darted black, unaccountable looks at her.
+
+Each _brave_ also kissed her hand, with a profound salute. Then the men
+shook hands warmly with Ciccio, murmuring to him.
+
+He did not put on his hat nor his coat, but ran round as he was to the
+neighbouring house with her, and opened the door. She entered, and he
+followed, flashing on the light. So she climbed weakly up the dusty,
+drab stairs, he following. When she came to her door, she turned and
+looked at him. His face was scarcely visible, it seemed, and yet so
+strange and beautiful. It was the unknown beauty which almost killed
+her.
+
+“You aren’t coming?” she quavered.
+
+He gave an odd, half-gay, half-mocking twitch of his thick dark brows,
+and began to laugh silently. Then he nodded again, laughing at her
+boldly, carelessly, triumphantly, like the dark Southerner he was. Her
+instinct was to defend herself. When suddenly she found herself in the
+dark.
+
+She gasped. And as she gasped, he quite gently put her inside her room,
+and closed the door, keeping one arm round her all the time. She felt
+his heavy muscular predominance. So he took her in both arms, powerful,
+mysterious, horrible in the pitch dark. Yet the sense of the unknown
+beauty of him weighed her down like some force. If for one moment she
+could have escaped from that black spell of his beauty, she would have
+been free. But she could not. He was awful to her, shameless so that
+she died under his shamelessness, his smiling, progressive
+shamelessness. Yet she could not see him ugly. If only she could, for
+one second, have seen him ugly, he would not have killed her and made
+her his slave as he did. But the spell was on her, of his darkness and
+unfathomed handsomeness. And he killed her. He simply took her and
+assassinated her. How she suffered no one can tell. Yet all the time,
+his lustrous dark beauty, unbearable.
+
+When later she pressed her face on his chest and cried, he held her
+gently as if she was a child, but took no notice, and she felt in the
+darkness that he smiled. It was utterly dark, and she knew he smiled,
+and she began to get hysterical. But he only kissed her, his smiling
+deepening to a heavy laughter, silent and invisible, but sensible, as
+he carried her away once more. He intended her to be his slave, she
+knew. And he seemed to throw her down and suffocate her like a wave.
+And she could have fought, if only the sense of his dark, rich
+handsomeness had not numbed her like a venom. So she was suffocated in
+his passion.
+
+In the morning when it was light he turned and looked at her from under
+his long black lashes, a long, steady, cruel, faintly-smiling look from
+his tawny eyes, searching her as if to see whether she were still
+alive. And she looked back at him, heavy-eyed and half subjected. He
+smiled slightly at her, rose, and left her. And she turned her face to
+the wall, feeling beaten. Yet not quite beaten to death. Save for the
+fatal numbness of her love for him, she could still have escaped him.
+But she lay inert, as if envenomed. He wanted to make her his slave.
+
+When she went down to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras for breakfast she found
+them waiting for her. She was rather frail and tender-looking, with
+wondering eyes that showed she had been crying.
+
+“Come, daughter of the Tawaras,” said Madame brightly to her. “We have
+been waiting for you. Good-morning, and all happiness, eh? Look, it is
+a gift-day for you—”
+
+Madame smilingly led Alvina to her place. Beside her plate was a bunch
+of violets, a bunch of carnations, a pair of exquisite bead moccasins,
+and a pair of fine doeskin gloves delicately decorated with
+feather-work on the cuffs. The slippers were from Kishwégin, the gloves
+from Mondagua, the carnations from Atonquois, the violets from
+Walgatchka—all _To the Daughter of the Tawaras, Allaye_, as it said on
+the little cards.
+
+“The gift of Pacohuila you know,” said Madame, smiling. “The brothers
+of Pacohuila are your brothers.”
+
+One by one they went to her and each one laid the back of her fingers
+against his forehead, saying in turn:
+
+“I am your brother Mondagua, Allaye!”
+
+“I am your brother Atonquois, Allaye!”
+
+“I am your brother Walgatchka, Allaye, best brother, you know—” So
+spoke Geoffrey, looking at her with large, almost solemn eyes of
+affection. Alvina smiled a little wanly, wondering where she was. It
+was all so solemn. Was it all mockery, play-acting? She felt bitterly
+inclined to cry.
+
+Meanwhile Madame came in with the coffee, which she always made
+herself, and the party sat down to breakfast. Ciccio sat on Alvina’s
+right, but he seemed to avoid looking at her or speaking to her. All
+the time he looked across the table, with the half-asserted, knowing
+look in his eyes, at Gigi: and all the time he addressed himself to
+Gigi, with the throaty, rich, plangent quality in his voice, that
+Alvina could not bear, it seemed terrible to her: and he spoke in
+French: and the two men seemed to be exchanging unspeakable
+communications. So that Alvina, for all her wistfulness and
+subjectedness, was at last seriously offended. She rose as soon as
+possible from table. In her own heart she wanted attention and public
+recognition from Ciccio—none of which she got. She returned to her own
+house, to her own room, anxious to tidy everything, not wishing to have
+her landlady in the room. And she half expected Ciccio to come to speak
+to her.
+
+As she was busy washing a garment in the bowl, her landlady knocked and
+entered. She was a rough and rather beery-looking Yorkshire woman, not
+attractive.
+
+“Oh, yo’n made yer bed then, han’ yer!”
+
+“Yes,” said Alvina. “I’ve done everything.”
+
+“I see yer han. Yo’n bin sharp.”
+
+Alvina did not answer.
+
+“Seems yer doin’ yersen a bit o’ weshin’.”
+
+Still Alvina didn’t answer.
+
+“Yo’ can ’ing it i’ th’ back yard.”
+
+“I think it’ll dry here,” said Alvina.
+
+“Isna much dryin’ up here. Send us howd when ’t’s ready. Yo’ll ’appen
+be wantin’ it. I can dry it off for yer i’ t’ kitchen. You don’t take a
+drop o’ nothink, do yer?”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “I don’t like it.”
+
+“Summat a bit stronger ’n ’t bottle, my sakes alive! Well, yo mun ha’e
+yer fling, like t’ rest. But coom na, which on ’em is it? I catched
+sight on ’im goin’ out, but I didna ma’e out then which on ’em it wor.
+He—eh, it’s a pity you don’t take a drop of nothink, it’s a world’s
+pity. Is it the fairest on ’em, the tallest.”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “The darkest one.”
+
+“Oh ay! Well, ’s a strappin’ anuff feller, for them as goes that road.
+I thought Madame was partikler. I s’ll charge yer a bit more, yer know.
+I s’ll ’ave to make a bit out of it. _I’m_ partikler as a rule. I don’t
+like ’em comin’ in an’ goin’ out, you know. Things get said. You look
+so quiet, you do. Come now, it’s worth a hextra quart to me, else I
+shan’t have it, I shan’t. You can’t make as free as all that with the
+house, you know, be it what it may—”
+
+She stood red-faced and dour in the doorway. Alvina quietly gave her
+half-a-sovereign.
+
+“Nay, lass,” said the woman, “if you share niver a drop o’ th’ lashins,
+you mun split it. Five shillin’s is oceans, ma wench. I’m not down on
+you—not me. On’y we’ve got to keep up appearances a bit, you know. Dash
+my rags, it’s a caution!”
+
+“I haven’t got five shillings—” said Alvina.
+
+“Yer’ve not? All right, gi’e ’s ha ’efcrown today, an’ t’other
+termorrer. It’ll keep, it’ll keep. God bless you for a good wench. A’
+open ’eart ’s worth all your bum-righteousness. It is for me. An’ a
+sight more. You’re all right, ma wench, you’re all right—”
+
+And the rather bleary woman went nodding away.
+
+Alvina ought to have minded. But she didn’t. She even laughed into her
+ricketty mirror. At the back of her thoughts, all she minded was that
+Ciccio did not pay her some attention. She really expected him now to
+come to speak to her. If she could have imagined how far he was from
+any such intention.
+
+So she loitered unwillingly at her window high over the grey, hard,
+cobbled street, and saw her landlady hastening along the black asphalt
+pavement, her dirty apron thrown discreetly over what was most
+obviously a quart jug. She followed the squat, intent figure with her
+eye, to the public-house at the corner. And then she saw Ciccio humped
+over his yellow bicycle, going for a steep and perilous ride with Gigi.
+
+Still she lingered in her sordid room. She could feel Madame was
+expecting her. But she felt inert, weak, incommunicative. Only a real
+fear of offending Madame drove her down at last.
+
+Max opened the door to let her in.
+
+“Ah!” he said. “You’ve come. We were wondering about you.”
+
+“Thank you,” she said, as she passed into the dirty hall where still
+two bicycles stood.
+
+“Madame is in the kitchen,” he said.
+
+Alvina found Madame trussed in a large white apron, busy rubbing a
+yellow-fleshed hen with lemon, previous to boiling.
+
+“Ah!” said Madame. “So there you are! I have been out and done my
+shopping, and already begun to prepare the dinner. Yes, you may help
+me. Can you wash leeks? Yes? Every grain of sand? Shall I trust you
+then—?”
+
+Madame usually had a kitchen to herself, in the morning. She either
+ousted her landlady, or used her as second cook. For Madame was a
+gourmet, if not gourmand. If she inclined towards self-indulgence in
+any direction, it was in the direction of food. She _loved_ a good
+table. And hence the Tawaras saved less money than they might. She was
+an exacting, tormenting, bullying cook. Alvina, who knew well enough
+how to prepare a simple dinner, was offended by Madame’s exactions.
+Madame turning back the green leaves of a leek, and hunting a speck of
+earth down into the white, like a flea in a bed, was too much for
+Alvina.
+
+“I’m afraid I shall never be particular enough,” she said. “Can’t I do
+anything else for you?”
+
+“For me? I need nothing to be done for me. But for the young men—yes, I
+will show you in one minute—”
+
+And she took Alvina upstairs to her room, and gave her a pair of the
+thin leather trousers fringed with hair, belonging to one of the
+_braves_. A seam had ripped. Madame gave Alvina a fine awl and some
+waxed thread.
+
+“The leather is not good in these things of Gigi’s,” she said. “It is
+badly prepared. See, like this.” And she showed Alvina another place
+where the garment was repaired. “Keep on your apron. At the week-end
+you must fetch more clothes, not spoil this beautiful gown of voile.
+Where have you left your diamonds? What? In your room? Are they locked?
+Oh my dear—!” Madame turned pale and darted looks of fire at Alvina.
+“If they are stolen—!” she cried. “Oh! I have become quite weak,
+hearing you!” She panted and shook her head. “If they are not stolen,
+you have the Holy Saints alone to be thankful for keeping them. But
+run, run!”
+
+And Madame really stamped her foot.
+
+“Bring me everything you’ve got—every _thing_ that is valuable. I shall
+lock it up. How _can_ you—”
+
+Alvina was hustled off to her lodging. Fortunately nothing was gone.
+She brought all to Madame, and Madame fingered the treasures lovingly.
+
+“Now what you want you must ask me for,” she said.
+
+With what close curiosity Madame examined the ruby brooch.
+
+“You can have that if you like, Madame,” said Alvina.
+
+“You mean—what?”
+
+“I will give you that brooch if you like to take it—”
+
+“Give me this—!” cried Madame, and a flash went over her face. Then she
+changed into a sort of wheedling. “No—no. I shan’t take it! I shan’t
+take it. You don’t want to give away such a thing.”
+
+“I don’t mind,” said Alvina. “Do take it if you like it.”
+
+“Oh no! Oh no! I can’t take it. A beautiful thing it is, really. It
+would be worth over a thousand francs, because I believe it is quite
+genuine.”
+
+“I’m sure it’s genuine,” said Alvina. “Do have it since you like it.”
+
+“Oh, I can’t! I can’t!—”
+
+“Yes do—”
+
+“The beautiful red stones!—antique gems, antique gems—! And do you
+really give it to me?”
+
+“Yes, I should like to.”
+
+“You are a girl with a noble heart—” Madame threw her arms round
+Alvina’s neck, and kissed her. Alvina felt very cool about it. Madame
+locked up the jewels quickly, after one last look.
+
+“My fowl,” she said, “which must not boil too fast.”
+
+At length Alvina was called down to dinner. The young men were at
+table, talking as young men do, not very interestingly. After the meal,
+Ciccio sat and twanged his mandoline, making its crying noise vibrate
+through the house.
+
+“I shall go and look at the town,” said Alvina.
+
+“And who shall go with you?” asked Madame.
+
+“I will go alone,” said Alvina, “unless you will come, Madame.”
+
+“Alas no, I can’t. I can’t come. Will you really go alone?”
+
+“Yes, I want to go to the women’s shops,” said Alvina.
+
+“You want to! All right then! And you will come home at tea-time, yes?”
+
+As soon as Alvina had gone out Ciccio put away his mandoline and lit a
+cigarette. Then after a while he hailed Geoffrey, and the two young men
+sallied forth. Alvina, emerging from a draper’s shop in Rotherhampton
+Broadway, found them loitering on the pavement outside. And they
+strolled along with her. So she went into a shop that sold ladies’
+underwear, leaving them on the pavement. She stayed as long as she
+could. But there they were when she came out. They had endless lounging
+patience.
+
+“I thought you would be gone on,” she said.
+
+“No hurry,” said Ciccio, and he took away her parcels from her, as if
+he had a right. She wished he wouldn’t tilt the flap of his black hat
+over one eye, and she wished there wasn’t quite so much waist-line in
+the cut of his coat, and that he didn’t smoke cigarettes against the
+end of his nose in the street. But wishing wouldn’t alter him. He
+strayed alongside as if he half belonged, and half didn’t—most
+irritating.
+
+She wasted as much time as possible in the shops, then they took the
+tram home again. Ciccio paid the three fares, laying his hand
+restrainingly on Gigi’s hand, when Gigi’s hand sought pence in his
+trouser pocket, and throwing his arm over his friend’s shoulder, in
+affectionate but vulgar triumph, when the fares were paid. Alvina was
+on her high horse.
+
+They tried to talk to her, they tried to ingratiate themselves—but she
+wasn’t having any. She talked with icy pleasantness. And so the
+tea-time passed, and the time after tea. The performance went rather
+mechanically, at the theatre, and the supper at home, with bottled beer
+and boiled ham, was a conventionally cheerful affair. Even Madame was a
+little afraid of Alvina this evening.
+
+“I am tired, I shall go early to my room,” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes, I think we are all tired,” said Madame.
+
+“Why is it?” said Max metaphysically—“why is it that two merry evenings
+never follow one behind the other.”
+
+“Max, beer makes thee a _farceur_ of a fine quality,” said Madame.
+Alvina rose.
+
+“Please don’t get up,” she said to the others. “I have my key and can
+see quite well,” she said. “Good-night all.”
+
+They rose and bowed their good-nights. But Ciccio, with an obstinate
+and ugly little smile on his face, followed her.
+
+“Please don’t come,” she said, turning at the street door. But
+obstinately he lounged into the street with her. He followed her to her
+door.
+
+“Did you bring the flash-light?” she said. “The stair is so dark.”
+
+He looked at her, and turned as if to get the light. Quickly she opened
+the house-door and slipped inside, shutting it sharply in his face. He
+stood for some moments looking at the door, and an ugly little look
+mounted his straight nose. He too turned indoors.
+
+Alvina hurried to bed and slept well. And the next day the same, she
+was all icy pleasantness. The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were a little bit put
+out by her. She was a spoke in their wheel, a scotch to their facility.
+She made them irritable. And that evening—it was Friday—Ciccio did not
+rise to accompany her to her house. And she knew they were relieved
+that she had gone.
+
+That did not please her. The next day, which was Saturday, the last and
+greatest day of the week, she found herself again somewhat of an
+outsider in the troupe. The tribe had assembled in its old unison. She
+was the intruder, the interloper. And Ciccio never looked at her, only
+showed her the half-averted side of his cheek, on which was a slightly
+jeering, ugly look.
+
+“Will you go to Woodhouse tomorrow?” Madame asked her, rather coolly.
+They none of them called her Allaye any more.
+
+“I’d better fetch some things, hadn’t I?” said Alvina.
+
+“Certainly, if you think you will stay with us.”
+
+This was a nasty slap in the face for her. But:
+
+“I want to,” she said.
+
+“Yes! Then you will go to Woodhouse tomorrow, and come to Mansfield on
+Monday morning? Like that shall it be? You will stay one night at
+Woodhouse?”
+
+Through Alvina’s mind flitted the rapid thought—“They want an evening
+without me.” Her pride mounted obstinately. She very nearly said—“I may
+stay in Woodhouse altogether.” But she held her tongue.
+
+After all, they were very common people. They ought to be glad to have
+her. Look how Madame snapped up that brooch! And look what an uncouth
+lout Ciccio was! After all, she was demeaning herself shamefully
+staying with them in common, sordid lodgings. After all, she had been
+bred up differently from that. They had horribly low standards—such low
+standards—not only of morality, but of life altogether. Really, she had
+come down in the world, conforming to such standards of life. She
+evoked the images of her mother and Miss Frost: ladies, and noble women
+both. Whatever could she be thinking of herself!
+
+However, there was time for her to retrace her steps. She had not given
+herself away. Except to Ciccio. And her heart burned when she thought
+of him, partly with anger and mortification, partly, alas, with
+undeniable and unsatisfied love. Let her bridle as she might, her heart
+burned, and she wanted to look at him, she wanted him to notice her.
+And instinct told her that he might ignore her for ever. She went to
+her room an unhappy woman, and wept and fretted till morning, chafing
+between humiliation and yearning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
+
+
+Alvina rose chastened and wistful. As she was doing her hair, she heard
+the plaintive nasal sound of Ciccio’s mandoline. She looked down the
+mixed vista of back-yards and little gardens, and was able to catch
+sight of a portion of Ciccio, who was sitting on a box in the
+blue-brick yard of his house, bare-headed and in his shirt-sleeves,
+twitching away at the wailing mandoline. It was not a warm morning, but
+there was a streak of sunshine. Alvina had noticed that Ciccio did not
+seem to feel the cold, unless it were a wind or a driving rain. He was
+playing the wildly-yearning Neapolitan songs, of which Alvina knew
+nothing. But, although she only saw a section of him, the glimpse of
+his head was enough to rouse in her that overwhelming fascination,
+which came and went in spells. His remoteness, his southernness,
+something velvety and dark. So easily she might miss him altogether!
+Within a hair’s-breadth she had let him disappear.
+
+She hurried down. Geoffrey opened the door to her. She smiled at him in
+a quick, luminous smile, a magic change in her.
+
+“I could hear Ciccio playing,” she said.
+
+Geoffrey spread his rather thick lips in a smile, and jerked his head
+in the direction of the back door, with a deep, intimate look into
+Alvina’s eyes, as if to say his friend was lovesick.
+
+“Shall I go through?” said Alvina.
+
+Geoffrey laid his large hand on her shoulder for a moment, looked into
+her eyes, and nodded. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, with a rather
+flat, handsome face, well-coloured, and with the look of the Alpine ox
+about him, slow, eternal, even a little mysterious. Alvina was startled
+by the deep, mysterious look in his dark-fringed ox-eyes. The odd arch
+of his eyebrows made him suddenly seem not quite human to her. She
+smiled to him again, startled. But he only inclined his head, and with
+his heavy hand on her shoulder gently impelled her towards Ciccio.
+
+When she came out at the back she smiled straight into Ciccio’s face,
+with her sudden, luminous smile. His hand on the mandoline trembled
+into silence. He sat looking at her with an instant re-establishment of
+knowledge. And yet she shrank from the long, inscrutable gaze of his
+black-set, tawny eyes. She resented him a little. And yet she went
+forward to him and stood so that her dress touched him. And still he
+gazed up at her, with the heavy, unspeaking look, that seemed to bear
+her down: he seemed like some creature that was watching her for his
+purposes. She looked aside at the black garden, which had a wiry
+goose-berry bush.
+
+“You will come with me to Woodhouse?” she said.
+
+He did not answer till she turned to him again. Then, as she met his
+eyes,
+
+“To Woodhouse?” he said, watching her, to fix her.
+
+“Yes,” she said, a little pale at the lips.
+
+And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his
+mouth. She wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred his
+tawny eyes with their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched her as a
+cat watches a bird, but without the white gleam of ferocity. In his
+eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth, something fathomless, deepening black
+and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.
+
+“Will you?” she repeated.
+
+But his eyes had already begun to glimmer their consent. He turned
+aside his face, as if unwilling to give a straight answer.
+
+“Yes,” he said.
+
+“Play something to me,” she cried.
+
+He lifted his face to her, and shook his head slightly.
+
+“Yes do,” she said, looking down on him.
+
+And he bent his head to the mandoline, and suddenly began to sing a
+Neapolitan song, in a faint, compressed head-voice, looking up at her
+again as his lips moved, looking straight into her face with a curious
+mocking caress as the muted _voix blanche_ came through his lips at
+her, amid the louder quavering of the mandoline. The sound penetrated
+her like a thread of fire, hurting, but delicious, the high thread of
+his voice. She could see the Adam’s apple move in his throat, his brows
+tilted as he looked along his lashes at her all the time. Here was the
+strange sphinx singing again, and herself between its paws! She seemed
+almost to melt into his power.
+
+Madame intervened to save her.
+
+“What, serenade before breakfast! You have strong stomachs, I say. Eggs
+and ham are more the question, hein? Come, you smell them, don’t you?”
+
+A flicker of contempt and derision went over Ciccio’s face as he broke
+off and looked aside.
+
+“I prefer the serenade,” said Alvina. “I’ve had ham and eggs before.”
+
+“You do, hein? Well—always, you won’t. And now you must eat the ham and
+eggs, however. Yes? Isn’t it so?”
+
+Ciccio rose to his feet, and looked at Alvina: as he would have looked
+at Gigi, had Gigi been there. His eyes said unspeakable things about
+Madame. Alvina flashed a laugh, suddenly. And a good-humoured,
+half-mocking smile came over his face too.
+
+They turned to follow Madame into the house. And as Alvina went before
+him, she felt his fingers stroke the nape of her neck, and pass in a
+soft touch right down her back. She started as if some unseen creature
+had stroked her with its paw, and she glanced swiftly round, to see the
+face of Ciccio mischievous behind her shoulder.
+
+“Now I think,” said Madame, “that today we all take the same train. We
+go by the Great Central as far as the junction, together. Then you,
+Allaye, go on to Knarborough, and we leave you until tomorrow. And now
+there is not much time.”
+
+“I am going to Woodhouse,” said Ciccio in French.
+
+“You also! By the train, or the bicycle?”
+
+“Train,” said Ciccio.
+
+“Waste so much money?”
+
+Ciccio raised his shoulders slightly.
+
+When breakfast was over, and Alvina had gone to her room, Geoffrey went
+out into the back yard, where the bicycles stood.
+
+“Cic’,” he said. “I should like to go with thee to Woodhouse. Come on
+bicycle with me.”
+
+Ciccio shook his head.
+
+“I’m going in train with _her_,” he said.
+
+Geoffrey darkened with his heavy anger.
+
+“I would like to see how it is, there, _chez elle_,” he said.
+
+“Ask _her_,” said Ciccio.
+
+Geoffrey watched him suddenly.
+
+“Thou forsakest me,” he said. “I would like to see it, there.”
+
+“Ask _her_,” repeated Ciccio. “Then come on bicycle.”
+
+“You’re content to leave me,” muttered Geoffrey.
+
+Ciccio touched his friend on his broad cheek, and smiled at him with
+affection.
+
+“I don’t leave thee, Gigi. I asked thy advice. You said, Go. But come.
+Go and ask her, and then come. Come on bicycle, eh? Ask her! Go on! Go
+and ask her.”
+
+Alvina was surprised to hear a tap at her door, and Gigi’s voice, in
+his strong foreign accent:
+
+“Mees Houghton, I carry your bag.”
+
+She opened her door in surprise. She was all ready.
+
+“There it is,” she said, smiling at him.
+
+But he confronted her like a powerful ox, full of dangerous force. Her
+smile had reassured him.
+
+“Na, Allaye,” he said, “tell me something.”
+
+“What?” laughed Alvina.
+
+“Can I come to Woodhouse?”
+
+“When?”
+
+“Today. Can I come on bicycle, to tea, eh? At your house with you and
+Ciccio? Eh?”
+
+He was smiling with a thick, doubtful, half sullen smile.
+
+“Do!” said Alvina.
+
+He looked at her with his large, dark-blue eyes.
+
+“Really, eh?” he said, holding out his large hand.
+
+She shook hands with him warmly.
+
+“Yes, really!” she said. “I wish you would.”
+
+“Good,” he said, a broad smile on his thick mouth. And all the time he
+watched her curiously, from his large eyes.
+
+“Ciccio—a good chap, eh?” he said.
+
+“Is he?” laughed Alvina.
+
+“Ha-a—!” Gigi shook his head solemnly. “The best!” He made such solemn
+eyes, Alvina laughed. He laughed too, and picked up her bag as if it
+were a bubble.
+
+“Na Cic’—” he said, as he saw Ciccio in the street. “Sommes d’accord.”
+
+“Ben!” said Ciccio, holding out his hand for the bag. “Donne.”
+
+“Ne-ne,” said Gigi, shrugging.
+
+Alvina found herself on the new and busy station that Sunday morning,
+one of the little theatrical company. It was an odd experience. They
+were so obviously a theatrical company—people apart from the world.
+Madame was darting her black eyes here and there, behind her spotted
+veil, and standing with the ostensible self-possession of her
+profession. Max was circling round with large strides, round a big
+black box on which the red words Natcha-Kee-Tawara showed mystic, and
+round the small bunch of stage fittings at the end of the platform.
+Louis was waiting to get the tickets, Gigi and Ciccio were bringing up
+the bicycles. They were a whole train of departure in themselves, busy,
+bustling, cheerful—and curiously apart, vagrants.
+
+Alvina strolled away towards the half-open bookstall. Geoffrey was
+standing monumental between her and the company. She returned to him.
+
+“What time shall we expect you?” she said.
+
+He smiled at her in his broad, friendly fashion.
+
+“Expect me to be there? Why—” he rolled his eyes and proceeded to
+calculate. “At four o’clock.”
+
+“Just about the time when we get there,” she said.
+
+He looked at her sagely, and nodded.
+
+They were a good-humoured company in the railway carriage. The men
+smoked cigarettes and tapped off the ash on the heels of their boots,
+Madame watched every traveller with professional curiosity. Max
+scrutinized the newspaper, Lloyds, and pointed out items to Louis, who
+read them over Max’s shoulder, Ciccio suddenly smacked Geoffrey on the
+thigh, and looked laughing into his face. So till they arrived at the
+junction. And then there was a kissing and a taking of farewells, as if
+the company were separating for ever. Louis darted into the refreshment
+bar and returned with little pies and oranges, which he deposited in
+the carriage, Madame presented Alvina with a packet of chocolate. And
+it was “Good-bye, good-bye, Allaye! Good-bye, Ciccio! Bon voyage. Have
+a good time, both.”
+
+So Alvina sped on in the fast train to Knarborough with Ciccio.
+
+“I _do_ like them all,” she said.
+
+He opened his mouth slightly and lifted his head up and down. She saw
+in the movement how affectionate he was, and in his own way, how
+emotional. He loved them all. She put her hand to his. He gave her hand
+one sudden squeeze, of physical understanding, then left it as if
+nothing had happened. There were other people in the carriage with
+them. She could not help feeling how sudden and lovely that moment’s
+grasp of his hand was: so warm, so whole.
+
+And thus they watched the Sunday morning landscape slip by, as they ran
+into Knarborough. They went out to a little restaurant to eat. It was
+one o’clock.
+
+“Isn’t it strange, that we are travelling together like this?” she
+said, as she sat opposite him.
+
+He smiled, looking into her eyes.
+
+“You think it’s strange?” he said, showing his teeth slightly.
+
+“Don’t you?” she cried.
+
+He gave a slight, laconic laugh.
+
+“And I can hardly bear it that I love you so much,” she said,
+quavering, across the potatoes.
+
+He glanced furtively round, to see if any one was listening, if any one
+might hear. He would have hated it. But no one was near. Beneath the
+tiny table, he took her two knees between his knees, and pressed them
+with a slow, immensely powerful pressure. Helplessly she put her hand
+across the table to him. He covered it for one moment with his hand,
+then ignored it. But her knees were still between the powerful, living
+vice of his knees.
+
+“Eat!” he said to her, smiling, motioning to her plate. And he relaxed
+her.
+
+They decided to go out to Woodhouse on the tram-car, a long hour’s
+ride. Sitting on the top of the covered car, in the atmosphere of
+strong tobacco smoke, he seemed self-conscious, withdrawn into his own
+cover, so obviously a dark-skinned foreigner. And Alvina, as she sat
+beside him, was reminded of the woman with the negro husband, down in
+Lumley. She understood the woman’s reserve. She herself felt, in the
+same way, something of an outcast, because of the man at her side. An
+outcast! And glad to be an outcast. She clung to Ciccio’s dark,
+despised foreign nature. She loved it, she worshipped it, she defied
+all the other world. Dark, he sat beside her, drawn in to himself,
+overcast by his presumed inferiority among these northern industrial
+people. And she was with him, on his side, outside the pale of her own
+people.
+
+There were already acquaintances on the tram. She nodded in answer to
+their salutation, but so obviously from a distance, that they kept
+turning round to eye her and Ciccio. But they left her alone. The
+breach between her and them was established for ever—and it was her
+will which established it.
+
+So up and down the weary hills of the hilly, industrial countryside,
+till at last they drew near to Woodhouse. They passed the ruins of
+Throttle-Ha’penny, and Alvina glanced at it indifferent. They ran along
+the Knarborough Road. A fair number of Woodhouse young people were
+strolling along the pavements in their Sunday clothes. She knew them
+all. She knew Lizzie Bates’s fox furs, and Fanny Clough’s lilac
+costume, and Mrs. Smitham’s winged hat. She knew them all. And almost
+inevitably the old Woodhouse feeling began to steal over her, she was
+glad they could not see her, she was a little ashamed of Ciccio. She
+wished, for the moment, Ciccio were not there. And as the time came to
+get down, she looked anxiously back and forth to see at which halt she
+had better descend—where fewer people would notice her. But then she
+threw her scruples to the wind, and descended into the staring, Sunday
+afternoon street, attended by Ciccio, who carried her bag. She knew she
+was a marked figure.
+
+They slipped round to Manchester House. Miss Pinnegar expected Alvina,
+but by the train, which came later. So she had to be knocked up, for
+she was lying down. She opened the door looking a little patched in her
+cheeks, because of her curious colouring, and a little forlorn, and a
+little dumpy, and a little irritable.
+
+“I didn’t know there’d be two of you,” was her greeting.
+
+“Didn’t you,” said Alvina, kissing her. “Ciccio came to carry my bag.”
+
+“Oh,” said Miss Pinnegar. “How do you do?” and she thrust out her hand
+to him. He shook it loosely.
+
+“I had your wire,” said Miss Pinnegar. “You said the train. Mrs.
+Rollings is coming in at four again—”
+
+“Oh all right—” said Alvina.
+
+The house was silent and afternoon-like. Ciccio took off his coat and
+sat down in Mr. Houghton’s chair. Alvina told him to smoke. He kept
+silent and reserved. Miss Pinnegar, a poor, patch-cheeked, rather
+round-backed figure with grey-brown fringe, stood as if she did not
+quite know what to say or do.
+
+She followed Alvina upstairs to her room.
+
+“I can’t think why you bring _him_ here,” snapped Miss Pinnegar. “I
+don’t know what you’re thinking about. The whole place is talking
+already.”
+
+“I don’t care,” said Alvina. “I like him.”
+
+“Oh—for shame!” cried Miss Pinnegar, lifting her hand with Miss Frost’s
+helpless, involuntary movement. “What do you think of yourself? And
+your father a month dead.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter. Father _is_ dead. And I’m sure the dead don’t
+mind.”
+
+“I never _knew_ such things as you say.”
+
+“Why? I mean them.”
+
+Miss Pinnegar stood blank and helpless.
+
+“You’re not asking him to stay the night,” she blurted.
+
+“Yes. And I’m going back with him to Madame tomorrow. You know I’m part
+of the company now, as pianist.”
+
+“And are you going to marry him?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“How _can_ you say you don’t know! Why, it’s awful. You make me feel I
+shall go out of my mind.”
+
+“But I _don’t_ know,” said Alvina.
+
+“It’s incredible! Simply incredible! I believe you’re out of your
+senses. I used to think sometimes there was something wrong with your
+mother. And that’s what it is with you. You’re not quite right in your
+mind. You need to be looked after.”
+
+“Do I, Miss Pinnegar! Ah, well, don’t you trouble to look after me,
+will you?”
+
+“No one will if I don’t.”
+
+“I hope no one will.”
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“I’m ashamed to live another day in Woodhouse,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“_I’m_ leaving it for ever,” said Alvina.
+
+“I should think so,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Suddenly she sank into a chair, and burst into tears, wailing:
+
+“Your poor father! Your poor father!”
+
+“I’m sure the dead are all right. Why must you pity him?”
+
+“You’re a lost girl!” cried Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Am I really?” laughed Alvina. It sounded funny.
+
+“Yes, you’re a lost girl,” sobbed Miss Pinnegar, on a final note of
+despair.
+
+“I like being lost,” said Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar wept herself into silence. She looked huddled and
+forlorn. Alvina went to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.
+
+“Don’t fret, Miss Pinnegar,” she said. “Don’t be silly. I love to be
+with Ciccio and Madame. Perhaps in the end I shall marry him. But if I
+don’t—” her hand suddenly gripped Miss Pinnegar’s heavy arm till it
+hurt—“I wouldn’t lose a minute of him, no, not for anything would I.”
+
+Poor Miss Pinnegar dwindled, convinced.
+
+“You make it hard for _me_, in Woodhouse,” she said, hopeless.
+
+“Never mind,” said Alvina, kissing her. “Woodhouse isn’t heaven and
+earth.”
+
+“It’s been my home for forty years.”
+
+“It’s been mine for thirty. That’s why I’m glad to leave it.” There was
+a pause.
+
+“I’ve been thinking,” said Miss Pinnegar, “about opening a little
+business in Tamworth. You know the Watsons are there.”
+
+“I believe you’d be happy,” said Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar pulled herself together. She had energy and courage
+still.
+
+“I don’t want to stay here, anyhow,” she said. “Woodhouse has nothing
+for me any more.”
+
+“Of course it hasn’t,” said Alvina. “I think you’d be happier away from
+it.”
+
+“Yes—probably I should—now!”
+
+None the less, poor Miss Pinnegar was grey-haired, she was almost a
+dumpy, odd old woman.
+
+They went downstairs. Miss Pinnegar put on the kettle.
+
+“Would you like to see the house?” said Alvina to Ciccio.
+
+He nodded. And she took him from room to room. His eyes looked quickly
+and curiously over everything, noticing things, but without criticism.
+
+“This was my mother’s little sitting-room,” she said. “She sat here for
+years, in this chair.”
+
+“Always here?” he said, looking into Alvina’s face.
+
+“Yes. She was ill with her heart. This is another photograph of her.
+I’m not like her.”
+
+“Who is _that_?” he asked, pointing to a photograph of the handsome,
+white-haired Miss Frost.
+
+“That was Miss Frost, my governess. She lived here till she died. I
+loved her—she meant everything to me.”
+
+“She also dead—?”
+
+“Yes, five years ago.”
+
+They went to the drawing-room. He laid his hand on the keys of the
+piano, sounding a chord.
+
+“Play,” she said.
+
+He shook his head, smiling slightly. But he wished her to play. She sat
+and played one of Kishwégin’s pieces. He listened, faintly smiling.
+
+“Fine piano—eh?” he said, looking into her face.
+
+“I like the tone,” she said.
+
+“Is it yours?”
+
+“The piano? Yes. I suppose everything is mine—in name at least. I don’t
+know how father’s affairs are really.”
+
+He looked at her, and again his eye wandered over the room. He saw a
+little coloured portrait of a child with a fleece of brownish-gold hair
+and surprised eyes, in a pale-blue stiff frock with a broad dark-blue
+sash.
+
+“You?” he said.
+
+“Do you recognize me?” she said. “Aren’t I comical?”
+
+She took him upstairs—first to the monumental bedroom.
+
+“This was mother’s room,” she said. “Now it is mine.”
+
+He looked at her, then at the things in the room, then out of the
+window, then at her again. She flushed, and hurried to show him his
+room, and the bath-room. Then she went downstairs.
+
+He kept glancing up at the height of the ceilings, the size of the
+rooms, taking in the size and proportion of the house, and the quality
+of the fittings.
+
+“It is a big house,” he said. “Yours?”
+
+“Mine in name,” said Alvina. “Father left all to me—and his debts as
+well, you see.”
+
+“Much debts?”
+
+“Oh yes! I don’t quite know how much. But perhaps more debts than there
+is property. I shall go and see the lawyer in the morning. Perhaps
+there will be nothing at all left for me, when everything is paid.”
+
+She had stopped on the stairs, telling him this, turning round to him,
+who was on the steps above. He looked down on her, calculating. Then he
+smiled sourly.
+
+“Bad job, eh, if it is all gone—!” he said.
+
+“I don’t mind, really, if I can live,” she said.
+
+He spread his hands, deprecating, not understanding. Then he glanced up
+the stairs and along the corridor again, and downstairs into the hall.
+
+“A fine big house. Grand if it was yours,” he said.
+
+“I wish it were,” she said rather pathetically, “if you like it so
+much.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“Hé!” he said. “How not like it!”
+
+“I don’t like it,” she said. “I think it’s a gloomy miserable hole. I
+hate it. I’ve lived here all my life and seen everything bad happen
+here. I hate it.”
+
+“Why?” he said, with a curious, sarcastic intonation.
+
+“It’s a bad job it isn’t yours, for certain,” he said, as they entered
+the living-room, where Miss Pinnegar sat cutting bread and butter.
+
+“What?” said Miss Pinnegar sharply.
+
+“The house,” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh well, we don’t know. We’ll hope for the best,” replied Miss
+Pinnegar, arranging the bread and butter on the plate. Then, rather
+tart, she added: “It is a bad job. And a good many things are a bad
+job, besides that. If Miss Houghton had what she _ought_ to have,
+things would be very different, I assure you.”
+
+“Oh yes,” said Ciccio, to whom this address was directed.
+
+“Very different indeed. If all the money hadn’t been—lost—in the way it
+has, Miss Houghton wouldn’t be playing the piano, for one thing, in a
+cinematograph show.”
+
+“No, perhaps not,” said Ciccio.
+
+“Certainly not. It’s not the right thing for her to be doing, _at
+all_!”
+
+“You think not?” said Ciccio.
+
+“Do you imagine it is?” said Miss Pinnegar, turning point blank on him
+as he sat by the fire.
+
+He looked curiously at Miss Pinnegar, grinning slightly.
+
+“Hé!” he said. “How do I know!”
+
+“I should have thought it was obvious,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Hé!” he ejaculated, not fully understanding.
+
+“But of course those that are used to nothing better can’t see anything
+but what they’re used to,” she said, rising and shaking the crumbs from
+her black silk apron, into the fire. He watched her.
+
+Miss Pinnegar went away into the scullery. Alvina was laying a fire in
+the drawing-room. She came with a dustpan to take some coal from the
+fire of the living-room.
+
+“What do you want?” said Ciccio, rising. And he took the shovel from
+her hand.
+
+“Big, hot fires, aren’t they?” he said, as he lifted the burning coals
+from the glowing mass of the grate.
+
+“Enough,” said Alvina. “Enough! We’ll put it in the drawing-room.” He
+carried the shovel of flaming, smoking coals to the other room, and
+threw them in the grate on the sticks, watching Alvina put on more
+pieces of coal.
+
+“Fine, a fire! Quick work, eh? A beautiful thing, a fire! You know what
+they say in my place: You can live without food, but you can’t live
+without fire.”
+
+“But I thought it was always hot in Naples,” said Alvina.
+
+“No, it isn’t. And my village, you know, when I was small boy, that was
+in the mountains, an hour quick train from Naples. Cold in the winter,
+hot in the summer—”
+
+“As cold as England?” said Alvina.
+
+“Hé—and colder. The wolves come down. You could hear them crying in the
+night, in the frost—”
+
+“How terrifying—!” said Alvina.
+
+“And they will kill the dogs! Always they kill the dogs. You know, they
+hate dogs, wolves do.” He made a queer noise, to show how wolves hate
+dogs. Alvina understood, and laughed.
+
+“So should I, if I was a wolf,” she said.
+
+“Yes—eh?” His eyes gleamed on her for a moment.
+
+“Ah but, the poor dogs! You find them bitten—carried away among the
+trees or the stones, hard to find them, poor things, the next day.”
+
+“How frightened they must be—!” said Alvina.
+
+“Frightened—hu!” he made sudden gesticulations and ejaculations, which
+added volumes to his few words.
+
+“And did you like it, your village?” she said.
+
+He put his head on one side in deprecation.
+
+“No,” he said, “because, you see—hé, there is nothing to do—no
+money—work—work—work—no life—you see nothing. When I was a small boy my
+father, he died, and my mother comes with me to Naples. Then I go with
+the little boats on the sea—fishing, carrying people—” He flourished
+his hand as if to make her understand all the things that must be
+wordless. He smiled at her—but there was a faint, poignant sadness and
+remoteness in him, a beauty of old fatality, and ultimate indifference
+to fate.
+
+“And were you very poor?”
+
+“Poor?—why yes! Nothing. Rags—no shoes—bread, little fish from the
+sea—shell-fish—”
+
+His hands flickered, his eyes rested on her with a profound look of
+knowledge. And it seemed, in spite of all, one state was very much the
+same to him as another, poverty was as much life as affluence. Only he
+had a sort of jealous idea that it was humiliating to be poor, and so,
+for vanity’s sake, he would have possessions. The countless generations
+of civilization behind him had left him an instinct of the world’s
+meaninglessness. Only his little modern education made money and
+independence an _idée fixe_. Old instinct told him the world was
+nothing. But modern education, so shallow, was much more efficacious
+than instinct. It drove him to make a show of himself to the world.
+Alvina watching him, as if hypnotized, saw his old beauty, formed
+through civilization after civilization; and at the same time she saw
+his modern vulgarianism, and decadence.
+
+“And when you go back, you will go back to your old village?” she said.
+
+He made a gesture with his head and shoulders, evasive, non-committal.
+
+“I don’t know, you see,” he said.
+
+“What is the name of it?”
+
+“Pescocalascio.” He said the word subduedly, unwillingly.
+
+“Tell me again,” said Alvina.
+
+“Pescocalascio.”
+
+She repeated it.
+
+“And tell me how you spell it,” she said.
+
+He fumbled in his pocket for a pencil and a piece of paper. She rose
+and brought him an old sketch-book. He wrote, slowly, but with the
+beautiful Italian hand, the name of his village.
+
+“And write your name,” she said.
+
+“Marasca Francesco,” he wrote.
+
+“And write the name of your father and mother,” she said. He looked at
+her enquiringly.
+
+“I want to see them,” she said.
+
+“Marasca Giovanni,” he wrote, and under that “Califano Maria.”
+
+She looked at the four names, in the graceful Italian script. And one
+after the other she read them out. He corrected her, smiling gravely.
+When she said them properly, he nodded.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “That’s it. You say it well.”
+
+At that moment Miss Pinnegar came in to say Mrs. Rollings had seen
+another of the young men riding down the street.
+
+“That’s Gigi! He doesn’t know how to come here,” said Ciccio, quickly
+taking his hat and going out to find his friend.
+
+Geoffrey arrived, his broad face hot and perspiring.
+
+“Couldn’t you find it?” said Alvina.
+
+“I find the house, but I couldn’t find no door,” said Geoffrey.
+
+They all laughed, and sat down to tea. Geoffrey and Ciccio talked to
+each other in French, and kept each other in countenance. Fortunately
+for them, Madame had seen to their table-manners. But still they were
+far too free and easy to suit Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Do you know,” said Ciccio in French to Geoffrey, “what a fine house
+this is?”
+
+“No,” said Geoffrey, rolling his large eyes round the room, and
+speaking with his cheek stuffed out with food. “Is it?”
+
+“Ah—if it was _hers_, you know—”
+
+And so, after tea, Ciccio said to Alvina:
+
+“Shall you let Geoffrey see the house?”
+
+The tour commenced again. Geoffrey, with his thick legs planted apart,
+gazed round the rooms, and made his comments in French to Ciccio. When
+they climbed the stairs, he fingered the big, smooth mahogany
+bannister-rail. In the bedroom he stared almost dismayed at the
+colossal bed and cupboard. In the bath-room he turned on the
+old-fashioned, silver taps.
+
+“Here is my room—” said Ciccio in French.
+
+“Assez éloigné!” replied Gigi. Ciccio also glanced along the corridor.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “But an open course—”
+
+“Look, my boy—if you could marry _this_—” meaning the house.
+
+“Ha, she doesn’t know if it hers any more! Perhaps the debts cover
+every bit of it.”
+
+“Don’t say so! Na, that’s a pity, that’s a pity! La pauvre fille—pauvre
+demoiselle!” lamented Geoffrey.
+
+“Isn’t it a pity! What dost say?”
+
+“A thousand pities! A thousand pities! Look, my boy, love needs no
+havings, but marriage does. Love is for all, even the grasshoppers. But
+marriage means a kitchen. That’s how it is. La pauvre demoiselle; c’est
+malheur pour elle.”
+
+“That’s true,” said Ciccio. “Et aussi pour moi. For me as well.”
+
+“For thee as well, cher! Perhaps—” said Geoffrey, laying his arm on
+Ciccio’s shoulder, and giving him a sudden hug. They smiled to each
+other.
+
+“Who knows!” said Ciccio.
+
+“Who knows, truly, my Cic’.”
+
+As they went downstairs to rejoin Alvina, whom they heard playing on
+the piano in the drawing-room, Geoffrey peeped once more into the big
+bedroom.
+
+“Tu n’es jamais monté si haut, mon beau. Pour moi, ça serait difficile
+de m’élever. J’aurais bien peur, moi. Tu te trouves aussi un peu ébahi,
+hein? n’est-ce pas?”
+
+“Y’a place pour trois,” said Ciccio.
+
+“Non, je crêverais, là haut. Pas pour moi!”
+
+And they went laughing downstairs.
+
+Miss Pinnegar was sitting with Alvina, determined not to go to Chapel
+this evening. She sat, rather hulked, reading a novel. Alvina flirted
+with the two men, played the piano to them, and suggested a game of
+cards.
+
+“Oh, Alvina, you will never bring out the cards tonight!” expostulated
+poor Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“But, Miss Pinnegar, it can’t possibly hurt anybody.”
+
+“You know what I think—and what your father thought—and your mother and
+Miss Frost—”
+
+“You see I think it’s only prejudice,” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh very well!” said Miss Pinnegar angrily.
+
+And closing her book, she rose and went to the other room.
+
+Alvina brought out the cards, and a little box of pence which remained
+from Endeavour harvests. At that moment there was a knock. It was Mr.
+May. Miss Pinnegar brought him in, in triumph.
+
+“Oh!” he said. “Company! I heard you’d come, Miss Houghton, so I
+_hastened_ to pay my compliments. I didn’t know you had _company_. How
+do you do, Francesco! How do you do, Geoffrey. Comment allez-vous,
+alors?”
+
+“Bien!” said Geoffrey. “You are going to take a hand?”
+
+“Cards on Sunday evening! Dear me, what a revolution! Of course, I’m
+not _bigoted_. If Miss Houghton asks me—”
+
+Miss Pinnegar looked solemnly at Alvina.
+
+“Yes, do take a hand, Mr. May,” said Alvina.
+
+“Thank you, I will then, if I may. Especially as I see those tempting
+piles of pennies and ha’pennies. Who is bank, may I ask? Is Miss
+Pinnegar going to play too?”
+
+But Miss Pinnegar had turned her poor, bowed back, and departed.
+
+“I’m afraid she’s offended,” said Alvina.
+
+“But why? We don’t put _her_ soul in danger, do we now? I’m a good
+Catholic, you know, I _can’t_ do with these provincial little creeds.
+Who deals? Do you, Miss Houghton? But I’m afraid we shall have a rather
+_dry_ game? What? Isn’t that your opinion?”
+
+The other men laughed.
+
+“If Miss Houghton would just _allow_ me to run round and bring
+something in. Yes? May I? That would be _so_ much more cheerful. What
+is your choice, gentlemen?”
+
+“Beer,” said Ciccio, and Geoffrey nodded.
+
+“Beer! Oh really! Extraor’nary! I always take a little whiskey myself.
+What kind of beer? Ale?—or bitter? I’m afraid I’d better bring bottles.
+Now how can I secrete them? You haven’t a small travelling case, Miss
+Houghton? Then I shall look as if I’d just been taking a _journey_.
+Which I have—to the Sun and back: and if _that_ isn’t far enough, even
+for Miss Pinnegar and John Wesley, why, I’m sorry.”
+
+Alvina produced the travelling case.
+
+“Excellent!” he said. “Excellent! It will hold half-a-dozen
+beautifully. Now—” he fell into a whisper—“hadn’t I better sneak out at
+the front door, and so escape the clutches of the watch-dog?”
+
+Out he went, on tip-toe, the other two men grinning at him. Fortunately
+there were glasses, the best old glasses, in the side cupboard in the
+drawing room. But unfortunately, when Mr. May returned, a corkscrew was
+in request. So Alvina stole to the kitchen. Miss Pinnegar sat dumped by
+the fire, with her spectacles and her book. She watched like a lynx as
+Alvina returned. And she saw the tell-tale corkscrew. So she dumped a
+little deeper in her chair.
+
+“There was a sound of revelry by night!” For Mr. May, after a long
+depression, was in high feather. They shouted, positively shouted over
+their cards, they roared with excitement, expostulation, and laughter.
+Miss Pinnegar sat through it all. But at one point she could bear it no
+longer.
+
+The drawing-room door opened, and the dumpy, hulked, faded woman in a
+black serge dress stood like a rather squat avenging angel in the
+doorway.
+
+“What would your _father_ say to this?” she said sternly.
+
+The company suspended their laughter and their cards, and looked
+around. Miss Pinnegar wilted and felt strange under so many eyes.
+
+“Father!” said Alvina. “But why father?”
+
+“You lost girl!” said Miss Pinnegar, backing out and closing the door.
+
+Mr. May laughed so much that he knocked his whiskey over.
+
+“There,” he cried, helpless, “look what she’s cost me!” And he went off
+into another paroxysm, swelling like a turkey.
+
+Ciccio opened his mouth, laughing silently.
+
+“Lost girl! Lost girl! How lost, when you are at home?” said Geoffrey,
+making large eyes and looking hither and thither as if _he_ had lost
+something.
+
+They all went off again in a muffled burst.
+
+“No but, really,” said Mr. May, “drinking and card-playing with strange
+men in the drawing-room on Sunday evening, of _cauce_ it’s scandalous.
+It’s _terrible_! I don’t know how ever you’ll be saved, after such a
+sin. And in Manchester House, too—!” He went off into another silent,
+turkey-scarlet burst of mirth, wriggling in his chair and squealing
+faintly: “Oh, I love it, I love it! _You lost girl!_ Why of _cauce_
+she’s lost! And Miss Pinnegar has only just found it out. Who
+_wouldn’t_ be lost? Why even Miss Pinnegar would be lost if she could.
+Of _cauce_ she would! Quite natch’ral!”
+
+Mr. May wiped his eyes, with his handkerchief which had unfortunately
+mopped up his whiskey.
+
+So they played on, till Mr. May and Geoffrey had won all the pennies,
+except twopence of Ciccio’s. Alvina was in debt.
+
+“Well I think it’s been a most agreeable game,” said Mr. May. “Most
+agreeable! Don’t you all?”
+
+The two other men smiled and nodded.
+
+“I’m only sorry to think Miss Houghton has _lost_ so steadily all
+evening. Really quite remarkable. But _then_—you see—I comfort myself
+with the reflection ‘Lucky in cards, unlucky in love.’ I’m certainly
+_hounded_ with misfortune in love. And I’m _sure_ Miss Houghton would
+rather be unlucky in cards than in love. What, isn’t it so?”
+
+“Of course,” said Alvina.
+
+“There, you see, _of cauce_! Well, all we can do after that is to wish
+her success in love. Isn’t that so, gentlemen? I’m sure _we_ are all
+quite willing to do our best to contribute to it. Isn’t it so,
+gentlemen? Aren’t we all ready to do our best to contribute to Miss
+Houghton’s happiness in love? Well then, let us drink to it.” He lifted
+his glass, and bowed to Alvina. “With _every_ wish for your success in
+love, Miss Houghton, and your _devoted_ servant—” He bowed and drank.
+
+Geoffrey made large eyes at her as he held up his glass.
+
+“_I_ know you’ll come out all right in love, _I_ know,” he said
+heavily.
+
+“And you, Ciccio? Aren’t you drinking?” said Mr. May.
+
+Ciccio held up his glass, looked at Alvina, made a little mouth at her,
+comical, and drank his beer.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. May, “_beer_ must confirm it, since words won’t.”
+
+“What time is it?” said Alvina. “We must have supper.”
+
+It was past nine o’clock. Alvina rose and went to the kitchen, the men
+trailing after her. Miss Pinnegar was not there. She was not anywhere.
+
+“Has she gone to bed?” said Mr. May. And he crept stealthily upstairs
+on tip-toe, a comical, flush-faced, tubby little man. He was familiar
+with the house. He returned prancing.
+
+“I heard her cough,” he said. “There’s a light under her door. She’s
+gone to bed. Now haven’t I always said she was a good soul? I shall
+drink her health. Miss Pinnegar—” and he bowed stiffly in the direction
+of the stairs—“your health, and a _good night’s rest_.”
+
+After which, giggling gaily, he seated himself at the head of the table
+and began to carve the cold mutton.
+
+“And where are the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras this week?” he asked. They told
+him.
+
+“Oh? And you two are cycling back to the camp of Kishwégin tonight? We
+mustn’t prolong our cheerfulness _too_ far.”
+
+“Ciccio is staying to help me with my bag tomorrow,” said Alvina. “You
+know I’ve joined the Tawaras permanently—as pianist.”
+
+“No, I didn’t know that! Oh really! Really! Oh! Well! I see!
+Permanently! Yes, I am surprised! Yes! As pianist? And if I might ask,
+what is your share of the tribal income?”
+
+“That isn’t settled yet,” said Alvina.
+
+“No! Exactly! Exactly! It _wouldn’t_ be settled yet. And you say it is
+a permanent engagement? Of _cauce_, at such a figure.”
+
+“Yes, it is a permanent engagement,” said Alvina.
+
+“Really! What a blow you give me! You won’t come back to the Endeavour?
+What? Not at all?”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “I shall sell out of the Endeavour.”
+
+“Really! You’ve decided, have you? Oh! This is news to me. And is
+_this_ quite final, too?”
+
+“Quite,” said Alvina.
+
+“I see! Putting two and two together, if I may say so—” and he glanced
+from her to the young men—“I _see_. Most decidedly, most one-sidedly,
+if I may use the vulgarism, I _see—e—e!_ Oh! but what a blow you give
+me! What a blow you give me!”
+
+“Why?” said Alvina.
+
+“What’s to become of the Endeavour? and consequently, of poor me?”
+
+“Can’t you keep it going?—form a company?”
+
+“I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve done my best. But I’m afraid, you know,
+you’ve landed me.”
+
+“I’m so sorry,” said Alvina. “I hope not.”
+
+“Thank you for the _hope_” said Mr. May sarcastically. “They say hope
+is sweet. _I_ begin to find it a little _bitter_!”
+
+Poor man, he had already gone quite yellow in the face. Ciccio and
+Geoffrey watched him with dark-seeing eyes.
+
+“And when are you going to let this fatal decision take effect?” asked
+Mr. May.
+
+“I’m going to see the lawyer tomorrow, and I’m going to tell him to
+sell everything and clear up as soon as possible,” said Alvina.
+
+“Sell everything! This house, and all it contains?”
+
+“Yes,” said Alvina. “Everything.”
+
+“Really!” Mr. May seemed smitten quite dumb. “I feel as if the world
+had suddenly come to an end,” he said.
+
+“But hasn’t your world often come to an end before?” said Alvina.
+
+“Well—I suppose, once or twice. But _never_ quite on top of me, you
+see, before—”
+
+There was a silence.
+
+“And have you told Miss Pinnegar?” said Mr. May.
+
+“Not finally. But she has decided to open a little business in
+Tamworth, where she has relations.”
+
+“Has she! And are you _really_ going to _tour_ with these young
+people—?” he indicated Ciccio and Gigi. “And at _no_ salary!” His voice
+rose. “Why! It’s almost _White Slave Traffic_, on Madame’s part. Upon
+my word!”
+
+“I don’t think so,” said Alvina. “Don’t you see that’s insulting.”
+
+“_Insulting!_ Well, I don’t know. I think it’s the _truth_—”
+
+“Not to be said to me, for all that,” said Alvina, quivering with
+anger.
+
+“Oh!” perked Mr. May, yellow with strange rage. “Oh! I mustn’t say what
+I think! Oh!”
+
+“Not if you think those things—” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh really! The difficulty is, you see, I’m afraid I _do_ think them—”
+Alvina watched him with big, heavy eyes.
+
+“Go away,” she said. “Go away! I won’t be insulted by you.”
+
+“No _indeed!_” cried Mr. May, starting to his feet, his eyes almost
+bolting from his head. “No _indeed!_ I wouldn’t _think_ of insulting
+you in the presence of these _two_ young gentlemen.”
+
+Ciccio rose slowly, and with a slow, repeated motion of the head,
+indicated the door.
+
+“Allez!” he said.
+
+“_Certainement!_” cried Mr. May, flying at Ciccio, verbally, like an
+enraged hen yellow at the gills. “_Certainement!_ Je m’en vais. Cette
+compagnie n’est pas de ma choix.”
+
+“Allez!” said Ciccio, more loudly.
+
+And Mr. May strutted out of the room like a bird bursting with its own
+rage. Ciccio stood with his hands on the table, listening. They heard
+Mr. May slam the front door.
+
+“Gone!” said Geoffrey.
+
+Ciccio smiled sneeringly.
+
+“Voyez, un cochon de lait,” said Gigi amply and calmly.
+
+Ciccio sat down in his chair. Geoffrey poured out some beer for him,
+saying:
+
+“Drink, my Cic’, the bubble has burst, prfff!” And Gigi knocked in his
+own puffed cheek with his fist. “Allaye, my dear, your health! We are
+the Tawaras. We are Allaye! We are Pacohuila! We are Walgatchka!
+Allons! The milk-pig is stewed and eaten. Voilà!” He drank, smiling
+broadly.
+
+“One by one,” said Geoffrey, who was a little drunk: “One by one we put
+them out of the field, they are _hors de combat_. Who remains?
+Pacohuila, Walgatchka, Allaye—”
+
+He smiled very broadly. Alvina was sitting sunk in thought and torpor
+after her sudden anger.
+
+“Allaye, what do you think about? You are the bride of Tawara,” said
+Geoffrey.
+
+Alvina looked at him, smiling rather wanly.
+
+“And who is Tawara?” she asked.
+
+He raised his shoulders and spread his hands and swayed his head from
+side to side, for all the world like a comic mandarin.
+
+“There!” he cried. “The question! Who is Tawara? Who? Tell me! Ciccio
+is he—and I am he—and Max and Louis—” he spread his hand to the distant
+members of the tribe.
+
+“I can’t be the bride of all four of you,” said Alvina, laughing.
+
+“No—no! No—no! Such a thing does not come into my mind. But you are the
+Bride of Tawara. You dwell in the tent of Pacohuila. And comes the day,
+should it ever be so, there is no room for you in the tent of
+Pacohuila, then the lodge of Walgatchka the bear is open for you. Open,
+yes, wide open—” He spread his arms from his ample chest, at the end of
+the table. “Open, and when Allaye enters, it is the lodge of Allaye,
+Walgatchka is the bear that serves Allaye. By the law of the Pale Face,
+by the law of the Yenghees, by the law of the Fransayes, Walgatchka
+shall be husband-bear to Allaye, that day she lifts the door-curtain of
+his tent—”
+
+He rolled his eyes and looked around. Alvina watched him.
+
+“But I might be afraid of a husband-bear,” she said.
+
+Geoffrey got on to his feet.
+
+“By the Manitou,” he said, “the head of the bear Walgatchka is humble—”
+here Geoffrey bowed his head—“his teeth are as soft as lilies—” here he
+opened his mouth and put his finger on his small close teeth—“his hands
+are as soft as bees that stroke a flower—” here he spread his hands and
+went and suddenly flopped on his knees beside Alvina, showing his hands
+and his teeth still, and rolling his eyes. “Allaye can have no fear at
+all of the bear Walgatchka,” he said, looking up at her comically.
+
+Ciccio, who had been watching and slightly grinning, here rose to his
+feet and took Geoffrey by the shoulder, pulling him up.
+
+“Basta!” he said. “Tu es saoul. You are drunk, my Gigi. Get up. How are
+you going to ride to Mansfield, hein?—great beast.”
+
+“Ciccio,” said Geoffrey solemnly. “I love thee, I love thee as a
+brother, and also more. I love thee as a brother, my Ciccio, as thou
+knowest. But—” and he puffed fiercely—“I am the slave of Allaye, I am
+the tame bear of Allaye.”
+
+“Get up,” said Ciccio, “get up! Per bacco! She doesn’t want a tame
+bear.” He smiled down on his friend.
+
+Geoffrey rose to his feet and flung his arms round Ciccio.
+
+“Cic’,” he besought him. “Cic’—I love thee as a brother. But let me be
+the tame bear of Allaye, let me be the gentle bear of Allaye.”
+
+“All right,” said Ciccio. “Thou art the tame bear of Allaye.”
+
+Geoffrey strained Ciccio to his breast.
+
+“Thank you! Thank you! Salute me, my own friend.”
+
+And Ciccio kissed him on either cheek. Whereupon Geoffrey immediately
+flopped on his knees again before Alvina, and presented her his broad,
+rich-coloured cheek.
+
+“Salute your bear, Allaye,” he cried. “Salute your slave, the tame bear
+Walgatchka, who is a wild bear for all except Allaye and his brother
+Pacohuila the Puma.” Geoffrey growled realistically as a wild bear as
+he kneeled before Alvina, presenting his cheek.
+
+Alvina looked at Ciccio, who stood above, watching. Then she lightly
+kissed him on the cheek, and said:
+
+“Won’t you go to bed and sleep?”
+
+Geoffrey staggered to his feet, shaking his head.
+
+“No—no—” he said. “No—no! Walgatchka must travel to the tent of
+Kishwégin, to the Camp of the Tawaras.”
+
+“Not tonight, _mon brave_,” said Ciccio. “Tonight we stay here, hein.
+Why separate, hein?—frère?”
+
+Geoffrey again clasped Ciccio in his arms.
+
+“Pacohuila and Walgatchka are blood-brothers, two bodies, one blood.
+One blood, in two bodies; one stream, in two valleys: one lake, between
+two mountains.”
+
+Here Geoffrey gazed with large, heavy eyes on Ciccio. Alvina brought a
+candle and lighted it.
+
+“You will manage in the one room?” she said. “I will give you another
+pillow.”
+
+She led the way upstairs. Geoffrey followed, heavily. Then Ciccio. On
+the landing Alvina gave them the pillow and the candle, smiled, bade
+them good-night in a whisper, and went downstairs again. She cleared
+away the supper and carried away all glasses and bottles from the
+drawing-room. Then she washed up, removing all traces of the feast. The
+cards she restored to their old mahogany box. Manchester House looked
+itself again.
+
+She turned off the gas at the meter, and went upstairs to bed. From the
+far room she could hear the gentle, but profound vibrations of
+Geoffrey’s snoring. She was tired after her day: too tired to trouble
+about anything any more.
+
+But in the morning she was first downstairs. She heard Miss Pinnegar,
+and hurried. Hastily she opened the windows and doors to drive away the
+smell of beer and smoke. She heard the men rumbling in the bath-room.
+And quickly she prepared breakfast and made a fire. Mrs. Rollings would
+not appear till later in the day. At a quarter to seven Miss Pinnegar
+came down, and went into the scullery to make her tea.
+
+“Did both the men stay?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, they both slept in the end room,” said Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar said no more, but padded with her tea and her boiled egg
+into the living room. In the morning she was wordless.
+
+Ciccio came down, in his shirt-sleeves as usual, but wearing a collar.
+He greeted Miss Pinnegar politely.
+
+“Good-morning!” she said, and went on with her tea.
+
+Geoffrey appeared. Miss Pinnegar glanced once at him, sullenly, and
+briefly answered his good-morning. Then she went on with her egg, slow
+and persistent in her movements, mum.
+
+The men went out to attend to Geoffrey’s bicycle. The morning was slow
+and grey, obscure. As they pumped up the tires, they heard some one
+padding behind. Miss Pinnegar came and unbolted the yard door, but
+ignored their presence. Then they saw her return and slowly mount the
+outer stair-ladder, which went up to the top floor. Two minutes
+afterwards they were startled by the irruption of the work-girls. As
+for the work-girls, they gave quite loud, startled squeals, suddenly
+seeing the two men on their right hand, in the obscure morning. And
+they lingered on the stair-way to gaze in rapt curiosity, poking and
+whispering, until Miss Pinnegar appeared overhead, and sharply rang a
+bell which hung beside the entrance door of the work-rooms.
+
+After which excitements Geoffrey and Ciccio went in to breakfast, which
+Alvina had prepared.
+
+“You have done it all, eh?” said Ciccio, glancing round.
+
+“Yes. I’ve made breakfast for years, now,” said Alvina.
+
+“Not many more times here, eh?” he said, smiling significantly.
+
+“I hope not,” said Alvina.
+
+Ciccio sat down almost like a husband—as if it were his right.
+
+Geoffrey was very quiet this morning. He ate his breakfast, and rose to
+go.
+
+“I shall see you soon,” he said, smiling sheepishly and bowing to
+Alvina. Ciccio accompanied him to the street.
+
+When Ciccio returned, Alvina was once more washing dishes.
+
+“What time shall we go?” he said.
+
+“We’ll catch the one train. I must see the lawyer this morning.”
+
+“And what shall you say to him?”
+
+“I shall tell him to sell everything—”
+
+“And marry me?”
+
+She started, and looked at him.
+
+“You don’t want to marry, do you?” she said.
+
+“Yes, I do.”
+
+“Wouldn’t you rather wait, and see—”
+
+“What?” he said.
+
+“See if there is any money.”
+
+He watched her steadily, and his brow darkened.
+
+“Why?” he said.
+
+She began to tremble.
+
+“You’d like it better if there was money.”
+
+A slow, sinister smile came on his mouth. His eyes never smiled, except
+to Geoffrey, when a flood of warm, laughing light sometimes suffused
+them.
+
+“You think I should!”
+
+“Yes. It’s true, isn’t it? You would!”
+
+He turned his eyes aside, and looked at her hands as she washed the
+forks. They trembled slightly. Then he looked back at her eyes again,
+that were watching him large and wistful and a little accusing.
+
+His impudent laugh came on his face.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “it is always better if there is money.” He put his
+hand on her, and she winced. “But I marry you for love, you know. You
+know what love is—” And he put his arms round her, and laughed down
+into her face.
+
+She strained away.
+
+“But you can have love without marriage,” she said. “You know that.”
+
+“All right! All right! Give me love, eh? I want that.”
+
+She struggled against him.
+
+“But not now,” she said.
+
+She saw the light in his eyes fix determinedly, and he nodded.
+
+“Now!” he said. “Now!”
+
+His yellow-tawny eyes looked down into hers, alien and overbearing.
+
+“I can’t,” she struggled. “I can’t now.”
+
+He laughed in a sinister way: yet with a certain warmheartedness.
+
+“Come to that big room—” he said.
+
+Her face flew fixed into opposition.
+
+“I can’t now, really,” she said grimly.
+
+His eyes looked down at hers. Her eyes looked back at him, hard and
+cold and determined. They remained motionless for some seconds. Then, a
+stray wisp of her hair catching his attention, desire filled his heart,
+warm and full, obliterating his anger in the combat. For a moment he
+softened. He saw her hardness becoming more assertive, and he wavered
+in sudden dislike, and almost dropped her. Then again the desire
+flushed his heart, his smile became reckless of her, and he picked her
+right up.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “Now.”
+
+For a second, she struggled frenziedly. But almost instantly she
+recognized how much stronger he was, and she was still, mute and
+motionless with anger. White, and mute, and motionless, she was taken
+to her room. And at the back of her mind all the time she wondered at
+his deliberate recklessness of her. Recklessly, he had his will of
+her—but deliberately, and thoroughly, not rushing to the issue, but
+taking everything he wanted of her, progressively, and fully, leaving
+her stark, with nothing, nothing of herself—nothing.
+
+When she could lie still she turned away from him, still mute. And he
+lay with his arms over her, motionless. Noises went on, in the street,
+overhead in the work-room. But theirs was complete silence.
+
+At last he rose and looked at her.
+
+“Love is a fine thing, Allaye,” he said.
+
+She lay mute and unmoving. He approached, laid his hand on her breast,
+and kissed her.
+
+“Love,” he said, asserting, and laughing.
+
+But still she was completely mute and motionless. He threw bedclothes
+over her and went downstairs, whistling softly.
+
+She knew she would have to break her own trance of obstinacy. So she
+snuggled down into the bedclothes, shivering deliciously, for her skin
+had become chilled. She didn’t care a bit, really, about her own
+downfall. She snuggled deliciously in the sheets, and admitted to
+herself that she loved him. In truth, she loved him—and she was
+laughing to herself.
+
+Luxuriously, she resented having to get up and tackle her heap of
+broken garments. But she did it. She took other clothes, adjusted her
+hair, tied on her apron, and went downstairs once more. She could not
+find Ciccio: he had gone out. A stray cat darted from the scullery, and
+broke a plate in her leap. Alvina found her washing-up water cold. She
+put on more, and began to dry her dishes.
+
+Ciccio returned shortly, and stood in the doorway looking at her. She
+turned to him, unexpectedly laughing.
+
+“What do you think of yourself?” she laughed.
+
+“Well,” he said, with a little nod, and a furtive look of triumph about
+him, evasive. He went past her and into the room. Her inside burned
+with love for him: so elusive, so beautiful, in his silent passing out
+of her sight. She wiped her dishes happily. Why was she so absurdly
+happy, she asked herself? And why did she still fight so hard against
+the sense of his dark, unseizable beauty? Unseizable, for ever
+unseizable! That made her almost his slave. She fought against her own
+desire to fall at his feet. Ridiculous to be so happy.
+
+She sang to herself as she went about her work downstairs. Then she
+went upstairs, to do the bedrooms and pack her bag. At ten o’clock she
+was to go to the family lawyer.
+
+She lingered over her possessions: what to take, and what not to take.
+And so doing she wasted her time. It was already ten o’clock when she
+hurried downstairs. He was sitting quite still, waiting. He looked up
+at her.
+
+“Now I must hurry,” she said. “I don’t think I shall be more than an
+hour.”
+
+He put on his hat and went out with her.
+
+“I shall tell the lawyer I am engaged to you. Shall I?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “Tell him what you like.” He was indifferent.
+
+“Because,” said Alvina gaily, “we can please ourselves what we do,
+whatever we say. I shall say we think of getting married in the summer,
+when we know each other better, and going to Italy.”
+
+“Why shall you say all that?” said Ciccio.
+
+“Because I shall _have_ to give some account of myself, or they’ll make
+me do something I don’t want to do. You might come to the lawyer’s with
+me, will you? He’s an awfully nice old man. Then he’d believe in you.”
+
+But Ciccio shook his head.
+
+“No,” he said. “I shan’t go. He doesn’t want to see _me_.”
+
+“Well, if you don’t want to. But I remember your name, Francesco
+Marasca, and I remember Pescocalascio.”
+
+Ciccio heard in silence, as they walked the half-empty, Monday-morning
+street of Woodhouse. People kept nodding to Alvina. Some hurried
+inquisitively across to speak to her and look at Ciccio. Ciccio however
+stood aside and turned his back.
+
+“Oh yes,” Alvina said. “I am staying with friends, here and there, for
+a few weeks. No, I don’t know when I shall be back. Good-bye!”
+
+“You’re looking well, Alvina,” people said to her. “I think you’re
+looking wonderful. A change does you good.”
+
+“It does, doesn’t it,” said Alvina brightly. And she was pleased she
+was looking well.
+
+“Well, good-bye for a minute,” she said, glancing smiling into his eyes
+and nodding to him, as she left him at the gate of the lawyer’s house,
+by the ivy-covered wall.
+
+The lawyer was a little man, all grey. Alvina had known him since she
+was a child: but rather as an official than an individual. She arrived
+all smiling in his room. He sat down and scrutinized her sharply,
+officially, before beginning.
+
+“Well, Miss Houghton, and what news have you?”
+
+“I don’t think I’ve any, Mr. Beeby. I came to you for news.”
+
+“Ah!” said the lawyer, and he fingered a paper-weight that covered a
+pile of papers. “I’m afraid there is nothing very pleasant,
+unfortunately. And nothing very unpleasant either, for that matter.”
+
+He gave her a shrewd little smile.
+
+“Is the will proved?”
+
+“Not yet. But I expect it will be through in a few days’ time.”
+
+“And are all the claims in?”
+
+“Yes. I _think_ so. I think so!” And again he laid his hand on the pile
+of papers under the paper-weight, and ran through the edges with the
+tips of his fingers.
+
+“All those?” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes,” he said quietly. It sounded ominous.
+
+“Many!” said Alvina.
+
+“A fair amount! A fair amount! Let me show you a statement.”
+
+He rose and brought her a paper. She made out, with the lawyer’s help,
+that the claims against her father’s property exceeded the gross
+estimate of his property by some seven hundred pounds.
+
+“Does it mean we owe seven hundred pounds?” she asked.
+
+“That is only on the _estimate_ of the property. It might, of course,
+realize much more, when sold—or it might realize less.”
+
+“How awful!” said Alvina, her courage sinking.
+
+“Unfortunate! Unfortunate! However, I don’t think the realization of
+the property would amount to less than the estimate. I don’t think so.”
+
+“But even then,” said Alvina. “There is sure to be something owing—”
+
+She saw herself saddled with her father’s debts.
+
+“I’m afraid so,” said the lawyer.
+
+“And then what?” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh—the creditors will have to be satisfied with a little less than
+they claim, I suppose. Not a very great deal, you see. I don’t expect
+they will complain a great deal. In fact, some of them will be less
+badly off than they feared. No, on that score we need not trouble
+further. Useless if we do, anyhow. But now, about yourself. Would you
+like me to try to compound with the creditors, so that you could have
+some sort of provision? They are mostly people who know you, know your
+condition: and I might try—”
+
+“Try what?” said Alvina.
+
+“To make some sort of compound. Perhaps you might retain a lease of
+Miss Pinnegar’s work-rooms. Perhaps even something might be done about
+the cinematograph. What would you like—?”
+
+Alvina sat still in her chair, looking through the window at the ivy
+sprays, and the leaf buds on the lilac. She felt she could not, she
+could not cut off every resource. In her own heart she had confidently
+expected a few hundred pounds: even a thousand or more. And that would
+make her _something_ of a catch, to people who had nothing. But
+now!—nothing!—nothing at the back of her but her hundred pounds. When
+that was gone—!
+
+In her dilemma she looked at the lawyer.
+
+“You didn’t expect it would be quite so bad?” he said.
+
+“I think I didn’t,” she said.
+
+“No. Well—it might have been worse.”
+
+Again he waited. And again she looked at him vacantly.
+
+“What do you think?” he said.
+
+For answer, she only looked at him with wide eyes.
+
+“Perhaps you would rather decide later.”
+
+“No,” she said. “No. It’s no use deciding later.”
+
+The lawyer watched her with curious eyes, his hand beat a little
+impatiently.
+
+“I will do my best,” he said, “to get what I can for you.”
+
+“Oh well!” she said. “Better let everything go. I don’t _want_ to hang
+on. Don’t bother about me at all. I shall go away, anyhow.”
+
+“You will go away?” said the lawyer, and he studied his finger-nails.
+
+“Yes. I shan’t stay here.”
+
+“Oh! And may I ask if you have any definite idea, where you will go?”
+
+“I’ve got an engagement as pianist, with a travelling theatrical
+company.”
+
+“Oh indeed!” said the lawyer, scrutinizing her sharply. She stared away
+vacantly out of the window. He took to the attentive study of his
+finger-nails once more. “And at a sufficient salary?”
+
+“Quite sufficient, thank you,” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh! Well! Well now!—” He fidgetted a little. “You see, we are all old
+neighbours and connected with your father for many years. We—that is
+the persons interested, and myself—would not like to think that you
+were driven out of Woodhouse—er—er—destitute. If—er—we could come to
+some composition—make some arrangement that would be agreeable to you,
+and would, in some measure, secure you a means of livelihood—”
+
+He watched Alvina with sharp blue eyes. Alvina looked back at him,
+still vacantly.
+
+“No—thanks awfully!” she said. “But don’t bother. I’m going away.”
+
+“With the travelling theatrical company?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The lawyer studied his finger-nails intensely.
+
+“Well,” he said, feeling with a finger-tip an imaginary roughness of
+one nail-edge. “Well, in that case—In that case—Supposing you have made
+an irrevocable decision—”
+
+He looked up at her sharply. She nodded slowly, like a porcelain
+mandarin.
+
+“In that case,” he said, “we must proceed with the valuation and the
+preparation for the sale.”
+
+“Yes,” she said faintly.
+
+“You realize,” he said, “that everything in Manchester House, except
+your private personal property, and that of Miss Pinnegar, belongs to
+the claimants, your father’s creditors, and may not be removed from the
+house.”
+
+“Yes,” she said.
+
+“And it will be necessary to make an account of everything in the
+house. So if you and Miss Pinnegar will put your possessions strictly
+apart—But I shall see Miss Pinnegar during the course of the day. Would
+you ask her to call about seven—I think she is free then—”
+
+Alvina sat trembling.
+
+“I shall pack my things today,” she said.
+
+“Of course,” said the lawyer, “any little things to which you may be
+attached the claimants would no doubt wish you to regard as your own.
+For anything of greater value—your piano, for example—I should have to
+make a personal request—”
+
+“Oh, I don’t want anything—” said Alvina.
+
+“No? Well! You will see. You will be here a few days?”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “I’m going away today.”
+
+“Today! Is that also irrevocable?”
+
+“Yes. I must go this afternoon.”
+
+“On account of your engagement? May I ask where your company is
+performing this week? Far away?”
+
+“Mansfield!”
+
+“Oh! Well then, in case I particularly wished to see you, you could
+come over?”
+
+“If necessary,” said Alvina. “But I don’t want to come to Woodhouse
+unless it _is_ necessary. Can’t we write?”
+
+“Yes—certainly! Certainly!—most things! Certainly! And now—”
+
+He went into certain technical matters, and Alvina signed some
+documents. At last she was free to go. She had been almost an hour in
+the room.
+
+“Well, good-morning, Miss Houghton. You will hear from me, and I from
+you. I wish you a pleasant experience in your new occupation. You are
+not leaving Woodhouse for ever.”
+
+“Good-bye!” she said. And she hurried to the road.
+
+Try as she might, she felt as if she had had a blow which knocked her
+down. She felt she had had a blow.
+
+At the lawyer’s gate she stood a minute. There, across a little hollow,
+rose the cemetery hill. There were her graves: her mother’s, Miss
+Frost’s, her father’s. Looking, she made out the white cross at Miss
+Frost’s grave, the grey stone at her parents’. Then she turned slowly,
+under the church wall, back to Manchester House.
+
+She felt humiliated. She felt she did not want to see anybody at all.
+She did not want to see Miss Pinnegar, nor the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: and
+least of all, Ciccio. She felt strange in Woodhouse, almost as if the
+ground had risen from under her feet and hit her over the mouth. The
+fact that Manchester House and its very furniture was under seal to be
+sold on behalf of her father’s creditors made her feel as if all her
+Woodhouse life had suddenly gone smash. She loathed the thought of
+Manchester House. She loathed staying another minute in it.
+
+And yet she did not want to go to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras either. The
+church clock above her clanged eleven. She ought to take the
+twelve-forty train to Mansfield. Yet instead of going home she turned
+off down the alley towards the fields and the brook.
+
+How many times had she gone that road! How many times had she seen Miss
+Frost bravely striding home that way, from her music-pupils. How many
+years had she noticed a particular wild cherry-tree come into blossom,
+a particular bit of black-thorn scatter its whiteness in among the
+pleached twigs of a hawthorn hedge. How often, how many springs had
+Miss Frost come home with a bit of this black-thorn in her hand!
+
+Alvina did _not_ want to go to Mansfield that afternoon. She felt
+insulted. She knew she would be much cheaper in Madame’s eyes. She knew
+her own position with the troupe would be humiliating. It would be
+openly a little humiliating. But it would be much more maddeningly
+humiliating to stay in Woodhouse and experience the full flavour of
+Woodhouse’s calculated benevolence. She hardly knew which was worse:
+the cool look of insolent half-contempt, half-satisfaction with which
+Madame would receive the news of her financial downfall, or the
+officious patronage which she would meet from the Woodhouse magnates.
+She knew exactly how Madame’s black eyes would shine, how her mouth
+would curl with a sneering, slightly triumphant smile, as she heard the
+news. And she could hear the bullying tone in which Henry Wagstaff
+would dictate the Woodhouse benevolence to her. She wanted to go away
+from them all—from them all—for ever.
+
+Even from Ciccio. For she felt he insulted her too. Subtly, they all
+did it. They had regard for her possibilities as an heiress. Five
+hundred, even two hundred pounds would have made all the difference.
+Useless to deny it. Even to Ciccio. Ciccio would have had a lifelong
+respect for her, if she had come with even so paltry a sum as two
+hundred pounds. Now she had nothing, he would coolly withhold this
+respect. She felt he might jeer at her. And she could not get away from
+this feeling.
+
+Mercifully she had the bit of ready money. And she had a few trinkets
+which might be sold. Nothing else. Mercifully, for the mere moment, she
+was independent.
+
+Whatever else she did, she must go back and pack. She must pack her two
+boxes, and leave them ready. For she felt that once she had left, she
+could never come back to Woodhouse again. If England had cliffs all
+round—why, when there was nowhere else to go and no getting beyond, she
+could walk over one of the cliffs. Meanwhile, she had her short run
+before her. She banked hard on her independence.
+
+So she turned back to the town. She would not be able to take the
+twelve-forty train, for it was already mid-day. But she was glad. She
+wanted some time to herself. She would send Ciccio on. Slowly she
+climbed the familiar hill—slowly—and rather bitterly. She felt her
+native place insulted her: and she felt the Natchas insulted her. In
+the midst of the insult she remained isolated upon herself, and she
+wished to be alone.
+
+She found Ciccio waiting at the end of the yard: eternally waiting, it
+seemed. He was impatient.
+
+“You’ve been a long time,” he said.
+
+“Yes,” she answered.
+
+“We shall have to make haste to catch the train.”
+
+“I can’t go by this train. I shall have to come on later. You can just
+eat a mouthful of lunch, and go now.”
+
+They went indoors. Miss Pinnegar had not yet come down. Mrs. Rollings
+was busily peeling potatoes.
+
+“Mr. Marasca is going by the train, he’ll have to have a little cold
+meat,” said Alvina. “Would you mind putting it ready while I go
+upstairs?”
+
+“Sharpses and Fullbankses sent them bills,” said Mrs. Rollings. Alvina
+opened them, and turned pale. It was thirty pounds, the total funeral
+expenses. She had completely forgotten them.
+
+“And Mr. Atterwell wants to know what you’d like put on th’ headstone
+for your father—if you’d write it down.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+Mrs. Rollings popped on the potatoes for Miss Pinnegar’s dinner, and
+spread the cloth for Ciccio. When he was eating, Miss Pinnegar came in.
+She inquired for Alvina—and went upstairs.
+
+“Have you had your dinner?” she said. For there was Alvina sitting
+writing a letter.
+
+“I’m going by a later train,” said Alvina.
+
+“Both of you?”
+
+“No. He’s going now.”
+
+Miss Pinnegar came downstairs again, and went through to the scullery.
+When Alvina came down, she returned to the living room.
+
+“Give this letter to Madame,” Alvina said to Ciccio. “I shall be at the
+hall by seven tonight. I shall go straight there.”
+
+“Why can’t you come now?” said Ciccio.
+
+“I can’t possibly,” said Alvina. “The lawyer has just told me father’s
+debts come to much more than everything is worth. Nothing is ours—not
+even the plate you’re eating from. Everything is under seal to be sold
+to pay off what is owing. So I’ve got to get my own clothes and boots
+together, or they’ll be sold with the rest. Mr. Beeby wants you to go
+round at seven this evening, Miss Pinnegar—before I forget.”
+
+“Really!” gasped Miss Pinnegar. “Really! The house and the furniture
+and everything got to be sold up? Then we’re on the streets! I can’t
+believe it.”
+
+“So he told me,” said Alvina.
+
+“But how positively awful,” said Miss Pinnegar, sinking motionless into
+a chair.
+
+“It’s not more than I expected,” said Alvina. “I’m putting my things
+into my two trunks, and I shall just ask Mrs. Slaney to store them for
+me. Then I’ve the bag I shall travel with.”
+
+“Really!” gasped Miss Pinnegar. “I can’t believe it! And when have we
+got to get out?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t think there’s a desperate hurry. They’ll take an inventory
+of all the things, and we can live on here till they’re actually ready
+for the sale.”
+
+“And when will that be?”
+
+“I don’t know. A week or two.”
+
+“And is the cinematograph to be sold the same?”
+
+“Yes—everything! The piano—even mother’s portrait—”
+
+“It’s impossible to believe it,” said Miss Pinnegar. “It’s impossible.
+He can never have left things so bad.”
+
+“Ciccio,” said Alvina. “You’ll really have to go if you are to catch
+the train. You’ll give Madame my letter, won’t you? I should hate you
+to miss the train. I know she can’t bear me already, for all the fuss
+and upset I cause.”
+
+Ciccio rose slowly, wiping his mouth.
+
+“You’ll be there at seven o’clock?” he said.
+
+“At the theatre,” she replied.
+
+And without more ado, he left.
+
+Mrs. Rollings came in.
+
+“You’ve heard?” said Miss Pinnegar dramatically.
+
+“I heard somethink,” said Mrs. Rollings.
+
+“Sold up! Everything to be sold up. Every stick and rag! I never
+thought I should live to see the day,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“You might almost have expected it,” said Mrs. Rollings. “But you’re
+all right, yourself, Miss Pinnegar. Your money isn’t with his, is it?”
+
+“No,” said Miss Pinnegar. “What little I have put by is safe. But it’s
+not enough to live on. It’s not enough to keep me, even supposing I
+only live another ten years. If I only spend a pound a week, it costs
+fifty-two pounds a year. And for ten years, look at it, it’s five
+hundred and twenty pounds. And you couldn’t say less. And I haven’t
+half that amount. I never had more than a wage, you know. Why, Miss
+Frost earned a good deal more than I do. And _she_ didn’t leave much
+more than fifty. Where’s the money to come from—?”
+
+“But if you’ve enough to start a little business—” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes, it’s what I shall _have_ to do. It’s what I shall have to do. And
+then what about you? What about you?”
+
+“Oh, don’t bother about me,” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes, it’s all very well, don’t bother. But when you come to my age,
+you know you’ve _got_ to bother, and bother a great deal, if you’re not
+going to find yourself in a position you’d be sorry for. You _have_ to
+bother. And _you’ll_ have to bother before you’ve done.”
+
+“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said Alvina.
+
+“Ha, sufficient for a good many days, it seems to me.”
+
+Miss Pinnegar was in a real temper. To Alvina this seemed an odd way of
+taking it. The three women sat down to an uncomfortable dinner of cold
+meat and hot potatoes and warmed-up pudding.
+
+“But whatever you do,” pronounced Miss Pinnegar; “whatever you do, and
+however you strive, in this life, you’re knocked down in the end.
+You’re always knocked down.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter,” said Alvina, “if it’s only in the end. It doesn’t
+matter if you’ve had your life.”
+
+“You’ve never had your life, till you’re dead,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+“And if you work and strive, you’ve a right to the fruits of your
+work.”
+
+“It doesn’t matter,” said Alvina laconically, “so long as you’ve
+enjoyed working and striving.”
+
+But Miss Pinnegar was too angry to be philosophic. Alvina knew it was
+useless to be either angry or otherwise emotional. None the less, she
+also felt as if she had been knocked down. And she almost envied poor
+Miss Pinnegar the prospect of a little, day-by-day haberdashery shop in
+Tamworth. Her own problem seemed so much more menacing. “Answer or
+die,” said the Sphinx of fate. Miss Pinnegar could answer her own fate
+according to its question. She could say “haberdashery shop,” and her
+sphinx would recognize this answer as true to nature, and would be
+satisfied. But every individual has his own, or her own fate, and her
+own sphinx. Alvina’s sphinx was an old, deep thoroughbred, she would
+take no mongrel answers. And her thoroughbred teeth were long and
+sharp. To Alvina, the last of the fantastic but pure-bred race of
+Houghton, the problem of her fate was terribly abstruse.
+
+The only thing to do was not to solve it: to stray on, and answer fate
+with whatever came into one’s head. No good striving with fate. Trust
+to a lucky shot, or take the consequences.
+
+“Miss Pinnegar,” said Alvina. “Have we any money in hand?”
+
+“There is about twenty pounds in the bank. It’s all shown in my books,”
+said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“We couldn’t take it, could we?”
+
+“Every penny shows in the books.”
+
+Alvina pondered again.
+
+“Are there more bills to come in?” she asked. “I mean my bills. Do I
+owe anything?”
+
+“I don’t think you do,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“I’m going to keep the insurance money, any way. They can say what they
+like. I’ve got it, and I’m going to keep it.”
+
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar, “it’s not my business. But there’s Sharps
+and Fullbanks to pay.”
+
+“I’ll pay those,” said Alvina. “You tell Atterwell what to put on
+father’s stone. How much does it cost?”
+
+“Five shillings a letter, you remember.”
+
+“Well, we’ll just put the name and the date. How much will that be?
+James Houghton. Born 17th January—”
+
+“You’ll have to put ‘Also of,’” said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+“Also of—” said Alvina. “One—two—three—four—five—six—. Six
+letters—thirty shillings. Seems an awful lot for _Also of_—”
+
+“But you can’t leave it out,” said Miss Pinnegar. “You can’t economize
+over that.”
+
+“I begrudge it,” said Alvina.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT
+
+
+For days, after joining the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, Alvina was very quiet,
+subdued, and rather remote, sensible of her humiliating position as a
+hanger-on. They none of them took much notice of her. They drifted on,
+rather disjointedly. The cordiality, the _joie de vivre_ did not
+revive. Madame was a little irritable, and very exacting, and inclined
+to be spiteful. Ciccio went his way with Geoffrey.
+
+In the second week, Madame found out that a man had been
+surreptitiously inquiring about them at their lodgings, from the
+landlady and the landlady’s blowsy daughter. It must have been a
+detective—some shoddy detective. Madame waited. Then she sent Max over
+to Mansfield, on some fictitious errand. Yes, the lousy-looking dogs of
+detectives had been there too, making the most minute enquiries as to
+the behaviour of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, what they did, how their
+sleeping was arranged, how Madame addressed the men, what attitude the
+men took towards Alvina.
+
+Madame waited again. And again, when they moved to Doncaster, the same
+two mongrel-looking fellows were lurking in the street, and plying the
+inmates of their lodging-house with questions. All the Natchas caught
+sight of the men. And Madame cleverly wormed out of the righteous and
+respectable landlady what the men had asked. Once more it was about the
+sleeping accommodation—whether the landlady heard anything in the
+night—whether she noticed anything in the bedrooms, in the beds.
+
+No doubt about it, the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were under suspicion. They
+were being followed, and watched. What for? Madame made a shrewd guess.
+“They want to say we are immoral foreigners,” she said.
+
+“But what have our personal morals got to do with them?” said Max
+angrily.
+
+“Yes—but the English! They are so pure,” said Madame.
+
+“You know,” said Louis, “somebody must have put them up to it—”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Madame, “somebody on account of Allaye.”
+
+Alvina went white.
+
+“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “White Slave Traffic! Mr. May said it.”
+
+Madame slowly nodded.
+
+“Mr. May!” she said. “Mr. May! It is he. He knows all about morals—and
+immorals. Yes, I know. Yes—yes—yes! He suspects all our immoral doings,
+_mes braves_.”
+
+“But there aren’t any, except mine,” cried Alvina, pale to the lips.
+
+“You! You! There you are!” Madame smiled archly, and rather mockingly.
+
+“What are we to do?” said Max, pale on the cheekbones.
+
+“Curse them! Curse them!” Louis was muttering, in his rolling accent.
+
+“Wait,” said Madame. “Wait. They will not do anything to us. You are
+only dirty foreigners, _mes braves_. At the most they will ask us only
+to leave their pure country.”
+
+“We don’t interfere with none of them,” cried Max.
+
+“Curse them,” muttered Louis.
+
+“Never mind, _mon cher_. You are in a pure country. Let us wait.”
+
+“If you think it’s me,” said Alvina, “I can go away.”
+
+“Oh, my dear, you are only the excuse,” said Madame, smiling
+indulgently at her. “Let us wait, and see.”
+
+She took it smilingly. But her cheeks were white as paper, and her eyes
+black as drops of ink, with anger.
+
+“Wait and see!” she chanted ironically. “Wait and see! If we must leave
+the dear country—then _adieu!_” And she gravely bowed to an imaginary
+England.
+
+“I feel it’s my fault. I feel I ought to go away,” cried Alvina, who
+was terribly distressed, seeing Madame’s glitter and pallor, and the
+black brows of the men. Never had Ciccio’s brow looked so ominously
+black. And Alvina felt it was all her fault. Never had she experienced
+such a horrible feeling: as if something repulsive were creeping on her
+from behind. Every minute of these weeks was a horror to her: the sense
+of the low-down dogs of detectives hanging round, sliding behind them,
+trying to get hold of some clear proof of immorality on their part. And
+then—the unknown vengeance of the authorities. All the repulsive
+secrecy, and all the absolute power of the police authorities. The
+sense of a great malevolent power which had them all the time in its
+grip, and was watching, feeling, waiting to strike the morbid blow: the
+sense of the utter helplessness of individuals who were not even
+accused, only watched and enmeshed! the feeling that they, the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, herself included, must be monsters of hideous vice,
+to have provoked all this: and yet the sane knowledge that they, none
+of them, _were_ monsters of vice; this was quite killing. The sight of
+a policeman would send up Alvina’s heart in a flame of fear, agony; yet
+she knew she had nothing legally to be afraid of. Every knock at the
+door was horrible.
+
+She simply could not understand it. Yet there it was: they were
+watched, followed. Of that there was no question. And all she could
+imagine was that the troupe was secretly accused of White Slave Traffic
+by somebody in Woodhouse. Probably Mr. May had gone the round of the
+benevolent magnates of Woodhouse, concerning himself with her virtue,
+and currying favour with his concern. Of this she became convinced,
+that it was concern for her virtue which had started the whole
+business: and that the first instigator was Mr. May, who had got round
+some vulgar magistrate or County Councillor.
+
+Madame did not consider Alvina’s view very seriously. She thought it
+was some personal malevolence against the Tawaras themselves, probably
+put up by some other professionals, with whom Madame was not popular.
+
+Be that as it may, for some weeks they went about in the shadow of this
+repulsive finger which was following after them, to touch them and
+destroy them with the black smear of shame. The men were silent and
+inclined to be sulky. They seemed to hold together. They seemed to be
+united into a strong, four-square silence and tension. They kept to
+themselves—and Alvina kept to herself—and Madame kept to herself. So
+they went about.
+
+And slowly the cloud melted. It never broke. Alvina felt that the very
+force of the sullen, silent fearlessness and fury in the Tawaras had
+prevented its bursting. Once there had been a weakening, a cringing,
+they would all have been lost. But their hearts hardened with black,
+indomitable anger. And the cloud melted, it passed away. There was no
+sign.
+
+Early summer was now at hand. Alvina no longer felt at home with the
+Natchas. While the trouble was hanging over, they seemed to ignore her
+altogether. The men hardly spoke to her. They hardly spoke to Madame,
+for that matter. They kept within the four-square enclosure of
+themselves.
+
+But Alvina felt herself particularly excluded, left out. And when the
+trouble of the detectives began to pass off, and the men became more
+cheerful again, wanted her to jest and be familiar with them, she
+responded verbally, but in her heart there was no response.
+
+Madame had been quite generous with her. She allowed her to pay for her
+room, and the expense of travelling. But she had her food with the
+rest. Wherever she was, Madame bought the food for the party, and
+cooked it herself. And Alvina came in with the rest: she paid no board.
+
+She waited, however, for Madame to suggest a small salary—or at least,
+that the troupe should pay her living expenses. But Madame did not make
+such a suggestion. So Alvina knew that she was not very badly wanted.
+And she guarded her money, and watched for some other opportunity.
+
+It became her habit to go every morning to the public library of the
+town in which she found herself, to look through the advertisements:
+advertisements for maternity nurses, for nursery governesses, pianists,
+travelling companions, even ladies’ maids. For some weeks she found
+nothing, though she wrote several letters.
+
+One morning Ciccio, who had begun to hang round her again, accompanied
+her as she set out to the library. But her heart was closed against
+him.
+
+“Why are you going to the library?” he asked her. It was in Lancaster.
+
+“To look at the papers and magazines.”
+
+“Ha-a! To find a job, eh?”
+
+His cuteness startled her for a moment.
+
+“If I found one I should take it,” she said.
+
+“Hé! I know that,” he said.
+
+It so happened that that very morning she saw on the notice-board of
+the library an announcement that the Borough Council wished to engage
+the services of an experienced maternity nurse, applications to be made
+to the medical board. Alvina wrote down the directions. Ciccio watched
+her.
+
+“What is a maternity nurse?” he said.
+
+“An _accoucheuse_!” she said. “The nurse who attends when babies are
+born.”
+
+“Do you know how to do that?” he said, incredulous, and jeering
+slightly.
+
+“I was trained to do it,” she said.
+
+He said no more, but walked by her side as she returned to the
+lodgings. As they drew near the lodgings, he said:
+
+“You don’t want to stop with us any more?”
+
+“I can’t,” she said.
+
+He made a slight, mocking gesture.
+
+“‘I can’t,’” he repeated. “Why do you always say you can’t?”
+
+“Because I can’t,” she said.
+
+“Pff—!” he went, with a whistling sound of contempt.
+
+But she went indoors to her room. Fortunately, when she had finally
+cleared her things from Manchester House, she had brought with her her
+nurse’s certificate, and recommendations from doctors. She wrote out
+her application, took the tram to the Town Hall and dropped it in the
+letterbox there. Then she wired home to her doctor for another
+reference. After which she went to the library and got out a book on
+her subject. If summoned, she would have to go before the medical board
+on Monday. She had a week. She read and pondered hard, recalling all
+her previous experience and knowledge.
+
+She wondered if she ought to appear before the board in uniform. Her
+nurse’s dresses were packed in her trunk at Mrs. Slaney’s, in
+Woodhouse. It was now May. The whole business at Woodhouse was
+finished. Manchester House and all the furniture was sold to some
+boot-and-shoe people: at least the boot-and-shoe people had the house.
+They had given four thousand pounds for it—which was above the lawyer’s
+estimate. On the other hand, the theatre was sold for almost nothing.
+It all worked out that some thirty-three pounds, which the creditors
+made up to fifty pounds, remained for Alvina. She insisted on Miss
+Pinnegar’s having half of this. And so that was all over. Miss Pinnegar
+was already in Tamworth, and her little shop would be opened next week.
+She wrote happily and excitedly about it.
+
+Sometimes fate acts swiftly and without a hitch. On Thursday Alvina
+received her notice that she was to appear before the Board on the
+following Monday. And yet she could not bring herself to speak of it to
+Madame till the Saturday evening. When they were all at supper, she
+said:
+
+“Madame, I applied for a post of maternity nurse, to the Borough of
+Lancaster.”
+
+Madame raised her eyebrows. Ciccio had said nothing.
+
+“Oh really! You never told me.”
+
+“I thought it would be no use if it all came to nothing. They want me
+to go and see them on Monday, and then they will decide—”
+
+“Really! Do they! On Monday? And then if you get this work you will
+stay here? Yes?”
+
+“Yes, of course.”
+
+“Of course! Of course! Yes! H’m! And if not?”
+
+The two women looked at each other.
+
+“What?” said Alvina.
+
+“If you _don’t_ get it—! You are not _sure_?”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “I am not a bit sure.”
+
+“Well then—! Now! And if you don’t get it—?”
+
+“What shall I do, you mean?”
+
+“Yes, what shall you do?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“How! you don’t know! Shall you come back to us, then?”
+
+“I will if you like—”
+
+“If I like! If _I_ like! Come, it is not a question of if _I_ like. It
+is what do you want to do yourself.”
+
+“I feel you don’t want me very badly,” said Alvina.
+
+“Why? Why do you feel? Who makes you? Which of us makes you feel so?
+Tell me.”
+
+“Nobody in particular. But I feel it.”
+
+“Oh we-ell! If nobody makes you, and yet you feel it, it must be in
+yourself, don’t you see? Eh? Isn’t it so?”
+
+“Perhaps it is,” admitted Alvina.
+
+“We-ell then! We-ell—” So Madame gave her her congé. “But if you like
+to come back—if you _laike_—then—” Madame shrugged her shoulders—“you
+must come, I suppose.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Alvina.
+
+The young men were watching. They seemed indifferent. Ciccio turned
+aside, with his faint, stupid smile.
+
+In the morning Madame gave Alvina all her belongings, from the little
+safe she called her bank.
+
+“There is the money—so—and so—and so—that is correct. Please count it
+once more!—” Alvina counted it and kept it clutched in her hand. “And
+there are your rings, and your chain, and your
+locket—see—all—everything—! But not the brooch. Where is the brooch?
+Here! Shall I give it back, hein?”
+
+“I gave it to you,” said Alvina, offended. She looked into Madame’s
+black eyes. Madame dropped her eyes.
+
+“Yes, you gave it. But I thought, you see, as you have now not much
+mo-oney, perhaps you would like to take it again—”
+
+“No, thank you,” said Alvina, and she went away, leaving Madame with
+the red brooch in her plump hand.
+
+“Thank goodness I’ve given her something valuable,” thought Alvina to
+herself, as she went trembling to her room.
+
+She had packed her bag. She had to find new rooms. She bade good-bye to
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. Her face was cold and distant, but she smiled
+slightly as she bade them good-bye.
+
+“And perhaps,” said Madame, “per-haps you will come to Wigan tomorrow
+afternoon—or evening? Yes?”
+
+“Thank you,” said Alvina.
+
+She went out and found a little hotel, where she took her room for the
+night, explaining the cause of her visit to Lancaster. Her heart was
+hard and burning. A deep, burning, silent anger against everything
+possessed her, and a profound indifference to mankind.
+
+And therefore, the next day, everything went as if by magic. She had
+decided that at the least sign of indifference from the medical board
+people she would walk away, take her bag, and go to Windermere. She had
+never been to the Lakes. And Windermere was not far off. She would not
+endure one single hint of contumely from any one else. She would go
+straight to Windermere, to see the big lake. Why not do as she wished!
+She could be quite happy by herself among the lakes. And she would be
+absolutely free, absolutely free. She rather looked forward to leaving
+the Town Hall, hurrying to take her bag and off to the station and
+freedom. Hadn’t she still got about a hundred pounds? Why bother for
+one moment? To be quite alone in the whole world—and quite, quite free,
+with her hundred pounds—the prospect attracted her sincerely.
+
+And therefore, everything went charmingly at the Town Hall. The medical
+board were charming to her—charming. There was no hesitation at all.
+From the first moment she was engaged. And she was given a pleasant
+room in a hospital in a garden, and the matron was charming to her, and
+the doctors most courteous.
+
+When could she undertake to commence her duties? When did they want
+her? The very _moment_ she could come. She could begin tomorrow—but she
+had no uniform. Oh, the matron would lend her uniform and aprons, till
+her box arrived.
+
+So there she was—by afternoon installed in her pleasant little room
+looking on the garden, and dressed in a nurse’s uniform. It was all
+sudden like magic. She had wired to Madame, she had wired for her box.
+She was another person.
+
+Needless to say, she was glad. Needless to say that, in the morning,
+when she had thoroughly bathed, and dressed in clean clothes, and put
+on the white dress, the white apron, and the white cap, she felt
+another person. So clean, she felt, so thankful! Her skin seemed
+caressed and live with cleanliness and whiteness, luminous she felt. It
+was so different from being with the Natchas.
+
+In the garden the snowballs, guelder-roses, swayed softly among green
+foliage, there was pink may-blossom, and single scarlet may-blossom,
+and underneath the young green of the trees, irises rearing purple and
+moth-white. A young gardener was working—and a convalescent slowly
+trailed a few paces.
+
+Having ten minutes still, Alvina sat down and wrote to Ciccio: “I am
+glad I have got this post as nurse here. Every one is most kind, and I
+feel at home already. I feel quite happy here. I shall think of my days
+with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, and of you, who were such a stranger to
+me. Good-bye.—A. H.”
+
+This she addressed and posted. No doubt Madame would find occasion to
+read it. But let her.
+
+Alvina now settled down to her new work. There was of course a great
+deal to do, for she had work both in the hospital and out in the town,
+though chiefly out in the town. She went rapidly from case to case, as
+she was summoned. And she was summoned at all hours. So that it was
+tiring work, which left her no time to herself, except just in
+snatches.
+
+She had no serious acquaintance with anybody, she was too busy. The
+matron and sisters and doctors and patients were all part of her day’s
+work, and she regarded them as such. The men she chiefly ignored: she
+felt much more friendly with the matron. She had many a cup of tea and
+many a chat in the matron’s room, in the quiet, sunny afternoons when
+the work was not pressing. Alvina took her quiet moments when she
+could: for she never knew when she would be rung up by one or other of
+the doctors in the town.
+
+And so, from the matron, she learned to crochet. It was work she had
+never taken to. But now she had her ball of cotton and her hook, and
+she worked away as she chatted. She was in good health, and she was
+getting fatter again. With the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, she had improved a
+good deal, her colour and her strength had returned. But undoubtedly
+the nursing life, arduous as it was, suited her best. She became a
+handsome, reposeful woman, jolly with the other nurses, really happy
+with her friend the matron, who was well-bred and wise, and never
+over-intimate.
+
+The doctor with whom Alvina had most to do was a Dr. Mitchell, a
+Scotchman. He had a large practice among the poor, and was an energetic
+man. He was about fifty-four years old, tall, largely-built, with a
+good figure, but with extraordinarily large feet and hands. His face
+was red and clean-shaven, his eyes blue, his teeth very good. He
+laughed and talked rather mouthingly. Alvina, who knew what the nurses
+told her, knew that he had come as a poor boy and bottle-washer to Dr.
+Robertson, a fellow-Scotchman, and that he had made his way up
+gradually till he became a doctor himself, and had an independent
+practice. Now he was quite rich—and a bachelor. But the nurses did not
+set their bonnets at him very much, because he was rather mouthy and
+overbearing.
+
+In the houses of the poor he was a great autocrat.
+
+“What is that stuff you’ve got there!” he inquired largely, seeing a
+bottle of somebody’s Soothing Syrup by a poor woman’s bedside. “Take it
+and throw it down the sink, and the next time you want a soothing syrup
+put a little boot-blacking in hot water. It’ll do you just as much
+good.”
+
+Imagine the slow, pompous, large-mouthed way in which the red-faced,
+handsomely-built man pronounced these words, and you realize why the
+poor set such store by him.
+
+He was eagle-eyed. Wherever he went, there was a scuffle directly his
+foot was heard on the stairs. And he knew they were hiding something.
+He sniffed the air: he glanced round with a sharp eye: and during the
+course of his visit picked up a blue mug which was pushed behind the
+looking-glass. He peered inside—and smelled it.
+
+“Stout?” he said, in a tone of indignant inquiry: God-Almighty would
+presumably take on just such a tone, finding the core of an apple flung
+away among the dead-nettle of paradise: “Stout! Have you been drinking
+stout?” This as he gazed down on the wan mother in the bed.
+
+“They gave me a drop, doctor. I felt that low.”
+
+The doctor marched out of the room, still holding the mug in his hand.
+The sick woman watched him with haunted eyes. The attendant women threw
+up their hands and looked at one another. Was he going for ever? There
+came a sudden smash. The doctor had flung the blue mug downstairs. He
+returned with a solemn stride.
+
+“There!” he said. “And the next person that gives you stout will be
+thrown down along with the mug.”
+
+“Oh doctor, the bit o’ comfort!” wailed the sick woman. “It ud never do
+me no harm.”
+
+“Harm! Harm! With a stomach as weak as yours! Harm! Do you know better
+than I do? What have I come here for? To be told by _you_ what will do
+you harm and what won’t? It appears to me you need no doctor here, you
+know everything already—”
+
+“Oh no, doctor. It’s not like that. But when you feel as if you’d sink
+through the bed, an’ you don’t know what to do with yourself—”
+
+“Take a little beef-tea, or a little rice pudding. Take _nourishment_,
+don’t take that muck. Do you hear—” charging upon the attendant women,
+who shrank against the wall—“she’s to have nothing alcoholic at all,
+and don’t let me catch you giving it her.”
+
+“They say there’s nobbut fower per cent. i’ stout,” retorted the daring
+female.
+
+“Fower per cent.,” mimicked the doctor brutally. “Why, what does an
+ignorant creature like _you_ know about fower per cent.”
+
+The woman muttered a little under her breath.
+
+“What? Speak out. Let me hear what you’ve got to say, my woman. I’ve no
+doubt it’s something for my benefit—”
+
+But the affronted woman rushed out of the room, and burst into tears on
+the landing. After which Dr. Mitchell, mollified, largely told the
+patient how she was to behave, concluding:
+
+“Nourishment! Nourishment is what you want. Nonsense, don’t tell me you
+can’t take it. Push it down if it won’t go down by itself—”
+
+“Oh doctor—”
+
+“Don’t say _oh doctor_ to me. Do as I tell you. That’s _your_
+business.” After which he marched out, and the rattle of his motor car
+was shortly heard.
+
+Alvina got used to scenes like these. She wondered why the people stood
+it. But soon she realized that they loved it—particularly the women.
+
+“Oh, nurse, stop till Dr. Mitchell’s been. I’m scared to death of him,
+for fear he’s going to shout at me.”
+
+“Why does everybody put up with him?” asked innocent Alvina.
+
+“Oh, he’s good-hearted, nurse, he _does_ feel for you.”
+
+And everywhere it was the same: “Oh, he’s got a heart, you know. He’s
+rough, but he’s got a heart. I’d rather have him than your smarmy
+slormin sort. Oh, you feel safe with Dr. Mitchell, I don’t care what
+you say.”
+
+But to Alvina this peculiar form of blustering, bullying heart which
+had all the women scurrying like chickens was not particularly
+attractive.
+
+The men did not like Dr. Mitchell, and would not have him if possible.
+Yet since he was club doctor and panel doctor, they had to submit. The
+first thing he said to a sick or injured labourer, invariably, was:
+
+“And keep off the beer.”
+
+“Oh ay!”
+
+“Keep off the beer, or I shan’t set foot in this house again.”
+
+“Tha’s got a red enough face on thee, tha nedna shout.”
+
+“My face is red with exposure to all weathers, attending ignorant
+people like you. I never touch alcohol in any form.”
+
+“No, an’ I dunna. I drink a drop o’ beer, if that’s what you ca’
+touchin’ alcohol. An’ I’m none th’ wuss for it, tha sees.”
+
+“You’ve heard what I’ve told you.”
+
+“Ah, I have.”
+
+“And if you go on with the beer, you may go on with curing yourself.
+_I_ shan’t attend you. You know I mean what I say, Mrs. Larrick”—this
+to the wife.
+
+“I do, doctor. And I know it’s true what you say. An’ I’m at him night
+an’ day about it—”
+
+“Oh well, if he will hear no reason, he must suffer for it. He mustn’t
+think _I’m_ going to be running after him, if he disobeys my orders.”
+And the doctor stalked off, and the woman began to complain.
+
+None the less the women had their complaints against Dr. Mitchell. If
+ever Alvina entered a clean house on a wet day, she was sure to hear
+the housewife chuntering.
+
+“Oh my lawk, come in nurse! What a day! Doctor’s not been yet. And he’s
+bound to come now I’ve just cleaned up, trapesin’ wi’ his gret feet.
+He’s got the biggest understandin’s of any man i’ Lancaster. My husband
+says they’re the best pair o’ pasties i’ th’ kingdom. An’ he does make
+such a mess, for he never stops to wipe his feet on th’ mat, marches
+straight up your clean stairs—”
+
+“Why don’t you tell him to wipe his feet?” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh my word! Fancy me telling him! He’d jump down my throat with both
+feet afore I’d opened my mouth. He’s not to be spoken to, he isn’t.
+He’s my-lord, he is. You mustn’t look, or you’re done for.”
+
+Alvina laughed. She knew they all liked him for browbeating them, and
+having a heart over and above.
+
+Sometimes he was given a good hit—though nearly always by a man. It
+happened he was in a workman’s house when the man was at dinner.
+
+“Canna yer gi’e a man summat better nor this ’ere pap, Missis?” said
+the hairy husband, turning up his nose at the rice pudding.
+
+“Oh go on,” cried the wife. “I hadna time for owt else.” Dr. Mitchell
+was just stooping his handsome figure in the doorway.
+
+“Rice pudding!” he exclaimed largely. “You couldn’t have anything more
+wholesome and nourishing. I have a rice pudding every day of my
+life—every day of my life, I do.”
+
+The man was eating his pudding and pearling his big moustache copiously
+with it. He did not answer.
+
+“Do you doctor!” cried the woman. “And never no different.”
+
+“Never,” said the doctor.
+
+“Fancy that! You’re that fond of them?”
+
+“I find they agree with me. They are light and digestible. And my
+stomach is as weak as a baby’s.”
+
+The labourer wiped his big moustache on his sleeve.
+
+“Mine _isna_, tha sees,” he said, “so pap’s no use. ’S watter ter me. I
+want ter feel as I’ve had summat: a bit o’ suetty dumplin’ an’ a pint
+o’ hale, summat ter fill th’ hole up. An’ tha’d be th’ same if tha did
+my work.”
+
+“If I did your work,” sneered the doctor. “Why I do ten times the work
+that any one of you does. It’s just the work that has ruined my
+digestion, the never getting a quiet meal, and never a whole night’s
+rest. When do you think _I_ can sit at table and digest my dinner? I
+have to be off looking after people like you—”
+
+“Eh, tha can ta’e th’ titty-bottle wi’ thee,” said the labourer.
+
+But Dr. Mitchell was furious for weeks over this. It put him in a black
+rage to have his great manliness insulted. Alvina was quietly amused.
+
+The doctor began by being rather lordly and condescending with her. But
+luckily she felt she knew her work at least as well as he knew it. She
+smiled and let him condescend. Certainly she neither feared nor even
+admired him. To tell the truth, she rather disliked him: the great,
+red-faced bachelor of fifty-three, with his bald spot and his stomach
+as weak as a baby’s, and his mouthing imperiousness and his good heart
+which was as selfish as it could be. Nothing can be more cocksuredly
+selfish than a good heart which believes in its own beneficence. He was
+a little too much the teetotaller on the one hand to be so largely
+manly on the other. Alvina preferred the labourers with their awful
+long moustaches that got full of food. And he was a little too
+loud-mouthedly lordly to be in human good taste.
+
+As a matter of fact, he was conscious of the fact that he had risen to
+be a gentleman. Now if a man is conscious of being a _gentleman_, he is
+bound to be a little less than a _man_. But if he is gnawed with
+anxiety lest he may _not_ be a gentleman, he is only pitiable. There is
+a third case, however. If a man must loftily, by his manner, assert
+that he is _now_ a gentleman, he shows himself a clown. For Alvina,
+poor Dr. Mitchell fell into this third category, of clowns. She
+tolerated him good-humouredly, as women so often tolerate ninnies and
+_poseurs_. She smiled to herself when she saw his large and important
+presence on the board. She smiled when she saw him at a sale, buying
+the grandest pieces of antique furniture. She smiled when he talked of
+going up to Scotland, for grouse shooting, or of snatching an hour on
+Sunday morning, for golf. And she talked him over, with quiet, delicate
+malice, with the matron. He was no favourite at the hospital.
+
+Gradually Dr. Mitchell’s manner changed towards her. From his imperious
+condescension he took to a tone of uneasy equality. This did not suit
+him. Dr. Mitchell had no equals: he had only the vast stratum of
+inferiors, towards whom he exercised his quite profitable
+beneficence—it brought him in about two thousand a year: and then his
+superiors, people who had been born with money. It was the tradesmen
+and professionals who had started at the bottom and clambered to the
+motor-car footing, who distressed him. And therefore, whilst he treated
+Alvina on this uneasy tradesman footing, he felt himself in a false
+position.
+
+She kept her attitude of quiet amusement, and little by little he sank.
+From being a lofty creature soaring over her head, he was now like a
+big fish poking its nose above water and making eyes at her. He treated
+her with rather presuming deference.
+
+“You look tired this morning,” he barked at her one hot day.
+
+“I think it’s thunder,” she said.
+
+“Thunder! Work, you mean,” and he gave a slight smile. “I’m going to
+drive you back.”
+
+“Oh no, thanks, don’t trouble! I’ve got to call on the way.”
+
+“Where have you got to call?”
+
+She told him.
+
+“Very well. That takes you no more than five minutes. I’ll wait for
+you. Now take your cloak.”
+
+She was surprised. Yet, like other women, she submitted.
+
+As they drove he saw a man with a barrow of cucumbers. He stopped the
+car and leaned towards the man.
+
+“Take that barrow-load of poison and _bury_ it!” he shouted, in his
+strong voice. The busy street hesitated.
+
+“What’s that, mister?” replied the mystified hawker.
+
+Dr. Mitchell pointed to the green pile of cucumbers.
+
+“Take that barrow-load of poison, and bury it,” he called, “before you
+do anybody any more harm with it.”
+
+“What barrow-load of poison’s that?” asked the hawker, approaching. A
+crowd began to gather.
+
+“What barrow-load of poison is that!” repeated the doctor. “Why your
+barrow-load of cucumbers.”
+
+“Oh,” said the man, scrutinizing his cucumbers carefully. To be sure,
+some were a little yellow at the end. “How’s that? Cumbers is right
+enough: fresh from market this morning.”
+
+“Fresh or not fresh,” said the doctor, mouthing his words distinctly,
+“you might as well put poison into your stomach, as those things.
+Cucumbers are the worst thing you can eat.”
+
+“Oh!” said the man, stuttering. “That’s ’appen for them as doesn’t like
+them. I niver knowed a cumber do _me_ no harm, an’ I eat ’em like a
+happle.” Whereupon the hawker took a “cumber” from his barrow, bit off
+the end, and chewed it till the sap squirted. “What’s wrong with that?”
+he said, holding up the bitten cucumber.
+
+“I’m not talking about what’s wrong with that,” said the doctor. “My
+business is what’s wrong with the stomach it goes into. I’m a doctor.
+And I know that those things cause me half my work. They cause half the
+internal troubles people suffer from in summertime.”
+
+“Oh ay! That’s no loss to you, is it? Me an’ you’s partners. More
+cumbers I sell, more graft for you, ’cordin’ to that. What’s wrong
+then. _Cum-bers! Fine fresh Cum-berrrs! All fresh and juisty, all cheap
+and tasty—!_” yelled the man.
+
+“I am a doctor not only to cure illness, but to prevent it where I can.
+And cucumbers are poison to everybody.”
+
+“_Cum-bers! Cum-bers! Fresh cumbers!_” yelled the man,
+
+Dr. Mitchell started his car.
+
+“When will they learn intelligence?” he said to Alvina, smiling and
+showing his white, even teeth.
+
+“I don’t care, you know, myself,” she said. “I should always let people
+do what they wanted—”
+
+“Even if you knew it would do them harm?” he queried, smiling with
+amiable condescension.
+
+“Yes, why not! It’s their own affair. And they’ll do themselves harm
+one way or another.”
+
+“And you wouldn’t try to prevent it?”
+
+“You might as well try to stop the sea with your fingers.”
+
+“You think so?” smiled the doctor. “I see, you are a pessimist. You are
+a pessimist with regard to human nature.”
+
+“Am I?” smiled Alvina, thinking the rose would smell as sweet. It
+seemed to please the doctor to find that Alvina was a pessimist with
+regard to human nature. It seemed to give her an air of distinction. In
+his eyes, she _seemed_ distinguished. He was in a fair way to dote on
+her.
+
+She, of course, when he began to admire her, liked him much better, and
+even saw graceful, boyish attractions in him. There was really
+something childish about him. And this something childish, since it
+looked up to her as if she were the saving grace, naturally flattered
+her and made her feel gentler towards him.
+
+He got in the habit of picking her up in his car, when he could. And he
+would tap at the matron’s door, smiling and showing all his beautiful
+teeth, just about tea-time.
+
+“May I come in?” His voice sounded almost flirty.
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“I see you’re having tea! Very nice, a cup of tea at this hour!”
+
+“Have one too, doctor.”
+
+“I will with pleasure.” And he sat down wreathed with smiles. Alvina
+rose to get a cup. “I didn’t intend to disturb you, nurse,” he said.
+“Men are always intruders,” he smiled to the matron.
+
+“Sometimes,” said the matron, “women are charmed to be intruded upon.”
+
+“Oh really!” his eyes sparkled. “Perhaps _you_ wouldn’t say so, nurse?”
+he said, turning to Alvina. Alvina was just reaching at the cupboard.
+Very charming she looked, in her fresh dress and cap and soft brown
+hair, very attractive her figure, with its full, soft loins. She turned
+round to him.
+
+“Oh yes,” she said. “I quite agree with the matron.”
+
+“Oh, you do!” He did not quite know how to take it. “But you mind being
+disturbed at your tea, I am sure.”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “We are so used to being disturbed.”
+
+“Rather weak, doctor?” said the matron, pouring the tea.
+
+“Very weak, please.”
+
+The doctor was a little laboured in his gallantry, but unmistakably
+gallant. When he was gone, the matron looked demure, and Alvina
+confused. Each waited for the other to speak.
+
+“Don’t you think Dr. Mitchell is quite coming out?” said Alvina.
+
+“Quite! _Quite_ the ladies’ man! I wonder who it is can be _bringing_
+him out. A very praiseworthy work, I am sure.” She looked wickedly at
+Alvina.
+
+“No, don’t look at me,” laughed Alvina, “_I_ know nothing about it.”
+
+“Do you think it may be _me_!” said the matron, mischievous.
+
+“I’m sure of it, matron! He begins to show some taste at last.”
+
+“There now!” said the matron. “I shall put my cap straight.” And she
+went to the mirror, fluffing her hair and settling her cap.
+
+“There!” she said, bobbing a little curtsey to Alvina.
+
+They both laughed, and went off to work.
+
+But there was no mistake, Dr. Mitchell was beginning to expand. With
+Alvina he quite unbent, and seemed even to sun himself when she was
+near, to attract her attention. He smiled and smirked and became oddly
+self-conscious: rather uncomfortable. He liked to hang over her chair,
+and he made a great event of offering her a cigarette whenever they
+met, although he himself never smoked. He had a gold cigarette case.
+
+One day he asked her in to see his garden. He had a pleasant old square
+house with a big walled garden. He showed her his flowers and his
+wall-fruit, and asked her to eat his strawberries. He bade her admire
+his asparagus. And then he gave her tea in the drawing-room, with
+strawberries and cream and cakes, of all of which he ate nothing. But
+he smiled expansively all the time. He was a made man: and now he was
+really letting himself go, luxuriating in everything; above all, in
+Alvina, who poured tea gracefully from the old Georgian tea-pot, and
+smiled so pleasantly above the Queen Anne tea-cups.
+
+And she, wicked that she was, admired every detail of his drawing-room.
+It was a pleasant room indeed, with roses outside the French door, and
+a lawn in sunshine beyond, with bright red flowers in beds. But
+indoors, it was insistently antique. Alvina admired the Jacobean
+sideboard and the Jacobean arm-chairs and the Hepplewhite wall-chairs
+and the Sheraton settee and the Chippendale stands and the Axminster
+carpet and the bronze clock with Shakespeare and Ariosto reclining on
+it—yes, she even admired Shakespeare on the clock—and the ormolu
+cabinet and the bead-work foot-stools and the dreadful Sèvres dish with
+a cherub in it and—but why enumerate. She admired _everything_! And Dr.
+Mitchell’s heart expanded in his bosom till he felt it would burst,
+unless he either fell at her feet or did something extraordinary. He
+had never even imagined what it was to be so expanded: what a delicious
+feeling. He could have kissed her feet in an ecstasy of wild expansion.
+But habit, so far, prevented his doing more than beam.
+
+Another day he said to her, when they were talking of age:
+
+“You are as young as you feel. Why, when I was twenty I felt I had all
+the cares and responsibility of the world on my shoulders. And now I am
+middle-aged more or less, I feel as light as if I were just beginning
+life.” He beamed down at her.
+
+“Perhaps you _are_ only just beginning your _own_ life,” she said. “You
+have lived for your work till now.”
+
+“It may be that,” he said. “It may be that up till now I have lived for
+others, for my patients. And now perhaps I may be allowed to live a
+little more for myself.” He beamed with real luxury, saw the real
+luxury of life begin.
+
+“Why shouldn’t you?” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh yes, I intend to,” he said, with confidence.
+
+He really, by degrees, made up his mind to marry now, and to retire in
+part from his work. That is, he would hire another assistant, and give
+himself a fair amount of leisure. He was inordinately proud of his
+house. And now he looked forward to the treat of his life: hanging
+round the woman he had made his wife, following her about, feeling
+proud of her and his house, talking to her from morning till night,
+really finding himself in her. When he had to go his rounds she would
+go with him in the car: he made up his mind she would be willing to
+accompany him. He would teach her to drive, and they would sit side by
+side, she driving him and waiting for him. And he would run out of the
+houses of his patients, and find her sitting there, and he would get in
+beside her and feel so snug and so sure and so happy as she drove him
+off to the next case, he informing her about his work.
+
+And if ever she did not go out with him, she would be there on the
+doorstep waiting for him the moment she heard the car. And they would
+have long, cosy evenings together in the drawing-room, as he luxuriated
+in her very presence. She would sit on his knees and they would be snug
+for hours, before they went warmly and deliciously to bed. And in the
+morning he need not rush off. He would loiter about with her, they
+would loiter down the garden looking at every new flower and every new
+fruit, she would wear fresh flowery dresses and no cap on her hair, he
+would never be able to tear himself away from her. Every morning it
+would be unbearable to have to tear himself away from her, and every
+hour he would be rushing back to her. They would be simply everything
+to one another. And how he would enjoy it! Ah!
+
+He pondered as to whether he would have children. A child would take
+her away from him. That was his first thought. But then—! Ah well, he
+would have to leave it till the time. Love’s young dream is never so
+delicious as at the virgin age of fifty-three.
+
+But he was quite cautious. He made no definite advances till he had put
+a plain question. It was August Bank Holiday, that for ever black day
+of the declaration of war, when his question was put. For this year of
+our story is the fatal year 1914.
+
+There was quite a stir in the town over the declaration of war. But
+most people felt that the news was only intended to give an extra
+thrill to the all-important event of Bank Holiday. Half the world had
+gone to Blackpool or Southport, the other half had gone to the Lakes or
+into the country. Lancaster was busy with a sort of fête,
+notwithstanding. And as the weather was decent, everybody was in a real
+holiday mood.
+
+So that Dr. Mitchell, who had contrived to pick up Alvina at the
+Hospital, contrived to bring her to his house at half-past three, for
+tea.
+
+“What do you think of this new war?” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh, it will be over in six weeks,” said the doctor easily. And there
+they left it. Only, with a fleeting thought, Alvina wondered if it
+would affect the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She had never heard any more of
+them.
+
+“Where would you have liked to go today?” said the doctor, turning to
+smile at her as he drove the car.
+
+“I think to Windermere—into the Lakes,” she said.
+
+“We might make a tour of the Lakes before long,” he said. She was not
+thinking, so she took no particular notice of the speech.
+
+“How nice!” she said vaguely.
+
+“We could go in the car, and take them as we chose,” said the doctor.
+
+“Yes,” she said, wondering at him now.
+
+When they had had tea, quietly and gallantly tête-à-tête in his
+drawing-room, he asked her if she would like to see the other rooms of
+the house. She thanked him, and he showed her the substantial oak
+dining-room, and the little room with medical works and a revolving
+chair, which he called his study: then the kitchen and the pantry, the
+housekeeper looking askance; then upstairs to his bedroom, which was
+very fine with old mahogany tall-boys and silver candle-sticks on the
+dressing-table, and brushes with green ivory backs, and a hygienic
+white bed and straw mats: then the visitors’ bedroom corresponding,
+with its old satin-wood furniture and cream-coloured chairs with large,
+pale-blue cushions, and a pale carpet with reddish wreaths. Very nice,
+lovely, awfully nice, I do like that, isn’t that beautiful, I’ve never
+seen anything like that! came the gratifying fireworks of admiration
+from Alvina. And he smiled and gloated. But in her mind she was
+thinking of Manchester House, and how dark and horrible it was, how she
+hated it, but how it had impressed Ciccio and Geoffrey, how they would
+have loved to feel themselves masters of it, and how done in the eye
+they were. She smiled to herself rather grimly. For this afternoon she
+was feeling unaccountably uneasy and wistful, yearning into the
+distance again: a trick she thought she had happily lost.
+
+The doctor dragged her up even to the slanting attics. He was a big
+man, and he always wore navy blue suits, well-tailored and immaculate.
+Unconsciously she felt that big men in good navy-blue suits, especially
+if they had reddish faces and rather big feet and if their hair was
+wearing thin, were a special type all to themselves, solid and rather
+namby-pamby and tiresome.
+
+“What very nice attics! I think the many angles which the roof makes,
+the different slants, you know, are so attractive. Oh, and the
+fascinating little window!” She crouched in the hollow of the small
+dormer window. “Fascinating! See the town and the hills! I know I
+should want this room for my own.”
+
+“Then have it,” he said. “Have it for _one_ of your own.”
+
+She crept out of the window recess and looked up at him. He was leaning
+forward to her, smiling, self-conscious, tentative, and eager. She
+thought it best to laugh it off.
+
+“I was only talking like a child, from the imagination,” she said.
+
+“I quite understand that,” he replied deliberately. “But I am speaking
+what I _mean_—”
+
+She did not answer, but looked at him reproachfully. He was smiling and
+smirking broadly at her.
+
+“Won’t you marry me, and come and have this garret for your own?” He
+spoke as if he were offering her a chocolate. He smiled with curious
+uncertainty.
+
+“I don’t know,” she said vaguely.
+
+His smile broadened.
+
+“Well now,” he said, “make up your mind. I’m not good at _talking_
+about love, you know. But I think I’m pretty good at _feeling_ it, you
+know. I want you to come here and be happy: with me.” He added the two
+last words as a sort of sly post-scriptum, and as if to commit himself
+finally.
+
+“But I’ve never thought about it,” she said, rapidly cogitating.
+
+“I know you haven’t. But think about it now—” He began to be hugely
+pleased with himself. “Think about it now. And tell me if you could put
+up with _me_, as well as the garret.” He beamed and put his head a
+little on one side—rather like Mr. May, for one second. But he was much
+more dangerous than Mr. May. He was overbearing, and had the devil’s
+own temper if he was thwarted. This she knew. He was a big man in a
+navy blue suit, with very white teeth.
+
+Again she thought she had better laugh it off.
+
+“It’s you I _am_ thinking about,” she laughed, flirting still. “It’s
+you I _am_ wondering about.”
+
+“Well,” he said, rather pleased with himself, “you wonder about me till
+you’ve made up your mind—”
+
+“I will—” she said, seizing the opportunity. “I’ll wonder about you
+till I’ve made up my mind—shall I?”
+
+“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I wish you to do. And the next time I ask
+you, you’ll let me know. That’s it, isn’t it?” He smiled indulgently
+down on her: thought her face young and charming, charming.
+
+“Yes,” she said. “But don’t ask me too soon, will you?”
+
+“How, too soon—?” He smiled delightedly.
+
+“You’ll give me time to wonder about you, won’t you? You won’t ask me
+again this month, will you?”
+
+“This month?” His eyes beamed with pleasure. He enjoyed the
+procrastination as much as she did. “But the month’s only just begun!
+However! Yes, you shall have your way. I won’t ask you again this
+month.”
+
+“And I’ll promise to wonder about you all the month,” she laughed.
+
+“That’s a bargain,” he said.
+
+They went downstairs, and Alvina returned to her duties. She was very
+much excited, very much excited indeed. A big, well-to-do man in a navy
+blue suit, of handsome appearance, aged fifty-three, with white teeth
+and a delicate stomach: it _was_ exciting. A sure position, a very nice
+home and lovely things in it, once they were dragged about a bit. And
+of course he’d adore her. That went without saying. She was as fussy as
+if some one had given her a lovely new pair of boots. She was really
+fussy and pleased with herself: and _quite_ decided she’d take it all
+on. That was how it put itself to her: she would take it all on.
+
+Of course there was the man himself to consider. But he was quite
+presentable. There was nothing at all against it: nothing at all. If he
+had pressed her during the first half of the month of August, he would
+almost certainly have got her. But he only beamed in anticipation.
+
+Meanwhile the stir and restlessness of the war had begun, and was
+making itself felt even in Lancaster. And the excitement and the unease
+began to wear through Alvina’s rather glamorous fussiness. Some of her
+old fretfulness came back on her. Her spirit, which had been as if
+asleep these months, now woke rather irritably, and chafed against its
+collar. Who was this elderly man, that she should marry him? Who was
+he, that she should be kissed by him. Actually kissed and fondled by
+him! Repulsive. She avoided him like the plague. Fancy reposing against
+his broad, navy blue waistcoat! She started as if she had been stung.
+Fancy seeing his red, smiling face just above hers, coming down to
+embrace her! She pushed it away with her open hand. And she ran away,
+to avoid the thought.
+
+And yet! And yet! She would be so comfortable, she would be so well-off
+for the rest of her life. The hateful problem of material circumstance
+would be solved for ever. And she knew well how hateful material
+circumstances can make life.
+
+Therefore, she could not decide in a hurry. But she bore poor Dr.
+Mitchell a deep grudge, that he could not grant her all the advantages
+of his offer, and excuse her the acceptance of him himself. She dared
+not decide in a hurry. And this very fear, like a yoke on her, made her
+resent the man who drove her to decision.
+
+Sometimes she rebelled. Sometimes she laughed unpleasantly in the man’s
+face: though she dared not go _too_ far: for she was a little afraid of
+him and his rabid temper, also. In her moments of sullen rebellion she
+thought of Natcha-Kee-Tawara. She thought of them deeply. She wondered
+where they were, what they were doing, how the war had affected them.
+Poor Geoffrey was a Frenchman—he would have to go to France to fight.
+Max and Louis were Swiss, it would not affect them: nor Ciccio, who was
+Italian. She wondered if the troupe was in England: if they would
+continue together when Geoffrey was gone. She wondered if they thought
+of her. She felt they did. She felt they did not forget her. She felt
+there was a connection.
+
+In fact, during the latter part of August she wondered a good deal more
+about the Natchas than about Dr. Mitchell. But wondering about the
+Natchas would not help her. She felt, if she knew where they were, she
+would fly to them. But then she knew she wouldn’t.
+
+When she was at the station she saw crowds and bustle. People were
+seeing their young men off. Beer was flowing: sailors on the train were
+tipsy: women were holding young men by the lapel of the coat. And when
+the train drew away, the young men waving, the women cried aloud and
+sobbed after them.
+
+A chill ran down Alvina’s spine. This was another matter, apart from
+her Dr. Mitchell. It made him feel very unreal, trivial. She did not
+know what she was going to do. She realized she must do something—take
+some part in the wild dislocation of life. She knew that she would put
+off Dr. Mitchell again.
+
+She talked the matter over with the matron. The matron advised her to
+procrastinate. Why not volunteer for war-service? True, she was a
+maternity nurse, and this was hardly the qualification needed for the
+nursing of soldiers. But still, she _was_ a nurse.
+
+Alvina felt this was the thing to do. Everywhere was a stir and a
+seethe of excitement. Men were active, women were needed too. She put
+down her name on the list of volunteers for active service. This was on
+the last day of August.
+
+On the first of September Dr. Mitchell was round at the hospital early,
+when Alvina was just beginning her morning duties there. He went into
+the matron’s room, and asked for Nurse Houghton. The matron left them
+together.
+
+The doctor was excited. He smiled broadly, but with a tension of
+nervous excitement. Alvina was troubled. Her heart beat fast.
+
+“Now!” said Dr. Mitchell. “What have you to say to me?”
+
+She looked up at him with confused eyes. He smiled excitedly and
+meaningful at her, and came a little nearer.
+
+“Today is the day when you answer, isn’t it?” he said. “Now then, let
+me hear what you have to say.”
+
+But she only watched him with large, troubled eyes, and did not speak.
+He came still nearer to her.
+
+“Well then,” he said, “I am to take it that silence gives consent.” And
+he laughed nervously, with nervous anticipation, as he tried to put his
+arm round her. But she stepped suddenly back.
+
+“No, not yet,” she said.
+
+“Why?” he asked.
+
+“I haven’t given my answer,” she said.
+
+“Give it then,” he said, testily.
+
+“I’ve volunteered for active service,” she stammered. “I felt I ought
+to do something.”
+
+“Why?” he asked. He could put a nasty intonation into that
+monosyllable. “I should have thought you would answer _me_ first.”
+
+She did not answer, but watched him. She did not like him.
+
+“I only signed yesterday,” she said.
+
+“Why didn’t you leave it till tomorrow? It would have looked better.”
+He was angry. But he saw a half-frightened, half-guilty look on her
+face, and during the weeks of anticipation he had worked himself up.
+
+“But put that aside,” he smiled again, a little dangerously. “You have
+still to answer my question. Having volunteered for war service doesn’t
+prevent your being engaged to me, does it?”
+
+Alvina watched him with large eyes. And again he came very near to her,
+so that his blue-serge waistcoat seemed, to impinge on her, and his
+purplish red face was above her.
+
+“I’d rather not be engaged, under the circumstances,” she said.
+
+“Why?” came the nasty monosyllable. “What have the circumstances got to
+do with it?”
+
+“Everything is so uncertain,” she said. “I’d rather wait.”
+
+“Wait! Haven’t you waited long enough? There’s nothing at all to
+prevent your getting engaged to me now. Nothing whatsoever! Come now.
+I’m old enough not to be played with. And I’m much too much in love
+with you to let you go on indefinitely like this. Come now!” He smiled
+imminent, and held out his large hand for her hand. “Let me put the
+ring on your finger. It will be the proudest day of my life when I make
+you my wife. Give me your hand—”
+
+Alvina was wavering. For one thing, mere curiosity made her want to see
+the ring. She half lifted her hand. And but for the knowledge that he
+would kiss her, she would have given it. But he would kiss her—and
+against that she obstinately set her will. She put her hand behind her
+back, and looked obstinately into his eyes.
+
+“Don’t play a game with me,” he said dangerously.
+
+But she only continued to look mockingly and obstinately into his eyes.
+
+“Come,” he said, beckoning for her to give her hand.
+
+With a barely perceptible shake of the head, she refused, staring at
+him all the time. His ungovernable temper got the better of him. He saw
+red, and without knowing, seized her by the shoulder, swung her back,
+and thrust her, pressed her against the wall as if he would push her
+through it. His face was blind with anger, like a hot, red sun.
+Suddenly, almost instantaneously, he came to himself again and drew
+back his hands, shaking his right hand as if some rat had bitten it.
+
+“I’m sorry!” he shouted, beside himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.
+I’m sorry.” He dithered before her.
+
+She recovered her equilibrium, and, pale to the lips, looked at him
+with sombre eyes.
+
+“I’m sorry!” he continued loudly, in his strange frenzy like a small
+boy. “Don’t remember! Don’t remember! Don’t think I did it.”
+
+His face was a kind of blank, and unconsciously he wrung the hand that
+had gripped her, as if it pained him. She watched him, and wondered why
+on earth all this frenzy. She was left rather cold, she did not at all
+feel the strong feelings he seemed to expect of her. There was nothing
+so very unnatural, after all, in being bumped up suddenly against the
+wall. Certainly her shoulder hurt where he had gripped it. But there
+were plenty of worse hurts in the world. She watched him with wide,
+distant eyes.
+
+And he fell on his knees before her, as she backed against the
+bookcase, and he caught hold of the edge of her dress-bottom, drawing
+it to him. Which made her rather abashed, and much more uncomfortable.
+
+“Forgive me!” he said. “Don’t remember! Forgive me! Love me! Love me!
+Forgive me and love me! Forgive me and love me!”
+
+As Alvina was looking down dismayed on the great, red-faced, elderly
+man, who in his crying-out showed his white teeth like a child, and as
+she was gently trying to draw her skirt from his clutch, the door
+opened, and there stood the matron, in her big frilled cap. Alvina
+glanced at her, flushed crimson and looked down to the man. She touched
+his face with her hand.
+
+“Never mind,” she said. “It’s nothing. Don’t think about it.”
+
+He caught her hand and clung to it.
+
+“Love me! Love me! Love me!” he cried.
+
+The matron softly closed the door again, withdrawing.
+
+“Love me! Love me!”
+
+Alvina was absolutely dumbfounded by this scene. She had no idea men
+did such things. It did not touch her, it dumbfounded her.
+
+The doctor, clinging to her hand, struggled to his feet and flung his
+arms round her, clasping her wildly to him.
+
+“You love me! You love me, don’t you?” he said, vibrating and beside
+himself as he pressed her to his breast and hid his face against her
+hair. At such a moment, what was the good of saying she didn’t? But she
+didn’t. Pity for his shame, however, kept her silent, motionless and
+silent in his arms, smothered against the blue-serge waistcoat of his
+broad breast.
+
+He was beginning to come to himself. He became silent. But he still
+strained her fast, he had no idea of letting her go.
+
+“You will take my ring, won’t you?” he said at last, still in the
+strange, lamentable voice. “You will take my ring.”
+
+“Yes,” she said coldly. Anything for a quiet emergence from this scene.
+
+He fumbled feverishly in his pocket with one hand, holding her still
+fast by the other arm. And with one hand he managed to extract the ring
+from its case, letting the case roll away on the floor. It was a
+diamond solitaire.
+
+“Which finger? Which finger is it?” he asked, beginning to smile rather
+weakly. She extricated her hand, and held out her engagement finger.
+Upon it was the mourning-ring Miss Frost had always worn. The doctor
+slipped the diamond solitaire above the mourning ring, and folded
+Alvina to his breast again.
+
+“Now,” he said, almost in his normal voice. “Now I know you love me.”
+The pleased self-satisfaction in his voice made her angry. She managed
+to extricate herself.
+
+“You will come along with me now?” he said.
+
+“I can’t,” she answered. “I must get back to my work here.”
+
+“Nurse Allen can do that.”
+
+“I’d rather not.”
+
+“Where are you going today?”
+
+She told him her cases.
+
+“Well, you will come and have tea with me. I shall expect you to have
+tea with me every day.”
+
+But Alvina was straightening her crushed cap before the mirror, and did
+not answer.
+
+“We can see as much as we like of each other now we’re engaged,” he
+said, smiling with satisfaction.
+
+“I wonder where the matron is,” said Alvina, suddenly going into the
+cool white corridor. He followed her. And they met the matron just
+coming out of the ward.
+
+“Matron!” said Dr. Mitchell, with a return of his old mouthing
+importance. “You may congratulate Nurse Houghton and me on our
+engagement—” He smiled largely.
+
+“I may congratulate _you_, you mean,” said the matron.
+
+“Yes, of course. And both of us, since we are now one,” he replied.
+
+“Not quite, yet,” said the matron gravely.
+
+And at length she managed to get rid of him.
+
+At once she went to look for Alvina, who had gone to her duties.
+
+“Well, I _suppose_ it is all right,” said the matron gravely.
+
+“No it isn’t,” said Alvina. “I shall _never_ marry him.”
+
+“Ah, never is a long while! Did he hear me come in?”
+
+“No, I’m sure he didn’t.”
+
+“Thank goodness for that.”
+
+“Yes indeed! It was perfectly horrible. Following me round on his knees
+and shouting for me to love him! Perfectly horrible!”
+
+“Well,” said the matron. “You never know what men will do till you’ve
+known them. And then you need be surprised at nothing, _nothing_. I’m
+surprised at nothing they do—”
+
+“I must say,” said Alvina, “I was surprised. Very unpleasantly.”
+
+“But you accepted him—”
+
+“Anything to quieten him—like a hysterical child.”
+
+“Yes, but I’m not sure you haven’t taken a very risky way of quietening
+him, giving him what he wanted—”
+
+“I think,” said Alvina, “I can look after myself. I may be moved any
+day now.”
+
+“Well—!” said the matron. “He may prevent your getting moved, you know.
+He’s on the board. And if he says you are indispensable—”
+
+This was a new idea for Alvina to cogitate. She had counted on a speedy
+escape. She put his ring in her apron pocket, and there she forgot it
+until he pounced on her in the afternoon, in the house of one of her
+patients. He waited for her, to take her off.
+
+“Where is your ring?” he said.
+
+And she realized that it lay in the pocket of a soiled, discarded
+apron—perhaps lost for ever.
+
+“I shan’t wear it on duty,” she said. “You know that.”
+
+She had to go to tea with him. She avoided his love-making, by telling
+him any sort of spooniness revolted her. And he was too much an old
+bachelor to take easily to a fondling habit—before marriage, at least.
+So he mercifully left her alone: he was on the whole devoutly thankful
+she wanted to be left alone. But he wanted her to be there. That was
+his greatest craving. He wanted her to be always there. And so he
+craved for marriage: to possess her entirely, and to have her always
+there with him, so that he was never alone. Alone and apart from all
+the world: but by her side, always by her side.
+
+“Now when shall we fix the marriage?” he said. “It is no good putting
+it back. We both know what we are doing. And now the engagement is
+announced—”
+
+He looked at her anxiously. She could see the hysterical little boy
+under the great, authoritative man.
+
+“Oh, not till after Christmas!” she said.
+
+“After Christmas!” he started as if he had been bitten. “Nonsense! It’s
+nonsense to wait so long. Next month, at the latest.”
+
+“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t think so soon.”
+
+“Why not? The sooner the better. You had better send in your
+resignation at once, so that you’re free.”
+
+“Oh but is there any need? I may be transferred for war service.”
+
+“That’s not likely. You’re our only maternity nurse—”
+
+And so the days went by. She had tea with him practically every
+afternoon, and she got used to him. They discussed the furnishing—she
+could not help suggesting a few alterations, a few arrangements
+according to _her_ idea. And he drew up a plan of a wedding tour in
+Scotland. Yet she was quite certain she would not marry him. The matron
+laughed at her certainty. “You will drift into it,” she said. “He is
+tying you down by too many little threads.”
+
+“Ah, well, you’ll see!” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes,” said the matron. “I _shall_ see.”
+
+And it was true that Alvina’s will was indeterminate, at this time. She
+was _resolved_ not to marry. But her will, like a spring that is
+hitched somehow, did not fly direct against the doctor. She had sent in
+her resignation, as he suggested. But not that she might be free to
+marry him, but that she might be at liberty to flee him. So she told
+herself. Yet she worked into his hands.
+
+One day she sat with the doctor in the car near the station—it was
+towards the end of September—held up by a squad of soldiers in khaki,
+who were marching off with their band wildly playing, to embark on the
+special troop train that was coming down from the north. The town was
+in great excitement. War-fever was spreading everywhere. Men were
+rushing to enlist—and being constantly rejected, for it was still the
+days of regular standards.
+
+As the crowds surged on the pavement, as the soldiers tramped to the
+station, as the traffic waited, there came a certain flow in the
+opposite direction. The 4:15 train had come in. People were struggling
+along with luggage, children were running with spades and buckets, cabs
+were crawling along with families: it was the seaside people coming
+home. Alvina watched the two crowds mingle.
+
+And as she watched she saw two men, one carrying a mandoline case and a
+suit-case which she knew. It was Ciccio. She did not know the other
+man; some theatrical individual. The two men halted almost near the
+car, to watch the band go by. Alvina saw Ciccio quite near to her. She
+would have liked to squirt water down his brown, handsome, oblivious
+neck. She felt she hated him. He stood there, watching the music, his
+lips curling in his faintly-derisive Italian manner, as he talked to
+the other man. His eyelashes were as long and dark as ever, his eyes
+had still the attractive look of being set in with a smutty finger. He
+had got the same brownish suit on, which she disliked, the same black
+hat set slightly, jauntily over one eye. He looked common: and yet with
+that peculiar southern aloofness which gave him a certain beauty and
+distinction in her eyes. She felt she hated him, rather. She felt she
+had been let down by him.
+
+The band had passed. A child ran against the wheel of the standing car.
+Alvina suddenly reached forward and made a loud, screeching flourish on
+the hooter. Every one looked round, including the laden, tramping
+soldiers.
+
+“We can’t move yet,” said Dr. Mitchell.
+
+But Alvina was looking at Ciccio at that moment. He had turned with the
+rest, looking inquiringly at the car. And his quick eyes, the whites of
+which showed so white against his duskiness, the yellow pupils so
+non-human, met hers with a quick flash of recognition. His mouth began
+to curl in a smile of greeting. But she stared at him without moving a
+muscle, just blankly stared, abstracting every scrap of feeling, even
+of animosity or coldness, out of her gaze. She saw the smile die on his
+lips, his eyes glance sideways, and again sideways, with that curious
+animal shyness which characterized him. It was as if he did not want to
+see her looking at him, and ran from side to side like a caged weasel,
+avoiding her blank, glaucous look.
+
+She turned pleasantly to Dr. Mitchell.
+
+“What did you say?” she asked sweetly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED
+
+
+Alvina found it pleasant to be respected as she was respected in
+Lancaster. It is not only the prophet who hath honour _save_ in his own
+country: it is every one with individuality. In this northern town
+Alvina found that her individuality really told. Already she belonged
+to the revered caste of medicine-men. And into the bargain she was a
+personality, a person.
+
+Well and good. She was not going to cheapen herself. She felt that even
+in the eyes of the natives—the well-to-do part, at least—she lost a
+_little_ of her distinction when she was engaged to Dr. Mitchell. The
+engagement had been announced in _The Times_, _The Morning Post_, _The
+Manchester Guardian_, and the local _News_. No fear about its being
+known. And it cast a slight slur of vulgar familiarity over her. In
+Woodhouse, she knew, it elevated her in the common esteem tremendously.
+But she was no longer in Woodhouse. She was in Lancaster. And in
+Lancaster her engagement pigeonholed her. Apart from Dr. Mitchell she
+had a magic potentiality. Connected with him, she was a known and
+labelled quantity.
+
+This she gathered from her contact with the local gentry. The matron
+was a woman of family, who somehow managed, in her big, white, frilled
+cap, to be distinguished like an abbess of old. The really toney women
+of the place came to take tea in her room, and these little teas in the
+hospital were like a little elegant female conspiracy. There was a
+slight flavour of art and literature about. The matron had known Walter
+Pater, in the somewhat remote past.
+
+Alvina was admitted to these teas with the few women who formed the
+toney intellectual élite of this northern town. There was a certain
+freemasonry in the matron’s room. The matron, a lady-doctor, a
+clergyman’s daughter, and the wives of two industrial magnates of the
+place, these five, and then Alvina, formed the little group. They did
+not meet a great deal outside the hospital. But they always met with
+that curious female freemasonry which can form a law unto itself even
+among most conventional women. They talked as they would never talk
+before men, or before feminine outsiders. They threw aside the whole
+vestment of convention. They discussed plainly the things they thought
+about—even the most secret—and they were quite calm about the things
+they did—even the most impossible. Alvina felt that her transgression
+was a very mild affair, and that her engagement was really _infra dig_.
+
+“And are you going to marry him?” asked Mrs. Tuke, with a long, cool
+look.
+
+“I can’t _imagine_ myself—” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh, but so many things happen outside one’s imagination. That’s where
+your body has you. I can’t _imagine_ that I’m going to have a child—”
+She lowered her eyelids wearily and sardonically over her large eyes.
+
+Mrs. Tuke was the wife of the son of a local manufacturer. She was
+about twenty-eight years old, pale, with great dark-grey eyes and an
+arched nose and black hair, very like a head on one of the lovely
+Syracusan coins. The odd look of a smile which wasn’t a smile, at the
+corners of the mouth, the arched nose, and the slowness of the big,
+full, classic eyes gave her the dangerous Greek look of the Syracusan
+women of the past: the dangerous, heavily-civilized women of old
+Sicily: those who laughed about the latomia.
+
+“But do you think you can have a child without wanting it _at all_?”
+asked Alvina.
+
+“Oh, but there isn’t _one bit_ of me wants it, not _one bit_. My
+_flesh_ doesn’t want it. And my mind doesn’t—yet there it is!” She
+spread her fine hands with a flicker of inevitability.
+
+“Something must want it,” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh!” said Mrs. Tuke. “The universe is one big machine, and we’re just
+part of it.” She flicked out her grey silk handkerchief, and dabbed her
+nose, watching with big, black-grey eyes the fresh face of Alvina.
+
+“There’s not _one bit_ of me concerned in having this child,” she
+persisted to Alvina. “My flesh isn’t concerned, and my mind isn’t. And
+_yet_!—_le voilà!_—I’m just _planté_. I can’t _imagine_ why I married
+Tommy. And yet—I did—!” She shook her head as if it was all just beyond
+her, and the pseudo-smile at the corners of her ageless mouth deepened.
+
+Alvina was to nurse Mrs. Tuke. The baby was expected at the end of
+August. But already the middle of September was here, and the baby had
+not arrived.
+
+The Tukes were not very rich—the young ones, that is. Tommy wanted to
+compose music, so he lived on what his father gave him. His father gave
+him a little house outside the town, a house furnished with expensive
+bits of old furniture, in a way that the townspeople thought insane.
+But there you are—Effie would insist on dabbing a rare bit of yellow
+brocade on the wall, instead of a picture, and in painting apple-green
+shelves in the recesses of the whitewashed wall of the dining-room.
+Then she enamelled the hall-furniture yellow, and decorated it with
+curious green and lavender lines and flowers, and had unearthly
+cushions and Sardinian pottery with unspeakable peaked griffins.
+
+What were you to make of such a woman! Alvina slept in her house these
+days, instead of at the hospital. For Effie was a very bad sleeper. She
+would sit up in bed, the two glossy black plaits hanging beside her
+white, arch face, wrapping loosely round her her dressing-gown of a
+sort of plumbago-coloured, dark-grey silk lined with fine silk of
+metallic blue, and there, ivory and jet-black and grey like black-lead,
+she would sit in the white bedclothes flicking her handkerchief and
+revealing a flicker of kingfisher-blue silk and white silk night dress,
+complaining of her neuritis nerve and her own impossible condition, and
+begging Alvina to stay with her another half-hour, and suddenly
+studying the big, blood-red stone on her finger as if she was reading
+something in it.
+
+“I believe I shall be like the woman in the _Cent Nouvelles_ and carry
+my child for five years. Do you know that story? She said that eating a
+parsley leaf on which bits of snow were sticking started the child in
+her. It might just as well—”
+
+Alvina would laugh and get tired. There was about her a kind of half
+bitter sanity and nonchalance which the nervous woman liked.
+
+One night as they were sitting thus in the bedroom, at nearly eleven
+o’clock, they started and listened. Dogs in the distance had also
+started to yelp. A mandoline was wailing its vibration in the night
+outside, rapidly, delicately quivering. Alvina went pale. She knew it
+was Ciccio. She had seen him lurking in the streets of the town, but
+had never spoken to him.
+
+“What’s this?” cried Mrs. Tuke, cocking her head on one side. “Music! A
+mandoline! How extraordinary! Do you think it’s a serenade?—” And she
+lifted her brows archly.
+
+“I should think it is,” said Alvina.
+
+“How extraordinary! What a moment to choose to serenade the lady!
+_Isn’t_ it like life—! I _must_ look at it—”
+
+She got out of bed with some difficulty, wrapped her dressing-gown
+round her, pushed her feet into slippers, and went to the window. She
+opened the sash. It was a lovely moonlight night of September. Below
+lay the little front garden, with its short drive and its iron gates
+that closed on the high-road. From the shadow of the high-road came the
+noise of the mandoline.
+
+“Hello, Tommy!” called Mrs. Tuke to her husband, whom she saw on the
+drive below her. “How’s your musical ear—?”
+
+“All right. Doesn’t it disturb you?” came the man’s voice from the
+moonlight below.
+
+“Not a bit. I like it. I’m waiting for the voice. ‘_O Richard, O mon
+roi!_’—”
+
+But the music had stopped.
+
+“There!” cried Mrs. Tuke. “You’ve frightened him off! And we’re dying
+to be serenaded, aren’t we, nurse?” She turned to Alvina. “Do give me
+my fur, will you? Thanks so much. Won’t you open the other window and
+look out there—?”
+
+Alvina went to the second window. She stood looking out.
+
+“Do play again!” Mrs. Tuke called into the night. “Do sing something.”
+And with her white arm she reached for a glory rose that hung in the
+moonlight from the wall, and with a flash of her white arm she flung it
+toward the garden wall—ineffectually, of course.
+
+“Won’t you play again?” she called into the night, to the unseen.
+“Tommy, go indoors, the bird won’t sing when you’re about.”
+
+“It’s an Italian by the sound of him. Nothing I hate more than
+emotional Italian music. Perfectly nauseating.”
+
+“Never mind, dear. I know it sounds as if all their insides were coming
+out of their mouth. But we want to be serenaded, don’t we, nurse?—”
+
+Alvina stood at her window, but did not answer.
+
+“Ah-h?” came the odd query from Mrs. Tuke. “Don’t you like it?”
+
+“Yes,” said Alvina. “Very much.”
+
+“And aren’t you dying for the song?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+“There!” cried Mrs. Tuke, into the moonlight. “Una canzone
+bella-bella—molto bella—”
+
+She pronounced her syllables one by one, calling into the night. It
+sounded comical. There came a rude laugh from the drive below.
+
+“Go indoors, Tommy! He won’t sing if you’re there. Nothing will sing if
+you’re there,” called the young woman.
+
+They heard a footstep on the gravel, and then the slam of the hall
+door.
+
+“Now!” cried Mrs. Tuke.
+
+They waited. And sure enough, came the fine tinkle of the mandoline,
+and after a few moments, the song. It was one of the well-known
+Neapolitan songs, and Ciccio sang it as it should be sung.
+
+Mrs. Tuke went across to Alvina.
+
+“Doesn’t he put his _bowels_ into it—?” she said, laying her hand on
+her own full figure, and rolling her eyes mockingly. “I’m _sure_ it’s
+more effective than senna-pods.”
+
+Then she returned to her own window, huddled her furs over her breast,
+and rested her white elbows in the moonlight.
+
+“Torn’ a Surrientu
+Fammi campar—”
+
+
+The song suddenly ended, in a clamorous, animal sort of yearning. Mrs.
+Tuke was quite still, resting her chin on her fingers. Alvina also was
+still. Then Mrs. Tuke slowly reached for the rose-buds on the old wall.
+
+“Molto bella!” she cried, half ironically. “Molto bella! Je vous envoie
+une rose—” And she threw the roses out on to the drive. A man’s figure
+was seen hovering outside the gate, on the high-road. “Entrez!” called
+Mrs. Tuke. “Entrez! Prenez votre rose. Come in and take your rose.”
+
+The man’s voice called something from the distance.
+
+“What?” cried Mrs. Tuke.
+
+“Je ne peux pas entrer.”
+
+“Vous ne pouvez pas entrer? Pourquoi alors! La porte n’est pas fermée à
+clef. Entrez donc!”
+
+“Non. On n’entre pas—” called the well-known voice of Ciccio.
+
+“Quoi faire, alors! Alvina, take him the rose to the gate, will you?
+Yes do! Their singing is horrible, I think. I can’t go down to him. But
+do take him the roses, and see what he looks like. Yes do!” Mrs. Tuke’s
+eyes were arched and excited. Alvina looked at her slowly. Alvina also
+was smiling to herself.
+
+She went slowly down the stairs and out of the front door. From a bush
+at the side she pulled two sweet-smelling roses. Then in the drive she
+picked up Effie’s flowers. Ciccio was standing outside the gate.
+
+“Allaye!” he said, in a soft, yearning voice.
+
+“Mrs. Tuke sent you these roses,” said Alvina, putting the flowers
+through the bars of the gate.
+
+“Allaye!” he said, caressing her hand, kissing it with a soft,
+passionate, yearning mouth. Alvina shivered. Quickly he opened the gate
+and drew her through. He drew her into the shadow of the wall, and put
+his arms round her, lifting her from her feet with passionate yearning.
+
+“Allaye!” he said. “I love you, Allaye, my beautiful, Allaye. I love
+you, Allaye!” He held her fast to his breast and began to walk away
+with her. His throbbing, muscular power seemed completely to envelop
+her. He was just walking away with her down the road, clinging fast to
+her, enveloping her.
+
+“Nurse! Nurse! I can’t see you! Nurse!—” came the long call of Mrs.
+Tuke through the night. Dogs began to bark.
+
+“Put me down,” murmured Alvina. “Put me down, Ciccio.”
+
+“Come with me to Italy. Come with me to Italy, Allaye. I can’t go to
+Italy by myself, Allaye. Come with me, be married to me—Allaye,
+Allaye—”
+
+His voice was a strange, hoarse whisper just above her face, he still
+held her in his throbbing, heavy embrace.
+
+“Yes—yes!” she whispered. “Yes—yes! But put me down, Ciccio. Put me
+down.”
+
+“Come to Italy with me, Allaye. Come with me,” he still reiterated, in
+a voice hoarse with pain and yearning.
+
+“Nurse! Nurse! Wherever are you? Nurse! I want you,” sang the uneasy,
+querulous voice of Mrs. Tuke.
+
+“Do put me down!” murmured Alvina, stirring in his arms.
+
+He slowly relaxed his clasp, and she slid down like rain to earth. But
+still he clung to her.
+
+“Come with me, Allaye! Come with me to Italy!” he said.
+
+She saw his face, beautiful, non-human in the moonlight, and she
+shuddered slightly.
+
+“Yes!” she said. “I will come. But let me go now. Where is your
+mandoline?”
+
+He turned round and looked up the road.
+
+“Nurse! You absolutely _must_ come. I can’t bear it,” cried the strange
+voice of Mrs. Tuke.
+
+Alvina slipped from the man, who was a little bewildered, and through
+the gate into the drive.
+
+“You must come!” came the voice in pain from the upper window.
+
+Alvina ran upstairs. She found Mrs. Tuke crouched in a chair, with a
+drawn, horrified, terrified face. As her pains suddenly gripped her,
+she uttered an exclamation, and pressed her clenched fists hard on her
+face.
+
+“The pains have begun,” said Alvina, hurrying to her.
+
+“Oh, it’s horrible! It’s horrible! I don’t want it!” cried the woman in
+travail. Alvina comforted her and reassured her as best she could. And
+from outside, once more, came the despairing howl of the Neapolitan
+song, animal and inhuman on the night.
+
+“E tu dic’ Io part’, addio!
+T’alluntare di sta core,
+Nel paese del amore
+Tien’ o cor’ di non turnar’
+—Ma nun me lasciar’—”
+
+
+It was almost unendurable. But suddenly Mrs. Tuke became quite still,
+and sat with her fists clenched on her knees, her two jet-black plaits
+dropping on either side of her ivory face, her big eyes fixed staring
+into space. At the line—
+
+Ma nun me lasciar’—
+
+
+she began to murmur softly to herself—“Yes, it’s dreadful! It’s
+horrible! I can’t understand it. What does it mean, that noise? It’s as
+bad as these pains. What does it mean? What does he say? I can
+understand a little Italian—” She paused. And again came the sudden
+complaint:
+
+Ma nun me lasciar’—
+
+
+“Ma nun me lasciar’—!” she murmured, repeating the music. “That
+means—Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! But why? Why shouldn’t one human
+being go away from another? What does it mean? That _awful_ noise!
+Isn’t love the most horrible thing! I think it’s horrible. It just does
+one in, and turns one into a sort of howling animal. I’m howling with
+one sort of pain, he’s howling with another. Two hellish animals
+howling through the night! I’m not myself, he’s not himself. Oh, I
+think it’s horrible. What does he look like, Nurse? Is he beautiful? Is
+he a great hefty brute?”
+
+She looked with big, slow, enigmatic eyes at Alvina.
+
+“He’s a man I knew before,” said Alvina.
+
+Mrs. Tuke’s face woke from its half-trance.
+
+“Really! Oh! A man you knew before! Where?”
+
+“It’s a long story,” said Alvina. “In a travelling music-hall troupe.”
+
+“In a travelling music-hall troupe! How extraordinary! Why, how did you
+come across such an individual—?”
+
+Alvina explained as briefly as possible. Mrs. Tuke watched her.
+
+“Really!” she said. “You’ve done all those things!” And she scrutinized
+Alvina’s face. “You’ve had some effect on him, that’s evident,” she
+said. Then she shuddered, and dabbed her nose with her handkerchief.
+“Oh, the flesh is a _beastly_ thing!” she cried. “To make a man howl
+outside there like that, because you’re here. And to make me howl
+because I’ve got a child inside me. It’s unbearable! What does he look
+like, really?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Alvina. “Not extraordinary. Rather a hefty brute—”
+
+Mrs. Tuke glanced at her, to detect the irony.
+
+“I should like to see him,” she said. “Do you think I might?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Alvina, non-committal.
+
+“Do you think he might come up? Ask him. Do let me see him.”
+
+“Do you really want to?” said Alvina.
+
+“Of course—” Mrs. Tuke watched Alvina with big, dark, slow eyes. Then
+she dragged herself to her feet. Alvina helped her into bed.
+
+“Do ask him to come up for a minute,” Effie said. “We’ll give him a
+glass of Tommy’s famous port. Do let me see him. Yes do!” She stretched
+out her long white arm to Alvina, with sudden imploring.
+
+Alvina laughed, and turned doubtfully away.
+
+The night was silent outside. But she found Ciccio leaning against a
+gate-pillar. He started up.
+
+“Allaye!” he said.
+
+“Will you come in for a moment? I can’t leave Mrs. Tuke.”
+
+Ciccio obediently followed Alvina into the house and up the stairs,
+without a word. He was ushered into the bedroom. He drew back when he
+saw Effie in the bed, sitting with her long plaits and her dark eyes,
+and the subtle-seeming smile at the corners of her mouth.
+
+“Do come in!” she said. “I want to thank you for the music. Nurse says
+it was for her, but I enjoyed it also. Would you tell me the words? I
+think it’s a wonderful song.”
+
+Ciccio hung back against the door, his head dropped, and the shy,
+suspicious, faintly malicious smile on his face.
+
+“Have a glass of port, do!” said Effie. “Nurse, give us all one. I
+should like one too. And a biscuit.” Again she stretched out her long
+white arm from the sudden blue lining of her wrap, suddenly, as if
+taken with the desire. Ciccio shifted on his feet, watching Alvina pour
+out the port.
+
+He swallowed his in one swallow, and put aside his glass.
+
+“Have some more!” said Effie, watching over the top of her glass.
+
+He smiled faintly, stupidly, and shook his head.
+
+“Won’t you? Now tell me the words of the song—”
+
+He looked at her from out of the dusky hollows of his brow, and did not
+answer. The faint, stupid half-smile, half-sneer was on his lips.
+
+“Won’t you tell them me? I understood one line—”
+
+Ciccio smiled more pronouncedly as he watched her, but did not speak.
+
+“I understood one line,” said Effie, making big eyes at him. “_Ma non
+me lasciare_—_Don’t leave me!_ There, isn’t that it?”
+
+He smiled, stirred on his feet, and nodded.
+
+“Don’t leave me! There, I knew it was that. Why don’t you want Nurse to
+leave you? Do you want her to be with you _every minute_?”
+
+He smiled a little contemptuously, awkwardly, and turned aside his
+face, glancing at Alvina. Effie’s watchful eyes caught the glance. It
+was swift, and full of the terrible yearning which so horrified her.
+
+At the same moment a spasm crossed her face, her expression went blank.
+
+“Shall we go down?” said Alvina to Ciccio.
+
+He turned immediately, with his cap in his hand, and followed. In the
+hall he pricked up his ears as he took the mandoline from the chest. He
+could hear the stifled cries and exclamations from Mrs. Tuke. At the
+same moment the door of the study opened, and the musician, a burly
+fellow with troubled hair, came out.
+
+“Is that Mrs. Tuke?” he snapped anxiously.
+
+“Yes. The pains have begun,” said Alvina.
+
+“Oh God! And have you left her!” He was quite irascible.
+
+“Only for a minute,” said Alvina.
+
+But with a _Pf_! of angry indignation, he was climbing the stairs.
+
+“She is going to have a child,” said Alvina to Ciccio. “I shall have to
+go back to her.” And she held out her hand.
+
+He did not take her hand, but looked down into her face with the same
+slightly distorted look of overwhelming yearning, yearning heavy and
+unbearable, in which he was carried towards her as on a flood.
+
+“Allaye!” he said, with a faint lift of the lip that showed his teeth,
+like a pained animal: a curious sort of smile. He could not go away.
+
+“I shall have to go back to her,” she said.
+
+“Shall you come with me to Italy, Allaye?”
+
+“Yes. Where is Madame?”
+
+“Gone! Gigi—all gone.”
+
+“Gone where?”
+
+“Gone back to France—called up.”
+
+“And Madame and Louis and Max?”
+
+“Switzerland.”
+
+He stood helplessly looking at her.
+
+“Well, I must go,” she said.
+
+He watched her with his yellow eyes, from under his long black lashes,
+like some chained animal, haunted by doom. She turned and left him
+standing.
+
+She found Mrs. Tuke wildly clutching the edge of the sheets, and
+crying: “No, Tommy dear. I’m awfully fond of you, you know I am. But go
+away. Oh God, go away. And put a space between us. Put a space between
+us!” she almost shrieked.
+
+He pushed up his hair. He had been working on a big choral work which
+he was composing, and by this time he was almost demented.
+
+“Can’t you stand my presence!” he shouted, and dashed downstairs.
+
+“Nurse!” cried Effie. “It’s _no use_ trying to get a grip on life.
+You’re just at the mercy of _Forces_,” she shrieked angrily.
+
+“Why not?” said Alvina. “There are good life-forces. Even the will of
+God is a life-force.”
+
+“You don’t understand! I want to be _myself_. And I’m _not_ myself. I’m
+just torn to pieces by _Forces_. It’s horrible—”
+
+“Well, it’s not my fault. I didn’t make the universe,” said Alvina. “If
+you have to be torn to pieces by forces, well, you have. Other forces
+will put you together again.”
+
+“I don’t want them to. I want to be myself. I don’t want to be nailed
+together like a chair, with a hammer. I want to be myself.”
+
+“You won’t be nailed together like a chair. You should have faith in
+life.”
+
+“But I hate life. It’s nothing but a mass of forces. _I_ am
+intelligent. Life isn’t intelligent. Look at it at this moment. Do you
+call this intelligent? Oh—Oh! It’s horrible! Oh—!” She was wild and
+sweating with her pains. Tommy flounced out downstairs, beside himself.
+He was heard talking to some one in the moonlight outside. To Ciccio.
+He had already telephoned wildly for the doctor. But the doctor had
+replied that Nurse would ring him up.
+
+The moment Mrs. Tuke recovered her breath she began again.
+
+“I hate life, and faith, and such things. Faith is only fear. And life
+is a mass of unintelligent forces to which intelligent beings are
+submitted. Prostituted. Oh—oh!!—prostituted—”
+
+“Perhaps life itself is something bigger than intelligence,” said
+Alvina.
+
+“Bigger than intelligence!” shrieked Effie. “_Nothing_ is bigger than
+intelligence. Your man is a hefty brute. His yellow eyes _aren’t_
+intelligent. They’re _animal_—”
+
+“No,” said Alvina. “Something else. I wish he didn’t attract me—”
+
+“There! Because you’re not content to be at the mercy of _Forces_!”
+cried Effie. “I’m not. I’m not. I want to be myself. And so forces tear
+me to pieces! Tear me to pie—eee—Oh-h-h! No!—”
+
+Downstairs Tommy had walked Ciccio back into the house again, and the
+two men were drinking port in the study, discussing Italy, for which
+Tommy had a great sentimental affection, though he hated all Italian
+music after the younger Scarlatti. They drank port all through the
+night, Tommy being strictly forbidden to interfere upstairs, or even to
+fetch the doctor. They drank three and a half bottles of port, and were
+discovered in the morning by Alvina fast asleep in the study, with the
+electric light still burning. Tommy slept with his fair and ruffled
+head hanging over the edge of the couch like some great loose fruit,
+Ciccio was on the floor, face downwards, his face in his folded arms.
+
+Alvina had a great difficulty in waking the inert Ciccio. In the end,
+she had to leave him and rouse Tommy first: who in rousing fell off the
+sofa with a crash which woke him disagreeably. So that he turned on
+Alvina in a fury, and asked her what the hell she thought she was
+doing. In answer to which Alvina held up a finger warningly, and Tommy,
+suddenly remembering, fell back as if he had been struck.
+
+“She is sleeping now,” said Alvina.
+
+“Is it a boy or a girl?” he cried.
+
+“It isn’t born yet,” she said.
+
+“Oh God, it’s an accursed fugue!” cried the bemused Tommy. After which
+they proceeded to wake Ciccio, who was like the dead doll in Petrushka,
+all loose and floppy. When he was awake, however, he smiled at Alvina,
+and said: “Allaye!”
+
+The dark, waking smile upset her badly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+THE WEDDED WIFE
+
+
+The upshot of it all was that Alvina ran away to Scarborough without
+telling anybody. It was in the first week in October. She asked for a
+week-end, to make some arrangements for her marriage. The marriage was
+presumably with Dr. Mitchell—though she had given him no definite word.
+However, her month’s notice was up, so she was legally free. And
+therefore she packed a rather large bag with all her ordinary things,
+and set off in her everyday dress, leaving the nursing paraphernalia
+behind.
+
+She knew Scarborough quite well: and quite quickly found rooms which
+she had occupied before, in a boarding-house where she had stayed with
+Miss Frost long ago. Having recovered from her journey, she went out on
+to the cliffs on the north side. It was evening, and the sea was before
+her. What was she to do?
+
+She had run away from both men—from Ciccio as well as from Mitchell.
+She had spent the last fortnight more or less avoiding the pair of
+them. Now she had a moment to herself. She was even free from Mrs.
+Tuke, who in her own way was more exacting than the men. Mrs. Tuke had
+a baby daughter, and was getting well. Ciccio was living with the
+Tukes. Tommy had taken a fancy to him, and had half engaged him as a
+sort of personal attendant: the sort of thing Tommy would do, not
+having paid his butcher’s bills.
+
+So Alvina sat on the cliffs in a mood of exasperation. She was sick of
+being badgered about. She didn’t really want to marry anybody. Why
+should she? She was thankful beyond measure to be by herself. How sick
+she was of other people and their importunities! What was she to do?
+She decided to offer herself again, in a little while, for war
+service—in a new town this time. Meanwhile she wanted to be by herself.
+
+She made excursions, she walked on the moors, in the brief but lovely
+days of early October. For three days it was all so sweet and
+lovely—perfect liberty, pure, almost paradisal.
+
+The fourth day it rained: simply rained all day long, and was cold,
+dismal, disheartening beyond words. There she sat, stranded in the
+dismalness, and knew no way out. She went to bed at nine o’clock,
+having decided in a jerk to go to London and find work in the
+war-hospitals at once: not to leave off until she had found it.
+
+But in the night she dreamed that Alexander, her first fiancé, was with
+her on the quay of some harbour, and was reproaching her bitterly, even
+reviling her, for having come too late, so that they had missed their
+ship. They were there to catch the boat—and she, for dilatoriness, was
+an hour late, and she could see the broad stern of the steamer not far
+off. Just an hour late. She showed Alexander her watch—exactly ten
+o’clock, instead of nine. And he was more angry than ever, because her
+watch was slow. He pointed to the harbour clock—it was ten minutes past
+ten.
+
+When she woke up she was thinking of Alexander. It was such a long time
+since she had thought of him. She wondered if he had a right to be
+angry with her.
+
+The day was still grey, with sweepy rain-clouds on the sea—gruesome,
+objectionable. It was a prolongation of yesterday. Well, despair was no
+good, and being miserable was no good either. She got no satisfaction
+out of either mood. The only thing to do was to act: seize hold of life
+and wring its neck.
+
+She took the time-table that hung in the hall: the time-table, that
+magic carpet of today. When in doubt, _move_. This was the maxim. Move.
+Where to?
+
+Another click of a resolution. She would wire to Ciccio and meet
+him—where? York—Leeds—Halifax—? She looked up the places in the
+time-table, and decided on Leeds. She wrote out a telegram, that she
+would be at Leeds that evening. Would he get it in time? Chance it.
+
+She hurried off and sent the telegram. Then she took a little luggage,
+told the people of her house she would be back next day, and set off.
+She did not like whirling in the direction of Lancaster. But no matter.
+
+She waited a long time for the train from the north to come in. The
+first person she saw was Tommy. He waved to her and jumped from the
+moving train.
+
+“I say!” he said. “So glad to see you! Ciccio is with me. Effie
+insisted on my coming to see you.”
+
+There was Ciccio climbing down with the bag. A sort of servant! This
+was too much for her.
+
+“So you came with your valet?” she said, as Ciccio stood with the bag.
+
+“Not a bit,” said Tommy, laying his hand on the other man’s shoulder.
+“We’re the best of friends. I don’t carry bags because my heart is
+rather groggy. I say, nurse, excuse me, but I like you better in
+uniform. Black doesn’t suit you. You don’t _mind_—”
+
+“Yes, I do. But I’ve only got black clothes, except uniforms.”
+
+“Well look here now—! You’re not going on anywhere tonight, are you?”
+
+“It is too late.”
+
+“Well now, let’s turn into the hotel and have a talk. I’m acting under
+Effie’s orders, as you may gather—”
+
+At the hotel Tommy gave her a letter from his wife: to the tune
+of—don’t marry this Italian, you’ll put yourself in a wretched hole,
+and one wants to avoid getting into holes. _I know_—concluded Effie, on
+a sinister note.
+
+Tommy sang another tune. Ciccio was a lovely chap, a rare chap, a
+treat. He, Tommy, could quite understand any woman’s wanting to marry
+him—didn’t agree a bit with Effie. But marriage, you know, was so
+final. And then with this war on: you never knew how things might turn
+out: a foreigner and all that. And then—you won’t mind what I say—? We
+won’t talk about class and that rot. If the man’s good enough, he’s
+good enough by himself. But is he your intellectual equal, nurse? After
+all, it’s a big point. You don’t want to marry a man you can’t talk to.
+Ciccio’s a treat to be with, because he’s so natural. But it isn’t a
+_mental_ treat—
+
+Alvina thought of Mrs. Tuke, who complained that Tommy talked music and
+pseudo-philosophy _by the hour_ when he was wound up. She saw Effie’s
+long, outstretched arm of repudiation and weariness.
+
+“Of course!”—another of Mrs. Tuke’s exclamations. “Why not _be_
+atavistic if you _can_ be, and follow at a man’s heel just because he’s
+a man. Be like barbarous women, a slave.”
+
+During all this, Ciccio stayed out of the room, as bidden. It was not
+till Alvina sat before her mirror that he opened her door softly, and
+entered.
+
+“I come in,” he said, and he closed the door.
+
+Alvina remained with her hair-brush suspended, watching him. He came to
+her, smiling softly, to take her in his arms. But she put the chair
+between them.
+
+“Why did you bring Mr. Tuke?” she said.
+
+He lifted his shoulders.
+
+“I haven’t brought him,” he said, watching her.
+
+“Why did you show him the telegram?”
+
+“It was Mrs. Tuke took it.”
+
+“Why did you give it her?”
+
+“It was she who gave it me, in her room. She kept it in her room till I
+came and took it.”
+
+“All right,” said Alvina. “Go back to the Tukes.” And she began again
+to brush her hair.
+
+Ciccio watched her with narrowing eyes.
+
+“What you mean?” he said. “I shan’t go, Allaye. You come with me.”
+
+“Ha!” she sniffed scornfully. “I shall go where I like.”
+
+But slowly he shook his head.
+
+“You’ll come, Allaye,” he said. “You come with me, with Ciccio.”
+
+She shuddered at the soft, plaintive entreaty.
+
+“How can I go with you? How can I depend on you at all?”
+
+Again he shook his head. His eyes had a curious yellow fire,
+beseeching, plaintive, with a demon quality of yearning compulsion.
+
+“Yes, you come with me, Allaye. You come with me, to Italy. You don’t
+go to that other man. He is too old, not healthy. You come with me to
+Italy. Why do you send a telegram?”
+
+Alvina sat down and covered her face, trembling.
+
+“I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!” she moaned. “I can’t do it.”
+
+“Yes, you come with me. I have money. You come with me, to my place in
+the mountains, to my uncle’s house. Fine house, you like it. Come with
+me, Allaye.”
+
+She could not look at him.
+
+“Why do you want me?” she said.
+
+“Why I want you?” He gave a curious laugh, almost of ridicule. “I don’t
+know that. You ask me another, eh?”
+
+She was silent, sitting looking downwards.
+
+“I can’t, I think,” she said abstractedly, looking up at him.
+
+He smiled, a fine, subtle smile, like a demon’s, but inexpressibly
+gentle. He made her shiver as if she was mesmerized. And he was
+reaching forward to her as a snake reaches, nor could she recoil.
+
+“You come, Allaye,” he said softly, with his foreign intonation. “You
+come. You come to Italy with me. Yes?” He put his hand on her, and she
+started as if she had been struck. But his hands, with the soft,
+powerful clasp, only closed her faster.
+
+“Yes?” he said. “Yes? All right, eh? All right!”—he had a strange
+mesmeric power over her, as if he possessed the sensual secrets, and
+she was to be subjected.
+
+“I can’t,” she moaned, trying to struggle. But she was powerless.
+
+Dark and insidious he was: he had no regard for her. How could a man’s
+movements be so soft and gentle, and yet so inhumanly regardless! He
+had no regard for her. Why didn’t she revolt? Why couldn’t she? She was
+as if bewitched. She couldn’t fight against her bewitchment. Why?
+Because he seemed to her beautiful, so beautiful. And this left her
+numb, submissive. Why must she see him beautiful? Why was she
+will-less? She felt herself like one of the old sacred prostitutes: a
+sacred prostitute.
+
+In the morning, very early, they left for Scarborough, leaving a letter
+for the sleeping Tommy. In Scarborough they went to the registrar’s
+office: they could be married in a fortnight’s time. And so the
+fortnight passed, and she was under his spell. Only she knew it. She
+felt extinguished. Ciccio talked to her: but only ordinary things.
+There was no wonderful intimacy of speech, such as she had always
+imagined, and always craved for. No. He loved her—but it was in a dark,
+mesmeric way, which did not let her be herself. His love did not
+stimulate her or excite her. It extinguished her. She had to be the
+quiescent, obscure woman: she felt as if she were veiled. Her thoughts
+were dim, in the dim back regions of consciousness—yet, somewhere, she
+almost exulted. Atavism! Mrs. Tuke’s word would play in her mind. Was
+it atavism, this sinking into extinction under the spell of Ciccio? Was
+it atavism, this strange, sleep-like submission to his being? Perhaps
+it was. Perhaps it was. But it was also heavy and sweet and rich.
+Somewhere, she was content. Somewhere even she was vastly proud of the
+dark veiled eternal loneliness she felt, under his shadow.
+
+And so it had to be. She shuddered when she touched him, because he was
+so beautiful, and she was so submitted. She quivered when he moved as
+if she were his shadow. Yet her mind remained distantly clear. She
+would criticize him, find fault with him, the things he did. But
+_ultimately_ she could find no fault with him. She had lost the power.
+She didn’t care. She had lost the power to care about his faults.
+Strange, sweet, poisonous indifference! She was drugged. And she knew
+it. Would she ever wake out of her dark, warm coma? She shuddered, and
+hoped not. Mrs. Tuke would say atavism. Atavism! The word recurred
+curiously.
+
+But under all her questionings she felt well; a nonchalance deep as
+sleep, a passivity and indifference so dark and sweet she felt it must
+be evil. Evil! She was evil. And yet she had no power to be otherwise.
+They were legally married. And she was glad. She was relieved by
+knowing she could not escape. She was Mrs. Marasca. What was the good
+of trying to be Miss Houghton any longer? Marasca, the bitter cherry.
+Some dark poison fruit she had eaten. How glad she was she had eaten
+it! How beautiful he was! And no one saw it but herself. For her it was
+so potent it made her tremble when she noticed him. His beauty, his
+dark shadow. Ciccio really was much handsomer since his marriage. He
+seemed to emerge. Before, he had seemed to make himself invisible in
+the streets, in England, altogether. But now something unfolded in him,
+he was a potent, glamorous presence, people turned to watch him. There
+was a certain dark, leopard-like pride in the air about him, something
+that the English people watched.
+
+He wanted to go to Italy. And now it was _his_ will which counted.
+Alvina, as his wife, must submit. He took her to London the day after
+the marriage. He wanted to get away to Italy. He did not like being in
+England, a foreigner, amid the beginnings of the spy craze.
+
+In London they stayed at his cousin’s house. His cousin kept a
+restaurant in Battersea, and was a flourishing London Italian, a real
+London product with all the good English virtues of cleanliness and
+honesty added to an Italian shrewdness. His name was Giuseppe Califano,
+and he was pale, and he had four children of whom he was very proud. He
+received Alvina with an affable respect, as if she were an asset in the
+family, but as if he were a little uneasy and disapproving. She had
+_come down_, in marrying Ciccio. She had lost caste. He rather seemed
+to exult over her degradation. For he was a northernized Italian, he
+had accepted English standards. His children were English brats. He
+almost patronized Alvina.
+
+But then a long, slow look from her remote blue eyes brought him up
+sharp, and he envied Ciccio suddenly, he was almost in love with her
+himself. She disturbed him. She disturbed him in his new English aplomb
+of a London _restaurateur_, and she disturbed in him the old Italian
+dark soul, to which he was renegade. He tried treating her as an
+English lady. But the slow, remote look in her eyes made this fall
+flat. He had to be Italian.
+
+And he was jealous of Ciccio. In Ciccio’s face was a lurking smile, and
+round his fine nose there seemed a subtle, semi-defiant triumph. After
+all, he had triumphed over his well-to-do, Anglicized cousin. With a
+stealthy, leopard-like pride Ciccio went through the streets of London
+in those wild early days of war. He was the one victor, arching
+stealthily over the vanquished north.
+
+Alvina saw nothing of all these complexities. For the time being, she
+was all dark and potent. Things were curious to her. It was curious to
+be in Battersea, in this English-Italian household, where the children
+spoke English more readily than Italian. It was strange to be high over
+the restaurant, to see the trees of the park, to hear the clang of
+trams. It was strange to walk out and come to the river. It was strange
+to feel the seethe of war and dread in the air. But she did not
+question. She seemed steeped in the passional influence of the man, as
+in some narcotic. She even forgot Mrs. Tuke’s atavism. Vague and
+unquestioning she went through the days, she accompanied Ciccio into
+town, she went with him to make purchases, or she sat by his side in
+the music hall, or she stayed in her room and sewed, or she sat at
+meals with the Califanos, a vague brightness on her face. And Mrs.
+Califano was very nice to her, very gentle, though with a suspicion of
+malicious triumph, mockery, beneath her gentleness. Still, she was nice
+and womanly, hovering as she was between her English emancipation and
+her Italian subordination. She half pitied Alvina, and was more than
+half jealous of her.
+
+Alvina was aware of nothing—only of the presence of Ciccio. It was his
+physical presence which cast a spell over her. She lived within his
+aura. And she submitted to him as if he had extended his dark nature
+over her. She knew nothing about him. She lived mindlessly within his
+presence, quivering within his influence, as if his blood beat in her.
+She _knew_ she was subjected. One tiny corner of her knew, and watched.
+
+He was very happy, and his face had a real beauty. His eyes glowed with
+lustrous secrecy, like the eyes of some victorious, happy wild creature
+seen remote under a bush. And he was very good to her. His tenderness
+made her quiver into a swoon of complete self-forgetfulness, as if the
+flood-gates of her depths opened. The depth of his warm, mindless,
+enveloping love was immeasurable. She felt she could sink forever into
+his warm, pulsating embrace.
+
+Afterwards, later on, when she was inclined to criticize him, she would
+remember the moment when she saw his face at the Italian Consulate in
+London. There were many people at the Consulate, clamouring for
+passports—a wild and ill-regulated crowd. They had waited their turn
+and got inside—Ciccio was not good at pushing his way. And inside a
+courteous tall old man with a white beard had lifted the flap for
+Alvina to go inside the office and sit down to fill in the form. She
+thanked the old man, who bowed as if he had a reputation to keep up.
+
+Ciccio followed, and it was he who had to sit down and fill up the
+form, because she did not understand the Italian questions. She stood
+at his side, watching the excited, laughing, noisy, east-end Italians
+at the desk. The whole place had a certain free-and-easy confusion, a
+human, unofficial, muddling liveliness which was not quite like
+England, even though it was in the middle of London.
+
+“What was your mother’s name?” Ciccio was asking her. She turned to
+him. He sat with the pen perched flourishingly at the end of his
+fingers, suspended in the serious and artistic business of filling in a
+form. And his face had a dark luminousness, like a dark transparence
+which was shut and has now expanded. She quivered, as if it was more
+than she could bear. For his face was open like a flower right to the
+depths of his soul, a dark, lovely translucency, vulnerable to the deep
+quick of his soul. The lovely, rich darkness of his southern nature, so
+different from her own, exposing itself now in its passional
+vulnerability, made her go white with a kind of fear. For an instant,
+her face seemed drawn and old as she looked down at him, answering his
+questions. Then her eyes became sightless with tears, she stooped as if
+to look at his writing, and quickly kissed his fingers that held the
+pen, there in the midst of the crowded, vulgar Consulate.
+
+He stayed suspended, again looking up at her with the bright, unfolded
+eyes of a wild creature which plays and is not seen. A faint smile,
+very beautiful to her, was on his face. What did he see when he looked
+at her? She did not know, she did not know. And she would never know.
+For an instant, she swore inside herself that God Himself should not
+take her away from this man. She would commit herself to him through
+every eternity. And then the vagueness came over her again, she turned
+aside, photographically seeing the crowd in the Consulate, but really
+unconscious. His movement as he rose seemed to move her in her sleep,
+she turned to him at once.
+
+It was early in November before they could leave for Italy, and her
+dim, lustrous state lasted all the time. She found herself at Charing
+Cross in the early morning, in all the bustle of catching the
+Continental train. Giuseppe was there, and Gemma his wife, and two of
+the children, besides three other Italian friends of Ciccio. They all
+crowded up the platform. Giuseppe had insisted that Ciccio should take
+second-class tickets. They were very early. Alvina and Ciccio were
+installed in a second-class compartment, with all their packages,
+Ciccio was pale, yellowish under his tawny skin, and nervous. He stood
+excitedly on the platform talking in Italian—or rather, in his own
+dialect—whilst Alvina sat quite still in her corner. Sometimes one of
+the women or one of the children came to say a few words to her, or
+Giuseppe hurried to her with illustrated papers. They treated her as if
+she were some sort of invalid or angel, now she was leaving. But most
+of their attention they gave to Ciccio, talking at him rapidly all at
+once, whilst he answered, and glanced in this way and that, under his
+fine lashes, and smiled his old, nervous, meaningless smile. He was
+curiously upset.
+
+Time came to shut the doors. The women and children kissed Alvina,
+saying:
+
+“You’ll be all right, eh? Going to Italy—!” And then profound and
+meaningful nods, which she could not interpret, but which were fraught
+surely with good-fellowship.
+
+Then they all kissed Ciccio. The men took him in their arms and kissed
+him on either cheek, the children lifted their faces in eager
+anticipation of the double kiss. Strange, how eager they were for this
+embrace—how they all kept taking Ciccio’s hand, one after the other,
+whilst he smiled constrainedly and nervously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+THE JOURNEY ACROSS
+
+
+The train began to move. Giuseppe ran alongside, holding Ciccio’s hand
+still; the women and children were crying and waving their
+handkerchiefs, the other men were shouting messages, making strange,
+eager gestures. And Alvina sat quite still, wonderingly. And so the
+big, heavy train drew out, leaving the others small and dim on the
+platform. It was foggy, the river was a sea of yellow beneath the
+ponderous iron bridge. The morning was dim and dank.
+
+The train was very full. Next to Alvina sat a trim Frenchwoman reading
+_L’Aiglon_. There was a terrible encumbrance of packages and luggage
+everywhere. Opposite her sat Ciccio, his black overcoat open over his
+pale-grey suit, his black hat a little over his left eye. He glanced at
+her from time to time, smiling constrainedly. She remained very still.
+They ran through Bromley and out into the open country. It was grey,
+with shivers of grey sunshine. On the downs there was thin snow. The
+air in the train was hot, heavy with the crowd and tense with
+excitement and uneasiness. The train seemed to rush ponderously,
+massively, across the Weald.
+
+And so, through Folkestone to the sea. There was sun in the sky now,
+and white clouds, in the sort of hollow sky-dome above the grey earth
+with its horizon walls of fog. The air was still. The sea heaved with a
+sucking noise inside the dock. Alvina and Ciccio sat aft on the
+second-class deck, their bags near them. He put a white muffler round
+himself, Alvina hugged herself in her beaver scarf and muff. She looked
+tender and beautiful in her still vagueness, and Ciccio, hovering about
+her, was beautiful too, his estrangement gave him a certain wistful
+nobility which for the moment put him beyond all class inferiority. The
+passengers glanced at them across the magic of estrangement.
+
+The sea was very still. The sun was fairly high in the open sky, where
+white cloud-tops showed against the pale, wintry blue. Across the sea
+came a silver sun-track. And Alvina and Ciccio looked at the sun, which
+stood a little to the right of the ship’s course.
+
+“The sun!” said Ciccio, nodding towards the orb and smiling to her.
+
+“I love it,” she said.
+
+He smiled again, silently. He was strangely moved: she did not know
+why.
+
+The wind was cold over the wintry sea, though the sun’s beams were
+warm. They rose, walked round the cabins. Other ships were at
+sea—destroyers and battleships, grey, low, and sinister on the water.
+Then a tall bright schooner glimmered far down the channel. Some brown
+fishing smacks kept together. All was very still in the wintry sunshine
+of the Channel.
+
+So they turned to walk to the stern of the boat. And Alvina’s heart
+suddenly contracted. She caught Ciccio’s arm, as the boat rolled
+gently. For there behind, behind all the sunshine, was England.
+England, beyond the water, rising with ash-grey, corpse-grey cliffs,
+and streaks of snow on the downs above. England, like a long, ash-grey
+coffin slowly submerging. She watched it, fascinated and terrified. It
+seemed to repudiate the sunshine, to remain unilluminated, long and
+ash-grey and dead, with streaks of snow like cerements. That was
+England! Her thoughts flew to Woodhouse, the grey centre of it all.
+Home!
+
+Her heart died within her. Never had she felt so utterly strange and
+far-off. Ciccio at her side was as nothing, as spell-bound she watched,
+away off, behind all the sunshine and the sea, the grey, snow-streaked
+substance of England slowly receding and sinking, submerging. She felt
+she could not believe it. It was like looking at something else. What?
+It was like a long, ash-grey coffin, winter, slowly submerging in the
+sea. England?
+
+She turned again to the sun. But clouds and veils were already weaving
+in the sky. The cold was beginning to soak in, moreover. She sat very
+still for a long time, almost an eternity. And when she looked round
+again there was only a bank of mist behind, beyond the sea: a bank of
+mist, and a few grey, stalking ships. She must watch for the coast of
+France.
+
+And there it was already, looming up grey and amorphous, patched with
+snow. It had a grey, heaped, sordid look in the November light. She had
+imagined Boulogne gay and brilliant. Whereas it was more grey and
+dismal than England. But not that magical, mystic, phantom look.
+
+The ship slowly put about, and backed into the harbour. She watched the
+quay approach. Ciccio was gathering up the luggage. Then came the first
+cry one ever hears: “_Porteur! Porteur!_ Want a _porteur_?” A porter in
+a blouse strung the luggage on his strap, and Ciccio and Alvina entered
+the crush for the exit and the passport inspection. There was a tense,
+eager, frightened crowd, and officials shouting directions in French
+and English. Alvina found herself at last before a table where bearded
+men in uniforms were splashing open the big pink sheets of the English
+passports: she felt strange and uneasy, that her passport was
+unimpressive and Italian. The official scrutinized her, and asked
+questions of Ciccio. Nobody asked her anything—she might have been
+Ciccio’s shadow. So they went through to the vast, crowded cavern of a
+Customs house, where they found their porter waving to them in the mob.
+Ciccio fought in the mob while the porter whisked off Alvina to get
+seats in the big train. And at last she was planted once more in a
+seat, with Ciccio’s place reserved beside her. And there she sat,
+looking across the railway lines at the harbour, in the last burst of
+grey sunshine. Men looked at her, officials stared at her, soldiers
+made remarks about her. And at last, after an eternity, Ciccio came
+along the platform, the porter trotting behind.
+
+They sat and ate the food they had brought, and drank wine and tea. And
+after weary hours the train set off through snow-patched country to
+Paris. Everywhere was crowded, the train was stuffy without being warm.
+Next to Alvina sat a large, fat, youngish Frenchman who overflowed over
+her in a hot fashion. Darkness began to fall. The train was very late.
+There were strange and frightening delays. Strange lights appeared in
+the sky, everybody seemed to be listening for strange noises. It was
+all such a whirl and confusion that Alvina lost count, relapsed into a
+sort of stupidity. Gleams, flashes, noises and then at last the frenzy
+of Paris.
+
+It was night, a black city, and snow falling, and no train that night
+across to the Gare de Lyon. In a state of semi-stupefaction after all
+the questionings and examinings and blusterings, they were finally
+allowed to go straight across Paris. But this meant another wild tussle
+with a Paris taxi-driver, in the filtering snow. So they were deposited
+in the Gare de Lyon.
+
+And the first person who rushed upon them was Geoffrey, in a rather
+grimy private’s uniform. He had already seen some hard service, and had
+a wild, bewildered look. He kissed Ciccio and burst into tears on his
+shoulder, there in the great turmoil of the entrance hall of the Gare
+de Lyon. People looked, but nobody seemed surprised. Geoffrey sobbed,
+and the tears came silently down Ciccio’s cheeks.
+
+“I’ve waited for you since five o’clock, and I’ve got to go back now.
+Ciccio! Ciccio! I wanted so badly to see you. I shall never see thee
+again, brother, my brother!” cried Gigi, and a sob shook him.
+
+“Gigi! Mon Gigi. Tu as done regu ma lettre?”
+
+“Yesterday. O Ciccio, Ciccio, I shall die without thee!”
+
+“But no, Gigi, frère. You won’t die.”
+
+“Yes, Ciccio, I shall. I know I shall.”
+
+“I say _no_, brother,” said Ciccio. But a spasm suddenly took him, he
+pulled off his hat and put it over his face and sobbed into it.
+
+“Adieu, ami! Adieu!” cried Gigi, clutching the other man’s arm. Ciccio
+took his hat from his tear-stained face and put it on his head. Then
+the two men embraced.
+
+“_Toujours à toi!_” said Geoffrey, with a strange, solemn salute in
+front of Ciccio and Alvina. Then he turned on his heel and marched
+rapidly out of the station, his soiled soldier’s overcoat flapping in
+the wind at the door. Ciccio watched him go. Then he turned and looked
+with haunted eyes into the eyes of Alvina. And then they hurried down
+the desolate platform in the darkness. Many people, Italians, largely,
+were camped waiting there, while bits of snow wavered down. Ciccio
+bought food and hired cushions. The train backed in. There was a
+horrible fight for seats, men scrambling through windows. Alvina got a
+place—but Ciccio had to stay in the corridor.
+
+Then the long night journey through France, slow and blind. The train
+was now so hot that the iron plate on the floor burnt Alvina’s feet.
+Outside she saw glimpses of snow. A fat Italian hotel-keeper put on a
+smoking cap, covered the light, and spread himself before Alvina. In
+the next carriage a child was screaming. It screamed all the night—all
+the way from Paris to Chambéry it screamed. The train came to sudden
+halts, and stood still in the snow. The hotel-keeper snored. Alvina
+became almost comatose, in the burning heat of the carriage. And again
+the train rumbled on. And again she saw glimpses of stations, glimpses
+of snow, through the chinks in the curtained windows. And again there
+was a jerk and a sudden halt, a drowsy mutter from the sleepers,
+somebody uncovering the light, and somebody covering it again, somebody
+looking out, somebody tramping down the corridor, the child screaming.
+
+The child belonged to two poor Italians—Milanese—a shred of a thin
+little man, and a rather loose woman. They had five tiny children, all
+boys: and the four who could stand on their feet all wore scarlet caps.
+The fifth was a baby. Alvina had seen a French official yelling at the
+poor shred of a young father on the platform.
+
+When morning came, and the bleary people pulled the curtains, it was a
+clear dawn, and they were in the south of France. There was no sign of
+snow. The landscape was half southern, half Alpine. White houses with
+brownish tiles stood among almond trees and cactus. It was beautiful,
+and Alvina felt she had known it all before, in a happier life. The
+morning was graceful almost as spring. She went out in the corridor to
+talk to Ciccio.
+
+He was on his feet with his back to the inner window, rolling slightly
+to the motion of the train. His face was pale, he had that sombre,
+haunted, unhappy look. Alvina, thrilled by the southern country, was
+smiling excitedly.
+
+“This is my first morning abroad,” she said.
+
+“Yes,” he answered.
+
+“I love it here,” she said. “Isn’t this like Italy?”
+
+He looked darkly out of the window, and shook his head.
+
+But the sombre look remained on his face. She watched him. And her
+heart sank as she had never known it sink before.
+
+“Are you thinking of Gigi?” she said.
+
+He looked at her, with a faint, unhappy, bitter smile, but he said
+nothing. He seemed far off from her. A wild unhappiness beat inside her
+breast. She went down the corridor, away from him, to avoid this new
+agony, which after all was not her agony. She listened to the chatter
+of French and Italian in the corridor. She felt the excitement and
+terror of France, inside the railway carriage: and outside she saw
+white oxen slowly ploughing, beneath the lingering yellow poplars of
+the sub-Alps, she saw peasants looking up, she saw a woman holding a
+baby to her breast, watching the train, she saw the excited, yeasty
+crowds at the station. And they passed a river, and a great lake. And
+it all seemed bigger, nobler than England. She felt vaster influences
+spreading around, the Past was greater, more magnificent in these
+regions. For the first time the nostalgia of the vast Roman and classic
+world took possession of her. And she found it splendid. For the first
+time she opened her eyes on a continent, the Alpine core of a
+continent. And for the first time she realized what it was to escape
+from the smallish perfection of England, into the grander imperfection
+of a great continent.
+
+Near Chambéry they went down for breakfast to the restaurant car. And
+secretly, she was very happy. Ciccio’s distress made her uneasy. But
+underneath she was extraordinarily relieved and glad. Ciccio did not
+trouble her very much. The sense of the bigness of the lands about her,
+the excitement of travelling with Continental people, the pleasantness
+of her coffee and rolls and honey, the feeling that vast events were
+taking place—all this stimulated her. She had brushed, as it were, the
+fringe of the terror of the war and the invasion. Fear was seething
+around her. And yet she was excited and glad. The vast world was in one
+of its convulsions, and she was moving amongst it. Somewhere, she
+believed in the convulsion, the event elated her.
+
+The train began to climb up to Modane. How wonderful the Alps
+were!—what a bigness, an unbreakable power was in the mountains! Up and
+up the train crept, and she looked at the rocky slopes, the glistening
+peaks of snow in the blue heaven, the hollow valleys with fir trees and
+low-roofed houses. There were quarries near the railway, and men
+working. There was a strange mountain town, dirty-looking. And still
+the train climbed up and up, in the hot morning sunshine, creeping
+slowly round the mountain loops, so that a little brown dog from one of
+the cottages ran alongside the train for a long way, barking at Alvina,
+even running ahead of the creeping, snorting train, and barking at the
+people ahead. Alvina, looking out, saw the two unfamiliar engines
+snorting out their smoke round the bend ahead. And the morning wore
+away to mid-day.
+
+Ciccio became excited as they neared Modane, the frontier station. His
+eye lit up again, he pulled himself together for the entrance into
+Italy. Slowly the train rolled in to the dismal station. And then a
+confusion indescribable, of porters and masses of luggage, the
+unspeakable crush and crowd at the customs barriers, the more intense
+crowd through the passport office, all like a madness.
+
+They were out on the platform again, they had secured their places.
+Ciccio wanted to have luncheon in the station restaurant. They went
+through the passages. And there in the dirty station gang-ways and big
+corridors dozens of Italians were lying on the ground, men, women,
+children, camping with their bundles and packages in heaps. They were
+either emigrants or refugees. Alvina had never seen people herd about
+like cattle, dumb, brute cattle. It impressed her. She could not grasp
+that an Italian labourer would lie down just where he was tired, in the
+street, on a station, in any corner, like a dog.
+
+In the afternoon they were slipping down the Alps towards Turin. And
+everywhere was snow—deep, white, wonderful snow, beautiful and fresh,
+glistening in the afternoon light all down the mountain slopes, on the
+railway track, almost seeming to touch the train. And twilight was
+falling. And at the stations people crowded in once more.
+
+It had been dark a long time when they reached Turin. Many people
+alighted from the train, many surged to get in. But Ciccio and Alvina
+had seats side by side. They were becoming tired now. But they were in
+Italy. Once more they went down for a meal. And then the train set off
+again in the night for Alessandria and Genoa, Pisa and Rome.
+
+It was night, the train ran better, there was a more easy sense in
+Italy. Ciccio talked a little with other travelling companions. And
+Alvina settled her cushion, and slept more or less till Genoa. After
+the long wait at Genoa she dozed off again. She woke to see the sea in
+the moonlight beneath her—a lovely silvery sea, coming right to the
+carriage. The train seemed to be tripping on the edge of the
+Mediterranean, round bays, and between dark rocks and under castles, a
+night-time fairy-land, for hours. She watched spell-bound: spell-bound
+by the magic of the world itself. And she thought to herself: “Whatever
+life may be, and whatever horror men have made of it, the world is a
+lovely place, a magic place, something to marvel over. The world is an
+amazing place.”
+
+This thought dozed her off again. Yet she had a consciousness of
+tunnels and hills and of broad marshes pallid under a moon and a coming
+dawn. And in the dawn there was Pisa. She watched the word hanging in
+the station in the dimness: “Pisa.” Ciccio told her people were
+changing for Florence. It all seemed wonderful to her—wonderful. She
+sat and watched the black station—then she heard the sound of the
+child’s trumpet. And it did not occur to her to connect the train’s
+moving on with the sound of the trumpet.
+
+But she saw the golden dawn, a golden sun coming out of level country.
+She loved it. She loved being in Italy. She loved the lounging
+carelessness of the train, she liked having Italian money, hearing the
+Italians round her—though they were neither as beautiful nor as
+melodious as she expected. She loved watching the glowing antique
+landscape. She read and read again: “E pericoloso sporgersi,” and “E
+vietato fumare,” and the other little magical notices on the carriages.
+Ciccio told her what they meant, and how to say them. And sympathetic
+Italians opposite at once asked him if they were married and who and
+what his bride was, and they gazed at her with bright, approving eyes,
+though she felt terribly bedraggled and travel-worn.
+
+“You come from England? Yes! Nice contry!” said a man in a corner,
+leaning forward to make this display of his linguistic capacity.
+
+“Not so nice as this,” said Alvina.
+
+“Eh?”
+
+Alvina repeated herself.
+
+“Not so nice? Oh? No! Fog, eh!” The fat man whisked his fingers in the
+air, to indicate fog in the atmosphere. “But nice contry!
+Very—_convenient_.”
+
+He sat up in triumph, having achieved this word. And the conversation
+once more became a spatter of Italian. The women were very interested.
+They looked at Alvina, at every atom of her. And she divined that they
+were wondering if she was already with child. Sure enough, they were
+asking Ciccio in Italian if she was “making him a baby.” But he shook
+his head and did not know, just a bit constrained. So they ate slices
+of sausages and bread and fried rice-balls, with wonderfully greasy
+fingers, and they drank red wine in big throatfuls out of bottles, and
+they offered their fare to Ciccio and Alvina, and were charmed when she
+said to Ciccio she _would_ have some bread and sausage. He picked the
+strips off the sausage for her with his fingers, and made her a
+sandwich with a roll. The women watched her bite it, and bright-eyed
+and pleased they said, nodding their heads—
+
+“Buono? Buono?”
+
+And she, who knew this word, understood, and replied:
+
+“Yes, good! Buono!” nodding her head likewise. Which caused immense
+satisfaction. The women showed the whole paper of sausage slices, and
+nodded and beamed and said:
+
+“Se vuole ancora—!”
+
+And Alvina bit her wide sandwich, and smiled, and said:
+
+“Yes, awfully nice!”
+
+And the women looked at each other and said something, and Ciccio
+interposed, shaking his head. But one woman ostentatiously wiped a
+bottle mouth with a clean handkerchief, and offered the bottle to
+Alvina, saying:
+
+“Vino buono. Vecchio! Vecchio!” nodding violently and indicating that
+she should drink. She looked at Ciccio, and he looked back at her,
+doubtingly.
+
+“Shall I drink some?” she said.
+
+“If you like,” he replied, making an Italian gesture of indifference.
+
+So she drank some of the wine, and it dribbled on to her chin. She was
+not good at managing a bottle. But she liked the feeling of warmth it
+gave her. She was very tired.
+
+“Si piace? Piace?”
+
+“Do you like it,” interpreted Ciccio.
+
+“Yes, very much. What is very much?” she asked of Ciccio.
+
+“Molto.”
+
+“Si, molto. Of course, I knew molto, from, music,” she added.
+
+The women made noises, and smiled and nodded, and so the train pulsed
+on till they came to Rome. There was again, the wild scramble with
+luggage, a general leave taking, and then the masses of people on the
+station at Rome. _Roma! Roma!_ What was it to Alvina but a name, and a
+crowded, excited station, and Ciccio running after the luggage, and the
+pair of them eating in a station restaurant?
+
+Almost immediately after eating, they were in the train once more, with
+new fellow travellers, running south this time towards Naples. In a
+daze of increasing weariness Alvina watched the dreary, to her
+sordid-seeming Campagna that skirts the railway, the broken aqueduct
+trailing in the near distance over the stricken plain. She saw a
+tram-car, far out from everywhere, running up to cross the railway. She
+saw it was going to Frascati.
+
+And slowly the hills approached—they passed the vines of the foothills,
+the reeds, and were among the mountains. Wonderful little towns perched
+fortified on rocks and peaks, mountains rose straight up off the level
+plain, like old topographical prints, rivers wandered in the wild,
+rocky places, it all seemed ancient and shaggy, savage still, under all
+its remote civilization, this region of the Alban Mountains south of
+Rome. So the train clambered up and down, and went round corners.
+
+They had not far to go now. Alvina was almost too tired to care what it
+would be like. They were going to Ciccio’s native village. They were to
+stay in the house of his uncle, his mother’s brother. This uncle had
+been a model in London. He had built a house on the land left by
+Ciccio’s grandfather. He lived alone now, for his wife was dead and his
+children were abroad. Giuseppe was his son: Giuseppe of Battersea, in
+whose house Alvina had stayed.
+
+This much Alvina knew. She knew that a portion of the land down at
+Pescocalascio belonged to Ciccio: a bit of half-savage, ancient earth
+that had been left to his mother by old Francesco Califano, her
+hard-grinding peasant father. This land remained integral in the
+property, and was worked by Ciccio’s two uncles, Pancrazio and
+Giovanni. Pancrazio was the well-to-do uncle, who had been a model and
+had built a “villa.” Giovanni was not much good. That was how Ciccio
+put it.
+
+They expected Pancrazio to meet them at the station. Ciccio collected
+his bundles and put his hat straight and peered out of the window into
+the steep mountains of the afternoon. There was a town in the opening
+between steep hills, a town on a flat plain that ran into the mountains
+like a gulf. The train drew up. They had arrived.
+
+Alvina was so tired she could hardly climb down to the platform. It was
+about four o’clock. Ciccio looked up and down for Pancrazio, but could
+not see him. So he put his luggage into a pile on the platform, told
+Alvina to stand by it, whilst he went off for the registered boxes. A
+porter came and asked her questions, of which she understood nothing.
+Then at last came Ciccio, shouldering one small trunk, whilst a porter
+followed, shouldering another. Out they trotted, leaving Alvina
+abandoned with the pile of hand luggage. She waited. The train drew
+out. Ciccio and the porter came bustling back. They took her out
+through the little gate, to where, in the flat desert space behind the
+railway, stood two great drab motor-omnibuses, and a rank of open
+carriages. Ciccio was handing up the handbags to the roof of one of the
+big post-omnibuses. When it was finished the man on the roof came down,
+and Ciccio gave him and the station porter each sixpence. The
+station-porter immediately threw his coin on the ground with a gesture
+of indignant contempt, spread his arms wide and expostulated violently.
+Ciccio expostulated back again, and they pecked at each other,
+verbally, like two birds. It ended by the rolling up of the burly,
+black moustached driver of the omnibus. Whereupon Ciccio quite amicably
+gave the porter two nickel twopences in addition to the sixpence,
+whereupon the porter quite lovingly wished him “buon’ viaggio.”
+
+So Alvina was stowed into the body of the omnibus, with Ciccio at her
+side. They were no sooner seated than a voice was heard, in
+beautifully-modulated English:
+
+“You are here! Why how have I missed you?”
+
+It was Pancrazio, a smallish, rather battered-looking, shabby Italian
+of sixty or more, with a big moustache and reddish-rimmed eyes and a
+deeply-lined face. He was presented to Alvina.
+
+“How have I missed you?” he said. “I was on the station when the train
+came, and I did not see you.”
+
+But it was evident he had taken wine. He had no further opportunity to
+talk. The compartment was full of large, mountain-peasants with black
+hats and big cloaks and overcoats. They found Pancrazio a seat at the
+far end, and there he sat, with his deeply-lined, impassive face and
+slightly glazed eyes. He had yellow-brown eyes like Ciccio. But in the
+uncle the eyelids dropped in a curious, heavy way, the eyes looked dull
+like those of some old, rakish tom-cat, they were slightly rimmed with
+red. A curious person! And his English, though slow, was beautifully
+pronounced. He glanced at Alvina with slow, impersonal glances, not at
+all a stare. And he sat for the most part impassive and abstract as a
+Red Indian.
+
+At the last moment a large black priest was crammed in, and the door
+shut behind him. Every available seat was let down and occupied. The
+second great post-omnibus rolled away, and then the one for Mola
+followed, rolling Alvina and Ciccio over the next stage of their
+journey.
+
+The sun was already slanting to the mountain tops, shadows were falling
+on the gulf of the plain. The omnibus charged at a great speed along a
+straight white road, which cut through the cultivated level straight
+towards the core of the mountain. By the road-side, peasant men in
+cloaks, peasant women in full-gathered dresses with white bodices or
+blouses having great full sleeves, tramped in the ridge of grass,
+driving cows or goats, or leading heavily-laden asses. The women had
+coloured kerchiefs on their heads, like the women Alvina remembered at
+the Sunday-School treats, who used to tell fortunes with green little
+love-birds. And they all tramped along towards the blue shadow of the
+closing-in mountains, leaving the peaks of the town behind on the left.
+
+At a branch-road the ’bus suddenly stopped, and there it sat calmly in
+the road beside an icy brook, in the falling twilight. Great moth-white
+oxen waved past, drawing a long, low load of wood; the peasants left
+behind began to come up again, in picturesque groups. The icy brook
+tinkled, goats, pigs and cows wandered and shook their bells along the
+grassy borders of the road and the flat, unbroken fields, being driven
+slowly home. Peasants jumped out of the omnibus on to the road, to
+chat—and a sharp air came in. High overhead, as the sun went down, was
+the curious icy radiance of snow mountains, and a pinkness, while
+shadow deepened in the valley.
+
+At last, after about half an hour, the youth who was conductor of the
+omnibus came running down the wild side-road, everybody clambered in,
+and away the vehicle charged, into the neck of the plain. With a growl
+and a rush it swooped up the first loop of the ascent. Great precipices
+rose on the right, the ruddiness of sunset above them. The road wound
+and swirled, trying to get up the pass. The omnibus pegged slowly up,
+then charged round a corner, swirled into another loop, and pegged
+heavily once more. It seemed dark between the closing-in mountains. The
+rocks rose very high, the road looped and swerved from one side of the
+wide defile to the other, the vehicle pulsed and persisted. Sometimes
+there was a house, sometimes a wood of oak-trees, sometimes the glimpse
+of a ravine, then the tall white glisten of snow above the earthly
+blackness. And still they went on and on, up the darkness.
+
+Peering ahead, Alvina thought she saw the hollow between the peaks,
+which was the top of the pass. And every time the omnibus took a new
+turn, she thought it was coming out on the top of this hollow between
+the heights. But no—the road coiled right away again.
+
+A wild little village came in sight. This was the destination. Again
+no. Only the tall, handsome mountain youth who had sat across from her,
+descended grumbling because the ’bus had brought him past his road, the
+driver having refused to pull up. Everybody expostulated with him, and
+he dropped into the shadow. The big priest squeezed into his place. The
+’bus wound on and on, and always towards that hollow sky-line between
+the high peaks.
+
+At last they ran up between buildings nipped between high rock-faces,
+and out into a little market-place, the crown of the pass. The luggage
+was got out and lifted down. Alvina descended. There she was, in a wild
+centre of an old, unfinished little mountain town. The façade of a
+church rose from a small eminence. A white road ran to the right, where
+a great open valley showed faintly beyond and beneath. Low, squalid
+sort of buildings stood around—with some high buildings. And there were
+bare little trees. The stars were in the sky, the air was icy. People
+stood darkly, excitedly about, women with an odd, shell-pattern
+head-dress of gofered linen, something like a parlour-maid’s cap, came
+and stared hard. They were hard-faced mountain women.
+
+Pancrazio was talking to Ciccio in dialect.
+
+“I couldn’t get a cart to come down,” he said in English. “But I shall
+find one here. Now what will you do? Put the luggage in Grazia’s place
+while you wait?—”
+
+They went across the open place to a sort of shop called the Post
+Restaurant. It was a little hole with an earthen floor and a smell of
+cats. Three crones were sitting over a low brass brazier, in which
+charcoal and ashes smouldered. Men were drinking. Ciccio ordered coffee
+with rum—and the hard-faced Grazia, in her unfresh head-dress, dabbled
+the little dirty coffee-cups in dirty water, took the coffee-pot out of
+the ashes, poured in the old black boiling coffee three parts full, and
+slopped the cup over with rum. Then she dashed in a spoonful of sugar,
+to add to the pool in the saucer, and her customers were served.
+
+However, Ciccio drank up, so Alvina did likewise, burning her lips
+smartly. Ciccio paid and ducked his way out.
+
+“Now what will you buy?” asked Pancrazio.
+
+“Buy?” said Ciccio.
+
+“Food,” said Pancrazio. “Have you brought food?”
+
+“No,” said Ciccio.
+
+So they trailed up stony dark ways to a butcher, and got a big red
+slice of meat; to a baker, and got enormous flat loaves. Sugar and
+coffee they bought. And Pancrazio lamented in his elegant English that
+no butter was to be obtained. Everywhere the hard-faced women came and
+stared into Alvina’s face, asking questions. And both Ciccio and
+Pancrazio answered rather coldly, with some _hauteur_. There was
+evidently not too much intimacy between the people of Pescocalascio and
+these semi-townfolk of Ossona. Alvina felt as if she were in a strange,
+hostile country, in the darkness of the savage little mountain town.
+
+At last they were ready. They mounted into a two-wheeled cart, Alvina
+and Ciccio behind, Pancrazio and the driver in front, the luggage
+promiscuous. The bigger things were left for the morrow. It was icy
+cold, with a flashing darkness. The moon would not rise till later.
+
+And so, without any light but that of the stars, the cart went spanking
+and rattling downhill, down the pale road which wound down the head of
+the valley to the gulf of darkness below. Down in the darkness into the
+darkness they rattled, wildly, and without heed, the young driver
+making strange noises to his dim horse, cracking a whip and asking
+endless questions of Pancrazio.
+
+Alvina sat close to Ciccio. He remained almost impassive. The wind was
+cold, the stars flashed. And they rattled down the rough, broad road
+under the rocks, down and down in the darkness. Ciccio sat crouching
+forwards, staring ahead. Alvina was aware of mountains, rocks, and
+stars.
+
+“I didn’t know it was so _wild_!” she said.
+
+“It is not much,” he said. There was a sad, plangent note in his voice.
+He put his hand upon her.
+
+“You don’t like it?” he said.
+
+“I think it’s lovely—wonderful,” she said, dazed.
+
+He held her passionately. But she did not feel she needed protecting.
+It was all wonderful and amazing to her. She could not understand why
+he seemed upset and in a sort of despair. To her there was magnificence
+in the lustrous stars and the steepnesses, magic, rather terrible and
+grand.
+
+They came down to the level valley bed, and went rolling along. There
+was a house, and a lurid red fire burning outside against the wall, and
+dark figures about it.
+
+“What is that?” she said. “What are they doing?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Ciccio. “Cosa fanno li—eh?”
+
+“Ka—? Fanno il buga’—” said the driver.
+
+“They are doing some washing,” said Pancrazio, explanatory.
+
+“Washing!” said Alvina.
+
+“Boiling the clothes,” said Ciccio.
+
+On the cart rattled and bumped, in the cold night, down the high-way in
+the valley. Alvina could make out the darkness of the slopes. Overhead
+she saw the brilliance of Orion. She felt she was quite, quite lost.
+She had gone out of the world, over the border, into some place of
+mystery. She was lost to Woodhouse, to Lancaster, to England—all lost.
+
+They passed through a darkness of woods, with a swift sound of cold
+water. And then suddenly the cart pulled up. Some one came out of a
+lighted doorway in the darkness.
+
+“We must get down here—the cart doesn’t go any further,” said
+Pancrazio.
+
+“Are we there?” said Alvina.
+
+“No, it is about a mile. But we must leave the cart.”
+
+Ciccio asked questions in Italian. Alvina climbed down.
+
+“Good-evening! Are you cold?” came a loud, raucous, American-Italian
+female voice. It was another relation of Ciccio’s. Alvina stared and
+looked at the handsome, sinister, raucous-voiced young woman who stood
+in the light of the doorway.
+
+“Rather cold,” she said.
+
+“Come in, and warm yourself,” said the young woman.
+
+“My sister’s husband lives here,” explained Pancrazio.
+
+Alvina went through the doorway into the room. It was a sort of inn. On
+the earthen floor glowed a great round pan of charcoal, which looked
+like a flat pool of fire. Men in hats and cloaks sat at a table playing
+cards by the light of a small lamp, a man was pouring wine. The room
+seemed like a cave.
+
+“Warm yourself,” said the young woman, pointing to the flat disc of
+fire on the floor. She put a chair up to it, and Alvina sat down. The
+men in the room stared, but went on noisily with their cards. Ciccio
+came in with luggage. Men got up and greeted him effusively, watching
+Alvina between whiles as if she were some alien creature. Words of
+American sounded among the Italian dialect.
+
+There seemed to be a confab of some sort, aside. Ciccio came and said
+to her:
+
+“They want to know if we will stay the night here.”
+
+“I would rather go on home,” she said.
+
+He averted his face at the word home.
+
+“You see,” said Pancrazio, “I think you might be more comfortable here,
+than in my poor house. You see I have no woman to care for it—”
+
+Alvina glanced round the cave of a room, at the rough fellows in their
+black hats. She was thinking how she would be “more comfortable” here.
+
+“I would rather go on,” she said.
+
+“Then we will get the donkey,” said Pancrazio stoically. And Alvina
+followed him out on to the high-road.
+
+From a shed issued a smallish, brigand-looking fellow carrying a
+lantern. He had his cloak over his nose and his hat over his eyes. His
+legs were bundled with white rag, crossed and crossed with hide straps,
+and he was shod in silent skin sandals.
+
+“This is my brother Giovanni,” said Pancrazio. “He is not quite
+sensible.” Then he broke into a loud flood of dialect.
+
+Giovanni touched his hat to Alvina, and gave the lantern to Pancrazio.
+Then he disappeared, returning in a few moments with the ass. Ciccio
+came out with the baggage, and by the light of the lantern the things
+were slung on either side of the ass, in a rather precarious heap.
+Pancrazio tested the rope again.
+
+“There! Go on, and I shall come in a minute.”
+
+“Ay-er-er!” cried Giovanni at the ass, striking the flank of the beast.
+Then he took the leading rope and led up on the dark high-way, stalking
+with his dingy white legs under his muffled cloak, leading the ass.
+Alvina noticed the shuffle of his skin-sandalled feet, the quiet step
+of the ass.
+
+She walked with Ciccio near the side of the road. He carried the
+lantern. The ass with its load plodded a few steps ahead. There were
+trees on the road-side, and a small channel of invisible but noisy
+water. Big rocks jutted sometimes. It was freezing, the mountain
+high-road was congealed. High stars flashed overhead.
+
+“How strange it is!” said Alvina to Ciccio. “Are you glad you have come
+home?”
+
+“It isn’t my home,” he replied, as if the word fretted him. “Yes, I
+like to see it again. But it isn’t the place for young people to live
+in. You will see how you like it.”
+
+She wondered at his uneasiness. It was the same in Pancrazio. The
+latter now came running to catch them up.
+
+“I think you will be tired,” he said. “You ought to have stayed at my
+relation’s house down there.”
+
+“No, I am not tired,” said Alvina. “But I’m hungry.”
+
+“Well, we shall eat something when we come to my house.”
+
+They plodded in the darkness of the valley high-road. Pancrazio took
+the lantern and went to examine the load, hitching the ropes. A great
+flat loaf fell out, and rolled away, and smack came a little valise.
+Pancrazio broke into a flood of dialect to Giovanni, handing him the
+lantern. Ciccio picked up the bread and put it under his arm.
+
+“Break me a little piece,” said Alvina.
+
+And in the darkness they both chewed bread.
+
+After a while, Pancrazio halted with the ass just ahead, and took the
+lantern from Giovanni.
+
+“We must leave the road here,” he said.
+
+And with the lantern he carefully, courteously showed Alvina a small
+track descending in the side of the bank, between bushes. Alvina
+ventured down the steep descent, Pancrazio following showing a light.
+In the rear was Giovanni, making noises at the ass. They all picked
+their way down into the great white-bouldered bed of a mountain river.
+It was a wide, strange bed of dry boulders, pallid under the stars.
+There was a sound of a rushing river, glacial-sounding. The place
+seemed wild and desolate. In the distance was a darkness of bushes,
+along the far shore.
+
+Pancrazio swinging the lantern, they threaded their way through the
+uneven boulders till they came to the river itself—not very wide, but
+rushing fast. A long, slender, drooping plank crossed over. Alvina
+crossed rather tremulous, followed by Pancrazio with the light, and
+Ciccio with the bread and the valise. They could hear the click of the
+ass and the ejaculations of Giovanni.
+
+Pancrazio went back over the stream with the light. Alvina saw the dim
+ass come up, wander uneasily to the stream, plant his fore legs, and
+sniff the water, his nose right down.
+
+“Er! Err!” cried Pancrazio, striking the beast on the flank.
+
+But it only lifted its nose and turned aside. It would not take the
+stream. Pancrazio seized the leading rope angrily and turned upstream.
+
+“Why were donkeys made! They are beasts without sense,” his voice
+floated angrily across the chill darkness.
+
+Ciccio laughed. He and Alvina stood in the wide, stony river-bed, in
+the strong starlight, watching the dim figures of the ass and the men
+crawl upstream with the lantern.
+
+Again the same performance, the white muzzle of the ass stooping down
+to sniff the water suspiciously, his hind-quarters tilted up with the
+load. Again the angry yells and blows from Pancrazio. And the ass
+seemed to be taking the water. But no! After a long deliberation he
+drew back. Angry language sounded through the crystal air. The group
+with the lantern moved again upstream, becoming smaller.
+
+Alvina and Ciccio stood and watched. The lantern looked small up the
+distance. But there—a clocking, shouting, splashing sound.
+
+“He is going over,” said Ciccio.
+
+Pancrazio came hurrying back to the plank with the lantern.
+
+“Oh the stupid beast! I could kill him!” cried he.
+
+“Isn’t he used to the water?” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes, he is. But he won’t go except where he thinks he will go. You
+might kill him before he should go.”
+
+They picked their way across the river bed, to the wild scrub and
+bushes of the farther side. There they waited for the ass, which came
+up clicking over the boulders, led by the patient Giovanni. And then
+they took a difficult, rocky track ascending between banks. Alvina felt
+the uneven scramble a great effort. But she got up. Again they waited
+for the ass. And then again they struck off to the right, under some
+trees.
+
+A house appeared dimly.
+
+“Is that it?” said Alvina.
+
+“No. It belongs to me. But that is not my house. A few steps further.
+Now we are on my land.”
+
+They were treading a rough sort of grass-land—and still climbing. It
+ended in a sudden little scramble between big stones, and suddenly they
+were on the threshold of a quite important-looking house: but it was
+all dark.
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Pancrazio, “they have done nothing that I told them.”
+He made queer noises of exasperation.
+
+“What?” said Alvina.
+
+“Neither made a fire nor anything. Wait a minute—”
+
+The ass came up. Ciccio, Alvina, Giovanni and the ass waited in the
+frosty starlight under the wild house. Pancrazio disappeared round the
+back. Ciccio talked to Giovanni. He seemed uneasy, as if he felt
+depressed.
+
+Pancrazio returned with the lantern, and opened the big door. Alvina
+followed him into a stone-floored, wide passage, where stood farm
+implements, where a little of straw and beans lay in a corner, and
+whence rose bare wooden stairs. So much she saw in the glimpse of
+lantern-light, as Pancrazio pulled the string and entered the kitchen:
+a dim-walled room with a vaulted roof and a great dark, open hearth,
+fireless: a bare room, with a little rough dark furniture: an unswept
+stone floor: iron-barred windows, rather small, in the deep-thickness
+of the wall, one-half shut with a drab shutter. It was rather like a
+room on the stage, gloomy, not meant to be lived in.
+
+“I will make a light,” said Pancrazio, taking a lamp from the
+mantel-piece, and proceeding to wind it up.
+
+Ciccio stood behind Alvina, silent. He had put down the bread and
+valise on a wooden chest. She turned to him.
+
+“It’s a beautiful room,” she said.
+
+Which, with its high, vaulted roof, its dirty whitewash, its great
+black chimney, it really was. But Ciccio did not understand. He smiled
+gloomily.
+
+The lamp was lighted. Alvina looked round in wonder.
+
+“Now I will make a fire. You, Ciccio, will help Giovanni with the
+donkey,” said Pancrazio, scuttling with the lantern.
+
+Alvina looked at the room. There was a wooden settle in front of the
+hearth, stretching its back to the room. There was a little table under
+a square, recessed window, on whose sloping ledge were newspapers,
+scattered letters, nails and a hammer. On the table were dried beans
+and two maize cobs. In a corner were shelves, with two chipped enamel
+plates, and a small table underneath, on which stood a bucket of water
+with a dipper. Then there was a wooden chest, two little chairs, and a
+litter of faggots, cane, vine-twigs, bare maize-hubs, oak-twigs filling
+the corner by the hearth.
+
+Pancrazio came scrambling in with fresh faggots.
+
+“They have not done what I told them, the tiresome people!” he said. “I
+told them to make a fire and prepare the house. You will be
+uncomfortable in my poor home. I have no woman, nothing, everything is
+wrong—”
+
+He broke the pieces of cane and kindled them in the hearth. Soon there
+was a good blaze. Ciccio came in with the bags and the food.
+
+“I had better go upstairs and take my things off,” said Alvina. “I am
+so hungry.”
+
+“You had better keep your coat on,” said Pancrazio. “The room is cold.”
+Which it was, ice-cold. She shuddered a little. She took off her hat
+and fur.
+
+“Shall we fry some meat?” said Pancrazio.
+
+He took a frying-pan, found lard in the wooden chest—it was the
+food-chest—and proceeded to fry pieces of meat in a frying-pan over the
+fire. Alvina wanted to lay the table. But there was no cloth.
+
+“We will sit here, as I do, to eat,” said Pancrazio. He produced two
+enamel plates and one soup-plate, three penny iron forks and two old
+knives, and a little grey, coarse salt in a wooden bowl. These he
+placed on the seat of the settle in front of the fire. Ciccio was
+silent.
+
+The settle was dark and greasy. Alvina feared for her clothes. But she
+sat with her enamel plate and her impossible fork, a piece of meat and
+a chunk of bread, and ate. It was difficult—but the food was good, and
+the fire blazed. Only there was a film of wood-smoke in the room,
+rather smarting. Ciccio sat on the settle beside her, and ate in large
+mouthfuls.
+
+“I think it’s fun,” said Alvina.
+
+He looked at her with dark, haunted, gloomy eyes. She wondered what was
+the matter with him.
+
+“Don’t you think it’s fun?” she said, smiling.
+
+He smiled slowly.
+
+“You won’t like it,” he said.
+
+“Why not?” she cried, in panic lest he prophesied truly.
+
+Pancrazio scuttled in and out with the lantern. He brought wrinkled
+pears, and green, round grapes, and walnuts, on a white cloth, and
+presented them.
+
+“I think my pears are still good,” he said. “You must eat them, and
+excuse my uncomfortable house.”
+
+Giovanni came in with a big bowl of soup and a bottle of milk. There
+was room only for three on the settle before the hearth. He pushed his
+chair among the litter of fire-kindling, and sat down. He had bright,
+bluish eyes, and a fattish face—was a man of about fifty, but had a
+simple, kindly, slightly imbecile face. All the men kept their hats on.
+
+The soup was from Giovanni’s cottage. It was for Pancrazio and him. But
+there was only one spoon. So Pancrazio ate a dozen spoonfuls, and
+handed the bowl to Giovanni—who protested and tried to refuse—but
+accepted, and ate ten spoonfuls, then handed the bowl back to his
+brother, with the spoon. So they finished the bowl between them. Then
+Pancrazio found wine—a whitish wine, not very good, for which he
+apologized. And he invited Alvina to coffee. Which she accepted gladly.
+
+For though the fire was warm in front, behind was very cold. Pancrazio
+stuck a long pointed stick down the handle of a saucepan, and gave this
+utensil to Ciccio, to hold over the fire and scald the milk, whilst he
+put the tin coffee-pot in the ashes. He took a long iron tube or
+blow-pipe, which rested on two little feet at the far end. This he gave
+to Giovanni to blow the fire.
+
+Giovanni was a fire-worshipper. His eyes sparkled as he took the
+blowing tube. He put fresh faggots behind the fire—though Pancrazio
+forbade him. He arranged the burning faggots. And then softly he blew a
+red-hot fire for the coffee.
+
+“Basta! Basta!” said Ciccio. But Giovanni blew on, his eyes sparkling,
+looking to Alvina. He was making the fire beautiful for her.
+
+There was one cup, one enamelled mug, one little bowl. This was the
+coffee-service. Pancrazio noisily ground the coffee. He seemed to do
+everything, old, stooping as he was.
+
+At last Giovanni took his leave—the kettle which hung on the hook over
+the fire was boiling over. Ciccio burnt his hand lifting it off. And at
+last, at last Alvina could go to bed.
+
+Pancrazio went first with the candle—then Ciccio with the black
+kettle—then Alvina. The men still had their hats on. Their boots
+tramped noisily on the bare stairs.
+
+The bedroom was very cold. It was a fair-sized room with a concrete
+floor and white walls, and window-door opening on a little balcony.
+There were two high white beds on opposite sides of the room. The
+wash-stand was a little tripod thing.
+
+The air was very cold, freezing, the stone floor was dead cold to the
+feet. Ciccio sat down on a chair and began to take off his boots. She
+went to the window. The moon had risen. There was a flood of light on
+dazzling white snow tops, glimmering and marvellous in the evanescent
+night. She went out for a moment on to the balcony. It was a
+wonder-world: the moon over the snow heights, the pallid valley-bed
+away below; the river hoarse, and round about her, scrubby, blue-dark
+foothills with twiggy trees. Magical it all was—but so cold.
+
+“You had better shut the door,” said Ciccio.
+
+She came indoors. She was dead tired, and stunned with cold, and
+hopelessly dirty after that journey. Ciccio had gone to bed without
+washing.
+
+“Why does the bed rustle?” she asked him.
+
+It was stuffed with dry maize-leaves, the dry sheathes from the
+cobs—stuffed enormously high. He rustled like a snake among dead
+foliage.
+
+Alvina washed her hands. There was nothing to do with the water but
+throw it out of the door. Then she washed her face, thoroughly, in good
+hot water. What a blessed relief! She sighed as she dried herself.
+
+“It does one good!” she sighed.
+
+Ciccio watched her as she quickly brushed her hair. She was almost
+stupefied with weariness and the cold, bruising air. Blindly she crept
+into the high, rustling bed. But it was made high in the middle. And it
+was icy cold. It shocked her almost as if she had fallen into water.
+She shuddered, and became semi-conscious with fatigue. The blankets
+were heavy, heavy. She was dazed with excitement and wonder. She felt
+vaguely that Ciccio was miserable, and wondered why.
+
+She woke with a start an hour or so later. The moon was in the room.
+She did not know where she was. And she was frightened. And she was
+cold. A real terror took hold of her. Ciccio in his bed was quite
+still. Everything seemed electric with horror. She felt she would die
+instantly, everything was so terrible around her. She could not move.
+She felt that everything around her was horrific, extinguishing her,
+putting her out. Her very being was threatened. In another instant she
+would be transfixed.
+
+Making a violent effort she sat up. The silence of Ciccio in his bed
+was as horrible as the rest of the night. She had a horror of him also.
+What would she do, where should she flee? She was lost—lost—lost
+utterly.
+
+The knowledge sank into her like ice. Then deliberately she got out of
+bed and went across to him. He was horrible and frightening, but he was
+warm. She felt his power and his warmth invade her and extinguish her.
+The mad and desperate passion that was in him sent her completely
+unconscious again, completely unconscious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO
+
+
+There is no mistake about it, Alvina was a lost girl. She was cut off
+from everything she belonged to. Ovid isolated in Thrace might well
+lament. The soul itself needs its own mysterious nourishment. This
+nourishment lacking, nothing is well.
+
+At Pescocalascio it was the mysterious influence of the mountains and
+valleys themselves which seemed always to be annihilating the
+Englishwoman: nay, not only her, but the very natives themselves.
+Ciccio and Pancrazio clung to her, essentially, as if she saved them
+also from extinction. It needed all her courage. Truly, she had to
+support the souls of the two men.
+
+At first she did not realize. She was only stunned with the strangeness
+of it all: startled, half-enraptured with the terrific beauty of the
+place, half-horrified by its savage annihilation of her. But she was
+stunned. The days went by.
+
+It seems there are places which resist us, which have the power to
+overthrow our psychic being. It seems as if every country has its
+potent negative centres, localities which savagely and triumphantly
+refuse our living culture. And Alvina had struck one of them, here on
+the edge of the Abruzzi.
+
+She was not in the village of Pescocalascio itself. That was a long
+hour’s walk away. Pancrazio’s house was the chief of a tiny hamlet of
+three houses, called Califano because the Califanos had made it. There
+was the ancient, savage hole of a house, quite windowless, where
+Pancrazio and Ciccio’s mother had been born: the family home. Then
+there was Pancrazio’s villa. And then, a little below, another newish,
+modern house in a sort of wild meadow, inhabited by the peasants who
+worked the land. Ten minutes’ walk away was another cluster of seven or
+eight houses, where Giovanni lived. But there was no shop, no post
+nearer than Pescocalascio, an hour’s heavy road up deep and rocky,
+wearying tracks.
+
+And yet, what could be more lovely than the sunny days: pure, hot, blue
+days among the mountain foothills: irregular, steep little hills half
+wild with twiggy brown oak-trees and marshes and broom heaths, half
+cultivated, in a wild, scattered fashion. Lovely, in the lost hollows
+beyond a marsh, to see Ciccio slowly ploughing with two great white
+oxen: lovely to go with Pancrazio down to the wild scrub that bordered
+the river-bed, then over the white-bouldered, massive desert and across
+stream to the other scrubby savage shore, and so up to the high-road.
+Pancrazio was very happy if Alvina would accompany him. He liked it
+that she was not afraid. And her sense of the beauty of the place was
+an infinite relief to him.
+
+Nothing could have been more marvellous than the winter twilight.
+Sometimes Alvina and Pancrazio were late returning with the ass. And
+then gingerly the ass would step down the steep banks, already
+beginning to freeze when the sun went down. And again and again he
+would balk the stream, while a violet-blue dusk descended on the white,
+wide stream-bed, and the scrub and lower hills became dark, and in
+heaven, oh, almost unbearably lovely, the snow of the near mountains
+was burning rose, against the dark-blue heavens. How unspeakably lovely
+it was, no one could ever tell, the grand, pagan twilight of the
+valleys, savage, cold, with a sense of ancient gods who knew the right
+for human sacrifice. It stole away the soul of Alvina. She felt
+transfigured in it, clairvoyant in another mystery of life. A savage
+hardness came in her heart. The gods who had demanded human sacrifice
+were quite right, immutably right. The fierce, savage gods who dipped
+their lips in blood, these were the true gods.
+
+The terror, the agony, the nostalgia of the heathen past was a constant
+torture to her mediumistic soul. She did not know what it was. But it
+was a kind of neuralgia in the very soul, never to be located in the
+human body, and yet physical. Coming over the brow of a heathy, rocky
+hillock, and seeing Ciccio beyond leaning deep over the plough, in his
+white shirt-sleeves following the slow, waving, moth-pale oxen across a
+small track of land turned up in the heathen hollow, her soul would go
+all faint, she would almost swoon with realization of the world that
+had gone before. And Ciccio was so silent, there seemed so much dumb
+magic and anguish in him, as if he were for ever afraid of himself and
+the thing he was. He seemed, in his silence, to _concentrate_ upon her
+so terribly. She believed she would not live.
+
+Sometimes she would go gathering acorns, large, fine acorns, a precious
+crop in that land where the fat pig was almost an object of veneration.
+Silently she would crouch filling the pannier. And far off she would
+hear the sound of Giovanni chopping wood, of Ciccio calling to the oxen
+or Pancrazio making noises to the ass, or the sound of a peasant’s
+mattock. Over all the constant speech of the passing river, and the
+real breathing presence of the upper snows. And a wild, terrible
+happiness would take hold of her, beyond despair, but very like
+despair. No one would ever find her. She had gone beyond the world into
+the pre-world, she had reopened on the old eternity.
+
+And then Maria, the little elvish old wife of Giovanni, would come up
+with the cows. One cow she held by a rope round its horns, and she
+hauled it from the patches of young corn into the rough grass, from the
+little plantation of trees in among the heath. Maria wore the
+full-pleated white-sleeved dress of the peasants, and a red kerchief on
+her head. But her dress was dirty, and her face was dirty, and the big
+gold rings of her ears hung from ears which perhaps had never been
+washed. She was rather smoke-dried too, from perpetual wood-smoke.
+
+Maria in her red kerchief hauling the white cow, and screaming at it,
+would come laughing towards Alvina, who was rather afraid of cows. And
+then, screaming high in dialect, Maria would talk to her. Alvina smiled
+and tried to understand. Impossible. It was not strictly a human
+speech. It was rather like the crying of half-articulate animals. It
+certainly was not Italian. And yet Alvina by dint of constant hearing
+began to pick up the coagulated phrases.
+
+She liked Maria. She liked them all. They were all very kind to her, as
+far as they knew. But they did not know. And they were kind with each
+other. For they all seemed lost, like lost, forlorn aborigines, and
+they treated Alvina as if she were a higher being. They loved her that
+she would strip maize-cobs or pick acorns. But they were all anxious to
+serve her. And it seemed as if they needed some one to serve. It seemed
+as if Alvina, the Englishwoman, had a certain magic glamour for them,
+and so long as she was happy, it was a supreme joy and relief to them
+to have her there. But it seemed to her she would not live.
+
+And when she was unhappy! Ah, the dreadful days of cold rain mingled
+with sleet, when the world outside was more than impossible, and the
+house inside was a horror. The natives kept themselves alive by going
+about constantly working, dumb and elemental. But what was Alvina to
+do?
+
+For the house was unspeakable. The only two habitable rooms were the
+kitchen and Alvina’s bedroom: and the kitchen, with its little grated
+windows high up in the wall, one of which had a broken pane and must
+keep one-half of its shutters closed, was like a dark cavern vaulted
+and bitter with wood-smoke. Seated on the settle before the fire, the
+hard, greasy settle, Alvina could indeed keep the fire going, with
+faggots of green oak. But the smoke hurt her chest, she was not clean
+for one moment, and she could do nothing else. The bedroom again was
+just impossibly cold. And there was no other place. And from far away
+came the wild braying of an ass, primeval and desperate in the snow.
+
+The house was quite large; but uninhabitable. Downstairs, on the left
+of the wide passage where the ass occasionally stood out of the
+weather, and where the chickens wandered in search of treasure, was a
+big, long apartment where Pancrazio kept implements and tools and
+potatoes and pumpkins, and where four or five rabbits hopped
+unexpectedly out of the shadows. Opposite this, on the right, was the
+cantina, a dark place with wine-barrels and more agricultural stores.
+This was the whole of the downstairs.
+
+Going upstairs, half way up, at the turn of the stairs was the opening
+of a sort of barn, a great wire-netting behind which showed a glow of
+orange maize-cobs and some wheat. Upstairs were four rooms. But
+Alvina’s room alone was furnished. Pancrazio slept in the unfurnished
+bedroom opposite, on a pile of old clothes. Beyond was a room with
+litter in it, a chest of drawers, and rubbish of old books and
+photographs Pancrazio had brought from England. There was a battered
+photograph of Lord Leighton, among others. The fourth room, approached
+through the corn-chamber, was always locked.
+
+Outside was just as hopeless. There had been a little garden within the
+stone enclosure. But fowls, geese, and the ass had made an end of this.
+Fowl-droppings were everywhere, indoors and out, the ass left his pile
+of droppings to steam in the winter air on the threshold, while his
+heartrending bray rent the air. Roads there were none: only deep
+tracks, like profound ruts with rocks in them, in the hollows, and
+rocky, grooved tracks over the brows. The hollow grooves were full of
+mud and water, and one struggled slipperily from rock to rock, or along
+narrow grass-ledges.
+
+What was to be done, then, on mornings that were dark with sleet?
+Pancrazio would bring a kettle of hot water at about half-past eight.
+For had he not travelled Europe with English gentlemen, as a sort of
+model-valet! Had he not _loved_ his English gentlemen? Even now, he was
+infinitely happier performing these little attentions for Alvina than
+attending to his wretched domains.
+
+Ciccio rose early, and went about in the hap-hazard, useless way of
+Italians all day long, getting nothing done. Alvina came out of the icy
+bedroom to the black kitchen. Pancrazio would be gallantly heating milk
+for her, at the end of a long stick. So she would sit on the settle and
+drink her coffee and milk, into which she dipped her dry bread. Then
+the day was before her.
+
+She washed her cup and her enamelled plate, and she tried to clean the
+kitchen. But Pancrazio had on the fire a great black pot, dangling from
+the chain. He was boiling food for the eternal pig—the only creature
+for which any cooking was done. Ciccio was tramping in with faggots.
+Pancrazio went in and out, back and forth from his pot.
+
+Alvina stroked her brow and decided on a method. Once she was rid of
+Pancrazio, she would wash every cup and plate and utensil in boiling
+water. Well, at last Pancrazio went off with his great black pan, and
+she set to. But there were not six pieces of crockery in the house, and
+not more than six cooking utensils. These were soon scrubbed. Then she
+scrubbed the two little tables and the shelves. She lined the
+food-chest with clean paper. She washed the high window-ledges and the
+narrow mantel-piece, that had large mounds of dusty candle-wax, in
+deposits. Then she tackled the settle. She scrubbed it also. Then she
+looked at the floor. And even she, English housewife as she was,
+realized the futility of trying to wash it. As well try to wash the
+earth itself outside. It was just a piece of stone-laid earth. She
+swept it as well as she could, and made a little order in the
+faggot-heap in the corner. Then she washed the little, high-up windows,
+to try and let in light.
+
+And what was the difference? A dank wet soapy smell, and not much more.
+Maria had kept scuffling admiringly in and out, crying her wonderment
+and approval. She had most ostentatiously chased out an obtrusive hen,
+from this temple of cleanliness. And that was all.
+
+It was hopeless. The same black walls, the same floor, the same cold
+from behind, the same green-oak wood-smoke, the same bucket of water
+from the well—the same come-and-go of aimless busy men, the same cackle
+of wet hens, the same hopeless nothingness.
+
+Alvina stood up against it for a time. And then she caught a bad cold,
+and was wretched. Probably it was the wood-smoke. But her chest was
+raw, she felt weak and miserable. She could not sit in her bedroom, for
+it was too cold. If she sat in the darkness of the kitchen she was hurt
+with smoke, and perpetually cold behind her neck. And Pancrazio rather
+resented the amount of faggots consumed for nothing. The only hope
+would have been in work. But there was nothing in that house to be
+done. How could she even sew?
+
+She was to prepare the mid-day and evening meals. But with no pots, and
+over a smoking wood fire, what could she prepare? Black and greasy, she
+boiled potatoes and fried meat in lard, in a long-handled frying pan.
+Then Pancrazio decreed that Maria should prepare macaroni with the
+tomato sauce, and thick vegetable soup, and sometimes polenta. This
+coarse, heavy food was wearying beyond words.
+
+Alvina began to feel she would die, in the awful comfortless
+meaninglessness of it all. True, sunny days returned and some magic.
+But she was weak and feverish with her cold, which would not get
+better. So that even in the sunshine the crude comfortlessness and
+inferior savagery of the place only repelled her.
+
+The others were depressed when she was unhappy.
+
+“Do you wish you were back in England?” Ciccio asked her, with a little
+sardonic bitterness in his voice. She looked at him without answering.
+He ducked and went away.
+
+“We will make a fire-place in the other bedroom,” said Pancrazio.
+
+No sooner said than done. Ciccio persuaded Alvina to stay in bed a few
+days. She was thankful to take refuge. Then she heard a rare
+come-and-go. Pancrazio, Ciccio, Giovanni, Maria and a mason all set
+about the fire-place. Up and down stairs they went, Maria carrying
+stone and lime on her head, and swerving in Alvina’s doorway, with her
+burden perched aloft, to shout a few unintelligible words. In the
+intervals of lime-carrying she brought the invalid her soup or her
+coffee or her hot milk.
+
+It turned out quite a good job—a pleasant room with two windows, that
+would have all the sun in the afternoon, and would see the mountains on
+one hand, the far-off village perched up on the other. When she was
+well enough they set off one early Monday morning to the market in
+Ossona. They left the house by starlight, but dawn was coming by the
+time they reached the river. At the high-road, Pancrazio harnessed the
+ass, and after endless delay they jogged off to Ossona. The dawning
+mountains were wonderful, dim-green and mauve and rose, the ground rang
+with frost. Along the roads many peasants were trooping to market,
+women in their best dresses, some of thick heavy silk with the white,
+full-sleeved bodices, dresses green, lavender, dark-red, with gay
+kerchiefs on the head: men muffled in cloaks, treading silently in
+their pointed skin sandals: asses with loads, carts full of peasants, a
+belated cow.
+
+The market was lovely, there in the crown of the pass, in the old town,
+on the frosty sunny morning. Bulls, cows, sheep, pigs, goats stood and
+lay about under the bare little trees on the platform high over the
+valley: some one had kindled a great fire of brush-wood, and men
+crowded round, out of the blue frost. From laden asses vegetables were
+unloaded, from little carts all kinds of things, boots, pots, tin-ware,
+hats, sweet-things, and heaps of corn and beans and seeds. By eight
+o’clock in the December morning the market was in full swing: a great
+crowd of handsome mountain people, all peasants, nearly all in costume,
+with different head-dresses.
+
+Ciccio and Pancrazio and Alvina went quietly about. They bought pots
+and pans and vegetables and sweet-things and thick rush matting and two
+wooden arm-chairs and one old soft arm-chair, going quietly and
+bargaining modestly among the crowd, as Anglicized Italians do.
+
+The sun came on to the market at about nine o’clock, and then, from the
+terrace of the town gate, Alvina looked down on the wonderful sight of
+all the coloured dresses of the peasant women, the black hats of the
+men, the heaps of goods, the squealing pigs, the pale lovely cattle,
+the many tethered asses—and she wondered if she would die before she
+became one with it altogether. It was impossible for her to become one
+with it altogether. Ciccio would have to take her to England again, or
+to America. He was always hinting at America.
+
+But then, Italy might enter the war. Even here it was the great theme
+of conversation. She looked down on the seethe of the market. The sun
+was warm on her. Ciccio and Pancrazio were bargaining for two cowskin
+rugs: she saw Ciccio standing with his head rather forward. Her
+husband! She felt her heart die away within her.
+
+All those other peasant women, did they feel as she did?—the same sort
+of acquiescent passion, the same lapse of life? She believed they did.
+The same helpless passion for the man, the same remoteness from the
+world’s actuality? Probably, under all their tension of money and
+money-grubbing and vindictive mountain morality and rather horrible
+religion, probably they felt the same. She was one with them. But she
+could never endure it for a life-time. It was only a test on her.
+Ciccio must take her to America, or England—to America preferably.
+
+And even as he turned to look for her, she felt a strange thrilling in
+her bowels: a sort of trill strangely within her, yet extraneous to
+her. She caught her hand to her flank. And Ciccio was looking up for
+her from the market beneath, searching with that quick, hasty look. He
+caught sight of her. She seemed to glow with a delicate light for him,
+there beyond all the women. He came straight towards her, smiling his
+slow, enigmatic smile. He could not bear it if he lost her. She knew
+how he loved her—almost inhumanly, elementally, without communication.
+And she stood with her hand to her side, her face frightened. She
+hardly noticed him. It seemed to her she was with child. And yet in the
+whole market-place she was aware of nothing but him.
+
+“We have bought the skins,” he said. “Twenty-seven lire each.”
+
+She looked at him, his dark skin, his golden eyes—so near to her, so
+unified with her, yet so incommunicably remote. How far off was his
+being from hers!
+
+“I believe I’m going to have a child,” she said.
+
+“Eh?” he ejaculated quickly. But he had understood. His eyes shone
+weirdly on her. She felt the strange terror and loveliness of his
+passion. And she wished she could lie down there by that town gate, in
+the sun, and swoon for ever unconscious. Living was almost too great a
+demand on her. His yellow, luminous eyes watched her and enveloped her.
+There was nothing for her but to yield, yield, yield. And yet she could
+not sink to earth.
+
+She saw Pancrazio carrying the skins to the little cart, which was
+tilted up under a small, pale-stemmed tree on the platform above the
+valley. Then she saw him making his way quickly back through the crowd,
+to rejoin them.
+
+“Did you feel something?” said Ciccio.
+
+“Yes—here—!” she said, pressing her hand on her side as the sensation
+trilled once more upon her consciousness. She looked at him with
+remote, frightened eyes.
+
+“That’s good—” he said, his eyes full of a triumphant, incommunicable
+meaning.
+
+“Well!—And now,” said Pancrazio, coming up, “shall we go and eat
+something?”
+
+They jogged home in the little flat cart in the wintry afternoon. It
+was almost night before they had got the ass untackled from the shafts,
+at the wild lonely house where Pancrazio left the cart. Giovanni was
+there with the lantern. Ciccio went on ahead with Alvina, whilst the
+others stood to load up the ass by the high-way.
+
+Ciccio watched Alvina carefully. When they were over the river, and
+among the dark scrub, he took her in his arms and kissed her with long,
+terrible passion. She saw the snow-ridges flare with evening, beyond
+his cheek. They had glowed dawn as she crossed the river outwards, they
+were white-fiery now in the dusk sky as she returned. What strange
+valley of shadow was she threading? What was the terrible man’s passion
+that haunted her like a dark angel? Why was she so much beyond herself?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+SUSPENSE
+
+
+Christmas was at hand. There was a heap of maize cobs still unstripped.
+Alvina sat with Ciccio stripping them, in the corn-place.
+
+“Will you be able to stop here till the baby is born?” he asked her.
+
+She watched the films of the leaves come off from the burning gold
+maize cob under his fingers, the long, ruddy cone of fruition. The heap
+of maize on one side burned like hot sunshine, she felt it really gave
+off warmth, it glowed, it burned. On the other side the filmy, crackly,
+sere sheaths were also faintly sunny. Again and again the long,
+red-gold, full ear of corn came clear in his hands, and was put gently
+aside. He looked up at her, with his yellow eyes.
+
+“Yes, I think so,” she said. “Will you?”
+
+“Yes, if they let me. I should like it to be born here.”
+
+“Would you like to bring up a child here?” she asked.
+
+“You wouldn’t be happy here, so long,” he said, sadly.
+
+“Would you?”
+
+He slowly shook his head: indefinite.
+
+She was settling down. She had her room upstairs, her cups and plates
+and spoons, her own things. Pancrazio had gone back to his old habit,
+he went across and ate with Giovanni and Maria, Ciccio and Alvina had
+their meals in their pleasant room upstairs. They were happy alone.
+Only sometimes the terrible influence of the place preyed on her.
+
+However, she had a clean room of her own, where she could sew and read.
+She had written to the matron and Mrs. Tuke, and Mrs. Tuke had sent
+books. Also she helped Ciccio when she could, and Maria was teaching
+her to spin the white sheep’s wool into coarse thread.
+
+This morning Pancrazio and Giovanni had gone off somewhere, Alvina and
+Ciccio were alone on the place, stripping the last maize. Suddenly, in
+the grey morning air, a wild music burst out: the drone of a bagpipe,
+and a man’s high voice half singing, half yelling a brief verse, at the
+end of which a wild flourish on some other reedy wood instrument.
+Alvina sat still in surprise. It was a strange, high, rapid, yelling
+music, the very voice of the mountains. Beautiful, in our musical sense
+of the word, it was not. But oh, the magic, the nostalgia of the
+untamed, heathen past which it evoked.
+
+“It is for Christmas,” said Ciccio. “They will come every day now.”
+
+Alvina rose and went round to the little balcony. Two men stood below,
+amid the crumbling of finely falling snow. One, the elder, had a
+bagpipe whose bag was patched with shirting: the younger was dressed in
+greenish clothes, he had his face lifted, and was yelling the verses of
+the unintelligible Christmas ballad: short, rapid verses, followed by a
+brilliant flourish on a short wooden pipe he held ready in his hand.
+Alvina felt he was going to be out of breath. But no, rapid and high
+came the next verse, verse after verse, with the wild scream on the
+little new pipe in between, over the roar of the bagpipe. And the
+crumbs of snow were like a speckled veil, faintly drifting the
+atmosphere and powdering the littered threshold where they stood—a
+threshold littered with faggots, leaves, straw, fowls and geese and ass
+droppings, and rag thrown out from the house, and pieces of paper.
+
+The carol suddenly ended, the young man snatched off his hat to Alvina
+who stood above, and in the same breath he was gone, followed by the
+bagpipe. Alvina saw them dropping hurriedly down the incline between
+the twiggy wild oaks.
+
+“They will come every day now, till Christmas,” said Ciccio. “They go
+to every house.”
+
+And sure enough, when Alvina went down, in the cold, silent house, and
+out to the well in the still crumbling snow, she heard the sound far
+off, strange, yelling, wonderful: and the same ache for she knew not
+what overcame her, so that she felt one might go mad, there in the
+veiled silence of these mountains, in the great hilly valley cut off
+from the world.
+
+Ciccio worked all day on the land or round about. He was building a
+little earth closet also: the obvious and unscreened place outside was
+impossible. It was curious how little he went to Pescocalascio, how
+little he mixed with the natives. He seemed always to withhold
+something from them. Only with his relatives, of whom he had many, he
+was more free, in a kind of family intimacy.
+
+Yet even here he was guarded. His uncle at the mill, an unwashed, fat
+man with a wife who tinkled with gold and grime, and who shouted a few
+lost words of American, insisted on giving Alvina wine and a sort of
+cake made with cheese and rice. Ciccio too was feasted, in the dark
+hole of a room. And the two natives seemed to press their cheer on
+Alvina and Ciccio whole-heartedly.
+
+“How nice they are!” said Alvina when she had left. “They give so
+freely.”
+
+But Ciccio smiled a wry smile, silent.
+
+“Why do you make a face?” she said.
+
+“It’s because you are a foreigner, and they think you will go away
+again,” he said.
+
+“But I should have thought that would make them less generous,” she
+said.
+
+“No. They like to give to foreigners. They don’t like to give to the
+people here. Giocomo puts water in the wine which he sells to the
+people who go by. And if I leave the donkey in her shed, I give Marta
+Maria something, or the next time she won’t let me have it. Ha, they
+are—they are sly ones, the people here.”
+
+“They are like that everywhere,” said Alvina.
+
+“Yes. But nowhere they say so many bad things about people as
+here—nowhere where I have ever been.”
+
+It was strange to Alvina to feel the deep-bed-rock distrust which all
+the hill-peasants seemed to have of one another. They were watchful,
+venomous, dangerous.
+
+“Ah,” said Pancrazio, “I am glad there is a woman in my house once
+more.”
+
+“But did _nobody_ come in and do for you before?” asked Alvina. “Why
+didn’t you pay somebody?”
+
+“Nobody will come,” said Pancrazio, in his slow, aristocratic English.
+“Nobody will come, because I am a man, and if somebody should see her
+at my house, they will all talk.”
+
+“Talk!” Alvina looked at the deeply-lined man of sixty-six, “But what
+will they say?”
+
+“Many bad things. Many bad things indeed. They are not good people
+here. All saying bad things, and all jealous. They don’t like me
+because I have a house—they think I am too much a _signore_. They say
+to me ‘Why do you think you are a signore?’ Oh, they are bad people,
+envious, you cannot have anything to do with them.”
+
+“They are nice to me,” said Alvina.
+
+“They think you will go away. But if you stay, they will say bad
+things. You must wait. Oh, they are evil people, evil against one
+another, against everybody but strangers who don’t know them—”
+
+Alvina felt the curious passion in Pancrazio’s voice, the passion of a
+man who has lived for many years in England and known the social
+confidence of England, and who, coming back, is deeply injured by the
+ancient malevolence of the remote, somewhat gloomy hill-peasantry. She
+understood also why he was so glad to have her in his house, so proud,
+why he loved serving her. She seemed to see a fairness, a luminousness
+in the northern soul, something free, touched with divinity such as
+“these people here” lacked entirely.
+
+When she went to Ossona with him, she knew everybody questioned him
+about her and Ciccio. She began to get the drift of the questions—which
+Pancrazio answered with reserve.
+
+“And how long are they staying?”
+
+This was an invariable, envious question. And invariably Pancrazio
+answered with a reserved—
+
+“Some months. As long as _they_ like.”
+
+And Alvina could feel waves of black envy go out against Pancrazio,
+because she was domiciled with him, and because she sat with him in the
+flat cart, driving to Ossona.
+
+Yet Pancrazio himself was a study. He was thin, and very shabby, and
+rather out of shape. Only in his yellow eyes lurked a strange sardonic
+fire, and a leer which puzzled her. When Ciccio happened to be out in
+the evening he would sit with her and tell her stories of Lord Leighton
+and Millais and Alma Tadema and other academicians dead and living.
+There would sometimes be a strange passivity on his worn face, an
+impassive, almost Red Indian look. And then again he would stir into a
+curious, arch, malevolent laugh, for all the world like a debauched old
+tom-cat. His narration was like this: either simple, bare, stoical,
+with a touch of nobility; or else satiric, malicious, with a strange,
+rather repellent jeering.
+
+“Leighton—he wasn’t Lord Leighton then—he wouldn’t have me to sit for
+him, because my figure was too poor, he didn’t like it. He liked fair
+young men, with plenty of flesh. But once, when he was doing a
+picture—I don’t know if you know it? It is a crucifixion, with a man on
+a cross, and—” He described the picture. “No! Well, the model had to be
+tied hanging on to a wooden cross. And it made you suffer! Ah!” Here
+the odd, arch, diabolic yellow flare lit up through the stoicism of
+Pancrazio’s eyes. “Because Leighton, he was cruel to his model. He
+wouldn’t let you rest. ‘Damn you, you’ve got to keep still till I’ve
+finished with you, you devil,’ so he said. Well, for this man on the
+cross, he couldn’t get a model who would do it for him. They all tried
+it once, but they would not go again. So they said to him, he must try
+Califano, because Califano was the only man who would stand it. At last
+then he sent for me. ‘I don’t like your damned figure, Califano,’ he
+said to me, ‘but nobody will do this if you won’t. Now will you do it?
+‘Yes!’ I said, ‘I will.’ So he tied me up on the cross. And he paid me
+well, so I stood it. Well, he kept me tied up, hanging you know
+forwards naked on this cross, for four hours. And then it was luncheon.
+And after luncheon he would tie me again. Well, I suffered. I suffered
+so much, that I must lean against the wall to support me to walk home.
+And in the night I could not sleep, I could cry with the pains in my
+arms and my ribs, I had no sleep. ‘You’ve said you’d do it, so now you
+must,’ he said to me. ‘And I will do it,’ I said. And so he tied me up.
+This cross, you know, was on a little raised place—I don’t know what
+you call it—”
+
+“A platform,” suggested Alvina.
+
+“A platform. Now one day when he came to do something to me, when I was
+tied up, he slipped back over this platform, and he pulled me, who was
+tied on the cross, with him. So we all fell down, he with the naked man
+on top of him, and the heavy cross on top of us both. I could not move,
+because I was tied. And it was so, with me on top of him, and the heavy
+cross, that he could not get out. So he had to lie shouting underneath
+me until some one came to the studio to untie me. No, we were not hurt,
+because the top of the cross fell so that it did not crush us. ‘Now you
+have had a taste of the cross,’ I said to him. ‘Yes, you devil, but I
+shan’t let you off,’ he said to me.
+
+“To make the time go he would ask me questions. Once he said, ‘Now,
+Califano, what time is it? I give you three guesses, and if you guess
+right once I give you sixpence.’ So I guessed three o’clock. ‘That’s
+one. Now then, what time is it? ‘Again, three o’clock. ‘That’s two
+guesses gone, you silly devil. Now then, what time is it? ‘So now I was
+obstinate, and I said _Three o’clock_. He took out his watch. ‘Why damn
+you, how did you know? I give you a shilling—’ It was three o’clock, as
+I said, so he gave me a shilling instead of sixpence as he had said—”
+
+It was strange, in the silent winter afternoon, downstairs in the black
+kitchen, to sit drinking a cup of tea with Pancrazio and hearing these
+stories of English painters. It was strange to look at the battered
+figure of Pancrazio, and think how much he had been crucified through
+the long years in London, for the sake of late Victorian art. It was
+strangest of all to see through his yellow, often dull, red-rimmed eyes
+these blithe and well-conditioned painters. Pancrazio looked on them
+admiringly and contemptuously, as an old, rakish tom-cat might look on
+such frivolous well-groomed young gentlemen.
+
+As a matter of fact Pancrazio had never been rakish or debauched, but
+mountain-moral, timid. So that the queer, half-sinister drop of his
+eyelids was curious, and the strange, wicked yellow flare that came
+into his eyes was almost frightening. There was in the man a sort of
+sulphur-yellow flame of passion which would light up in his battered
+body and give him an almost diabolic look. Alvina felt that if she were
+left much alone with him she would need all her English ascendancy not
+to be afraid of him.
+
+It was a Sunday morning just before Christmas when Alvina and Ciccio
+and Pancrazio set off for Pescocalascio for the first time. Snow had
+fallen—not much round the house, but deep between the banks as they
+climbed. And the sun was very bright. So that the mountains were
+dazzling. The snow was wet on the roads. They wound between oak-trees
+and under the broom-scrub, climbing over the jumbled hills that lay
+between the mountains, until the village came near. They got on to a
+broader track, where the path from a distant village joined theirs.
+They were all talking, in the bright clear air of the morning.
+
+A little man came down an upper path. As he joined them near the
+village he hailed them in English:
+
+“Good morning. Nice morning.”
+
+“Does everybody speak English here?” asked Alvina.
+
+“I have been eighteen years in Glasgow. I am only here for a trip.”
+
+He was a little Italian shop-keeper from Glasgow. He was most friendly,
+insisted on paying for drinks, and coffee and almond biscuits for
+Alvina. Evidently he also was grateful to Britain.
+
+The village was wonderful. It occupied the crown of an eminence in the
+midst of the wide valley. From the terrace of the high-road the valley
+spread below, with all its jumble of hills, and two rivers, set in the
+walls of the mountains, a wide space, but imprisoned. It glistened with
+snow under the blue sky. But the lowest hollows were brown. In the
+distance, Ossona hung at the edge of a platform. Many villages clung
+like pale swarms of birds to the far slopes, or perched on the hills
+beneath. It was a world within a world, a valley of many hills and
+townlets and streams shut in beyond access.
+
+Pescocalascio itself was crowded. The roads were sloppy with snow. But
+none the less, peasants in full dress, their feet soaked in the skin
+sandals, were trooping in the sun, purchasing, selling, bargaining for
+cloth, talking all the time. In the shop, which was also a sort of inn,
+an ancient woman was making coffee over a charcoal brazier, while a
+crowd of peasants sat at the tables at the back, eating the food they
+had brought.
+
+Post was due at mid-day. Ciccio went to fetch it, whilst Pancrazio took
+Alvina to the summit, to the castle. There, in the level region, boys
+were snowballing and shouting. The ancient castle, badly cracked by the
+last earthquake, looked wonderfully down on the valley of many hills
+beneath, Califano a speck down the left, Ossona a blot to the right,
+suspended, its towers and its castle clear in the light. Behind the
+castle of Pescocalascio was a deep, steep valley, almost a gorge, at
+the bottom of which a river ran, and where Pancrazio pointed out the
+electricity works of the village, deep in the gloom. Above this gorge,
+at the end, rose the long slopes of the mountains, up to the vivid
+snow—and across again was the wall of the Abruzzi.
+
+They went down, past the ruined houses broken by the earthquake. Ciccio
+still had not come with the post. A crowd surged at the post-office
+door, in a steep, black, wet side-street. Alvina’s feet were sodden.
+Pancrazio took her to the place where she could drink coffee and a
+strega, to make her warm. On the platform of the high-way, above the
+valley, people were parading in the hot sun. Alvina noticed some
+ultra-smart young men. They came up to Pancrazio, speaking English.
+Alvina hated their Cockney accent and florid showy vulgar presence.
+They were more models. Pancrazio was cool with them.
+
+Alvina sat apart from the crowd of peasants, on a chair the old crone
+had ostentatiously dusted for her. Pancrazio ordered beer for himself.
+Ciccio came with letters—long-delayed letters, that had been censored.
+Alvina’s heart went down.
+
+The first she opened was from Miss Pinnegar—all war and fear and
+anxiety. The second was a letter, a real insulting letter from Dr.
+Mitchell. “I little thought, at the time when I was hoping to make you
+my wife, that you were carrying on with a dirty Italian organ-grinder.
+So your fair-seeming face covered the schemes and vice of your true
+nature. Well, I can only thank Providence which spared me the disgust
+and shame of marrying you, and I hope that, when I meet you on the
+streets of Leicester Square, I shall have forgiven you sufficiently to
+be able to throw you a coin—”
+
+Here was a pretty little epistle! In spite of herself, she went pale
+and trembled. She glanced at Ciccio. Fortunately he was turning round
+talking to another man. She rose and went to the ruddy brazier, as if
+to warm her hands. She threw on the screwed-up letter. The old crone
+said something unintelligible to her. She watched the letter catch
+fire—glanced at the peasants at the table—and out at the wide, wild
+valley. The world beyond could not help, but it still had the power to
+injure one here. She felt she had received a bitter blow. A black
+hatred for the Mitchells of this world filled her.
+
+She could hardly bear to open the third letter. It was from Mrs. Tuke,
+and again, all war. Would Italy join the Allies? She ought to, her
+every interest lay that way. Could Alvina bear to be so far off, when
+such terrible events were happening near home? Could she possibly be
+happy? Nurses were so valuable now. She, Mrs. Tuke, had volunteered.
+She would do whatever she could. She had had to leave off nursing
+Jenifer, who had an _excellent_ Scotch nurse, much better than a
+mother. Well, Alvina and Mrs. Tuke might yet meet in some hospital in
+France. So the letter ended.
+
+Alvina sat down, pale and trembling. Pancrazio was watching her
+curiously.
+
+“Have you bad news?” he asked.
+
+“Only the war.”
+
+“Ha!” and the Italian gesture of half-bitter “what can one do?”
+
+They were talking war—all talking war. The dandy young models had left
+England because of the war, expecting Italy to come in. And everybody
+talked, talked, talked. Alvina looked round her. It all seemed alien to
+her, bruising upon the spirit.
+
+“Do you think I shall ever be able to come here alone and do my
+shopping by myself?” she asked.
+
+“You must never come alone,” said Pancrazio, in his curious, benevolent
+courtesy. “Either Ciccio or I will come with you. You must never come
+so far alone.”
+
+“Why not?” she said.
+
+“You are a stranger here. You are not a contadina—” Alvina could feel
+the oriental idea of women, which still leaves its mark on the
+Mediterranean, threatening her with surveillance and subjection. She
+sat in her chair, with cold wet feet, looking at the sunshine outside,
+the wet snow, the moving figures in the strong light, the men drinking
+at the counter, the cluster of peasant women bargaining for
+dress-material. Ciccio was still turning talking in the rapid way to
+his neighbour. She knew it was war. She noticed the movement of his
+finely-modelled cheek, a little sallow this morning.
+
+And she rose hastily.
+
+“I want to go into the sun,” she said.
+
+When she stood above the valley in the strong, tiring light, she
+glanced round. Ciccio inside the shop had risen, but he was still
+turning to his neighbour and was talking with all his hands and all his
+body. He did not talk with his mind and lips alone. His whole physique,
+his whole living body spoke and uttered and emphasized itself.
+
+A certain weariness possessed her. She was beginning to realize
+something about him: how he had no sense of home and domestic life, as
+an Englishman has. Ciccio’s home would never be his castle. His castle
+was the piazza of Pescocalascio. His home was nothing to him but a
+possession, and a hole to sleep in. He didn’t _live_ in it. He lived in
+the open air, and in the community. When the true Italian came out in
+him, his veriest home was the piazza of Pescocalascio, the little sort
+of market-place where the roads met in the village, under the castle,
+and where the men stood in groups and talked, talked, talked. This was
+where Ciccio belonged: his active, mindful self. His active, mindful
+self was none of hers. She only had his passive self, and his family
+passion. His masculine mind and intelligence had its home in the little
+public square of his village. She knew this as she watched him now,
+with all his body talking politics. He could not break off till he had
+finished. And then, with a swift, intimate handshake to the group with
+whom he had been engaged, he came away, putting all his interest off
+from himself.
+
+She tried to make him talk and discuss with her. But he wouldn’t. An
+obstinate spirit made him darkly refuse masculine conversation with
+her.
+
+“If Italy goes to war, you will have to join up?” she asked him.
+
+“Yes,” he said, with a smile at the futility of the question.
+
+“And I shall have to stay here?”
+
+He nodded, rather gloomily.
+
+“Do you want to go?” she persisted.
+
+“No, I don’t want to go.”
+
+“But you think Italy ought to join in?”
+
+“Yes, I do.”
+
+“Then you _do_ want to go—”
+
+“I want to go if Italy goes in—and she ought to go in—”
+
+Curious, he was somewhat afraid of her, he half venerated her, and half
+despised her. When she tried to make him discuss, in the masculine way,
+he shut obstinately against her, something like a child, and the slow,
+fine smile of dislike came on his face. Instinctively he shut off all
+masculine communication from her, particularly politics and religion.
+He would discuss both, violently, with other men. In politics he was
+something of a Socialist, in religion a freethinker. But all this had
+nothing to do with Alvina. He would not enter on a discussion in
+English.
+
+Somewhere in her soul, she knew the finality of his refusal to hold
+discussion with a woman. So, though at times her heart hardened with
+indignant anger, she let herself remain outside. The more so, as she
+felt that in matters intellectual he was rather stupid. Let him go to
+the piazza or to the wine-shop, and talk.
+
+To do him justice, he went little. Pescocalascio was only half his own
+village. The nostalgia, the campanilismo from which Italians suffer,
+the craving to be in sight of the native church-tower, to stand and
+talk in the native market place or piazza, this was only half formed in
+Ciccio, taken away as he had been from Pescocalascio when so small a
+boy. He spent most of his time working in the fields and woods, most of
+his evenings at home, often weaving a special kind of fishnet or
+net-basket from fine, frail strips of cane. It was a work he had
+learned at Naples long ago. Alvina meanwhile would sew for the child,
+or spin wool. She became quite clever at drawing the strands of wool
+from her distaff, rolling them fine and even between her fingers, and
+keeping her bobbin rapidly spinning away below, dangling at the end of
+the thread. To tell the truth, she was happy in the quietness with
+Ciccio, now they had their own pleasant room. She loved his presence.
+She loved the quality of his silence, so rich and physical. She felt he
+was never very far away: that he was a good deal a stranger in
+Califano, as she was: that he clung to her presence as she to his. Then
+Pancrazio also contrived to serve her and shelter her, he too, loved
+her for being there. They both revered her because she was with child.
+So that she lived more and more in a little, isolate, illusory,
+wonderful world then, content, moreover, because the living cost so
+little. She had sixty pounds of her own money, always intact in the
+little case. And after all, the high-way beyond the river led to
+Ossona, and Ossona gave access to the railway, and the railway would
+take her anywhere.
+
+So the month of January passed, with its short days and its bits of
+snow and bursts of sunshine. On sunny days Alvina walked down to the
+desolate river-bed, which fascinated her. When Pancrazio was carrying
+up stone or lime on the ass, she accompanied him. And Pancrazio was
+always carrying up something, for he loved the extraneous jobs like
+building a fire-place much more than the heavy work of the land. Then
+she would find little tufts of wild narcissus among the rocks,
+gold-centred pale little things, many on one stem. And their scent was
+powerful and magical, like the sound of the men who came all those days
+and sang before Christmas. She loved them. There was green hellebore
+too, a fascinating plant—and one or two little treasures, the last of
+the rose-coloured Alpine cyclamens, near the earth, with snake-skin
+leaves, and so rose, so rose, like violets for shadowiness. She sat and
+cried over the first she found: heaven knows why.
+
+In February, as the days opened, the first almond trees flowered among
+grey olives, in warm, level corners between the hills. But it was March
+before the real flowering began. And then she had continual bowl-fuls
+of white and blue violets, she had sprays of almond blossom,
+silver-warm and lustrous, then sprays of peach and apricot, pink and
+fluttering. It was a great joy to wander looking for flowers. She came
+upon a bankside all wide with lavender crocuses. The sun was on them
+for the moment, and they were opened flat, great five-pointed,
+seven-pointed lilac stars, with burning centres, burning with a strange
+lavender flame, as she had seen some metal burn lilac-flamed in the
+laboratory of the hospital at Islington. All down the oak-dry bankside
+they burned their great exposed stars. And she felt like going down on
+her knees and bending her forehead to the earth in an oriental
+submission, they were so royal, so lovely, so supreme. She came again
+to them in the morning, when the sky was grey, and they were closed,
+sharp clubs, wonderfully fragile on their stems of sap, among leaves
+and old grass and wild periwinkle. They had wonderful dark stripes
+running up their cheeks, the crocuses, like the clear proud stripes on
+a badger’s face, or on some proud cat. She took a handful of the sappy,
+shut, striped flames. In her room they opened into a grand bowl of
+lilac fire.
+
+March was a lovely month. The men were busy in the hills. She wandered,
+extending her range. Sometimes with a strange fear. But it was a fear
+of the elements rather than of man. One day she went along the
+high-road with her letters, towards the village of Casa Latina. The
+high-road was depressing, wherever there were houses. For the houses
+had that sordid, ramshackle, slummy look almost invariable on an
+Italian high-road. They were patched with a hideous, greenish
+mould-colour, blotched, as if with leprosy. It frightened her, till
+Pancrazio told her it was only the copper sulphate that had sprayed the
+vines hitched on to the walls. But none the less the houses were
+sordid, unkempt, slummy. One house by itself could make a complete
+slum.
+
+Casa Latina was across the valley, in the shadow. Approaching it were
+rows of low cabins—fairly new. They were the one-storey dwellings
+commanded after the earthquake. And hideous they were. The village
+itself was old, dark, in perpetual shadow of the mountain. Streams of
+cold water ran round it. The piazza was gloomy, forsaken. But there was
+a great, twin-towered church, wonderful from outside.
+
+She went inside, and was almost sick with repulsion. The place was
+large, whitewashed, and crowded with figures in glass cases and ex voto
+offerings. The lousy-looking, dressed-up dolls, life size and tinselly,
+that stood in the glass cases; the blood-streaked Jesus on the
+crucifix; the mouldering, mumbling, filthy peasant women on their
+knees; all the sense of trashy, repulsive, degraded fetish-worship was
+too much for her. She hurried out, shrinking from the contamination of
+the dirty leather door-curtain.
+
+Enough of Casa Latina. She would never go _there_ again. She was
+beginning to feel that, if she lived in this part of the world at all,
+she must avoid the _inside_ of it. She must never, if she could help
+it, enter into any interior but her own—neither into house nor church
+nor even shop or post-office, if she could help it. The moment she went
+through a door the sense of dark repulsiveness came over her. If she
+was to save her sanity she must keep to the open air, and avoid any
+contact with human interiors. When she thought of the insides of the
+native people she shuddered with repulsion, as in the great, degraded
+church of Casa Latina. They were horrible.
+
+Yet the outside world was so fair. Corn and maize were growing green
+and silken, vines were in the small bud. Everywhere little grape
+hyacinths hung their blue bells. It was a pity they reminded her of the
+many-breasted Artemis, a picture of whom, or of whose statue, she had
+seen somewhere. Artemis with her clusters of breasts was horrible to
+her, now she had come south: nauseating beyond words. And the milky
+grape hyacinths reminded her.
+
+She turned with thankfulness to the magenta anemones that were so gay.
+Some one told her that wherever Venus had shed a tear for Adonis, one
+of these flowers had sprung. They were not tear-like. And yet their
+red-purple silkiness had something pre-world about it, at last. The
+more she wandered, the more the shadow of the by-gone pagan world
+seemed to come over her. Sometimes she felt she would shriek and go
+mad, so strong was the influence on her, something pre-world and, it
+seemed to her now, vindictive. She seemed to feel in the air strange
+Furies, Lemures, things that had haunted her with their tomb-frenzied
+vindictiveness since she was a child and had pored over the illustrated
+Classical Dictionary. Black and cruel presences were in the under-air.
+They were furtive and slinking. They bewitched you with loveliness, and
+lurked with fangs to hurt you afterwards. There it was: the fangs
+sheathed in beauty: the beauty first, and then, horribly, inevitably,
+the fangs.
+
+Being a great deal alone, in the strange place, fancies possessed her,
+people took on strange shapes. Even Ciccio and Pancrazio. And it came
+that she never wandered far from the house, from her room, after the
+first months. She seemed to hide herself in her room. There she sewed
+and spun wool and read, and learnt Italian. Her men were not at all
+anxious to teach her Italian. Indeed her chief teacher, at first, was a
+young fellow called Bussolo. He was a model from London, and he came
+down to Califano sometimes, hanging about, anxious to speak English.
+
+Alvina did not care for him. He was a dandy with pale grey eyes and a
+heavy figure. Yet he had a certain penetrating intelligence.
+
+“No, this country is a country for old men. It is only for old men,” he
+said, talking of Pescocalascio. “You won’t stop here. Nobody young can
+stop here.”
+
+The odd plangent certitude in his voice penetrated her. And all the
+young people said the same thing. They were all waiting to go away. But
+for the moment the war held them up.
+
+Ciccio and Pancrazio were busy with the vines. As she watched them
+hoeing, crouching, tying, tending, grafting, mindless and utterly
+absorbed, hour after hour, day after day, thinking vines, living vines,
+she wondered they didn’t begin to sprout vine-buds and vine stems from
+their own elbows and neck-joints. There was something to her unnatural
+in the quality of the attention the men gave to the wine. It was a sort
+of worship, almost a degradation again. And heaven knows, Pancrazio’s
+wine was poor enough, his grapes almost invariably bruised with
+hail-stones, and half-rotten instead of ripe.
+
+The loveliness of April came, with hot sunshine. Astonishing the
+ferocity of the sun, when he really took upon himself to blaze. Alvina
+was amazed. The burning day quite carried her away. She loved it: it
+made her quite careless about everything, she was just swept along in
+the powerful flood of the sunshine. In the end, she felt that intense
+sunlight had on her the effect of night: a sort of darkness, and a
+suspension of life. She had to hide in her room till the cold wind blew
+again.
+
+Meanwhile the declaration of war drew nearer, and became inevitable.
+She knew Ciccio would go. And with him went the chance of her escape.
+She steeled herself to bear the agony of the knowledge that he would
+go, and she would be left alone in this place, which sometimes she
+hated with a hatred unspeakable. After a spell of hot, intensely dry
+weather she felt she would die in this valley, wither and go to powder
+as some exposed April roses withered and dried into dust against a hot
+wall. Then the cool wind came in a storm, the next day there was grey
+sky and soft air. The rose-coloured wild gladioli among the young green
+corn were a dream of beauty, the morning of the world. The lovely,
+pristine morning of the world, before our epoch began. Rose-red
+gladioli among corn, in among the rocks, and small irises, black-purple
+and yellow blotched with brown, like a wasp, standing low in little
+desert places, that would seem forlorn but for this weird,
+dark-lustrous magnificence. Then there were the tiny irises, only one
+finger tall, growing in dry places, frail as crocuses, and much tinier,
+and blue, blue as the eye of the morning heaven, which was a morning
+earlier, more pristine than ours. The lovely translucent pale irises,
+tiny and morning-blue, they lasted only a few hours. But nothing could
+be more exquisite, like gods on earth. It was the flowers that brought
+back to Alvina the passionate nostalgia for the place. The human
+influence was a bit horrible to her. But the flowers that came out and
+uttered the earth in magical expression, they cast a spell on her,
+bewitched her and stole her own soul away from her.
+
+She went down to Ciccio where he was weeding armfuls of rose-red
+gladioli from the half-grown wheat, and cutting the lushness of the
+first weedy herbage. He threw down his sheaves of gladioli, and with
+his sickle began to cut the forest of bright yellow corn-marigolds. He
+looked intent, he seemed to work feverishly.
+
+“Must they all be cut?” she said, as she went to him.
+
+He threw aside the great armful of yellow flowers, took off his cap,
+and wiped the sweat from his brow. The sickle dangled loose in his
+hand.
+
+“We have declared war,” he said.
+
+In an instant she realized that she had seen the figure of the old
+post-carrier dodging between the rocks. Rose-red and gold-yellow of the
+flowers swam in her eyes. Ciccio’s dusk-yellow eyes were watching her.
+She sank on her knees on a sheaf of corn-marigolds. Her eyes, watching
+him, were vulnerable as if stricken to death. Indeed she felt she would
+die.
+
+“You will have to go?” she said.
+
+“Yes, we shall all have to go.” There seemed a certain sound of triumph
+in his voice. Cruel!
+
+She sank lower on the flowers, and her head dropped. But she would not
+be beaten. She lifted her face.
+
+“If you are very long,” she said, “I shall go to England. I can’t stay
+here very long without you.”
+
+“You will have Pancrazio—and the child,” he said.
+
+“Yes. But I shall still be myself. I can’t stay here very long without
+you. I shall go to England.”
+
+He watched her narrowly.
+
+“I don’t think they’ll let you,” he said.
+
+“Yes they will.”
+
+At moments she hated him. He seemed to want to crush her altogether.
+She was always making little plans in her mind—how she could get out of
+that great cruel valley and escape to Rome, to English people. She
+would find the English Consul and he would help her. She would do
+anything rather than be really crushed. She knew how easy it would be,
+once her spirit broke, for her to die and be buried in the cemetery at
+Pescocalascio.
+
+And they would all be so sentimental about her—just as Pancrazio was.
+She felt that in some way Pancrazio had killed his wife—not
+consciously, but unconsciously, as Ciccio might kill _her_. Pancrazio
+would tell Alvina about his wife and her ailments. And he seemed always
+anxious to prove that he had been so good to her. No doubt he had been
+good to her, also. But there was something underneath—malevolent in his
+spirit, some caged-in sort of cruelty, malignant beyond his control. It
+crept out in his stories. And it revealed itself in his fear of his
+dead wife. Alvina knew that in the night the elderly man was afraid of
+his dead wife, and of her ghost or her avenging spirit. He would huddle
+over the fire in fear. In the same way the cemetery had a fascination
+of horror for him—as, she noticed, for most of the natives. It was an
+ugly, square place, all stone slabs and wall-cupboards, enclosed in
+four-square stone walls, and lying away beneath Pescocalascio village
+obvious as if it were on a plate.
+
+“That is our cemetery,” Pancrazio said, pointing it out to her, “where
+we shall all be carried some day.”
+
+And there was fear, horror in his voice. He told her how the men had
+carried his wife there—a long journey over the hill-tracks, almost two
+hours.
+
+These were days of waiting—horrible days of waiting for Ciccio to be
+called up. One batch of young men left the village—and there was a
+lugubrious sort of saturnalia, men and women alike got rather drunk,
+the young men left amid howls of lamentation and shrieks of distress.
+Crowds accompanied them to Ossona, whence they were marched towards the
+railway. It was a horrible event.
+
+A shiver of horror and death went through the valley. In a lugubrious
+way, they seemed to enjoy it.
+
+“You’ll never be satisfied till you’ve gone,” she said to Ciccio. “Why
+don’t they be quick and call you?”
+
+“It will be next week,” he said, looking at her darkly. In the twilight
+he came to her, when she could hardly see him.
+
+“Are you sorry you came here with me, Allaye?” he asked. There was
+malice in the very question.
+
+She put down the spoon and looked up from the fire. He stood shadowy,
+his head ducked forward, the firelight faint on his enigmatic,
+timeless, half-smiling face.
+
+“I’m not sorry,” she answered slowly, using all her courage. “Because I
+love you—”
+
+She crouched quite still on the hearth. He turned aside his face. After
+a moment or two he went out. She stirred her pot slowly and sadly. She
+had to go downstairs for something.
+
+And there on the landing she saw him standing in the darkness with his
+arm over his face, as if fending a blow.
+
+“What is it?” she said, laying her hand on him. He uncovered his face.
+
+“I would take you away if I could,” he said.
+
+“I can wait for you,” she answered.
+
+He threw himself in a chair that stood at a table there on the broad
+landing, and buried his head in his arms.
+
+“Don’t wait for me! Don’t wait for me!” he cried, his voice muffled.
+
+“Why not?” she said, filled with terror. He made no sign. “Why not?”
+she insisted. And she laid her fingers on his head.
+
+He got up and turned to her.
+
+“I love you, even if it kills me,” she said.
+
+But he only turned aside again, leaned his arm against the wall, and
+hid his face, utterly noiseless.
+
+“What is it?” she said. “What is it? I don’t understand.” He wiped his
+sleeve across his face, and turned to her.
+
+“I haven’t any hope,” he said, in a dull, dogged voice.
+
+She felt her heart and the child die within her.
+
+“Why?” she said.
+
+Was she to bear a hopeless child?
+
+“You _have_ hope. Don’t make a scene,” she snapped. And she went
+downstairs, as she had intended.
+
+And when she got into the kitchen, she forgot what she had come for.
+She sat in the darkness on the seat, with all life gone dark and still,
+death and eternity settled down on her. Death and eternity were settled
+down on her as she sat alone. And she seemed to hear him moaning
+upstairs—“I can’t come back. I can’t come back.” She heard it. She
+heard it so distinctly, that she never knew whether it had been an
+actual utterance, or whether it was her inner ear which had heard the
+inner, unutterable sound. She wanted to answer, to call to him. But she
+could not. Heavy, mute, powerless, there she sat like a lump of
+darkness, in that doomed Italian kitchen. “I can’t come back.” She
+heard it so fatally.
+
+She was interrupted by the entrance of Pancrazio.
+
+“Oh!” he cried, startled when, having come near the fire, he caught
+sight of her. And he said something, frightened, in Italian.
+
+“Is it you? Why are you in the darkness?” he said.
+
+“I am just going upstairs again.”
+
+“You frightened me.”
+
+She went up to finish the preparing of the meal. Ciccio came down to
+Pancrazio. The latter had brought a newspaper. The two men sat on the
+settle, with the lamp between them, reading and talking the news.
+
+Ciccio’s group was called up for the following week, as he had said.
+The departure hung over them like a doom. Those were perhaps the worst
+days of all: the days of the impending departure. Neither of them spoke
+about it.
+
+But the night before he left she could bear the silence no more.
+
+“You will come back, won’t you?” she said, as he sat motionless in his
+chair in the bedroom. It was a hot, luminous night. There was still a
+late scent of orange blossom from the garden, the nightingale was
+shaking the air with his sound. At times other, honey scents wafted
+from the hills.
+
+“You will come back?” she insisted.
+
+“Who knows?” he replied.
+
+“If you make up your mind to come back, you will come back. We have our
+fate in our hands,” she said.
+
+He smiled slowly.
+
+“You think so?” he said.
+
+“I know it. If you don’t come back it will be because you don’t want
+to—no other reason. It won’t be because you can’t. It will be because
+you don’t want to.”
+
+“Who told you so?” he asked, with the same cruel smile.
+
+“I know it,” she said.
+
+“All right,” he answered.
+
+But he still sat with his hands abandoned between his knees.
+
+“So make up your mind,” she said.
+
+He sat motionless for a long while: while she undressed and brushed her
+hair and went to bed. And still he sat there unmoving, like a corpse.
+It was like having some unnatural, doomed, unbearable presence in the
+room. She blew out the light, that she need not see him. But in the
+darkness it was worse.
+
+At last he stirred—he rose. He came hesitating across to her.
+
+“I’ll come back, Allaye,” he said quietly. “Be damned to them all.” She
+heard unspeakable pain in his voice.
+
+“To whom?” she said, sitting up.
+
+He did not answer, but put his arms round her.
+
+“I’ll come back, and we’ll go to America,” he said.
+
+“You’ll come back to me,” she whispered, in an ecstasy of pain and
+relief. It was not her affair, where they should go, so long as he
+really returned to her.
+
+“I’ll come back,” he said.
+
+“Sure?” she whispered, straining him to her.
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lost Girl, by D. H. Lawrence</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Lost Girl</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: D. H. Lawrence</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 3, 2007 [eBook #23727]<br />
+[Most recently updated: October 15, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
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+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Roger Frank, Roberta Staehlin, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST GIRL ***</div>
+
+<h1>The Lost Girl</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">By D. H. Lawrence</h2>
+
+<h4>New York: Thomas Seltzer</h4>
+
+<h3>1921</h3>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. THE MATERNITY NURSE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. TWO WOMEN DIE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. THE BEAU</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. HOUGHTON’S LAST ENDEAVOUR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. CICCIO</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. THE WEDDED WIFE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. THE JOURNEY ACROSS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV. THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI. SUSPENSE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I<br/>
+THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Take a mining townlet like Woodhouse, with a population of ten thousand people,
+and three generations behind it. This space of three generations argues a
+certain well-established society. The old “County” has fled from the sight of
+so much disembowelled coal, to flourish on mineral rights in regions still
+idyllic. Remains one great and inaccessible magnate, the local coal owner:
+three generations old, and clambering on the bottom step of the “County,”
+kicking off the mass below. Rule him out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A well established society in Woodhouse, full of fine shades, ranging from the
+dark of coal-dust to grit of stone-mason and sawdust of timber-merchant,
+through the lustre of lard and butter and meat, to the perfume of the chemist
+and the disinfectant of the doctor, on to the serene gold-tarnish of
+bank-managers, cashiers for the firm, clergymen and such-like, as far as the
+automobile refulgence of the general-manager of all the collieries. Here the
+<i>ne plus ultra</i>. The general manager lives in the shrubberied seclusion of
+the so-called Manor. The genuine Hall, abandoned by the “County,” has been
+taken over as offices by the firm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here we are then: a vast substratum of colliers; a thick sprinkling of
+tradespeople intermingled with small employers of labour and diversified by
+elementary schoolmasters and nonconformist clergy; a higher layer of
+bank-managers, rich millers and well-to-do ironmasters, episcopal clergy and
+the managers of collieries, then the rich and sticky cherry of the local
+coal-owner glistening over all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such the complicated social system of a small industrial town in the Midlands
+of England, in this year of grace 1920. But let us go back a little. Such it
+was in the last calm year of plenty, 1913.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A calm year of plenty. But one chronic and dreary malady: that of the odd
+women. Why, in the name of all prosperity, should every class but the lowest in
+such a society hang overburdened with Dead Sea fruit of odd women, unmarried,
+unmarriageable women, called old maids? Why is it that every tradesman, every
+school-master, every bank-manager, and every clergyman produces one, two, three
+or more old maids? Do the middle-classes, particularly the lower
+middle-classes, give birth to more girls than boys? Or do the lower
+middle-class men assiduously climb up or down, in marriage, thus leaving their
+true partners stranded? Or are middle-class women very squeamish in their
+choice of husbands?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However it be, it is a tragedy. Or perhaps it is not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps these unmarried women of the middle-classes are the famous
+sexless-workers of our ant-industrial society, of which we hear so much.
+Perhaps all they lack is an occupation: in short, a job. But perhaps we might
+hear their own opinion, before we lay the law down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Woodhouse, there was a terrible crop of old maids among the “nobs,” the
+tradespeople and the clergy. The whole town of women, colliers’ wives and all,
+held its breath as it saw a chance of one of these daughters of comfort and woe
+getting off. They flocked to the well-to-do weddings with an intoxication of
+relief. For let class-jealousy be what it may, a woman hates to see another
+woman left stalely on the shelf, without a chance. They all <i>wanted</i> the
+middle-class girls to find husbands. Every one wanted it, including the girls
+themselves. Hence the dismalness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now James Houghton had only one child: his daughter Alvina. Surely Alvina
+Houghton&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But let us retreat to the early eighties, when Alvina was a baby: or even
+further back, to the palmy days of James Houghton. In his palmy days, James
+Houghton was <i>crême de la crême</i> of Woodhouse society. The house of
+Houghton had always been well-to-do: tradespeople, we must admit; but after a
+few generations of affluence, tradespeople acquire a distinct <i>cachet</i>.
+Now James Houghton, at the age of twenty-eight, inherited a splendid business
+in Manchester goods, in Woodhouse. He was a tall, thin, elegant young man with
+side-whiskers, genuinely refined, somewhat in the Bulwer style. He had a taste
+for elegant conversation and elegant literature and elegant Christianity: a
+tall, thin, brittle young man, rather fluttering in his manner, full of facile
+ideas, and with a beautiful speaking voice: most beautiful. Withal, of course,
+a tradesman. He courted a small, dark woman, older than himself, daughter of a
+Derbyshire squire. He expected to get at least ten thousand pounds with her. In
+which he was disappointed, for he got only eight hundred. Being of a
+romantic-commercial nature, he never forgave her, but always treated her with
+the most elegant courtesy. To seehim peel and prepare an apple for her was an
+exquisite sight. But that peeled and quartered apple was her portion. This
+elegant Adam of commerce gave Eve her own back, nicely cored, and had no more
+to do with her. Meanwhile Alvina was born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before all this, however, before his marriage, James Houghton had built
+Manchester House. It was a vast square building&mdash;vast, that is, for
+Woodhouse&mdash;standing on the main street and high-road of the small but
+growing town. The lower front consisted of two fine shops, one for Manchester
+goods, one for silk and woollens. This was James Houghton’s commercial poem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For James Houghton was a dreamer, and something of a poet: commercial, be it
+understood. He liked the novels of George Macdonald, and the fantasies of that
+author, extremely. He wove one continual fantasy for himself, a fantasy of
+commerce. He dreamed of silks and poplins, luscious in texture and of
+unforeseen exquisiteness: he dreamed of carriages of the “County” arrested
+before his windows, of exquisite women ruffling charmed, entranced to his
+counter. And charming, entrancing, he served them his lovely fabrics, which
+only he and they could sufficiently appreciate. His fame spread, until
+Alexandra, Princess of Wales, and Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, the two
+best-dressed women in Europe, floated down from heaven to the shop in
+Woodhouse, and sallied forth to show what could be done by purchasing from
+James Houghton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We cannot say why James Houghton failed to become the Liberty or the Snelgrove
+of his day. Perhaps he had too much imagination. Be that as it may, in those
+early days when he brought his wife to her new home, his window on the
+Manchester side was a foam and a may-blossom of muslins and prints, his window
+on the London side was an autumn evening of silks and rich fabrics. What wife
+could fail to be dazzled! But she, poor darling, from her stone hall in stony
+Derbyshire, was a little bit repulsed by the man’s dancing in front of his
+stock, like David before the ark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The home to which he brought her was a monument. In the great bedroom over the
+shop he had his furniture <i>built</i>: built of solid mahogany: oh too, too
+solid. No doubt he hopped or skipped himself with satisfaction into the
+monstrous matrimonial bed: it could only be mounted by means of a stool and
+chair. But the poor, secluded little woman, older than he, must have climbed up
+with a heavy heart, to lie and face the gloomy Bastille of mahogany, the great
+cupboard opposite, or to turn wearily sideways to the great cheval mirror,
+which performed a perpetual and hideous bow before her grace. Such furniture!
+It could never be removed from the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little child was born in the second year. And then James Houghton decamped
+to a small, half-furnished bedroom at the other end of the house, where he
+slept on a rough board and played the anchorite for the rest of his days. His
+wife was left alone with her baby and the built-in furniture. She developed
+heart disease, as a result of nervous repressions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But like a butterfly James fluttered over his fabrics. He was a tyrant to his
+shop-girls. No French marquis in a Dickens’ novel could have been more elegant
+and <i>raffiné</i> and heartless. The girls detested him. And yet, his curious
+refinement and enthusiasm bore them away. They submitted to him. The shop
+attracted much curiosity. But the poor-spirited Woodhouse people were weak
+buyers. They wearied James Houghton with their demand for common zephyrs, for
+red flannel which they would scallop with black worsted, for black alpacas and
+bombazines and merinos. He fluffed out his silk-striped muslins, his India
+cotton-prints. But the natives shied off as if he had offered them the poisoned
+robes of Herakles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a sale. These sales contributed a good deal to Mrs. Houghton’s
+nervous heart-disease. They brought the first signs of wear and tear into the
+face of James Houghton. At first, of course, he merely marked down, with
+discretion, his less-expensive stock of prints and muslins, nuns-veilings and
+muslin delaines, with a few fancy braidings and trimmings in guimp or bronze to
+enliven the affair. And Woodhouse bought cautiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the sale, however, James Houghton felt himself at liberty to plunge into
+an orgy of new stock. He flitted, with a tense look on his face, to Manchester.
+After which huge bundles, bales and boxes arrived in Woodhouse, and were dumped
+on the pavement of the shop. Friday evening came, and with it a revelation in
+Houghton’s window: the first piqués, the first strangely-woven and honey-combed
+toilet covers and bed quilts, the first frill-caps and aprons for
+maid-servants: a wonder in white. That was how James advertised it. “A Wonder
+in White.” Who knows but that he had been reading Wilkie Collins’ famous novel!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the nine days of the wonder-in-white passed and receded, James disappeared
+in the direction of London. A few Fridays later he came out with his Winter
+Touch. Weird and wonderful winter coats, for ladies&mdash;everything James
+handled was for ladies, he scorned the coarser sex&mdash;: weird and wonderful
+winter coats for ladies, of thick, black, pockmarked cloth, stood and
+flourished their bear-fur cuffs in the background, while tippets, boas, muffs
+and winter-fancies coquetted in front of the window-space. Friday-night crowds
+gathered outside: the gas-lamps shone their brightest: James Houghton hovered
+in the background like an author on his first night in the theatre. The result
+was a sensation. Ten villages stared and crushed round the plate glass. It was
+a sensation: but what sensation! In the breasts of the crowd, wonder,
+admiration, <i>fear</i>, and ridicule. Let us stress the word fear. The
+inhabitants of Woodhouse were afraid lest James Houghton should impose his
+standards upon them. His goods were in excellent taste: but his customers were
+in as bad taste as possible. They stood outside and pointed, giggled, and
+jeered. Poor James, like an author on his first night, saw his work fall more
+than flat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But still he believed in his own excellence: and quite justly. What he failed
+to perceive was that the crowd hated excellence. Woodhouse wanted a gently
+graduated progress in mediocrity, a mediocrity so stale and flat that it fell
+outside the imagination of any sensitive mortal. Woodhouse wanted a series of
+vulgar little thrills, as one tawdry mediocrity was imported from Nottingham or
+Birmingham to take the place of some tawdry mediocrity which Nottingham and
+Birmingham had already discarded. That Woodhouse, as a very condition of its
+own being, hated any approach to originality or real taste, this James Houghton
+could never learn. He thought he had not been clever enough, when he had been
+far, far too clever already. He always thought that Dame Fortune was a
+capricious and fastidious dame, a sort of Elizabeth of Austria or Alexandra,
+Princess of Wales, elegant beyond his grasp. Whereas Dame Fortune, even in
+London or Vienna, let alone in Woodhouse, was a vulgar woman of the middle and
+lower middle-class, ready to put her heavy foot on anything that was not
+vulgar, machine-made, and appropriate to the herd. When he saw his delicate
+originalities, as well as his faint flourishes of draper’s fantasy, squashed
+flat under the calm and solid foot of vulgar Dame Fortune, he fell into fits of
+depression bordering on mysticism, and talked to his wife in a vague way of
+higher influences and the angel Israfel. She, poor lady, was thoroughly scared
+by Israfel, and completely unhooked by the vagaries of James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last&mdash;we hurry down the slope of James’ misfortunes&mdash;the real days
+of Houghton’s Great Sales began. Houghton’s Great Bargain Events were really
+events. After some years of hanging on, he let go splendidly. He marked down
+his prints, his chintzes, his dimities and his veilings with a grand and lavish
+hand. Bang went his blue pencil through 3/11, and nobly he subscribed 1/0-3/4.
+Prices fell like nuts. A lofty one-and-eleven rolled down to six-three, 1/6
+magically shrank into 4-3/4d, whilst good solid prints exposed themselves at
+3-3/4d per yard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now this was really an opportunity. Moreover the goods, having become a little
+stale during their years of ineffectuality, were beginning to approximate to
+the public taste. And besides, good sound stuff it was, no matter what the
+pattern. And so the little Woodhouse girls went to school in petties and
+drawers made of material which James had destined for fair summer dresses:
+petties and drawers of which the little Woodhouse girls were ashamed, for all
+that. For if they should chance to turn up their little skirts, be sure they
+would raise a chorus among their companions: “Yah-h-h, yer’ve got Houghton’s
+threp’ny draws on!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this time James Houghton walked on air. He still saw the Fata Morgana
+snatching his fabrics round her lovely form, and pointing him to wealth untold.
+True, he became also Superintendent of the Sunday School. But whether this was
+an act of vanity, or whether it was an attempt to establish an Entente Cordiale
+with higher powers, who shall judge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile his wife became more and more an invalid; the little Alvina was a
+pretty, growing child. Woodhouse was really impressed by the sight of Mrs.
+Houghton, small, pale and withheld, taking a walk with her dainty little girl,
+so fresh in an ermine tippet and a muff. Mrs. Houghton in shiny black
+bear’s-fur, the child in the white and spotted ermine, passing silent and
+shadowy down the street, made an impression which the people did not forget.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Mrs. Houghton had pains at her heart. If, during her walk, she saw two
+little boys having a scrimmage, she had to run to them with pence and entreaty,
+leaving them dumfounded, whilst she leaned blue at the lips against a wall. If
+she saw a carter crack his whip over the ears of the horse, as the horse
+laboured uphill, she had to cover her eyes and avert her face, and all her
+strength left her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she stayed more and more in her room, and the child was given to the charge
+of a governess. Miss Frost was a handsome, vigorous young woman of about thirty
+years of age, with grey-white hair and gold-rimmed spectacles. The white hair
+was not at all tragical: it was a family <i>trait</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost mattered more than any one else to Alvina Houghton, during the first
+long twenty-five years of the girl’s life. The governess was a strong, generous
+woman, a musician by nature. She had a sweet voice, and sang in the choir of
+the chapel, and took the first class of girls in the Sunday-School of which
+James Houghton was Superintendent. She disliked and rather despised James
+Houghton, saw in him elements of a hypocrite, detested his airy and gracious
+selfishness, his lack of human feeling, and most of all, his fairy fantasy. As
+James went further into life, he became a dreamer. Sad indeed that he died
+before the days of Freud. He enjoyed the most wonderful and fairy-like dreams,
+which he could describe perfectly, in charming, delicate language. At such
+times his beautifully modulated voice all but sang, his grey eyes gleamed
+fiercely under his bushy, hairy eyebrows, his pale face with its side-whiskers
+had a strange <i>lueur</i>, his long thin hands fluttered occasionally. He had
+become meagre in figure, his skimpy but genteel coat would be buttoned over his
+breast, as he recounted his dream-adventures, adventures that were half Edgar
+Allan Poe, half Andersen, with touches of Vathek and Lord Byron and George
+Macdonald: perhaps more than a touch of the last. Ladies were always struck by
+these accounts. But Miss Frost never felt so strongly moved to impatience as
+when she was within hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For twenty years, she and James Houghton treated each other with a courteous
+distance. Sometimes she broke into open impatience with him, sometimes he
+answered her tartly: “Indeed, indeed! Oh, indeed! Well, well, I’m sorry you
+find it so&mdash;” as if the injury consisted in her finding it so. Then he
+would flit away to the Conservative Club, with a fleet, light, hurried step, as
+if pressed by fate. At the club he played chess&mdash;at which he was
+excellent&mdash;and conversed. Then he flitted back at half-past twelve, to
+dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole morale of the house rested immediately on Miss Frost. She saw her
+line in the first year. She must defend the little Alvina, whom she loved as
+her own, and the nervous, petulant, heart-stricken woman, the mother, from the
+vagaries of James. Not that James had any vices. He did not drink or smoke, was
+abstemious and clean as an anchorite, and never lowered his fine tone. But
+still, the two unprotected ones must be sheltered from him. Miss Frost
+imperceptibly took into her hands the reins of the domestic government. Her
+rule was quiet, strong, and generous. She was not seeking her own way. She was
+steering the poor domestic ship of Manchester House, illuminating its dark
+rooms with her own sure, radiant presence: her silver-white hair, and her pale,
+heavy, reposeful face seemed to give off a certain radiance. She seemed to give
+weight, ballast, and repose to the staggering and bewildered home. She
+controlled the maid, and suggested the meals&mdash;meals which James ate
+without knowing what he ate. She brought in flowers and books, and, very
+rarely, a visitor. Visitors were out of place in the dark sombreness of
+Manchester House. Her flowers charmed the petulant invalid, her books she
+sometimes discussed with the airy James: after which discussions she was
+invariably filled with exasperation and impatience, whilst James invariably
+retired to the shop, and was heard raising his musical voice, which the
+work-girls hated, to one or other of the work-girls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James certainly had an irritating way of speaking of a book. He talked of
+incidents, and effects, and suggestions, as if the whole thing had just been a
+sensational-æsthetic attribute to himself. Not a grain of human feeling in the
+man, said Miss Frost, flushing pink with exasperation. She herself invariably
+took the human line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the shops began to take on a hopeless and frowsy look. After ten
+years’ sales, spring sales, summer sales, autumn sales, winter sales, James
+began to give up the drapery dream. He himself could not bear any more to put
+the heavy, pock-holed black cloth coat, with wild bear cuffs and collar, on to
+the stand. He had marked it down from five guineas to one guinea, and then, oh
+ignoble day, to ten-and-six. He nearly kissed the gipsy woman with a basket of
+tin saucepan-lids, when at last she bought it for five shillings, at the end of
+one of his winter sales. But even she, in spite of the bitter sleety day, would
+not put the coat on in the shop. She carried it over her arm down to the
+Miners’ Arms. And later, with a shock that really hurt him, James, peeping
+bird-like out of his shop door, saw her sitting driving a dirty rag-and-bone
+cart with a green-white, mouldy pony, and flourishing her arms like some wild
+and hairy-decorated squaw. For the long bear-fur, wet with sleet, seemed like a
+<i>chevaux de frise</i> of long porcupine quills round her fore-arms and her
+neck. Yet such good, such wonderful material! James eyed it for one moment, and
+then fled like a rabbit to the stove in his back regions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The higher powers did not seem to fulfil the terms of treaty which James hoped
+for. He began to back out from the Entente. The Sunday School was a great trial
+to him. Instead of being carried away by his grace and eloquence, the nasty
+louts of colliery boys and girls openly banged their feet and made deafening
+noises when he tried to speak. He said many acid and withering things, as he
+stood there on the rostrum. But what is the good of saying acid things to those
+little fiends and gall-bladders, the colliery children. The situation was saved
+by Miss Frost’s sweeping together all the big girls, under her surveillance,
+and by her organizing that the tall and handsome blacksmith who taught the
+lower boys should extend his influence over the upper boys. His influence was
+more than effectual. It consisted in gripping any recalcitrant boy just above
+the knee, and jesting with him in a jocular manner, in the dialect. The
+blacksmith’s hand was all a blacksmith’s hand need be, and his dialect was as
+broad as could be wished. Between the grip and the homely idiom no boy could
+endure without squealing. So the Sunday School paid more attention to James,
+whose prayers were beautiful. But then one of the boys, a protegé of Miss
+Frost, having been left for half an hour in the obscure room with Mrs.
+Houghton, gave away the secret of the blacksmith’s grip, which secret so
+haunted the poor lady that it marked a stage in the increase of her malady, and
+made Sunday afternoon a nightmare to her. And then James Houghton resented
+something in the coarse Scotch manner of the minister of that day. So that the
+superintendency of the Sunday School came to an end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the same time, Solomon had to divide his baby. That is, he let the London
+side of his shop to W. H. Johnson, the tailor and haberdasher, a parvenu little
+fellow whose English would not bear analysis. Bitter as it was, it had to be.
+Carpenters and joiners appeared, and the premises were completely severed. From
+her room in the shadows at the back the invalid heard the hammering and sawing,
+and suffered. W. H. Johnson came out with a spick-and-span window, and had his
+wife, a shrewd, quiet woman, and his daughter, a handsome, loud girl, to help
+him on Friday evenings. Men flocked in&mdash;even women, buying their husbands
+a sixpence-halfpenny tie. They could have bought a tie for four-three from
+James Houghton. But no, they would rather give sixpence-halfpenny for W.H.
+Johnson’s fresh but rubbishy stuff. And James, who had tried to rise to another
+successful sale, saw the streams pass into the other doorway, and heard the
+heavy feet on the hollow boards of the other shop: his shop no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this cut at his pride and integrity he lay in retirement for a while,
+mystically inclined. Probably he would have come to Swedenborg, had not his
+clipt wings spread for a new flight. He hit upon the brilliant idea of working
+up his derelict fabrics into ready-mades: not men’s clothes, oh no: women’s, or
+rather, ladies’. Ladies’ Tailoring, said the new announcement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James Houghton was happy once more. A zig-zag wooden stair-way was rigged up
+the high back of Manchester House. In the great lofts sewing-machines of
+various patterns and movements were installed. A manageress was advertised for,
+and work-girls were hired. So a new phase of life started. At half-past six in
+the morning there was a clatter of feet and of girls’ excited tongues along the
+back-yard and up the wooden stair-way outside the back wall. The poor invalid
+heard every clack and every vibration. She could never get over her nervous
+apprehension of an invasion. Every morning alike, she felt an invasion of some
+enemy was breaking in on her. And all day long the low, steady rumble of
+sewing-machines overhead seemed like the low drumming of a bombardment upon her
+weak heart. To make matters worse, James Houghton decided that he must have his
+sewing-machines driven by some extra-human force. He installed another plant of
+machinery&mdash;acetylene or some such contrivance&mdash;which was intended to
+drive all the little machines from one big belt. Hence a further throbbing and
+shaking in the upper regions, truly terrible to endure. But, fortunately or
+unfortunately, the acetylene plant was not a success. Girls got their thumbs
+pierced, and sewing machines absolutely refused to stop sewing, once they had
+started, and absolutely refused to start, once they had stopped. So that after
+a while, one loft was reserved for disused and rusty, but expensive engines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dame Fortune, who had refused to be taken by fine fabrics and fancy trimmings,
+was just as reluctant to be captured by ready-mades. Again the good dame was
+thoroughly lower middle-class. James Houghton designed “robes.” Now Robes were
+the mode. Perhaps it was Alexandra, Princess of Wales, who gave glory to the
+slim, glove-fitting Princess Robe. Be that as it may, James Houghton designed
+robes. His work-girls, a race even more callous than shop-girls, proclaimed the
+fact that James tried on his own inventions upon his own elegant thin person,
+before the privacy of his own cheval mirror. And even if he did, why not? Miss
+Frost, hearing this legend, looked sideways at the enthusiast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let us remark in time that Miss Frost had already ceased to draw any
+maintenance from James Houghton. Far from it, she herself contributed to the
+upkeep of the domestic hearth and board. She had fully decided never to leave
+her two charges. She knew that a governess was an impossible item in Manchester
+House, as things went. And so she trudged the country, giving music lessons to
+the daughters of tradesmen and of colliers who boasted pianofortes. She even
+taught heavy-handed but dauntless colliers, who were seized with a passion to
+“play.” Miles she trudged, on her round from village to village: a white-haired
+woman with a long, quick stride, a strong figure, and a quick, handsome smile
+when once her face awoke behind her gold-rimmed glasses. Like many
+short-sighted people, she had a certain intent look of one who goes her own
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The miners knew her, and entertained the highest respect and admiration for
+her. As they streamed in a grimy stream home from pit, they diverged like some
+magic dark river from off the pavement into the horse-way, to give her room as
+she approached. And the men who knew her well enough to salute her, by calling
+her name “Miss Frost!” giving it the proper intonation of salute, were fussy
+men indeed. “She’s a lady if ever there was one,” they said. And they meant it.
+Hearing her name, poor Miss Frost would flash a smile and a nod from behind her
+spectacles, but whose black face she smiled to she never, or rarely knew. If
+she did chance to get an inkling, then gladly she called in reply “Mr. Lamb,”
+or “Mr. Calladine.” In her way she was a proud woman, for she was regarded with
+cordial respect, touched with veneration, by at least a thousand colliers, and
+by perhaps as many colliers’ wives. That is something, for any woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost charged fifteen shillings for thirteen weeks’ lessons, two lessons a
+week. And at that she was considered rather dear. She was supposed to be making
+money. What money she made went chiefly to support the Houghton household. In
+the meanwhile she drilled Alvina thoroughly in theory and pianoforte practice,
+for Alvina was naturally musical, and besides this she imparted to the girl the
+elements of a young lady’s education, including the drawing of flowers in
+water-colour, and the translation of a Lamartine poem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now incredible as it may seem, fate threw another prop to the falling house of
+Houghton, in the person of the manageress of the work-girls, Miss Pinnegar.
+James Houghton complained of Fortune, yet to what other man would Fortune have
+sent two such women as Miss Frost and Miss Pinnegar, <i>gratis</i>? Yet there
+they were. And doubtful if James was ever grateful for their presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Miss Frost saved him from heaven knows what domestic débâcle and horror,
+Miss Pinnegar saved him from the workhouse. Let us not mince matters. For a
+dozen years Miss Frost supported the heart-stricken, nervous invalid, Clariss
+Houghton: for more than twenty years she cherished, tended and protected the
+young Alvina, shielding the child alike from a neurotic mother and a father
+such as James. For nearly twenty years she saw that food was set on the table,
+and clean sheets were spread on the beds: and all the time remained virtually
+in the position of an outsider, without one grain of established authority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then to find Miss Pinnegar! In her way, Miss Pinnegar was very different
+from Miss Frost. She was a rather short, stout, mouse-coloured, creepy kind of
+woman with a high colour in her cheeks, and dun, close hair like a cap. It was
+evident she was not a lady: her grammar was not without reproach. She had pale
+grey eyes, and a padding step, and a soft voice, and almost purplish cheeks.
+Mrs. Houghton, Miss Frost, and Alvina did not like her. They suffered her
+unwillingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But from the first she had a curious ascendancy over James Houghton. One would
+have expected his æsthetic eye to be offended. But no doubt it was her voice:
+her soft, near, sure voice, which seemed almost like a secret touch upon her
+hearer. Now many of her hearers disliked being secretly touched, as it were
+beneath their clothing. Miss Frost abhorred it: so did Mrs. Houghton. Miss
+Frost’s voice was clear and straight as a bell-note, open as the day. Yet
+Alvina, though in loyalty she adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, did not really
+mind the quiet suggestive power of Miss Pinnegar. For Miss Pinnegar was not
+vulgarly insinuating. On the contrary, the things she said were rather clumsy
+and downright. It was only that she seemed to weigh what she said, secretly,
+before she said it, and then she approached as if she would slip it into her
+hearer’s consciousness without his being aware of it. She seemed to slide her
+speeches unnoticed into one’s ears, so that one accepted them without the
+slightest challenge. That was just her manner of approach. In her own way, she
+was as loyal and unselfish as Miss Frost. There are such poles of opposition
+between honesties and loyalties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar had the <i>second</i> class of girls in the Sunday School, and
+she took second, subservient place in Manchester House. By force of nature,
+Miss Frost took first place. Only when Miss Pinnegar spoke to Mr.
+Houghton&mdash;nay, the very way she addressed herself to him&mdash;“What do
+<i>you</i> think, Mr. Houghton?”&mdash;then there seemed to be assumed an
+immediacy of correspondence between the two, and an unquestioned priority in
+their unison, his and hers, which was a cruel thorn in Miss Frost’s outspoken
+breast. This sort of secret intimacy and secret exulting in having,
+<i>really</i>, the chief power, was most repugnant to the white-haired woman.
+Not that there was, in fact, any secrecy, or any form of unwarranted
+correspondence between James Houghton and Miss Pinnegar. Far from it. Each of
+them would have found any suggestion of such a possibility repulsive in the
+extreme. It was simply an implicit correspondence between their two psyches, an
+immediacy of understanding which preceded all expression, tacit, wireless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar lived in: so that the household consisted of the invalid, who
+mostly sat, in her black dress with a white lace collar fastened by a twisted
+gold brooch, in her own dim room, doing nothing, nervous and heart-suffering;
+then James, and the thin young Alvina, who adhered to her beloved Miss Frost,
+and then these two strange women. Miss Pinnegar never lifted up her voice in
+household affairs: she seemed, by her silence, to admit her own inadequacy in
+culture and intellect, when topics of interest were being discussed, only
+coming out now and then with defiant platitudes and truisms&mdash;for almost
+defiantly she took the commonplace, vulgarian point of view; yet after
+everything she would turn with her quiet, triumphant assurance to James
+Houghton, and start on some point of business, soft, assured, ascendant. The
+others shut their ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Miss Pinnegar had to get her footing slowly. She had to let James run the
+gamut of his creations. Each Friday night new wonders, robes and ladies’
+“suits”&mdash;the phrase was very new&mdash;garnished the window of Houghton’s
+shop. It was one of the sights of the place, Houghton’s window on Friday night.
+Young or old, no individual, certainly no female left Woodhouse without
+spending an excited and usually hilarious ten minutes on the pavement under the
+window. Muffled shrieks of young damsels who had just got their first view,
+guffaws of sympathetic youths, continued giggling and expostulation and “Eh,
+but what price the umbrella skirt, my girl!” and “You’d like to marry me in
+<i>that</i>, my boy&mdash;what? not half!”&mdash;or else “Eh, now, if you’d
+seen me in <i>that</i> you’d have fallen in love with me at first sight,
+shouldn’t you?”&mdash;with a probable answer “I should have fallen over myself
+making haste to get away”&mdash;loud guffaws:&mdash;all this was the regular
+Friday night’s entertainment in Woodhouse. James Houghton’s shop was regarded
+as a weekly comic issue. His piqué costumes with glass buttons and sort of
+steel-trimming collars and cuffs were immortal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But why, once more, drag it out. Miss Pinnegar served in the shop on Friday
+nights. She stood by her man. Sometimes when the shrieks grew loudest she came
+to the shop door and looked with her pale grey eyes at the ridiculous mob of
+lasses in tam-o-shanters and youths half buried in caps. And she imposed a
+silence. They edged away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Miss Pinnegar pursued the sober and even tenor of her own way. Whilst
+James lashed out, to use the local phrase, in robes and “suits,” Miss Pinnegar
+steadily ground away, producing strong, indestructible shirts and singlets for
+the colliers, sound, serviceable aprons for the colliers’ wives, good print
+dresses for servants, and so on. She executed no flights of fancy. She had her
+goods made to suit her people. And so, underneath the foam and froth of James’
+creative adventure flowed a slow but steady stream of output and income. The
+women of Woodhouse came at last to <i>depend</i> on Miss Pinnegar. Growing lads
+in the pit reduce their garments to shreds with amazing expedition. “I’ll go to
+Miss Pinnegar for thy shirts this time, my lad,” said the harassed mothers,
+“and see if <i>they’ll</i> stand thee.” It was almost like a threat. But it
+served Manchester House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James bought very little stock in these days: just remnants and pieces for his
+immortal robes. It was Miss Pinnegar who saw the travellers and ordered the
+unions and calicoes and grey flannel. James hovered round and said the last
+word, of course. But what was his last word but an echo of Miss Pinnegar’s
+penultimate! He was not interested in unions and twills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His own stock remained on hand. Time, like a slow whirlpool churned it over
+into sight and out of sight, like a mass of dead sea-weed in a backwash. There
+was a regular series of sales fortnightly. The display of “creations” fell off.
+The new entertainment was the Friday-night’s sale. James would attack some
+portion of his stock, make a wild jumble of it, spend a delirious Wednesday and
+Thursday marking down, and then open on Friday afternoon. In the evening there
+was a crush. A good moiré underskirt for one-and-eleven-three was not to be
+neglected, and a handsome string-lace collarette for six-three would iron out
+and be worth at least three-and-six. That was how it went: it would nearly all
+of it iron out into something really nice, poor James’ crumpled stock. His
+fine, semi-transparent face flushed pink, his eyes flashed as he took in the
+sixpences and handed back knots of tape or packets of pins for the notorious
+farthings. What matter if the farthing change had originally cost him a
+halfpenny! His shop was crowded with women peeping and pawing and turning
+things over and commenting in loud, unfeeling tones. For there were still many
+comic items. Once, for example, he suddenly heaped up piles of hats, trimmed
+and untrimmed, the weirdest, sauciest, most screaming shapes. Woodhouse enjoyed
+itself that night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all the time, in her quiet, polite, think-the-more fashion Miss Pinnegar
+waited on the people, showing them considerable forbearance and just a tinge of
+contempt. She became very tired those evenings&mdash;her hair under its
+invisible hairnet became flatter, her cheeks hung down purplish and mottled.
+But while James stood she stood. The people did not like her, yet she
+influenced them. And the stock slowly wilted, withered. Some was scrapped. The
+shop seemed to have digested some of its indigestible contents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James accumulated sixpences in a miserly fashion. Luckily for her work-girls,
+Miss Pinnegar took her own orders, and received payments for her own
+productions. Some of her regular customers paid her a shilling a week&mdash;or
+less. But it made a small, steady income. She reserved her own modest share,
+paid the expenses of her department, and left the residue to James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James had accumulated sixpences, and made a little space in his shop. He had
+desisted from “creations.” Time now for a new flight. He decided it was better
+to be a manufacturer than a tradesman. His shop, already only half its original
+size, was again too big. It might be split once more. Rents had risen in
+Woodhouse. Why not cut off another shop from his premises?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner said than done. In came the architect, with whom he had played many a
+game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one good-sized shop, rather
+than halve the premises. James would be left a little cramped, a little tight,
+with only one-third of his present space. But as we age we dwindle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More hammering and alterations, and James found himself cooped in a long, long
+narrow shop, very dark at the back, with a high oblong window and a door that
+came in at a pinched corner. Next door to him was a cheerful new grocer of the
+cheap and florid type. The new grocer whistled “Just Like the Ivy,” and shouted
+boisterously to his shop-boy. In his doorway, protruding on James’ sensitive
+vision, was a pyramid of sixpence-halfpenny tins of salmon, red, shiny tins
+with pink halved salmons depicted, and another yellow pyramid of
+four-pence-halfpenny tins of pineapple. Bacon dangled in pale rolls
+<i>almost</i> over James’ doorway, whilst straw and paper, redolent of cheese,
+lard, and stale eggs filtered through the threshold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was coming down in the world, with a vengeance. But what James lost
+downstairs he tried to recover upstairs. Heaven knows what he would have done,
+but for Miss Pinnegar. She kept her own work-rooms against him, with a soft,
+heavy, silent tenacity that would have beaten stronger men than James. But his
+strength lay in his pliability. He rummaged in the empty lofts, and among the
+discarded machinery. He rigged up the engines afresh, bought two new machines,
+and started an elastic department, making elastic for garters and for
+hat-chins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was immensely proud of his first cards of elastic, and saw Dame Fortune this
+time fast in his yielding hands. But, becoming used to disillusionment, he
+almost welcomed it. Within six months he realized that every inch of elastic
+cost him exactly sixty per cent. more than he could sell it for, and so he
+scrapped his new department. Luckily, he sold one machine and even gained two
+pounds on it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this, he made one last effort. This was hosiery webbing, which could be
+cut up and made into as-yet-unheard-of garments. Miss Pinnegar kept her thumb
+on this enterprise, so that it was not much more than abortive. And then James
+left her alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the shop slowly churned its oddments. Every Thursday afternoon James
+sorted out tangles of bits and bobs, antique garments and occasional finds.
+With these he trimmed his window, so that it looked like a historical museum,
+rather soiled and scrappy. Indoors he made baskets of assortments: threepenny,
+sixpenny, ninepenny and shilling baskets, rather like a bran pie in which
+everything was a plum. And then, on Friday evening, thin and alert he hovered
+behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his narrow chest, his face
+agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers, so that they only grew becomingly as
+low as his ears. His rather large, grey moustache was brushed off his mouth.
+His hair, gone very thin, was brushed frail and floating over his baldness. But
+still a gentleman, still courteous, with a charming voice he suggested the
+possibilities of a pad of green parrots’ tail-feathers, or of a few yards of
+pink-pearl trimming or of old chenille fringe. The women would pinch the thick,
+exquisite old chenille fringe, delicate and faded, curious to feel its
+softness. But they wouldn’t give threepence for it. Tapes, ribbons, braids,
+buttons, feathers, jabots, bussels, appliqués, fringes, jet-trimmings,
+bugle-trimmings, bundles of old coloured machine-lace, many bundles of strange
+cord, in all colours, for old-fashioned braid-patterning, ribbons with H.M.S.
+Birkenhead, for boys’ sailor caps&mdash;everything that nobody wanted, did the
+women turn over and over, till they chanced on a find. And James’ quick eyes
+watched the slow surge of his flotsam, as the pot boiled but did not boil away.
+Wonderful that he did not think of the days when these bits and bobs were new
+treasures. But he did not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at his side Miss Pinnegar quietly took orders for shirts, discussed and
+agreed, made measurements and received instalments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shop was now only opened on Friday afternoons and evenings, so every day,
+twice a day, James was seen dithering bare-headed and hastily down the street,
+as if pressed by fate, to the Conservative Club, and twice a day he was seen as
+hastily returning, to his meals. He was becoming an old man: his daughter was a
+young woman: but in his own mind he was just the same, and his daughter was a
+little child, his wife a young invalid whom he must charm by some few delicate
+attentions&mdash;such as the peeled apple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the club he got into more mischief. He met men who wanted to extend a
+brickfield down by the railway. The brickfield was called Klondyke. James had
+now a new direction to run in: down hill towards Bagthorpe, to Klondyke. Big
+penny-daisies grew in tufts on the brink of the yellow clay at Klondyke, yellow
+eggs-and-bacon spread their midsummer mats of flower. James came home with clay
+smeared all over him, discoursing brilliantly on grit and paste and presses and
+kilns and stamps. He carried home a rough and pinkish brick, and gloated over
+it. It was a <i>hard</i> brick, it was a non-porous brick. It was an ugly
+brick, painfully heavy and parched-looking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This time he was sure: Dame Fortune would rise like Persephone out of the
+earth. He was all the more sure, because other men of the town were in with him
+at this venture: sound, moneyed grocers and plumbers. They were all going to
+become rich.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Klondyke lasted a year and a half, and was not so bad, for in the end, all
+things considered, James had lost not more than five per cent. of his money. In
+fact, all things considered, he was about square. And yet he felt Klondyke as
+the greatest blow of all. Miss Pinnegar would have aided and abetted him in
+another scheme, if it would but have cheered him. Even Miss Frost was nice with
+him. But to no purpose. In the year after Klondyke he became an old man, he
+seemed to have lost all his feathers, he acquired a plucked, tottering look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet he roused up, after a coal-strike. Throttle-Ha’penny put new life into him.
+During a coal-strike the miners themselves began digging in the fields, just
+near the houses, for the surface coal. They found a plentiful seam of drossy,
+yellowish coal behind the Methodist New Connection Chapel. The seam was opened
+in the side of a bank, and approached by a footrill, a sloping shaft down which
+the men walked. When the strike was over, two or three miners still remained
+working the soft, drossy coal, which they sold for eight-and-sixpence a
+ton&mdash;or sixpence a hundredweight. But a mining population scorned such
+dirt, as they called it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James Houghton, however, was seized with a desire to work the Connection Meadow
+seam, as he called it. He gathered two miner partners&mdash;he trotted
+endlessly up to the field, he talked, as he had never talked before, with
+inumerable colliers. Everybody he met he stopped, to talk Connection Meadow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so at last he sank a shaft, sixty feet deep, rigged up a corrugated-iron
+engine-house with a winding-engine, and lowered his men one at a time down the
+shaft, in a big bucket. The whole affair was ricketty, amateurish, and
+twopenny. The name Connection Meadow was forgotten within three months.
+Everybody knew the place as Throttle-Ha’penny. “What!” said a collier to his
+wife: “have we got no coal? You’d better get a bit from Throttle-Ha’penny.”
+“Nay,” replied the wife, “I’m sure I shan’t. I’m sure I shan’t burn that muck,
+and smother myself with white ash.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in the early Throttle-Ha’penny days that Mrs. Houghton died. James
+Houghton cried, and put a black band on his Sunday silk hat. But he was too
+feverishly busy at Throttle-Ha’penny, selling his hundredweights of ash-pit
+fodder, as the natives called it, to realize anything else.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had three men and two boys working his pit, besides a superannuated old man
+driving the winding engine. And in spite of all jeering, he flourished. Shabby
+old coal-carts rambled up behind the New Connection, and filled from the
+pit-bank. The coal improved a little in quality: it was cheap and it was handy.
+James could sell at last fifty or sixty tons a week: for the stuff was easy
+getting. And now at last he was actually handling money. He saw millions ahead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This went on for more than a year. A year after the death of Mrs. Houghton,
+Miss Frost became ill and suddenly died. Again James Houghton cried and
+trembled. But it was Throttle-Ha’penny that made him tremble. He trembled in
+all his limbs, at the touch of success. He saw himself making noble provision
+for his only daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But alas&mdash;it is wearying to repeat the same thing over and over. First the
+Board of Trade began to make difficulties. Then there was a fault in the seam.
+Then the roof of Throttle-Ha’penny was so loose and soft, James could not
+afford timber to hold it up. In short, when his daughter Alvina was about
+twenty-seven years old, Throttle-Ha’penny closed down. There was a sale of poor
+machinery, and James Houghton came home to the dark, gloomy house&mdash;to Miss
+Pinnegar and Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a pinched, dreary house. James seemed down for the last time. But Miss
+Pinnegar persuaded him to take the shop again on Friday evening. For the rest,
+faded and peaked, he hurried shadowily down to the club.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II<br/>
+THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON</h2>
+
+<p>
+The heroine of this story is Alvina Houghton. If we leave her out of the first
+chapter of her own story it is because, during the first twenty-five years of
+her life, she really was left out of count, or so overshadowed as to be
+negligible. She and her mother were the phantom passengers in the ship of James
+Houghton’s fortunes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Manchester House, every voice lowered its tone. And so from the first Alvina
+spoke with a quiet, refined, almost convent voice. She was a thin child with
+delicate limbs and face, and wide, grey-blue, ironic eyes. Even as a small girl
+she had that odd ironic tilt of the eyelids which gave her a look as if she
+were hanging back in mockery. If she were, she was quite unaware of it, for
+under Miss Frost’s care she received no education in irony or mockery. Miss
+Frost was straightforward, good-humoured, and a little earnest. Consequently
+Alvina, or Vina as she was called, understood only the explicit mode of
+good-humoured straightforwardness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was doubtful which shadow was greater over the child: that of Manchester
+House, gloomy and a little sinister, or that of Miss Frost, benevolent and
+protective. Sufficient that the girl herself worshipped Miss Frost: or believed
+she did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina never went to school. She had her lessons from her beloved governess,
+she worked at the piano, she took her walks, and for social life she went to
+the Congregational Chapel, and to the functions connected with the chapel.
+While she was little, she went to Sunday School twice and to Chapel once on
+Sundays. Then occasionally there was a magic lantern or a penny reading, to
+which Miss Frost accompanied her. As she grew older she entered the choir at
+chapel, she attended Christian Endeavour and P.S.A., and the Literary Society
+on Monday evenings. Chapel provided her with a whole social activity, in the
+course of which she met certain groups of people, made certain friends, found
+opportunity for strolls into the country and jaunts to the local
+entertainments. Over and above this, every Thursday evening she went to the
+subscription library to change the week’s supply of books, and there again she
+met friends and acquaintances. It is hard to overestimate the value of church
+or chapel&mdash;but particularly chapel&mdash;as a social institution, in
+places like Woodhouse. The Congregational Chapel provided Alvina with a whole
+outer life, lacking which she would have been poor indeed. She was not
+particularly religious by inclination. Perhaps her father’s beautiful prayers
+put her off. So she neither questioned nor accepted, but just let be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She grew up a slim girl, rather distinguished in appearance, with a slender
+face, a fine, slightly arched nose, and beautiful grey-blue eyes over which the
+lids tilted with a very odd, sardonic tilt. The sardonic quality was, however,
+quite in abeyance. She was ladylike, not vehement at all. In the street her
+walk had a delicate, lingering motion, her face looked still. In conversation
+she had rather a quick, hurried manner, with intervals of well-bred repose and
+attention. Her voice was like her father’s, flexible and curiously attractive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes, however, she would have fits of boisterous hilarity, not quite
+natural, with a strange note half pathetic, half jeering. Her father tended to
+a supercilious, sneering tone. In Vina it came out in mad bursts of hilarious
+jeering. This made Miss Frost uneasy. She would watch the girl’s strange face,
+that could take on a gargoyle look. She would see the eyes rolling strangely
+under sardonic eyelids, and then Miss Frost would feel that never, never had
+she known anything so utterly alien and incomprehensible and unsympathetic as
+her own beloved Vina. For twenty years the strong, protective governess reared
+and tended her lamb, her dove, only to see the lamb open a wolf’s mouth, to
+hear the dove utter the wild cackle of a daw or a magpie, a strange sound of
+derision. At such times Miss Frost’s heart went cold within her. She dared not
+realize. And she chid and checked her ward, restored her to the usual
+impulsive, affectionate demureness. Then she dismissed the whole matter. It was
+just an accidental aberration on the girl’s part from her own true nature. Miss
+Frost taught Alvina thoroughly the qualities of her own true nature, and Alvina
+believed what she was taught. She remained for twenty years the demure, refined
+creature of her governess’ desire. But there was an odd, derisive look at the
+back of her eyes, a look of old knowledge and deliberate derision. She herself
+was unconscious of it. But it was there. And this it was, perhaps, that scared
+away the young men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina reached the age of twenty-three, and it looked as if she were destined
+to join the ranks of the old maids, so many of whom found cold comfort in the
+Chapel. For she had no suitors. True there were extraordinarily few young men
+of her class&mdash;for whatever her condition, she had certain breeding and
+inherent culture&mdash;in Woodhouse. The young men of the same social standing
+as herself were in some curious way outsiders to her. Knowing nothing, yet her
+ancient sapience went deep, deeper than Woodhouse could fathom. The young men
+did not like her for it. They did not like the tilt of her eyelids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost, with anxious foreseeing, persuaded the girl to take over some
+pupils, to teach them the piano. The work was distasteful to Alvina. She was
+not a good teacher. She persevered in an off-hand way, somewhat indifferent,
+albeit dutiful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she was twenty-three years old, Alvina met a man called Graham. He was an
+Australian, who had been in Edinburgh taking his medical degree. Before going
+back to Australia, he came to spend some months practising with old Dr. Fordham
+in Woodhouse&mdash;Dr. Fordham being in some way connected with his mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alexander Graham called to see Mrs. Houghton. Mrs. Houghton did not like him.
+She said he was creepy. He was a man of medium height, dark in colouring, with
+very dark eyes, and a body which seemed to move inside his clothing. He was
+amiable and polite, laughed often, showing his teeth. It was his teeth which
+Miss Frost could not stand. She seemed to see a strong mouthful of cruel,
+compact teeth. She declared he had dark blood in his veins, that he was not a
+man to be trusted, and that never, never would he make any woman’s life happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet in spite of all, Alvina was attracted by him. The two would stay together
+in the parlour, laughing and talking by the hour. What they could find to talk
+about was a mystery. Yet there they were, laughing and chatting, with a running
+insinuating sound through it all which made Miss Frost pace up and down unable
+to bear herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man was always running in when Miss Frost was out. He contrived to meet
+Alvina in the evening, to take a walk with her. He went a long walk with her
+one night, and wanted to make love to her. But her upbringing was too strong
+for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no,” she said. “We are only friends.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew her upbringing was too strong for him also.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’re more than friends,” he said. “We’re more than friends.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think so,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes we are,” he insisted, trying to put his arm round her waist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, don’t!” she cried. “Let us go home.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then he burst out with wild and thick protestations of love, which thrilled
+her and repelled her slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Anyhow I must tell Miss Frost,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, yes,” he answered. “Yes, yes. Let us be engaged at once.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they passed under the lamps he saw her face lifted, the eyes shining, the
+delicate nostrils dilated, as of one who scents battle and laughs to herself.
+She seemed to laugh with a certain proud, sinister recklessness. His hands
+trembled with desire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they were engaged. He bought her a ring, an emerald set in tiny diamonds.
+Miss Frost looked grave and silent, but would not openly deny her approval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You like him, don’t you? You don’t dislike him?” Alvina insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t dislike him,” replied Miss Frost. “How can I? He is a perfect stranger
+to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with this Alvina subtly contented herself. Her father treated the young man
+with suave attention, punctuated by fits of jerky hostility and jealousy. Her
+mother merely sighed, and took sal volatile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To tell the truth, Alvina herself was a little repelled by the man’s
+love-making. She found him fascinating, but a trifle repulsive. And she was not
+sure whether she hated the repulsive element, or whether she rather gloried in
+it. She kept her look of arch, half-derisive recklessness, which was so
+unbearably painful to Miss Frost, and so exciting to the dark little man. It
+was a strange look in a refined, really virgin girl&mdash;oddly sinister. And
+her voice had a curious bronze-like resonance that acted straight on the nerves
+of her hearers: unpleasantly on most English nerves, but like fire on the
+different susceptibilities of the young man&mdash;the darkie, as people called
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But after all, he had only six weeks in England, before sailing to Sydney. He
+suggested that he and Alvina should marry before he sailed. Miss Frost would
+not hear of it. He must see his people first, she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the time passed, and he sailed. Alvina missed him, missed the extreme
+excitement of him rather than the human being he was. Miss Frost set to work to
+regain her influence over her ward, to remove that arch, reckless, almost lewd
+look from the girl’s face. It was a question of heart against sensuality. Miss
+Frost tried and tried to wake again the girl’s loving heart&mdash;which loving
+heart was certainly not occupied by <i>that man</i>. It was a hard task, an
+anxious, bitter task Miss Frost had set herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at last she succeeded. Alvina seemed to thaw. The hard shining of her eyes
+softened again to a sort of demureness and tenderness. The influence of the man
+was revoked, the girl was left uninhabited, empty and uneasy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was due to follow her Alexander in three months’ time, to Sydney. Came
+letters from him, en route&mdash;and then a cablegram from Australia. He had
+arrived. Alvina should have been preparing her trousseau, to follow. But owing
+to her change of heart, she lingered indecisive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>Do</i> you love him, dear?” said Miss Frost with emphasis, knitting her
+thick, passionate, earnest eyebrows. “Do you love him sufficiently?
+<i>That’s</i> the point.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The way Miss Frost put the question implied that Alvina did not and could not
+love him&mdash;because Miss Frost could not. Alvina lifted her large, blue
+eyes, confused, half-tender towards her governess, half shining with
+unconscious derision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t really know,” she said, laughing hurriedly. “I don’t really.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost scrutinized her, and replied with a meaningful:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To Miss Frost it was clear as daylight. To Alvina not so. In her periods of
+lucidity, when she saw as clear as daylight also, she certainly did not love
+the little man. She felt him a terrible outsider, an inferior, to tell the
+truth. She wondered how he could have the slightest attraction for her. In fact
+she could not understand it at all. She was as free of him as if he had never
+existed. The square green emerald on her finger was almost non-sensical. She
+was quite, quite sure of herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, most irritating, a complete <i>volte face</i> in her feelings. The
+clear-as-daylight mood disappeared as daylight is bound to disappear. She found
+herself in a night where the little man loomed large, terribly large, potent
+and magical, while Miss Frost had dwindled to nothingness. At such times she
+wished with all her force that she could travel like a cablegram to Australia.
+She felt it was the only way. She felt the dark, passionate receptivity of
+Alexander overwhelmed her, enveloped her even from the Antipodes. She felt
+herself going distracted&mdash;she felt she was going out of her mind. For she
+could not act.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her mother and Miss Frost were fixed in one line. Her father said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, of course, you’ll do as you think best. There’s a great risk in going so
+far&mdash;a great risk. You would be entirely unprotected.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t mind being unprotected,” said Alvina perversely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because you don’t understand what it means,” said her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her quickly. Perhaps he understood her better than the others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Personally,” said Miss Pinnegar, speaking of Alexander, “I don’t care for him.
+But every one has their own taste.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina felt she was being overborne, and that she was letting herself be
+overborne. She was half relieved. She seemed to nestle into the well-known
+surety of Woodhouse. The other unknown had frightened her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost now took a definite line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I feel you don’t love him, dear. I’m almost sure you don’t. So now you have to
+choose. Your mother dreads your going&mdash;she dreads it. I am certain you
+would never see her again. She says she can’t bear it&mdash;she can’t bear the
+thought of you out there with Alexander. It makes her shudder. She suffers
+dreadfully, you know. So you will have to choose, dear. You will have to choose
+for the best.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was made stubborn by pressure. She herself had come fully to believe
+that she did not love him. She was quite sure she did not love him. But out of
+a certain perversity, she wanted to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Came his letter from Sydney, and one from his parents to her and one to her
+parents. All seemed straightforward&mdash;not <i>very</i> cordial, but
+sufficiently. Over Alexander’s letter Miss Frost shed bitter tears. To her it
+seemed so shallow and heartless, with terms of endearment stuck in like
+exclamation marks. He semed to have no thought, no feeling for the girl
+herself. All he wanted was to hurry her out there. He did not even mention the
+grief of her parting from her English parents and friends: not a word. Just a
+rush to get her out there, winding up with “And now, dear, I shall not be
+myself till I see you here in Sydney&mdash;Your ever-loving Alexander.” A
+selfish, sensual creature, who would forget the dear little Vina in three
+months, if she did not turn up, and who would neglect her in six months, if she
+did. Probably Miss Frost was right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina knew the tears she was costing all round. She went upstairs and looked
+at his photograph&mdash;his dark and impertinent muzzle. Who was <i>he</i>,
+after all? She did not know him. With cold eyes she looked at him, and found
+him repugnant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went across to her governess’s room, and found Miss Frost in a strange mood
+of trepidation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t trust me, dear, don’t trust what I say,” poor Miss Frost ejaculated
+hurriedly, even wildly. “Don’t notice what I have said. Act for yourself, dear.
+Act for yourself entirely. I am sure I am wrong in trying to influence you. I
+know I am wrong. It is wrong and foolish of me. Act just for yourself,
+dear&mdash;the rest doesn’t matter. The rest doesn’t matter. Don’t take
+<i>any</i> notice of what I have said. I know I am wrong.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first time in her life Alvina saw her beloved governess flustered, the
+beautiful white hair looking a little draggled, the grey, near-sighted eyes, so
+deep and kind behind the gold-rimmed glasses, now distracted and scared. Alvina
+immediately burst into tears and flung herself into the arms of Miss Frost.
+Miss Frost also cried as if her heart would break, catching her indrawn breath
+with a strange sound of anguish, forlornness, the terrible crying of a woman
+with a loving heart, whose heart has never been able to relax. Alvina was
+hushed. In a second, she became the elder of the two. The terrible poignancy of
+the woman of fifty-two, who now at last had broken down, silenced the girl of
+twenty-three, and roused all her passionate tenderness. The terrible sound of
+“Never now, never now&mdash;it is too late,” which seemed to ring in the
+curious, indrawn cries of the elder woman, filled the girl with a deep wisdom.
+She knew the same would ring in her mother’s dying cry. Married or unmarried,
+it was the same&mdash;the same anguish, realized in all its pain after the age
+of fifty&mdash;the loss in never having been able to relax, to submit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina felt very strong and rich in the fact of her youth. For her it was not
+too late. For Miss Frost it was for ever too late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t want to go, dear,” said Alvina to the elder woman. “I know I don’t
+care for him. He is nothing to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost became gradually silent, and turned aside her face. After this there
+was a hush in the house. Alvina announced her intention of breaking off her
+engagement. Her mother kissed her, and cried, and said, with the selfishness of
+an invalid:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I couldn’t have parted with you, I couldn’t.” Whilst the father said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think you are wise, Vina. I have thought a lot about it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Alvina packed up his ring and his letters and little presents, and posted
+them over the seas. She was relieved, really: as if she had escaped some very
+trying ordeal. For some days she went about happily, in pure relief. She loved
+everybody. She was charming and sunny and gentle with everybody, particularly
+with Miss Frost, whom she loved with a deep, tender, rather sore love. Poor
+Miss Frost seemed to have lost a part of her confidence, to have taken on a new
+wistfulness, a new silence and remoteness. It was as if she found her busy
+contact with life a strain now. Perhaps she was getting old. Perhaps her proud
+heart had given way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina had kept a little photograph of the man. She would often go and look at
+it. Love?&mdash;no, it was not love! It was something more primitive still. It
+was curiosity, deep, radical, burning curiosity. How she looked and looked at
+his dark, impertinent-seeming face. A flicker of derision came into her eyes.
+Yet still she looked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the same manner she would look into the faces of the young men of Woodhouse.
+But she never found there what she found in her photograph. They all seemed
+like blank sheets of paper in comparison. There was a curious pale surface-look
+in the faces of the young men of Woodhouse: or, if there was some underneath
+suggestive power, it was a little abject or humiliating, inferior, common. They
+were all either blank or common.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III<br/>
+THE MATERNITY NURSE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Of course Alvina made everybody pay for her mood of submission and sweetness.
+In a month’s time she was quite intolerable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t stay here all my life,” she declared, stretching her eyes in a way
+that irritated the other inmates of Manchester House extremely. “I know I
+can’t. I can’t bear it. I simply can’t bear it, and there’s an end of it. I
+can’t, I tell you. I can’t bear it. I’m buried alive&mdash;simply buried alive.
+And it’s more than I can stand. It is, really.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was an odd clang, like a taunt, in her voice. She was trying them all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what do you want, dear?” asked Miss Frost, knitting her dark brows in
+agitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want to go away,” said Alvina bluntly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost gave a slight gesture with her right hand, of helpless impatience.
+It was so characteristic, that Alvina almost laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But where do you want to go?” asked Miss Frost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know. I don’t care,” said Alvina. “Anywhere, if I can get out of
+Woodhouse.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you wish you had gone to Australia?” put in Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I don’t wish I had gone to Australia,” retorted Alvina with a rude laugh.
+“Australia isn’t the only other place besides Woodhouse.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar was naturally offended. But the curious insolence which sometimes
+came out in the girl was inherited direct from her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You see, dear,” said Miss Frost, agitated: “if you knew what you wanted, it
+would be easier to see the way.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want to be a nurse,” rapped out Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost stood still, with the stillness of a middle-aged disapproving woman,
+and looked at her charge. She believed that Alvina was just speaking at random.
+Yet she dared not check her, in her present mood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was indeed speaking at random. She had never thought of being a
+nurse&mdash;the idea had never entered her head. If it had she would certainly
+never have entertained it. But she had heard Alexander speak of Nurse This and
+Sister That. And so she had rapped out her declaration. And having rapped it
+out, she prepared herself to stick to it. Nothing like leaping before you look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A nurse!” repeated Miss Frost. “But do you feel yourself fitted to be a nurse?
+Do you think you could bear it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I’m sure I could,” retorted Alvina. “I want to be a maternity
+nurse&mdash;” She looked strangely, even outrageously, at her governess. “I
+want to be a maternity nurse. Then I shouldn’t have to attend operations.” And
+she laughed quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost’s right hand beat like a wounded bird. It was reminiscent of the way
+she beat time, insistently, when she was giving music lessons, sitting close
+beside her pupils at the piano. Now it beat without time or reason. Alvina
+smiled brightly and cruelly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Whatever put such an idea into your head, Vina?” asked poor Miss Frost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” said Alvina, still more archly and brightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course you don’t mean it, dear,” said Miss Frost, quailing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I do. Why should I say it if I don’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost would have done anything to escape the arch, bright, cruel eyes of
+her charge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then we must think about it,” she said, numbly. And she went away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina floated off to her room, and sat by the window looking down on the
+street. The bright, arch look was still on her face. But her heart was sore.
+She wanted to cry, and fling herself on the breast of her darling. But she
+couldn’t. No, for her life she couldn’t. Some little devil sat in her breast
+and kept her smiling archly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somewhat to her amazement, he sat steadily on for days and days. Every minute
+she expected him to go. Every minute she expected to break down, to burst into
+tears and tenderness and reconciliation. But no&mdash;she did not break down.
+She persisted. They all waited for the old loving Vina to be herself again. But
+the new and recalcitrant Vina still shone hard. She found a copy of <i>The
+Lancet</i>, and saw an advertisement of a home in Islington where maternity
+nurses would be fully trained and equipped in six months’ time. The fee was
+sixty guineas. Alvina declared her intention of departing to this training
+home. She had two hundred pounds of her own, bequeathed by her grandfather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Manchester House they were all horrified&mdash;not moved with grief, this
+time, but shocked. It seemed such a repulsive and indelicate step to take.
+Which it was. And which, in her curious perverseness, Alvina must have intended
+it to be. Mrs. Houghton assumed a remote air of silence, as if she did not hear
+any more, did not belong. She lapsed far away. She was really very weak. Miss
+Pinnegar said: “Well really, if she wants to do it, why, she might as well
+try.” And, as often with Miss Pinnegar, this speech seemed to contain a veiled
+threat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A maternity nurse!” said James Houghton. “A maternity nurse! What exactly do
+you mean by a maternity nurse?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A trained mid-wife,” said Miss Pinnegar curtly. “That’s it, isn’t it? It is as
+far as I can see. A trained mid-wife.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, of course,” said Alvina brightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But&mdash;!” stammered James Houghton, pushing his spectacles up on to his
+forehead, and making his long fleece of painfully thin hair uncover his
+baldness. “I can’t understand that any young girl of any&mdash;any upbringing,
+any upbringing whatever, should want to choose such a&mdash;such
+an&mdash;occupation. I can’t understand it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can’t you?” said Alvina brightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh well, if she <i>does</i>&mdash;” said Miss Pinnegar cryptically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost said very little. But she had serious confidential talks with Dr.
+Fordham. Dr. Fordham didn’t approve, certainly he didn’t&mdash;but neither did
+he see any great harm in it. At that time it was rather the thing for young
+ladies to enter the nursing profession, if their hopes had been blighted or
+checked in another direction! And so, enquiries were made. Enquiries were made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The upshot was, that Alvina was to go to Islington for her six months’
+training. There was a great bustle, preparing her nursing outfit. Instead of a
+trousseau, nurse’s uniforms in fine blue-and-white stripe, with great white
+aprons. Instead of a wreath of orange blossom, a rather chic nurse’s bonnet of
+blue silk, and for a trailing veil, a blue silk fall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well and good! Alvina expected to become frightened, as the time drew near. But
+no, she wasn’t a bit frightened. Miss Frost watched her narrowly. Would there
+not be a return of the old, tender, sensitive, shrinking Vina&mdash;the
+exquisitely sensitive and nervous, loving girl? No, astounding as it may seem,
+there was no return of such a creature. Alvina remained bright and ready, the
+half-hilarious clang remained in her voice, taunting. She kissed them all
+good-bye, brightly and sprightlily, and off she set. She wasn’t nervous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came to St. Pancras, she got her cab, she drove off to her
+destination&mdash;and as she drove, she looked out of the window. Horrid, vast,
+stony, dilapidated, crumbly-stuccoed streets and squares of Islington, grey,
+grey, greyer by far than Woodhouse, and interminable. How exceedingly sordid
+and disgusting! But instead of being repelled and heartbroken, Alvina enjoyed
+it. She felt her trunk rumble on the top of the cab, and still she looked out
+on the ghastly dilapidated flat facades of Islington, and still she smiled
+brightly, as if there were some charm in it all. Perhaps for her there was a
+charm in it all. Perhaps it acted like a tonic on the little devil in her
+breast. Perhaps if she had seen tufts of snowdrops&mdash;it was
+February&mdash;and yew-hedges and cottage windows, she would have broken down.
+As it was, she just enjoyed it. She enjoyed glimpsing in through uncurtained
+windows, into sordid rooms where human beings moved as if sordidly unaware. She
+enjoyed the smell of a toasted bloater, rather burnt. So common! so
+indescribably common! And she detested bloaters, because of the hairy feel of
+the spines in her mouth. But to smell them like this, to know that she was in
+the region of “penny beef-steaks,” gave her a perverse pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cab stopped at a yellow house at the corner of a square where some shabby
+bare trees were flecked with bits of blown paper, bits of paper and refuse
+cluttered inside the round railings of each tree. She went up some
+dirty-yellowish steps, and rang the “Patients’” bell, because she knew she
+ought not to ring the “Tradesmen’s.” A servant, not exactly dirty, but
+unattractive, let her into a hall painted a dull drab, and floored with
+cocoa-matting, otherwise bare. Then up bare stairs to a room where a stout,
+pale, common woman with two warts on her face, was drinking tea. It was three
+o’clock. This was the matron. The matron soon deposited her in a bedroom, not
+very small, but bare and hard and dusty-seeming, and there left her. Alvina sat
+down on her chair, looked at her box opposite her, looked round the uninviting
+room, and smiled to herself. Then she rose and went to the window: a very dirty
+window, looking down into a sort of well of an area, with other wells ranging
+along, and straight opposite like a reflection another solid range of
+back-premises, with iron stair-ways and horrid little doors and washing and
+little W. C.’s and people creeping up and down like vermin. Alvina shivered a
+little, but still smiled. Then slowly she began to take off her hat. She put it
+down on the drab-painted chest of drawers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently the servant came in with a tray, set it down, lit a naked gas-jet,
+which roared faintly, and drew down a crackly dark-green blind, which showed a
+tendency to fly back again alertly to the ceiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you,” said Alvina, and the girl departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Miss Houghton drank her black tea and ate her bread and margarine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Surely enough books have been written about heroines in similar circumstances.
+There is no need to go into the details of Alvina’s six months in Islington.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The food was objectionable&mdash;yet Alvina got fat on it. The air was
+filthy&mdash;and yet never had her colour been so warm and fresh, her skin so
+soft. Her companions were almost without exception vulgar and coarse&mdash;yet
+never had she got on so well with women of her own age&mdash;or older than
+herself. She was ready with a laugh and a word, and though she was unable to
+venture on indecencies herself, yet she had an amazing faculty for
+<i>looking</i> knowing and indecent beyond words, rolling her eyes and pitching
+her eyebrows in a certain way&mdash;oh, it was quite sufficient for her
+companions! And yet, if they had ever actually demanded a dirty story or a
+really open indecency from her, she would have been floored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she enjoyed it. Amazing how she enjoyed it. She did not care <i>how</i>
+revolting and indecent these nurses were&mdash;she put on a look as if she were
+in with it all, and it all passed off as easy as winking. She swung her
+haunches and arched her eyes with the best of them. And they behaved as if she
+were exactly one of themselves. And yet, with the curious cold tact of women,
+they left her alone, one and all, in private: just ignored her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is truly incredible how Alvina became blooming and bouncing at this time.
+Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was always ready with her hard,
+nurse’s laugh and her nurse’s quips. No one was better than she at
+<i>double-entendres.</i> No one could better give the nurse’s leer. She had it
+all in a fortnight. And never once did she feel anything but exhilarated and in
+full swing. It seemed to her she had not a moment’s time to brood or reflect
+about things&mdash;she was too much in the swing. Every moment, in the swing,
+living, or active in full swing. When she got into bed she went to sleep. When
+she awoke, it was morning, and she got up. As soon as she was up and dressed
+she had somebody to answer, something to say, something to do. Time passed like
+an express train&mdash;and she seemed to have known no other life than this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not far away was a lying-in hospital. A dreadful place it was. There she had to
+go, right off, and help with cases. There she had to attend lectures and
+demonstrations. There she met the doctors and students. Well, a pretty lot they
+were, one way and another. When she had put on flesh and become pink and
+bouncing she was just their sort: just their very ticket. Her voice had the
+right twang, her eyes the right roll, her haunches the right swing. She seemed
+altogether just the ticket. And yet she wasn’t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would be useless to say she was not shocked. She was profoundly and awfully
+shocked. Her whole state was perhaps largely the result of shock: a sort of
+play-acting based on hysteria. But the dreadful things she saw in the lying-in
+hospital, and afterwards, went deep, and finished her youth and her tutelage
+for ever. How many infernos deeper than Miss Frost could ever know, did she not
+travel? the inferno of the human animal, the human organism in its convulsions,
+the human social beast in its abjection and its degradation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For in her latter half she had to visit the slum cases. And such cases! A woman
+lying on a bare, filthy floor, a few old coats thrown over her, and vermin
+crawling everywhere, in spite of sanitary inspectors. But what did the woman,
+the sufferer, herself care! She ground her teeth and screamed and yelled with
+pains. In her calm periods she lay stupid and indifferent&mdash;or she cursed a
+little. But abject, stupid indifference was the bottom of it all: abject,
+brutal indifference to everything&mdash;yes, everything. Just a piece of female
+functioning, no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was supposed to receive a certain fee for these cases she attended in
+their homes. A small proportion of her fee she kept for herself, the rest she
+handed over to the Home. That was the agreement. She received her grudged fee
+callously, threatened and exacted it when it was not forthcoming. Ha!&mdash;if
+they didn’t have to pay you at all, these slum-people, they would treat you
+with more contempt than if you were one of themselves. It was one of the
+hardest lessons Alvina had to learn&mdash;to bully these people, in their own
+hovels, into some sort of obedience to her commands, and some sort of respect
+for her presence. She had to fight tooth and nail for this end. And in a week
+she was as hard and callous to them as they to her. And so her work was well
+done. She did not hate them. There they were. They had a certain life, and you
+had to take them at their own worth in their own way. What else! If one should
+be gentle, one was gentle. The difficulty did not lie there. The difficulty lay
+in being sufficiently rough and hard: that was the trouble. It cost a great
+struggle to be hard and callous enough. Glad she would have been to be allowed
+to treat them quietly and gently, with consideration. But pah&mdash;it was not
+their line. They wanted to be callous, and if you were not callous to match,
+they made a fool of you and prevented your doing your work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was Alvina her own real self all this time? The mighty question arises upon us,
+what is one’s own real self? It certainly is not what we think we are and ought
+to be. Alvina had been bred to think of herself as a delicate, tender, chaste
+creature with unselfish inclinations and a pure, “high” mind. Well, so she was,
+in the more-or-less exhausted part of herself. But high-mindedness had really
+come to an end with James Houghton, had really reached the point, not only of
+pathetic, but of dry and anti-human, repulsive quixotry. In Alvina
+high-mindedness was already stretched beyond the breaking point. Being a woman
+of some flexibility of temper, wrought through generations to a fine, pliant
+hardness, she flew back. She went right back on high-mindedness. Did she
+thereby betray it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We think not. If we turn over the head of the penny and look at the tail, we
+don’t thereby deny or betray the head. We do but adjust it to its own
+complement. And so with high-mindedness. It is but one side of the
+medal&mdash;the crowned reverse. On the obverse the three legs still go kicking
+the soft-footed spin of the universe, the dolphin flirts and the crab leers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Alvina spun her medal, and her medal came down tails. Heads or tails? Heads
+for generations. Then tails. See the poetic justice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Alvina decided to accept the decision of her fate. Or rather, being
+sufficiently a woman, she didn’t decide anything. She <i>was</i> her own fate.
+She went through her training experiences like another being. She was not
+herself, said Everybody. When she came home to Woodhouse at Easter, in her
+bonnet and cloak, everybody was simply knocked out. Imagine that this frail,
+pallid, diffident girl, so ladylike, was now a rather fat, warm-coloured young
+woman, strapping and strong-looking, and with a certain bounce. Imagine her
+mother’s startled, almost expiring:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, Vina dear!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vina laughed. She knew how they were all feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At least it agrees with your <i>health</i>,” said her father, sarcastically,
+to which Miss Pinnegar answered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, that’s a good deal.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Miss Frost said nothing the first day. Only the second day, at breakfast,
+as Alvina ate rather rapidly and rather well, the white-haired woman said
+quietly, with a tinge of cold contempt:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How changed you are, dear!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Am I?” laughed Alvina. “Oh, not really.” And she gave the arch look with her
+eyes, which made Miss Frost shudder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Inwardly, Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from questioning. Alvina was
+always speaking of the doctors: Doctor Young and Doctor Headley and Doctor
+James. She spoke of theatres and music-halls with these young men, and the
+jolly good time she had with them. And her blue-grey eyes seemed to have become
+harder and greyer, lighter somehow. In her wistfulness and her tender pathos,
+Alvina’s eyes would deepen their blue, so beautiful. And now, in her floridity,
+they were bright and arch and light-grey. The deep, tender, flowery blue was
+gone for ever. They were luminous and crystalline, like the eyes of a
+changeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from question. She wanted, she
+<i>needed</i> to ask of her charge: “Alvina, have you betrayed yourself with
+any of these young men?” But coldly her heart abstained from asking&mdash;or
+even from seriously thinking. She left the matter untouched for the moment. She
+was already too much shocked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly Alvina represented the young doctors as very nice, but rather fast
+young fellows. “My word, you have to have your wits about you with them!”
+Imagine such a speech from a girl tenderly nurtured: a speech uttered in her
+own home, and accompanied by a florid laugh, which would lead a chaste,
+generous woman like Miss Frost to imagine&mdash;well, she merely abstained from
+imagining anything. She had that strength of mind. She never for one moment
+attempted to answer the question to herself, as to whether Alvina had betrayed
+herself with any of these young doctors, or not. The question remained stated,
+but completely unanswered&mdash;coldly awaiting its answer. Only when Miss
+Frost kissed Alvina good-bye at the station, tears came to her eyes, and she
+said hurriedly, in a low voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Remember we are all praying for you, dear!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, don’t do that!” cried Alvina involuntarily, without knowing what she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then the train moved out, and she saw her darling standing there on the
+station, the pale, well-modelled face looking out from behind the gold-rimmed
+spectacles, wistfully, the strong, rather stout figure standing very still and
+unchangeable, under its coat and skirt of dark purple, the white hair
+glistening under the folded dark hat. Alvina threw herself down on the seat of
+her carriage. She loved her darling. She would love her through eternity. She
+knew she was right&mdash;amply and beautifully right, her darling, her beloved
+Miss Frost. Eternally and gloriously right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;it was a right which was fulfilled. There were
+other rights. There was another side to the medal. Purity and
+high-mindedness&mdash;the beautiful, but unbearable tyranny. The beautiful,
+unbearable tyranny of Miss Frost! It was time now for Miss Frost to die. It was
+time for that perfected flower to be gathered to immortality. A lovely
+<i>immortel</i>. But an obstruction to other, purple and carmine blossoms which
+were in bud on the stem. A lovely edelweiss&mdash;but time it was gathered into
+eternity. Black-purple and red anemones were due, real Adonis blood, and
+strange individual orchids, spotted and fantastic. Time for Miss Frost to die.
+She, Alvina, who loved her as no one else would ever love her, with that love
+which goes to the core of the universe, knew that it was time for her darling
+to be folded, oh, so gently and softly, into immortality. Mortality was busy
+with the day after her day. It was time for Miss Frost to die. As Alvina sat
+motionless in the train, running from Woodhouse to Tibshelf, it decided itself
+in her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was glad to be back in Islington, among all the horrors of her confinement
+cases. The doctors she knew hailed her. On the whole, these young men had not
+any too deep respect for the nurses as a whole. Why drag in respect? Human
+functions were too obviously established to make any great fuss about. And so
+the doctors put their arms round Alvina’s waist, because she was plump, and
+they kissed her face, because the skin was soft. And she laughed and squirmed a
+little, so that they felt all the more her warmth and softness under their
+arm’s pressure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s no use, you know,” she said, laughing rather breathless, but looking into
+their eyes with a curious definite look of unchangeable resistance. This only
+piqued them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s no use?” they asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook her head slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It isn’t any use your behaving like that with me,” she said, with the same
+challenging definiteness, finality: a flat negative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who’re you telling?” they said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For she did not at all forbid them to “behave like that.” Not in the least. She
+almost encouraged them. She laughed and arched her eyes and flirted. But her
+backbone became only the stronger and firmer. Soft and supple as she was, her
+backbone never yielded for an instant. It could not. She had to confess that
+she liked the young doctors. They were alert, their faces were clean and
+bright-looking. She liked the sort of intimacy with them, when they kissed her
+and wrestled with her in the empty laboratories or corridors&mdash;often in the
+intervals of most critical and appalling cases. She liked their arm round her
+waist, the kisses as she reached back her face, straining away, the sometimes
+desperate struggles. They took unpardonable liberties. They pinched her
+haunches and attacked her in unheard-of ways. Sometimes her blood really came
+up in the fight, and she felt as if, with her hands, she could tear any man,
+any male creature, limb from limb. A super-human, voltaic force filled her. For
+a moment she surged in massive, inhuman, female strength. The men always
+wilted. And invariably, when they wilted, she touched them with a sudden gentle
+touch, pitying. So that she always remained friends with them. When her curious
+Amazonic power left her again, and she was just a mere woman, she made shy eyes
+at them once more, and treated them with the inevitable female-to-male homage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men liked her. They cocked their eyes at her, when she was not looking, and
+wondered at her. They wondered over her. They had been beaten by her, every one
+of them. But they did not openly know it. They looked at her, as if she were
+Woman itself, some creature not quite personal. What they noticed, all of them,
+was the way her brown hair looped over her ears. There was something chaste,
+and noble, and war-like about it. The remote quality which hung about her in
+the midst of her intimacies and her frequencies, nothing high or lofty, but
+something given to the struggle and as yet invincible in the struggle, made
+them seek her out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They felt safe with her. They knew she would not let them down. She would not
+intrigue into marriage, or try and make use of them in any way. She didn’t care
+about them. And so, because of her isolate self-sufficiency in the fray, her
+wild, overweening backbone, they were ready to attend on her and serve her.
+Headley in particular hoped he might overcome her. He was a well-built fellow
+with sandy hair and a pugnacious face. The battle-spirit was really roused in
+him, and he heartily liked the woman. If he could have overcome her he would
+have been mad to marry her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With him, she summoned up all her mettle. She had never to be off her guard for
+a single minute. The treacherous suddenness of his attack&mdash;for he was
+treachery itself&mdash;had to be met by the voltaic suddenness of her
+resistance and counter-attack. It was nothing less than magical the way the
+soft, slumbering body of the woman could leap in one jet into terrible,
+overwhelming voltaic force, something strange and massive, at the first
+treacherous touch of the man’s determined hand. His strength was so different
+from hers&mdash;quick, muscular, lambent. But hers was deep and heaving, like
+the strange heaving of an earthquake, or the heave of a bull as it rises from
+earth. And by sheer non-human power, electric and paralysing, she could
+overcome the brawny red-headed fellow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was nearly a match for her. But she did not like him. The two were
+enemies&mdash;and good acquaintances. They were more or less matched. But as he
+found himself continually foiled, he became sulky, like a bear with a sore
+head. And then she avoided him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She really liked Young and James much better. James was a quick, slender,
+dark-haired fellow, a gentleman, who was always trying to catch her out with
+his quickness. She liked his fine, slim limbs, and his exaggerated generosity.
+He would ask her out to ridiculously expensive suppers, and send her sweets and
+flowers, fabulously recherché. He was always immaculately well-dressed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course, as a lady <i>and</i> a nurse,” he said to her, “you are two sorts
+of women in one.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she was not impressed by his wisdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was most strongly inclined to Young. He was a plump young man of middle
+height, with those blue eyes of a little boy which are so knowing: particularly
+of a woman’s secrets. It is a strange thing that these childish men have such a
+deep, half-perverse knowledge of the other sex. Young was certainly innocent as
+far as acts went. Yet his hair was going thin at the crown already.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He also played with her&mdash;being a doctor, and she a nurse who encouraged
+it. He too touched her and kissed her: and did <i>not</i> rouse her to contest.
+For his touch and his kiss had that nearness of a little boy’s, which nearly
+melted her. She could almost have succumbed to him. If it had not been that
+with him there was no question of succumbing. She would have had to take him
+between her hands and caress and cajole him like a cherub, into a fall. And
+though she would have like to do so, yet that inflexible stiffness of her
+backbone prevented her. She could not do as she liked. There was an inflexible
+fate within her, which shaped her ends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes she wondered to herself, over her own virginity. Was it worth much,
+after all, behaving as she did? Did she care about it, anyhow? Didn’t she
+rather despise it? To sin in thought was as bad as to sin in act. If the
+thought was the same as the act, how much more was her behaviour equivalent to
+a whole committal? She wished she were wholly committed. She wished she had
+gone the whole length.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But sophistry and wishing did her no good. There she was, still isolate. And
+still there was that in her which would preserve her intact, sophistry and
+deliberate intention notwithstanding. Her time was up. She was returning to
+Woodhouse virgin as she had left it. In a measure she felt herself beaten. Why?
+Who knows. But so it was, she felt herself beaten, condemned to go back to what
+she was before. Fate had been too strong for her and her desires: fate which
+was not an external association of forces, but which was integral in her own
+nature. Her own inscrutable nature was her fate: sore against her will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was August when she came home, in her nurse’s uniform. She was beaten by
+fate, as far as chastity and virginity went. But she came home with high
+material hopes. Here was James Houghton’s own daughter. She had an affluent
+future ahead of her. A fully-qualified maternity nurse, she was going to bring
+all the babies of the district easily and triumphantly into the world. She was
+going to charge the regulation fee of two guineas a case: and even on a modest
+estimate of ten babies a month, she would have twenty guineas. For well-to-do
+mothers she would charge from three to five guineas. At this calculation she
+would make an easy three hundred a year, without slaving either. She would be
+independent, she could laugh every one in the face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bounced back into Woodhouse to make her fortune.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV<br/>
+TWO WOMEN DIE</h2>
+
+<p>
+It goes without saying that Alvina Houghton did not make her fortune as a
+maternity nurse. Being her father’s daughter, we might almost expect that she
+did not make a penny. But she did&mdash;just a few pence. She had exactly four
+cases&mdash;and then no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The reason is obvious. Who in Woodhouse was going to afford a two-guinea nurse,
+for a confinement? And who who was going to engage Alvina Houghton, even if
+they were ready to stretch their purse-strings? After all, they all knew her as
+<i>Miss</i> Houghton, with a stress on the <i>Miss</i>, and they could not
+conceive of her as Nurse Houghton. Besides, there seemed something positively
+indecent in technically engaging one who was so much part of themselves. They
+all preferred either a simple mid-wife, or a nurse procured out of the unknown
+by the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Alvina wanted to make her fortune&mdash;or even her living&mdash;she should
+have gone to a strange town. She was so advised by every one she knew. But she
+never for one moment reflected on the advice. She had become a maternity nurse
+in order to practise in Woodhouse, just as James Houghton had purchased his
+elegancies to sell in Woodhouse. And father and daughter alike calmly expected
+Woodhouse demand to rise to their supply. So both alike were defeated in their
+expectations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a little while Alvina flaunted about in her nurse’s uniform. Then she left
+it off. And as she left it off she lost her bounce, her colour, and her flesh.
+Gradually she shrank back to the old, slim, reticent pallor, with eyes a little
+too large for her face. And now it seemed her face was a little too long, a
+little gaunt. And in her civilian clothes she seemed a little dowdy, shabby.
+And altogether, she looked older: she looked more than her age, which was only
+twenty-four years. Here was the old Alvina come back, rather battered and
+deteriorated, apparently. There was even a tiny touch of the trollops in her
+dowdiness&mdash;so the shrewd-eyed collier-wives decided. But she was a lady
+still, and unbeaten. Undeniably she was a lady. And that was rather irritating
+to the well-to-do and florid daughter of W.H. Johnson, next door but one.
+Undeniably a lady, and undeniably unmastered. This last was irritating to the
+good-natured but easy-coming young men in the Chapel Choir, where she resumed
+her seat. These young men had the good nature of dogs that wag their tails and
+expect to be patted. And Alvina did not pat them. To be sure, a pat from such a
+shabbily-black-kid-gloved hand would not have been so flattering&mdash;she need
+not imagine it! The way she hung back and looked at them, the young men, as
+knowing as if she were a prostitute, and yet with the well-bred indifference of
+a lady&mdash;well, it was almost offensive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a matter of fact, Alvina was detached for the time being from her interest
+in young men. Manchester House had settled down on her like a doom. There was
+the quartered shop, through which one had to worm one’s encumbered way in the
+gloom&mdash;unless one liked to go miles round a back street, to the yard
+entry. There was James Houghton, faintly powdered with coal-dust, flitting back
+and forth in a fever of nervous frenzy, to Throttle-Ha’penny&mdash;so carried
+away that he never saw his daughter at all the first time he came in, after her
+return. And when she reminded him of her presence, with her&mdash;“Hello,
+father!”&mdash;he merely glancied hurriedly at her, as if vexed with her
+interruption, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, Alvina, you’re back. You’re back to find us busy.” And he went off into
+his ecstasy again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Houghton was now very weak, and so nervous in her weakness that she could
+not bear the slightest sound. Her greatest horror was lest her husband should
+come into the room. On his entry she became blue at the lips immediately, so he
+had to hurry out again. At last he stayed away, only hurriedly asking, each
+time he came into the house, “How is Mrs. Houghton? Ha!” Then off into
+uninterrupted Throttle-Ha’penny ecstasy once more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Alvina went up to her mother’s room, on her return, all the poor invalid
+could do was to tremble into tears, and cry faintly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Child, you look dreadful. It isn’t you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This from the pathetic little figure in the bed had struck Alvina like a blow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not, mother?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But for her mother she had to remove her nurse’s uniform. And at the same time,
+she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a woman who came in, and
+the servant had been nursing the invalid between them. Miss Frost was worn and
+rather heavy: her old buoyancy and brightness was gone. She had become
+irritable also. She was very glad that Alvina had returned to take this
+responsibility of nursing off her shoulders. For her wonderful energy had ebbed
+and oozed away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina said nothing, but settled down to her task. She was quiet and technical
+with her mother. The two loved one another, with a curious impersonal love
+which had not a single word to exchange: an almost after-death love. In these
+days Mrs. Houghton never talked&mdash;unless to fret a little. So Alvina sat
+for many hours in the lofty, sombre bedroom, looking out silently on the
+street, or hurriedly rising to attend the sick woman. For continually came the
+fretful murmur:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Vina!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To sit still&mdash;who knows the long discipline of it, nowadays, as our
+mothers and grandmothers knew. To sit still, for days, months, and
+years&mdash;perforce to sit still, with some dignity of tranquil bearing.
+Alvina was old-fashioned. She had the old, womanly faculty for sitting quiet
+and collected&mdash;not indeed for a life-time, but for long spells together.
+And so it was during these months nursing her mother. She attended constantly
+on the invalid: she did a good deal of work about the house: she took her walks
+and occupied her place in the choir on Sunday mornings. And yet, from August to
+January, she seemed to be seated in her chair in the bedroom, sometimes
+reading, but mostly quite still, her hands quietly in her lap, her mind subdued
+by musing. She did not even think, not even remember. Even such activity would
+have made her presence too disturbing in the room. She sat quite still, with
+all her activities in abeyance&mdash;except that strange will-to-passivity
+which was by no means a relaxation, but a severe, deep, soul-discipline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the moment there was a sense of prosperity&mdash;or probable prosperity, in
+the house. And there was an abundance of Throttle-Ha’penny coal. It was dirty
+ashy stuff. The lower bars of the grate were constantly blanked in with white
+powdery ash, which it was fatal to try to poke away. For if you poked and
+poked, you raised white cumulus clouds of ash, and you were left at last with a
+few darkening and sulphurous embers. But even so, by continuous application,
+you could keep the room moderately warm, without feeling you were consuming the
+house’s meat and drink in the grate. Which was one blessing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The days, the months darkened past, and Alvina returned to her old thinness and
+pallor. Her fore-arms were thin, they rested very still in her lap, there was a
+ladylike stillness about them as she took her walk, in her lingering, yet
+watchful fashion. She saw everything. Yet she passed without attracting any
+attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Early in the year her mother died. Her father came and wept self-conscious
+tears, Miss Frost cried a little, painfully. And Alvina cried also: she did not
+quite know why or wherefore. Her poor mother! Alvina had the old-fashioned
+wisdom to let be, and not to think. After all, it was not for her to
+reconstruct her parents’ lives. She came after them. Her day was not their day,
+their life was not hers. Returning up-channel to re-discover their course was
+quite another matter from flowing down-stream into the unknown, as they had
+done thirty years before. This supercilious and impertinent exploration of the
+generation gone by, by the present generation, is nothing to our credit. As a
+matter of fact, no generation repeats the mistakes of the generation ahead, any
+more than any river repeats its course. So the young need not be so proud of
+their superiority over the old. The young generation glibly makes its own
+mistakes: and <i>how</i> detestable these new mistakes are, why, only the
+future will be able to tell us. But be sure they are quite as detestable, quite
+as full of lies and hypocrisy, as any of the mistakes of our parents. There is
+no such thing as <i>absolute</i> wisdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wisdom has reference only to the past. The future remains for ever an infinite
+field for mistakes. You can’t know beforehand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Alvina refrained from pondering on her mother’s life and fate. Whatever the
+fate of the mother, the fate of the daughter will be otherwise. That is
+organically inevitable. The business of the daughter is with her own fate, not
+with her mother’s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost however meditated bitterly on the fate of the poor dead woman.
+Bitterly she brooded on the lot of woman. Here was Clariss Houghton, married,
+and a mother&mdash;and dead. What a life! Who was responsible? James Houghton.
+What ought James Houghton to have done differently? Everything. In short, he
+should have been somebody else, and not himself. Which is the <i>reductio ad
+absurdum</i> of idealism. The universe should be something else, and not what
+it is: so the nonsense of idealistic conclusion. The cat should not catch the
+mouse, the mouse should not nibble holes in the table-cloth, and so on and so
+on, in the House that Jack Built.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Miss Frost sat by the dead in grief and despair. This was the end of
+another woman’s life: such an end! Poor Clariss: guilty James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet why? Why was James more guilty than Clariss? Is the only aim and end of a
+man’s life, to make some woman, or parcel of women, happy? Why? Why should
+anybody expect to be <i>made happy</i>, and develop heart-disease if she isn’t?
+Surely Clariss’ heart-disease was a more emphatic sign of obstinate
+self-importance than ever James’ shop-windows were. She expected to be <i>made
+happy</i>. Every woman in Europe and America expects it. On her own head then
+if she is made unhappy: for her expectation is arrogant and impertinent. The
+be-all and end-all of life doesn’t lie in feminine happiness&mdash;or in any
+happiness. Happiness is a sort of soap-tablet&mdash;he won’t be happy till he
+gets it, and when he’s got it, the precious baby, it’ll cost him his eyes and
+his stomach. Could anything be more puerile than a mankind howling because it
+isn’t happy: like a baby in the bath!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Clariss, however, was dead&mdash;and if she had developed heart-disease
+because she wasn’t happy, well, she had died of her own heart-disease, poor
+thing. Wherein lies every moral that mankind can wish to draw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost wept in anguish, and saw nothing but another woman betrayed to
+sorrow and a slow death. Sorrow and a slow death, because a man had married
+her. Miss Frost wept also for herself, for her own sorrow and slow death.
+Sorrow and slow death, because a man had <i>not</i> married her. Wretched man,
+what is he to do with these exigeant and never-to-be-satisfied women? Our
+mothers pined because our fathers drank and were rakes. Our wives pine because
+we are virtuous but inadequate. Who is this sphinx, this woman? Where is the
+Oedipus that will solve her riddle of happiness, and then strangle
+her?&mdash;only to marry his own mother!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the months that followed her mother’s death, Alvina went on the same, in
+abeyance. She took over the housekeeping, and received one or two overflow
+pupils from Miss Frost, young girls to whom she gave lessons in the dark
+drawing-room of Manchester House. She was busy&mdash;chiefly with housekeeping.
+There seemed a great deal to put in order after her mother’s death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sorted all her mother’s clothes&mdash;expensive, old-fashioned clothes,
+hardly worn. What was to be done with them? She gave them away, without
+consulting anybody. She kept a few private things, she inherited a few pieces
+of jewellery. Remarkable how little trace her mother left&mdash;hardly a trace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She decided to move into the big, monumental bedroom in front of the house. She
+liked space, she liked the windows. She was strictly mistress, too. So she took
+her place. Her mother’s little sitting-room was cold and disused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Alvina went through all the linen. There was still abundance, and it was
+all sound. James had had such large ideas of setting up house, in the
+beginning. And now he begrudged the household expenses, begrudged the very soap
+and candles, and even would have liked to introduce margarine instead of
+butter. This last degradation the women refused. But James was above food.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old Alvina seemed completely herself again. She was quiet, dutiful,
+affectionate. She appealed in her old, childish way to Miss Frost, and Miss
+Frost called her “Dear!” with all the old protective gentleness. But there was
+a difference. Underneath her appearance of appeal, Alvina was almost coldly
+independent. She did what she thought she would. The old manner of intimacy
+persisted between her and her darling. And perhaps neither of them knew that
+the intimacy itself had gone. But it had. There was no spontaneous interchange
+between them. It was a kind of deadlock. Each knew the great love she felt for
+the other. But now it was a love static, inoperative. The warm flow did not run
+any more. Yet each would have died for the other, would have done anything to
+spare the other hurt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost was becoming tired, dragged looking. She would sink into a chair as
+if she wished never to rise again&mdash;never to make the effort. And Alvina
+quickly would attend on her, bring her tea and take away her music, try to make
+everything smooth. And continually the young woman exhorted the elder to work
+less, to give up her pupils. But Miss Frost answered quickly, nervously:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When I don’t work I shan’t live.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why&mdash;?” came the long query from Alvina. And in her expostulation
+there was a touch of mockery for such a creed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost did not answer. Her face took on a greyish tinge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In these days Alvina struck up an odd friendship with Miss Pinnegar, after so
+many years of opposition. She felt herself more in sympathy with Miss
+Pinnegar&mdash;it was so easy to get on with her, she left so much unsaid. What
+was left unsaid mattered more to Alvina now than anything that was expressed.
+She began to hate outspokenness and direct speaking-forth of the whole mind. It
+nauseated her. She wanted tacit admission of difference, not open, wholehearted
+communication. And Miss Pinnegar made this admission all along. She never made
+you feel for an instant that she was one with you. She was never even near. She
+kept quietly on her own ground, and left you on yours. And across the space
+came her quiet commonplaces&mdash;but fraught with space.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With Miss Frost all was openness, explicit and downright. Not that Miss Frost
+trespassed. She was far more well-bred than Miss Pinnegar. But her very
+breeding had that Protestant, northern quality which assumes that we have all
+the same high standards, really, and all the same divine nature, intrinsically.
+It is a fine assumption. But willy-nilly, it sickened Alvina at this time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She preferred Miss Pinnegar, and admired Miss Pinnegar’s humble wisdom with a
+new admiration. The two were talking of Dr. Headley, who, they read in the
+newspaper, had disgraced himself finally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose,” said Miss Pinnegar, “it takes his sort to make all sorts.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such bits of homely wisdom were like relief from cramp and pain, to Alvina. “It
+takes his sort to make all sorts.” It took her sort too. And it took her
+father’s sort&mdash;as well as her mother’s and Miss Frost’s. It took every
+sort to make all sorts. Why have standards and a regulation pattern? Why have a
+human criterion? There’s the point! Why, in the name of all the free heavens,
+have human criteria? Why? Simply for bullying and narrowness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina felt at her ease with Miss Pinnegar. The two women talked away to one
+another, in their quiet moments: and slipped apart like conspirators when Miss
+Frost came in: as if there was something to be ashamed of. If there was, heaven
+knows what it might have been, for their talk was ordinary enough. But Alvina
+liked to be with Miss Pinnegar in the kitchen. Miss Pinnegar wasn’t competent
+and masterful like Miss Frost: she was ordinary and uninspired, with quiet,
+unobserved movements. But she was deep, and there was some secret satisfaction
+in her very quality of secrecy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the days and weeks and months slipped by, and Alvina was hidden like a mole
+in the dark chambers of Manchester House, busy with cooking and cleaning and
+arranging, getting the house in her own order, and attending to her pupils. She
+took her walk in the afternoon. Once and only once she went to
+Throttle-Ha’penny, and, seized with sudden curiosity, insisted on being wound
+down in the iron bucket to the little workings underneath. Everything was quite
+tidy in the short gang-ways down below, timbered and in sound order. The miners
+were competent enough. But water dripped dismally in places, and there was a
+stale feeling in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father accompanied her, pointed her to the seam of yellow-flecked coal, the
+shale and the bind, the direction of the trend. He had already an airy-fairy
+kind of knowledge of the whole affair, and seemed like some not quite
+trustworthy conjuror who had conjured it all up by sleight of hand. In the
+background the miners stood grey and ghostly, in the candle-light, and seemed
+to listen sardonically. One of them, facile in his subordinate way as James in
+his authoritative, kept chiming in:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay, that’s the road it goes, Miss Huffen&mdash;yis, yo’ll see th’ roof theer
+bellies down a bit&mdash;s’ loose. No, you dunna get th’ puddin’ stones i’ this
+pit&mdash;s’ not deep enough. Eh, they come down on you plumb, as if th’ roof
+had laid its egg on you. Ay, it runs a bit thin down here&mdash;six inches. You
+see th’ bed’s soft, it’s a sort o’ clay-bind, it’s not clunch such as you get
+deeper. Oh, it’s easy workin’&mdash;you don’t have to knock your guts out.
+There’s no need for shots, Miss Huffen&mdash;we bring it down&mdash;you see
+here&mdash;” And he stooped, pointing to a shallow, shelving excavation which
+he was making under the coal. The working was low, you must stoop all the time.
+The roof and the timbered sides of the way seemed to press on you. It was as if
+she were in her tomb for ever, like the dead and everlasting Egyptians. She was
+frightened, but fascinated. The collier kept on talking to her, stretching his
+bare, grey-black hairy arm across her vision, and pointing with his knotted
+hand. The thick-wicked tallow candles guttered and smelled. There was a
+thickness in the air, a sense of dark, fluid presence in the thick atmosphere,
+the dark, fluid, viscous voice of the collier making a broad-vowelled, clapping
+sound in her ear. He seemed to linger near her as if he knew&mdash;as if he
+knew&mdash;what? Something for ever unknowable and inadmissible, something that
+belonged purely to the underground: to the slaves who work underground:
+knowledge humiliated, subjected, but ponderous and inevitable. And still his
+voice went on clapping in her ear, and still his presence edged near her, and
+seemed to impinge on her&mdash;a smallish, semi-grotesque, grey-obscure figure
+with a naked brandished forearm: not human: a creature of the subterranean
+world, melted out like a bat, fluid. She felt herself melting out also, to
+become a mere vocal ghost, a presence in the thick atmosphere. Her lungs felt
+thick and slow, her mind dissolved, she felt she could cling like a bat in the
+long swoon of the crannied, underworld darkness. Cling like a bat and sway for
+ever swooning in the draughts of the darkness&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she was up on the earth again she blinked and peered at the world in
+amazement. What a pretty, luminous place it was, carved in substantial
+luminosity. What a strange and lovely place, bubbling iridescent-golden on the
+surface of the underworld. Iridescent golden&mdash;could anything be more
+fascinating! Like lovely glancing surface on fluid pitch. But a velvet surface.
+A velvet surface of golden light, velvet-pile of gold and pale luminosity, and
+strange beautiful elevations of houses and trees, and depressions of fields and
+roads, all golden and floating like atmospheric majolica. Never had the common
+ugliness of Woodhouse seemed so entrancing. She thought she had never seen such
+beauty&mdash;a lovely luminous majolica, living and palpitating, the glossy,
+svelte world-surface, the exquisite face of all the darkness. It was like a
+vision. Perhaps gnomes and subterranean workers, enslaved in the era of light,
+see with such eyes. Perhaps that is why they are absolutely blind to
+conventional ugliness. For truly nothing could be more hideous than Woodhouse,
+as the miners had built it and disposed it. And yet, the very cabbage-stumps
+and rotten fences of the gardens, the very back-yards were instinct with magic,
+molten as they seemed with the bubbling-up of the under-darkness, bubbling up
+of majolica weight and luminosity, quite ignorant of the sky, heavy and
+satisfying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Slaves of the underworld! She watched the swing of the grey colliers along the
+pavement with a new fascination, hypnotized by a new vision. Slaves&mdash;the
+underground trolls and iron-workers, magic, mischievous, and enslaved, of the
+ancient stories. But tall&mdash;the miners seemed to her to loom tall and grey,
+in their enslaved magic. Slaves who would cause the superimposed day-order to
+fall. Not because, individually, they wanted to. But because, collectively,
+something bubbled up in them, the force of darkness which had no master and no
+control. It would bubble and stir in them as earthquakes stir the earth. It
+would be simply disastrous, because it had no master. There was no dark master
+in the world. The puerile world went on crying out for a new Jesus, another
+Saviour from the sky, another heavenly superman. When what was wanted was a
+Dark Master from the underworld.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they streamed past her, home from work&mdash;grey from head to foot,
+distorted in shape, cramped, with curious faces that came out pallid from under
+their dirt. Their walk was heavy-footed and slurring, their bearing stiff and
+grotesque. A stream they were&mdash;yet they seemed to her to loom like
+strange, valid figures of fairy-lore, unrealized and as yet unexperienced. The
+miners, the iron-workers, those who fashion the stuff of the underworld.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it always comes to its children, the nostalgia of the repulsive,
+heavy-footed Midlands came over her again, even whilst she was there in the
+midst. The curious, dark, inexplicable and yet insatiable craving&mdash;as if
+for an earthquake. To feel the earth heave and shudder and shatter the world
+from beneath. To go down in the débâcle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so, in spite of everything, poverty, dowdiness, obscurity, and nothingness,
+she was content to stay in abeyance at home for the time. True, she was filled
+with the same old, slow, dreadful craving of the Midlands: a craving insatiable
+and inexplicable. But the very craving kept her still. For at this time she did
+not translate it into a desire, or need, for love. At the back of her mind
+somewhere was the fixed idea, the fixed intention of finding love, a man. But
+as yet, at this period, the idea was in abeyance, it did not act. The craving
+that possessed her as it possesses everybody, in a greater or less degree, in
+those parts, sustained her darkly and unconsciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A hot summer waned into autumn, the long, bewildering days drew in, the
+transient nights, only a few breaths of shadow between noon and noon, deepened
+and strengthened. A restlessness came over everybody. There was another short
+strike among the miners. James Houghton, like an excited beetle, scurried to
+and fro, feeling he was making his fortune. Never had Woodhouse been so
+thronged on Fridays with purchasers and money-spenders. The place seemed
+surcharged with life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Autumn lasted beautiful till end of October. And then suddenly, cold rain,
+endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through the wind and
+rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had seemed almost to blossom
+again in the long hot days, regaining a free cheerfulness that amounted almost
+to liveliness, and who even caused a sort of scandal by her intimacy with a
+rather handsome but common stranger, an insurance agent who had come into the
+place with a good, unused tenor voice&mdash;now she wilted again. She had given
+the rather florid young man tea in her room, and had laboured away at his fine,
+metallic voice, correcting him and teaching him and laughing with him and
+spending really a remarkable number of hours alone with him in her room in
+Woodhouse&mdash;for she had given up tramping the country, and had hired a
+music-room in a quiet street, where she gave her lessons. And the young man had
+hung round, and had never wanted to go away. They would prolong their
+tête-à-tête and their singing on till ten o’clock at night, and Miss Frost
+would return to Manchester House flushed and handsome and a little shy, while
+the young man, who was common, took on a new boldness in the streets. He had
+auburn hair, high colouring, and a rather challenging bearing. He took on a new
+boldness, his own estimate of himself rose considerably, with Miss Frost and
+his trained voice to justify him. He was a little insolent and condescending to
+the natives, who disliked him. For their lives they could not imagine what Miss
+Frost could find in him. They began even to dislike her, and a pretty scandal
+was started about the pair, in the pleasant room where Miss Frost had her
+piano, her books, and her flowers. The scandal was as unjust as most scandals
+are. Yet truly, all that summer and autumn Miss Frost had a new and slightly
+aggressive cheerfulness and humour. And Manchester House saw little of her,
+comparatively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then, at the end of September, the young man was removed by his Insurance
+Company to another district. And at the end of October set in the most
+abominable and unbearable weather, deluges of rain and north winds, cutting the
+tender, summer-unfolded people to pieces. Miss Frost wilted at once. A silence
+came over her. She shuddered when she had to leave the fire. She went in the
+morning to her room, and stayed there all the day, in a hot, close atmosphere,
+shuddering when her pupils brought the outside weather with them to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was always subject to bronchitis. In November she had a bad bronchitis
+cold. Then suddenly one morning she could not get up. Alvina went in and found
+her semi-conscious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl was almost mad. She flew to the rescue. She despatched her father
+instantly for the doctor, she heaped the sticks in the bedroom grate and made a
+bright fire, she brough hot milk and brandy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you, dear, thank you. It’s a bronchial cold,” whispered Miss Frost
+hurriedly, trying to sip the milk. She could not. She didn’t want it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve sent for the doctor,” said Alvina, in her cool voice, wherein none the
+less there rang the old hesitancy of sheer love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost lifted her eyes:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s no need,” she said, and she smiled winsomely at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was pneumonia. Useless to talk of the distracted anguish of Alvina during
+the next two days. She was so swift and sensitive in her nursing, she seemed to
+have second sight. She talked to nobody. In her silence her soul was alone with
+the soul of her darling. The long semi-consciousness and the tearing pain of
+pneumonia, the anguished sickness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But sometimes the grey eyes would open and smile with delicate winsomeness at
+Alvina, and Alvina smiled back, with a cheery, answering winsomeness. But that
+costs something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the evening of the second day, Miss Frost got her hand from under the
+bedclothes, and laid it on Alvina’s hand. Alvina leaned down to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Everything is for you, my love,” whispered Miss Frost, looking with strange
+eyes on Alvina’s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t talk, Miss Frost,” moaned Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Everything is for you,” murmured the sick woman&mdash;“except&mdash;” and she
+enumerated some tiny legacies which showed her generous, thoughtful nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I shall remember,” said Alvina, beyond tears now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Frost smiled with her old bright, wonderful look, that had a touch of
+queenliness in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Kiss me, dear,” she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina kissed her, and could not suppress the whimpering of her too-much grief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The night passed slowly. Sometimes the grey eyes of the sick woman rested dark,
+dilated, haggard on Alvina’s face, with a heavy, almost accusing look,
+sinister. Then they closed again. And sometimes they looked pathetic, with a
+mute, stricken appeal. Then again they closed&mdash;only to open again tense
+with pain. Alvina wiped her blood-phlegmed lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning she died&mdash;lay there haggard, death-smeared, with her lovely
+white hair smeared also, and disorderly: she who had been so beautiful and
+clean always.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina knew death&mdash;which is untellable. She knew that her darling carried
+away a portion of her own soul into death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she was alone. And the agony of being alone, the agony of grief,
+passionate, passionate grief for her darling who was torn into death&mdash;the
+agony of self-reproach, regret; the agony of remembrance; the agony of the
+looks of the dying woman, winsome, and sinisterly accusing, and pathetically,
+despairingly appealing&mdash;probe after probe of mortal agony, which
+throughout eternity would never lose its power to pierce to the quick!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina seemed to keep strangely calm and aloof all the days after the death.
+Only when she was alone she suffered till she felt her heart really broke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall never feel anything any more,” she said in her abrupt way to Miss
+Frost’s friend, another woman of over fifty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nonsense, child!” expostulated Mrs. Lawson gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shan’t! I shall never have a heart to feel anything any more,” said Alvina,
+with a strange, distraught roll of the eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not like this, child. But you’ll feel other things&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t the heart,” persisted Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not yet,” said Mrs. Lawson gently. “You can’t expect&mdash;But time&mdash;time
+brings back&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh well&mdash;but I don’t believe it,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+People thought her rather hard. To one of her gossips Miss Pinnegar confessed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought she’d have felt it more. She cared more for her than she did for her
+own mother&mdash;and her mother knew it. Mrs. Houghton complained bitterly,
+sometimes, that <i>she</i> had <i>no</i> love. They were everything to one
+another, Miss Frost and Alvina. I should have thought she’d have felt it more.
+But you never know. A good thing if she doesn’t, really.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar herself did not care one little bit that Miss Frost was dead. She
+did not feel herself implicated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nearest relatives came down, and everything was settled. The will was
+found, just a brief line on a piece of notepaper expressing a wish that Alvina
+should have everything. Alvina herself told the verbal requests. All was
+quietly fulfilled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As it might well be. For there was nothing to leave. Just sixty-three pounds in
+the bank&mdash;no more: then the clothes, piano, books and music. Miss Frost’s
+brother had these latter, at his own request: the books and music, and the
+piano. Alvina inherited the few simple trinkets, and about forty-five pounds in
+money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Poor Miss Frost,” cried Mrs. Lawson, weeping rather bitterly&mdash;“she saved
+nothing for herself. You can see why she never wanted to grow old, so that she
+couldn’t work. You can see. It’s a shame, it’s a shame, one of the best women
+that ever trod earth.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Manchester House settled down to its deeper silence, its darker gloom. Miss
+Frost was irreparably gone. With her, the reality went out of the house. It
+seemed to be silently waiting to disappear. And Alvina and Miss Pinnegar might
+move about and talk in vain. They could never remove the sense of waiting to
+finish: it was all just waiting to finish. And the three, James and Alvina and
+Miss Pinnegar, waited lingering through the months, for the house to come to an
+end. With Miss Frost its spirit passed away: it was no more. Dark,
+empty-feeling, it seemed all the time like a house just before a sale.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V<br/>
+THE BEAU</h2>
+
+<p>
+Throttle-Ha’penny worked fitfully through the winter, and in the spring broke
+down. By this time James Houghton had a pathetic, childish look which touched
+the hearts of Alvina and Miss Pinnegar. They began to treat him with a certain
+feminine indulgence, as he fluttered round, agitated and bewildered. He was
+like a bird that has flown into a room and is exhausted, enfeebled by its
+attempts to fly through the false freedom of the window-glass. Sometimes he
+would sit moping in a corner, with his head under his wing. But Miss Pinnegar
+chased him forth, like the stealthy cat she was, chased him up to the work-room
+to consider some detail of work, chased him into the shop to turn over the old
+débris of the stock. At one time he showed the alarming symptom of brooding
+over his wife’s death. Miss Pinnegar was thoroughly scared. But she was not
+inventive. It was left to Alvina to suggest: “Why doesn’t father let the shop,
+and some of the house?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Let the shop! Let the last inch of frontage on the street! James thought of it.
+Let the shop! Permit the name of Houghton to disappear from the list of
+tradesmen? Withdraw? Disappear? Become a nameless nobody, occupying obscure
+premises?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought about it. And thinking about it, became so indignant at the thought
+that he pulled his scattered energies together within his frail frame. And then
+he came out with the most original of all his schemes. Manchester House was to
+be fitted up as a boarding-house for the better classes, and was to make a
+fortune catering for the needs of these gentry, who had now nowhere to go. Yes,
+Manchester House should be fitted up as a sort of quiet family hotel for the
+better classes. The shop should be turned into an elegant hall-entrance,
+carpeted, with a hall-porter and a wide plate-glass door, round-arched, in the
+round arch of which the words: “Manchester House” should appear large and
+distinguished, making an arch also, whilst underneath, more refined and
+smaller, should show the words: “Private Hotel.” James was to be proprietor and
+secretary, keeping the books and attending to correspondence: Miss Pinnegar was
+to be manageress, superintending the servants and directing the house, whilst
+Alvina was to occupy the equivocal position of “hostess.” She was to shake
+hands with the guests: she was to play the piano, and she was to nurse the
+sick. For in the prospectus James would include: “Trained nurse always on the
+premises.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why!” cried Miss Pinnegar, for once brutally and angrily hostile to him:
+“You’ll make it sound like a private lunatic asylum.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you explain why?” answered James tartly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For himself, he was enraptured with the scheme. He began to tot up ideas and
+expenses. There would be the handsome entrance and hall: there would be an
+extension of the kitchen and scullery: there would be an installing of new
+hot-water and sanitary arrangements: there would be a light lift-arrangment
+from the kitchen: there would be a handsome glazed balcony or loggia or terrace
+on the first floor at the back, over the whole length of the back-yard. This
+loggia would give a wonderful outlook to the south-west and the west. In the
+immediate foreground, to be sure, would be the yard of the livery-stables and
+the rather slummy dwellings of the colliers, sloping downhill. But these could
+be easily overlooked, for the eye would instinctively wander across the green
+and shallow valley, to the long upslope opposite, showing the Manor set in its
+clump of trees, and farms and haystacks pleasantly dotted, and moderately far
+off coal-mines with twinkling headstocks and narrow railwaylines crossing the
+arable fields, and heaps of burning slag. The balcony or covered
+terrace&mdash;James settled down at last to the word <i>terrace</i>&mdash;was
+to be one of the features of the house: <i>the</i> feature. It was to be fitted
+up as a sort of elegant lounging restaurant. Elegant teas, at two-and-six per
+head, and elegant suppers, at five shillings without wine, were to be served
+here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a teetotaller and a man of ascetic views, James, in his first shallow
+moments, before he thought about it, assumed that his house should be entirely
+non-alcoholic. A temperance house! Already he winced. We all know what a
+provincial Temperance Hotel is. Besides, there is magic in the sound of wine.
+<i>Wines Served</i>. The legend attracted him immensely&mdash;as a teetotaller,
+it had a mysterious, hypnotic influence. He must have wines. He knew nothing
+about them. But Alfred Swayn, from the Liquor Vaults, would put him in the
+running in five minutes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was most curious to see Miss Pinnegar turtle up at the mention of this
+scheme. When first it was disclosed to her, her colour came up like a turkey’s
+in a flush of indignant anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous!” she blurted, bridling and ducking her
+head and turning aside, like an indignant turkey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ridiculous! Why? Will you explain why!” retorted James, turtling also.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s absolutely ridiculous!” she repeated, unable to do more than splutter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, we’ll see,” said James, rising to superiority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again he began to dart absorbedly about, like a bird building a nest. Miss
+Pinnegar watched him with a sort of sullen fury. She went to the shop door to
+peep out after him. She saw him slip into the Liquor Vaults, and she came back
+to announce to Alvina:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s taken to drink!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Drink?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s what it is,” said Miss Pinnegar vindictively. “Drink!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina sank down and laughed till she was weak. It all seemed really too funny
+to her&mdash;too funny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t see what it is to laugh at,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+“Disgraceful&mdash;it’s disgraceful! But I’m not going to stop to be made a
+fool of. I shall be no manageress, I tell you. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Who
+does he think will come to the place? He’s out of his mind&mdash;and it’s
+drink; that’s what it is! Going into the Liquor Vaults at ten o’clock in the
+morning! That’s where he gets his ideas&mdash;out of whiskey&mdash;or brandy!
+But he’s not going to make a fool of me&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh dear!” sighed Alvina, laughing herself into composure and a little
+weariness. “I know it’s <i>perfectly</i> ridiculous. We shall have to stop
+him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve said all I can say,” blurted Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as James came in to a meal, the two women attacked him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But father,” said Alvina, “there’ll be nobody to come.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Plenty of people&mdash;plenty of people,” said her father. “Look at The
+Shakespeare’s Head, in Knarborough.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Knarborough! Is this Knarborough!” blurted Miss Pinnegar. “Where are the
+business men here? Where are the foreigners coming here for business, where’s
+our lace-trade and our stocking-trade?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There <i>are</i> business men,” said James. “And there are ladies.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who,” retorted Miss Pinnegar, “is going to give half-a-crown for a tea? They
+expect tea and bread-and-butter for fourpence, and cake for sixpence, and
+apricots or pineapple for ninepence, and ham-and-tongue for a shilling, and
+fried ham and eggs and jam and cake as much as they can eat for one-and-two. If
+they expect a knife-and-fork tea for a shilling, what are you going to give
+them for half-a-crown?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know what I shall offer,” said James. “And we may make it two shillings.”
+Through his mind flitted the idea of 1/11-1/2&mdash;but he rejected it. “You
+don’t realize that I’m catering for a higher class of custom&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But there <i>isn’t</i> any higher class in Woodhouse, father,” said Alvina,
+unable to restrain a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you create a supply you create a demand,” he retorted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But how can you create a supply of better class people?” asked Alvina
+mockingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James took on his refined, abstracted look, as if he were preoccupied on higher
+planes. It was the look of an obstinate little boy who poses on the side of the
+angels&mdash;or so the women saw it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar was prepared to combat him now by sheer weight of opposition. She
+would pitch her dead negative will obstinately against him. She would not speak
+to him, she would not observe his presence, she was stone deaf and stone blind:
+there <i>was</i> no James. This nettled him. And she miscalculated him. He
+merely took another circuit, and rose another flight higher on the spiral of
+his spiritual egotism. He believed himself finely and sacredly in the right,
+that he was frustrated by lower beings, above whom it was his duty to rise, to
+soar. So he soared to serene heights, and his Private Hotel seemed a celestial
+injunction, an erection on a higher plane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He saw the architect: and then, with his plans and schemes, he saw the builder
+and contractor. The builder gave an estimate of six or seven hundred&mdash;but
+James had better see the plumber and fitter who was going to instal the new hot
+water and sanitary system. James was a little dashed. He had calculated much
+less. Having only a few hundred pounds in possession after Throttle-Ha’penny,
+he was prepared to mortgage Manchester House if he could keep in hand a
+sufficent sum of money for the running of his establishment for a year. He knew
+he would have to sacrifice Miss Pinnegar’s work-room. He knew, and he feared
+Miss Pinnegar’s violent and unmitigated hostility. Still&mdash;his obstinate
+spirit rose&mdash;he was quite prepared to risk everything on this last throw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Allsop, daughter of the builder, called to see Alvina. The Allsops were
+great Chapel people, and Cassie Allsop was one of the old maids. She was thin
+and nipped and wistful looking, about forty-two years old. In private, she was
+tyrannously exacting with the servants, and spiteful, rather mean with her
+motherless nieces. But in public she had this nipped, wistful look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was surprised by this visit. When she found Miss Allsop at the back
+door, all her inherent hostility awoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, is it you, Miss Allsop! Will you come in.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sat in the middle room, the common living room of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I called,” said Miss Allsop, coming to the point at once, and speaking in her
+Sunday-school-teacher voice, “to ask you if you know about this Private Hotel
+scheme of your father’s?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, you do! Well, we wondered. Mr. Houghton came to father about the building
+alterations yesterday. They’ll be awfully expensive.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will they?” said Alvina, making big, mocking eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, very. What do <i>you</i> think of the scheme?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I?&mdash;well&mdash;!” Alvina hesitated, then broke into a laugh. “To tell the
+truth I haven’t thought much about it at all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well I think you should,” said Miss Allsop severely. “Father’s sure it won’t
+pay&mdash;and it will cost I don’t know how much. It is bound to be a dead
+loss. And your father’s getting on. You’ll be left stranded in the world
+without a penny to bless yourself with. I think it’s an awful outlook for you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here she was, with a bang, planked upon the shelf among the old maids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I do. Sincerely! I should do all I could to prevent him, if I were you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Allsop took her departure. Alvina felt herself jolted in her mood. An old
+maid along with Cassie Allsop!&mdash;and James Houghton fooling about with the
+last bit of money, mortgaging Manchester House up to the hilt. Alvina sank in a
+kind of weary mortification, in which <i>her</i> peculiar obstinacy persisted
+devilishly and spitefully. “Oh well, so be it,” said her spirit vindictively.
+“Let the meagre, mean, despicable fate fulfil itself.” Her old anger against
+her father arose again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arthur Witham, the plumber, came in with James Houghton to examine the house.
+Arthur Witham was also one of the Chapel men&mdash;as had been his common,
+interfering, uneducated father before him. The father had left each of his sons
+a fair little sum of money, which Arthur, the eldest, had already increased
+ten-fold. He was sly and slow and uneducated also, and spoke with a broad
+accent. But he was not bad-looking, a tight fellow with big blue eyes, who
+aspired to keep his “h’s” in the right place, and would have been a gentleman
+if he could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Against her usual habit, Alvina joined the plumber and her father in the
+scullery. Arthur Witham saluted her with some respect. She liked his blue eyes
+and tight figure. He was keen and sly in business, very watchful, and slow to
+commit himself. Now he poked and peered and crept under the sink. Alvina
+watched him half disappear&mdash;she handed him a candle&mdash;and she laughed
+to herself seeing his tight, well-shaped hind-quarters protruding from under
+the sink like the wrong end of a dog from a kennel. He was keen after money,
+was Arthur&mdash;and bossy, creeping slyly after his own self-importance and
+power. He wanted power&mdash;and he would creep quietly after it till he got
+it: as much as he was capable of. His “h’s” were a barbed-wire fence and
+entanglement, preventing his unlimited progress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He emerged from under the sink, and they went to the kitchen and afterwards
+upstairs. Alvina followed them persistently, but a little aloof, and silent.
+When the tour of inspection was almost over, she said innocently:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t it cost a great deal?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arthur Witham slowly shook his head. Then he looked at her. She smiled rather
+archly into his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It won’t be done for nothing,” he said, looking at her again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We can go into that later,” said James, leading off the plumber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good morning, Miss Houghton,” said Arthur Witham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good morning, Mr. Witham,” replied Alvina brightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she lingered in the background, and as Arthur Witham was going she heard
+him say: “Well, I’ll work it out, Mr. Houghton. I’ll work it out, and let you
+know tonight. I’ll get the figures by tonight.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The younger man’s tone was a little off-hand, just a little supercilious with
+her father, she thought. James’s star was setting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoon, directly after dinner, Alvina went out. She entered the shop,
+where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty stood about, varied by sheets
+of glass and fancy paper. Lottie Witham, Arthur’s wife, appeared. She was a
+woman of thirty-five, a bit of a shrew, with social ambitions and no children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is Mr. Witham in?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Witham eyed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll see,” she answered, and she left the shop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Arthur entered, in his shirt-sleeves: rather attractive-looking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know what you’ll think of me, and what I’ve come for,” said Alvina,
+with hurried amiability. Arthur lifted his blue eyes to her, and Mrs. Witham
+appeared in the background, in the inner doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, what is it?” said Arthur stolidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Make it as dear as you can, for father,” said Alvina, laughing nervously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arthur’s blue eyes rested on her face. Mrs. Witham advanced into the shop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why? What’s that for?” asked Lottie Witham shrewdly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina turned to the woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t say anything,” she said. “But we don’t want father to go on with this
+scheme. It’s bound to fail. And Miss Pinnegar and I can’t have anything to do
+with it anyway. I shall go away.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s bound to fail,” said Arthur Witham stolidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And father has no money, I’m sure,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lottie Witham eyed the thin, nervous face of Alvina. For some reason, she liked
+her. And of course, Alvina was considered a lady in Woodhouse. That was what it
+had come to, with James’s declining fortunes: she was merely <i>considered</i>
+a lady. The consideration was no longer indisputable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall you come in a minute?” said Lottie Witham, lifting the flap of the
+counter. It was a rare and bold stroke on Mrs. Witham’s part. Alvina’s
+immediate instinct was to refuse. But she liked Arthur Witham, in his shirt
+sleeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;I must be back in a minute,” she said, as she entered the embrasure
+of the counter. She felt as if she were really venturing on new ground. She was
+led into the new drawing-room, done in new peacock-and-bronze brocade
+furniture, with gilt and brass and white walls. This was the Withams’ new
+house, and Lottie was proud of it. The two women had a short confidential chat.
+Arthur lingered in the doorway a while, then went away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina did not really like Lottie Witham. Yet the other woman was sharp and
+shrewd in the uptake, and for some reason she fancied Alvina. So she was
+invited to tea at Manchester House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this, so many difficulties rose up in James Houghton’s way that he was
+worried almost out of his life. His two women left him alone. Outside
+difficulties multiplied on him till he abandoned his scheme&mdash;he was simply
+driven out of it by untoward circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lottie Witham came to tea, and was shown over Manchester House. She had no
+opinion at all of Manchester House&mdash;wouldn’t hang a cat in such a gloomy
+hole. <i>Still</i>, she was rather impressed by the sense of superiority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed as she stood in Alvina’s bedroom, and looked at
+the enormous furniture, the lofty tableland of the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh my goodness! I wouldn’t sleep in <i>that</i> for a trifle, by myself!
+Aren’t you frightened out of your life? Even if I had Arthur at one side of me,
+I should be that frightened on the other side I shouldn’t know what to do. Do
+you sleep here by yourself?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Alvina laughing. “I haven’t got an Arthur, even for one side.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my word, you’d want a husband on both sides, in that bed,” said Lottie
+Witham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was asked back to tea&mdash;on Wednesday afternoon, closing day. Arthur
+was there to tea&mdash;very ill at ease and feeling as if his hands were
+swollen. Alvina got on better with his wife, who watched closely to learn from
+her guest the secret of repose. The indefinable repose and inevitability of a
+lady&mdash;even of a lady who is nervous and agitated&mdash;this was the
+problem which occupied Lottie’s shrewd and active, but lower-class mind. She
+even did not resent Alvina’s laughing attempts to draw out the clumsy Arthur:
+because Alvina was a lady, and her tactics must be studied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina really liked Arthur, and thought a good deal about him&mdash;heaven
+knows why. He and Lottie were quite happy together, and he was absorbed in his
+petty ambitions. In his limited way, he was invincibly ambitious. He would end
+by making a sufficient fortune, and by being a town councillor and a J.P. But
+beyond Woodhouse he did not exist. Why then should Alvina be attracted by him?
+Perhaps because of his “closeness,” and his secret determinedness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she met him in the street she would stop him&mdash;though he was always
+busy&mdash;and make him exchange a few words with her. And when she had tea at
+his house, she would try to rouse his attention. But though he looked at her,
+steadily, with his blue eyes, from under his long lashes, still, she knew, he
+looked at her objectively. He never conceived any connection with her
+whatsoever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Lottie who had a scheming mind. In the family of three brothers there
+was one&mdash;not black sheep, but white. There was one who was climbing out,
+to be a gentleman. This was Albert, the second brother. He had been a
+school-teacher in Woodhouse: had gone out to South Africa and occupied a post
+in a sort of Grammar School in one of the cities of Cape Colony. He had
+accumulated some money, to add to his patrimony. Now he was in England, at
+Oxford, where he would take his belated degree. When he had got his degree, he
+would return to South Africa to become head of his school, at seven hundred a
+year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert was thirty-two years old, and unmarried. Lottie was determined he should
+take back to the Cape a suitable wife: presumably Alvina. He spent his
+vacations in Woodhouse&mdash;and he was only in his first year at Oxford. Well
+now, what could be more suitable&mdash;a young man at Oxford, a young lady in
+Woodhouse. Lottie told Alvina all about him, and Alvina was quite excited to
+meet him. She imagined him a taller, more fascinating, educated Arthur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the fear of being an old maid, the fear of her own virginity was really
+gaining on Alvina. There was a terrible sombre futility, nothingness, in
+Manchester House. She was twenty-six years old. Her life was utterly barren now
+Miss Frost had gone. She was shabby and penniless, a mere household drudge: for
+James begrudged even a girl to help in the kitchen. She was looking faded and
+worn. Panic, the terrible and deadly panic which overcomes so many unmarried
+women at about the age of thirty, was beginning to overcome her. She would not
+care about marriage, if even she had a lover. But some sort of <i>terror</i>
+hunted her to the search of a lover. She would become loose, she would become a
+prostitute, she said to herself, rather than die off like Cassie Allsop and the
+rest, wither slowly and ignominiously and hideously on the tree. She would
+rather kill herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it needs a certain natural gift to become a loose woman or a prostitute. If
+you haven’t got the qualities which attract loose men, what are you to do?
+Supposing it isn’t in your nature to attract loose and promiscuous men! Why,
+then you can’t be a prostitute, if you try your head off: nor even a loose
+woman. Since <i>willing</i> won’t do it. It requires a second party to come to
+an agreement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Therefore all Alvina’s desperate and profligate schemes and ideas fell to
+nought before the inexorable in her nature. And the inexorable in her nature
+was highly exclusive and selective, an inevitable negation of looseness or
+prostitution. Hence men were afraid of her&mdash;of her power, once they had
+committed themselves. She would involve and lead a man on, she would destroy
+him rather than not get of him what she wanted. And what she wanted was
+something serious and risky. Not mere marriage&mdash;oh dear no! But a profound
+and dangerous inter-relationship. As well ask the paddlers in the small surf of
+passion to plunge themselves into the heaving gulf of mid-ocean. Bah, with
+their trousers turned up to their knees it was enough for them to wet their
+toes in the dangerous sea. They were having nothing to do with such desperate
+nereids as Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had cast her mind on Arthur. Truly ridiculous. But there was something
+compact and energetic and wilful about him that she magnified ten-fold and so
+obtained, imaginatively, an attractive lover. She brooded her days shabbily
+away in Manchester House, busy with housework drudgery. Since the collapse of
+Throttle-Ha’penny, James Houghton had become so stingy that it was like an
+inflammation in him. A silver sixpence had a pale and celestial radiance which
+he could not forego, a nebulous whiteness which made him feel he had heaven in
+his hold. How then could he let it go. Even a brown penny seemed alive and
+pulsing with mysterious blood, potent, magical. He loved the flock of his busy
+pennies, in the shop, as if they had been divine bees bringing him sustenance
+from the infinite. But the pennies he saw dribbling away in household expenses
+troubled him acutely, as if they were live things leaving his fold. It was a
+constant struggle to get from him enough money for necessities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the household diet became meagre in the extreme, the coal was eked out
+inch by inch, and when Alvina must have her boots mended she must draw on her
+own little stock of money. For James Houghton had the impudence to make her an
+allowance of two shillings a week. She was very angry. Yet her anger was of
+that dangerous, half-ironical sort which wears away its subject and has no
+outward effect. A feeling of half-bitter mockery kept her going. In the
+ponderous, rather sordid nullity of Manchester House she became shadowy and
+absorbed, absorbed in nothing in particular, yet absorbed. She was always more
+or less busy: and certainly there was always something to be done, whether she
+did it or not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shop was opened once a week, on Friday evenings. James Houghton 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;compassionate, one might almost say&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina looked at Arthur. Arthur was short and dark-haired and nicely coloured.
+But, now his brother was there, he too seemed to have a dumb, aqueous silence,
+fish-like and aloof, about him. He seemed to swim like a fish in his own little
+element. Strange it all was, like Alice in Wonderland. Alvina understood now
+Lottie’s strained sort of thinness, a haggard, sinewy, sea-weedy look. The poor
+thing was all the time swimming for her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For Alvina it was a most curious tea-party. She listened and smiled and made
+vague answers to Albert, who leaned his broad, thin, brittle shoulders towards
+her. Lottie seemed rather shadowily to preside. But it was Arthur who came out
+into communication. And now, uttering his rather broad-mouthed speeches, she
+seemed to hear in him a quieter, subtler edition of his father. His father had
+been a little, terrifically loud-voiced, hard-skinned man, amazingly uneducated
+and amazingly bullying, who had tyrannized for many years over the Sunday
+School children during morning service. He had been an odd-looking creature
+with round grey whiskers: to Alvina, always a creature, never a man: an
+atrocious leprechaun from under the Chapel floor. And how he used to dig the
+children in the back with his horrible iron thumb, if the poor things happened
+to whisper or nod in chapel!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were his children&mdash;most curious chips of the old block. Who ever
+would have believed she would have been taking tea with them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why don’t you have a bicycle, and go out on it?” Arthur was saying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I can’t ride,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’d learn in a couple of lessons. There’s nothing in riding a bicycle.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t believe I ever should,” laughed Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t mean to say you’re nervous?” said Arthur rudely and sneeringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I <i>am</i>,” she persisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You needn’t be nervous with me,” smiled Albert broadly, with his odd, genuine
+gallantry. “I’ll hold you on.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I haven’t got a bicycle,” said Alvina, feeling she was slowly colouring to
+a deep, uneasy blush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You can have mine to learn on,” said Lottie. “Albert will look after it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s your chance,” said Arthur rudely. “Take it while you’ve got it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Alvina did not want to learn to ride a bicycle. The two Miss Carlins, two
+more old maids, had made themselves ridiculous for ever by becoming twin cycle
+fiends. And the horrible energetic strain of peddling a bicycle over miles and
+miles of high-way did not attract Alvina at all. She was completely indifferent
+to sight-seeing and scouring about. She liked taking a walk, in her lingering
+indifferent fashion. But rushing about in any way was hateful to her. And then,
+to be taught to ride a bicycle by Albert Witham! Her very soul stood still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Albert, beaming down at her from his strange pale eyes. “Come on.
+When will you have your first lesson?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh,” cried Alvina in confusion. “I can’t promise. I haven’t time, really.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Time!” exclaimed Arthur rudely. “But what do you do wi’ yourself all day?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have to keep house,” she said, looking at him archly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“House! You can put a chain round its neck, and tie it up,” he retorted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert laughed, showing all his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sure you find plenty to do, with everything on your hands,” said Lottie to
+Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I do!” said Alvina. “By evening I’m quite tired&mdash;though you mayn’t
+believe it, since you say I do nothing,” she added, laughing confusedly to
+Arthur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he, hard-headed little fortune-maker, replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have a girl to help you, don’t you!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert, however, was beaming at her sympathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have too much to do indoors,” he said. “It would do you good to get a bit
+of exercise out of doors. Come down to the Coach Road tomorrow afternoon, and
+let me give you a lesson. Go on&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the coach-road was a level drive between beautiful park-like
+grass-stretches, down in the valley. It was a delightful place for learning to
+ride a bicycle, but open in full view of all the world. Alvina would have died
+of shame. She began to laugh nervously and hurriedly at the very thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I can’t. I really can’t. Thanks, awfully,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can’t you really!” said Albert. “Oh well, we’ll say another day, shall we?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When I feel I can,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, when you feel like it,” replied Albert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s more it,” said Arthur. “It’s not the time. It’s the nervousness.” Again
+Albert beamed at her sympathetically, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I’ll hold you. You needn’t be afraid.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I’m not afraid,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t <i>say</i> you are,” interposed Arthur. “Women’s faults mustn’t be
+owned up to.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was beginning to feel quite dazed. Their mechanical, overbearing way was
+something she was unaccustomed to. It was like the jaws of a pair of insentient
+iron pincers. She rose, saying she must go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert rose also, and reached for his straw hat, with its coloured band.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll stroll up with you, if you don’t mind,” he said. And he took his place at
+her side along the Knarborough Road, where everybody turned to look. For, of
+course, he had a sort of fame in Woodhouse. She went with him laughing and
+chatting. But she did not feel at all comfortable. He seemed so pleased. Only
+he was not pleased with <i>her</i>. He was pleased with himself on her account:
+inordinately pleased with himself. In his world, as in a fish’s, there was but
+his own swimming self: and if he chanced to have something swimming alongside
+and doing him credit, why, so much the more complacently he smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked stiff and erect, with his head pressed rather back, so that he always
+seemed to be advancing from the head and shoulders, in a flat kind of advance,
+horizontal. He did not seem to be walking with his whole body. His manner was
+oddly gallant, with a gallantry that completely missed the individual in the
+woman, circled round her and flew home gratified to his own hive. The way he
+raised his hat, the way he inclined and smiled flatly, even rather excitedly,
+as he talked, was all a little discomforting and comical.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He left her at the shop door, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall see you again, I hope.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, yes,” she replied, rattling the door anxiously, for it was locked. She
+heard her father’s step at last tripping down the shop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-evening, Mr. Houghton,” said Albert suavely and with a certain
+confidence, as James peered out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, good-evening!” said James, letting Alvina pass, and shutting the door in
+Albert’s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who was that?” he asked her sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Albert Witham,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What has <i>he</i> got to do with you?” said James shrewishly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing, I hope.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She fled into the obscurity of Manchester House, out of the grey summer
+evening. The Withams threw her off her pivot, and made her feel she was not
+herself. She felt she didn’t know, she couldn’t feel, she was just scattered
+and decentralized. And she was rather afraid of the Witham brothers. She might
+be their victim. She intended to avoid them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following days she saw Albert, in his Norfolk jacket and flannel trousers
+and his straw hat, strolling past several times and looking in through the shop
+door and up at the upper windows. But she hid herself thoroughly. When she went
+out, it was by the back way. So she avoided him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But on Sunday evening, there he sat, rather stiff and brittle in the old
+Withams’ pew, his head pressed a little back, so that his face and neck seemed
+slightly flattened. He wore very low, turn-down starched collars that showed
+all his neck. And he kept looking up at her during the service&mdash;she sat in
+the choir-loft&mdash;gazing up at her with apparently love-lorn eyes and a
+faint, intimate smile&mdash;the sort of <i>je-sais-tout</i> look of a private
+swain. Arthur also occasionally cast a judicious eye on her, as if she were a
+chimney that needed repairing, and he must estimate the cost, and whether it
+was worth it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sure enough, as she came out through the narrow choir gate into Knarborough
+Road, there was Albert stepping forward like a policeman, and saluting her and
+smiling down on her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know if I’m presuming&mdash;” he said, in a mock deferential way that
+showed he didn’t imagine he <i>could</i> presume.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, not at all,” said Alvina airily. He smiled with assurance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You haven’t got any engagement, then, for this evening?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” she replied simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We might take a walk. What do you think?” he said, glancing down the road in
+either direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What, after all, was she to think? All the girls were pairing off with the boys
+for the after-chapel stroll and spoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t mind,” she said. “But I can’t go far. I’ve got to be in at nine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Which way shall we go?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He steered off, turned downhill through the common gardens, and proposed to
+take her the not-very-original walk up Flint’s Lane, and along the railway
+line&mdash;the colliery railway, that is&mdash;then back up the Marlpool Road:
+a sort of circle. She agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They did not find a great deal to talk about. She questioned him about his
+plans, and about the Cape. But save for bare outlines, which he gave readily
+enough, he was rather close.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you do on Sunday nights as a rule?” he asked her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I have a walk with Lucy Grainger&mdash;or I go down to Hallam’s&mdash;or
+go home,” she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t go walks with the fellows, then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father would never have it,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What will he say now?” he asked, with self-satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Goodness knows!” she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Goodness usually does,” he answered archly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they came to the rather stumbly railway, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you take my arm?”&mdash;offering her the said member.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I’m all right,” she said. “Thanks.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go on,” he said, pressing a little nearer to her, and offering his arm.
+“There’s nothing against it, is there?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, it’s not that,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And feeling in a false position, she took his arm, rather unwillingly. He drew
+a little nearer to her, and walked with a slight prance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We get on better, don’t we?” he said, giving her hand the tiniest squeeze with
+his arm against his side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Much!” she replied, with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he lowered his voice oddly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s many a day since I was on this railroad,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is this one of your old walks?” she asked, malicious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I’ve been it once or twice&mdash;with girls that are all married now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Didn’t you want to marry?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I don’t know. I may have done. But it never came off, somehow. I’ve
+sometimes thought it never would come off.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know, exactly. It didn’t seem to, you know. Perhaps neither of us was
+properly inclined.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should think so,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And yet,” he admitted slyly, “I should <i>like</i> to marry&mdash;” To this
+she did not answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shouldn’t you?” he continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When I meet the right man,” she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s it,” he said. “There, that’s just it! And you <i>haven’t</i> met him?”
+His voice seemed smiling with a sort of triumph, as if he had caught her out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;once I thought I had&mdash;when I was engaged to Alexander.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you found you were mistaken?” he insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. Mother was so ill at the time&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s always something to consider,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kept on wondering what she should do if he wanted to kiss her. The mere
+incongruity of such a desire on his part formed a problem. Luckily, for this
+evening he formulated no desire, but left her in the shop-door soon after nine,
+with the request:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall see you in the week, shan’t I?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m not sure. I can’t promise now,” she said hurriedly. “Good-night.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What she felt chiefly about him was a decentralized perplexity, very much akin
+to no feeling at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who do you think took me for a walk, Miss Pinnegar?” she said, laughing, to
+her confidante.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t imagine,” replied Miss Pinnegar, eyeing her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You never would imagine,” said Alvina. “Albert Witham.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Albert Witham!” exclaimed Miss Pinnegar, standing quite motionless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It may well take your breath away,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, it’s not that!” hurriedly expostulated Miss Pinnegar. “Well&mdash;! Well,
+I declare!&mdash;” and then, on a new note: “Well, he’s very eligible, I
+think.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Most eligible!” replied Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, he is,” insisted Miss Pinnegar. “I think it’s very good.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s very good?” asked Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar hesitated. She looked at Alvina. She reconsidered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course he’s not the man I should have imagined for you, but&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You think he’ll do?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not?” said Miss Pinnegar. “Why shouldn’t he do&mdash;if you like him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah&mdash;!” cried Alvina, sinking on the sofa with a laugh. “That’s it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course you couldn’t have anything to do with him if you don’t care for
+him,” pronounced Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert continued to hang around. He did not make any direct attack for a few
+days. Suddenly one evening he appeared at the back door with a bunch of white
+stocks in his hand. His face lit up with a sudden, odd smile when she opened
+the door&mdash;a broad, pale-gleaming, remarkable smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lottie wanted to know if you’d come to tea tomorrow,” he said straight out,
+looking at her with the pale light in his eyes, that smiled palely right into
+her eyes, but did not see her at all. He was waiting on the doorstep to come
+in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you come in?” said Alvina. “Father is in.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I don’t mind,” he said, pleased. He mounted the steps, still holding his
+bunch of white stocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James Houghton screwed round in his chair and peered over his spectacles to see
+who was coming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father,” said Alvina, “you know Mr. Witham, don’t you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James Houghton half rose. He still peered over his glasses at the intruder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;I do by sight. How do you do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held out his frail hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert held back, with the flowers in his own hand, and giving his broad,
+pleased, pale-gleaming smile from father to daughter, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What am I to do with these? Will you accept them, Miss Houghton?” He stared at
+her with shining, pallid smiling eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are they for me?” she said, with false brightness. “Thank you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James Houghton looked over the top of his spectacles, searchingly, at the
+flowers, as if they had been a bunch of white and sharp-toothed ferrets. Then
+he looked as suspiciously at the hand which Albert at last extended to him. He
+shook it slightly, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Take a seat.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid I’m disturbing you in your reading,” said Albert, still having the
+drawn, excited smile on his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;” said James Houghton. “The light is fading.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina came in with the flowers in a jar. She set them on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Haven’t they a lovely scent?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you think so?” he replied, again with the excited smile. There was a pause.
+Albert, rather embarrassed, reached forward, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“May I see what you’re reading!” And he turned over the book. “‘Tommy and
+Grizel!’ Oh yes! What do you think of it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said James, “I am only in the beginning.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think it’s interesting, myself,” said Albert, “as a study of a man who can’t
+get away from himself. You meet a lot of people like that. What I wonder is why
+they find it such a drawback.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Find what a drawback?” asked James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not being able to get away from themselves. That self-consciousness. It
+hampers them, and interferes with their power of action. Now I wonder why
+self-consciousness should hinder a man in his action? Why does it cause
+misgiving? I think I’m self-conscious, but I don’t think I have so many
+misgivings. I don’t see that they’re necessary.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Certainly I think Tommy is a weak character. I believe he’s a despicable
+character,” said James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I don’t know so much about that,” said Albert. “I shouldn’t say weak,
+exactly. He’s only weak in one direction. No, what I wonder is why he feels
+guilty. If you feel self-conscious, there’s no need to feel guilty about it, is
+there?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stared with his strange, smiling stare at James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shouldn’t say so,” replied James. “But if a man never knows his own mind, he
+certainly can’t be much of a man.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t see it,” replied Albert. “What’s the matter is that he feels guilty
+for not knowing his own mind. That’s the unnecessary part. The guilty
+feeling&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Albert seemed insistent on this point, which had no particular interest for
+James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where we’ve got to make a change,” said Albert, “is in the feeling that other
+people have a right to tell us what we ought to feel and do. Nobody knows what
+another man ought to feel. Every man has his own special feelings, and his own
+right to them. That’s where it is with education. You ought not to want all
+your children to feel alike. Their natures are all different, and so they
+should all feel different, about practically everything.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There would be no end to the confusion,” said James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There needn’t be any confusion to speak of. You agree to a number of rules and
+conventions and laws, for social purposes. But in private you feel just as you
+do feel, without occasion for trying to feel something else.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” said James. “There are certain feelings common to humanity,
+such as love, and honour, and truth.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you call them feelings?” said Albert. “I should say what is common is
+the idea. The idea is common to humanity, once you’ve put it into words. But
+the feeling varies with every man. The same idea represents a different kind of
+feeling in every different individual. It seems to me that’s what we’ve got to
+recognize if we’re going to do anything with education. We don’t want to
+produce mass feelings. Don’t you agree?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor James was too bewildered to know whether to agree or not to agree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall we have a light, Alvina?” he said to his daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina lit the incandescent gas-jet that hung in the middle of the room. The
+hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as she reached up to it.
+But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly. It seemed as if his words came
+off him without affecting him at all. He did not think about what he was
+feeling, and he did not feel what he was thinking about. And therefore she
+hardly heard what he said. Yet she believed he was clever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was evident Albert was quite blissfully happy, in his own way, sitting there
+at the end of the sofa not far from the fire, and talking animatedly. The
+uncomfortable thing was that though he talked in the direction of his
+interlocutor, he did not speak <i>to</i> him: merely said his words towards
+him. James, however, was such an airy feather himself he did not remark this,
+but only felt a little self-important at sustaining such a subtle conversation
+with a man from Oxford. Alvina, who never expected to be interested in clever
+conversations, after a long experience of her father, found her expectation
+justified again. She was not interested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man was quite nicely dressed, in the regulation tweed jacket and flannel
+trousers and brown shoes. He was even rather smart, judging from his yellow
+socks and yellow-and-brown tie. Miss Pinnegar eyed him with approval when she
+came in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-evening!” she said, just a trifle condescendingly, as she shook hands.
+“How do you find Woodhouse, after being away so long?” Her way of speaking was
+so quiet, as if she hardly spoke aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” he answered. “I find it the same in many ways.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You wouldn’t like to settle here again?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think I should. It feels a little cramped, you know, after a new
+country. But it has its attractions.” Here he smiled meaningful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Miss Pinnegar. “I suppose the old connections count for something.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They do. Oh decidedly they do. There’s no associations like the old ones.” He
+smiled flatly as he looked towards Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You find it so, do you!” returned Miss Pinnegar. “You don’t find that the new
+connections make up for the old?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not altogether, they don’t. There’s something missing&mdash;” Again he looked
+towards Alvina. But she did not answer his look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar. “I’m glad we still count for something, in spite of
+the greater attractions. How long have you in England?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Another year. Just a year. This time next year I expect I shall be sailing
+back to the Cape.” He smiled as if in anticipation. Yet it was hard to believe
+that it mattered to him&mdash;or that anything mattered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And is Oxford agreeable to you?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, yes. I keep myself busy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What are your subjects?” asked James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“English and History. But I do mental science for my own interest.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina had taken up a piece of sewing. She sat under the light, brooding a
+little. What <i>had</i> all this to do with her. The man talked on, and beamed
+in her direction. And she felt a little important. But moved or
+touched?&mdash;not the least in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered if any one would ask him to supper&mdash;bread and cheese and
+currant-loaf, and water, was all that offered. No one asked him, and at last he
+rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Show Mr. Witham out through the shop, Alvina,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina piloted the man through the long, dark, encumbered way of the shop. At
+the door he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ve never said whether you’re coming to tea on Thursday.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think I can,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seemed rather taken aback.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” he said. “What stops you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve so much to do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled slowly and satirically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t it keep?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, really. I can’t come on Thursday&mdash;thank you so much. Good-night!” She
+gave him her hand and turned quickly into the shop, closing the door. He
+remained standing in the porch, staring at the closed door. Then, lifting his
+lip, he turned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar decidedly, as Alvina re-entered. “You can say what
+you like&mdash;but I think he’s <i>very pleasant</i>, <i>very</i> pleasant.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Extremely intelligent,” said James Houghton, shifting in his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was awfully bored,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They both looked at her, irritated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this she really did what she could to avoid him. When she saw him
+sauntering down the street in all his leisure, a sort of anger possessed her.
+On Sunday, she slipped down from the choir into the Chapel, and out through the
+main entrance, whilst he awaited her at the small exit. And by good luck, when
+he called one evening in the week, she was out. She returned down the yard. And
+there, through the uncurtained window, she saw him sitting awaiting her.
+Without a thought, she turned on her heel and fled away. She did not come in
+till he had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How late you are!” said Miss Pinnegar. “Mr. Witham was here till ten minutes
+ago.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” laughed Alvina. “I came down the yard and saw him. So I went back till
+he’d gone.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar looked at her in displeasure:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose you know your own mind,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you explain such behaviour?” said her father pettishly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I didn’t want to meet him,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next evening was Saturday. Alvina had inherited Miss Frost’s task of
+attending to the Chapel flowers once a quarter. She had been round the gardens
+of her friends, and gathered the scarlet and hot yellow and purple flowers of
+August, asters, red stocks, tall Japanese sunflowers, coreopsis, geraniums.
+With these in her basket she slipped out towards evening, to the Chapel. She
+knew Mr. Calladine, the caretaker would not lock up till she had been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment she got inside the Chapel&mdash;it was a big, airy, pleasant
+building&mdash;she heard hammering from the organ-loft, and saw the flicker of
+a candle. Some workman busy before Sunday. She shut the baize door behind her,
+and hurried across to the vestry, for vases, then out to the tap, for water.
+All was warm and still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was full early evening. The yellow light streamed through the side windows,
+the big stained-glass window at the end was deep and full of glowing colour, in
+which the yellows and reds were richest. Above in the organ-loft the hammering
+continued. She arranged her flowers in many vases, till the communion table was
+like the window, a tangle of strong yellow, and crimson, and purple, and
+bronze-green. She tried to keep the effect light and kaleidoscopic, an
+interplay of tossed pieces of strong, hot colour, vibrating and lightly
+intermingled. It was very gorgeous, for a communion table. But the day of white
+lilies was over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly there was a terrific crash and bang and tumble, up in the organ-loft,
+followed by a cursing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you hurt?” called Alvina, looking up into space. The candle had
+disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was no reply. Feeling curious, she went out of the Chapel to the
+stairs in the side porch, and ran up to the organ. She went round the
+side&mdash;and there she saw a man in his shirt-sleeves sitting crouched in the
+obscurity on the floor between the organ and the wall of the back, while a
+collapsed pair of steps lay between her and him. It was too dark to see who it
+was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That rotten pair of steps came down with me,” said the infuriated voice of
+Arthur Witham, “and about broke my leg.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina advanced towards him, picking her way over the steps. He was sitting
+nursing his leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it bad?” she asked, stooping towards him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the shadow he lifted up his face. It was pale, and his eyes were savage with
+anger. Her face was near his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is bad,” he said furious because of the shock. The shock had thrown him off
+his balance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let me see,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He removed his hands from clasping his shin, some distance above the ankle. She
+put her fingers over the bone, over his stocking, to feel if there was any
+fracture. Immediately her fingers were wet with blood. Then he did a curious
+thing. With both his hands he pressed her hand down over his wounded leg,
+pressed it with all his might, as if her hand were a plaster. For some moments
+he sat pressing her hand over his broken shin, completely oblivious, as some
+people are when they have had a shock and a hurt, intense on one point of
+consciousness only, and for the rest unconscious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he began to come to himself. The pain modified itself. He could not bear
+the sudden acute hurt to his shin. That was one of his sensitive, unbearable
+parts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The bone isn’t broken,” she said professionally. “But you’d better get the
+stocking out of it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without a thought, he pulled his trouser-leg higher and rolled down his
+stocking, extremely gingerly, and sick with pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can you show a light?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found the candle. And she knew where matches always rested, on a little
+ledge of the organ. So she brought him a light, whilst he examined his broken
+shin. The blood was flowing, but not so much. It was a nasty cut bruise,
+swelling and looking very painful. He sat looking at it absorbedly, bent over
+it in the candle-light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s not so very bad, when the pain goes off,” she said, noticing the black
+hairs of his shin. “We’d better tie it up. Have you got a handkerchief?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s in my jacket,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked round for his jacket. He annoyed her a little, by being completely
+oblivious of her. She got his handkerchief and wiped her fingers on it. Then of
+her own kerchief she made a pad for the wound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I tie it up, then?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he did not answer. He sat still nursing his leg, looking at his hurt, while
+the blood slowly trickled down the wet hairs towards his ankle. There was
+nothing to do but wait for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I tie it up, then?” she repeated at length, a little impatient. So he
+put his leg a little forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at the wound, and wiped it a little. Then she folded the pad of her
+own handkerchief, and laid it over the hurt. And again he did the same thing,
+he took her hand as if it were a plaster, and applied it to his wound, pressing
+it cautiously but firmly down. She was rather angry. He took no notice of her
+at all. And she, waiting, seemed to go into a dream, a sleep, her arm trembled
+a little, stretched out and fixed. She seemed to lose count, under the firm
+compression he imposed on her. It was as if the pressure on her hand pressed
+her into oblivion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tie it up,” he said briskly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she, obedient, began to tie the bandage with numb fingers. He seemed to
+have taken the use out of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she had finished, he scrambled to his feet, looked at the organ which he
+was repairing, and looked at the collapsed pair of steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A rotten pair of things to have, to put a man’s life in danger,” he said,
+towards the steps. Then stubbornly, he rigged them up again, and stared again
+at his interrupted job.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t go on, will you?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s got to be done, Sunday tomorrow,” he said. “If you’d hold them steps a
+minute! There isn’t more than a minute’s fixing to do. It’s all done, but
+fixing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hadn’t you better leave it,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you mind holding the steps, so that they don’t let me down again,” he
+said. Then he took the candle, and hobbled stubbornly and angrily up again,
+with spanner and hammer. For some minutes he worked, tapping and readjusting,
+whilst she held the ricketty steps and stared at him from below, the shapeless
+bulk of his trousers. Strange the difference&mdash;she could not help thinking
+it&mdash;between the vulnerable hairy, and somehow childish leg of the real
+man, and the shapeless form of these workmen’s trousers. The kernel, the man
+himself&mdash;seemed so tender&mdash;the covering so stiff and insentient.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And was he not going to speak to her&mdash;not one human word of recognition?
+Men are the most curious and unreal creatures. After all he had made use of
+her. Think how he had pressed her hand gently but firmly down, down over his
+bruise, how he had taken the virtue out of her, till she felt all weak and dim.
+And after that was he going to relapse into his tough and ugly workman’s hide,
+and treat her as if <i>she</i> were a pair of steps, which might let him down
+or hold him up, as might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she stood clinging to the steps she felt weak and a little hysterical. She
+wanted to summon her strength, to have her own back from him. After all he had
+taken the virtue from her, he might have the grace to say thank you, and treat
+her as if she were a human being.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he left off tinkering, and looked round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you finished?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he answered crossly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And taking the candle he began to clamber down. When he got to the bottom he
+crouched over his leg and felt the bandage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That gives you what for,” he said, as if it were her fault.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is the bandage holding?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think so,” he answered churlishly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aren’t you going to make sure?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, it’s all right,” he said, turning aside and taking up his tools. “I’ll
+make my way home.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So will I,” she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took the candle and went a little in front. He hurried into his coat and
+gathered his tools, anxious to get away. She faced him, holding the candle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look at my hand,” she said, holding it out. It was smeared with blood, as was
+the cuff of her dress&mdash;a black-and-white striped cotton dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it hurt?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, but look at it. Look here!” She showed the bloodstains on her dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’ll wash out,” he said, frightened of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, so it will. But for the present it’s there. Don’t you think you ought to
+thank me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He recoiled a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said. “I’m very much obliged.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You ought to be more than that,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not answer, but looked her up and down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ll be going down,” he said. “We s’ll have folks talking.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she began to laugh. It seemed so comical. What a position! The candle
+shook as she laughed. What a man, answering her like a little automaton!
+Seriously, quite seriously he said it to her&mdash;“We s’ll have folks
+talking!” She laughed in a breathless, hurried way, as they tramped downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the bottom of the stairs Calladine, the caretaker, met them. He was a tall
+thin man with a black moustache&mdash;about fifty years old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you done for tonight, all of you?” he said, grinning in echo to Alvina’s
+still fluttering laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s a nice rotten pair of steps you’ve got up there for a death-trap,” said
+Arthur angrily. “Come down on top of me, and I’m lucky I haven’t got my leg
+broken. It <i>is</i> near enough.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come down with you, did they?” said Calladine good-humouredly. “I never knowed
+’em come down wi’ me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You ought to, then. My leg’s as near broke as it can be.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, have you hurt yourself?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should think I have. Look here&mdash;” And he began to pull up his trouser
+leg. But Alvina had given the candle to Calladine, and fled. She had a last
+view of Arthur stooping over his precious leg, while Calladine stooped his
+length and held down the candle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she got home she took off her dress and washed herself hard and washed the
+stained sleeve, thoroughly, thoroughly, and threw away the wash water and
+rinsed the wash-bowls with fresh water, scrupulously. Then she dressed herself
+in her black dress once more, did her hair, and went downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she could not sew&mdash;and she could not settle down. It was Saturday
+evening, and her father had opened the shop, Miss Pinnegar had gone to
+Knarborough. She would be back at nine o’clock. Alvina set about to make a mock
+woodcock, or a mock something or other, with cheese and an egg and bits of
+toast. Her eyes were dilated and as if amused, mocking, her face quivered a
+little with irony that was not all enjoyable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar entered. “The supper’s
+just done. I’ll ask father if he’ll close the shop.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course James would not close the shop, though he was merely wasting light.
+He nipped in to eat his supper, and started out again with a mouthful the
+moment he heard the ping of the bell. He kept his customers chatting as long as
+he could. His love for conversation had degenerated into a spasmodic passion
+for chatter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina looked across at Miss Pinnegar, as the two sat at the meagre
+supper-table. Her eyes were dilated and arched with a mocking, almost satanic
+look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve made up my mind about Albert Witham,” said Alvina. Miss Pinnegar looked
+at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Which way?” she asked, demurely, but a little sharp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s all off,” said Alvina, breaking into a nervous laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why? What has happened?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing has happened. I can’t stand him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?&mdash;suddenly&mdash;” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s not sudden,” laughed Alvina. “Not at all. I can’t stand him. I never
+could. And I won’t try. There! Isn’t that plain?” And she went off into her
+hurried laugh, partly at herself, partly at Arthur, partly at Albert, partly at
+Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, well, if you’re so sure&mdash;” said Miss Pinnegar rather bitingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I <i>am</i> quite sure&mdash;” said Alvina. “I’m quite certain.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Cock-sure people are often most mistaken,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d rather have my own mistakes than somebody else’s rights,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then don’t expect anybody to pay for your mistakes,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It would be all the same if I did,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she lay in bed, she stared at the light of the street-lamp on the wall.
+She was thinking busily: but heaven knows what she was thinking. She had
+sharpened the edge of her temper. She was waiting till tomorrow. She was
+waiting till she saw Albert Witham. She wanted to finish off with him. She was
+keen to cut clean through any correspondence with him. She stared for many
+hours at the light of the street-lamp, and there was a narrowed look in her
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day she did not go to Morning Service, but stayed at home to cook the
+dinner. In the evening she sat in her place in the choir. In the Withams’ pew
+sat Lottie and Albert&mdash;no Arthur. Albert kept glancing up. Alvina could
+not bear the sight of him&mdash;she simply could not bear the sight of him. Yet
+in her low, sweet voice she sang the alto to the hymns, right to the vesper:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Lord keep us safe this night<br/>
+Secure from all our fears,<br/>
+May angels guard us while we sleep<br/>
+Till morning light appears&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she sang her alto, and as the soft and emotional harmony of the vesper
+swelled luxuriously through the chapel, she was peeping over her folded hands
+at Lottie’s hat. She could not bear Lottie’s hats. There was something
+aggressive and vulgar about them. And she simply detested the look of the back
+of Albert’s head, as he too stooped to the vesper prayer. It looked mean and
+rather common. She remembered Arthur had the same look, bending to prayer.
+There!&mdash;why had she not seen it before! That petty, vulgar little look!
+How could she have thought twice of Arthur. She had made a fool of herself, as
+usual. Him and his little leg. She grimaced round the chapel, waiting for
+people to bob up their heads and take their departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the gate Albert was waiting for her. He came forward lifting his hat with a
+smiling and familiar “Good evening!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good evening,” she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s ages since I’ve seen you,” he said. “And I’ve looked out for you
+everywhere.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was raining a little. She put up her umbrella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll take a little stroll. The rain isn’t much,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, thank you,” she said. “I must go home.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, what’s your hurry! Walk as far as Beeby Bridge. Go on.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, thank you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How’s that? What makes you refuse?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t want to.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He paused and looked down at her. The cold and supercilious look of anger, a
+little spiteful, came into his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you mean because of the rain?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. I hope you don’t mind. But I don’t want to take any more walks. I don’t
+mean anything by them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, as for that,” he said, taking the words out of her mouth. “Why should you
+mean anything by them!” He smiled down on her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked him straight in the face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I’d rather not take any more walks, thank you&mdash;none at all,” she
+said, looking him full in the eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You wouldn’t!” he replied, stiffening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. I’m quite sure,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As sure as all that, are you!” he said, with a sneering grimace. He stood
+eyeing her insolently up and down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-night,” she said. His sneering made her furious. Putting her umbrella
+between him and her, she walked off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-night then,” he replied, unseen by her. But his voice was sneering and
+impotent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went home quivering. But her soul was burning with satisfaction. She had
+shaken them off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later she wondered if she had been unkind to him. But it was done&mdash;and
+done for ever. <i>Vogue la galère.</i>
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI<br/>
+HOUGHTON’S LAST ENDEAVOUR</h2>
+
+<p>
+The trouble with her ship was that it would <i>not</i> sail. It rode
+water-logged in the rotting port of home. All very well to have wild, reckless
+moods of irony and independence, if you have to pay for them by withering
+dustily on the shelf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina fell again into humility and fear: she began to show symptoms of her
+mother’s heart trouble. For day followed day, month followed month, season
+after season went by, and she grubbed away like a housemaid in Manchester
+House, she hurried round doing the shopping, she sang in the choir on Sundays,
+she attended the various chapel events, she went out to visit friends, and
+laughed and talked and played games. But all the time, what was there actually
+in her life? Not much. She was withering towards old-maiddom. Already in her
+twenty-eighth year, she spent her days grubbing in the house, whilst her father
+became an elderly, frail man still too lively in mind and spirit. Miss Pinnegar
+began to grow grey and elderly too, money became scarcer and scarcer, there was
+a black day ahead when her father would die and the home be broken up, and she
+would have to tackle life as a worker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There lay the only alternative: in work. She might slave her days away teaching
+the piano, as Miss Frost had done: she might find a subordinate post as nurse:
+she might sit in the cash-desk of some shop. Some work of some sort would be
+found for her. And she would sink into the routine of her job, as did so many
+women, and grow old and die, chattering and fluttering. She would have what is
+called her independence. But, seriously faced with that treasure, and without
+the option of refusing it, strange how hideous she found it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Work!&mdash;a job! More even than she rebelled against the Withams did she
+rebel against a job. Albert Witham was distasteful to her&mdash;or rather, he
+was not exactly distasteful, he was chiefly incongruous. She could never get
+over the feeling that he was mouthing and smiling at her through the glass wall
+of an aquarium, he being on the watery side. Whether she would ever be able to
+take to his strange and dishuman element, who knows? Anyway it would be some
+sort of an adventure: better than a job. She rebelled with all her backbone
+against the word <i>job</i>. Even the substitutes, <i>employment</i> or
+<i>work</i>, were detestable, unbearable. Emphatically, she did not want to
+work for a wage. It was too humiliating. Could anything be more <i>infra
+dig</i> than the performing of a set of special actions day in day out, for a
+life-time, in order to receive some shillings every seventh day. Shameful! A
+condition of shame. The most vulgar, sordid and humiliating of all forms of
+slavery: so mechanical. Far better be a slave outright, in contact with all the
+whims and impulses of a human being, than serve some mechanical routine of
+modern work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She trembled with anger, impotence, and fear. For months, the thought of Albert
+was a torment to her. She might have married him. He would have been strange, a
+strange fish. But were it not better to take the strange leap, over into his
+element, than to condemn oneself to the routine of a job? He would have been
+curious and dishuman. But after all, it would have been an experience. In a
+way, she liked him. There was something odd and integral about him, which she
+liked. He was not a liar. In his own line, he was honest and direct. Then he
+would take her to South Africa: a whole new <i>milieu</i>. And perhaps she
+would have children. She shivered a little. No, not his children! He seemed so
+curiously cold-blooded. And yet, why not? Why not his curious, pale, half
+cold-blooded children, like little fishes of her own? Why not? Everything was
+possible: and even desirable, once one could see the strangeness of it. Once
+she could plunge through the wall of the aquarium! Once she could kiss him!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Therefore Miss Pinnegar’s quiet harping on the string was unbearable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t understand that you disliked Mr. Witham so much?” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We never can understand those things,” said Alvina. “I can’t understand why I
+dislike tapioca and arrowroot&mdash;but I do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s different,” said Miss Pinnegar shortly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s no more easy to understand,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because there’s no need to understand it,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And is there need to understand the other?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Certainly. I can see nothing wrong with him,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina went away in silence. This was in the first months after she had given
+Albert his dismissal. He was at Oxford again&mdash;would not return to
+Woodhouse till Christmas. Between her and the Woodhouse Withams there was a
+decided coldness. They never looked at her now&mdash;nor she at them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None the less, as Christmas drew near Alvina worked up her feelings. Perhaps
+she would be reconciled to him. She would slip across and smile to him. She
+would take the plunge, once and for all&mdash;and kiss him and marry him and
+bear the little half-fishes, his children. She worked herself into quite a
+fever of anticipation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when she saw him, the first evening, sitting stiff and staring flatly in
+front of him in Chapel, staring away from everything in the world, at heaven
+knows what&mdash;just as fishes stare&mdash;then his dishumanness came over her
+again like an arrest, and arrested all her flights of fancy. He stared flatly
+in front of him, and flatly set a wall of oblivion between him and her. She
+trembled and let be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After Christmas, however, she had nothing at all to think forward to. And it
+was then she seemed to shrink: she seemed positively to shrink.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You never spoke to Mr. Witham?” Miss Pinnegar asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He never spoke to me,” replied Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He raised his hat to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>You</i> ought to have married him, Miss Pinnegar,” said Alvina. “He would
+have been right for you.” And she laughed rather mockingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is no need to make provision for me,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And after this, she was a long time before she forgave Alvina, and was really
+friendly again. Perhaps she would never have forgiven her if she had not found
+her weeping rather bitterly in her mother’s abandoned sitting-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now so far, the story of Alvina is commonplace enough. It is more or less the
+story of thousands of girls. They all find work. It is the ordinary solution of
+everything. And if we were dealing with an ordinary girl we should have to
+carry on mildly and dully down the long years of employment; or, at the best,
+marriage with some dull school-teacher or office-clerk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we protest that Alvina is not ordinary. Ordinary people, ordinary fates.
+But extraordinary people, extraordinary fates. Or else no fate at all. The
+all-to-one-pattern modern system is too much for most extraordinary
+individuals. It just kills them off or throws them disused aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There have been enough stories about ordinary people. I should think the Duke
+of Clarence must even have found malmsey nauseating, when he choked and went
+purple and was really asphyxiated in a butt of it. And ordinary people are no
+malmsey. Just ordinary tap-water. And we have been drenched and deluged and so
+nearly drowned in perpetual floods of ordinariness, that tap-water tends to
+become a really hateful fluid to us. We loathe its out-of-the-tap
+tastelessness. We detest ordinary people. We are in peril of our lives from
+them: and in peril of our souls too, for they would damn us one and all to the
+ordinary. Every individual should, by nature, have his extraordinary points.
+But nowadays you may look for them with a microscope, they are so worn-down by
+the regular machine-friction of our average and mechanical days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no hope for Alvina in the ordinary. If help came, it would have to
+come from the extraordinary. Hence the extreme peril of her case. Hence the
+bitter fear and humiliation she felt as she drudged shabbily on in Manchester
+House, hiding herself as much as possible from public view. Men can suck the
+heady juice of exalted self-importance from the bitter weed of
+failure&mdash;failures are usually the most conceited of men: even as was James
+Houghton. But to a woman, failure is another matter. For her it means failure
+to live, failure to establish her own life on the face of the earth. And this
+is humiliating, the ultimate humiliation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the slow years crept round, and the completed coil of each one was a
+further heavy, strangling noose. Alvina had passed her twenty-sixth,
+twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and even her twenty-ninth year. She was in her
+thirtieth. It ought to be a laughing matter. But it isn’t.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+          Ach, schon zwanzig<br/>
+          Ach, schon zwanzig<br/>
+Immer noch durch’s Leben tanz’ ich<br/>
+Jeder, Jeder will mich küssen<br/>
+Mir das Leben zu versüssen.<br/>
+<br/>
+          Ach, schon dreissig<br/>
+          Ach, schon dreissig<br/>
+Immer Mädchen, Mädchen heiss’ ich.<br/>
+In dem Zopf schon graue Härchen<br/>
+Ach, wie schnell vergehn die Jährchen.<br/>
+<br/>
+          Ach, schon vierzig<br/>
+          Ach, schon vierzig<br/>
+Und noch immer Keiner find ’sich.<br/>
+Im gesicht schon graue Flecken<br/>
+Ach, das muss im Spiegel stecken.<br/>
+<br/>
+          Ach, schon fünfzig<br/>
+          Ach, schon fünfzig<br/>
+Und noch immer Keiner will ’mich;<br/>
+Soll ich mich mit Bänden zieren<br/>
+Soll ich einen Schleier führen?<br/>
+          Dann heisst’s, die Alte putzt sich,<br/>
+          Sie ist fu’fzig, sie ist fu’fzig.<br/>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True enough, in Alvina’s pig-tail of soft brown the grey hairs were already
+showing. True enough, she still preferred to be thought of as a girl. And the
+slow-footed years, so heavy in passing, were so imperceptibly numerous in their
+accumulation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we are not going to follow our song to its fatal and dreary conclusion.
+Presumably, the <i>ordinary</i> old-maid heroine nowadays is destined to die in
+her fifties, she is not allowed to be the long-liver of the by-gone novels. Let
+the song suffice her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James Houghton had still another kick in him. He had one last scheme up his
+sleeve. Looking out on a changing world, it was the popular novelties which had
+the last fascination for him. The Skating Rink, like another Charybdis, had all
+but entangled him in its swirl as he pushed painfully off from the rocks of
+Throttle-Ha’penny. But he had escaped, and for almost three years had lain
+obscurely in port, like a frail and finished bark, selling the last of his bits
+and bobs, and making little splashes in warehouse-oddments. Miss Pinnegar
+thought he had really gone quiet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But alas, at that degenerated and shabby, down-at-heel club he met another
+tempter: a plump man who had been in the music-hall line as a sort of agent.
+This man had catered for the little shows of little towns. He had been in
+America, out West, doing shows there. He had trailed his way back to England,
+where he had left his wife and daughter. But he did not resume his family life.
+Wherever he was, his wife was a hundred miles away. Now he found himself more
+or less stranded in Woodhouse. He had <i>nearly</i> fixed himself up with a
+music-hall in the Potteries&mdash;as manager: he had all-but got such another
+place at Ickley, in Derbyshire: he had forced his way through the industrial
+and mining townlets, prospecting for any sort of music-hall or show from which
+he could get a picking. And now, in very low water, he found himself at
+Woodhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Woodhouse had a cinema already: a famous Empire run-up by Jordan, the sly
+builder and decorator who had got on so surprisingly. In James’s younger days,
+Jordan was an obscure and illiterate nobody. And now he had a motor car, and
+looked at the tottering James with sardonic contempt, from under his heavy,
+heavy-lidded dark eyes. He was rather stout, frail in health, but silent and
+insuperable, was A. W. Jordan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I missed a chance there,” said James, fluttering. “I missed a rare chance
+there. I ought to have been first with a cinema.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He admitted as much to Mr. May, the stranger who was looking for some sort of
+“managing” job. Mr. May, who also was plump and who could hold his tongue, but
+whose pink, fat face and light-blue eyes had a loud look, for all that, put the
+speech in his pipe and smoked it. Not that he smoked a pipe: always cigarettes.
+But he seized on James’s admission, as something to be made the most of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Mr. May’s mind, though quick, was pedestrian, not winged. He had come to
+Woodhouse not to look at Jordan’s “Empire,” but at the temporary wooden
+structure that stood in the old Cattle Market&mdash;“Wright’s Cinematograph and
+Variety Theatre.” Wright’s was not a superior show, like the Woodhouse Empire.
+Yet it was always packed with colliers and work-lasses. But unfortunately there
+was no chance of Mr. May’s getting a finger in the Cattle Market pie. Wright’s
+was a family affair. Mr. and Mrs. Wright and a son and two daughters with their
+husbands: a tight old lock-up family concern. Yet it was the kind of show that
+appealed to Mr. May: pictures between the turns. The cinematograph was but an
+item in the program, amidst the more thrilling incidents&mdash;to Mr.
+May&mdash;of conjurors, popular songs, five-minute farces, performing birds,
+and comics. Mr. May was too human to believe that a show should consist
+entirely of the dithering eye-ache of a film.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was becoming really depressed by his failure to find any opening. He had his
+family to keep&mdash;and though his honesty was of the variety sort, he had a
+heavy conscience in the direction of his wife and daughter. Having been so long
+in America, he had acquired American qualities, one of which was this heavy
+sort of private innocence, coupled with complacent and natural unscrupulousness
+in “matters of business.” A man of some odd sensitiveness in material things,
+he liked to have his clothes neat and spick, his linen immaculate, his face
+clean-shaved like a cherub. But alas, his clothes were now old-fashioned, so
+that their rather expensive smartness was detrimental to his chances, in spite
+of their scrupulous look of having come almost new out of the bandbox that
+morning. His rather small felt hats still curved jauntily over his full pink
+face. But his eyes looked lugubrious, as if he felt he had not deserved so much
+bad luck, and there were bilious lines beneath them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Mr. May, in his room in the Moon and Stars, which was the best inn in
+Woodhouse&mdash;he must have a good hötel&mdash;lugubriously considered his
+position. Woodhouse offered little or nothing. He must go to Alfreton. And
+would he find anything there? Ah, where, where in this hateful world was there
+refuge for a man saddled with responsibilities, who wanted to do his best and
+was given no opportunity? Mr. May had travelled in his Pullman car and gone
+straight to the best hotel in the town, like any other American with
+money&mdash;in America. He had done it smart, too. And now, in this grubby
+penny-picking England, he saw his boots being worn-down at the heel, and was
+afraid of being stranded without cash even for a railway ticket. If he had to
+clear out without paying his hotel bill&mdash;well, that was the world’s fault.
+He had to live. But he must perforce keep enough in hand for a ticket to
+Birmingham. He always said his wife was in London. And he always walked down to
+Lumley to post his letters. He was full of evasions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So again he walked down to Lumley to post his letters. And he looked at Lumley.
+And he found it a damn god-forsaken hell of a hole. It was a long straggle of a
+dusty road down in the valley, with a pale-grey dust and spatter from the
+pottery, and big chimneys bellying forth black smoke right by the road. Then
+there was a short cross-way, up which one saw the iron foundry, a black and
+rusty place. A little further on was the railway junction, and beyond that,
+more houses stretching to Hathersedge, where the stocking factories were busy.
+Compared with Lumley, Woodhouse, whose church could be seen sticking up proudly
+and vulgarly on an eminence, above trees and meadow-slopes, was an idyllic
+heaven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May turned in to the Derby Hotel to have a small whiskey. And of course he
+entered into conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You seem somewhat quiet at Lumley,” he said, in his odd, refined-showman’s
+voice. “Have you <i>nothing at all</i> in the way of amusement?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They all go up to Woodhouse, else to Hathersedge.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But couldn’t you support some place of your own&mdash;some <i>rival</i> to
+Wright’s Variety?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay&mdash;’appen&mdash;if somebody started it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it was that James was inoculated with the idea of starting a cinema on
+the virgin soil of Lumley. To the women he said not a word. But on the very
+first morning that Mr. May broached the subject, he became a new man. He
+fluttered like a boy, he fluttered as if he had just grown wings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let us go down,” said Mr. May, “and look at a site. You pledge yourself to
+nothing&mdash;you don’t compromise yourself. You merely have a site in your
+mind.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it came to pass that, next morning, this oddly assorted couple went down
+to Lumley together. James was very shabby, in his black coat and dark grey
+trousers, and his cheap grey cap. He bent forward as he walked, and still
+nipped along hurriedly, as if pursued by fate. His face was thin and still
+handsome. Odd that his cheap cap, by incongruity, made him look more a
+gentleman. But it did. As he walked he glanced alertly hither and thither, and
+saluted everybody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By his side, somewhat tight and tubby, with his chest out and his head back,
+went the prim figure of Mr. May, reminding one of a consequential bird of the
+smaller species. His plumbago-grey suit fitted exactly&mdash;save that it was
+perhaps a little tight. The jacket and waistcoat were bound with silk braid of
+exactly the same shade as the cloth. His soft collar, immaculately fresh, had a
+dark stripe like his shirt. His boots were black, with grey suède uppers: but a
+<i>little</i> down at heel. His dark-grey hat was jaunty. Altogether he looked
+very spruce, though a <i>little</i> behind the fashions: very pink faced,
+though his blue eyes were bilious beneath: very much on the spot, although the
+spot was the wrong one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They discoursed amiably as they went, James bending forward, Mr. May bending
+back. Mr. May took the refined man-of-the-world tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course,” he said&mdash;he used the two words very often, and pronounced the
+second, rather mincingly, to rhyme with <i>sauce</i>: “Of course,” said Mr.
+May, “it’s a disgusting place&mdash;<i>disgusting</i>! I never was in a worse,
+in all the <i>cauce</i> of my travels. But <i>then</i>&mdash;that isn’t the
+point&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spread his plump hands from his immaculate shirt-cuffs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, it isn’t. Decidedly it isn’t. That’s beside the point altogether. What we
+want&mdash;” began James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is an audience&mdash;of <i>cauce</i>&mdash;! And we have it&mdash;! Virgin
+soil&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, decidedly. Untouched! An unspoiled market.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“An unspoiled market!” reiterated Mr. May, in full confirmation, though with a
+faint flicker of a smile. “How very <i>fortunate</i> for us.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Properly handled,” said James. “Properly handled.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why yes&mdash;of <i>cauce</i>! Why <i>shouldn’t</i> we handle it properly!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, we shall manage that, we shall manage that,” came the quick, slightly
+husky voice of James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of <i>cauce</i> we shall! Why bless my life, if we can’t manage an audience in
+Lumley, what <i>can</i> we do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have a guide in the matter of their taste,” said James. “We can see what
+Wright’s are doing&mdash;and Jordan’s&mdash;and we can go to Hathersedge and
+Knarborough and Alfreton&mdash;beforehand, that is&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why certainly&mdash;if you think it’s <i>necessary</i>. I’ll do all that for
+you. <i>And</i> I’ll interview the managers and the performers
+themselves&mdash;as if I were a journalist, don’t you see. I’ve done a fair
+amount of journalism, and nothing easier than to get cards from various
+newspapers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, that’s a good suggestion,” said James. “As if you were going to write an
+account in the newspapers&mdash;excellent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so simple! You pick up just <i>all</i> the information you require.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Decidedly&mdash;decidedly!” said James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so behold our two heroes sniffing round the sordid backs and wasted meadows
+and marshy places of Lumley. They found one barren patch where two caravans
+were standing. A woman was peeling potatoes, sitting on the bottom step of her
+caravan. A half-caste girl came up with a large pale-blue enamelled jug of
+water. In the background were two booths covered up with coloured canvas.
+Hammering was heard inside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-morning!” said Mr. May, stopping before the woman. “’Tisn’t fair time, is
+it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, it’s no fair,” said the woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I see. You’re just on your own. Getting on all right?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fair,” said the woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only fair! Sorry. Good-morning.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May’s quick eye, roving round, had seen a negro stoop from under the canvas
+that covered one booth. The negro was thin, and looked young but rather frail,
+and limped. His face was very like that of the young negro in Watteau’s
+drawing&mdash;pathetic, wistful, north-bitten. In an instant Mr. May had taken
+all in: the man was the woman’s husband&mdash;they were acclimatized in these
+regions: the booth where he had been hammering was a Hoop-La. The other would
+be a cocoanut-shy. Feeling the instant American dislike for the presence of a
+negro, Mr. May moved off with James.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found out that the woman was a Lumley woman, that she had two children,
+that the negro was a most quiet and respectable chap, but that the family kept
+to itself, and didn’t mix up with Lumley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should think so,” said Mr. May, a little disgusted even at the suggestion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he proceeded to find out how long they had stood on this
+ground&mdash;three months&mdash;how long they would remain&mdash;only another
+week, then they were moving off to Alfreton fair&mdash;who was the owner of the
+pitch&mdash;Mr. Bows, the butcher. Ah! And what was the ground used for? Oh, it
+was building land. But the foundation wasn’t very good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The very thing! Aren’t we <i>fortunate</i>!” cried Mr. May, perking up the
+moment they were in the street. But this cheerfulness and brisk perkiness was a
+great strain on him. He missed his eleven o’clock whiskey
+terribly&mdash;terribly&mdash;his pick-me-up! And he daren’t confess it to
+James, who, he knew, was T-T. So he dragged his weary and hollow way up to
+Woodhouse, and sank with a long “Oh!” of nervous exhaustion in the private bar
+of the Moon and Stars. He wrinkled his short nose. The smell of the place was
+distasteful to him. The <i>disgusting</i> beer that the colliers drank.
+Oh!&mdash;he <i>was</i> so tired. He sank back with his whiskey and stared
+blankly, dismally in front of him. Beneath his eyes he looked more bilious
+still. He felt thoroughly out of luck, and petulant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None the less he sallied out with all his old bright perkiness, the next time
+he had to meet James. He hadn’t yet broached the question of costs. When would
+he be able to get an advance from James? He <i>must</i> hurry the matter
+forward. He brushed his crisp, curly brown hair carefully before the mirror.
+How grey he was at the temples! No wonder, dear me, with such a life! He was in
+his shirt-sleeves. His waistcoat, with its grey satin back, fitted him tightly.
+He had filled out&mdash;but he hadn’t developed a corporation. Not at all. He
+looked at himself sideways, and feared dismally he was thinner. He was one of
+those men who carry themselves in a birdie fashion, so that their tail sticks
+out a little behind, jauntily. How wonderfully the satin of his waistcoat had
+worn! He looked at his shirt-cuffs. They were going. Luckily, when he had had
+the shirts made he had secured enough material for the renewing of cuffs and
+neckbands. He put on his coat, from which he had flicked the faintest suspicion
+of dust, and again settled himself to go out and meet James on the question of
+an advance. He simply must have an advance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He didn’t get it that day, none the less. The next morning he was ringing for
+his tea at six o’clock. And before ten he had already flitted to Lumley and
+back, he had already had a word with Mr. Bows, about that pitch, and,
+overcoming all his repugnance, a word with the quiet, frail, sad negro, about
+Alfreton fair, and the chance of buying some sort of collapsible building, for
+his cinematograph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With all this news he met James&mdash;not at the shabby club, but in the
+deserted reading-room of the so-called Artizans Hall&mdash;where never an
+artizan entered, but only men of James’s class. Here they took the chessboard
+and pretended to start a game. But their conversation was rapid and secretive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May disclosed all his discoveries. And then he said, tentatively:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hadn’t we better think about the financial part now? If we’re going to look
+round for an erection”&mdash;curious that he always called it an
+erection&mdash;“we shall have to know what we are going to spend.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;yes. Well&mdash;” said James vaguely, nervously, giving a glance at
+Mr. May. Whilst Mr. May abstractedly fingered his black knight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You see at the moment,” said Mr. May, “I have no funds that I can represent in
+cash. I have no doubt a little <i>later</i>&mdash;if we need it&mdash;I can
+find a few hundreds. Many things are <i>due</i>&mdash;numbers of things. But it
+is so difficult to <i>collect</i> one’s dues, particularly from America.” He
+lifted his blue eyes to James Houghton. “Of course we can <i>delay</i> for some
+time, until I get my supplies. Or I can act just as your manager&mdash;you can
+<i>employ</i> me&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched James’s face. James looked down at the chessboard. He was fluttering
+with excitement. He did not want a partner. He wanted to be in this all by
+himself. He hated partners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will agree to be manager, at a fixed salary?” said James hurriedly and
+huskily, his fine fingers slowly rubbing each other, along the sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why yes, willingly, if you’ll give me the option of becoming your partner upon
+terms of mutual agreement, later on.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James did not quite like this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What terms are you thinking of?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, it doesn’t matter for the moment. Suppose for the moment I enter an
+engagement as your manager, at a salary, let us say, of&mdash;of what, do you
+think?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So much a week?” said James pointedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hadn’t we better make it monthly?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men looked at one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“With a month’s notice on either hand?” continued Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How much?” said James, avaricious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May studied his own nicely kept hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, I don’t see how I can do it under twenty pounds a month. Of course it’s
+ridiculously low. In America I <i>never</i> accepted less than three hundred
+dollars a month, and that was my poorest and lowest. But of <i>cauce</i>,
+England’s not America&mdash;more’s the pity.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But James was shaking his head in a vibrating movement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Impossible!” he replied shrewdly. “Impossible! Twenty pounds a month?
+Impossible. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t think of it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then name a figure. Say what you <i>can</i> think of,” retorted Mr. May,
+rather annoyed by this shrewd, shaking head of a doddering provincial, and by
+his own sudden collapse into mean subordination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t make it more than ten pounds a month,” said James sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What!” screamed Mr. May. “What am I to live on? What is my wife to live on?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve got to make it pay,” said James. “If I’ve got to make it pay, I must keep
+down expenses at the beginning.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,&mdash;on the contrary. You must be prepared to spend something at the
+beginning. If you go in a pinch-and-scrape fashion in the beginning, you will
+get nowhere at all. Ten pounds a month! Why it’s impossible! Ten pounds a
+month! But how am I to <i>live</i>?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James’s head still vibrated in a negative fashion. And the two men came to no
+agreement <i>that</i> morning. Mr. May went home more sick and weary than ever,
+and took his whiskey more biliously. But James was lit with the light of
+battle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Mr. May had to gather together his wits and his sprightliness for his next
+meeting. He had decided he must make a percentage in other ways. He schemed in
+all known ways. He would accept the ten pounds&mdash;but really, did ever you
+hear of anything so ridiculous in your life, <i>ten pounds!</i>&mdash;dirty old
+screw, dirty, screwing old woman! He would accept the ten pounds; but he would
+get his own back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He flitted down once more to the negro, to ask him of a certain wooden
+show-house, with section sides and roof, an old travelling theatre which stood
+closed on Selverhay Common, and might probably be sold. He pressed across once
+more to Mr. Bows. He wrote various letters and drew up certain notes. And the
+next morning, by eight o’clock, he was on his way to Selverhay: walking, poor
+man, the long and uninteresting seven miles on his small and rather tight-shod
+feet, through country that had been once beautiful but was now scrubbled all
+over with mining villages, on and on up heavy hills and down others, asking his
+way from uncouth clowns, till at last he came to the Common, which wasn’t a
+Common at all, but a sort of village more depressing than usual: naked, high,
+exposed to heaven and to full barren view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There he saw the theatre-booth. It was old and sordid-looking, painted dark-red
+and dishevelled with narrow, tattered announcements. The grass was growing high
+up the wooden sides. If only it wasn’t rotten? He crouched and probed and
+pierced with his pen-knife, till a country-policeman in a high helmet like a
+jug saw him, got off his bicycle and came stealthily across the grass wheeling
+the same bicycle, and startled poor Mr. May almost into apoplexy by demanding
+behind him, in a loud voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’re you after?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May rose up with flushed face and swollen neck-veins, holding his pen-knife
+in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh,” he said, “good-morning.” He settled his waistcoat and glanced over the
+tall, lanky constable and the glittering bicycle. “I was taking a look at this
+old erection, with a view to buying it. I’m afraid it’s going rotten from the
+bottom.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shouldn’t wonder,” said the policeman suspiciously, watching Mr. May shut the
+pocket knife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid that makes it useless for my purpose,” said Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The policeman did not deign to answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Could you tell me where I can find out about it, anyway?” Mr. May used his
+most affable, man of the world manner. But the policeman continued to stare him
+up and down, as if he were some marvellous specimen unknown on the normal,
+honest earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, find out?” said the constable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“About being able to buy it,” said Mr. May, a little testily. It was with great
+difficulty he preserved his man-to-man openness and brightness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They aren’t here,” said the constable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh indeed! Where <i>are</i> they? And <i>who</i> are they?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The policeman eyed him more suspiciously than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Cowlard’s their name. An’ they live in Offerton when they aren’t travelling.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Cowlard&mdash;thank you.” Mr. May took out his pocket-book.
+“C-o-w-l-a-r-d&mdash;is that right? And the address, please?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I dunno th’ street. But you can find out from the Three Bells. That’s Missis’
+sister.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The Three Bells&mdash;thank you. Offerton did you say?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Offerton!&mdash;where’s that?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“About eight mile.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really&mdash;and how do you get there?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You can walk&mdash;or go by train.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, there is a station?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Station!” The policeman looked at him as if he were either a criminal or a
+fool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. There <i>is</i> a station there?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay&mdash;biggest next to Chesterfield&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly it dawned on Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh-h!” he said. “You mean <i>Alfreton</i>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alfreton, yes.” The policeman was now convinced the man was a wrong-’un. But
+fortunately he was not a pushing constable, he did not want to rise in the
+police-scale: thought himself safest at the bottom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And which is the way to the station here?” asked Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do yer want Pinxon or Bull’ill?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pinxon or Bull’ill?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s two,” said the policeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For Selverhay?” asked Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, them’s the two.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And which is the best?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Depends what trains is runnin’. Sometimes yer have to wait an hour or
+two&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t know the trains, do you&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s one in th’ afternoon&mdash;but I don’t know if it’d be gone by the
+time you get down.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To where?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bull’ill.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh Bull’ill! Well, perhaps I’ll try. Could you tell me the way?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, after an hour’s painful walk, Mr. May came to Bullwell Station and found
+there was no train till six in the evening, he felt he was earning every penny
+he would ever get from Mr. Houghton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first intelligence which Miss Pinnegar and Alvina gathered of the coming
+adventure was given them when James announced that he had let the shop to
+Marsden, the grocer next door. Marsden had agreed to take over James’s premises
+at the same rent as that of the premises he already occupied, and moreover to
+do all alterations and put in all fixtures himself. This was a grand scoop for
+James: not a penny was it going to cost him, and the rent was clear profit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But when?” cried Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He takes possession on the first of October.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;it’s a good idea. The shop isn’t worth while,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Certainly it isn’t,” said James, rubbing his hands: a sign that he was rarely
+excited and pleased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you’ll just retire, and live quietly,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall see,” said James. And with those fatal words he wafted away to find
+Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James was now nearly seventy years old. Yet he nipped about like a leaf in the
+wind. Only, it was a frail leaf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father’s got something going,” said Alvina, in a warning voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe he has,” said Miss Pinnegar pensively. “I wonder what it is, now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t imagine,” laughed Alvina. “But I’ll bet it’s something
+awful&mdash;else he’d have told us.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Miss Pinnegar slowly. “Most likely he would. I wonder what it can
+be.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t an idea,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both women were so retired, they had heard nothing of James’s little trips down
+to Lumley. So they watched like cats for their man’s return, at dinner-time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar saw him coming along talking excitedly to Mr. May, who, all in
+grey, with his chest perkily stuck out like a robin, was looking rather pinker
+than usual. Having come to an agreement, he had ventured on whiskey and soda in
+honour, and James had actually taken a glass of port.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alvina!” Miss Pinnegar called discreetly down the shop. “Alvina! Quick!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina flew down to peep round the corner of the shop window. There stood the
+two men, Mr. May like a perky, pink-faced grey bird standing cocking his head
+in attention to James Houghton, and occasionally catching James by the lapel of
+his coat, in a vain desire to get a word in, whilst James’s head nodded and his
+face simply wagged with excited speech, as he skipped from foot to foot, and
+shifted round his listener.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who <i>ever</i> can that common-looking man be?” said Miss Pinnegar, her heart
+going down to her boots.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t imagine,” said Alvina, laughing at the comic sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you think he’s dreadful?” said the poor elderly woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perfectly impossible. Did ever you see such a pink face?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>And</i> the braid binding!” said Miss Pinnegar in indignation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father might almost have sold him the suit,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let us hope he hasn’t sold your father, that’s all,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men had moved a few steps further towards home, and the women prepared
+to flee indoors. Of course it was frightfully wrong to be standing peeping in
+the high street at all. But who could consider the proprieties now?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They’ve stopped again,” said Miss Pinnegar, recalling Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two men were having a few more excited words, their voices just audible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I do wonder who he can be,” murmured Miss Pinnegar miserably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In the theatrical line, I’m sure,” declared Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you think so?” said Miss Pinnegar. “Can’t be! Can’t be!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He couldn’t be anything else, don’t you think?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh I <i>can’t</i> believe it, I can’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now Mr. May had laid his detaining hand on James’s arm. And now he was
+shaking his employer by the hand. And now James, in his cheap little cap, was
+smiling a formal farewell. And Mr. May, with a graceful wave of his
+grey-suède-gloved hand, was turning back to the Moon and Stars, strutting,
+whilst James was running home on tip-toe, in his natural hurry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina hastily retreated, but Miss Pinnegar stood it out. James started as he
+nipped into the shop entrance, and found her confronting him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh&mdash;Miss Pinnegar!” he said, and made to slip by her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who was that man?” she asked sharply, as if James were a child whom she could
+endure no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh? I beg your pardon?” said James, starting back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who was that man?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh? Which man?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James was a little deaf, and a little husky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The man&mdash;” Miss Pinnegar turned to the door. “There! That man!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James also came to the door, and peered out as if he expected to see a sight.
+The sight of Mr. May’s tight and perky back, the jaunty little hat and the grey
+suède hands retreating quite surprised him. He was angry at being introduced to
+the sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh,” he said. “That’s my manager.” And he turned hastily down the shop, asking
+for his dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar stood for some moments in pure oblivion in the shop entrance. Her
+consciousness left her. When she recovered, she felt she was on the brink of
+hysteria and collapse. But she hardened herself once more, though the effort
+cost her a year of her life. She had never collapsed, she had never fallen into
+hysteria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gathered herself together, though bent a little as from a blow, and,
+closing the shop door, followed James to the living room, like the inevitable.
+He was eating his dinner, and seemed oblivious of her entry. There was a smell
+of Irish stew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What manager?” said Miss Pinnegar, short, silent, and inevitable in the
+doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But James was in one of his abstractions, his trances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What manager?” persisted Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he still bent unknowing over his plate and gobbled his Irish stew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mr. Houghton!” said Miss Pinnegar, in a sudden changed voice. She had gone a
+livid yellow colour. And she gave a queer, sharp little rap on the table with
+her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James started. He looked up bewildered, as one startled out of sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh?” he said, gaping. “Eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Answer me,” said Miss Pinnegar. “What manager?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Manager? Eh? Manager? What manager?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She advanced a little nearer, menacing in her black dress. James shrank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What manager?” he re-echoed. “My manager. The manager of my cinema.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar looked at him, and looked at him, and did not speak. In that
+moment all the anger which was due to him from all womanhood was silently
+discharged at him, like a black bolt of silent electricity. But Miss Pinnegar,
+the engine of wrath, felt she would burst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Cinema! Cinema! Do you mean to tell me&mdash;” but she was really suffocated,
+the vessels of her heart and breast were bursting. She had to lean her hand on
+the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a terrible moment. She looked ghastly and terrible, with her mask-like
+face and her stony eyes and her bluish lips. Some fearful thunderbolt seemed to
+fall. James withered, and was still. There was silence for minutes, a
+suspension.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in those minutes, she finished with him. She finished with him for ever.
+When she had sufficiently recovered, she went to her chair, and sat down before
+her plate. And in a while she began to eat, as if she were alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Alvina, for whom this had been a dreadful and uncalled-for moment, had
+looked from one to another, and had also dropped her head to her plate. James
+too, with bent head, had forgotten to eat. Miss Pinnegar ate very slowly,
+alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you want your dinner, Alvina?” she said at length.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not as much as I did,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not?” said Miss Pinnegar. She sounded short, almost like Miss Frost. Oddly
+like Miss Frost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina took up her fork and began to eat automatically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I always think,” said Miss Pinnegar, “Irish stew is more tasty with a bit of
+Swede in it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So do I, really,” said Alvina. “But Swedes aren’t come yet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! Didn’t we have some on Tuesday?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, they were yellow turnips&mdash;but they weren’t Swedes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well then, yellow turnip. I like a little yellow turnip,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I might have put some in, if I’d known,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. We will another time,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not another word about the cinema: not another breath. As soon as James had
+eaten his plum tart, he ran away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What can he have been doing?” said Alvina when he had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Buying a cinema show&mdash;and that man we saw is his manager. It’s quite
+simple.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what are we going to do with a cinema show?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s what is <i>he</i> going to do. It doesn’t concern me. It’s no concern of
+mine. I shall not lend him anything, I shall not think about it, it will be the
+same to me as if there <i>were</i> no cinema. Which is all I have to say,”
+announced Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But he’s gone and done it,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then let him go through with it. It’s no affair of mine. After all, your
+father’s affairs don’t concern me. It would be impertinent of me to introduce
+myself into them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They don’t concern <i>me</i> very much,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re different. You’re his daughter. He’s no connection of mine, I’m glad to
+say. I pity your mother.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, but he was always alike,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s where it is,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something fatal about her feelings. Once they had gone cold, they
+would never warm up again. As well try to warm up a frozen mouse. It only
+putrifies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But poor Miss Pinnegar after this looked older, and seemed to get a little
+round-backed. And the things she said reminded Alvina so often of Miss Frost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James fluttered into conversation with his daughter the next evening, after
+Miss Pinnegar had retired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I told you I had bought a cinematograph building,” said James. “We are
+negotiating for the machinery now: the dynamo and so on.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But where is it to be?” asked Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Down at Lumley. I’ll take you and show you the site tomorrow. The
+building&mdash;it is a frame-section travelling theatre&mdash;will arrive on
+Thursday&mdash;next Thursday.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But who is in with you, father?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am quite alone&mdash;quite alone,” said James Houghton. “I have found an
+excellent manager, who knows the whole business thoroughly&mdash;a Mr. May.
+Very nice man. Very nice man.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rather short and dressed in grey?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. And I have been thinking&mdash;if Miss Pinnegar will take the cash and
+issue tickets: if she will take over the ticket-office: and you will play the
+piano: and if Mr. May learns the control of the machine&mdash;he is having
+lessons now&mdash;: and if I am the indoors attendant, we shan’t need any more
+staff.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Miss Pinnegar won’t take the cash, father.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not? Why not?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t say why not. But she won’t do anything&mdash;and if I were you I
+wouldn’t ask her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, well,” said James, huffy. “She isn’t indispensable.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Alvina was to play the piano! Here was a blow for her! She hurried off to
+her bedroom to laugh and cry at once. She just saw herself at that piano,
+banging off the <i>Merry Widow Waltz</i>, and, in tender moments, <i>The
+Rosary</i>. Time after time, <i>The Rosary</i>. While the pictures flickered
+and the audience gave shouts and some grubby boy called “Chot-let, penny a bar!
+Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a bar!” away she banged at another tune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What a sight for the gods! She burst out laughing. And at the same time, she
+thought of her mother and Miss Frost, and she cried as if her heart would
+break. And then all kinds of comic and incongruous tunes came into her head.
+She imagined herself dressing up with most priceless variations. <i>Linger
+Longer Lucy</i>, for example. She began to spin imaginary harmonies and
+variations in her head, upon the theme of <i>Linger Longer Lucy</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Linger longer Lucy, linger longer Loo.<br/>
+How I love to linger longer linger long o’ you.<br/>
+Listen while I sing, love, promise you’ll be true,<br/>
+And linger longer longer linger linger longer Loo.”<br/>
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+All the tunes that used to make Miss Frost so angry. All the Dream Waltzes and
+Maiden’s Prayers, and the awful songs.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“For in Spooney-ooney Island<br/>
+Is there any one cares for me?<br/>
+In Spooney-ooney Island<br/>
+Why surely there ought to be&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Poor Miss Frost! Alvina imagined herself leading a chorus of collier louts, in
+a bad atmosphere of “Woodbines” and oranges, during the intervals when the
+pictures had collapsed.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“How’d you like to spoon with me?<br/>
+How’d you like to spoon with me?<br/>
+                    (<i>Why ra-ther!</i>)<br/>
+<br/>
+Underneath the oak-tree nice and shady<br/>
+Calling me your tootsey-wootsey lady?<br/>
+How’d you like to hug and squeeze,<br/>
+                    (<i>Just try me!</i>)<br/>
+<br/>
+Dandle me upon your knee,<br/>
+Calling me your little lovey-dovey&mdash;<br/>
+How’d you like to spoon with me?<br/>
+                    (<i>Oh-h&mdash;Go on!</i>)”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina worked herself into quite a fever, with her imaginings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning she told Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Miss Pinnegar, “you see me issuing tickets, don’t you?
+Yes&mdash;well. I’m afraid he will have to do that part himself. And you’re
+going to play the piano. It’s a disgrace! It’s a disgrace! It’s a disgrace!
+It’s a mercy Miss Frost and your mother are dead. He’s lost every bit of
+shame&mdash;every bit&mdash;if he ever had any&mdash;which I doubt very much.
+Well, all I can say, I’m glad I am not concerned. And I’m sorry for you, for
+being his daughter. I’m heart sorry for you, I am. Well, well&mdash;no sense of
+shame&mdash;no sense of shame&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Miss Pinnegar padded out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina walked down to Lumley and was shown the site and was introduced to Mr.
+May. He bowed to her in his best American fashion, and treated her with
+admirable American deference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you think,” he said to her, “it’s an admirable scheme?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wonderful,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of cauce,” he said, “the erection will be a merely temporary one. Of cauce it
+won’t be anything to <i>look</i> at: just an old wooden travelling theatre. But
+<i>then</i>&mdash;all we need is to make a start.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you are going to work the film?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said with pride, “I spend every evening with the operator at Marsh’s
+in Knarborough. Very interesting I find it&mdash;very interesting indeed. And
+<i>you</i> are going to play the piano?” he said, perking his head on one side
+and looking at her archly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So father says,” she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what do <i>you</i> say?” queried Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose I don’t have any say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh but <i>surely</i>. Surely you won’t do it if you don’t wish to. That would
+never do. Can’t we hire some young fellow&mdash;?” And he turned to Mr.
+Houghton with a note of query.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alvina can play as well as anybody in Woodhouse,” said James. “We mustn’t add
+to our expenses. And wages in particular&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But surely Miss Houghton will have her wage. The labourer is worthy of his
+hire. Surely! Even of <i>her</i> hire, to put it in the feminine. And for the
+same wage you could get some unimportant fellow with strong wrists. I’m afraid
+it will tire Miss Houghton to death&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think so,” said James. “I don’t think so. Many of the turns she will
+not need to accompany&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, if it comes to that,” said Mr. May, “I can accompany some of them
+myself, when I’m not operating the film. I’m not an expert pianist&mdash;but I
+can play a little, you know&mdash;” And he trilled his fingers up and down an
+imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina, cocking his eye at her smiling a little
+archly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sure,” he continued, “I can accompany anything except a man juggling
+dinner-plates&mdash;and then I’d be afraid of making him drop the plates. But
+songs&mdash;oh, songs! <i>Con molto espressione!</i>”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again he trilled the imaginary keyboard, and smiled his rather fat cheeks
+at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She began to like him. There was something a little dainty about him, when you
+knew him better&mdash;really rather fastidious. A showman, true enough! Blatant
+too. But fastidiously so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came fairly frequently to Manchester House after this. Miss Pinnegar was
+rather stiff with him and he did not like her. But he was very happy sitting
+chatting tête-à-tête with Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is your wife?” said Alvina to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My wife! Oh, don’t speak of <i>her</i>,” he said comically. “She’s in London.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not speak of her?” asked Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, every reason for not speaking of her. We don’t get on at <i>all</i> well,
+she and I.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What a pity,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dreadful pity! But what are you to do?” He laughed comically. Then he became
+grave. “No,” he said. “She’s an impossible person.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I see,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sure you <i>don’t</i> see,” said Mr. May. “Don’t&mdash;” and here he laid
+his hand on Alvina’s arm&mdash;“don’t run away with the idea that she’s
+<i>immoral</i>! You’d never make a greater mistake. Oh dear me, no. Morality’s
+her strongest point. Live on three lettuce leaves, and give the rest to the
+char. That’s her. Oh, dreadful times we had in those first years. We only lived
+together for three years. But dear <i>me</i>! how awful it was!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There was no pleasing the woman. She wouldn’t eat. If I said to her ‘What
+shall we have for supper, Grace?’ as sure as anything she’d answer ‘Oh, I shall
+take a bath when I go to bed&mdash;that will be my supper.’ She was one of
+these advanced vegetarian women, don’t you know.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How extraordinary!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Extraordinary! I should think so. Extraordinary hard lines on <i>me</i>. And
+she wouldn’t let <i>me</i> eat either. She followed me to the kitchen in a
+<i>fury</i> while I cooked for myself. Why imagine! I prepared a dish of
+champignons: oh, most <i>beautiful</i> champignons, beautiful&mdash;and I put
+them on the stove to fry in butter: beautiful young champignons. I’m hanged if
+she didn’t go into the kitchen while my back was turned, and pour a pint of old
+carrot-water into the pan. I was <i>furious</i>. Imagine!&mdash;beautiful fresh
+young champignons&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fresh mushrooms,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mushrooms&mdash;most beautiful things in the world. Oh! don’t you think so?”
+And he rolled his eyes oddly to heaven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They <i>are</i> good,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should say so. And swamped&mdash;<i>swamped</i> with her dirty old carrot
+water. Oh I was so angry. And all she could say was, ‘Well, I didn’t want to
+waste it!’ Didn’t want to waste her old carrot water, and so <i>ruined</i> my
+champignons. <i>Can</i> you imagine such a person?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It must have been trying.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should think it was. I lost weight. I lost I don’t know how many pounds, the
+first year I was married to that woman. She hated me to eat. Why, one of her
+great accusations against me, at the last, was when she said: ‘I’ve looked
+round the larder,’ she said to me, ‘and seen it was quite empty, and I thought
+to myself: <i>Now</i> he <i>can’t</i> cook a supper! And <i>then</i> you did!’
+There! What do you think of that? The spite of it! ‘And <i>then</i> you did!’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What did she expect you to live on?” asked Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nibble a lettuce leaf with her, and drink water from the tap&mdash;and then
+elevate myself with a Bernard Shaw pamphlet. That was the sort of woman she
+was. All it gave <i>me</i> was gas in the stomach.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So overbearing!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” he turned his eyes to heaven, and spread his hands. “I didn’t believe my
+senses. I didn’t know such people existed. And her friends! Oh the dreadful
+friends she had&mdash;these Fabians! Oh, their eugenics. They wanted to examine
+my private morals, for eugenic reasons. Oh, you can’t imagine such a state.
+Worse than the Spanish Inquisition. And I stood it for three years. <i>How</i>
+I stood it, I don’t know&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now don’t you see her?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never! I never let her know where I am! But I <i>support</i> her, of cauce.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And your daughter?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, she’s the dearest child in the world. I saw her at a friend’s when I came
+back from America. Dearest little thing in the world. But of <i>cauce</i>
+suspicious of me. Treats me as if she didn’t <i>know</i> me&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What a pity!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh&mdash;unbearable!” He spread his plump, manicured hands, on one finger of
+which was a green intaglio ring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How old is your daughter?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fourteen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is her name?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud Callum, the
+<i>danseuse</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Curious the intimacy Mr. May established with Alvina at once. But it was all
+purely verbal, descriptive. He made no physical advances. On the contrary, he
+was like a dove-grey, disconsolate bird pecking the crumbs of Alvina’s
+sympathy, and cocking his eye all the time to watch that she did not advance
+one step towards him. If he had seen the least sign of coming-on-ness in her,
+he would have fluttered off in a great dither. Nothing <i>horrified</i> him
+more than a woman who was coming-on towards him. It horrified him, it
+exasperated him, it made him hate the whole tribe of women: horrific two-legged
+cats without whiskers. If he had been a bird, his innate horror of a cat would
+have been such. He liked the <i>angel</i>, and particularly the angel-mother in
+woman. Oh!&mdash;that he worshipped. But coming-on-ness!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he never wanted to be seen out-of-doors with Alvina; if he met her in the
+street he bowed and passed on: bowed very deep and reverential, indeed, but
+passed on, with his little back a little more strutty and assertive than ever.
+Decidedly he turned his back on her in public.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Miss Pinnegar, a regular old, grey, dangerous she-puss, eyed him from the
+corner of her pale eye, as he turned tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So unmanly!” she murmured. “In his dress, in his way, in everything&mdash;so
+unmanly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I was you, Alvina,” she said, “I shouldn’t see so much of Mr. May, in the
+drawing-room. People will talk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should almost feel flattered,” laughed Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you mean?” snapped Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None the less, Mr. May was dependable in matters of business. He was up at
+half-past five in the morning, and by seven was well on his way. He sailed like
+a stiff little ship before a steady breeze, hither and thither, out of
+Woodhouse and back again, and across from side to side. Sharp and snappy, he
+was, on the spot. He trussed himself up, when he was angry or displeased, and
+sharp, snip-snap came his words, rather like scissors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But how is it&mdash;” he attacked Arthur Witham&mdash;“that the gas isn’t
+connected with the main yet? It was to be ready yesterday.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ve had to wait for the fixings for them brackets,” said Arthur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>Had</i> to <i>wait</i> for <i>fixings</i>! But didn’t you know a fortnight
+ago that you’d want the fixings?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought we should have some as would do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! you thought so! Really! Kind of you to think so. And have you just thought
+about those that are coming, or have you made sure?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arthur looked at him sullenly. He hated him. But Mr. May’s sharp touch was not
+to be foiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I hope you’ll go further than <i>thinking</i>,” said Mr. May. “Thinking seems
+such a slow process. And when do you expect the fittings&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tomorrow.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What! Another day! Another day <i>still!</i> But you’re strangely indifferent
+to time, in your line of business. Oh! <i>Tomorrow!</i> Imagine it! Two days
+late already, and then <i>tomorrow!</i> Well I hope by tomorrow you mean
+<i>Wednesday</i>, and not tomorrow’s tomorrow, or some other absurd and
+fanciful date that you’ve just <i>thought about</i>. But now, <i>do</i> have
+the thing finished by tomorrow&mdash;” here he laid his hand cajoling on
+Arthur’s arm. “You promise me it will all be ready by tomorrow, don’t you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I’ll do it if anybody could do it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t say ‘if anybody could do it.’ Say it shall be done.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It shall if I can possibly manage it&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh&mdash;very well then. Mind you manage it&mdash;and thank you <i>very</i>
+much. I shall be <i>most</i> obliged, if it <i>is</i> done.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arthur was annoyed, but he was kept to the scratch. And so, early in October
+the place was ready, and Woodhouse was plastered with placards announcing
+“Houghton’s Pleasure Palace.” Poor Mr. May could not but see an irony in the
+Palace part of the phrase. “We can guarantee the <i>pleasure</i>,” he said.
+“But personally, I feel I can’t take the responsibility for the palace.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But James, to use the vulgar expression, was in his eye-holes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, father’s in his eye-holes,” said Alvina to Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” said Mr. May, puzzled and concerned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it merely meant that James was having the time of his life. He was drawing
+out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion strips, with the mystic
+script, in big black letters: Houghton’s Picture Palace, underneath which,
+quite small: Opens at Lumley on October 7th, at 6:30 P.M. Everywhere you went,
+these vermilion and black bars sprang from the wall at you. Then there were
+other notices, in delicate pale-blue and pale red, like a genuine theatre
+notice, giving full programs. And beneath these a broad-letter notice
+announced, in green letters on a yellow ground: “Final and Ultimate Clearance
+Sale at Houghton’s, Knarborough Road, on Friday, September 30th. Come and Buy
+Without Price.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James was in his eye-holes. He collected all his odds and ends from every
+corner of Manchester House. He sorted them in heaps, and marked the heaps in
+his own mind. And then he let go. He pasted up notices all over the window and
+all over the shop: “Take what you want and Pay what you Like.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He and Miss Pinnegar kept shop. The women flocked in. They turned things over.
+It nearly killed James to take the prices they offered. But take them he did.
+But he exacted that they should buy one article at a time. “One piece at a
+time, if you don’t mind,” he said, when they came up with their three-a-penny
+handfuls. It was not till later in the evening that he relaxed this rule.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, by eleven o’clock he had cleared out a good deal&mdash;really, a very
+great deal&mdash;and many women had bought what they didn’t want, at their own
+figure. Feverish but content, James shut the shop for the last time. Next day,
+by eleven, he had removed all his belongings, the door that connected the house
+with the shop was screwed up fast, the grocer strolled in and looked round his
+bare extension, took the key from James, and immediately set his boy to paste a
+new notice in the window, tearing down all James’s announcements. Poor James
+had to run round, down Knarborough Road, and down Wellington Street as far as
+the Livery Stable, then down long narrow passages, before he could get into his
+own house, from his own shop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he did not mind. Every hour brought the first performance of his Pleasure
+Palace nearer. He was satisfied with Mr. May: he had to admit that he was
+satisfied with Mr. May. The Palace stood firm at last&mdash;oh, it was so
+ricketty when it arrived!&mdash;and it glowed with a new coat, all over, of
+dark-red paint, like ox-blood. It was tittivated up with a touch of lavender
+and yellow round the door and round the decorated wooden eaving. It had a new
+wooden slope up to the doors&mdash;and inside, a new wooden floor, with
+red-velvet seats in front, before the curtain, and old chapel-pews behind. The
+collier youths recognized the pews.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hey! These ’ere’s the pews out of the old Primitive Chapel.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sorry ah! We’n come ter hear t’ parson.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Theme for endless jokes. And the Pleasure Palace was christened, in some lucky
+stroke, Houghton’s Endeavour, a reference to that particular Chapel effort
+called the Christian Endeavour, where Alvina and Miss Pinnegar both figured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wheer art off, Sorry?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lumley.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Houghton’s Endeavour?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rotten.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, when one laconic young collier accosted another. But we anticipate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May had worked hard to get a program for the first week. His pictures were:
+“The Human Bird,” which turned out to be a ski-ing film from Norway, purely
+descriptive; “The Pancake,” a humorous film: and then his grand serial: “The
+Silent Grip.” And then, for Turns, his first item was Miss Poppy Traherne, a
+lady in innumerable petticoats, who could whirl herself into anything you like,
+from an arum lily in green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and a
+cup-and-saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne. The next turn was The
+Baxter Brothers, who ran up and down each other’s backs and up and down each
+other’s front, and stood on each other’s heads and on their own heads, and
+perched for a moment on each other’s shoulders, as if each of them was a flight
+of stairs with a landing, and the three of them were three flights, three
+storeys up, the top flight continually running down and becoming the bottom
+flight, while the middle flight collapsed and became a horizontal corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina had to open the performance by playing an overture called “Welcome All”:
+a ridiculous piece. She was excited and unhappy. On the Monday morning there
+was a rehearsal, Mr. May conducting. She played “Welcome All,” and then took
+the thumbed sheets which Miss Poppy Traherne carried with her. Miss Poppy was
+rather exacting. As she whirled her skirts she kept saying: “A little faster,
+please”&mdash;“A little slower”&mdash;in a rather haughty, official voice that
+was somewhat muffled by the swim of her drapery. “Can you give it
+<i>expression</i>?” she cried, as she got the arum lily in full blow, and there
+was a sound of real ecstasy in her tones. But why she should have called
+“Stronger! Stronger!” as she came into being as a cup and saucer, Alvina could
+not imagine: unless Miss Poppy was fancying herself a strong cup of tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, she subsided into her mere self, panted frantically, and then, in a
+hoarse voice, demanded if she was in the bare front of the show. She scorned to
+count “Welcome All.” Mr. May said Yes. She was the first item. Whereupon she
+began to raise a dust. Mr. Houghton said, hurriedly interposing, that he meant
+to make a little opening speech. Miss Poppy eyed him as if he were a
+cuckoo-clock, and she had to wait till he’d finished cuckooing. Then she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s not every night. There’s six nights to a week.” James was properly
+snubbed. It ended by Mr. May metamorphizing himself into a pug dog: he said he
+had got the “costoom” in his bag: and doing a lump-of-sugar scene with one of
+the Baxter Brothers, as a brief first item. Miss Poppy’s professional virginity
+was thus saved from outrage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the back of the stage there was half-a-yard of curtain screening the two
+dressing-rooms, ladies and gents. In her spare time Alvina sat in the ladies’
+dressing room, or in its lower doorway, for there was not room right inside.
+She watched the ladies making up&mdash;she gave some slight assistance. She saw
+the men’s feet, in their shabby pumps, on the other side of the curtain, and
+she heard the men’s gruff voices. Often a slangy conversation was carried on
+through the curtain&mdash;for most of the turns were acquainted with each
+other: very affable before each other’s faces, very sniffy behind each other’s
+backs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Alvina was in a state of bewilderment. She was extremely nice&mdash;oh,
+much too nice with the female turns. They treated her with a sort of off-hand
+friendliness, and they snubbed and patronized her and were a little spiteful
+with her because Mr. May treated her with attention and deference. She felt
+bewildered, a little excited, and as if she was not herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first evening actually came. Her father had produced a pink crêpe de Chine
+blouse and a back-comb massed with brilliants&mdash;both of which she refused
+to wear. She stuck to her black blouse and black shirt, and her simple
+hair-dressing. Mr. May said “Of cauce! She wasn’t intended to attract attention
+to herself.” Miss Pinnegar actually walked down the hill with her, and began to
+cry when she saw the ox-blood red erection, with its gas-flares in front. It
+was the first time she had seen it. She went on with Alvina to the little stage
+door at the back, and up the steps into the scrap of dressing-room. But she
+fled out again from the sight of Miss Poppy in her yellow hair and green
+knickers with green-lace frills. Poor Miss Pinnegar! She stood outside on the
+trodden grass behind the Band of Hope, and really cried. Luckily she had put a
+veil on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went valiantly round to the front entrance, and climbed the steps. The
+crowd was just coming. There was James’s face peeping inside the little
+ticket-window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One!” he said officially, pushing out the ticket. And then he recognized her.
+“Oh,” he said, “<i>You’re</i> not going to pay.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes I am,” she said, and she left her fourpence, and James’s coppery, grimy
+fingers scooped it in, as the youth behind Miss Pinnegar shoved her forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Arf way down, fourpenny,” said the man at the door, poking her in the
+direction of Mr. May, who wanted to put her in the red velvet. But she marched
+down one of the pews, and took her seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The place was crowded with a whooping, whistling, excited audience. The curtain
+was down. James had let it out to his fellow tradesmen, and it represented a
+patchwork of local adverts. There was a fat porker and a fat pork-pie, and the
+pig was saying: “You all know where to find me. Inside the crust at Frank
+Churchill’s, Knarborough Road, Woodhouse.” Round about the name of W. H.
+Johnson floated a bowler hat, a collar-and-necktie, a pair of braces and an
+umbrella. And so on and so on. It all made you feel very homely. But Miss
+Pinnegar was sadly hot and squeezed in her pew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time came, and the colliers began to drum their feet. It was exactly the
+excited, crowded audience Mr. May wanted. He darted out to drive James round in
+front of the curtain. But James, fascinated by raking in the money so fast,
+could not be shifted from the pay-box, and the two men nearly had a fight. At
+last Mr. May was seen shooing James, like a scuffled chicken, down the side
+gangway and on to the stage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James before the illuminated curtain of local adverts, bowing and beginning and
+not making a single word audible! The crowd quieted itself, the eloquence
+flowed on. The crowd was sick of James, and began to shuffle. “Come down, come
+down!” hissed Mr. May frantically from in front. But James did not move. He
+would flow on all night. Mr. May waved excitedly at Alvina, who sat obscurely
+at the piano, and darted on to the stage. He raised his voice and drowned
+James. James ceased to wave his penny-blackened hands, Alvina struck up
+“Welcome All” as loudly and emphatically as she could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And all the time Miss Pinnegar sat like a sphinx&mdash;like a sphinx. What she
+thought she did not know herself. But stolidly she stared at James, and
+anxiously she glanced sideways at the pounding Alvina. She knew Alvina had to
+pound until she received the cue that Mr. May was fitted in his pug-dog
+“Costoom.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A twitch of the curtain. Alvina wound up her final flourish, the curtain rose,
+and:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well really!” said Miss Pinnegar, out loud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was Mr. May as a pug dog begging, too lifelike and too impossible. The
+audience shouted. Alvina sat with her hands in her lap. The Pug was a great
+success.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Curtain! A few bars of Toreador&mdash;and then Miss Poppy’s sheets of music.
+Soft music. Miss Poppy was on the ground under a green scarf. And so the
+accumulating dilation, on to the whirling climax of the perfect arum lily.
+Sudden curtain, and a yell of ecstasy from the colliers. Of all blossoms, the
+arum, the arum lily is most mystical and portentous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now a crash and rumble from Alvina’s piano. This is the storm from whence the
+rainbow emerges. Up goes the curtain&mdash;Miss Poppy twirling till her skirts
+lift as in a breeze, rise up and become a rainbow above her now darkened legs.
+The footlights are all but extinguished. Miss Poppy is all but extinguished
+also.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rainbow is not so moving as the arum lily. But the Catherine wheel, done at
+the last moment on one leg and then an amazing leap into the air backwards,
+again brings down the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Poppy herself sets all store on her cup and saucer. But the audience,
+vulgar as ever, cannot quite see it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so, Alvina slips away with Miss Poppy’s music-sheets, while Mr. May sits
+down like a professional at the piano and makes things fly for the
+up-and-down-stairs Baxter Bros. Meanwhile, Alvina’s pale face hovering like a
+ghost in the side darkness, as it were under the stage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lamps go out: gurglings and kissings&mdash;and then the dither on the
+screen: “The Human Bird,” in awful shivery letters. It’s not a very good
+machine, and Mr. May is not a very good operator. Audience distinctly critical.
+Lights up&mdash;an “Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a bar!” even as in
+Alvina’s dream&mdash;and then “The Pancake”&mdash;so the first half over.
+Lights up for the interval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar sighed and folded her hands. She looked neither to right nor to
+left. In spite of herself, in spite of outraged shame and decency, she was
+excited. But she felt such excitement was not wholesome. In vain the boy most
+pertinently yelled “Chot-let” at her. She looked neither to right nor left. But
+when she saw Alvina nodding to her with a quick smile from the side gangway
+under the stage, she almost burst into tears. It was too much for her, all at
+once. And Alvina looked almost indecently excited. As she slipped across in
+front of the audience, to the piano, to play the seductive “Dream Waltz!” she
+looked almost fussy, like her father. James, needless to say, flittered and
+hurried hither and thither around the audience and the stage, like a wagtail on
+the brink of a pool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The second half consisted of a comic drama acted by two Baxter Bros., disguised
+as women, and Miss Poppy disguised as a man&mdash;with a couple of locals
+thrown in to do the guardsman and the Count. This went very well. The winding
+up was the first instalment of “The Silent Grip.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When lights went up and Alvina solemnly struck “God Save Our Gracious King,”
+the audience was on its feet and not very quiet, evidently hissing with
+excitement like doughnuts in the pan even when the pan is taken off the fire.
+Mr. Houghton thanked them for their courtesy and attention, and hoped&mdash;And
+nobody took the slightest notice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar stayed last, waiting for Alvina. And Alvina, in her excitement,
+waited for Mr. May and her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May fairly pranced into the empty hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well!” he said, shutting both his fists and flourishing them in Miss
+Pinnegar’s face. “How did it go?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think it went very well,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well! I should think so, indeed. It went like a house on fire. What?
+Didn’t it?” And he laughed a high, excited little laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James was counting pennies for his life, in the cash-place, and dropping them
+into a Gladstone bag. The others had to wait for him. At last he locked his
+bag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Mr. May, “done well?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fairly well,” said James, huskily excited. “Fairly well.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only fairly? Oh-h!” And Mr. May suddenly picked up the bag. James turned as if
+he would snatch it from him. “Well! Feel that, for fairly well!” said Mr. May,
+handing the bag to Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Goodness!” she cried, handing it to Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you believe it?” said Miss Pinnegar, relinquishing it to James. But she
+spoke coldly, aloof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May turned off the gas at the meter, came talking through the darkness of
+the empty theatre, picking his way with a flash-light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“C’est le premier pas qui coute,” he said, in a sort of American French, as he
+locked the doors and put the key in his pocket. James tripped silently
+alongside, bowed under the weight of his Gladstone bag of pennies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How much have we taken, father?” asked Alvina gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t counted,” he snapped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he got home he hurried upstairs to his bare chamber. He swept his table
+clear, and then, in an expert fashion, he seized handfuls of coin and piled
+them in little columns on his board. There was an army of fat pennies, a dozen
+to a column, along the back, rows and rows of fat brown rank-and-file. In front
+of these, rows of slim halfpence, like an advance-guard. And commanding all, a
+stout column of half-crowns, a few stoutish and important florin-figures, like
+general and colonels, then quite a file of shillings, like so many captains,
+and a little cloud of silvery lieutenant sixpences. Right at the end, like a
+frail drummer boy, a thin stick of threepenny pieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There they all were: burly dragoons of stout pennies, heavy and holding their
+ground, with a screen of halfpenny light infantry, officered by the immovable
+half-crown general, who in his turn was flanked by all his staff of florin
+colonels and shilling captains, from whom lightly moved the nimble sixpenny
+lieutenants all ignoring the wan, frail Joey of the threepenny-bits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time after time James ran his almighty eye over his army. He loved them. He
+loved to feel that his table was pressed down, that it groaned under their
+weight. He loved to see the pence, like innumerable pillars of cloud, standing
+waiting to lead on into wildernesses of unopened resource, while the silver, as
+pillars of light, should guide the way down the long night of fortune. Their
+weight sank sensually into his muscle, and gave him gratification. The dark
+redness of bronze, like full-blooded fleas, seemed alive and pulsing, the
+silver was magic as if winged.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII<br/>
+NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA</h2>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May and Alvina became almost inseparable, and Woodhouse buzzed with
+scandal. Woodhouse could not believe that Mr. May was absolutely final in his
+horror of any sort of coming-on-ness in a woman. It could not believe that he
+was only <i>so</i> fond of Alvina because she was like a sister to him, poor,
+lonely, harassed soul that he was: a pure sister who really hadn’t any body.
+For although Mr. May was rather fond, in an epicurean way, of his own body, yet
+other people’s bodies rather made him shudder. So that his grand utterance on
+Alvina was: “She’s not physical, she’s mental.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He even explained to her one day how it was, in his naïve fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There are two kinds of friendships,” he said, “physical and mental. The
+physical is a thing of the moment. Of cauce you quite <i>like</i> the
+individual, you remain quite nice with them, and so on,&mdash;to keep the thing
+as decent as possible. It <i>is</i> quite decent, so long as you keep it so.
+But it is a thing of the moment. Which you know. It may last a week or two, or
+a month or two. But you know from the beginning it is going to end&mdash;quite
+finally&mdash;quite soon. You take it for what it is. But it’s so different
+with the mental friendships. <i>They</i> are lasting. They are eternal&mdash;if
+anything human (he said yuman) ever is eternal, ever <i>can</i> be eternal.” He
+pressed his hands together in an odd cherubic manner. He was quite sincere: if
+man ever <i>can</i> be quite sincere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was quite content to be one of his mental and eternal friends, or rather
+<i>friendships</i>&mdash;since she existed <i>in abstractu</i> as far as he was
+concerned. For she did not find him at all physically moving. Physically he was
+not there: he was oddly an absentee. But his naïveté roused the serpent’s tooth
+of her bitter irony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And your wife?” she said to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my wife! Dreadful thought! <i>There</i> I made the great mistake of trying
+to find the two in one person! And <i>didn’t</i> I fall between two stools! Oh
+dear, <i>didn’t</i> I? Oh, I fell between the two stools beautifully,
+beautifully! And <i>then</i>&mdash;she nearly set the stools on top of me. I
+thought I should never get up again. When I was physical, she was
+mental&mdash;Bernard Shaw and cold baths for supper!&mdash;and when I was
+mental she was physical, and threw her arms round my neck. In the morning, mark
+you. Always in the morning, when I was on the alert for business. Yes,
+invariably. What do you think of it? Could the devil himself have invented
+anything more trying? Oh dear me, don’t mention it. Oh, what a time I had!
+Wonder I’m alive. Yes, really! Although you smile.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina did more than smile. She laughed outright. And yet she remained good
+friends with the odd little man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bought himself a new, smart overcoat, that fitted his figure, and a new
+velour hat. And she even noticed, one day when he was curling himself up cosily
+on the sofa, that he had pale blue silk underwear, and purple silk suspenders.
+She wondered where he got them, and how he afforded them. But there they were.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James seemed for the time being wrapt in his undertaking&mdash;particularly in
+the takings part of it. He seemed for the time being contented&mdash;or nearly
+so, nearly so. Certainly there was money coming in. But then he had to pay off
+all he had borrowed to buy his erection and its furnishings, and a bulk of
+pennies sublimated into a very small £.s.d. account, at the bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Endeavour was successful&mdash;yes, it was successful. But not
+overwhelmingly so. On wet nights Woodhouse did not care to trail down to
+Lumley. And then Lumley was one of those depressed, negative spots on the face
+of the earth which have no pull at all. In that region of sharp hills with fine
+hill-brows, and shallow, rather dreary canal-valleys, it was the places on the
+hill-brows, like Woodhouse and Hathersedge and Rapton which flourished, while
+the dreary places down along the canals existed only for work-places, not for
+life and pleasure. It was just like James to have planted his endeavour down in
+the stagnant dust and rust of potteries and foundries, where no illusion could
+bloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had dreamed of crowded houses every night, and of raised prices. But there
+was no probability of his being able to raise his prices. He had to figure
+lower than the Woodhouse Empire. He was second-rate from the start. His hope
+now lay in the tramway which was being built from Knarborough away through the
+country&mdash;a black country indeed&mdash;through Woodhouse and Lumley and
+Hathersedge, to Rapton. When once this tramway-system was working, he would
+have a supply of youths and lasses always on tap, as it were. So he spread his
+rainbow wings towards the future, and began to say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When we’ve got the trams, I shall buy a new machine and finer lenses, and I
+shall extend my premises.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May did not talk business to Alvina. He was terribly secretive with respect
+to business. But he said to her once, in the early year following their
+opening:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, how do you think we’re doing, Miss Houghton?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’re not doing any better than we did at first, I think,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he answered. “No! That’s true. That’s perfectly true. But why? They seem
+to like the programs.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think they do,” said Alvina. “I think they like them when they’re there. But
+isn’t it funny, they don’t seem to want to come to them. I know they always
+talk as if we were second-rate. And they only come because they can’t get to
+the Empire, or up to Hathersedge. We’re a stop-gap. I know we are.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May looked down in the mouth. He cocked his blue eyes at her, miserable and
+frightened. Failure began to frighten him abjectly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why do you think that is?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t believe they like the turns,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But <i>look</i> how they applaud them! <i>Look</i> how pleased they are!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know. I know they like them once they’re there, and they see them. But they
+don’t come again. They crowd the Empire&mdash;and the Empire is only pictures
+now; and it’s much cheaper to run.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her dismally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t believe they want nothing but pictures. I can’t believe they want
+everything in the flat,” he said, coaxing and miserable. He himself was not
+interested in the film. His interest was still the human interest in living
+performers and their living feats. “Why,” he continued, “they are ever so much
+more excited after a good turn, than after any film.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know they are,” said Alvina. “But I don’t believe they want to be excited in
+that way.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In what way?” asked Mr. May plaintively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By the things which the artistes do. I believe they’re jealous.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh nonsense!” exploded Mr. May, starting as if he had been shot. Then he laid
+his hand on her arm. “But forgive my rudeness! I don’t mean it, of
+<i>cauce</i>! But do you mean to say that these collier louts and factory girls
+are jealous of the things the artistes do, because they could never do them
+themselves?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sure they are,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I <i>can’t</i> believe it,” said Mr. May, pouting up his mouth and smiling
+at her as if she were a whimsical child. “What a low opinion you have of human
+nature!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have I?” laughed Alvina. “I’ve never reckoned it up. But I’m sure that these
+common people here are jealous if anybody does anything or has anything they
+can’t have themselves.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t believe it,” protested Mr. May. “Could they be so <i>silly</i>! And
+then why aren’t they jealous of the extraordinary things which are done on the
+film?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because they don’t see the flesh-and-blood people. I’m sure that’s it. The
+film is only pictures, like pictures in the <i>Daily Mirror</i>. And pictures
+don’t have any feelings apart from their own feelings. I mean the feelings of
+the people who watch them. Pictures don’t have any life except in the people
+who watch them. And that’s why they like them. Because they make them feel that
+they are everything.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The pictures make the colliers and lasses feel that they themselves are
+everything? But how? They identify themselves with the heroes and heroines on
+the screen?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;they take it all to themselves&mdash;and there isn’t anything except
+themselves. I know it’s like that. It’s because they can spread themselves over
+a film, and they <i>can’t</i> over a living performer. They’re up against the
+performer himself. And they hate it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May watched her long and dismally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I <i>can’t</i> believe people are like that!&mdash;sane people!” he said.
+“Why, to me the whole joy is in the living personality, the curious
+<i>personality</i> of the artiste. That’s what I enjoy so much.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know. But that’s where you’re different from them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But <i>am</i> I?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. You’re not as up to the mark as they are.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not up to the mark? What do you mean? Do you mean they are more intelligent?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, but they’re more modern. You like things which aren’t yourself. But they
+don’t. They hate to admire anything that they can’t take to themselves. They
+hate anything that isn’t themselves. And that’s why they like pictures. It’s
+all themselves to them, all the time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He still puzzled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know I don’t follow you,” he said, a little mocking, as if she were making
+a fool of herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because you don’t know them. You don’t know the common people. You don’t know
+how conceited they are.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her a long time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you think we ought to cut out the variety, and give nothing but pictures,
+like the Empire?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe it takes best,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And costs less,” he answered. “But <i>then</i>! It’s so dull. Oh my
+<i>word</i>, it’s so dull. I don’t think I could bear it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And our pictures aren’t good enough,” she said. “We should have to get a new
+machine, and pay for the expensive films. Our pictures do shake, and our films
+are rather ragged.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But then, <i>surely</i> they’re good enough!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was how matters stood. The Endeavour paid its way, and made just a margin
+of profit&mdash;no more. Spring went on to summer, and then there was a very
+shadowy margin of profit. But James was not at all daunted. He was waiting now
+for the trams, and building up hopes since he could not build in bricks and
+mortar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The navvies were busy in troops along the Knarborough Road, and down Lumley
+Hill. Alvina became quite used to them. As she went down the hill soon after
+six o’clock in the evening, she met them trooping home. And some of them she
+liked. There was an outlawed look about them as they swung along the
+pavement&mdash;some of them; and there was a certain lurking set of the head
+which rather frightened her because it fascinated her. There was one tall young
+fellow with a red face and fair hair, who looked as if he had fronted the seas
+and the arctic sun. He looked at her. They knew each other quite well, in
+passing. And he would glance at perky Mr. May. Alvina tried to fathom what the
+young fellow’s look meant. She wondered what he thought of Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was surprised to hear Mr. May’s opinion of the navvy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>He’s</i> a handsome young man, now!” exclaimed her companion one evening as
+the navvies passed. And all three turned round, to find all three turning
+round. Alvina laughed, and made eyes. At that moment she would cheerfully have
+gone along with the navvy. She was getting so tired of Mr. May’s quiet prance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the whole, Alvina enjoyed the cinema and the life it brought her. She
+accepted it. And she became somewhat vulgarized in her bearing. She was
+<i>déclassée</i>: she had lost her class altogether. The other daughters of
+respectable tradesmen avoided her now, or spoke to her only from a distance.
+She was supposed to be “carrying on” with Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina did not care. She rather liked it. She liked being <i>déclassée</i>. She
+liked feeling an outsider. At last she seemed to stand on her own ground. She
+laughed to herself as she went back and forth from Woodhouse to Lumley, between
+Manchester House and the Pleasure Palace. She laughed when she saw her father’s
+theatre-notices plastered about. She laughed when she saw his thrilling
+announcements in the <i>Woodhouse Weekly</i>. She laughed when she knew that
+all the Woodhouse youths recognized her, and looked on her as one of their
+inferior entertainers. She was off the map: and she liked it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For after all, she got a good deal of fun out of it. There was not only the
+continual activity. There were the artistes. Every week she met a new set of
+stars&mdash;three or four as a rule. She rehearsed with them on Monday
+afternoons, and she saw them every evening, and twice a week at matinees. James
+now gave two performances each evening&mdash;and he always had <i>some</i>
+audience. So that Alvina had opportunity to come into contact with all the odd
+people of the inferior stage. She found they were very much of a type: a little
+frowsy, a little flea-bitten as a rule, indifferent to ordinary morality, and
+philosophical even if irritable. They were often very irritable. And they had
+always a certain fund of callous philosophy. Alvina did not <i>like</i>
+them&mdash;you were not supposed, really, to get deeply emotional over them.
+But she found it amusing to see them all and know them all. It was so different
+from Woodhouse, where everything was priced and ticketed. These people were
+nomads. They didn’t care a straw who you were or who you weren’t. They had a
+most irritable professional vanity, and that was all. It was most odd to watch
+them. They weren’t very squeamish. If the young gentlemen liked to peep round
+the curtain when the young lady was in her knickers: oh, well, she rather
+roundly told them off, perhaps, but nobody minded. The fact that ladies wore
+knickers and black silk stockings thrilled nobody, any more than grease-paint
+or false moustaches thrilled. It was all part of the stock-in-trade. As for
+immorality&mdash;well, what did it amount to? Not a great deal. Most of the men
+cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about any more carnal vice, and
+most of the girls were good pals with each other, men were only there to act
+with: even if the act was a private love-farce of an improper description.
+What’s the odds? You couldn’t get excited about it: not as a rule.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May usually took rooms for the artistes in a house down in Lumley. When any
+one particular was coming, he would go to a rather better-class widow in
+Woodhouse. He never let Alvina take any part in the making of these
+arrangements, except with the widow in Woodhouse, who had long ago been a
+servant at Manchester House, and even now came in to do cleaning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Odd, eccentric people they were, these entertainers. Most of them had a streak
+of imagination, and most of them drank. Most of them were middle-aged. Most of
+them had an abstracted manner; in ordinary life, they seemed left aside,
+somehow. Odd, extraneous creatures, often a little depressed, feeling life slip
+away from them. The cinema was killing them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina had quite a serious flirtation with a man who played a flute and
+piccolo. He was about fifty years old, still handsome, and growing stout. When
+sober, he was completely reserved. When rather drunk, he talked charmingly and
+amusingly&mdash;oh, most charmingly. Alvina quite loved him. But alas,
+<i>how</i> he drank! But what a charm he had! He went, and she saw him no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The usual rather American-looking, clean-shaven, slightly pasty young man left
+Alvina quite cold, though he had an amiable and truly chivalrous
+<i>galanterie</i>. He was quite likeable. But so unattractive. Alvina was more
+fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did marvellous things with six
+ferrets, or the Jap who was tattooed all over, and had the most amazing strong
+wrists, so that he could throw down any collier, with one turn of the hand.
+Queer cuts these!&mdash;but just a little bit beyond her. She watched them
+rather from a distance. She wished she could jump across the distance.
+Particularly with the Jap, who was almost quite naked, but clothed with the
+most exquisite tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle that flew with
+terrible spread wings between his shoulders, or the strange mazy pattern that
+netted the roundness of his buttocks. He was not very large, but nicely shaped,
+and with no hair on his smooth, tattooed body. He was almost blue in
+colour&mdash;that is, his tattooing was blue, with pickings of brilliant
+vermilion: as for instance round the nipples, and in a strange red
+serpent’s-jaws over the navel. A serpent went round his loins and haunches. He
+told her how many times he had had blood-poisoning, during the process of his
+tattooing. He was a queer, black-eyed creature, with a look of silence and
+toad-like lewdness. He frightened her. But when he was dressed in common
+clothes, and was just a cheap, shoddy-looking European Jap, he was more
+frightening still. For his face&mdash;he was not tattooed above a certain ring
+low on his neck&mdash;was yellow and flat and basking with one eye open, like
+some age-old serpent. She felt he was smiling horribly all the time: lewd,
+unthinkable. A strange sight he was in Woodhouse, on a sunny morning; a
+shabby-looking bit of riff-raff of the East, rather down at the heel. Who could
+have imagined the terrible eagle of his shoulders, the serpent of his loins,
+his supple, magic skin?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The summer passed again, and autumn. Winter was a better time for James
+Houghton. The trams, moreover, would begin to run in January.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wanted to arrange a good program for the week when the trams started. A long
+time ahead, Mr. May prepared it. The one item was the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe.
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe consisted of five persons, Madame Rochard and four
+young men. They were a strictly Red Indian troupe. But one of the young men,
+the German Swiss, was a famous yodeller, and another, the French Swiss, was a
+good comic with a French accent, whilst Madame and the German did a screaming
+two-person farce. Their great turn, of course, was the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Red
+Indian scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were due in the third week in January, arriving from the
+Potteries on the Sunday evening. When Alvina came in from Chapel that Sunday
+evening, she found her widow, Mrs. Rollings, seated in the living room talking
+with James, who had an anxious look. Since opening the Pleasure Palace James
+was less regular at Chapel. And moreover, he was getting old and shaky, and
+Sunday was the one evening he might spend in peace. Add that on this particular
+black Sunday night it was sleeting dismally outside, and James had already a
+bit of a cough, and we shall see that he did right to stay at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Rollings sat nursing a bottle. She was to go to the chemist for some
+cough-cure, because Madame had got a bad cold. The chemist was gone to
+Chapel&mdash;he wouldn’t open till eight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame and the four young men had arrived at about six. Madame, said Mrs.
+Rollings, was a little fat woman, and she was complaining all the time that she
+had got a cold on her chest, laying her hand on her chest and trying her
+breathing and going “He-e-e-er! Herr!” to see if she could breathe properly.
+She, Mrs. Rollings, had suggested that Madame should put her feet in hot
+mustard and water, but Madame said she must have something to clear her chest.
+The four young men were four nice civil young fellows. They evidently liked
+Madame. Madame had insisted on cooking the chops for the young men. She herself
+had eaten one, but she laid her hand on her chest when she swallowed. One of
+the young men had gone out to get her some brandy, and he had come back with
+half-a-dozen large bottles of Bass as well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Houghton was very much concerned over Madame’s cold. He asked the same
+questions again and again, to try and make sure how bad it was. But Mrs.
+Rollings didn’t seem quite to know. James wrinkled his brow. Supposing Madame
+could not take her part! He was most anxious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you think you might go across with Mrs. Rollings and see how this woman is,
+Alvina?” he said to his daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should think you’ll never turn Alvina out on such a night,” said Miss
+Pinnegar. “And besides, it isn’t right. Where is Mr. May? It’s his business to
+go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” returned Alvina. “<i>I</i> don’t mind going. Wait a minute, I’ll see if
+we haven’t got some of those pastilles for burning. If it’s very bad, I can
+make one of those plasters mother used.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she ran upstairs. She was curious to see what Madame and her four young men
+were like.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With Mrs. Rollings she called at the chemist’s back door, and then they hurried
+through the sleet to the widow’s dwelling. It was not far. As they went up the
+entry they heard the sound of voices. But in the kitchen all was quiet. The
+voices came from the front room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Rollings tapped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come in!” said a rather sharp voice. Alvina entered on the widow’s heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve brought you the cough stuff,” said the widow. “And Miss Huff’n’s come as
+well, to see how you was.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four young men were sitting round the table in their shirt-sleeves, with
+bottles of Bass. There was much cigarette smoke. By the fire, which was burning
+brightly, sat a plump, pale woman with dark bright eyes and finely-drawn
+eyebrows: she might be any age between forty and fifty. There were grey threads
+in her tidy black hair. She was neatly dressed in a well-made black dress with
+a small lace collar. There was a slight look of self-commiseration on her face.
+She had a cigarette between her drooped fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose as if with difficulty, and held out her plump hand, on which four or
+five rings showed. She had dropped the cigarette unnoticed into the hearth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you do,” she said. “I didn’t catch your name.” Madame’s voice was a
+little plaintive and plangent now, like a bronze reed mournfully vibrating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alvina Houghton,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Daughter of him as owns the thee-etter where you’re goin’ to act,” interposed
+the widow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh yes! Yes! I see. Miss Houghton. I didn’t know how it was said.
+Huff-ton&mdash;yes? Miss Houghton. I’ve got a bad cold on my chest&mdash;”
+laying her plump hand with the rings on her plump bosom. “But let me introduce
+you to my young men&mdash;” A wave of the plump hand, whose forefinger was very
+slightly cigarette-stained, towards the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The four young men had risen, and stood looking at Alvina and Madame. The room
+was small, rather bare, with horse-hair and white-crochet antimacassars and a
+linoleum floor. The table also was covered with a brightly-patterned American
+oil-cloth, shiny but clean. A naked gas-jet hung over it. For furniture, there
+were just chairs, arm-chairs, table, and a horse-hair antimacassar-ed sofa. Yet
+the little room seemed very full&mdash;full of people, young men with smart
+waistcoats and ties, but without coats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is Max,” said Madame. “I shall tell you only their names, and not their
+family names, because that is easier for you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the meantime Max had bowed. He was a tall Swiss with almond eyes and a
+flattish face and a rather stiff, ramrod figure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that is Louis&mdash;” Louis bowed gracefully. He was a Swiss Frenchman,
+moderately tall, with prominent cheekbones and a wing of glossy black hair
+falling on his temple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that is Géoffroi&mdash;Geoffrey&mdash;” Geoffrey made his bow&mdash;a
+broad-shouldered, watchful, taciturn man from Alpine France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that is Francesco&mdash;Frank&mdash;” Francesco gave a faint curl of his
+lip, half smile, as he saluted her involuntarily in a military fashion. He was
+dark, rather tall and loose, with yellow-tawny eyes. He was an Italian from the
+south. Madame gave another look at him. “He doesn’t like his English name of
+Frank. You will see, he pulls a face. No, he doesn’t like it. We call him
+Ciccio also&mdash;” But Ciccio was dropping his head sheepishly, with the same
+faint smile on his face, half grimace, and stooping to his chair, wanting to
+sit down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“These are my family of young men,” said Madame. “We are drawn from three
+races, though only Ciccio is not of our mountains. Will you please to sit
+down.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all took their chairs. There was a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My young men drink a little beer, after their horrible journey. As a rule, I
+do not like them to drink. But tonight they have a little beer. I do not take
+any myself, because I am afraid of inflaming myself.” She laid her hand on her
+breast, and took long, uneasy breaths. “I feel it. I feel it <i>here</i>.” She
+patted her breast. “It makes me afraid for tomorrow. Will you perhaps take a
+glass of beer? Ciccio, ask for another glass&mdash;” Ciccio, at the end of the
+table, did not rise, but looked round at Alvina as if he presumed there would
+be no need for him to move. The odd, supercilious curl of the lip persisted.
+Madame glared at him. But he turned the handsome side of his cheek towards her,
+with the faintest flicker of a sneer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, thank you. I never take beer,” said Alvina hurriedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No? Never? Oh!” Madame folded her hands, but her black eyes still darted venom
+at Ciccio. The rest of the young men fingered their glasses and put their
+cigarettes to their lips and blew the smoke down their noses, uncomfortably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame closed her eyes and leaned back a moment. Then her face looked
+transparent and pallid, there were dark rings under her eyes, the
+beautifully-brushed hair shone dark like black glass above her ears. She was
+obviously unwell. The young men looked at her, and muttered to one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid your cold is rather bad,” said Alvina. “Will you let me take your
+temperature?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame started and looked frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I don’t think you should trouble to do that,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max, the tall, highly-coloured Swiss, turned to her, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, you must have your temperature taken, and then we s’ll know, shan’t we. I
+had a hundred and five when we were in Redruth.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina had taken the thermometer from her pocket. Ciccio meanwhile muttered
+something in French&mdash;evidently something rude&mdash;meant for Max.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What shall I do if I can’t work tomorrow!” moaned Madame, seeing Alvina hold
+up the thermometer towards the light. “Max, what shall we do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will stay in bed, and we must do the White Prisoner scene,” said Max,
+rather staccato and official.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio curled his lip and put his head aside. Alvina went across to Madame with
+the thermometer. Madame lifted her plump hand and fended off Alvina, while she
+made her last declaration:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never&mdash;never have I missed my work, for a single day, for ten years.
+Never. If I am going to lie abandoned, I had better die at once.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lie abandoned!” said Max. “You know you won’t do no such thing. What are you
+talking about?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Take the thermometer,” said Geoffrey roughly, but with feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tomorrow, see, you will be well. Quite certain!” said Louis. Madame mournfully
+shook her head, opened her mouth, and sat back with closed eyes and the stump
+of the thermometer comically protruding from a corner of her lips. Meanwhile
+Alvina took her plump white wrist and felt her pulse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We can practise&mdash;” began Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sh!” said Max, holding up his finger and looking anxiously at Alvina and
+Madame, who still leaned back with the stump of the thermometer jauntily
+perking up from her pursed mouth, while her face was rather ghastly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max and Louis watched anxiously. Geoffrey sat blowing the smoke down his nose,
+while Ciccio callously lit another cigarette, striking a match on his boot-heel
+and puffing from under the tip of his rather long nose. Then he took the
+cigarette from his mouth, turned his head, slowly spat on the floor, and rubbed
+his foot on his spit. Max flapped his eyelids and looked all disdain, murmuring
+something about “ein schmutziges italienisches Volk,” whilst Louis, refusing
+either to see or to hear, framed the word “chien” on his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then quick as lightning both turned their attention again to Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her temperature was a hundred and two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’d better go to bed,” said Alvina. “Have you eaten anything?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One little mouthful,” said Madame plaintively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max sat looking pale and stricken, Louis had hurried forward to take Madame’s
+hand. He kissed it quickly, then turned aside his head because of the tears in
+his eyes. Geoffrey gulped beer in large throatfuls, and Ciccio, with his head
+bent, was watching from under his eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll run round for the doctor&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t! Don’t do that, my dear! Don’t you go and do that! I’m likely to a
+temperature&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Liable to a temperature,” murmured Louis pathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll go to bed,” said Madame, obediently rising.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait a bit. I’ll see if there’s a fire in the bedroom,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my dear, you are too good. Open the door for her, Ciccio&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio reached across at the door, but was too late. Max had hastened to usher
+Alvina out. Madame sank back in her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never for ten years,” she was wailing. “Quoi faire, ah, quoi faire! Que
+ferez-vous, mes pauvres, sans votre Kishwégin. Que vais-je faire, mourir dans
+un tel pays! La bonne demoiselle&mdash;la bonne demoiselle&mdash;elle a du
+coeur. Elle pourrait aussi être belle, s’il y avait un peu plus de chair. Max,
+liebster, schau ich sehr elend aus? Ach, oh jeh, oh jeh!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ach nein, Madame, ach nein. Nicht so furchtbar elend,” said Max.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Manca il cuore solamente al Ciccio,” moaned Madame. “Che natura povera, senza
+sentimento&mdash;niente di bello. Ahimé, che amico, che ragazzo duro,
+aspero&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Trova?” said Ciccio, with a curl of the lip. He looked, as he dropped his
+long, beautiful lashes, as if he might weep for all that, if he were not bound
+to be misbehaving just now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Madame moaned in four languages as she posed pallid in her arm-chair.
+Usually she spoke in French only, with her young men. But this was an extra
+occasion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“La pauvre Kishwégin!” murmured Madame. “Elle va finir au monde. Elle
+passe&mdash;la pauvre Kishwégin.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kishwégin was Madame’s Red Indian name, the name under which she danced her
+Squaw’s fire-dance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now that she knew she was ill, Madame seemed to become more ill. Her breath
+came in little pants. She had a pain in her side. A feverish flush seemed to
+mount her cheek. The young men were all extremely uncomfortable. Louis did not
+conceal his tears. Only Ciccio kept the thin smile on his lips, and added to
+Madame’s annoyance and pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina came down to take her to bed. The young men all rose, and kissed
+Madame’s hand as she went out: her poor jewelled hand, that was faintly
+perfumed with eau de Cologne. She spoke an appropriate good-night, to each of
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-night, my faithful Max, I trust myself to you. Good-night, Louis, the
+tender heart. Good-night valiant Geoffrey. Ah Ciccio, do not add to the weight
+of my heart. Be good <i>braves</i>, all, be brothers in one accord. One little
+prayer for poor Kishwégin. Good-night!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which valediction she slowly climbed the stairs, putting her hand on her
+knee at each step, with the effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No&mdash;no,” she said to Max, who would have followed to her assistance. “Do
+not come up. No&mdash;no!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her bedroom was tidy and proper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tonight,” she moaned, “I shan’t be able to see that the boys’ rooms are well
+in order. They are not to be trusted, no. They need an overseeing eye:
+especially Ciccio; especially Ciccio!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sank down by the fire and began to undo her dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You must let me help you,” said Alvina. “You know I have been a nurse.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, you are too kind, too kind, dear young lady. I am a lonely old woman. I am
+not used to attentions. Best leave me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let me help you,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alas, ahimé! Who would have thought Kishwégin would need help. I danced last
+night with the boys in the theatre in Leek: and tonight I am put to bed
+in&mdash;what is the name of this place, dear?&mdash;It seems I don’t remember
+it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Woodhouse,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Woodhouse! Woodhouse! Is there not something called Woodlouse? I believe. Ugh,
+horrible! Why is it horrible?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina quickly undressed the plump, trim little woman. She seemed so soft.
+Alvina could not imagine how she could be a dancer on the stage, strenuous. But
+Madame’s softness could flash into wild energy, sudden convulsive power, like a
+cuttle-fish. Alvina brushed out the long black hair, and plaited it lightly.
+Then she got Madame into bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah,” sighed Madame, “the good bed! The good bed! But cold&mdash;it is so cold.
+Would you hang up my dress, dear, and fold my stockings?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina quickly folded and put aside the dainty underclothing. Queer, dainty
+woman, was Madame, even to her wonderful threaded black-and-gold garters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My poor boys&mdash;no Kishwégin tomorrow! You don’t think I need see a priest,
+dear? A priest!” said Madame, her teeth chattering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Priest! Oh no! You’ll be better when we can get you warm. I think it’s only a
+chill. Mrs. Rollings is warming a blanket&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina ran downstairs. Max opened the sitting-room door and stood watching at
+the sound of footsteps. His rather bony fists were clenched beneath his loose
+shirt-cuffs, his eyebrows tragically lifted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is she much ill?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know. But I don’t think so. Do you mind heating the blanket while Mrs.
+Rollings makes thin gruel?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max and Louis stood heating blankets. Louis’ trousers were cut rather tight at
+the waist, and gave him a female look. Max was straight and stiff. Mrs.
+Rollings asked Geoffrey to fill the coal-scuttles and carry one upstairs.
+Geoffrey obediently went out with a lantern to the coal-shed. Afterwards he was
+to carry up the horse-hair arm-chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I must go home for some things,” said Alvina to Ciccio. “Will you come and
+carry them for me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started up, and with one movement threw away his cigarette. He did not look
+at Alvina. His beautiful lashes seemed to screen his eyes. He was fairly tall,
+but loosely built for an Italian, with slightly sloping shoulders. Alvina
+noticed the brown, slender Mediterranean hand, as he put his fingers to his
+lips. It was a hand such as she did not know, prehensile and tender and dusky.
+With an odd graceful slouch he went into the passage and reached for his coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not say a word, but held aloof as he walked with Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sorry for Madame,” said Alvina, as she hurried rather breathless through
+the night. “She does think for you men.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Ciccio vouchsafed no answer, and walked with his hands in the pockets of
+his water-proof, wincing from the weather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid she will never be able to dance tomorrow,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You think she won’t be able?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m almost sure she won’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which he said nothing, and Alvina also kept silence till they came to the
+black dark passage and encumbered yard at the back of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think you can see at all,” she said. “It’s this way.” She groped for
+him in the dark, and met his groping hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This way,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was curious how light his fingers were in their clasp&mdash;almost like a
+child’s touch. So they came under the light from the window of the
+sitting-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina hurried indoors, and the young man followed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall have to stay with Madame tonight,” she explained hurriedly. “She’s
+feverish, but she may throw it off if we can get her into a sweat.” And Alvina
+ran upstairs collecting things necessary. Ciccio stood back near the door, and
+answered all Miss Pinnegar’s entreaties to come to the fire with a shake of the
+head and a slight smile of the lips, bashful and stupid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But do come and warm yourself before you go out again,” said Miss Pinnegar,
+looking at the man as he drooped his head in the distance. He still shook
+dissent, but opened his mouth at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It makes it colder after,” he said, showing his teeth in a slight, stupid
+smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh well, if you think so,” said Miss Pinnegar, nettled. She couldn’t make
+heads or tails of him, and didn’t try.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they got back, Madame was light-headed, and talking excitedly of her
+dance, her young men. The three young men were terrified. They had got the
+blankets scorching hot. Alvina smeared the plasters and applied them to
+Madame’s side, where the pain was. What a white-skinned, soft, plump child she
+seemed! Her pain meant a touch of pleurisy, for sure. The men hovered outside
+the door. Alvina wrapped the poor patient in the hot blankets, got a few
+spoonfuls of hot gruel and whiskey down her throat, fastened her down in bed,
+lowered the light and banished the men from the stairs. Then she sat down to
+watch. Madame chafed, moaned, murmured feverishly. Alvina soothed her, and put
+her hands in bed. And at last the poor dear became quiet. Her brow was faintly
+moist. She fell into a quiet sleep, perspiring freely. Alvina watched her
+still, soothed her when she suddenly started and began to break out of the
+bedclothes, quieted her, pressed her gently, firmly down, folded her tight and
+made her submit to the perspiration against which, in convulsive starts, she
+fought and strove, crying that she was suffocating, she was too hot, too hot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lie still, lie still,” said Alvina. “You must keep warm.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Madame moaned. How she hated seething in the bath of her own perspiration.
+Her wilful nature rebelled strongly. She would have thrown aside her coverings
+and gasped into the cold air, if Alvina had not pressed her down with that
+soft, inevitable pressure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the hours passed, till about one o’clock, when the perspiration became less
+profuse, and the patient was really better, really quieter. Then Alvina went
+downstairs for a moment. She saw the light still burning in the front room.
+Tapping, she entered. There sat Max by the fire, a picture of misery, with
+Louis opposite him, nodding asleep after his tears. On the sofa Geoffrey snored
+lightly, while Ciccio sat with his head on the table, his arms spread out, dead
+asleep. Again she noticed the tender, dusky Mediterranean hands, the slender
+wrists, slender for a man naturally loose and muscular.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Haven’t you gone to bed?” whispered Alvina. “Why?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louis started awake. Max, the only stubborn watcher, shook his head
+lugubriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But she’s better,” whispered Alvina. “She’s perspired. She’s better. She’s
+sleeping naturally.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max stared with round, sleep-whitened, owlish eyes, pessimistic and sceptical:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” persisted Alvina. “Come and look at her. But don’t wake her, whatever
+you do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max took off his slippers and rose to his tall height. Louis, like a scared
+chicken, followed. Each man held his slippers in his hand. They noiselessly
+entered and peeped stealthily over the heaped bedclothes. Madame was lying,
+looking a little flushed and very girlish, sleeping lightly, with a strand of
+black hair stuck to her cheek, and her lips lightly parted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max watched her for some moments. Then suddenly he straightened himself, pushed
+back his brown hair that was brushed up in the German fashion, and crossed
+himself, dropping his knee as before an altar; crossed himself and dropped his
+knee once more; and then a third time crossed himself and inclined before the
+altar. Then he straightened himself again, and turned aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louis also crossed himself. His tears burst out. He bowed and took the edge of
+a blanket to his lips, kissing it reverently. Then he covered his face with his
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Madame slept lightly and innocently on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina turned to go. Max silently followed, leading Louis by the arm. When they
+got downstairs, Max and Louis threw themselves in each other’s arms, and kissed
+each other on either cheek, gravely, in Continental fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is better,” said Max gravely, in French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thanks to God,” replied Louis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina witnessed all this with some amazement. The men did not heed her. Max
+went over and shook Geoffrey, Louis put his hand on Ciccio’s shoulder. The
+sleepers were difficult to wake. The wakers shook the sleeping, but in vain. At
+last Geoffrey began to stir. But in vain Louis lifted Ciccio’s shoulders from
+the table. The head and the hands dropped inert. The long black lashes lay
+motionless, the rather long, fine Greek nose drew the same light breaths, the
+mouth remained shut. Strange fine black hair, he had, close as fur, animal, and
+naked, frail-seeming, tawny hands. There was a silver ring on one hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina suddenly seized one of the inert hands that slid on the table-cloth as
+Louis shook the young man’s shoulders. Tight she pressed the hand. Ciccio
+opened his tawny-yellowish eyes, that seemed to have been put in with a dirty
+finger, as the saying goes, owing to the sootiness of the lashes and brows. He
+was quite drunk with his first sleep, and saw nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wake up,” said Alvina, laughing, pressing his hand again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted his head once more, suddenly clasped her hand, his eyes came to
+consciousness, his hand relaxed, he recognized her, and he sat back in his
+chair, turning his face aside and lowering his lashes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Get up, great beast,” Louis was saying softly in French, pushing him as
+ox-drivers sometimes push their oxen. Ciccio staggered to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is better,” they told him. “We are going to bed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They took their candles and trooped off upstairs, each one bowing to Alvina as
+he passed. Max solemnly, Louis gallant, the other two dumb and sleepy. They
+occupied the two attic chambers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina carried up the loose bed from the sofa, and slept on the floor before
+the fire in Madame’s room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame slept well and long, rousing and stirring and settling off again. It was
+eight o’clock before she asked her first question. Alvina was already up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh&mdash;alors&mdash;Then I am better, I am quite well. I can dance today.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think today,” said Alvina. “But perhaps tomorrow.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, today,” said Madame. “I can dance today, because I am quite well. I am
+Kishwégin.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are better. But you must lie still today. Yes, really&mdash;you will find
+you are weak when you try to stand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame watched Alvina’s thin face with sullen eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are an Englishwoman, severe and materialist,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina started and looked round at her with wide blue eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” she said. There was a wan, pathetic look about her, a sort of heroism
+which Madame detested, but which now she found touching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come!” said Madame, stretching out her plump jewelled hand. “Come, I am an
+ungrateful woman. Come, they are not good for you, the people, I see it. Come
+to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina went slowly to Madame, and took the outstretched hand. Madame kissed her
+hand, then drew her down and kissed her on either cheek, gravely, as the young
+men had kissed each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have been good to Kishwégin, and Kishwégin has a heart that remembers.
+There, Miss Houghton, I shall do what you tell me. Kishwégin obeys you.” And
+Madame patted Alvina’s hand and nodded her head sagely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I take your temperature?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, my dear, you shall. You shall bid me, and I shall obey.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Madame lay back on her pillow, submissively pursing the thermometer between
+her lips and watching Alvina with black eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s all right,” said Alvina, as she looked at the thermometer. “Normal.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Normal!” re-echoed Madame’s rather guttural voice. “Good! Well, then when
+shall I dance?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina turned and looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think, truly,” said Alvina, “it shouldn’t be before Thursday or Friday.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thursday!” repeated Madame. “You say Thursday?” There was a note of strong
+rebellion in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll be so weak. You’ve only just escaped pleurisy. I can only say what I
+truly think, can’t I?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, you Englishwomen,” said Madame, watching with black eyes. “I think you
+like to have your own way. In all things, to have your own way. And over all
+people. You are so good, to have your own way. Yes, you good Englishwomen.
+Thursday. Very well, it shall be Thursday. Till Thursday, then, Kishwégin does
+not exist.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she subsided, already rather weak, upon her pillow again. When she had
+taken her tea and was washed and her room was tidied, she summoned the young
+men. Alvina had warned Max that she wanted Madame to be kept as quiet as
+possible this day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as the first of the four appeared, in his shirt-sleeves and his
+slippers, in the doorway, Madame said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, there you are, my young men! Come in! Come in! It is not Kishwégin
+addresses you. Kishwégin does not exist till Thursday, as the English
+demoiselle makes it.” She held out her hand, faintly perfumed with eau de
+Cologne&mdash;the whole room smelled of eau de Cologne&mdash;and Max stooped
+his brittle spine and kissed it. She touched his cheek gently with her other
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My faithful Max, my support.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louis came smiling with a bunch of violets and pinky anemones. He laid them
+down on the bed before her, and took her hand, bowing and kissing it
+reverently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are better, dear Madame?” he said, smiling long at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Better, yes, gentle Louis. And better for thy flowers, chivalric heart.” She
+put the violets and anemones to her face with both hands, and then gently laid
+them aside to extend her hand to Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The good Geoffrey will do his best, while there is no Kishwégin?” she said as
+he stooped to her salute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bien sûr, Madame.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ciccio, a button off thy shirt-cuff. Where is my needle?” She looked round the
+room as Ciccio kissed her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Did you want anything?” said Alvina, who had not followed the French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My needle, to sew on this button. It is there, in the silk bag.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will do it,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Alvina sewed on the button, Madame spoke to her young men, principally to
+Max. They were to obey Max, she said, for he was their eldest brother. This
+afternoon they would practise well the scene of the White Prisoner. Very
+carefully they must practise, and they must find some one who would play the
+young squaw&mdash;for in this scene she had practically nothing to do, the
+young squaw, but just sit and stand. Miss Houghton&mdash;but ah, Miss Houghton
+must play the piano, she could not take the part of the young squaw. Some other
+then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the interview was going on, Mr. May arrived, full of concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shan’t we have the procession!” he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, the procession!” cried Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe upon request would signalize its entry into any
+town by a procession. The young men were dressed as Indian <i>braves</i>, and
+headed by Kishwégin they rode on horseback through the main streets. Ciccio,
+who was the crack horseman, having served a very well-known horsey Marchese in
+an Italian cavalry regiment, did a bit of show riding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May was very keen on the procession. He had the horses in readiness. The
+morning was faintly sunny, after the sleet and bad weather. And now he arrived
+to find Madame in bed and the young men holding council with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How <i>very</i> unfortunate!” cried Mr. May. “How <i>very</i> unfortunate!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dreadful! Dreadful!” wailed Madame from the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But can’t we do <i>anything</i>?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;you can do the White Prisoner scene&mdash;the young men can do that,
+if you find a dummy squaw. Ah, I think I must get up after all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina saw the look of fret and exhaustion in Madame’s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you all go downstairs now?” said Alvina. “Mr. Max knows what you must
+do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she shooed the five men out of the bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I <i>must</i> get up. I won’t dance. I will be a dummy. But I must be there.
+It is too dre-eadful, too dre-eadful!” wailed Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t take any notice of them. They can manage by themselves. Men are such
+babies. Let them carry it through by themselves.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Children&mdash;they are all children!” wailed Madame. “All children! And so,
+what will they do without their old <i>gouvernante</i>? My poor <i>braves</i>,
+what will they do without Kishwégin? It is too dreadful, too dre-eadful, yes.
+The poor Mr. May&mdash;so <i>disappointed</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then let him <i>be</i> disappointed,” cried Alvina, as she forcibly tucked up
+Madame and made her lie still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are hard! You are a hard Englishwoman. All alike. All alike!” Madame
+subsided fretfully and weakly. Alvina moved softly about. And in a few minutes
+Madame was sleeping again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina went downstairs. Mr. May was listening to Max, who was telling in German
+all about the White Prisoner scene. Mr. May had spent his boyhood in a German
+school. He cocked his head on one side, and, laying his hand on Max’s arm,
+entertained him in odd German. The others were silent. Ciccio made no pretence
+of listening, but smoked and stared at his own feet. Louis and Geoffrey half
+understood, so Louis nodded with a look of deep comprehension, whilst Geoffrey
+uttered short, snappy “Ja!&mdash;Ja!&mdash;Doch!&mdash;Eben!” rather
+irrelevant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll be the squaw,” cried Mr. May in English, breaking off and turning round
+to the company. He perked up his head in an odd, parrot-like fashion.
+“<i>I’ll</i> be the squaw! What’s her name? Kishwégin? I’ll be Kishwégin.” And
+he bridled and beamed self-consciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two tall Swiss looked down on him, faintly smiling. Ciccio, sitting with
+his arms on his knees on the sofa, screwed round his head and watched the
+phenomenon of Mr. May with inscrutable, expressionless attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let us go,” said Mr. May, bubbling with new importance. “Let us go and
+rehearse <i>this morning</i>, and let us do the procession this afternoon, when
+the colliers are just coming home. There! What? Isn’t that exactly the idea?
+Well! Will you be ready at once, <i>now</i>?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked excitedly at the young men. They nodded with slow gravity, as if they
+were already <i>braves</i>. And they turned to put on their boots. Soon they
+were all trooping down to Lumley, Mr. May prancing like a little circus-pony
+beside Alvina, the four young men rolling ahead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you think of it?” cried Mr. May. “We’ve saved the
+situation&mdash;what? Don’t you think so? Don’t you think we can congratulate
+ourselves.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found Mr. Houghton fussing about in the theatre. He was on tenterhooks of
+agitation, knowing Madame was ill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max gave a brilliant display of yodelling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I must <i>explain</i> to them,” cried Mr. May. “I must <i>explain</i> to
+them what yodel means.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And turning to the empty theatre, he began, stretching forth his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In the high Alps of Switzerland, where eternal snows and glaciers reign over
+luscious meadows full of flowers, if you should chance to awaken, as I have
+done, in some lonely wooden farm amid the mountain pastures,
+you&mdash;er&mdash;you&mdash;let me see&mdash;if you&mdash;no&mdash;if you
+should chance to <i>spend the night</i> in some lonely wooden farm, amid the
+upland pastures, dawn will awake you with a wild, inhuman song, you will open
+your eyes to the first gleam of icy, eternal sunbeams, your ears will be
+ringing with weird singing, that has no words and no meaning, but sounds as if
+some wild and icy god were warbling to himself as he wandered among the peaks
+of dawn. You look forth across the flowers to the blue snow, and you see, far
+off, a small figure of a man moving among the grass. It is a peasant singing
+his mountain song, warbling like some creature that lifted up its voice on the
+edge of the eternal snows, before the human race began&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During this oration James Houghton sat with his chin in his hand, devoured with
+bitter jealousy, measuring Mr. May’s eloquence. And then he started, as Max,
+tall and handsome now in Tyrolese costume, white shirt and green, square
+braces, short trousers of chamois leather stitched with green and red,
+firm-planted naked knees, naked ankles and heavy shoes, warbled his native
+Yodel strains, a piercing and disturbing sound. He was flushed, erect, keen
+tempered and fierce and mountainous. There was a fierce, icy passion in the
+man. Alvina began to understand Madame’s subjection to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louis and Geoffrey did a farce dialogue, two foreigners at the same moment
+spying a purse in the street, struggling with each other and protesting they
+wanted to take it to the policeman, Ciccio, who stood solid and ridiculous. Mr.
+Houghton nodded slowly and gravely, as if to give his measured approval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then all retired to dress for the great scene. Alvina practised the music
+Madame carried with her. If Madame found a good pianist, she welcomed the
+accompaniment: if not, she dispensed with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Am I all right?” said a smirking voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there was Kishwégin, dusky, coy, with long black hair and a short chamois
+dress, gaiters and moccasins and bare arms: <i>so</i> coy, and <i>so</i>
+smirking. Alvina burst out laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But shan’t I do?” protested Mr. May, hurt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, you’re wonderful,” said Alvina, choking. “But I <i>must</i> laugh.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why? Tell me why?” asked Mr. May anxiously. “Is it my <i>appearance</i>
+you laugh at, or is it only <i>me</i>? If it’s me I don’t mind. But if it’s my
+appearance, tell me so.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here an appalling figure of Ciccio in war-paint strolled on to the stage. He
+was naked to the waist, wore scalp-fringed trousers, was dusky-red-skinned, had
+long black hair and eagle’s feathers&mdash;only two feathers&mdash;and a face
+wonderfully and terribly painted with white, red, yellow, and black lines. He
+was evidently pleased with himself. His curious soft slouch, and curious way of
+lifting his lip from his white teeth, in a sort of smile, was very convincing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You haven’t got the girdle,” he said, touching Mr. May’s plump
+waist&mdash;“and some flowers in your hair.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May here gave a sharp cry and a jump. A bear on its hind legs, slow,
+shambling, rolling its loose shoulders, was stretching a paw towards him. The
+bear dropped heavily on four paws again, and a laugh came from its muzzle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t have to dance,” said Geoffrey out of the bear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come and put in the flowers,” said Mr. May anxiously, to Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the dressing-room, the dividing-curtain was drawn. Max, in deerskin trousers
+but with unpainted torso looked very white and strange as he put the last
+touches of war-paint on Louis’ face. He glanced round at Alvina, then went on
+with his work. There was a sort of nobility about his erect white form and
+stiffly-carried head, the semi-luminous brown hair. He seemed curiously
+superior.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina adjusted the maidenly Mr. May. Louis arose, a <i>brave</i> like Ciccio,
+in war-paint even more hideous. Max slipped on a tattered hunting-shirt and
+cartridge belt. His face was a little darkened. He was the white prisoner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They arranged the scenery, while Alvina watched. It was soon done. A back cloth
+of tree-trunks and dark forest: a wigwam, a fire, and a cradle hanging from a
+pole. As they worked, Alvina tried in vain to dissociate the two <i>braves</i>
+from their war-paint. The lines were drawn so cleverly that the grimace of
+ferocity was fixed and horrible, so that even in the quiet work of
+scene-shifting Louis’ stiffish, female grace seemed full of latent cruelty,
+whilst Ciccio’s more muscular slouch made her feel she would not trust him for
+one single moment. Awful things men were, savage, cruel, underneath their
+civilization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scene had its beauty. It began with Kishwégin alone at the door of the
+wigwam, cooking, listening, giving an occasional push to the hanging cradle,
+and, if only Madame were taking the part, crooning an Indian cradle-song. Enter
+the <i>brave</i> Louis with his white prisoner, Max, who has his hands bound to
+his side. Kishwégin gravely salutes her husband&mdash;the bound prisoner is
+seated by the fire&mdash;Kishwégin serves food, and asks permission to feed the
+prisoner. The <i>brave</i> Louis, hearing a sound, starts up with his bow and
+arrow. There is a dumb scene of sympathy between Kishwégin and the
+prisoner&mdash;the prisoner wants his bonds cut. Re-enter the <i>brave</i>
+Louis&mdash;he is angry with Kishwégin&mdash;enter the <i>brave</i> Ciccio
+hauling a bear, apparently dead. Kishwégin examines the bear, Ciccio examines
+the prisoner. Ciccio tortures the prisoner, makes him stand, makes him caper
+unwillingly. Kishwégin swings the cradle. The prisoner is tripped
+up&mdash;falls, and cannot rise. He lies near the fallen bear. Kishwégin
+carries food to Ciccio. The two <i>braves</i> converse in dumb show, Kishwégin
+swings the cradle and croons. The men rise once more and bend over the
+prisoner. As they do so, there is a muffled roar. The bear is sitting up. Louis
+swings round, and at the same moment the bear strikes him down. Ciccio springs
+forward and stabs the bear, then closes with it. Kishwégin runs and cuts the
+prisoner’s bonds. He rises, and stands trying to lift his numbed and powerless
+arms, while the bear slowly crushes Ciccio, and Kishwégin kneels over her
+husband. The bear drops Ciccio lifeless, and turns to Kishwégin. At that moment
+Max manages to kill the bear&mdash;he takes Kishwégin by the hand and kneels
+with her beside the dead Louis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was wonderful how well the men played their different parts. But Mr. May was
+a little too frisky as Kishwégin. However, it would do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio got dressed as soon as possible, to go and look at the horses hired for
+the afternoon procession. Alvina accompanied him, Mr. May and the others were
+busy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know I think it’s quite wonderful, your scene,” she said to Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned and looked down at her. His yellow, dusky-set eyes rested on her
+good-naturedly, without seeing her, his lip curled in a self-conscious,
+contemptuous sort of smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not without Madame,” he said, with the slow, half-sneering, stupid smile.
+“Without Madame&mdash;” he lifted his shoulders and spread his hands and tilted
+his brows&mdash;“fool’s play, you know.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “I think Mr. May is good, considering. What does Madame
+<i>do</i>?” she asked a little jealously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do?” He looked down at her with the same long, half-sardonic look of his
+yellow eyes, like a cat looking casually at a bird which flutters past. And
+again he made his shrugging motion. “She does it all, really. The
+others&mdash;they are nothing&mdash;what they are Madame has made them. And now
+they think they’ve done it all, you see. You see, that’s it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But how has Madame made it all? Thought it out, you mean?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thought it out, yes. And then <i>done</i> it. You should see her
+dance&mdash;ah! You should see her dance round the bear, when I bring him in!
+Ah, a beautiful thing, you know. She claps her hand&mdash;” And Ciccio stood
+still in the street, with his hat cocked a little on one side, rather
+common-looking, and he smiled along his fine nose at Alvina, and he clapped his
+hands lightly, and he tilted his eyebrows and his eyelids as if facially he
+were imitating a dance, and all the time his lips smiled stupidly. As he gave a
+little assertive shake of his head, finishing, there came a great yell of
+laughter from the opposite pavement, where a gang of pottery lasses, in aprons
+all spattered with grey clay, and hair and boots and skin spattered with pallid
+spots, had stood to watch. The girls opposite shrieked again, for all the world
+like a gang of grey baboons. Ciccio turned round and looked at them with a
+sneer along his nose. They yelled the louder. And he was horribly
+uncomfortable, walking there beside Alvina with his rather small and
+effeminately-shod feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How stupid they are,” said Alvina. “I’ve got used to them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They should be&mdash;” he lifted his hand with a sharp, vicious
+movement&mdash;“<i>smacked</i>,” he concluded, lowering his hand again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who is going to do it?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a Neapolitan grimace, and twiddled the fingers of one hand outspread in
+the air, as if to say: “There you are! You’ve got to thank the fools who’ve
+failed to do it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why do you all love Madame so much?” Alvina asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How, love?” he said, making a little grimace. “We like her&mdash;we love
+her&mdash;as if she were a mother. You say <i>love</i>&mdash;” He raised his
+shoulders slightly, with a shrug. And all the time he looked down at Alvina
+from under his dusky eyelashes, as if watching her sideways, and his mouth had
+the peculiar, stupid, self-conscious, half-jeering smile. Alvina was a little
+bit annoyed. But she felt that a great instinctive good-naturedness came out of
+him, he was self-conscious and constrained, knowing she did not follow his
+language of gesture. For him, it was not yet quite natural to express himself
+in speech. Gesture and grimace were instantaneous, and spoke worlds of things,
+if you would but accept them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But certainly he was stupid, in her sense of the word. She could hear Mr. May’s
+verdict of him: “Like a child, you know, just as charming and just as tiresome
+and just as stupid.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is your home?” she asked him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In Italy.” She felt a fool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Which part?” she insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Naples,” he said, looking down at her sideways, searchingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It must be lovely,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha&mdash;!” He threw his head on one side and spread out his hands, as if to
+say&mdash;“What do you want, if you don’t find Naples lovely.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should like to see it. But I shouldn’t like to die,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They say ‘See Naples and die,’” she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He opened his mouth, and understood. Then he smiled at her directly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know what that means?” he said cutely. “It means see Naples and die
+afterwards. Don’t die <i>before</i> you’ve seen it.” He smiled with a knowing
+smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I see! I see!” she cried. “I never thought of that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was pleased with her surprise and amusement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah Naples!” he said. “She is lovely&mdash;” He spread his hand across the air
+in front of him&mdash;“The sea&mdash;and Posilippo&mdash;and Sorrento&mdash;and
+Capri&mdash;Ah-h! You’ve never been out of England?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” she said. “I should love to go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked down into her eyes. It was his instinct to say at once he would take
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ve seen nothing&mdash;nothing,” he said to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But if Naples is so lovely, how could you leave it?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She repeated her question. For answer, he looked at her, held out his hand, and
+rubbing the ball of his thumb across the tips of his fingers, said, with a
+fine, handsome smile:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pennies! Money! You can’t earn money in Naples. Ah, Naples is beautiful, but
+she is poor. You live in the sun, and you earn fourteen, fifteen pence a
+day&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not enough,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put his head on one side and tilted his brows, as if to say “What are you to
+do?” And the smile on his mouth was sad, fine, and charming. There was an
+indefinable air of sadness or wistfulness about him, something so robust and
+fragile at the same time, that she was drawn in a strange way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you’ll go back?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To Italy. To Naples.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I shall go back to Italy,” he said, as if unwilling to commit himself.
+“But perhaps I shan’t go back to Naples.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, never! I don’t say never. I shall go to Naples, to see my mother’s sister.
+But I shan’t go to live&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you a mother and father?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I? No! I have a brother and two sisters&mdash;in America. Parents, none. They
+are dead.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you wander about the world&mdash;” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her, and made a slight, sad gesture, indifferent also.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you have Madame for a mother,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made another gesture this time: pressed down the corners of his mouth as if
+he didn’t like it. Then he turned with the slow, fine smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Does a man want two mothers? Eh?” he said, as if he posed a conundrum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shouldn’t think so,” laughed Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced at her to see what she meant, what she understood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My mother is dead, see!” he said. “Frenchwomen&mdash;Frenchwomen&mdash;they
+have their babies till they are a hundred&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you mean?” said Alvina, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A Frenchman is a little man when he’s seven years old&mdash;and if his mother
+comes, he is a little baby boy when he’s seventy. Do you know that?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I <i>didn’t</i> know it,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But now&mdash;you do,” he said, lurching round a corner with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had come to the stables. Three of the horses were there, including the
+thoroughbred Ciccio was going to ride. He stood and examined the beasts
+critically. Then he spoke to them with strange sounds, patted them, stroked
+them down, felt them, slid his hand down them, over them, under them, and felt
+their legs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, he looked up from stooping there under the horses, with a long, slow look
+of his yellow eyes, at Alvina. She felt unconsciously flattered. His long,
+yellow look lingered, holding her eyes. She wondered what he was thinking. Yet
+he never spoke. He turned again to the horses. They seemed to understand him,
+to prick up alert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is mine,” he said, with his hand on the neck of the old thoroughbred. It
+was a bay with a white blaze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think he’s nice,” she said. “He seems so sensitive.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In England,” he answered suddenly, “horses live a long time, because they
+<i>don’t</i> live&mdash;never alive&mdash;see? In England railway-engines are
+alive, and horses go on wheels.” He smiled into her eyes as if she understood.
+She was a trifle nervous as he smiled at her from out of the stable, so
+yellow-eyed and half-mysterious, derisive. Her impulse was to turn and go away
+from the stable. But a deeper impulse made her smile into his face, as she said
+to him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They like you to touch them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who?” His eyes kept hers. Curious how <i>dark</i> they seemed, with only a
+yellow ring of pupil. He was looking right into her, beyond her usual self,
+impersonal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The horses,” she said. She was afraid of his long, cat-like look. Yet she felt
+convinced of his ultimate good-nature. He seemed to her to be the only
+passionately good-natured man she had ever seen. She watched him vaguely, with
+strange vague trust, implicit belief in him. In him&mdash;in what?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That afternoon the colliers trooping home in the winter afternoon were rejoiced
+with a spectacle: Kishwégin, in her deerskin, fringed gaiters and fringed frock
+of deerskin, her long hair down her back, and with marvellous cloths and
+trappings on her steed, riding astride on a tall white horse, followed by Max
+in chieftain’s robes and chieftain’s long head-dress of dyed feathers, then by
+the others in war-paint and feathers and brilliant Navajo blankets. They
+carried bows and spears. Ciccio was without his blanket, naked to the waist, in
+war-paint, and brandishing a long spear. He dashed up from the rear, saluted
+the chieftain with his arm and his spear on high as he swept past, suddenly
+drew up his rearing steed, and trotted slowly back again, making his horse
+perform its paces. He was extraordinarily velvety and alive on horseback.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crowds of excited, shouting children ran chattering along the pavements. The
+colliers, as they tramped grey and heavy, in an intermittent stream uphill from
+the low grey west, stood on the pavement in wonder as the cavalcade approached
+and passed, jingling the silver bells of its trappings, vibrating the wonderful
+colours of the barred blankets and saddle cloths, the scarlet wool of the
+accoutrements, the bright tips of feathers. Women shrieked as Ciccio, in his
+war-paint, wheeled near the pavement. Children screamed and ran. The colliers
+shouted. Ciccio smiled in his terrifying war-paint, brandished his spear and
+trotted softly, like a flower on its stem, round to the procession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar and Alvina and James Houghton had come round into Knarborough
+Road to watch. It was a great moment. Looking along the road they saw all the
+shopkeepers at their doors, the pavements eager. And then, in the distance, the
+white horse jingling its trappings of scarlet hair and bells, with the dusky
+Kishwégin sitting on the saddle-blanket of brilliant, lurid stripes, sitting
+impassive and all dusky above that intermittent flashing of colour: then the
+chieftain, dark-faced, erect, easy, swathed in a white blanket, with scarlet
+and black stripes, and all his strange crest of white, tip-dyed feathers
+swaying down his back: as he came nearer one saw the wolfskin and the brilliant
+moccasins against the black sides of his horse; Louis and Goeffrey followed,
+lurid, horrid in the face, wearing blankets with stroke after stroke of blazing
+colour upon their duskiness, and sitting stern, holding their spears: lastly,
+Ciccio, on his bay horse with a green seat, flickering hither and thither in
+the rear, his feathers swaying, his horse sweating, his face ghastlily smiling
+in its war-paint. So they advanced down the grey pallor of Knarborough Road, in
+the late wintry afternoon. Somewhere the sun was setting, and far overhead was
+a flush of orange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well I never!” murmured Miss Pinnegar. “Well I never!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The strange savageness of the striped Navajo blankets seemed to her unsettling,
+advancing down Knarborough Road: she examined Kishwégin curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can you <i>believe</i> that that’s Mr. May&mdash;he’s exactly like a girl.
+Well, well&mdash;it makes you wonder what is and what isn’t. But <i>aren’t</i>
+they good? What? Most striking. Exactly like Indians. You can’t believe your
+eyes. My word what a terrifying race they&mdash;” Here she uttered a scream and
+ran back clutching the wall as Ciccio swept past, brushing her with his horse’s
+tail, and actually swinging his spear so as to touch Alvina and James Houghton
+lightly with the butt of it. James too started with a cry, the mob at the
+corner screamed. But Alvina caught the slow, mischievous smile as the painted
+horror showed his teeth in passing; she was able to flash back an excited
+laugh. She felt his yellow-tawny eyes linger on her, in that one second, as if
+negligently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I call that too much!” Miss Pinnegar was crying, thoroughly upset. “Now that
+was unnecessary! Why it was enough to scare one to death. Besides, it’s
+dangerous. It ought to be put a stop to. I don’t believe in letting these
+show-people have liberties.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cavalcade was slowly passing, with its uneasy horses and its flare of
+striped colour and its silent riders. Ciccio was trotting softly back, on his
+green saddle-cloth, suave as velvet, his dusky, naked torso beautiful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh, you’d think he’d get his death,” the women in the crowd were saying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A proper savage one, that. Makes your blood run cold&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay, an’ a man for all that, take’s painted face for what’s worth. A tidy man,
+<i>I</i> say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not look at Alvina. The faint, mischievous smile uncovered his teeth. He
+fell in suddenly behind Geoffrey, with a jerk of his steed, calling out to
+Geoffrey in Italian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was becoming cold. The cavalcade fell into a trot, Mr. May shaking rather
+badly. Ciccio halted, rested his lance against a lamp-post, switched his green
+blanket from beneath him, flung it round him as he sat, and darted off. They
+had all disappeared over the brow of Lumley Hill, descending. He was gone too.
+In the wintry twilight the crowd began, lingeringly, to turn away. And in some
+strange way, it manifested its disapproval of the spectacle: as grown-up men
+and women, they were a little bit insulted by such a show. It was an
+anachronism. They wanted a direct appeal to the mind. Miss Pinnegar expressed
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” she said, when she was safely back in Manchester House, with the gas
+lighted, and as she was pouring the boiling water into the tea-pot, “You may
+say what you like. It’s interesting in a way, just to show what savage
+Red-Indians were like. But it’s childish. It’s only childishness. I can’t
+understand, myself, how people can go on liking shows. Nothing happens. It’s
+not like the cinema, where you see it all and take it all in at once; you
+<i>know</i> everything at a glance. You don’t know anything by looking at these
+people. You know they’re only men dressed up, for money. I can’t see why you
+should encourage it. I don’t hold with idle show-people, parading round, I
+don’t, myself. I like to go to the cinema once a week. It’s instruction, you
+take it all in at a glance, all you need to know, and it lasts you for a week.
+You can get to know everything about people’s actual lives from the cinema. I
+don’t see why you want people dressing up and showing off.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sat down to their tea and toast and marmalade, during this harangue. Miss
+Pinnegar was always like a douche of cold water to Alvina, bringing her back to
+consciousness after a delicious excitement. In a minute Madame and Ciccio and
+all seemed to become unreal&mdash;the actual unrealities: while the ragged
+dithering pictures of the film were actual, real as the day. And Alvina was
+always put out when this happened. She really hated Miss Pinnegar. Yet she had
+nothing to answer. They <i>were</i> unreal, Madame and Ciccio and the rest.
+Ciccio was just a fantasy blown in on the wind, to blow away again. The real,
+permanent thing was Woodhouse, the <i>semper idem</i> Knarborough Road, and the
+unchangeable grubby gloom of Manchester House, with the stuffy, padding Miss
+Pinnegar, and her father, whose fingers, whose very soul seemed dirty with
+pennies. These were the solid, permanent fact. These were life itself. And
+Ciccio, splashing up on his bay horse and green cloth, he was a mountebank and
+an extraneous nonentity, a coloured old rag blown down the Knarborough Road
+into Limbo. Into Limbo. Whilst Miss Pinnegar and her father sat frowsily on for
+ever, eating their toast and cutting off the crust, and sipping their third cup
+of tea. They would never blow away&mdash;never, never. Woodhouse was there to
+eternity. And the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe was blowing like a rag of old paper
+into Limbo. Nothingness! Poor Madame! Poor gallant histrionic Madame! The
+frowsy Miss Pinnegar could crumple her up and throw her down the utilitarian
+drain, and have done with her. Whilst Miss Pinnegar lived on for ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This put Alvina into a sharp temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Miss Pinnegar,” she said. “I do think you go on in the most unattractive way
+sometimes. You’re a regular spoil-sport.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar tartly. “I don’t approve of your way of sport, I’m
+afraid.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You can’t disapprove of it as much as I hate your spoil-sport existence,” said
+Alvina in a flare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alvina, are you mad!” said her father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wonder I’m not,” said Alvina, “considering what my life is.”
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br/>
+CICCIO</h2>
+
+<p>
+Madame did not pick up her spirits, after her cold. For two days she lay in
+bed, attended by Mrs. Rollings and Alvina and the young men. But she was most
+careful never to give any room for scandal. The young men might not approach
+her save in the presence of some third party. And then it was strictly a visit
+of ceremony or business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, your Woodhouse, how glad I shall be when I have left it,” she said to
+Alvina. “I feel it is unlucky for me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you?” said Alvina. “But if you’d had this bad cold in some places, you
+might have been much worse, don’t you think.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh my dear!” cried Madame. “Do you think I could confuse you in my dislike of
+this Woodhouse? Oh no! You are not Woodhouse. On the contrary, I think it is
+unkind for you also, this place. You look&mdash;also&mdash;what shall I
+say&mdash;thin, not very happy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a note of interrogation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sure I dislike Woodhouse much more than you can,” replied Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am sure. Yes! I am sure. I see it. Why don’t you go away? Why don’t you
+marry?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nobody wants to marry me,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame looked at her searchingly, with shrewd black eyes under her arched
+eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How!” she exclaimed. “How don’t they? You are not bad looking, only a little
+too thin&mdash;too haggard&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She watched Alvina. Alvina laughed uncomfortably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is there <i>nobody</i>?” persisted Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not now,” said Alvina. “Absolutely nobody.” She looked with a confused laugh
+into Madame’s strict black eyes. “You see I didn’t care for the Woodhouse young
+men, either. I <i>couldn’t</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame nodded slowly up and down. A secret satisfaction came over her pallid,
+waxy countenance, in which her black eyes were like twin swift extraneous
+creatures: oddly like two bright little dark animals in the snow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sure!” she said, sapient. “Sure! How could you? But there are other men
+besides these here&mdash;” She waved her hand to the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t meet them, do I?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, not often. But sometimes! sometimes!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence between the two women, very pregnant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Englishwomen,” said Madame, “are so practical. Why are they?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose they can’t help it,” said Alvina. “But they’re not half so practical
+and clever as <i>you</i>, Madame.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh la&mdash;la! I am practical differently. I am practical
+impractically&mdash;” she stumbled over the words. “But your Sue now, in Jude
+the Obscure&mdash;is it not an interesting book? And is she not always too
+practically practical. If she had been impractically practical she could have
+been quite happy. Do you know what I mean?&mdash;no. But she is ridiculous.
+Sue: so Anna Karénine. Ridiculous both. Don’t you think?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why did they both make everybody unhappy, when they had the man they wanted,
+and enough money? I think they are both so silly. If they had been beaten, they
+would have lost all their practical ideas and troubles, merely forgot them, and
+been happy enough. I am a woman who says it. Such ideas they have are not
+tragical. No, not at all. They are nonsense, you see, nonsense. That is all.
+Nonsense. Sue and Anna, they are&mdash;non-sensical. That is all. No tragedy
+whatsoever. Nonsense. I am a woman. I know men also. And I know nonsense when I
+see it. Englishwomen are all nonsense: the worst women in the world for
+nonsense.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, I am English,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, my dear, you are English. But you are not necessarily so non-sensical.
+Why are you at all?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nonsensical?” laughed Alvina. “But I don’t know what you call my nonsense.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah,” said Madame wearily. “They never understand. But I like you, my dear. I
+am an old woman&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Younger than I,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Younger than you, because I am practical from the heart, and not only from the
+head. You are not practical from the heart. And yet you have a heart.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But all Englishwomen have good hearts,” protested Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No! No!” objected Madame. “They are all ve-ry kind, and ve-ry practical with
+their kindness. But they have no heart in all their kindness. It is all head,
+all head: the kindness of the head.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t agree with you,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. No. I don’t expect it. But I don’t mind. You are very kind to me, and I
+thank you. But it is from the head, you see. And so I thank you from the head.
+From the heart&mdash;no.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame plucked her white fingers together and laid them on her breast with a
+gesture of repudiation. Her black eyes stared spitefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But Madame,” said Alvina, nettled, “I should never be half such a good
+business woman as you. Isn’t that from the head?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha! of course! Of course you wouldn’t be a good business woman. Because you
+are kind from the head. I&mdash;” she tapped her forehead and shook her
+head&mdash;“I am not kind from the head. From the head I am business-woman,
+good business-woman. Of course I am a good business-woman&mdash;of course!
+But&mdash;” here she changed her expression, widened her eyes, and laid her
+hand on her breast&mdash;“when the heart speaks&mdash;then I listen with the
+heart. I do not listen with the head. The heart hears the heart. The
+head&mdash;that is another thing. But you have blue eyes, you cannot
+understand. Only dark eyes&mdash;” She paused and mused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what about yellow eyes?” asked Alvina, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame darted a look at her, her lips curling with a very faint, fine smile of
+derision. Yet for the first time her black eyes dilated and became warm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yellow eyes like Ciccio’s?” she said, with her great watchful eyes and her
+smiling, subtle mouth. “They are the darkest of all.” And she shook her head
+roguishly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are they!” said Alvina confusedly, feeling a blush burning up her throat into
+her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha&mdash;ha!” laughed Madame. “Ha-ha! I am an old woman, you see. My heart is
+old enough to be kind, and my head is old enough to be clever. My heart is kind
+to few people&mdash;very few&mdash;especially in this England. My young men
+know that. But perhaps to you it is kind.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There! From the head <i>Thank you</i>. It is not well done, you see. You see!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Alvina ran away in confusion. She felt Madame was having her on a string.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May enjoyed himself hugely playing Kishwégin. When Madame came downstairs
+Louis, who was a good satirical mimic, imitated him. Alvina happened to come
+into their sitting-room in the midst of their bursts of laughter. They all
+stopped and looked at her cautiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Continuez! Continuez!” said Madame to Louis. And to Alvina: “Sit down, my
+dear, and see what a good actor we have in our Louis.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louis glanced round, laid his head a little on one side and drew in his chin,
+with Mr. May’s smirk exactly, and wagging his tail slightly, he commenced to
+play the false Kishwégin. He sidled and bridled and ejaculated with raised
+hands, and in the dumb show the tall Frenchman made such a ludicrous caricature
+of Mr. Houghton’s manager that Madame wept again with laughter, whilst Max
+leaned back against the wall and giggled continuously like some pot
+involuntarily boiling. Geoffrey spread his shut fists across the table and
+shouted with laughter, Ciccio threw back his head and showed all his teeth in a
+loud laugh of delighted derision. Alvina laughed also. But she flushed. There
+was a certain biting, annihilating quality in Louis’ derision of the absentee.
+And the others enjoyed it so much. At moments Alvina caught her lip between her
+teeth, it was so screamingly funny, and so annihilating. She laughed in spite
+of herself. In spite of herself she was shaken into a convulsion of laughter.
+Louis was masterful&mdash;he mastered her psyche. She laughed till her head lay
+helpless on the chair, she could not move. Helpless, inert she lay, in her
+orgasm of laughter. The end of Mr. May. Yet she was hurt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Madame wiped her own shrewd black eyes, and nodded slow approval.
+Suddenly Louis started and held up a warning finger. They all at once covered
+their smiles and pulled themselves together. Only Alvina lay silently laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Rollings!” they heard Mr. May’s voice. “Your company is
+lively. Is Miss Houghton here? May I go through?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They heard his quick little step and his quick little tap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come in,” called Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras all sat with straight faces. Only poor Alvina lay back
+in her chair in a new weak convulsion. Mr. May glanced quickly round, and
+advanced to Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, good-morning, Madame, so glad to see you downstairs,” he said, taking her
+hand and bowing ceremoniously. “Excuse my intruding on your mirth!” He looked
+archly round. Alvina was still incompetent. She lay leaning sideways in her
+chair, and could not even speak to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was evidently a good joke,” he said. “May I hear it too?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh,” said Madame, drawling. “It was no joke. It was only Louis making a fool
+of himself, doing a turn.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Must have been a good one,” said Mr. May. “Can’t we put it on?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” drawled Madame, “it was nothing&mdash;just a non-sensical mood of the
+moment. Won’t you sit down? You would like a little whiskey?&mdash;yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max poured out whiskey and water for Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina sat with her face averted, quiet, but unable to speak to Mr. May. Max
+and Louis had become polite. Geoffrey stared with his big, dark-blue eyes
+stolidly at the newcomer. Ciccio leaned with his arms on his knees, looking
+sideways under his long lashes at the inert Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Madame, “and are you satisfied with your houses?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh yes,” said Mr. May. “Quite! The two nights have been excellent. Excellent!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah&mdash;I am glad. And Miss Houghton tells me I should not dance tomorrow, it
+is too soon.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Miss Houghton <i>knows</i>,” said Mr. May archly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course!” said Madame. “I must do as she tells me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why yes, since it is for your good, and not hers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course! Of course! It is very kind of her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Miss Houghton is <i>most</i> kind&mdash;to <i>every one</i>,” said Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am sure,” said Madame. “And I am very glad you have been such a good
+Kishwégin. That is very nice also.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” replied Mr. May. “I begin to wonder if I have mistaken my vocation. I
+should have been <i>on</i> the boards, instead of behind them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No doubt,” said Madame. “But it is a little late&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eyes of the foreigners, watching him, flattered Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid it is,” he said. “Yes. Popular taste is a mysterious thing. How do
+you feel, now? Do you feel they appreciate your work as much as they did?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame watched him with her black eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” she replied. “They don’t. The pictures are driving us away. Perhaps we
+shall last for ten years more. And after that, we are finished.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You think so,” said Mr. May, looking serious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am sure,” she said, nodding sagely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why is it?” said Mr. May, angry and petulant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why is it? I don’t know. I don’t know. The pictures are cheap, and they are
+easy, and they cost the audience nothing, no feeling of the heart, no
+appreciation of the spirit, cost them nothing of these. And so they like them,
+and they don’t like us, because they must <i>feel</i> the things we do, from
+the heart, and appreciate them from the spirit. There!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And they don’t want to appreciate and to feel?” said Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. They don’t want. They want it all through the eye, and finished&mdash;so!
+Just curiosity, impertinent curiosity. That’s all. In all countries, the same.
+And so&mdash;in ten years’ time&mdash;no more Kishwégin at all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. Then what future have you?” said Mr. May gloomily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I may be dead&mdash;who knows. If not, I shall have my little apartment in
+Lausanne, or in Bellizona, and I shall be a bourgeoise once more, and the good
+Catholic which I am.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Which I am also,” said Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So! Are you? An American Catholic?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;English&mdash;Irish&mdash;American.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May never felt more gloomy in his life than he did that day. Where,
+finally, was he to rest his troubled head?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was not all peace in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara group either. For Thursday,
+there was to be a change of program&mdash;“Kishwégin’s Wedding&mdash;” (with
+the white prisoner, be if said)&mdash;was to take the place of the previous
+scene. Max of course was the director of the rehearsal. Madame would not come
+near the theatre when she herself was not to be acting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though very quiet and unobtrusive as a rule, Max could suddenly assume an air
+of <i>hauteur</i> and overbearing which was really very annoying. Geoffrey
+always fumed under it. But Ciccio it put into unholy, ungovernable tempers. For
+Max, suddenly, would reveal his contempt of the Eyetalian, as he called Ciccio,
+using the Cockney word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bah! quelle tête de veau,” said Max, suddenly contemptuous and angry because
+Ciccio, who really was slow at taking in the things said to him, had once more
+failed to understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Comment?” queried Ciccio, in his slow, derisive way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>Comment</i>!” sneered Max, in echo. “<i>What?</i> <i>What?</i> Why what
+<i>did</i> I say? Calf’s-head I said. Pig’s-head, if that seems more suitable
+to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To whom? To me or to you?” said Ciccio, sidling up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To you, lout of an Italian.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max’s colour was up, he held himself erect, his brown hair seemed to rise erect
+from his forehead, his blue eyes glared fierce.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is to say, to me, from an uncivilized German pig, ah? ah?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this in French. Alvina, as she sat at the piano, saw Max tall and blanched
+with anger; Ciccio with his neck stuck out, oblivious and convulsed with rage,
+stretching his neck at Max. All were in ordinary dress, but without coats,
+acting in their shirt-sleeves. Ciccio was clutching a property knife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now! None of that! None of that!” said Mr. May, peremptory. But Ciccio,
+stretching forward taut and immobile with rage, was quite unconscious. His hand
+was fast on his stage knife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A dirty Eyetalian,” said Max, in English, turning to Mr. May. “They understand
+nothing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the last word was smothered in Ciccio’s spring and stab. Max half started
+on to his guard, received the blow on his collar-bone, near the pommel of the
+shoulder, reeled round on top of Mr. May, whilst Ciccio sprang like a cat down
+from the stage and bounded across the theatre and out of the door, leaving the
+knife rattling on the boards behind him. Max recovered and sprang like a demon,
+white with rage, straight out into the theatre after him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stop&mdash;stop&mdash;!” cried Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Halte, Max! Max, Max, attends!” cried Louis and Geoffrey, as Louis sprang down
+after his friend. Thud went the boards again, with the spring of a man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina, who had been seated waiting at the piano below, started up and
+overturned her chair as Ciccio rushed past her. Now Max, white, with set blue
+eyes, was upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t&mdash;!” she cried, lifting her hand to stop his progress. He saw her,
+swerved, and hesitated, turned to leap over the seats and avoid her, when Louis
+caught him and flung his arms round him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Max&mdash;attends, ami! Laisse le partir. Max, tu sais que je t’aime. Tu le
+sais, ami. Tu le sais. Laisse le partir.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max and Louis wrestled together in the gangway, Max looking down with hate on
+his friend. But Louis was determined also, he wrestled as fiercely as Max, and
+at last the latter began to yield. He was panting and beside himself. Louis
+still held him by the hand and by the arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let him go, brother, he isn’t worth it. What does he understand, Max, dear
+brother, what does he understand? These fellows from the south, they are half
+children, half animal. They don’t know what they are doing. Has he hurt you,
+dear friend? Has he hurt you? It was a dummy knife, but it was a heavy
+blow&mdash;the dog of an Italian. Let us see.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So gradually Max was brought to stand still. From under the edge of his
+waistcoat, on the shoulder, the blood was already staining the shirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you cut, brother, brother?” said Louis. “Let us see.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max now moved his arm with pain. They took off his waistcoat and pushed back
+his shirt. A nasty blackening wound, with the skin broken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If the bone isn’t broken!” said Louis anxiously. “If the bone isn’t broken!
+Lift thy arm, frère&mdash;lift. It hurts you&mdash;so&mdash;.
+No&mdash;no&mdash;it is not broken&mdash;no&mdash;the bone is not broken.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is no bone broken, I know,” said Max.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The animal. He hasn’t done <i>that</i>, at least.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where do you imagine he’s gone?” asked Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The foreigners shrugged their shoulders, and paid no heed. There was no more
+rehearsal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We had best go home and speak to Madame,” said Mr. May, who was very
+frightened for his evening performance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They locked up the Endeavour. Alvina was thinking of Ciccio. He was gone in his
+shirt sleeves. She had taken his jacket and hat from the dressing-room at the
+back, and carried them under her rain-coat, which she had on her arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame was in a state of perturbation. She had heard some one come in at the
+back, and go upstairs, and go out again. Mrs. Rollings had told her it was the
+Italian, who had come in in his shirt-sleeves and gone out in his black coat
+and black hat, taking his bicycle, without saying a word. Poor Madame! She was
+struggling into her shoes, she had her hat on, when the others arrived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it?” she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She heard a hurried explanation from Louis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, the animal, the animal, he wasn’t worth all my pains!” cried poor Madame,
+sitting with one shoe off and one shoe on. “Why, Max, why didst thou not remain
+man enough to control that insulting mountain temper of thine. Have I not said,
+and said, and said that in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara there was but one nation, the
+Red Indian, and but one tribe, the tribe of Kishwe? And now thou hast called
+him a dirty Italian, or a dog of an Italian, and he has behaved like an animal.
+Too much, too much of an animal, too little <i>esprit</i>. But thou, Max, art
+almost as bad. Thy temper is a devil’s, which maybe is worse than an animal’s.
+Ah, this Woodhouse, a curse is on it, I know it is. Would we were away from it.
+Will the week never pass? We shall have to find Ciccio. Without him the company
+is ruined&mdash;until I get a substitute. I must get a substitute. And
+how?&mdash;and where?&mdash;in this country?&mdash;tell me that. I am tired of
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. There is no true tribe of Kishwe&mdash;no, never. I have had
+enough of Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Let us break up, let us part, <i>mes braves</i>,
+let us say adieu here in this <i>funeste</i> Woodhouse.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, Madame, dear Madame,” said Louis, “let us hope. Let us swear a closer
+fidelity, dear Madame, our Kishwégin. Let us never part. Max, thou dost not
+want to part, brother, well-loved? Thou dost not want to part, brother whom I
+love? And thou, Geoffrey, thou&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame burst into tears, Louis wept too, even Max turned aside his face, with
+tears. Alvina stole out of the room, followed by Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a while Madame came out to them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh,” she said. “You have not gone away! We are wondering which way Ciccio will
+have gone, on to Knarborough or to Marchay. Geoffrey will go on his bicycle to
+find him. But shall it be to Knarborough or to Marchay?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ask the policeman in the market-place,” said Alvina. “He’s sure to have
+noticed him, because Ciccio’s yellow bicycle is so uncommon.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May tripped out on this errand, while the others discussed among themselves
+where Ciccio might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May returned, and said that Ciccio had ridden off down the Knarborough
+Road. It was raining slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” said Madame. “And now how to find him, in that great town. I am afraid he
+will leave us without pity.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Surely he will want to speak to Geoffrey before he goes,” said Louis. “They
+were always good friends.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all looked at Geoffrey. He shrugged his broad shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Always good friends,” he said. “Yes. He will perhaps wait for me at his
+cousin’s in Battersea. In Knarborough, I don’t know.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How much money had he?” asked Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame spread her hands and lifted her shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who knows?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“These Italians,” said Louis, turning to Mr. May. “They have always money. In
+another country, they will not spend one sou if they can help. They are like
+this&mdash;” And he made the Neapolitan gesture drawing in the air with his
+fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But would he abandon you all without a word?” cried Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes! Yes!” said Madame, with a sort of stoic pathos. “<i>He</i> would. He
+alone would do such a thing. But he would do it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what point would he make for?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What point? You mean where would he go? To Battersea, no doubt, to his
+cousin&mdash;and then to Italy, if he thinks he has saved enough money to buy
+land, or whatever it is.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so good-bye to him,” said Mr. May bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Geoffrey ought to know,” said Madame, looking at Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, and would not give his comrade away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he said. “I don’t know. He will leave a message at Battersea, I know. But
+I don’t know if he will go to Italy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you don’t know where to find him in Knarborough?” asked Mr. May, sharply,
+very much on the spot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No&mdash;I don’t. Perhaps at the station he will go by train to London.” It
+was evident Geoffrey was not going to help Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alors!” said Madame, cutting through this futility. “Go thou to Knarborough,
+Geoffrey, and see&mdash;and be back at the theatre for work. Go now. And if
+thou can’st find him, bring him again to us. Tell him to come out of kindness
+to me. Tell him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she waved the young man away. He departed on his nine mile ride through the
+rain to Knarborough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They know,” said Madame. “They know each other’s places. It is a little more
+than a year since we came to Knarborough. But they will remember.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey rode swiftly as possible through the mud. He did not care very much
+whether he found his friend or not. He liked the Italian, but he never looked
+on him as a permanency. He knew Ciccio was dissatisfied, and wanted a change.
+He knew that Italy was pulling him away from the troupe, with which he had been
+associated now for three years or more. And the Swiss from Martigny knew that
+the Neapolitan would go, breaking all ties, one day suddenly back to Italy. It
+was so, and Geoffrey was philosophical about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rode into town, and the first thing he did was to seek out the music-hall
+artistes at their lodgings. He knew a good many of them. They gave him a
+welcome and a whiskey&mdash;but none of them had seen Ciccio. They sent him off
+to other artistes, other lodging-houses. He went the round of associates known
+and unknown, of lodgings strange and familiar, of third-rate possible public
+houses. Then he went to the Italians down in the Marsh&mdash;he knew these
+people always ask for one another. And then, hurrying, he dashed to the Midland
+Station, and then to the Great Central Station, asking the porters on the
+London departure platform if they had seen his pal, a man with a yellow
+bicycle, and a black bicycle cape. All to no purpose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey hurriedly lit his lamp and swung off in the dark back to Woodhouse. He
+was a powerfully built, imperturbable fellow. He pressed slowly uphill through
+the streets, then ran downhill into the darkness of the industrial country. He
+had continually to cross the new tram-lines, which were awkward, and he had
+occasionally to dodge the brilliantly-illuminated tram-cars which threaded
+their way across-country through so much darkness. All the time it rained, and
+his back wheel slipped under him, in the mud and on the new tram-track.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he pressed in the long darkness that lay between Slaters Mill and
+Durbeyhouses, he saw a light ahead&mdash;another cyclist. He moved to his side
+of the road. The light approached very fast. It was a strong acetylene flare.
+He watched it. A flash and a splash and he saw the humped back of what was
+probably Ciccio going by at a great pace on the low racing machine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hi Cic’&mdash;! Ciccio!” he yelled, dropping off his own bicycle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha-er-er!” he heard the answering shout, unmistakably Italian, way down the
+darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned&mdash;saw the other cyclist had stopped. The flare swung round, and
+Ciccio softly rode up. He dropped off beside Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Toi!” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hé! Où vas-tu?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hé!” ejaculated Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their conversation consisted a good deal in noises variously ejaculated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Coming back?” asked Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where’ve you been?” retorted Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Knarborough&mdash;looking for thee. Where have you&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Buckled my front wheel at Durbeyhouses.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come off?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hé!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hurt?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Max is all right.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Merde!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come on, come back with me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nay.” Ciccio shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame’s crying. Wants thee to come back.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come on, Cic’&mdash;” said Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never?” said Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Basta&mdash;had enough,” said Ciccio, with an invisible grimace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come for a bit, and we’ll clear together.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio again shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, is it adieu?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio did not speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t go, comrade,” said Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Faut,” said Ciccio, slightly derisive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh alors! I’d like to come with thee. What?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Doesn’t matter. Thou’rt going to Italy?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who knows!&mdash;seems so.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d like to go back.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh alors!” Ciccio half veered round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait for me a few days,” said Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“See you tomorrow in Knarborough. Go to Mrs. Pym’s, 6 Hampden Street.
+Gittiventi is there. Right, eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll think about it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eleven o’clock, eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll think about it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Friends ever&mdash;Ciccio&mdash;eh?” Geoffrey held out his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio slowly took it. The two men leaned to each other and kissed farewell, on
+either cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tomorrow, Cic’&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Au revoir, Gigi.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio dropped on to his bicycle and was gone in a breath. Geoffrey waited a
+moment for a tram which was rushing brilliantly up to him in the rain. Then he
+mounted and rode in the opposite direction. He went straight down to Lumley,
+and Madame had to remain on tenterhooks till ten o’clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She heard the news, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tomorrow I go to fetch him.” And with this she went to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning she was up betimes, sending a note to Alvina. Alvina appeared at
+nine o’clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will come with me?” said Madame. “Come. Together we will go to Knarborough
+and bring back the naughty Ciccio. Come with me, because I haven’t all my
+strength. Yes, you will? Good! Good! Let us tell the young men, and we will go
+now, on the tram-car.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I am not properly dressed,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who will see?” said Madame. “Come, let us go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They told Geoffrey they would meet him at the corner of Hampden Street at five
+minutes to eleven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You see,” said Madame to Alvina, “they are very funny, these young men,
+particularly Italians. You must never let them think you have caught them.
+Perhaps he will not let us see him&mdash;who knows? Perhaps he will go off to
+Italy all the same.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sat in the bumping tram-car, a long and wearying journey. And then they
+tramped the dreary, hideous streets of the manufacturing town. At the corner of
+the street they waited for Geoffrey, who rode up muddily on his bicycle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ask Ciccio to come out to us, and we will go and drink coffee at the Geisha
+Restaurant&mdash;or tea or something,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the two women waited wearily at the street-end. At last Geoffrey
+returned, shaking his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He won’t come?” cried Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He says he is going back to Italy?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To London.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is the same. You can never trust them. Is he quite obstinate?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey lifted his shoulders. Madame could see the beginnings of defection in
+him too. And she was tired and dispirited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We shall have to finish the Natcha-Kee-Tawara, that is all,” she said
+fretfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey watched her stolidly, impassively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dost thou want to go with him?” she asked suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey smiled sheepishly, and his colour deepened. But he did not speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go then&mdash;” she said. “Go then! Go with him! But for the sake of my
+honour, finish this week at Woodhouse. Can I make Miss Houghton’s father lose
+these two nights? Where is your shame? Finish this week and then go,
+go&mdash;But finish this week. Tell Francesco that. I have finished with him.
+But let him finish this engagement. Don’t put me to shame, don’t destroy my
+honour, and the honour of the Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Tell him that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey turned again into the house. Madame, in her chic little black hat and
+spotted veil, and her trim black coat-and-skirt, stood there at the
+street-corner staring before her, shivering a little with cold, but saying no
+word of any sort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Geoffrey appeared out of the doorway. His face was impassive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He says he doesn’t want,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” she cried suddenly in French, “the ungrateful, the animal! He shall
+suffer. See if he shall not suffer. The low canaille, without faith or feeling.
+My Max, thou wert right. Ah, such canaille should be beaten, as dogs are
+beaten, till they follow at heel. Will no one beat him for me, no one? Yes. Go
+back. Tell him before he leaves England he shall feel the hand of Kishwégin,
+and it shall be heavier than the Black Hand. Tell him that, the coward, that
+causes a woman’s word to be broken against her will. Ah, canaille, canaille!
+Neither faith nor feeling, neither faith nor feeling. Trust them not, dogs of
+the south.” She took a few agitated steps down the pavement. Then she raised
+her veil to wipe away her tears of anger and bitter disappointment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait a bit,” said Alvina. “I’ll go.” She was touched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. Don’t you!” cried Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes I will,” she said. The light of battle was in her eyes. “You’ll come with
+me to the door,” she said to Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey started obediently, and led the way up a long narrow stair, covered
+with yellow-and-brown oil-cloth, rather worn, on to the top of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ciccio,” he said, outside the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oui!” came the curly voice of Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey opened the door. Ciccio was sitting on a narrow bed, in a rather poor
+attic, under the steep slope of the roof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t come in,” said Alvina to Geoffrey, looking over her shoulder at him as
+she entered. Then she closed the door behind her, and stood with her back to
+it, facing the Italian. He sat loose on the bed, a cigarette between his
+fingers, dropping ash on the bare boards between his feet. He looked up
+curiously at Alvina. She stood watching him with wide, bright blue eyes,
+smiling slightly, and saying nothing. He looked up at her steadily, on his
+guard, from under his long black lashes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you come?” she said, smiling and looking into his eyes. He flicked off
+the ash of his cigarette with his little finger. She wondered why he wore the
+nail of his little finger so long, so very long. Still she smiled at him, and
+still he gave no sign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do come!” she urged, never taking her eyes from him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made not the slightest movement, but sat with his hands dropped between his
+knees, watching her, the cigarette wavering up its blue thread of smoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you?” she said, as she stood with her back to the door. “Won’t you
+come?” She smiled strangely and vividly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she took a pace forward, stooped, watching his face as if timidly,
+caught his brown hand in her own and lifted it towards herself. His hand
+started, dropped the cigarette, but was not withdrawn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will come, won’t you?” she said, smiling gently into his strange, watchful
+yellow eyes, that looked fixedly into hers, the dark pupil opening round and
+softening. She smiled into his softening round eyes, the eyes of some animal
+which stares in one of its silent, gentler moments. And suddenly she kissed his
+hand, kissed it twice, quickly, on the fingers and the back. He wore a silver
+ring. Even as she kissed his fingers with her lips, the silver ring seemed to
+her a symbol of his subjection, inferiority. She drew his hand slightly. And he
+rose to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned round and took the door-handle, still holding his fingers in her
+left hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are coming, aren’t you?” she said, looking over her shoulder into his
+eyes. And taking consent from his unchanging eyes, she let go his hand and
+slightly opened the door. He turned slowly, and taking his coat from a nail,
+slung it over his shoulders and drew it on. Then he picked up his hat, and put
+his foot on his half-smoked cigarette, which lay smoking still. He followed her
+out of the room, walking with his head rather forward, in the half loutish,
+sensual-subjected way of the Italians.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they entered the street, they saw the trim, French figure of Madame standing
+alone, as if abandoned. Her face was very white under her spotted veil, her
+eyes very black. She watched Ciccio following behind Alvina in his dark,
+hangdog fashion, and she did not move a muscle until he came to a standstill in
+front of her. She was watching his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Te voilà donc!” she said, without expression. “Allons boire un café, hé? Let
+us go and drink some coffee.” She had now put an inflection of tenderness into
+her voice. But her eyes were black with anger. Ciccio smiled slowly, the slow,
+fine, stupid smile, and turned to walk alongside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame said nothing as they went. Geoffrey passed on his bicycle, calling out
+that he would go straight to Woodhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the three sat with their cups of coffee, Madame pushed up her veil just
+above her eyes, so that it was a black band above her brows. Her face was pale
+and full like a child’s, but almost stonily expressionless, her eyes were black
+and inscrutable. She watched both Ciccio and Alvina with her black, inscrutable
+looks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you like also biscuits with your coffee, the two of you?” she said, with
+an amiable intonation which her strange black looks belied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Alvina. She was a little flushed, as if defiant, while Ciccio sat
+sheepishly, turning aside his ducked head, the slow, stupid, yet fine smile on
+his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And no more trouble with Max, hein?&mdash;you Ciccio?” said Madame, still with
+the amiable intonation and the same black, watching eyes. “No more of these
+stupid scenes, hein? What? Do you answer me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No more from me,” he said, looking up at her with a narrow, cat-like look in
+his derisive eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ho? No? No more? Good then! It is good! We are glad, aren’t we, Miss Houghton,
+that Ciccio has come back and there are to be no more
+rows?&mdash;hein?&mdash;aren’t we?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>I’m</i> awfully glad,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Awfully glad&mdash;yes&mdash;awfully glad! You hear, you Ciccio. And you
+remember another time. What? Don’t you? Hé?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up at her, the slow, derisive smile curling his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sure,” he said slowly, with subtle intonation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. Good! Well then! Well then! We are all friends. We are all friends,
+aren’t we, all the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Hé? What you think? What you say?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Ciccio, again looking up at her with his yellow, glinting eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right! All right then! It is all right&mdash;forgotten&mdash;” Madame
+sounded quite frank and restored. But the sullen watchfulness in her eyes, and
+the narrowed look in Ciccio’s, as he glanced at her, showed another state
+behind the obviousness of the words. “And Miss Houghton is one of us! Yes? She
+has united us once more, and so she has become one of us.” Madame smiled
+strangely from her blank, round white face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should love to be one of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;well&mdash;why not? Why not become one? Why not? What you say,
+Ciccio? You can play the piano, perhaps do other things. Perhaps better than
+Kishwégin. What you say, Ciccio, should she not join us? Is she not one of us?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled and showed his teeth but did not answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, what is it? Say then? Shall she not?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Ciccio, unwilling to commit himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, so I say! So I say. Quite a good idea! We will think of it, and speak
+perhaps to your father, and you shall come! Yes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the two women returned to Woodhouse by the tram-car, while Ciccio rode home
+on his bicycle. It was surprising how little Madame and Alvina found to say to
+one another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame effected the reunion of her troupe, and all seemed pretty much as
+before. She had decided to dance the next night, the Saturday night. On Sunday
+the party would leave for Warsall, about thirty miles away, to fulfil their
+next engagement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That evening Ciccio, whenever he had a moment to spare, watched Alvina. She
+knew it. But she could not make out what his watching meant. In the same way he
+might have watched a serpent, had he found one gliding in the theatre. He
+looked at her sideways, furtively, but persistently. And yet he did not want to
+meet her glance. He avoided her, and watched her. As she saw him standing, in
+his negligent, muscular, slouching fashion, with his head dropped forward, and
+his eyes sideways, sometimes she disliked him. But there was a sort of
+<i>finesse</i> about his face. His skin was delicately tawny, and slightly
+lustrous. The eyes were set in so dark, that one expected them to be black and
+flashing. And then one met the yellow pupils, sulphureous and remote. It was
+like meeting a lion. His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and
+curling lips seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture. He was waiting:
+silent there, with something muscular and remote about his very droop, he was
+waiting. What for? Alvina could not guess. She wanted to meet his eye, to have
+an open understanding with him. But he would not. When she went up to talk to
+him, he answered in his stupid fashion, with a smile of the mouth and no change
+of the eyes, saying nothing at all. Obstinately he held away from her. When he
+was in his war-paint, for one moment she hated his muscular, handsome,
+downward-drooping torso: so stupid and full. The fine sharp uprightness of Max
+seemed much finer, clearer, more manly. Ciccio’s velvety, suave heaviness, the
+very heave of his muscles, so full and softly powerful, sickened her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She flashed away angrily on her piano. Madame, who was dancing Kishwégin on the
+last evening, cast sharp glances at her. Alvina had avoided Madame as Ciccio
+had avoided Alvina&mdash;elusive and yet conscious, a distance, and yet a
+connection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame danced beautifully. No denying it, she was an artist. She became
+something quite different: fresh, virginal, pristine, a magic creature
+flickering there. She was infinitely delicate and attractive. Her <i>braves</i>
+became glamorous and heroic at once, and magically she cast her spell over
+them. It was all very well for Alvina to bang the piano crossly. She could not
+put out the glow which surrounded Kishwégin and her troupe. Ciccio was handsome
+now: without war-paint, and roused, fearless and at the same time suggestive, a
+dark, mysterious glamour on his face, passionate and remote. A
+stranger&mdash;and so beautiful. Alvina flashed at the piano, almost in tears.
+She hated his beauty. It shut her apart. She had nothing to do with it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame, with her long dark hair hanging in finely-brushed tresses, her cheek
+burning under its dusky stain, was another creature. How soft she was on her
+feet. How humble and remote she seemed, as across a chasm from the men. How
+submissive she was, with an eternity of inaccessible submission. Her hovering
+dance round the dead bear was exquisite: her dark, secretive curiosity, her
+admiration of the massive, male strength of the creature, her quivers of
+triumph over the dead beast, her cruel exultation, and her fear that he was not
+really dead. It was a lovely sight, suggesting the world’s morning, before Eve
+had bitten any white-fleshed apple, whilst she was still dusky, dark-eyed, and
+still. And then her stealthy sympathy with the white prisoner! Now indeed she
+was the dusky Eve tempted into knowledge. Her fascination was ruthless. She
+kneeled by the dead <i>brave</i>, her husband, as she had knelt by the bear: in
+fear and admiration and doubt and exultation. She gave him the least little
+push with her foot. Dead meat like the bear! And a flash of delight went over
+her, that changed into a sob of mortal anguish. And then, flickering, wicked,
+doubtful, she watched Ciccio wrestling with the bear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was the clue to all the action, was Kishwégin. And her dark <i>braves</i>
+seemed to become darker, more secret, malevolent, burning with a cruel fire,
+and at the same time wistful, knowing their end. Ciccio laughed in a strange
+way, as he wrestled with the bear, as he had never laughed on the previous
+evenings. The sound went out into the audience, a soft, malevolent, derisive
+sound. And when the bear was supposed to have crushed him, and he was to have
+fallen, he reeled out of the bear’s arms and said to Madame, in his derisive
+voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Vivo sempre, Madame.” And then he fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame stopped as if shot, hearing his words: “I am still alive, Madame.” She
+remained suspended motionless, suddenly wilted. Then all at once her hand went
+to her mouth with a scream:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The Bear!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the scene concluded itself. But instead of the tender, half-wistful triumph
+of Kishwégin, a triumph electric as it should have been when she took the white
+man’s hand and kissed it, there was a doubt, a hesitancy, a nullity, and Max
+did not quite know what to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the performance, neither Madame nor Max dared say anything to Ciccio
+about his innovation into the play. Louis felt he had to speak&mdash;it was
+left to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I say, Cic’&mdash;” he said, “why did you change the scene? It might have
+spoiled everything if Madame wasn’t such a genius. Why did you say that?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why,” said Ciccio, answering Louis’ French in Italian, “I am tired of being
+dead, you see.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame and Max heard in silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Alvina had played <i>God Save the King</i> she went round behind the
+stage. But Ciccio and Geoffrey had already packed up the property, and left.
+Madame was talking to James Houghton. Louis and Max were busy together. Mr. May
+came to Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” he said. “That closes another week. I think we’ve done very well, in
+face of difficulties, don’t you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wonderfully,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But poor Mr. May spoke and looked pathetically. He seemed to feel forlorn.
+Alvina was not attending to him. Her eye was roving. She took no notice of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame came up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, Miss Houghton,” she said, “time to say good-bye, I suppose.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you feel after dancing?” asked Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;not so strong as usual&mdash;but not so bad, you know. I shall be
+all right&mdash;thanks to you. I think your father is more ill than I. To me he
+looks very ill.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father wears himself away,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, and when we are no longer young, there is not so much to wear. Well, I
+must thank you once more&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What time do you leave in the morning?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By the train at half-past ten. If it doesn’t rain, the young men will
+cycle&mdash;perhaps all of them. Then they will go when they like&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will come round to say good-bye&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no&mdash;don’t disturb yourself&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I want to take home the things&mdash;the kettle for the bronchitis, and
+those things&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh thank you very much&mdash;but don’t trouble yourself. I will send Ciccio
+with them&mdash;or one of the others&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should like to say good-bye to you all,” persisted Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame glanced round at Max and Louis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are we not all here? No. The two have gone. No! Well! Well what time will you
+come?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“About nine?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well, and I leave at ten. Very well. Then <i>au revoir</i> till the
+morning. Good-night.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-night,” said Alvina. Her colour was rather flushed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked up with Mr. May, and hardly noticed he was there. After supper, when
+James Houghton had gone up to count his pennies, Alvina said to Miss Pinnegar:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you think father looks rather seedy, Miss Pinnegar?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve been thinking so a long time,” said Miss Pinnegar tartly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you think he ought to do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s killing himself down there, in all weathers and freezing in that
+box-office, and then the bad atmosphere. He’s killing himself, that’s all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What can we do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing so long as there’s that place down there. Nothing at all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina thought so too. So she went to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was up in time, and watching the clock. It was a grey morning, but not
+raining. At five minutes to nine, she hurried off to Mrs. Rollings. In the back
+yard the bicycles were out, glittering and muddy according to their owners.
+Ciccio was crouching mending a tire, crouching balanced on his toes, near the
+earth. He turned like a quick-eared animal glancing up as she approached, but
+did not rise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you getting ready to go?” she said, looking down at him. He screwed his
+head round to her unwillingly, upside down, his chin tilted up at her. She did
+not know him thus inverted. Her eyes rested on his face, puzzled. His chin
+seemed so large, aggressive. He was a little bit repellent and brutal,
+inverted. Yet she continued:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you help me to carry back the things we brought for Madame?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose to his feet, but did not look at her. He was wearing broken cycling
+shoes. He stood looking at his bicycle tube.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not just yet,” she said. “I want to say good-bye to Madame. Will you come in
+half an hour?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I will come,” he said, still watching his bicycle tube, which sprawled
+nakedly on the floor. The forward drop of his head was curiously beautiful to
+her, the straight, powerful nape of the neck, the delicate shape of the back of
+the head, the black hair. The way the neck sprang from the strong, loose
+shoulders was beautiful. There was something mindless but <i>intent</i> about
+the forward reach of his head. His face seemed colourless, neutral-tinted and
+expressionless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went indoors. The young men were moving about making preparations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come upstairs, Miss Houghton!” called Madame’s voice from above. Alvina
+mounted, to find Madame packing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is an uneasy moment, when we are busy to move,” said Madame, looking up at
+Alvina as if she were a stranger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid I’m in the way. But I won’t stay a minute.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, it is all right. Here are the things you brought&mdash;” Madame indicated
+a little pile&mdash;“and thank you <i>very</i> much, <i>very</i> much. I feel
+you saved my life. And now let me give you one little token of my gratitude. It
+is not much, because we are not millionaires in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Just a
+little remembrance of our troublesome visit to Woodhouse.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She presented Alvina with a pair of exquisite bead moccasins, woven in a weird,
+lovely pattern, with soft deerskin soles and sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They belong to Kishwégin, so it is Kishwégin who gives them to you, because
+she is grateful to you for saving her life, or at least from a long illness.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh&mdash;but I don’t want to take them&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t like them? Why?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think they’re lovely, lovely! But I don’t want to take them from you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I give them, you do not take them from me. You receive them. Hé?” And
+Madame pressed back the slippers, opening her plump jewelled hands in a gesture
+of finality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I don’t like to take <i>these</i>,” said Alvina. “I feel they belong to
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. And I don’t want to rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara, do I? Do take
+them back.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I have given them. You cannot rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara in taking a pair of
+shoes&mdash;impossible!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I’m sure they are much too small for me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha!” exclaimed Madame. “It is that! Try.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know they are,” said Alvina, laughing confusedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat down and took off her own shoe. The moccasin was a little too
+short&mdash;just a little. But it was charming on the foot, charming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Madame. “It is too short. Very well. I must find you something
+else.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Please don’t,” said Alvina. “Please don’t find me anything. I don’t want
+anything. Please!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” said Madame, eyeing her closely. “You don’t want? Why? You don’t want
+anything from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, or from Kishwégin? Hé? From which?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t give me anything, please,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right! All right then. I won’t. I won’t give you anything. I can’t give
+you anything you want from Natcha-Kee-Tawara.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Madame busied herself again with the packing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m awfully sorry you are going,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sorry? Why? Yes, so am I sorry we shan’t see you any more. Yes, so I am. But
+perhaps we shall see you another time&mdash;hé? I shall send you a post-card.
+Perhaps I shall send one of the young men on his bicycle, to bring you
+something which I shall buy for you. Yes? Shall I?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! I should be awfully glad&mdash;but don’t buy&mdash;” Alvina checked
+herself in time. “Don’t buy anything. Send me a little thing from
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. I <i>love</i> the slippers&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But they are too small,” said Madame, who had been watching her with black
+eyes that read every motive. Madame too had her avaricious side, and was glad
+to get back the slippers. “Very well&mdash;very well, I will do that. I will
+send you some small thing from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, and one of the young men
+shall bring it. Perhaps Ciccio? Hé?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you <i>so</i> much,” said Alvina, holding out her hand. “Good-bye. I’m
+so sorry you’re going.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;well! We are not going so very far. Not so very far. Perhaps we
+shall see each other another day. It may be. Good-bye!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame took Alvina’s hand, and smiled at her winsomely all at once, kindly,
+from her inscrutable black eyes. A sudden unusual kindness. Alvina flushed with
+surprise and a desire to cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. I am sorry you are not with Natcha-Kee-Tawara. But we shall see.
+Good-bye. I shall do my packing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina carried down the things she had to remove. Then she went to say good-bye
+to the young men, who were in various stages of their toilet. Max alone was
+quite presentable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio was just putting on the outer cover of his front tire. She watched his
+brown thumbs press it into place. He was quick and sure, much more capable, and
+even masterful, than you would have supposed, seeing his tawny Mediterranean
+hands. He spun the wheel round, patting it lightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it finished?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I think.” He reached his pump and blew up the tire. She watched his
+softly-applied force. What physical, muscular force there was in him. Then he
+swung round the bicycle, and stood it again on its wheels. After which he
+quickly folded his tools.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you come now?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned, rubbing his hands together, and drying them on an old cloth. He went
+into the house, pulled on his coat and his cap, and picked up the things from
+the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where are you going?” Max asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio jerked his head towards Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, allow me to carry them, Miss Houghton. He is not fit&mdash;” said Max.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True, Ciccio had no collar on, and his shoes were burst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t mind,” said Alvina hastily. “He knows where they go. He brought them
+before.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I will carry them. I am dressed. Allow me&mdash;” and he began to take the
+things. “You get dressed, Ciccio.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio looked at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you want?” he said, as if waiting for orders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do let Ciccio take them,” said Alvina to Max. “Thank you <i>ever</i> so much.
+But let him take them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Alvina marched off through the Sunday morning streets, with the Italian, who
+was down at heel and encumbered with an armful of sick-room apparatus. She did
+not know what to say, and he said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We will go in this way,” she said, suddenly opening the hall door. She had
+unlocked it before she went out, for that entrance was hardly ever used. So she
+showed the Italian into the sombre drawing-room, with its high black
+bookshelves with rows and rows of calf-bound volumes, its old red and flowered
+carpet, its grand piano littered with music. Ciccio put down the things as she
+directed, and stood with his cap in his hands, looking aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you so much,” she said, lingering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He curled his lips in a faint deprecatory smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing,” he murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eye had wandered uncomfortably up to a portrait on the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That was my mother,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced down at her, but did not answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am so sorry you’re going away,” she said nervously. She stood looking up at
+him with wide blue eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The faint smile grew on the lower part of his face, which he kept averted. Then
+he looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have to move,” he said, with his eyes watching her reservedly, his mouth
+twisting with a half-bashful smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you like continually going away?” she said, her wide blue eyes fixed on his
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have to do it. I like it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What he said meant nothing to him. He now watched her fixedly, with a slightly
+mocking look, and a reserve he would not relinquish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you think I shall ever see you again?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Should you like&mdash;?” he answered, with a sly smile and a faint shrug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should like awfully&mdash;” a flush grew on her cheek. She heard Miss
+Pinnegar’s scarcely audible step approaching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded at her slightly, watching her fixedly, turning up the corners of his
+eyes slyly, his nose seeming slyly to sharpen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right. Next week, eh? In the morning?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do!” cried Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar came through the door. He glanced quickly
+over his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” cried Miss Pinnegar. “I couldn’t imagine who it was.” She eyed the young
+fellow sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Couldn’t you?” said Alvina. “We brought back these things.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh yes. Well&mdash;you’d better come into the other room, to the fire,” said
+Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall go along. Good-bye!” said Ciccio, and with a slight bow to Alvina, and
+a still slighter to Miss Pinnegar, he was out of the room and out of the front
+door, as if turning tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose they’re going this morning,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX<br/>
+ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alvina wept when the Natchas had gone. She loved them so much, she wanted to be
+with them. Even Ciccio she regarded as only one of the Natchas. She looked
+forward to his coming as to a visit from the troupe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How dull the theatre was without them! She was tired of the Endeavour. She
+wished it did not exist. The rehearsal on the Monday morning bored her
+terribly. Her father was nervous and irritable. The previous week had tried him
+sorely. He had worked himself into a state of nervous apprehension such as
+nothing would have justified, unless perhaps, if the wooden walls of the
+Endeavour had burnt to the ground, with James inside victimized like another
+Samson. He had developed a nervous horror of all artistes. He did not feel safe
+for one single moment whilst he depended on a single one of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We shall have to convert into all pictures,” he said in a nervous fever to Mr.
+May. “Don’t make any more engagements after the end of next month.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really!” said Mr. May. “Really! Have you quite decided?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes quite! Yes quite!” James fluttered. “I have written about a new machine,
+and the supply of films from Chanticlers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really!” said Mr. May. “Oh well then, in that case&mdash;” But he was filled
+with dismay and chagrin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of cauce,” he said later to Alvina, “I can’t <i>possibly</i> stop on if we are
+nothing but a picture show!” And he arched his blanched and dismal eyelids with
+ghastly finality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” cried Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh&mdash;why!” He was rather ironic. “Well, it’s not my line at <i>all</i>.
+I’m not a <i>film-operator</i>!” And he put his head on one side with a grimace
+of contempt and superiority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you are, as well,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, <i>as well</i>. But not <i>only</i>! You <i>may</i> wash the dishes in
+the scullery. But you’re not only the <i>char</i>, are you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But is it the same?” cried Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of cauce!” cried Mr. May. “Of <i>cauce</i> it’s the same.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina laughed, a little heartlessly, into his pallid, stricken eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what will you do?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall have to look for something else,” said the injured but dauntless
+little man. “There’s nothing <i>else</i>, is there?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wouldn’t you stay on?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wouldn’t think of it. I wouldn’t think of it.” He turtled like an injured
+pigeon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” she said, looking laconically into his face: “It’s between you and
+father&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of <i>cauce</i>!” he said. “Naturally! Where else&mdash;!” But his tone was a
+little spiteful, as if he had rested his last hopes on Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina went away. She mentioned the coming change to Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar, judicious but aloof, “it’s a move in the right
+direction. But I doubt if it’ll do any good.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you?” said Alvina. “Why?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t believe in the place, and I never did,” declared Miss Pinnegar. “I
+don’t believe any good will come of it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why?” persisted Alvina. “What makes you feel so sure about it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know. But that’s how I feel. And I have from the first. It was wrong
+from the first. It was wrong to begin it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why?” insisted Alvina, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your father had no business to be led into it. He’d no business to touch this
+show business. It isn’t like him. It doesn’t belong to him. He’s gone against
+his own nature and his own life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh but,” said Alvina, “father was a showman even in the shop. He always was.
+Mother said he was like a showman in a booth.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar was taken aback.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well!” she said sharply. “If <i>that’s</i> what you’ve seen in
+him!”&mdash;there was a pause. “And in that case,” she continued tartly, “I
+think some of the showman has come out in his daughter! or
+show-woman!&mdash;which doesn’t improve it, to my idea.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why is it any worse?” said Alvina. “I enjoy it&mdash;and so does father.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” cried Miss Pinnegar. “There you’re wrong! There you make a mistake. It’s
+all against his better nature.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really!” said Alvina, in surprise. “What a new idea! But which is father’s
+better nature?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You may not know it,” said Miss Pinnegar coldly, “and if so, I can never tell
+you. But that doesn’t alter it.” She lapsed into dead silence for a moment.
+Then suddenly she broke out, vicious and cold: “He’ll go on till he’s killed
+himself, and <i>then</i> he’ll know.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little adverb <i>then</i> came whistling across the space like a bullet. It
+made Alvina pause. Was her father going to die? She reflected. Well, all men
+must die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She forgot the question in others that occupied her. First, could she bear it,
+when the Endeavour was turned into another cheap and nasty film-shop? The
+strange figures of the artistes passing under her observation had really
+entertained her, week by week. Some weeks they had bored her, some weeks she
+had detested them, but there was always a chance in the coming week. Think of
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She thought too much of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She knew it. And she tried to
+force her mind to the contemplation of the new state of things, when she banged
+at the piano to a set of dithering and boring pictures. There would be her
+father, herself, and Mr. May&mdash;or a new operator, a new manager. The new
+manager!&mdash;she thought of him for a moment&mdash;and thought of the
+mechanical factory-faced persons who <i>managed</i> Wright’s and the Woodhouse
+Empire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her mind fell away from this barren study. She was obsessed by the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. They seemed to have fascinated her. Which of them it was,
+or what it was that had cast the spell over her, she did not know. But she was
+as if hypnotized. She longed to be with them. Her soul gravitated towards them
+all the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Monday passed, and Ciccio did not come: Tuesday passed: and Wednesday. In her
+soul she was sceptical of their keeping their promise&mdash;either Madame or
+Ciccio. Why should they keep their promise? She knew what these nomadic
+artistes were. And her soul was stubborn within her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Wednesday night there was another sensation at the Endeavour. Mr. May found
+James Houghton fainting in the box-office after the performance had begun. What
+to do? He could not interrupt Alvina, nor the performance. He sent the
+chocolate-and-orange boy across to the Pear Tree for brandy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James revived. “I’m all right,” he said, in a brittle fashion. “I’m all right.
+Don’t bother.” So he sat with his head on his hand in the box-office, and Mr.
+May had to leave him to operate the film.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the interval arrived, Mr. May hurried to the box-office, a narrow hole
+that James could just sit in, and there he found the invalid in the same
+posture, semi-conscious. He gave him more brandy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m all right, I tell you,” said James, his eyes flaring. “Leave me alone.”
+But he looked anything but all right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May hurried for Alvina. When the daughter entered the ticket place, her
+father was again in a state of torpor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father,” she said, shaking his shoulder gently. “What’s the matter.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He murmured something, but was incoherent. She looked at his face. It was grey
+and blank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We shall have to get him home,” she said. “We shall have to get a cab.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Give him a little brandy,” said Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy was sent for the cab, James swallowed a spoonful of brandy. He came to
+himself irritably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What? What,” he said. “I won’t have all this fuss. Go on with the performance,
+there’s no need to bother about me.” His eye was wild.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You must go home, father,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Leave me alone! Will you leave me alone! Hectored by women all my
+life&mdash;hectored by women&mdash;first one, then another. I won’t stand
+it&mdash;I won’t stand it&mdash;” He looked at Alvina with a look of frenzy as
+he lapsed again, fell with his head on his hands on his ticket-board. Alvina
+looked at Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We must get him home,” she said. She covered him up with a coat, and sat by
+him. The performance went on without music. At last the cab came. James,
+unconscious, was driven up to Woodhouse. He had to be carried indoors. Alvina
+hurried ahead to make a light in the dark passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father’s ill!” she announced to Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Didn’t I say so!” said Miss Pinnegar, starting from her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two women went out to meet the cab-man, who had James in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can you manage?” cried Alvina, showing a light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He doesn’t weigh much,” said the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu!” went Miss Pinnegar’s tongue, in a rapid tut-tut of
+distress. “What have I said, now,” she exclaimed. “What have I said all along?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James was laid on the sofa. His eyes were half-shut. They made him drink
+brandy, the boy was sent for the doctor, Alvina’s bed was warmed. The sick man
+was got to bed. And then started another vigil. Alvina sat up in the sick room.
+James started and muttered, but did not regain consciousness. Dawn came, and he
+was the same. Pneumonia and pleurisy and a touch of meningitis. Alvina drank
+her tea, took a little breakfast, and went to bed at about nine o’clock in the
+morning, leaving James in charge of Miss Pinnegar. Time was all deranged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar was a nervous nurse. She sat in horror and apprehension, her
+eyebrows raised, starting and looking at James in terror whenever he made a
+noise. She hurried to him and did what she could. But one would have said she
+was repulsed, she found her task unconsciously repugnant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the course of the morning Mrs. Rollings came up and said that the
+Italian from last week had come, and could he speak to Miss Houghton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell him she’s resting, and Mr. Houghton is seriously ill,” said Miss Pinnegar
+sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Alvina came downstairs at about four in the afternoon she found a package:
+a comb of carved bone, and a message from Madame: “To Miss Houghton, with
+kindest greetings and most sincere thanks from Kishwégin.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The comb with its carved, beast-faced serpent was her portion. Alvina asked if
+there had been any other message. None.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May came in, and stayed for a dismal half-hour. Then Alvina went back to
+her nursing. The patient was no better, still unconscious. Miss Pinnegar came
+down, red eyed and sullen looking. The condition of James gave little room for
+hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the early morning he died. Alvina called Mrs. Rollings, and they composed
+the body. It was still only five o’clock, and not light. Alvina went to lie
+down in her father’s little, rather chilly chamber at the end of the corridor.
+She tried to sleep, but could not. At half-past seven she arose, and started
+the business of the new day. The doctor came&mdash;she went to the
+registrar&mdash;and so on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May came. It was decided to keep open the theatre. He would find some one
+else for the piano, some one else to issue the tickets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoon arrived Frederick Houghton, James’s cousin and nearest
+relative. He was a middle-aged, blond, florid, church-going draper from
+Knarborough, well-to-do and very <i>bourgeois</i>. He tried to talk to Alvina
+in a fatherly fashion, or a friendly, or a helpful fashion. But Alvina could
+not listen to him. He got on her nerves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hearing the gate bang, she rose and hurried to the window. She was in the
+drawing-room with her cousin, to give the interview its proper air of
+solemnity. She saw Ciccio rearing his yellow bicycle against the wall, and
+going with his head forward along the narrow, dark way of the back yard, to the
+scullery door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Excuse me a minute,” she said to her cousin, who looked up irritably as she
+left the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was just in time to open the door as Ciccio tapped. She stood on the
+doorstep above him. He looked up, with a faint smile, from under his black
+lashes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How nice of you to come,” she said. But her face was blanched and tired,
+without expression. Only her large eyes looked blue in their tiredness, as she
+glanced down at Ciccio. He seemed to her far away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame asks how is Mr. Houghton,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father! He died this morning,” she said quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He died!” exclaimed the Italian, a flash of fear and dismay going over his
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;this morning.” She had neither tears nor emotion, but just looked
+down on him abstractedly, from her height on the kitchen step. He dropped his
+eyes and looked at his feet. Then he lifted his eyes again, and looked at her.
+She looked back at him, as from across a distance. So they watched each other,
+as strangers across a wide, abstract distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned and looked down the dark yard, towards the gate where he could just
+see the pale grey tire of his bicycle, and the yellow mud-guard. He seemed to
+be reflecting. If he went now, he went for ever. Involuntarily he turned and
+lifted his face again towards Alvina, as if studying her curiously. She
+remained there on the doorstep, neutral, blanched, with wide, still, neutral
+eyes. She did not seem to see him. He studied her with alert, yellow-dusky,
+inscrutable eyes, until she met his look. And then he gave the faintest gesture
+with his head, as of summons towards him. Her soul started, and died in her.
+And again he gave the slight, almost imperceptible jerk of the head, backwards
+and sideways, as if summoning her towards him. His face too was closed and
+expressionless. But in his eyes, which kept hers, there was a dark flicker of
+ascendancy. He was going to triumph over her. She knew it. And her soul sank as
+if it sank out of her body. It sank away out of her body, left her there
+powerless, soulless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet as he turned, with his head stretched forward, to move away: as he
+glanced slightly over his shoulder: she stepped down from the step, down to his
+level, to follow him. He went ducking along the dark yard, nearly to the gate.
+Near the gate, near his bicycle, was a corner made by a shed. Here he turned,
+lingeringly, to her, and she lingered in front of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes were wide and neutral and submissive, with a new, awful submission as
+if she had lost her soul. So she looked up at him, like a victim. There was a
+faint smile in his eyes. He stretched forward over her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You love me? Yes?&mdash;Yes?” he said, in a voice that seemed like a palpable
+contact on her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she whispered involuntarily, soulless, like a victim. He put his arm
+round her, subtly, and lifted her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he re-echoed, almost mocking in his triumph. “Yes. Yes!” And smiling, he
+kissed her, delicately, with a certain finesse of knowledge. She moaned in
+spirit, in his arms, felt herself dead, dead. And he kissed her with a finesse,
+a passionate finesse which seemed like coals of fire on her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They heard footsteps. Miss Pinnegar was coming to look for her. Ciccio set her
+down, looked long into her eyes, inscrutably, smiling, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I come tomorrow.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With which he ducked and ran out of the yard, picking up his bicycle like a
+feather, and, taking no notice of Miss Pinnegar, letting the yard-door bang to
+behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alvina!” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Alvina did not answer. She turned, slipped past, ran indoors and upstairs
+to the little bare bedroom she had made her own. She locked the door and
+kneeled down on the floor, bowing down her head to her knees in a paroxysm on
+the floor. In a paroxysm&mdash;because she loved him. She doubled herself up in
+a paroxysm on her knees on the floor&mdash;because she loved him. It was far
+more like pain, like agony, than like joy. She swayed herself to and fro in a
+paroxysm of unbearable sensation, because she loved him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar came and knocked at the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alvina! Alvina! Oh, you are there! Whatever are you doing? Aren’t you coming
+down to speak to your cousin?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Soon,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And taking a pillow from the bed, she crushed it against herself and swayed
+herself unconsciously, in her orgasm of unbearable feeling. Right in her bowels
+she felt it&mdash;the terrible, unbearable feeling. How could she bear it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She crouched over until she became still. A moment of stillness seemed to cover
+her like sleep: an eternity of sleep in that one second. Then she roused and
+got up. She went to the mirror, still, evanescent, and tidied her hair,
+smoothed her face. She was so still, so remote, she felt that nothing, nothing
+could ever touch her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so she went downstairs, to that horrible cousin of her father’s. She seemed
+so intangible, remote and virginal, that her cousin and Miss Pinnegar both
+failed to make anything of her. She answered their questions simply, but did
+not talk. They talked to each other. And at last the cousin went away, with a
+profound dislike of Miss Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not notice. She was only glad he was gone. And she went about for the
+rest of the day elusive and vague. She slept deeply that night, without dreams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day was Saturday. It came with a great storm of wind and rain and
+hail: a fury. Alvina looked out in dismay. She knew Ciccio would not be able to
+come&mdash;he could not cycle, and it was impossible to get by train and return
+the same day. She was almost relieved. She was relieved by the intermission of
+fate, she was thankful for the day of neutrality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the early afternoon came a telegram: Coming both tomorrow morning deepest
+sympathy Madame. Tomorrow was Sunday: and the funeral was in the afternoon.
+Alvina felt a burning inside her, thinking of Ciccio. She winced&mdash;and yet
+she wanted him to come. Terribly she wanted him to come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She showed the telegram to Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good gracious!” said the weary Miss Pinnegar. “Fancy those people. And I
+warrant they’ll want to be at the funeral. As if he was anything to
+<i>them</i>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think it’s very nice of her,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh well,” said Miss Pinnegar. “If you think so. I don’t fancy he would have
+wanted such people following, myself. And what does she mean by <i>both</i>.
+Who’s the other?” Miss Pinnegar looked sharply at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ciccio,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The Italian! Why goodness me! What’s <i>he</i> coming for? I can’t make you
+out, Alvina. Is that his name, Chicho? I never heard such a name. Doesn’t sound
+like a name at all to me. There won’t be room for them in the cabs.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ll order another.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“More expense. I never knew such impertinent people&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Alvina did not hear her. On the next morning she dressed herself carefully
+in her new dress. It was black voile. Carefully she did her hair. Ciccio and
+Madame were coming. The thought of Ciccio made her shudder. She hung about,
+waiting. Luckily none of the funeral guests would arrive till after one
+o’clock. Alvina sat listless, musing, by the fire in the drawing-room. She left
+everything now to Miss Pinnegar and Mrs. Rollings. Miss Pinnegar, red-eyed and
+yellow-skinned, was irritable beyond words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nearly mid-day when Alvina heard the gate. She hurried to open the front
+door. Madame was in her little black hat and her black spotted veil, Ciccio in
+a black overcoat was closing the yard door behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my dear girl!” Madame cried, trotting forward with outstretched black-kid
+hands, one of which held an umbrella: “I am so shocked&mdash;I am so shocked to
+hear of your poor father. Am I to believe it?&mdash;am I really? No, I can’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lifted her veil, kissed Alvina, and dabbed her eyes. Ciccio came up the
+steps. He took off his hat to Alvina, smiled slightly as he passed her. He
+looked rather pale, constrained. She closed the door and ushered them into the
+drawing-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame looked round like a bird, examining the room and the furniture. She was
+evidently a little impressed. But all the time she was uttering her
+condolences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell me, poor girl, how it happened?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There isn’t much to tell,” said Alvina, and she gave the brief account of
+James’s illness and death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Worn out! Worn out!” Madame said, nodding slowly up and down. Her black veil,
+pushed up, sagged over her brows like a mourning band. “You cannot afford to
+waste the stamina. And will you keep on the theatre&mdash;with Mr. May&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio was sitting looking towards the fire. His presence made Alvina tremble.
+She noticed how the fine black hair of his head showed no parting at
+all&mdash;it just grew like a close cap, and was pushed aside at the forehead.
+Sometimes he looked at her, as Madame talked, and again looked at her, and
+looked away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Madame came to a halt. There was a long pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will stay to the funeral?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh my dear, we shall be too much&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “I have arranged for you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There! You think of everything. But I will come, not Ciccio. He will not
+trouble you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio looked up at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should like him to come,” said Alvina simply. But a deep flush began to
+mount her face. She did not know where it came from, she felt so cold. And she
+wanted to cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame watched her closely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Siamo di accordo,” came the voice of Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina and Madame both looked at him. He sat constrained, with his face
+averted, his eyes dropped, but smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame looked closely at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it true what he says?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t understand him,” said Alvina. “I don’t understand what he said.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That you have agreed with him&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame and Ciccio both watched Alvina as she sat in her new black dress. Her
+eyes involuntarily turned to his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” she said vaguely. “Have I&mdash;?” and she looked at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame kept silence for some moments. Then she said gravely:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well!&mdash;yes!&mdash;well!” She looked from one to another. “Well, there is
+a lot to consider. But if you have decided&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither of them answered. Madame suddenly rose and went to Alvina. She kissed
+her on either cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall protect you,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she returned to her seat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What have you said to Miss Houghton?” she said suddenly to Ciccio, tackling
+him direct, and speaking coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at Madame with a faint derisive smile. Then he turned to Alvina. She
+bent her head and blushed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Speak then,” said Madame, “you have a reason.” She seemed mistrustful of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he turned aside his face, and refused to speak, sitting as if he were
+unaware of Madame’s presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh well,” said Madame. “I shall be there, Signorino.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke with a half-playful threat. Ciccio curled his lip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You do not know him yet,” she said, turning to Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know that,” said Alvina, offended. Then she added: “Wouldn’t you like to
+take off your hat?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you truly wish me to stay,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, please do. And will you hang your coat in the hall?” she said to Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” said Madame roughly. “He will not stay to eat. He will go out to
+somewhere.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina looked at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you rather?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her with sardonic yellow eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you want,” he said, the awkward, derisive smile curling his lips and
+showing his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had a moment of sheer panic. Was he just stupid and bestial? The thought
+went clean through her. His yellow eyes watched her sardonically. It was the
+clean modelling of his dark, other-world face that decided her&mdash;for it
+sent the deep spasm across her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d like you to stay,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A smile of triumph went over his face. Madame watched him stonily as she stood
+beside her chair, one hand lightly balanced on her hip. Alvina was reminded of
+Kishwégin. But even in Madame’s stony mistrust there was an element of
+attraction towards him. He had taken his cigarette case from his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“On ne fume pas dans le salon,” said Madame brutally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you put your coat in the passage?&mdash;and do smoke if you wish,” said
+Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose to his feet and took off his overcoat. His face was obstinate and
+mocking. He was rather floridly dressed, though in black, and wore boots of
+black patent leather with tan uppers. Handsome he was&mdash;but undeniably in
+bad taste. The silver ring was still on his finger&mdash;and his close, fine,
+unparted hair went badly with smart English clothes. He looked
+common&mdash;Alvina confessed it. And her heart sank. But what was she to do?
+He evidently was not happy. Obstinacy made him stick out the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina and Madame went upstairs. Madame wanted to see the dead James. She
+looked at his frail, handsome, ethereal face, and crossed herself as she wept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Un bel homme, cependant,” she whispered. “Mort en un jour. C’est trop fort,
+voyez!” And she sniggered with fear and sobs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went down to Alvina’s bare room. Madame glanced round, as she did in every
+room she entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This was father’s bedroom,” said Alvina. “The other was mine. He wouldn’t have
+it anything but like this&mdash;bare.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nature of a monk, a hermit,” whispered Madame. “Who would have thought it! Ah,
+the men, the men!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she unpinned her hat and patted her hair before the small mirror, into
+which she had to peep to see herself. Alvina stood waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And now&mdash;” whispered Madame, suddenly turning: “What about this Ciccio,
+hein?” It was ridiculous that she would not raise her voice above a whisper,
+upstairs there. But so it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She scrutinized Alvina with her eyes of bright black glass. Alvina looked back
+at her, but did not know what to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What about him, hein? Will you marry him? Why will you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose because I like him,” said Alvina, flushing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame made a little grimace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh yes!” she whispered, with a contemptuous mouth. “Oh yes!&mdash;because you
+like him! But you know nothing <i>of</i> him&mdash;nothing. How can you like
+him, not knowing him? He may be a real bad character. How would you like him
+then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He isn’t, is he?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know. I don’t know. He may be. Even I, I don’t know him&mdash;no,
+though he has been with me for three years. What is he? He is a man of the
+people, a boatman, a labourer, an artist’s model. He sticks to nothing&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How old is he?” asked Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He is twenty-five&mdash;a boy only. And you? You are older.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thirty,” confessed Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thirty! Well now&mdash;so much difference! How can you trust him? How can you?
+Why does he want to marry you&mdash;why?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, and I don’t know. But I know something of these Italian men, who are
+labourers in every country, just labourers and under-men always, always down,
+down, down&mdash;” And Madame pressed her spread palms downwards. “And
+so&mdash;when they have a chance to come up&mdash;” she raised her hand with a
+spring&mdash;“they are very conceited, and they take their chance. He will want
+to rise, by you, and you will go down, with him. That is how it is. I have seen
+it before&mdash;yes&mdash;more than one time&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But,” said Alvina, laughing ruefully. “He can’t rise much because of me, can
+he?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How not? How not? In the first place, you are English, and he thinks to rise
+by that. Then you are not of the lower class, you are of the higher class, the
+class of the masters, such as employ Ciccio and men like him. How will he not
+rise in the world by you? Yes, he will rise very much. Or he will draw you
+down, down&mdash;Yes, one or another. And then he thinks that now you have
+money&mdash;now your father is dead&mdash;” here Madame glanced apprehensively
+at the closed door&mdash;“and they all like money, yes, very much, all
+Italians&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do they?” said Alvina, scared. “I’m sure there won’t <i>be</i> any money. I’m
+sure father is in debt.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What? You think? Do you? Really? Oh poor Miss Houghton! Well&mdash;and will
+you tell Ciccio that? Eh? Hein?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;certainly&mdash;if it matters,” said poor Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course it matters. Of course it matters very much. It matters to him.
+Because he will not have much. He saves, saves, saves, as they all do, to go
+back to Italy and buy a piece of land. And if he has you, it will cost him much
+more, he cannot continue with Natcha-Kee-Tawara. All will be much more
+difficult&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I will tell him in time,” said Alvina, pale at the lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will tell him! Yes. That is better. And then you will see. But he is
+obstinate&mdash;as a mule. And if he will still have you, then you must think.
+Can you live in England as the wife of a labouring man, a dirty Eyetalian, as
+they all say? It is serious. It is not pleasant for you, who have not known it.
+I also have not known it. But I have seen&mdash;” Alvina watched with wide,
+troubled eyes, while Madame darted looks, as from bright, deep black glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Alvina. “I should hate being a labourer’s wife in a nasty little
+house in a street&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In a house?” cried Madame. “It would not be in a house. They live many
+together in one house. It would be two rooms, or even one room, in another
+house with many people not quite clean, you see&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I couldn’t stand that,” she said finally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No!” Madame nodded approval. “No! you could not. They live in a bad way, the
+Italians. They do not know the English home&mdash;never. They don’t like it.
+Nor do they know the Swiss clean and proper house. No. They don’t understand.
+They run into their holes to sleep or to shelter, and that is all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The same in Italy?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Even more&mdash;because there it is sunny very often&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you don’t need a house,” said Alvina. “I should like that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, it is nice&mdash;but you don’t know the life. And you would be alone with
+people like animals. And if you go to Italy he will beat you&mdash;he will beat
+you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I let him,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you can’t help it, away there from everybody. Nobody will help you. If you
+are a wife in Italy, nobody will help you. You are his property, when you marry
+by Italian law. It is not like England. There is no divorce in Italy. And if he
+beats you, you are helpless&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why should he beat me?” said Alvina. “Why should he want to?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They do. They are so jealous. And then they go into their ungovernable
+tempers, horrible tempers&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only when they are provoked,” said Alvina, thinking of Max.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but you will not know what provokes him. Who can <i>say</i> when he will
+be provoked? And then he beats you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There seemed to be a gathering triumph in Madame’s bright black eyes. Alvina
+looked at her, and turned to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At any rate I know now,” she said, in rather a flat voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And it is <i>true</i>. It is all of it true,” whispered Madame vindictively.
+Alvina wanted to run from her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I <i>must</i> go to the kitchen,” she said. “Shall we go down?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina did not go into the drawing-room with Madame. She was too much upset,
+and she had almost a horror of seeing Ciccio at that moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar, her face stained carmine by the fire, was helping Mrs. Rollings
+with the dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are they both staying, or only one?” she said tartly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Both,” said Alvina, busying herself with the gravy, to hide her distress and
+confusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The man as well,” said Miss Pinnegar. “What does the woman want to bring
+<i>him</i> for? I’m sure I don’t know what your father would say&mdash;a common
+show-fellow, <i>looks</i> what he is&mdash;and staying to dinner.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar was thoroughly out of temper as she tried the potatoes. Alvina
+set the table. Then she went to the drawing-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you come to dinner?” she said to her two guests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio rose, threw his cigarette into the fire, and looked round. Outside was a
+faint, watery sunshine: but at least it was out of doors. He felt himself
+imprisoned and out of his element. He had an irresistible impulse to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he got into the hall he laid his hand on his hat. The stupid, constrained
+smile was on his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll go now,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have set the table for you,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stop now, since you have stopped for so long,” said Madame, darting her black
+looks at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he hurried on his coat, looking stupid. Madame lifted her eyebrows
+disdainfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is polite behaviour!” she said sarcastically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina stood at a loss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You return to the funeral?” said Madame coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When you are ready to go,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At four o’clock,” said Madame, “when the funeral has come home. Then we shall
+be in time for the train.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, smiled stupidly, opened the door, and went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is just like him, to be so&mdash;so&mdash;” Madame could not express
+herself as she walked down to the kitchen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Miss Pinnegar, this is Madame,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you do?” said Miss Pinnegar, a little distant and condescending. Madame
+eyed her keenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is the man? I don’t know his name,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He wouldn’t stay,” said Alvina. “What <i>is</i> his name, Madame?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Marasca&mdash;Francesco. Francesco Marasca&mdash;Neapolitan.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Marasca!” echoed Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It has a bad sound&mdash;a sound of a bad augury, bad sign,” said Madame.
+“Ma-rà-sca!” She shook her head at the taste of the syllables.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why do you think so?” said Alvina. “Do you think there is a meaning in sounds?
+goodness and badness?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Madame. “Certainly. Some sounds are good, they are for life, for
+creating, and some sounds are bad, they are for destroying.
+Ma-rà-sca!&mdash;that is bad, like swearing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what sort of badness? What does it do?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What does it do? It sends life down&mdash;down&mdash;instead of lifting it
+up.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why should things always go up? Why should life always go up?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” said Madame, cutting her meat quickly. There was a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what about other names,” interrupted Miss Pinnegar, a little lofty. “What
+about Houghton, for example?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame put down her fork, but kept her knife in her hand. She looked across the
+room, not at Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Houghton&mdash;! Huff-ton!” she said. “When it is said, it has a sound
+<i>against</i>: that is, against the neighbour, against humanity. But when it
+is written <i>Hough-ton!</i> then it is different, it is <i>for</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is always pronounced <i>Huff-ton</i>,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By us,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We ought to know,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame turned to look at the unhappy, elderly woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are a relative of the family?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, not a relative. But I’ve been here many years,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, yes!” said Madame. Miss Pinnegar was frightfully affronted. The meal, with
+the three women at table, passed painfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar rose to go upstairs and weep. She felt very forlorn. Alvina rose
+to wipe the dishes, hastily, because the funeral guests would all be coming.
+Madame went into the drawing-room to smoke her sly cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May was the first to turn up for the lugubrious affair: very tight and
+tailored, but a little extinguished, all in black. He never wore black, and was
+very unhappy in it, being almost morbidly sensitive to the impression the
+colour made on him. He was set to entertain Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not pretend distress, but sat black-eyed and watchful, very much her
+business self.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What about the theatre?&mdash;will it go on?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well I don’t know. I don’t know Miss Houghton’s intentions,” said Mr. May. He
+was a little stilted today.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s hers?” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, as far as I understand&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And if she wants to sell out&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May spread his hands, and looked dismal, but distant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You should form a company, and carry on&mdash;” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May looked even more distant, drawing himself up in an odd fashion, so that
+he looked as if he were trussed. But Madame’s shrewd black eyes and busy mind
+did not let him off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Buy Miss Houghton out&mdash;” said Madame shrewdly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of cauce,” said Mr. May. “Miss Houghton herself must decide.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh sure&mdash;! You&mdash;are you married?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your wife here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My wife is in London.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And children&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A daughter.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame slowly nodded her head up and down, as if she put thousands of
+two-and-two’s together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You think there will be much to come to Miss Houghton?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you mean property? I really can’t say. I haven’t enquired.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, but you have a good idea, eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid I haven’t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No! Well! It won’t be much, then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really, I don’t know. I should say, not a <i>large</i> fortune&mdash;!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No&mdash;eh?” Madame kept him fixed with her black eyes. “Do you think the
+other one will get anything?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The <i>other one</i>&mdash;?” queried Mr. May, with an uprising cadence.
+Madame nodded slightly towards the kitchen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The old one&mdash;the Miss&mdash;Miss Pin&mdash;Pinny&mdash;what you call
+her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Miss Pinnegar! The manageress of the work-girls? Really, I don’t know at
+all&mdash;” Mr. May was most freezing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha&mdash;ha! Ha&mdash;ha!” mused Madame quietly. Then she asked: “Which
+work-girls do you say?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she listened astutely to Mr. May’s forced account of the work-room
+upstairs, extorting all the details she desired to gather. Then there was a
+pause. Madame glanced round the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nice house!” she said. “Is it their own?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So I <i>believe</i>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Madame nodded sagely. “Debts perhaps&mdash;eh? Mortgage&mdash;” and she
+looked slyly sardonic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really!” said Mr. May, bouncing to his feet. “Do you mind if I go to speak to
+Mrs. Rollings&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no&mdash;go along,” said Madame, and Mr. May skipped out in a temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame was left alone in her comfortable chair, studying details of the room
+and making accounts in her own mind, until the actual funeral guests began to
+arrive. And then she had the satisfaction of sizing them up. Several arrived
+with wreaths. The coffin had been carried down and laid in the small
+sitting-room&mdash;Mrs. Houghton’s sitting-room. It was covered with white
+wreaths and streamers of purple ribbon. There was a crush and a confusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then at last the hearse and the cabs had arrived&mdash;the coffin was
+carried out&mdash;Alvina followed, on the arm of her father’s cousin, whom she
+disliked. Miss Pinnegar marshalled the other mourners. It was a wretched
+business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was a great funeral. There were nine cabs, besides the
+hearse&mdash;Woodhouse had revived its ancient respect for the house of
+Houghton. A posse of minor tradesmen followed the cabs&mdash;all in black and
+with black gloves. The richer tradesmen sat in the cabs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Alvina, this was the only day in all her life when she was the centre of
+public attention. For once, every eye was upon her, every mind was thinking
+about her. Poor Alvina! said every member of the Woodhouse “middle class”: Poor
+Alvina Houghton, said every collier’s wife. Poor thing, left alone&mdash;and
+hardly a penny to bless herself with. Lucky if she’s not left with a pile of
+debts. James Houghton ran through some money in his day. Ay, if she had her
+rights she’d be a rich woman. Why, her mother brought three or four thousands
+with her. Ay, but James sank it all in Throttle-Ha’penny and Klondyke and the
+Endeavour. Well, he was his own worst enemy. He paid his way. I’m not so sure
+about that. Look how he served his wife, and now Alvina. I’m not so sure he was
+his own worst enemy. He was bad enough enemy to his own flesh and blood. Ah
+well, he’ll spend no more money, anyhow. No, he went sudden, didn’t he? But he
+was getting very frail, if you noticed. Oh yes, why he fair seemed to totter
+down to Lumley. Do you reckon as that place pays its way? What, the
+Endeavour?&mdash;they say it does. They say it makes a nice bit. Well, it’s
+mostly pretty full. Ay, it is. Perhaps it won’t be now Mr. Houghton’s gone.
+Perhaps not. I wonder if he <i>will</i> leave much. I’m sure he won’t.
+Everything he’s got’s mortgaged up to the hilt. He’ll leave debts, you see if
+he doesn’t. What is she going to do then? She’ll have to go out of Manchester
+House&mdash;her and Miss Pinnegar. Wonder what she’ll do. Perhaps she’ll take
+up that nursing. She never made much of that, did she&mdash;and spent a sight
+of money on her training, they say. She’s a bit like her father in the business
+line&mdash;all flukes. Pity some nice young man doesn’t turn up and marry her.
+I don’t know, she doesn’t seem to hook on, does she? Why she’s never had a
+proper boy. They make out she was engaged once. Ay, but nobody ever saw him,
+and it was off as soon as it was on. Can you remember she went with Albert
+Witham for a bit. Did she? No, I never knew. When was that? Why, when he was at
+Oxford, you know, learning for his head master’s place. Why didn’t she marry
+him then? Perhaps he never asked her. Ay, there’s that to it. She’d have looked
+down her nose at him, times gone by. Ay, but that’s all over, my boy. She’d
+snap at anybody now. Look how she carries on with that manager. Why,
+<i>that’s</i> something awful. Haven’t you ever watched her in the Cinema? She
+never lets him alone. And it’s anybody alike. Oh, she doesn’t respect herself.
+I don’t consider. No girl who respected herself would go on as she does,
+throwing herself at every feller’s head. Does she, though? Ay, any performer or
+anybody. She’s a tidy age, though. She’s not much chance of getting off. How
+old do you reckon she is? Must be well over thirty. You never say. Well, she
+<i>looks</i> it. She does beguy&mdash;a dragged old maid. Oh but she sprightles
+up a bit sometimes. Ay, when she thinks she’s hooked on to somebody. I wonder
+why she never did take? It’s funny. Oh, she was too high and mighty before, and
+now it’s too late. Nobody wants her. And she’s got no relations to go to
+either, has she? No, that’s her father’s cousin who she’s walking with. Look,
+they’re coming. He’s a fine-looking man, isn’t he? You’d have thought they’d
+have buried Miss Frost beside Mrs. Houghton. You would, wouldn’t you? I should
+think Alvina will lie by Miss Frost. They say the grave was made for both of
+them. Ay, she was a lot more of a mother to her than her own mother. She
+<i>was</i> good to them, Miss Frost was. Alvina thought the world of her.
+That’s her stone&mdash;look, down there. Not a very grand one, considering. No,
+it isn’t. Look, there’s room for Alvina’s name underneath. Sh!&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina had sat back in the cab and watched from her obscurity the many faces on
+the street: so familiar, so familiar, familiar as her own face. And now she
+seemed to see them from a great distance, out of her darkness. Her big cousin
+sat opposite her&mdash;how she disliked his presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In chapel she cried, thinking of her mother, and Miss Frost, and her father.
+She felt so desolate&mdash;it all seemed so empty. Bitterly she cried, when she
+bent down during the prayer. And her crying started Miss Pinnegar, who cried
+almost as bitterly. It was all rather horrible. The afterwards&mdash;the
+horrible afterwards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was the slow progress to the cemetery. It was a dull, cold day. Alvina
+shivered as she stood on the bleak hillside, by the open grave. Her coat did
+not seem warm enough, her old black seal-skin furs were not much protection.
+The minister stood on the plank by the grave, and she stood near, watching the
+white flowers blowing in the cold wind. She had watched them for her
+mother&mdash;and for Miss Frost. She felt a sudden clinging to Miss Pinnegar.
+Yet they would have to part. Miss Pinnegar had been so fond of her father, in a
+quaint, reserved way. Poor Miss Pinnegar, that was all life had offered her.
+Well, after all, it had been a home and a home life. To which home and home
+life Alvina now clung with a desperate yearning, knowing inevitably she was
+going to lose it, now her father was gone. Strange, that he was gone. But he
+was weary, worn very thin and weary. He had lived his day. How different it all
+was, now, at his death, from the time when Alvina knew him as a little child
+and thought him such a fine gentleman. You live and learn and lose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For one moment she looked at Madame, who was shuddering with cold, her face
+hidden behind her black spotted veil. But Madame seemed immensely remote: so
+unreal. And Ciccio&mdash;what was his name? She could not think of it. What was
+it? She tried to think of Madame’s slow enunciation. Marasca&mdash;maraschino.
+Marasca! Maraschino! What was maraschino? Where had she heard it. Cudgelling
+her brains, she remembered the doctors, and the suppers after the theatre. And
+maraschino&mdash;why, that was the favourite white liqueur of the innocent Dr.
+Young. She could remember even now the way he seemed to smack his lips, saying
+the word <i>maraschino</i>. Yet she didn’t think much of it. Hot, bitterish
+stuff&mdash;nothing: not like green Chartreuse, which Dr. James gave her.
+Maraschino! Yes, that was it. Made from cherries. Well, Ciccio’s name was
+nearly the same. Ridiculous! But she supposed Italian words were a good deal
+alike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio, the marasca, the bitter cherry, was standing on the edge of the crowd,
+looking on. He had no connection whatever with the proceedings&mdash;stood
+outside, self-conscious, uncomfortable, bitten by the wind, and hating the
+people who stared at him. He saw the trim, plump figure of Madame, like some
+trim plump partridge among a flock of barn-yard fowls. And he depended on her
+presence. Without her, he would have felt too horribly uncomfortable on that
+raw hillside. She and he were in some way allied. But these others, how alien
+and uncouth he felt them. Impressed by their fine clothes, the English
+working-classes were none the less barbarians to him, uncivilized: just as he
+was to them an uncivilized animal. Uncouth, they seemed to him, all raw angles
+and harshness, like their own weather. Not that he thought about them. But he
+felt it in his flesh, the harshness and discomfort of them. And Alvina was one
+of them. As she stood there by the grave, pale and pinched and reserved
+looking, she was of a piece with the hideous cold grey discomfort of the whole
+scene. Never had anything been more uncongenial to him. He was dying to get
+away&mdash;to clear out. That was all he wanted. Only some southern obstinacy
+made him watch, from the duskiness of his face, the pale, reserved girl at the
+grave. Perhaps he even disliked her, at that time. But he watched in his
+dislike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the ceremony was over, and the mourners turned away to go back to the
+cabs, Madame pressed forward to Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall say good-bye now, Miss Houghton. We must go to the station for the
+train. And thank you, thank you. Good-bye.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But&mdash;” Alvina looked round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ciccio is there. I see him. We must catch the train.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh but&mdash;won’t you drive? Won’t you ask Ciccio to drive with you in the
+cab? Where is he?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame pointed him out as he hung back among the graves, his black hat cocked a
+little on one side. He was watching. Alvina broke away from her cousin, and
+went to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame is going to drive to the station,” she said. “She wants you to get in
+with her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked round at the cabs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” he said, and he picked his way across the graves to Madame,
+following Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So, we go together in the cab,” said Madame to him. Then: “Good-bye, my dear
+Miss Houghton. Perhaps we shall meet once more. Who knows? My heart is with
+you, my dear.” She put her arms round Alvina and kissed her, a little
+theatrically. The cousin looked on, very much aloof. Ciccio stood by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come then, Ciccio,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-bye,” said Alvina to him. “You’ll come again, won’t you?” She looked at
+him from her strained, pale face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” he said, shaking her hand loosely. It sounded hopelessly
+indefinite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will come, won’t you?” she repeated, staring at him with strained,
+unseeing blue eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” he said, ducking and turning away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood quite still for a moment, quite lost. Then she went on with her
+cousin to her cab, home to the funeral tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-bye!” Madame fluttered a black-edged handkerchief. But Ciccio, most
+uncomfortable in his four-wheeler, kept hidden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The funeral tea, with its baked meats and sweets, was a terrible affair. But it
+came to an end, as everything comes to an end, and Miss Pinnegar and Alvina
+were left alone in the emptiness of Manchester House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you weren’t here, Miss Pinnegar, I should be quite by myself,” said Alvina,
+blanched and strained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. And so should I without you,” said Miss Pinnegar doggedly. They looked at
+each other. And that night both slept in Miss Pinnegar’s bed, out of sheer
+terror of the empty house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the days following the funeral, no one could have been more tiresome
+than Alvina. James had left everything to his daughter, excepting some rights
+in the work-shop, which were Miss Pinnegar’s. But the question was, how much
+did “everything” amount to? There was something less than a hundred pounds in
+the bank. There was a mortgage on Manchester House. There were substantial
+bills owing on account of the Endeavour. Alvina had about a hundred pounds left
+from the insurance money, when all funeral expenses were paid. Of that she was
+sure, and of nothing else.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the rest, she was almost driven mad by people coming to talk to her. The
+lawyer came, the clergyman came, her cousin came, the old, stout, prosperous
+tradesmen of Woodhouse came, Mr. May came, Miss Pinnegar came. And they all had
+schemes, and they all had advice. The chief plan was that the theatre should be
+sold up: and that Manchester House should be sold, reserving a lease on the top
+floor, where Miss Pinnegar’s work-rooms were: that Miss Pinnegar and Alvina
+should move into a small house, Miss Pinnegar keeping the work-room, Alvina
+giving music-lessons: that the two women should be partners in the work-shop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were other plans, of course. There was a faction against the chapel
+faction, which favoured the plan sketched out above. The theatre faction,
+including Mr. May and some of the more florid tradesmen, favoured the risking
+of everything in the Endeavour. Alvina was to be the proprietress of the
+Endeavour, she was to run it on some sort of successful lines, and abandon all
+other enterprise. Minor plans included the election of Alvina to the post of
+parish nurse, at six pounds a month: a small private school; a small
+haberdashery shop; and a position in the office of her cousin’s Knarborough
+business. To one and all Alvina answered with a tantalizing: “I don’t know what
+I’m going to do. I don’t know. I can’t say yet. I shall see. I shall see.” Till
+one and all became angry with her. They were all so benevolent, and all so sure
+that they were proposing the very best thing she could do. And they were all
+nettled, even indignant that she did not jump at their proposals. She listened
+to them all. She even invited their advice. Continually she said: “Well, what
+do <i>you</i> think of it?” And she repeated the chapel plan to the theatre
+group, the theatre plan to the chapel party, the nursing to the pianoforte
+proposers, the haberdashery shop to the private school advocates. “Tell me what
+<i>you</i> think,” she said repeatedly. And they all told her they thought
+<i>their</i> plan was best. And bit by bit she told every advocate the proposal
+of every other advocate “Well, Lawyer Beeby thinks&mdash;” and “Well now, Mr.
+Clay, the minister, advises&mdash;” and so on and so on, till it was all
+buzzing through thirty benevolent and officious heads. And thirty
+benevolently-officious wills were striving to plant each one its own particular
+scheme of benevolence. And Alvina, naïve and pathetic, egged them all on in
+their strife, without even knowing what she was doing. One thing only was
+certain. Some obstinate will in her own self absolutely refused to have her
+mind made up. She would <i>not</i> have her mind made up for her, and she would
+not make it up for herself. And so everybody began to say “I’m getting tired of
+her. You talk to her, and you get no forrarder. She slips off to something
+else. I’m not going to bother with her any more.” In truth, Woodhouse was in a
+fever, for three weeks or more, arranging Alvina’s unarrangeable future for
+her. Offers of charity were innumerable&mdash;for three weeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, the lawyer went on with the proving of the will and the drawing up
+of a final account of James’s property; Mr. May went on with the Endeavour,
+though Alvina did not go down to play; Miss Pinnegar went on with the
+work-girls: and Alvina went on unmaking her mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio did not come during the first week. Alvina had a post-card from Madame,
+from Cheshire: rather far off. But such was the buzz and excitement over her
+material future, such a fever was worked up round about her that Alvina, the
+petty-propertied heroine of the moment, was quite carried away in a storm of
+schemes and benevolent suggestions. She answered Madame’s post-card, but did
+not give much thought to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. As a matter of fact, she was
+enjoying a real moment of importance, there at the centre of Woodhouse’s rather
+domineering benevolence: a benevolence which she unconsciously, but
+systematically frustrated. All this scheming for selling out and making
+reservations and hanging on and fixing prices and getting private bids for
+Manchester House and for the Endeavour, the excitement of forming a Limited
+Company to run the Endeavour, of seeing a lawyer about the sale of Manchester
+House and the auctioneer about the sale of the furniture, of receiving men who
+wanted to pick up the machines upstairs cheap, and of keeping everything
+dangling, deciding nothing, putting everything off till she had seen somebody
+else, this for the moment fascinated her, went to her head. It was not until
+the second week had passed that her excitement began to merge into irritation,
+and not until the third week had gone by that she began to feel herself
+entangled in an asphyxiating web of indecision, and her heart began to sing
+because Ciccio had never turned up. Now she would have given anything to see
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras again. But she did not know where they were. Now she
+began to loathe the excitement of her property: doubtfully hers, every stick of
+it. Now she would give anything to get away from Woodhouse, from the horrible
+buzz and entanglement of her sordid affairs. Now again her wild recklessness
+came over her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She suddenly said she was going away somewhere: she would not say where. She
+cashed all the money she could: a hundred-and-twenty-five pounds. She took the
+train to Cheshire, to the last address of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: she followed
+them to Stockport: and back to Chinley: and there she was stuck for the night.
+Next day she dashed back almost to Woodhouse, and swerved round to Sheffield.
+There, in that black town, thank heaven, she saw their announcement on the
+wall. She took a taxi to their theatre, and then on to their lodgings. The
+first thing she saw was Louis, in his shirt sleeves, on the landing above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed with excitement and pleasure. She seemed another woman. Madame
+looked up, almost annoyed, when she entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I couldn’t keep away from you, Madame,” she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Evidently,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame was darning socks for the young men. She was a wonderful mother for
+them, sewed for them, cooked for them, looked after them most carefully. Not
+many minutes was Madame idle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you mind?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame darned for some moments without answering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And how is everything at Woodhouse?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I couldn’t bear it any longer. I couldn’t bear it. So I collected all the
+money I could, and ran away. Nobody knows where I am.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame looked up with bright, black, censorious eyes, at the flushed girl
+opposite. Alvina had a certain strangeness and brightness, which Madame did not
+know, and a frankness which the Frenchwoman mistrusted, but found disarming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And all the business, the will and all?” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They’re still fussing about it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And there is some money?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have got a hundred pounds here,” laughed Alvina. “What there will be when
+everything is settled, I don’t know. But not very much, I’m sure of that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How much do you think? A thousand pounds?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, it’s just possible, you know. But it’s just as likely there won’t be
+another penny&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame nodded slowly, as always when she did her calculations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And if there is nothing, what do you intend?” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” said Alvina brightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And if there is something?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know either. But I thought, if you would let me play for you, I could
+keep myself for some time with my own money. You said perhaps I might be with
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. I wish you would let me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame bent her head so that nothing showed but the bright black folds of her
+hair. Then she looked up, with a slow, subtle, rather jeering smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ciccio didn’t come to see you, hein?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “Yet he promised.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Madame smiled sardonically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you call it a promise?” she said. “You are easy to be satisfied with a
+word. A hundred pounds? No more?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A hundred and twenty&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In my bag at the station&mdash;in notes. And I’ve got a little here&mdash;”
+Alvina opened her purse, and took out some little gold and silver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At the station!” exclaimed Madame, smiling grimly. “Then perhaps you have
+nothing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I think it’s quite safe, don’t you&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;maybe&mdash;since it is England. And you think a hundred and twenty
+pounds is enough?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What for?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To satisfy Ciccio.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wasn’t thinking of him,” cried Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No?” said Madame ironically. “I can propose it to him. Wait one moment.” She
+went to the door and called Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He entered, looking not very good-tempered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Be so good, my dear,” said Madame to him, “to go to the station and fetch Miss
+Houghton’s little bag. You have got the ticket, have you?” Alvina handed the
+luggage ticket to Madame. “Midland Railway,” said Madame. “And, Ciccio, you are
+listening&mdash;? Mind! There is a hundred and twenty pounds of Miss Houghton’s
+money in the bag. You hear? Mind it is not lost.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s all I have,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For the time, for the time&mdash;till the will is proved, it is all the cash
+she has. So mind doubly. You hear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell him what sort of a bag, Miss Houghton,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina told him. He ducked and went. Madame listened for his final departure.
+Then she nodded sagely at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Take off your hat and coat, my dear. Soon we will have tea&mdash;when Cic’
+returns. Let him think, let him think what he likes. So much money is certain,
+perhaps there will be more. Let him think. It will make all the difference that
+there is so much cash&mdash;yes, so much&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But would it <i>really</i> make a difference to him?” cried Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh my dear!” exclaimed Madame. “Why should it not? We are on earth, where we
+must eat. We are not in Paradise. If it were a thousand pounds, then he would
+want very badly to marry you. But a hundred and twenty is better than a blow to
+the eye, eh? Why sure!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s dreadful, though&mdash;!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh la-la! Dreadful! If it was Max, who is sentimental, then no, the money is
+nothing. But all the others&mdash;why, you see, they are men, and they know
+which side to butter their bread. Men are like cats, my dear, they don’t like
+their bread without butter. Why should they? Nor do I, nor do I.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can I help with the darning?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hein? I shall give you Ciccio’s socks, yes? He pushes holes in the
+toes&mdash;you see?” Madame poked two fingers through the hole in the toe of a
+red-and-black sock, and smiled a little maliciously at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t mind which sock I darn,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No? You don’t? Well then, I give you another. But if you like I will speak to
+him&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What to say?” asked Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To say that you have so much money, and hope to have more. And that you like
+him&mdash;Yes? Am I right? You like him very much?&mdash;hein? Is it so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And then what?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That he should tell me if he should like to marry you also&mdash;quite simply.
+What? Yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “Don’t say anything&mdash;not yet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hé? Not yet? Not yet. All right, not yet then. You will see&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina sat darning the sock and smiling at her own shamelessness. The point
+that amused her most of all was the fact that she was not by any means sure she
+wanted to marry him. There was Madame spinning her web like a plump prolific
+black spider. There was Ciccio, the unrestful fly. And there was herself, who
+didn’t know in the least what she was doing. There sat two of them, Madame and
+herself, darning socks in a stuffy little bedroom with a gas fire, as if they
+had been born to it. And after all, Woodhouse wasn’t fifty miles away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame went downstairs to get tea ready. Wherever she was, she superintended
+the cooking and the preparation of meals for her young men, scrupulous and
+quick. She called Alvina downstairs. Ciccio came in with the bag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“See, my dear, that your money is safe,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina unfastened her bag and counted the crisp white notes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And now,” said Madame, “I shall lock it in my little bank, yes, where it will
+be safe. And I shall give you a receipt, which the young men will witness.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The party sat down to tea, in the stuffy sitting-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, boys,” said Madame, “what do you say? Shall Miss Houghton join the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Shall she be our pianist?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eyes of the four young men rested on Alvina. Max, as being the responsible
+party, looked business-like. Louis was tender, Geoffrey round-eyed and
+inquisitive, Ciccio furtive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“With great pleasure,” said Max. “But can the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras afford to pay
+a pianist for themselves?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Madame. “No. I think not. Miss Houghton will come for one month, to
+prove, and in that time she shall pay for herself. Yes? So she fancies it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can we pay her expenses?” said Max.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “Let me pay everything for myself, for a month. I should
+like to be with you, awfully&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked across with a look half mischievous, half beseeching at the erect
+Max. He bowed as he sat at table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think we shall all be honoured,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Certainly,” said Louis, bowing also over his tea-cup.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey inclined his head, and Ciccio lowered his eyelashes in indication of
+agreement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now then,” said Madame briskly, “we are all agreed. Tonight we will have a
+bottle of wine on it. Yes, gentlemen? What d’you say? Chianti&mdash;hein?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all bowed above the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And Miss Houghton shall have her professional name, eh? Because we cannot say
+Miss Houghton&mdash;what?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do call me Alvina,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alvina&mdash;Al-vy-na! No, excuse me, my dear, I don’t like it. I don’t like
+this ‘vy’ sound. Tonight we shall find a name.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After tea they inquired for a room for Alvina. There was none in the house. But
+two doors away was another decent lodging-house, where a bedroom on the top
+floor was found for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think you are very well here,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite nice,” said Alvina, looking round the hideous little room, and
+remembering her other term of probation, as a maternity nurse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She dressed as attractively as possible, in her new dress of black voile, and
+imitating Madame, she put four jewelled rings on her fingers. As a rule she
+only wore the mourning-ring of black enamel and diamond, which had been always
+on Miss Frost’s finger. Now she left off this, and took four diamond rings, and
+one good sapphire. She looked at herself in her mirror as she had never done
+before, really interested in the effect she made. And in her dress she pinned a
+valuable old ruby brooch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she went down to Madame’s house. Madame eyed her shrewdly, with just a
+touch of jealousy: the eternal jealousy that must exist between the plump, pale
+partridge of a Frenchwoman, whose black hair is so glossy and tidy, whose black
+eyes are so acute, whose black dress is so neat and <i>chic</i>, and the rather
+thin Englishwoman in soft voile, with soft, rather loose brown hair and demure,
+blue-grey eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh&mdash;a difference&mdash;what a difference! When you have a little more
+flesh&mdash;then&mdash;” Madame made a slight click with her tongue. “What a
+good brooch, eh?” Madame fingered the brooch. “Old paste&mdash;old
+paste&mdash;antique&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “They are real rubies. It was my great-grandmother’s.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you mean it? Real? Are you sure&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think I’m quite sure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame scrutinized the jewels with a fine eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hm!” she said. And Alvina did not know whether she was sceptical, or jealous,
+or admiring, or really impressed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And the diamonds are real?” said Madame, making Alvina hold up her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve always understood so,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame scrutinized, and slowly nodded her head. Then she looked into Alvina’s
+eyes, really a little jealous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Another four thousand francs there,” she said, nodding sagely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For sure. It’s enough&mdash;it’s enough&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there was a silence between the two women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young men had been out shopping for the supper. Louis, who knew where to
+find French and German stuff, came in with bundles, Ciccio returned with a
+couple of flasks, Geoffrey with sundry moist papers of edibles. Alvina helped
+Madame to put the anchovies and sardines and tunny and ham and salami on
+various plates, she broke off a bit of fern from one of the flower-pots, to
+stick in the pork-pie, she set the table with its ugly knives and forks and
+glasses. All the time her rings sparkled, her red brooch sent out beams, she
+laughed and was gay, she was quick, and she flattered Madame by being very
+deferential to her. Whether she was herself or not, in the hideous, common,
+stuffy sitting-room of the lodging-house she did not know or care. But she felt
+excited and gay. She knew the young men were watching her. Max gave his
+assistance wherever possible. Geoffrey watched her rings, half spell-bound. But
+Alvina was concerned only to flatter the plump, white, soft vanity of Madame.
+She carefully chose for Madame the finest plate, the clearest glass, the
+whitest-hafted knife, the most delicate fork. All of which Madame saw, with
+acute eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the theatre the same: Alvina played for Kishwégin, only for Kishwégin. And
+Madame had the time of her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know, my dear,” she said afterward to Alvina, “I understand sympathy in
+music. Music goes straight to the heart.” And she kissed Alvina on both cheeks,
+throwing her arms round her neck dramatically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m <i>so</i> glad,” said the wily Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the young men stirred uneasily, and smiled furtively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They hurried home to the famous supper. Madame sat at one end of the table,
+Alvina at the other. Madame had Max and Louis by her side, Alvina had Ciccio
+and Geoffrey. Ciccio was on Alvina’s right hand: a delicate hint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They began with hors d’oeuvres and tumblers three parts full of Chianti. Alvina
+wanted to water her wine, but was not allowed to insult the sacred liquid.
+There was a spirit of great liveliness and conviviality. Madame became paler,
+her eyes blacker, with the wine she drank, her voice became a little raucous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tonight,” she said, “the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras make their feast of affiliation.
+The white daughter has entered the tribe of the Hirondelles, swallows that pass
+from land to land, and build their nests between roof and wall. A new swallow,
+a new Huron from the tents of the pale-face, from the lodges of the north, from
+the tribe of the Yenghees.” Madame’s black eyes glared with a kind of wild
+triumph down the table at Alvina. “Nameless, without having a name, comes the
+maiden with the red jewels, dark-hearted, with the red beams. Wine from the
+pale-face shadows, drunken wine for Kishwégin, strange wine for the
+<i>braves</i> in their nostrils, Vaali, <i>à vous</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame lifted her glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Vaali, drink to her&mdash;Boire à elle&mdash;” She thrust her glass forwards
+in the air. The young men thrust their glasses up towards Alvina, in a cluster.
+She could see their mouths all smiling, their teeth white as they cried in
+their throats: “Vaali! Vaali! Boire à vous.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio was near to her. Under the table he laid his hand on her knee. Quickly
+she put forward her hand to protect herself. He took her hand, and looked at
+her along the glass as he drank. She saw his throat move as the wine went down
+it. He put down his glass, still watching her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Vaali!” he said, in his throat. Then across the table “Hé, Gigi&mdash;Viale!
+Le Petit Chemin! Comment? Me prends-tu? L’allée&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There came a great burst of laughter from Louis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is good, it is good!” he cried. “Oh Madame! Viale, it is Italian for the
+little way, the alley. That is too rich.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max went off into a high and ribald laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“L’allée italienne!” he said, and shouted with laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alley or avenue, what does it matter,” cried Madame in French, “so long as it
+is a good journey.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Geoffrey at last saw the joke. With a strange determined flourish he
+filled his glass, cocking up his elbow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A toi, Cic’&mdash;et bon voyage!” he said, and then he tilted up his chin and
+swallowed in great throatfuls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Certainly! Certainly!” cried Madame. “To thy good journey, my Ciccio, for thou
+art not a great traveller&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Na, pour <i>ça</i>, y’a plus d’une voie,” said Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During this passage in French Alvina sat with very bright eyes looking from one
+to another, and not understanding. But she knew it was something improper, on
+her account. Her eyes had a bright, slightly-bewildered look as she turned from
+one face to another. Ciccio had let go her hand, and was wiping his lips with
+his fingers. He too was a little self-conscious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Assez de cette éternelle voix italienne,” said Madame. “Courage, courage au
+chemin d’Angleterre.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Assez de cette éternelle voix rauque,” said Ciccio, looking round. Madame
+suddenly pulled herself together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They will not have my name. They will call you Allay!” she said to Alvina. “Is
+it good? Will it do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she could not understand why Gigi, and then the others after him, went off
+into a shout of laughter. She kept looking round with bright, puzzled eyes. Her
+face was slightly flushed and tender looking, she looked naïve, young.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then you will become one of the tribe of Natcha-Kee-Tawara, of the name
+Allaye? Yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And obey the strict rules of the tribe. Do you agree?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then listen.” Madame primmed and preened herself like a black pigeon, and
+darted glances out of her black eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are one tribe, one nation&mdash;say it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are one tribe, one nation,” repeated Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Say all,” cried Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are one tribe, one nation&mdash;” they shouted, with varying accent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good!” said Madame. “And no nation do we know but the nation of the
+Hirondelles&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No nation do we know but the nation of the Hirondelles,” came the ragged chant
+of strong male voices, resonant and gay with mockery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hurons&mdash;Hirondelles, means <i>swallows</i>,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I know,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So! you know! Well, then! We know no nation but the Hirondelles. <small>WE
+HAVE NO LAW BUT HURON LAW</small>!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have no law but Huron law!” sang the response, in a deep, sardonic chant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<small>WE HAVE NO LAWGIVER EXCEPT KISHWÉGIN</small>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have no lawgiver except Kishwégin,” they sang sonorous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“W<small>E HAVE NO HOME BUT THE TENT OF KISHWÉGIN</small>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have no home but the tent of Kishwégin.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<small>THERE IS NO GOOD BUT THE GOOD OF NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA</small>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is no good but the good of Natcha-Kee-Tawara.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“W<small>E ARE THE HIRONDELLES</small>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are the Hirondelles.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“W<small>E ARE KISHWÉGIN</small>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are Kishwégin.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“W<small>E ARE MONDAGUA</small>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are Mondagua&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“W<small>E ARE ATONQUOIS</small>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are Atonquois&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“W<small>E ARE PACOHUILA</small>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are Pacohuila&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“W<small>E ARE WALGATCHKA</small>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are Walgatchka&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“W<small>E ARE ALLAYE</small>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are Allaye&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“La musica! Pacohuila, la musica!” cried Madame, starting to her feet and
+sounding frenzied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio got up quickly and took his mandoline from its case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A&mdash;A&mdash;Ai&mdash;Aii&mdash;eee&mdash;ya&mdash;” began Madame, with a
+long, faint wail. And on the wailing mandoline the music started. She began to
+dance a slight but intense dance. Then she waved for a partner, and set up a
+tarantella wail. Louis threw off his coat and sprang to tarantella attention,
+Ciccio rang out the peculiar tarantella, and Madame and Louis danced in the
+tight space.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Brava&mdash;Brava!” cried the others, when Madame sank into her place. And
+they crowded forward to kiss her hand. One after the other, they kissed her
+fingers, whilst she laid her left hand languidly on the head of one man after
+another, as she sat slightly panting. Ciccio however did not come up, but sat
+faintly twanging the mandoline. Nor did Alvina leave her place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pacohuila!” cried Madame, with an imperious gesture. “Allaye! Come&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio laid down his mandoline and went to kiss the fingers of Kishwégin.
+Alvina also went forward. Madame held out her hand. Alvina kissed it. Madame
+laid her hand on the head of Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is the squaw Allaye, this is the daughter of Kishwégin,” she said, in her
+Tawara manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And where is the <i>brave</i> of Allaye, where is the arm that upholds the
+daughter of Kishwégin, which of the Swallows spreads his wings over the gentle
+head of the new one!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pacohuila!” said Louis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pacohuila! Pacohuila! Pacohuila!” said the others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Spread soft wings, spread dark-roofed wings, Pacohuila,” said Kishwégin, and
+Ciccio, in his shirt-sleeves solemnly spread his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stoop, stoop, Allaye, beneath the wings of Pacohuila,” said Kishwégin, faintly
+pressing Alvina on the shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina stooped and crouched under the right arm of Pacohuila.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Has the bird flown home?” chanted Kishwégin, to one of the strains of their
+music.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The bird is home&mdash;” chanted the men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is the nest warm?” chanted Kishwégin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The nest is warm.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Does the he-bird stoop&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He stoops.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who takes Allaye?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pacohuila.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio gently stooped and raised Alvina to her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“C’est ça!” said Madame, kissing her. “And now, children, unless the Sheffield
+policeman will knock at our door, we must retire to our wigwams all&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio was watching Alvina. Madame made him a secret, imperative gesture that
+he should accompany the young woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have your key, Allaye?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Did I have a key?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame smiled subtly as she produced a latch-key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Kishwégin must open your doors for you all,” she said. Then, with a slight
+flourish, she presented the key to Ciccio. “I give it to him? Yes?” she added,
+with her subtle, malicious smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio, smiling slightly, and keeping his head ducked, took the key. Alvina
+looked brightly, as if bewildered, from one to another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Also the light!” said Madame, producing a pocket flash-light, which she
+triumphantly handed to Ciccio. Alvina watched him. She noticed how he dropped
+his head forward from his straight, strong shoulders, how beautiful that was,
+the strong, forward-inclining nape and back of the head. It produced a kind of
+dazed submission in her, the drugged sense of unknown beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And so good-night, Allaye&mdash;bonne nuit, fille des Tawara.” Madame kissed
+her, and darted black, unaccountable looks at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Each <i>brave</i> also kissed her hand, with a profound salute. Then the men
+shook hands warmly with Ciccio, murmuring to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not put on his hat nor his coat, but ran round as he was to the
+neighbouring house with her, and opened the door. She entered, and he followed,
+flashing on the light. So she climbed weakly up the dusty, drab stairs, he
+following. When she came to her door, she turned and looked at him. His face
+was scarcely visible, it seemed, and yet so strange and beautiful. It was the
+unknown beauty which almost killed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You aren’t coming?” she quavered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave an odd, half-gay, half-mocking twitch of his thick dark brows, and
+began to laugh silently. Then he nodded again, laughing at her boldly,
+carelessly, triumphantly, like the dark Southerner he was. Her instinct was to
+defend herself. When suddenly she found herself in the dark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gasped. And as she gasped, he quite gently put her inside her room, and
+closed the door, keeping one arm round her all the time. She felt his heavy
+muscular predominance. So he took her in both arms, powerful, mysterious,
+horrible in the pitch dark. Yet the sense of the unknown beauty of him weighed
+her down like some force. If for one moment she could have escaped from that
+black spell of his beauty, she would have been free. But she could not. He was
+awful to her, shameless so that she died under his shamelessness, his smiling,
+progressive shamelessness. Yet she could not see him ugly. If only she could,
+for one second, have seen him ugly, he would not have killed her and made her
+his slave as he did. But the spell was on her, of his darkness and unfathomed
+handsomeness. And he killed her. He simply took her and assassinated her. How
+she suffered no one can tell. Yet all the time, his lustrous dark beauty,
+unbearable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When later she pressed her face on his chest and cried, he held her gently as
+if she was a child, but took no notice, and she felt in the darkness that he
+smiled. It was utterly dark, and she knew he smiled, and she began to get
+hysterical. But he only kissed her, his smiling deepening to a heavy laughter,
+silent and invisible, but sensible, as he carried her away once more. He
+intended her to be his slave, she knew. And he seemed to throw her down and
+suffocate her like a wave. And she could have fought, if only the sense of his
+dark, rich handsomeness had not numbed her like a venom. So she was suffocated
+in his passion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning when it was light he turned and looked at her from under his
+long black lashes, a long, steady, cruel, faintly-smiling look from his tawny
+eyes, searching her as if to see whether she were still alive. And she looked
+back at him, heavy-eyed and half subjected. He smiled slightly at her, rose,
+and left her. And she turned her face to the wall, feeling beaten. Yet not
+quite beaten to death. Save for the fatal numbness of her love for him, she
+could still have escaped him. But she lay inert, as if envenomed. He wanted to
+make her his slave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she went down to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras for breakfast she found them
+waiting for her. She was rather frail and tender-looking, with wondering eyes
+that showed she had been crying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come, daughter of the Tawaras,” said Madame brightly to her. “We have been
+waiting for you. Good-morning, and all happiness, eh? Look, it is a gift-day
+for you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame smilingly led Alvina to her place. Beside her plate was a bunch of
+violets, a bunch of carnations, a pair of exquisite bead moccasins, and a pair
+of fine doeskin gloves delicately decorated with feather-work on the cuffs. The
+slippers were from Kishwégin, the gloves from Mondagua, the carnations from
+Atonquois, the violets from Walgatchka&mdash;all <i>To the Daughter of the
+Tawaras, Allaye</i>, as it said on the little cards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The gift of Pacohuila you know,” said Madame, smiling. “The brothers of
+Pacohuila are your brothers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One by one they went to her and each one laid the back of her fingers against
+his forehead, saying in turn:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am your brother Mondagua, Allaye!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am your brother Atonquois, Allaye!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am your brother Walgatchka, Allaye, best brother, you know&mdash;” So spoke
+Geoffrey, looking at her with large, almost solemn eyes of affection. Alvina
+smiled a little wanly, wondering where she was. It was all so solemn. Was it
+all mockery, play-acting? She felt bitterly inclined to cry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Madame came in with the coffee, which she always made herself, and
+the party sat down to breakfast. Ciccio sat on Alvina’s right, but he seemed to
+avoid looking at her or speaking to her. All the time he looked across the
+table, with the half-asserted, knowing look in his eyes, at Gigi: and all the
+time he addressed himself to Gigi, with the throaty, rich, plangent quality in
+his voice, that Alvina could not bear, it seemed terrible to her: and he spoke
+in French: and the two men seemed to be exchanging unspeakable communications.
+So that Alvina, for all her wistfulness and subjectedness, was at last
+seriously offended. She rose as soon as possible from table. In her own heart
+she wanted attention and public recognition from Ciccio&mdash;none of which she
+got. She returned to her own house, to her own room, anxious to tidy
+everything, not wishing to have her landlady in the room. And she half expected
+Ciccio to come to speak to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she was busy washing a garment in the bowl, her landlady knocked and
+entered. She was a rough and rather beery-looking Yorkshire woman, not
+attractive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, yo’n made yer bed then, han’ yer!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Alvina. “I’ve done everything.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I see yer han. Yo’n bin sharp.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina did not answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Seems yer doin’ yersen a bit o’ weshin’.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still Alvina didn’t answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yo’ can ’ing it i’ th’ back yard.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think it’ll dry here,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isna much dryin’ up here. Send us howd when ’t’s ready. Yo’ll ’appen be
+wantin’ it. I can dry it off for yer i’ t’ kitchen. You don’t take a drop o’
+nothink, do yer?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “I don’t like it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Summat a bit stronger ’n ’t bottle, my sakes alive! Well, yo mun ha’e yer
+fling, like t’ rest. But coom na, which on ’em is it? I catched sight on ’im
+goin’ out, but I didna ma’e out then which on ’em it wor. He&mdash;eh, it’s a
+pity you don’t take a drop of nothink, it’s a world’s pity. Is it the fairest
+on ’em, the tallest.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “The darkest one.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh ay! Well, ’s a strappin’ anuff feller, for them as goes that road. I
+thought Madame was partikler. I s’ll charge yer a bit more, yer know. I s’ll
+’ave to make a bit out of it. <i>I’m</i> partikler as a rule. I don’t like ’em
+comin’ in an’ goin’ out, you know. Things get said. You look so quiet, you do.
+Come now, it’s worth a hextra quart to me, else I shan’t have it, I shan’t. You
+can’t make as free as all that with the house, you know, be it what it
+may&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood red-faced and dour in the doorway. Alvina quietly gave her
+half-a-sovereign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nay, lass,” said the woman, “if you share niver a drop o’ th’ lashins, you mun
+split it. Five shillin’s is oceans, ma wench. I’m not down on you&mdash;not me.
+On’y we’ve got to keep up appearances a bit, you know. Dash my rags, it’s a
+caution!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t got five shillings&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yer’ve not? All right, gi’e ’s ha ’efcrown today, an’ t’other termorrer. It’ll
+keep, it’ll keep. God bless you for a good wench. A’ open ’eart ’s worth all
+your bum-righteousness. It is for me. An’ a sight more. You’re all right, ma
+wench, you’re all right&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the rather bleary woman went nodding away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina ought to have minded. But she didn’t. She even laughed into her ricketty
+mirror. At the back of her thoughts, all she minded was that Ciccio did not pay
+her some attention. She really expected him now to come to speak to her. If she
+could have imagined how far he was from any such intention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she loitered unwillingly at her window high over the grey, hard, cobbled
+street, and saw her landlady hastening along the black asphalt pavement, her
+dirty apron thrown discreetly over what was most obviously a quart jug. She
+followed the squat, intent figure with her eye, to the public-house at the
+corner. And then she saw Ciccio humped over his yellow bicycle, going for a
+steep and perilous ride with Gigi.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still she lingered in her sordid room. She could feel Madame was expecting her.
+But she felt inert, weak, incommunicative. Only a real fear of offending Madame
+drove her down at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Max opened the door to let her in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” he said. “You’ve come. We were wondering about you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you,” she said, as she passed into the dirty hall where still two
+bicycles stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame is in the kitchen,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina found Madame trussed in a large white apron, busy rubbing a
+yellow-fleshed hen with lemon, previous to boiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” said Madame. “So there you are! I have been out and done my shopping, and
+already begun to prepare the dinner. Yes, you may help me. Can you wash leeks?
+Yes? Every grain of sand? Shall I trust you then&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame usually had a kitchen to herself, in the morning. She either ousted her
+landlady, or used her as second cook. For Madame was a gourmet, if not
+gourmand. If she inclined towards self-indulgence in any direction, it was in
+the direction of food. She <i>loved</i> a good table. And hence the Tawaras
+saved less money than they might. She was an exacting, tormenting, bullying
+cook. Alvina, who knew well enough how to prepare a simple dinner, was offended
+by Madame’s exactions. Madame turning back the green leaves of a leek, and
+hunting a speck of earth down into the white, like a flea in a bed, was too
+much for Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid I shall never be particular enough,” she said. “Can’t I do anything
+else for you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For me? I need nothing to be done for me. But for the young men&mdash;yes, I
+will show you in one minute&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she took Alvina upstairs to her room, and gave her a pair of the thin
+leather trousers fringed with hair, belonging to one of the <i>braves</i>. A
+seam had ripped. Madame gave Alvina a fine awl and some waxed thread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The leather is not good in these things of Gigi’s,” she said. “It is badly
+prepared. See, like this.” And she showed Alvina another place where the
+garment was repaired. “Keep on your apron. At the week-end you must fetch more
+clothes, not spoil this beautiful gown of voile. Where have you left your
+diamonds? What? In your room? Are they locked? Oh my dear&mdash;!” Madame
+turned pale and darted looks of fire at Alvina. “If they are stolen&mdash;!”
+she cried. “Oh! I have become quite weak, hearing you!” She panted and shook
+her head. “If they are not stolen, you have the Holy Saints alone to be
+thankful for keeping them. But run, run!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Madame really stamped her foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bring me everything you’ve got&mdash;every <i>thing</i> that is valuable. I
+shall lock it up. How <i>can</i> you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was hustled off to her lodging. Fortunately nothing was gone. She
+brought all to Madame, and Madame fingered the treasures lovingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now what you want you must ask me for,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With what close curiosity Madame examined the ruby brooch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You can have that if you like, Madame,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You mean&mdash;what?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will give you that brooch if you like to take it&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Give me this&mdash;!” cried Madame, and a flash went over her face. Then she
+changed into a sort of wheedling. “No&mdash;no. I shan’t take it! I shan’t take
+it. You don’t want to give away such a thing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t mind,” said Alvina. “Do take it if you like it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no! Oh no! I can’t take it. A beautiful thing it is, really. It would be
+worth over a thousand francs, because I believe it is quite genuine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sure it’s genuine,” said Alvina. “Do have it since you like it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I can’t! I can’t!&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes do&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The beautiful red stones!&mdash;antique gems, antique gems&mdash;! And do you
+really give it to me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I should like to.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are a girl with a noble heart&mdash;” Madame threw her arms round Alvina’s
+neck, and kissed her. Alvina felt very cool about it. Madame locked up the
+jewels quickly, after one last look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My fowl,” she said, “which must not boil too fast.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length Alvina was called down to dinner. The young men were at table,
+talking as young men do, not very interestingly. After the meal, Ciccio sat and
+twanged his mandoline, making its crying noise vibrate through the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall go and look at the town,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And who shall go with you?” asked Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will go alone,” said Alvina, “unless you will come, Madame.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alas no, I can’t. I can’t come. Will you really go alone?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I want to go to the women’s shops,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You want to! All right then! And you will come home at tea-time, yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as Alvina had gone out Ciccio put away his mandoline and lit a
+cigarette. Then after a while he hailed Geoffrey, and the two young men sallied
+forth. Alvina, emerging from a draper’s shop in Rotherhampton Broadway, found
+them loitering on the pavement outside. And they strolled along with her. So
+she went into a shop that sold ladies’ underwear, leaving them on the pavement.
+She stayed as long as she could. But there they were when she came out. They
+had endless lounging patience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought you would be gone on,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No hurry,” said Ciccio, and he took away her parcels from her, as if he had a
+right. She wished he wouldn’t tilt the flap of his black hat over one eye, and
+she wished there wasn’t quite so much waist-line in the cut of his coat, and
+that he didn’t smoke cigarettes against the end of his nose in the street. But
+wishing wouldn’t alter him. He strayed alongside as if he half belonged, and
+half didn’t&mdash;most irritating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wasted as much time as possible in the shops, then they took the tram home
+again. Ciccio paid the three fares, laying his hand restrainingly on Gigi’s
+hand, when Gigi’s hand sought pence in his trouser pocket, and throwing his arm
+over his friend’s shoulder, in affectionate but vulgar triumph, when the fares
+were paid. Alvina was on her high horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They tried to talk to her, they tried to ingratiate themselves&mdash;but she
+wasn’t having any. She talked with icy pleasantness. And so the tea-time
+passed, and the time after tea. The performance went rather mechanically, at
+the theatre, and the supper at home, with bottled beer and boiled ham, was a
+conventionally cheerful affair. Even Madame was a little afraid of Alvina this
+evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am tired, I shall go early to my room,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I think we are all tired,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why is it?” said Max metaphysically&mdash;“why is it that two merry evenings
+never follow one behind the other.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Max, beer makes thee a <i>farceur</i> of a fine quality,” said Madame. Alvina
+rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Please don’t get up,” she said to the others. “I have my key and can see quite
+well,” she said. “Good-night all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They rose and bowed their good-nights. But Ciccio, with an obstinate and ugly
+little smile on his face, followed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Please don’t come,” she said, turning at the street door. But obstinately he
+lounged into the street with her. He followed her to her door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Did you bring the flash-light?” she said. “The stair is so dark.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her, and turned as if to get the light. Quickly she opened the
+house-door and slipped inside, shutting it sharply in his face. He stood for
+some moments looking at the door, and an ugly little look mounted his straight
+nose. He too turned indoors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina hurried to bed and slept well. And the next day the same, she was all
+icy pleasantness. The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were a little bit put out by her. She
+was a spoke in their wheel, a scotch to their facility. She made them
+irritable. And that evening&mdash;it was Friday&mdash;Ciccio did not rise to
+accompany her to her house. And she knew they were relieved that she had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That did not please her. The next day, which was Saturday, the last and
+greatest day of the week, she found herself again somewhat of an outsider in
+the troupe. The tribe had assembled in its old unison. She was the intruder,
+the interloper. And Ciccio never looked at her, only showed her the
+half-averted side of his cheek, on which was a slightly jeering, ugly look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you go to Woodhouse tomorrow?” Madame asked her, rather coolly. They none
+of them called her Allaye any more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d better fetch some things, hadn’t I?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Certainly, if you think you will stay with us.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a nasty slap in the face for her. But:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want to,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes! Then you will go to Woodhouse tomorrow, and come to Mansfield on Monday
+morning? Like that shall it be? You will stay one night at Woodhouse?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through Alvina’s mind flitted the rapid thought&mdash;“They want an evening
+without me.” Her pride mounted obstinately. She very nearly said&mdash;“I may
+stay in Woodhouse altogether.” But she held her tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After all, they were very common people. They ought to be glad to have her.
+Look how Madame snapped up that brooch! And look what an uncouth lout Ciccio
+was! After all, she was demeaning herself shamefully staying with them in
+common, sordid lodgings. After all, she had been bred up differently from that.
+They had horribly low standards&mdash;such low standards&mdash;not only of
+morality, but of life altogether. Really, she had come down in the world,
+conforming to such standards of life. She evoked the images of her mother and
+Miss Frost: ladies, and noble women both. Whatever could she be thinking of
+herself!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, there was time for her to retrace her steps. She had not given herself
+away. Except to Ciccio. And her heart burned when she thought of him, partly
+with anger and mortification, partly, alas, with undeniable and unsatisfied
+love. Let her bridle as she might, her heart burned, and she wanted to look at
+him, she wanted him to notice her. And instinct told her that he might ignore
+her for ever. She went to her room an unhappy woman, and wept and fretted till
+morning, chafing between humiliation and yearning.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X<br/>
+THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alvina rose chastened and wistful. As she was doing her hair, she heard the
+plaintive nasal sound of Ciccio’s mandoline. She looked down the mixed vista of
+back-yards and little gardens, and was able to catch sight of a portion of
+Ciccio, who was sitting on a box in the blue-brick yard of his house,
+bare-headed and in his shirt-sleeves, twitching away at the wailing mandoline.
+It was not a warm morning, but there was a streak of sunshine. Alvina had
+noticed that Ciccio did not seem to feel the cold, unless it were a wind or a
+driving rain. He was playing the wildly-yearning Neapolitan songs, of which
+Alvina knew nothing. But, although she only saw a section of him, the glimpse
+of his head was enough to rouse in her that overwhelming fascination, which
+came and went in spells. His remoteness, his southernness, something velvety
+and dark. So easily she might miss him altogether! Within a hair’s-breadth she
+had let him disappear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hurried down. Geoffrey opened the door to her. She smiled at him in a
+quick, luminous smile, a magic change in her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I could hear Ciccio playing,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey spread his rather thick lips in a smile, and jerked his head in the
+direction of the back door, with a deep, intimate look into Alvina’s eyes, as
+if to say his friend was lovesick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I go through?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey laid his large hand on her shoulder for a moment, looked into her
+eyes, and nodded. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, with a rather flat,
+handsome face, well-coloured, and with the look of the Alpine ox about him,
+slow, eternal, even a little mysterious. Alvina was startled by the deep,
+mysterious look in his dark-fringed ox-eyes. The odd arch of his eyebrows made
+him suddenly seem not quite human to her. She smiled to him again, startled.
+But he only inclined his head, and with his heavy hand on her shoulder gently
+impelled her towards Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she came out at the back she smiled straight into Ciccio’s face, with her
+sudden, luminous smile. His hand on the mandoline trembled into silence. He sat
+looking at her with an instant re-establishment of knowledge. And yet she
+shrank from the long, inscrutable gaze of his black-set, tawny eyes. She
+resented him a little. And yet she went forward to him and stood so that her
+dress touched him. And still he gazed up at her, with the heavy, unspeaking
+look, that seemed to bear her down: he seemed like some creature that was
+watching her for his purposes. She looked aside at the black garden, which had
+a wiry goose-berry bush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will come with me to Woodhouse?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not answer till she turned to him again. Then, as she met his eyes,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To Woodhouse?” he said, watching her, to fix her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said, a little pale at the lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his mouth. She
+wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred his tawny eyes with
+their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched her as a cat watches a bird, but
+without the white gleam of ferocity. In his eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth,
+something fathomless, deepening black and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you?” she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his eyes had already begun to glimmer their consent. He turned aside his
+face, as if unwilling to give a straight answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Play something to me,” she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted his face to her, and shook his head slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes do,” she said, looking down on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he bent his head to the mandoline, and suddenly began to sing a Neapolitan
+song, in a faint, compressed head-voice, looking up at her again as his lips
+moved, looking straight into her face with a curious mocking caress as the
+muted <i>voix blanche</i> came through his lips at her, amid the louder
+quavering of the mandoline. The sound penetrated her like a thread of fire,
+hurting, but delicious, the high thread of his voice. She could see the Adam’s
+apple move in his throat, his brows tilted as he looked along his lashes at her
+all the time. Here was the strange sphinx singing again, and herself between
+its paws! She seemed almost to melt into his power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame intervened to save her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, serenade before breakfast! You have strong stomachs, I say. Eggs and ham
+are more the question, hein? Come, you smell them, don’t you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A flicker of contempt and derision went over Ciccio’s face as he broke off and
+looked aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I prefer the serenade,” said Alvina. “I’ve had ham and eggs before.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You do, hein? Well&mdash;always, you won’t. And now you must eat the ham and
+eggs, however. Yes? Isn’t it so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio rose to his feet, and looked at Alvina: as he would have looked at Gigi,
+had Gigi been there. His eyes said unspeakable things about Madame. Alvina
+flashed a laugh, suddenly. And a good-humoured, half-mocking smile came over
+his face too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They turned to follow Madame into the house. And as Alvina went before him, she
+felt his fingers stroke the nape of her neck, and pass in a soft touch right
+down her back. She started as if some unseen creature had stroked her with its
+paw, and she glanced swiftly round, to see the face of Ciccio mischievous
+behind her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now I think,” said Madame, “that today we all take the same train. We go by
+the Great Central as far as the junction, together. Then you, Allaye, go on to
+Knarborough, and we leave you until tomorrow. And now there is not much time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am going to Woodhouse,” said Ciccio in French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You also! By the train, or the bicycle?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Train,” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Waste so much money?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio raised his shoulders slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When breakfast was over, and Alvina had gone to her room, Geoffrey went out
+into the back yard, where the bicycles stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Cic’,” he said. “I should like to go with thee to Woodhouse. Come on bicycle
+with me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m going in train with <i>her</i>,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey darkened with his heavy anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would like to see how it is, there, <i>chez elle</i>,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ask <i>her</i>,” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey watched him suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thou forsakest me,” he said. “I would like to see it, there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ask <i>her</i>,” repeated Ciccio. “Then come on bicycle.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re content to leave me,” muttered Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio touched his friend on his broad cheek, and smiled at him with affection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t leave thee, Gigi. I asked thy advice. You said, Go. But come. Go and
+ask her, and then come. Come on bicycle, eh? Ask her! Go on! Go and ask her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was surprised to hear a tap at her door, and Gigi’s voice, in his strong
+foreign accent:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mees Houghton, I carry your bag.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She opened her door in surprise. She was all ready.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There it is,” she said, smiling at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he confronted her like a powerful ox, full of dangerous force. Her smile
+had reassured him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Na, Allaye,” he said, “tell me something.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” laughed Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can I come to Woodhouse?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Today. Can I come on bicycle, to tea, eh? At your house with you and Ciccio?
+Eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was smiling with a thick, doubtful, half sullen smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her with his large, dark-blue eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really, eh?” he said, holding out his large hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shook hands with him warmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, really!” she said. “I wish you would.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good,” he said, a broad smile on his thick mouth. And all the time he watched
+her curiously, from his large eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ciccio&mdash;a good chap, eh?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is he?” laughed Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha-a&mdash;!” Gigi shook his head solemnly. “The best!” He made such solemn
+eyes, Alvina laughed. He laughed too, and picked up her bag as if it were a
+bubble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Na Cic’&mdash;” he said, as he saw Ciccio in the street. “Sommes d’accord.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ben!” said Ciccio, holding out his hand for the bag. “Donne.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ne-ne,” said Gigi, shrugging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina found herself on the new and busy station that Sunday morning, one of
+the little theatrical company. It was an odd experience. They were so obviously
+a theatrical company&mdash;people apart from the world. Madame was darting her
+black eyes here and there, behind her spotted veil, and standing with the
+ostensible self-possession of her profession. Max was circling round with large
+strides, round a big black box on which the red words Natcha-Kee-Tawara showed
+mystic, and round the small bunch of stage fittings at the end of the platform.
+Louis was waiting to get the tickets, Gigi and Ciccio were bringing up the
+bicycles. They were a whole train of departure in themselves, busy, bustling,
+cheerful&mdash;and curiously apart, vagrants.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina strolled away towards the half-open bookstall. Geoffrey was standing
+monumental between her and the company. She returned to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What time shall we expect you?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled at her in his broad, friendly fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Expect me to be there? Why&mdash;” he rolled his eyes and proceeded to
+calculate. “At four o’clock.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just about the time when we get there,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her sagely, and nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were a good-humoured company in the railway carriage. The men smoked
+cigarettes and tapped off the ash on the heels of their boots, Madame watched
+every traveller with professional curiosity. Max scrutinized the newspaper,
+Lloyds, and pointed out items to Louis, who read them over Max’s shoulder,
+Ciccio suddenly smacked Geoffrey on the thigh, and looked laughing into his
+face. So till they arrived at the junction. And then there was a kissing and a
+taking of farewells, as if the company were separating for ever. Louis darted
+into the refreshment bar and returned with little pies and oranges, which he
+deposited in the carriage, Madame presented Alvina with a packet of chocolate.
+And it was “Good-bye, good-bye, Allaye! Good-bye, Ciccio! Bon voyage. Have a
+good time, both.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Alvina sped on in the fast train to Knarborough with Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I <i>do</i> like them all,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He opened his mouth slightly and lifted his head up and down. She saw in the
+movement how affectionate he was, and in his own way, how emotional. He loved
+them all. She put her hand to his. He gave her hand one sudden squeeze, of
+physical understanding, then left it as if nothing had happened. There were
+other people in the carriage with them. She could not help feeling how sudden
+and lovely that moment’s grasp of his hand was: so warm, so whole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And thus they watched the Sunday morning landscape slip by, as they ran into
+Knarborough. They went out to a little restaurant to eat. It was one o’clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isn’t it strange, that we are travelling together like this?” she said, as she
+sat opposite him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled, looking into her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You think it’s strange?” he said, showing his teeth slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you?” she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a slight, laconic laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I can hardly bear it that I love you so much,” she said, quavering, across
+the potatoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced furtively round, to see if any one was listening, if any one might
+hear. He would have hated it. But no one was near. Beneath the tiny table, he
+took her two knees between his knees, and pressed them with a slow, immensely
+powerful pressure. Helplessly she put her hand across the table to him. He
+covered it for one moment with his hand, then ignored it. But her knees were
+still between the powerful, living vice of his knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eat!” he said to her, smiling, motioning to her plate. And he relaxed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They decided to go out to Woodhouse on the tram-car, a long hour’s ride.
+Sitting on the top of the covered car, in the atmosphere of strong tobacco
+smoke, he seemed self-conscious, withdrawn into his own cover, so obviously a
+dark-skinned foreigner. And Alvina, as she sat beside him, was reminded of the
+woman with the negro husband, down in Lumley. She understood the woman’s
+reserve. She herself felt, in the same way, something of an outcast, because of
+the man at her side. An outcast! And glad to be an outcast. She clung to
+Ciccio’s dark, despised foreign nature. She loved it, she worshipped it, she
+defied all the other world. Dark, he sat beside her, drawn in to himself,
+overcast by his presumed inferiority among these northern industrial people.
+And she was with him, on his side, outside the pale of her own people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were already acquaintances on the tram. She nodded in answer to their
+salutation, but so obviously from a distance, that they kept turning round to
+eye her and Ciccio. But they left her alone. The breach between her and them
+was established for ever&mdash;and it was her will which established it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So up and down the weary hills of the hilly, industrial countryside, till at
+last they drew near to Woodhouse. They passed the ruins of Throttle-Ha’penny,
+and Alvina glanced at it indifferent. They ran along the Knarborough Road. A
+fair number of Woodhouse young people were strolling along the pavements in
+their Sunday clothes. She knew them all. She knew Lizzie Bates’s fox furs, and
+Fanny Clough’s lilac costume, and Mrs. Smitham’s winged hat. She knew them all.
+And almost inevitably the old Woodhouse feeling began to steal over her, she
+was glad they could not see her, she was a little ashamed of Ciccio. She
+wished, for the moment, Ciccio were not there. And as the time came to get
+down, she looked anxiously back and forth to see at which halt she had better
+descend&mdash;where fewer people would notice her. But then she threw her
+scruples to the wind, and descended into the staring, Sunday afternoon street,
+attended by Ciccio, who carried her bag. She knew she was a marked figure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They slipped round to Manchester House. Miss Pinnegar expected Alvina, but by
+the train, which came later. So she had to be knocked up, for she was lying
+down. She opened the door looking a little patched in her cheeks, because of
+her curious colouring, and a little forlorn, and a little dumpy, and a little
+irritable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I didn’t know there’d be two of you,” was her greeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Didn’t you,” said Alvina, kissing her. “Ciccio came to carry my bag.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh,” said Miss Pinnegar. “How do you do?” and she thrust out her hand to him.
+He shook it loosely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I had your wire,” said Miss Pinnegar. “You said the train. Mrs. Rollings is
+coming in at four again&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh all right&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The house was silent and afternoon-like. Ciccio took off his coat and sat down
+in Mr. Houghton’s chair. Alvina told him to smoke. He kept silent and reserved.
+Miss Pinnegar, a poor, patch-cheeked, rather round-backed figure with
+grey-brown fringe, stood as if she did not quite know what to say or do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She followed Alvina upstairs to her room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t think why you bring <i>him</i> here,” snapped Miss Pinnegar. “I don’t
+know what you’re thinking about. The whole place is talking already.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t care,” said Alvina. “I like him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh&mdash;for shame!” cried Miss Pinnegar, lifting her hand with Miss Frost’s
+helpless, involuntary movement. “What do you think of yourself? And your father
+a month dead.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It doesn’t matter. Father <i>is</i> dead. And I’m sure the dead don’t mind.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I never <i>knew</i> such things as you say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why? I mean them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar stood blank and helpless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re not asking him to stay the night,” she blurted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. And I’m going back with him to Madame tomorrow. You know I’m part of the
+company now, as pianist.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And are you going to marry him?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How <i>can</i> you say you don’t know! Why, it’s awful. You make me feel I
+shall go out of my mind.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I <i>don’t</i> know,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s incredible! Simply incredible! I believe you’re out of your senses. I
+used to think sometimes there was something wrong with your mother. And that’s
+what it is with you. You’re not quite right in your mind. You need to be looked
+after.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do I, Miss Pinnegar! Ah, well, don’t you trouble to look after me, will you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No one will if I don’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I hope no one will.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m ashamed to live another day in Woodhouse,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>I’m</i> leaving it for ever,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should think so,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she sank into a chair, and burst into tears, wailing:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Your poor father! Your poor father!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sure the dead are all right. Why must you pity him?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re a lost girl!” cried Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Am I really?” laughed Alvina. It sounded funny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, you’re a lost girl,” sobbed Miss Pinnegar, on a final note of despair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I like being lost,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar wept herself into silence. She looked huddled and forlorn. Alvina
+went to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t fret, Miss Pinnegar,” she said. “Don’t be silly. I love to be with
+Ciccio and Madame. Perhaps in the end I shall marry him. But if I don’t&mdash;”
+her hand suddenly gripped Miss Pinnegar’s heavy arm till it hurt&mdash;“I
+wouldn’t lose a minute of him, no, not for anything would I.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Miss Pinnegar dwindled, convinced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You make it hard for <i>me</i>, in Woodhouse,” she said, hopeless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never mind,” said Alvina, kissing her. “Woodhouse isn’t heaven and earth.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s been my home for forty years.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s been mine for thirty. That’s why I’m glad to leave it.” There was a
+pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve been thinking,” said Miss Pinnegar, “about opening a little business in
+Tamworth. You know the Watsons are there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe you’d be happy,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar pulled herself together. She had energy and courage still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t want to stay here, anyhow,” she said. “Woodhouse has nothing for me
+any more.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course it hasn’t,” said Alvina. “I think you’d be happier away from it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;probably I should&mdash;now!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None the less, poor Miss Pinnegar was grey-haired, she was almost a dumpy, odd
+old woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went downstairs. Miss Pinnegar put on the kettle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you like to see the house?” said Alvina to Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded. And she took him from room to room. His eyes looked quickly and
+curiously over everything, noticing things, but without criticism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This was my mother’s little sitting-room,” she said. “She sat here for years,
+in this chair.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Always here?” he said, looking into Alvina’s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. She was ill with her heart. This is another photograph of her. I’m not
+like her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who is <i>that</i>?” he asked, pointing to a photograph of the handsome,
+white-haired Miss Frost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That was Miss Frost, my governess. She lived here till she died. I loved
+her&mdash;she meant everything to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She also dead&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, five years ago.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went to the drawing-room. He laid his hand on the keys of the piano,
+sounding a chord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Play,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head, smiling slightly. But he wished her to play. She sat and
+played one of Kishwégin’s pieces. He listened, faintly smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fine piano&mdash;eh?” he said, looking into her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I like the tone,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it yours?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The piano? Yes. I suppose everything is mine&mdash;in name at least. I don’t
+know how father’s affairs are really.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her, and again his eye wandered over the room. He saw a little
+coloured portrait of a child with a fleece of brownish-gold hair and surprised
+eyes, in a pale-blue stiff frock with a broad dark-blue sash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you recognize me?” she said. “Aren’t I comical?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took him upstairs&mdash;first to the monumental bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This was mother’s room,” she said. “Now it is mine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her, then at the things in the room, then out of the window, then
+at her again. She flushed, and hurried to show him his room, and the bath-room.
+Then she went downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kept glancing up at the height of the ceilings, the size of the rooms,
+taking in the size and proportion of the house, and the quality of the
+fittings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is a big house,” he said. “Yours?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mine in name,” said Alvina. “Father left all to me&mdash;and his debts as
+well, you see.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Much debts?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh yes! I don’t quite know how much. But perhaps more debts than there is
+property. I shall go and see the lawyer in the morning. Perhaps there will be
+nothing at all left for me, when everything is paid.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had stopped on the stairs, telling him this, turning round to him, who was
+on the steps above. He looked down on her, calculating. Then he smiled sourly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bad job, eh, if it is all gone&mdash;!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t mind, really, if I can live,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spread his hands, deprecating, not understanding. Then he glanced up the
+stairs and along the corridor again, and downstairs into the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A fine big house. Grand if it was yours,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wish it were,” she said rather pathetically, “if you like it so much.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hé!” he said. “How not like it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t like it,” she said. “I think it’s a gloomy miserable hole. I hate it.
+I’ve lived here all my life and seen everything bad happen here. I hate it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” he said, with a curious, sarcastic intonation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s a bad job it isn’t yours, for certain,” he said, as they entered the
+living-room, where Miss Pinnegar sat cutting bread and butter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” said Miss Pinnegar sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The house,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh well, we don’t know. We’ll hope for the best,” replied Miss Pinnegar,
+arranging the bread and butter on the plate. Then, rather tart, she added: “It
+is a bad job. And a good many things are a bad job, besides that. If Miss
+Houghton had what she <i>ought</i> to have, things would be very different, I
+assure you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh yes,” said Ciccio, to whom this address was directed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very different indeed. If all the money hadn’t been&mdash;lost&mdash;in the
+way it has, Miss Houghton wouldn’t be playing the piano, for one thing, in a
+cinematograph show.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, perhaps not,” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Certainly not. It’s not the right thing for her to be doing, <i>at all</i>!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You think not?” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you imagine it is?” said Miss Pinnegar, turning point blank on him as he
+sat by the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked curiously at Miss Pinnegar, grinning slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hé!” he said. “How do I know!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should have thought it was obvious,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hé!” he ejaculated, not fully understanding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But of course those that are used to nothing better can’t see anything but
+what they’re used to,” she said, rising and shaking the crumbs from her black
+silk apron, into the fire. He watched her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar went away into the scullery. Alvina was laying a fire in the
+drawing-room. She came with a dustpan to take some coal from the fire of the
+living-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you want?” said Ciccio, rising. And he took the shovel from her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Big, hot fires, aren’t they?” he said, as he lifted the burning coals from the
+glowing mass of the grate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Enough,” said Alvina. “Enough! We’ll put it in the drawing-room.” He carried
+the shovel of flaming, smoking coals to the other room, and threw them in the
+grate on the sticks, watching Alvina put on more pieces of coal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fine, a fire! Quick work, eh? A beautiful thing, a fire! You know what they
+say in my place: You can live without food, but you can’t live without fire.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I thought it was always hot in Naples,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, it isn’t. And my village, you know, when I was small boy, that was in the
+mountains, an hour quick train from Naples. Cold in the winter, hot in the
+summer&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As cold as England?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hé&mdash;and colder. The wolves come down. You could hear them crying in the
+night, in the frost&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How terrifying&mdash;!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And they will kill the dogs! Always they kill the dogs. You know, they hate
+dogs, wolves do.” He made a queer noise, to show how wolves hate dogs. Alvina
+understood, and laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So should I, if I was a wolf,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;eh?” His eyes gleamed on her for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah but, the poor dogs! You find them bitten&mdash;carried away among the trees
+or the stones, hard to find them, poor things, the next day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How frightened they must be&mdash;!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Frightened&mdash;hu!” he made sudden gesticulations and ejaculations, which
+added volumes to his few words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And did you like it, your village?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put his head on one side in deprecation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he said, “because, you see&mdash;hé, there is nothing to do&mdash;no
+money&mdash;work&mdash;work&mdash;work&mdash;no life&mdash;you see nothing.
+When I was a small boy my father, he died, and my mother comes with me to
+Naples. Then I go with the little boats on the sea&mdash;fishing, carrying
+people&mdash;” He flourished his hand as if to make her understand all the
+things that must be wordless. He smiled at her&mdash;but there was a faint,
+poignant sadness and remoteness in him, a beauty of old fatality, and ultimate
+indifference to fate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And were you very poor?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Poor?&mdash;why yes! Nothing. Rags&mdash;no shoes&mdash;bread, little fish
+from the sea&mdash;shell-fish&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His hands flickered, his eyes rested on her with a profound look of knowledge.
+And it seemed, in spite of all, one state was very much the same to him as
+another, poverty was as much life as affluence. Only he had a sort of jealous
+idea that it was humiliating to be poor, and so, for vanity’s sake, he would
+have possessions. The countless generations of civilization behind him had left
+him an instinct of the world’s meaninglessness. Only his little modern
+education made money and independence an <i>idée fixe</i>. Old instinct told
+him the world was nothing. But modern education, so shallow, was much more
+efficacious than instinct. It drove him to make a show of himself to the world.
+Alvina watching him, as if hypnotized, saw his old beauty, formed through
+civilization after civilization; and at the same time she saw his modern
+vulgarianism, and decadence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And when you go back, you will go back to your old village?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made a gesture with his head and shoulders, evasive, non-committal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know, you see,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is the name of it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pescocalascio.” He said the word subduedly, unwillingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tell me again,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pescocalascio.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She repeated it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And tell me how you spell it,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fumbled in his pocket for a pencil and a piece of paper. She rose and
+brought him an old sketch-book. He wrote, slowly, but with the beautiful
+Italian hand, the name of his village.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And write your name,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Marasca Francesco,” he wrote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And write the name of your father and mother,” she said. He looked at her
+enquiringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want to see them,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Marasca Giovanni,” he wrote, and under that “Califano Maria.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at the four names, in the graceful Italian script. And one after the
+other she read them out. He corrected her, smiling gravely. When she said them
+properly, he nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said. “That’s it. You say it well.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that moment Miss Pinnegar came in to say Mrs. Rollings had seen another of
+the young men riding down the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s Gigi! He doesn’t know how to come here,” said Ciccio, quickly taking
+his hat and going out to find his friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey arrived, his broad face hot and perspiring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Couldn’t you find it?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I find the house, but I couldn’t find no door,” said Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all laughed, and sat down to tea. Geoffrey and Ciccio talked to each other
+in French, and kept each other in countenance. Fortunately for them, Madame had
+seen to their table-manners. But still they were far too free and easy to suit
+Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you know,” said Ciccio in French to Geoffrey, “what a fine house this is?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Geoffrey, rolling his large eyes round the room, and speaking with
+his cheek stuffed out with food. “Is it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah&mdash;if it was <i>hers</i>, you know&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so, after tea, Ciccio said to Alvina:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall you let Geoffrey see the house?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tour commenced again. Geoffrey, with his thick legs planted apart, gazed
+round the rooms, and made his comments in French to Ciccio. When they climbed
+the stairs, he fingered the big, smooth mahogany bannister-rail. In the bedroom
+he stared almost dismayed at the colossal bed and cupboard. In the bath-room he
+turned on the old-fashioned, silver taps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here is my room&mdash;” said Ciccio in French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Assez éloigné!” replied Gigi. Ciccio also glanced along the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said. “But an open course&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look, my boy&mdash;if you could marry <i>this</i>&mdash;” meaning the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha, she doesn’t know if it hers any more! Perhaps the debts cover every bit of
+it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t say so! Na, that’s a pity, that’s a pity! La pauvre fille&mdash;pauvre
+demoiselle!” lamented Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isn’t it a pity! What dost say?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A thousand pities! A thousand pities! Look, my boy, love needs no havings, but
+marriage does. Love is for all, even the grasshoppers. But marriage means a
+kitchen. That’s how it is. La pauvre demoiselle; c’est malheur pour elle.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s true,” said Ciccio. “Et aussi pour moi. For me as well.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For thee as well, cher! Perhaps&mdash;” said Geoffrey, laying his arm on
+Ciccio’s shoulder, and giving him a sudden hug. They smiled to each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who knows!” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who knows, truly, my Cic’.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they went downstairs to rejoin Alvina, whom they heard playing on the piano
+in the drawing-room, Geoffrey peeped once more into the big bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tu n’es jamais monté si haut, mon beau. Pour moi, ça serait difficile de
+m’élever. J’aurais bien peur, moi. Tu te trouves aussi un peu ébahi, hein?
+n’est-ce pas?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Y’a place pour trois,” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Non, je crêverais, là haut. Pas pour moi!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they went laughing downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar was sitting with Alvina, determined not to go to Chapel this
+evening. She sat, rather hulked, reading a novel. Alvina flirted with the two
+men, played the piano to them, and suggested a game of cards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, Alvina, you will never bring out the cards tonight!” expostulated poor
+Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, Miss Pinnegar, it can’t possibly hurt anybody.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know what I think&mdash;and what your father thought&mdash;and your mother
+and Miss Frost&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You see I think it’s only prejudice,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh very well!” said Miss Pinnegar angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And closing her book, she rose and went to the other room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina brought out the cards, and a little box of pence which remained from
+Endeavour harvests. At that moment there was a knock. It was Mr. May. Miss
+Pinnegar brought him in, in triumph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” he said. “Company! I heard you’d come, Miss Houghton, so I
+<i>hastened</i> to pay my compliments. I didn’t know you had <i>company</i>.
+How do you do, Francesco! How do you do, Geoffrey. Comment allez-vous, alors?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bien!” said Geoffrey. “You are going to take a hand?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Cards on Sunday evening! Dear me, what a revolution! Of course, I’m not
+<i>bigoted</i>. If Miss Houghton asks me&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar looked solemnly at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, do take a hand, Mr. May,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you, I will then, if I may. Especially as I see those tempting piles of
+pennies and ha’pennies. Who is bank, may I ask? Is Miss Pinnegar going to play
+too?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Miss Pinnegar had turned her poor, bowed back, and departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid she’s offended,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why? We don’t put <i>her</i> soul in danger, do we now? I’m a good
+Catholic, you know, I <i>can’t</i> do with these provincial little creeds. Who
+deals? Do you, Miss Houghton? But I’m afraid we shall have a rather <i>dry</i>
+game? What? Isn’t that your opinion?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other men laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If Miss Houghton would just <i>allow</i> me to run round and bring something
+in. Yes? May I? That would be <i>so</i> much more cheerful. What is your
+choice, gentlemen?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Beer,” said Ciccio, and Geoffrey nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Beer! Oh really! Extraor’nary! I always take a little whiskey myself. What
+kind of beer? Ale?&mdash;or bitter? I’m afraid I’d better bring bottles. Now
+how can I secrete them? You haven’t a small travelling case, Miss Houghton?
+Then I shall look as if I’d just been taking a <i>journey</i>. Which I
+have&mdash;to the Sun and back: and if <i>that</i> isn’t far enough, even for
+Miss Pinnegar and John Wesley, why, I’m sorry.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina produced the travelling case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Excellent!” he said. “Excellent! It will hold half-a-dozen beautifully.
+Now&mdash;” he fell into a whisper&mdash;“hadn’t I better sneak out at the
+front door, and so escape the clutches of the watch-dog?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out he went, on tip-toe, the other two men grinning at him. Fortunately there
+were glasses, the best old glasses, in the side cupboard in the drawing room.
+But unfortunately, when Mr. May returned, a corkscrew was in request. So Alvina
+stole to the kitchen. Miss Pinnegar sat dumped by the fire, with her spectacles
+and her book. She watched like a lynx as Alvina returned. And she saw the
+tell-tale corkscrew. So she dumped a little deeper in her chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There was a sound of revelry by night!” For Mr. May, after a long depression,
+was in high feather. They shouted, positively shouted over their cards, they
+roared with excitement, expostulation, and laughter. Miss Pinnegar sat through
+it all. But at one point she could bear it no longer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The drawing-room door opened, and the dumpy, hulked, faded woman in a black
+serge dress stood like a rather squat avenging angel in the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What would your <i>father</i> say to this?” she said sternly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The company suspended their laughter and their cards, and looked around. Miss
+Pinnegar wilted and felt strange under so many eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father!” said Alvina. “But why father?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You lost girl!” said Miss Pinnegar, backing out and closing the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May laughed so much that he knocked his whiskey over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There,” he cried, helpless, “look what she’s cost me!” And he went off into
+another paroxysm, swelling like a turkey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio opened his mouth, laughing silently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lost girl! Lost girl! How lost, when you are at home?” said Geoffrey, making
+large eyes and looking hither and thither as if <i>he</i> had lost something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all went off again in a muffled burst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No but, really,” said Mr. May, “drinking and card-playing with strange men in
+the drawing-room on Sunday evening, of <i>cauce</i> it’s scandalous. It’s
+<i>terrible</i>! I don’t know how ever you’ll be saved, after such a sin. And
+in Manchester House, too&mdash;!” He went off into another silent,
+turkey-scarlet burst of mirth, wriggling in his chair and squealing faintly:
+“Oh, I love it, I love it! <i>You lost girl!</i> Why of <i>cauce</i> she’s
+lost! And Miss Pinnegar has only just found it out. Who <i>wouldn’t</i> be
+lost? Why even Miss Pinnegar would be lost if she could. Of <i>cauce</i> she
+would! Quite natch’ral!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. May wiped his eyes, with his handkerchief which had unfortunately mopped up
+his whiskey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they played on, till Mr. May and Geoffrey had won all the pennies, except
+twopence of Ciccio’s. Alvina was in debt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well I think it’s been a most agreeable game,” said Mr. May. “Most agreeable!
+Don’t you all?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two other men smiled and nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m only sorry to think Miss Houghton has <i>lost</i> so steadily all evening.
+Really quite remarkable. But <i>then</i>&mdash;you see&mdash;I comfort myself
+with the reflection ‘Lucky in cards, unlucky in love.’ I’m certainly
+<i>hounded</i> with misfortune in love. And I’m <i>sure</i> Miss Houghton would
+rather be unlucky in cards than in love. What, isn’t it so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There, you see, <i>of cauce</i>! Well, all we can do after that is to wish her
+success in love. Isn’t that so, gentlemen? I’m sure <i>we</i> are all quite
+willing to do our best to contribute to it. Isn’t it so, gentlemen? Aren’t we
+all ready to do our best to contribute to Miss Houghton’s happiness in love?
+Well then, let us drink to it.” He lifted his glass, and bowed to Alvina. “With
+<i>every</i> wish for your success in love, Miss Houghton, and your
+<i>devoted</i> servant&mdash;” He bowed and drank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey made large eyes at her as he held up his glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>I</i> know you’ll come out all right in love, <i>I</i> know,” he said
+heavily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you, Ciccio? Aren’t you drinking?” said Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio held up his glass, looked at Alvina, made a little mouth at her,
+comical, and drank his beer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Mr. May, “<i>beer</i> must confirm it, since words won’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What time is it?” said Alvina. “We must have supper.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was past nine o’clock. Alvina rose and went to the kitchen, the men trailing
+after her. Miss Pinnegar was not there. She was not anywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Has she gone to bed?” said Mr. May. And he crept stealthily upstairs on
+tip-toe, a comical, flush-faced, tubby little man. He was familiar with the
+house. He returned prancing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I heard her cough,” he said. “There’s a light under her door. She’s gone to
+bed. Now haven’t I always said she was a good soul? I shall drink her health.
+Miss Pinnegar&mdash;” and he bowed stiffly in the direction of the
+stairs&mdash;“your health, and a <i>good night’s rest</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which, giggling gaily, he seated himself at the head of the table and
+began to carve the cold mutton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And where are the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras this week?” he asked. They told him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh? And you two are cycling back to the camp of Kishwégin tonight? We mustn’t
+prolong our cheerfulness <i>too</i> far.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ciccio is staying to help me with my bag tomorrow,” said Alvina. “You know
+I’ve joined the Tawaras permanently&mdash;as pianist.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I didn’t know that! Oh really! Really! Oh! Well! I see! Permanently! Yes,
+I am surprised! Yes! As pianist? And if I might ask, what is your share of the
+tribal income?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That isn’t settled yet,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No! Exactly! Exactly! It <i>wouldn’t</i> be settled yet. And you say it is a
+permanent engagement? Of <i>cauce</i>, at such a figure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, it is a permanent engagement,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really! What a blow you give me! You won’t come back to the Endeavour? What?
+Not at all?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “I shall sell out of the Endeavour.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really! You’ve decided, have you? Oh! This is news to me. And is <i>this</i>
+quite final, too?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I see! Putting two and two together, if I may say so&mdash;” and he glanced
+from her to the young men&mdash;“I <i>see</i>. Most decidedly, most
+one-sidedly, if I may use the vulgarism, I <i>see&mdash;e&mdash;e!</i> Oh! but
+what a blow you give me! What a blow you give me!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s to become of the Endeavour? and consequently, of poor me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can’t you keep it going?&mdash;form a company?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve done my best. But I’m afraid, you know, you’ve landed
+me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m so sorry,” said Alvina. “I hope not.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you for the <i>hope</i>” said Mr. May sarcastically. “They say hope is
+sweet. <i>I</i> begin to find it a little <i>bitter</i>!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor man, he had already gone quite yellow in the face. Ciccio and Geoffrey
+watched him with dark-seeing eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And when are you going to let this fatal decision take effect?” asked Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m going to see the lawyer tomorrow, and I’m going to tell him to sell
+everything and clear up as soon as possible,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sell everything! This house, and all it contains?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Alvina. “Everything.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really!” Mr. May seemed smitten quite dumb. “I feel as if the world had
+suddenly come to an end,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But hasn’t your world often come to an end before?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;I suppose, once or twice. But <i>never</i> quite on top of me, you
+see, before&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And have you told Miss Pinnegar?” said Mr. May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not finally. But she has decided to open a little business in Tamworth, where
+she has relations.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Has she! And are you <i>really</i> going to <i>tour</i> with these young
+people&mdash;?” he indicated Ciccio and Gigi. “And at <i>no</i> salary!” His
+voice rose. “Why! It’s almost <i>White Slave Traffic</i>, on Madame’s part.
+Upon my word!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think so,” said Alvina. “Don’t you see that’s insulting.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>Insulting!</i> Well, I don’t know. I think it’s the <i>truth</i>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not to be said to me, for all that,” said Alvina, quivering with anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” perked Mr. May, yellow with strange rage. “Oh! I mustn’t say what I
+think! Oh!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not if you think those things&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh really! The difficulty is, you see, I’m afraid I <i>do</i> think
+them&mdash;” Alvina watched him with big, heavy eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go away,” she said. “Go away! I won’t be insulted by you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No <i>indeed!</i>” cried Mr. May, starting to his feet, his eyes almost
+bolting from his head. “No <i>indeed!</i> I wouldn’t <i>think</i> of insulting
+you in the presence of these <i>two</i> young gentlemen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio rose slowly, and with a slow, repeated motion of the head, indicated the
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allez!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>Certainement!</i>” cried Mr. May, flying at Ciccio, verbally, like an
+enraged hen yellow at the gills. “<i>Certainement!</i> Je m’en vais. Cette
+compagnie n’est pas de ma choix.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allez!” said Ciccio, more loudly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mr. May strutted out of the room like a bird bursting with its own rage.
+Ciccio stood with his hands on the table, listening. They heard Mr. May slam
+the front door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gone!” said Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio smiled sneeringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Voyez, un cochon de lait,” said Gigi amply and calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio sat down in his chair. Geoffrey poured out some beer for him, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Drink, my Cic’, the bubble has burst, prfff!” And Gigi knocked in his own
+puffed cheek with his fist. “Allaye, my dear, your health! We are the Tawaras.
+We are Allaye! We are Pacohuila! We are Walgatchka! Allons! The milk-pig is
+stewed and eaten. Voilà!” He drank, smiling broadly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One by one,” said Geoffrey, who was a little drunk: “One by one we put them
+out of the field, they are <i>hors de combat</i>. Who remains? Pacohuila,
+Walgatchka, Allaye&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled very broadly. Alvina was sitting sunk in thought and torpor after her
+sudden anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allaye, what do you think about? You are the bride of Tawara,” said Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina looked at him, smiling rather wanly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And who is Tawara?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He raised his shoulders and spread his hands and swayed his head from side to
+side, for all the world like a comic mandarin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There!” he cried. “The question! Who is Tawara? Who? Tell me! Ciccio is
+he&mdash;and I am he&mdash;and Max and Louis&mdash;” he spread his hand to the
+distant members of the tribe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t be the bride of all four of you,” said Alvina, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No&mdash;no! No&mdash;no! Such a thing does not come into my mind. But you are
+the Bride of Tawara. You dwell in the tent of Pacohuila. And comes the day,
+should it ever be so, there is no room for you in the tent of Pacohuila, then
+the lodge of Walgatchka the bear is open for you. Open, yes, wide open&mdash;”
+He spread his arms from his ample chest, at the end of the table. “Open, and
+when Allaye enters, it is the lodge of Allaye, Walgatchka is the bear that
+serves Allaye. By the law of the Pale Face, by the law of the Yenghees, by the
+law of the Fransayes, Walgatchka shall be husband-bear to Allaye, that day she
+lifts the door-curtain of his tent&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rolled his eyes and looked around. Alvina watched him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I might be afraid of a husband-bear,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey got on to his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By the Manitou,” he said, “the head of the bear Walgatchka is humble&mdash;”
+here Geoffrey bowed his head&mdash;“his teeth are as soft as lilies&mdash;”
+here he opened his mouth and put his finger on his small close teeth&mdash;“his
+hands are as soft as bees that stroke a flower&mdash;” here he spread his hands
+and went and suddenly flopped on his knees beside Alvina, showing his hands and
+his teeth still, and rolling his eyes. “Allaye can have no fear at all of the
+bear Walgatchka,” he said, looking up at her comically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio, who had been watching and slightly grinning, here rose to his feet and
+took Geoffrey by the shoulder, pulling him up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Basta!” he said. “Tu es saoul. You are drunk, my Gigi. Get up. How are you
+going to ride to Mansfield, hein?&mdash;great beast.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ciccio,” said Geoffrey solemnly. “I love thee, I love thee as a brother, and
+also more. I love thee as a brother, my Ciccio, as thou knowest. But&mdash;”
+and he puffed fiercely&mdash;“I am the slave of Allaye, I am the tame bear of
+Allaye.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Get up,” said Ciccio, “get up! Per bacco! She doesn’t want a tame bear.” He
+smiled down on his friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey rose to his feet and flung his arms round Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Cic’,” he besought him. “Cic’&mdash;I love thee as a brother. But let me be
+the tame bear of Allaye, let me be the gentle bear of Allaye.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” said Ciccio. “Thou art the tame bear of Allaye.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey strained Ciccio to his breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you! Thank you! Salute me, my own friend.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Ciccio kissed him on either cheek. Whereupon Geoffrey immediately flopped
+on his knees again before Alvina, and presented her his broad, rich-coloured
+cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Salute your bear, Allaye,” he cried. “Salute your slave, the tame bear
+Walgatchka, who is a wild bear for all except Allaye and his brother Pacohuila
+the Puma.” Geoffrey growled realistically as a wild bear as he kneeled before
+Alvina, presenting his cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina looked at Ciccio, who stood above, watching. Then she lightly kissed him
+on the cheek, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you go to bed and sleep?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey staggered to his feet, shaking his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No&mdash;no&mdash;” he said. “No&mdash;no! Walgatchka must travel to the tent
+of Kishwégin, to the Camp of the Tawaras.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not tonight, <i>mon brave</i>,” said Ciccio. “Tonight we stay here, hein. Why
+separate, hein?&mdash;frère?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey again clasped Ciccio in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pacohuila and Walgatchka are blood-brothers, two bodies, one blood. One blood,
+in two bodies; one stream, in two valleys: one lake, between two mountains.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Geoffrey gazed with large, heavy eyes on Ciccio. Alvina brought a candle
+and lighted it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will manage in the one room?” she said. “I will give you another pillow.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She led the way upstairs. Geoffrey followed, heavily. Then Ciccio. On the
+landing Alvina gave them the pillow and the candle, smiled, bade them
+good-night in a whisper, and went downstairs again. She cleared away the supper
+and carried away all glasses and bottles from the drawing-room. Then she washed
+up, removing all traces of the feast. The cards she restored to their old
+mahogany box. Manchester House looked itself again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned off the gas at the meter, and went upstairs to bed. From the far
+room she could hear the gentle, but profound vibrations of Geoffrey’s snoring.
+She was tired after her day: too tired to trouble about anything any more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in the morning she was first downstairs. She heard Miss Pinnegar, and
+hurried. Hastily she opened the windows and doors to drive away the smell of
+beer and smoke. She heard the men rumbling in the bath-room. And quickly she
+prepared breakfast and made a fire. Mrs. Rollings would not appear till later
+in the day. At a quarter to seven Miss Pinnegar came down, and went into the
+scullery to make her tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Did both the men stay?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, they both slept in the end room,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar said no more, but padded with her tea and her boiled egg into the
+living room. In the morning she was wordless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio came down, in his shirt-sleeves as usual, but wearing a collar. He
+greeted Miss Pinnegar politely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-morning!” she said, and went on with her tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey appeared. Miss Pinnegar glanced once at him, sullenly, and briefly
+answered his good-morning. Then she went on with her egg, slow and persistent
+in her movements, mum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men went out to attend to Geoffrey’s bicycle. The morning was slow and
+grey, obscure. As they pumped up the tires, they heard some one padding behind.
+Miss Pinnegar came and unbolted the yard door, but ignored their presence. Then
+they saw her return and slowly mount the outer stair-ladder, which went up to
+the top floor. Two minutes afterwards they were startled by the irruption of
+the work-girls. As for the work-girls, they gave quite loud, startled squeals,
+suddenly seeing the two men on their right hand, in the obscure morning. And
+they lingered on the stair-way to gaze in rapt curiosity, poking and
+whispering, until Miss Pinnegar appeared overhead, and sharply rang a bell
+which hung beside the entrance door of the work-rooms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After which excitements Geoffrey and Ciccio went in to breakfast, which Alvina
+had prepared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have done it all, eh?” said Ciccio, glancing round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. I’ve made breakfast for years, now,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not many more times here, eh?” he said, smiling significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I hope not,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio sat down almost like a husband&mdash;as if it were his right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Geoffrey was very quiet this morning. He ate his breakfast, and rose to go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall see you soon,” he said, smiling sheepishly and bowing to Alvina.
+Ciccio accompanied him to the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Ciccio returned, Alvina was once more washing dishes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What time shall we go?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ll catch the one train. I must see the lawyer this morning.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what shall you say to him?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall tell him to sell everything&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And marry me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She started, and looked at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t want to marry, do you?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wouldn’t you rather wait, and see&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“See if there is any money.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her steadily, and his brow darkened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She began to tremble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’d like it better if there was money.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A slow, sinister smile came on his mouth. His eyes never smiled, except to
+Geoffrey, when a flood of warm, laughing light sometimes suffused them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You think I should!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. It’s true, isn’t it? You would!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned his eyes aside, and looked at her hands as she washed the forks. They
+trembled slightly. Then he looked back at her eyes again, that were watching
+him large and wistful and a little accusing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His impudent laugh came on his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said, “it is always better if there is money.” He put his hand on
+her, and she winced. “But I marry you for love, you know. You know what love
+is&mdash;” And he put his arms round her, and laughed down into her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She strained away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you can have love without marriage,” she said. “You know that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right! All right! Give me love, eh? I want that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She struggled against him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But not now,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw the light in his eyes fix determinedly, and he nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now!” he said. “Now!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His yellow-tawny eyes looked down into hers, alien and overbearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t,” she struggled. “I can’t now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed in a sinister way: yet with a certain warmheartedness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come to that big room&mdash;” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face flew fixed into opposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t now, really,” she said grimly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eyes looked down at hers. Her eyes looked back at him, hard and cold and
+determined. They remained motionless for some seconds. Then, a stray wisp of
+her hair catching his attention, desire filled his heart, warm and full,
+obliterating his anger in the combat. For a moment he softened. He saw her
+hardness becoming more assertive, and he wavered in sudden dislike, and almost
+dropped her. Then again the desire flushed his heart, his smile became reckless
+of her, and he picked her right up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said. “Now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a second, she struggled frenziedly. But almost instantly she recognized how
+much stronger he was, and she was still, mute and motionless with anger. White,
+and mute, and motionless, she was taken to her room. And at the back of her
+mind all the time she wondered at his deliberate recklessness of her.
+Recklessly, he had his will of her&mdash;but deliberately, and thoroughly, not
+rushing to the issue, but taking everything he wanted of her, progressively,
+and fully, leaving her stark, with nothing, nothing of herself&mdash;nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she could lie still she turned away from him, still mute. And he lay with
+his arms over her, motionless. Noises went on, in the street, overhead in the
+work-room. But theirs was complete silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he rose and looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Love is a fine thing, Allaye,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lay mute and unmoving. He approached, laid his hand on her breast, and
+kissed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Love,” he said, asserting, and laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But still she was completely mute and motionless. He threw bedclothes over her
+and went downstairs, whistling softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knew she would have to break her own trance of obstinacy. So she snuggled
+down into the bedclothes, shivering deliciously, for her skin had become
+chilled. She didn’t care a bit, really, about her own downfall. She snuggled
+deliciously in the sheets, and admitted to herself that she loved him. In
+truth, she loved him&mdash;and she was laughing to herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Luxuriously, she resented having to get up and tackle her heap of broken
+garments. But she did it. She took other clothes, adjusted her hair, tied on
+her apron, and went downstairs once more. She could not find Ciccio: he had
+gone out. A stray cat darted from the scullery, and broke a plate in her leap.
+Alvina found her washing-up water cold. She put on more, and began to dry her
+dishes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio returned shortly, and stood in the doorway looking at her. She turned to
+him, unexpectedly laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you think of yourself?” she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” he said, with a little nod, and a furtive look of triumph about him,
+evasive. He went past her and into the room. Her inside burned with love for
+him: so elusive, so beautiful, in his silent passing out of her sight. She
+wiped her dishes happily. Why was she so absurdly happy, she asked herself? And
+why did she still fight so hard against the sense of his dark, unseizable
+beauty? Unseizable, for ever unseizable! That made her almost his slave. She
+fought against her own desire to fall at his feet. Ridiculous to be so happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sang to herself as she went about her work downstairs. Then she went
+upstairs, to do the bedrooms and pack her bag. At ten o’clock she was to go to
+the family lawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lingered over her possessions: what to take, and what not to take. And so
+doing she wasted her time. It was already ten o’clock when she hurried
+downstairs. He was sitting quite still, waiting. He looked up at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now I must hurry,” she said. “I don’t think I shall be more than an hour.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put on his hat and went out with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall tell the lawyer I am engaged to you. Shall I?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said. “Tell him what you like.” He was indifferent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because,” said Alvina gaily, “we can please ourselves what we do, whatever we
+say. I shall say we think of getting married in the summer, when we know each
+other better, and going to Italy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why shall you say all that?” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because I shall <i>have</i> to give some account of myself, or they’ll make me
+do something I don’t want to do. You might come to the lawyer’s with me, will
+you? He’s an awfully nice old man. Then he’d believe in you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Ciccio shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he said. “I shan’t go. He doesn’t want to see <i>me</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, if you don’t want to. But I remember your name, Francesco Marasca, and I
+remember Pescocalascio.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio heard in silence, as they walked the half-empty, Monday-morning street
+of Woodhouse. People kept nodding to Alvina. Some hurried inquisitively across
+to speak to her and look at Ciccio. Ciccio however stood aside and turned his
+back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh yes,” Alvina said. “I am staying with friends, here and there, for a few
+weeks. No, I don’t know when I shall be back. Good-bye!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re looking well, Alvina,” people said to her. “I think you’re looking
+wonderful. A change does you good.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It does, doesn’t it,” said Alvina brightly. And she was pleased she was
+looking well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, good-bye for a minute,” she said, glancing smiling into his eyes and
+nodding to him, as she left him at the gate of the lawyer’s house, by the
+ivy-covered wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lawyer was a little man, all grey. Alvina had known him since she was a
+child: but rather as an official than an individual. She arrived all smiling in
+his room. He sat down and scrutinized her sharply, officially, before
+beginning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, Miss Houghton, and what news have you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think I’ve any, Mr. Beeby. I came to you for news.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” said the lawyer, and he fingered a paper-weight that covered a pile of
+papers. “I’m afraid there is nothing very pleasant, unfortunately. And nothing
+very unpleasant either, for that matter.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave her a shrewd little smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is the will proved?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not yet. But I expect it will be through in a few days’ time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And are all the claims in?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. I <i>think</i> so. I think so!” And again he laid his hand on the pile of
+papers under the paper-weight, and ran through the edges with the tips of his
+fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All those?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said quietly. It sounded ominous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Many!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A fair amount! A fair amount! Let me show you a statement.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose and brought her a paper. She made out, with the lawyer’s help, that the
+claims against her father’s property exceeded the gross estimate of his
+property by some seven hundred pounds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Does it mean we owe seven hundred pounds?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is only on the <i>estimate</i> of the property. It might, of course,
+realize much more, when sold&mdash;or it might realize less.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How awful!” said Alvina, her courage sinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Unfortunate! Unfortunate! However, I don’t think the realization of the
+property would amount to less than the estimate. I don’t think so.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But even then,” said Alvina. “There is sure to be something owing&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw herself saddled with her father’s debts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m afraid so,” said the lawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And then what?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh&mdash;the creditors will have to be satisfied with a little less than they
+claim, I suppose. Not a very great deal, you see. I don’t expect they will
+complain a great deal. In fact, some of them will be less badly off than they
+feared. No, on that score we need not trouble further. Useless if we do,
+anyhow. But now, about yourself. Would you like me to try to compound with the
+creditors, so that you could have some sort of provision? They are mostly
+people who know you, know your condition: and I might try&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Try what?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To make some sort of compound. Perhaps you might retain a lease of Miss
+Pinnegar’s work-rooms. Perhaps even something might be done about the
+cinematograph. What would you like&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina sat still in her chair, looking through the window at the ivy sprays,
+and the leaf buds on the lilac. She felt she could not, she could not cut off
+every resource. In her own heart she had confidently expected a few hundred
+pounds: even a thousand or more. And that would make her <i>something</i> of a
+catch, to people who had nothing. But now!&mdash;nothing!&mdash;nothing at the
+back of her but her hundred pounds. When that was gone&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In her dilemma she looked at the lawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You didn’t expect it would be quite so bad?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think I didn’t,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. Well&mdash;it might have been worse.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he waited. And again she looked at him vacantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you think?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For answer, she only looked at him with wide eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps you would rather decide later.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” she said. “No. It’s no use deciding later.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lawyer watched her with curious eyes, his hand beat a little impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will do my best,” he said, “to get what I can for you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh well!” she said. “Better let everything go. I don’t <i>want</i> to hang on.
+Don’t bother about me at all. I shall go away, anyhow.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will go away?” said the lawyer, and he studied his finger-nails.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. I shan’t stay here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! And may I ask if you have any definite idea, where you will go?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve got an engagement as pianist, with a travelling theatrical company.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh indeed!” said the lawyer, scrutinizing her sharply. She stared away
+vacantly out of the window. He took to the attentive study of his finger-nails
+once more. “And at a sufficient salary?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite sufficient, thank you,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! Well! Well now!&mdash;” He fidgetted a little. “You see, we are all old
+neighbours and connected with your father for many years. We&mdash;that is the
+persons interested, and myself&mdash;would not like to think that you were
+driven out of Woodhouse&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;destitute. If&mdash;er&mdash;we
+could come to some composition&mdash;make some arrangement that would be
+agreeable to you, and would, in some measure, secure you a means of
+livelihood&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched Alvina with sharp blue eyes. Alvina looked back at him, still
+vacantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No&mdash;thanks awfully!” she said. “But don’t bother. I’m going away.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“With the travelling theatrical company?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lawyer studied his finger-nails intensely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” he said, feeling with a finger-tip an imaginary roughness of one
+nail-edge. “Well, in that case&mdash;In that case&mdash;Supposing you have made
+an irrevocable decision&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up at her sharply. She nodded slowly, like a porcelain mandarin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In that case,” he said, “we must proceed with the valuation and the
+preparation for the sale.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You realize,” he said, “that everything in Manchester House, except your
+private personal property, and that of Miss Pinnegar, belongs to the claimants,
+your father’s creditors, and may not be removed from the house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And it will be necessary to make an account of everything in the house. So if
+you and Miss Pinnegar will put your possessions strictly apart&mdash;But I
+shall see Miss Pinnegar during the course of the day. Would you ask her to call
+about seven&mdash;I think she is free then&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina sat trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall pack my things today,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course,” said the lawyer, “any little things to which you may be attached
+the claimants would no doubt wish you to regard as your own. For anything of
+greater value&mdash;your piano, for example&mdash;I should have to make a
+personal request&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I don’t want anything&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No? Well! You will see. You will be here a few days?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “I’m going away today.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Today! Is that also irrevocable?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. I must go this afternoon.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“On account of your engagement? May I ask where your company is performing this
+week? Far away?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mansfield!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! Well then, in case I particularly wished to see you, you could come over?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If necessary,” said Alvina. “But I don’t want to come to Woodhouse unless it
+<i>is</i> necessary. Can’t we write?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;certainly! Certainly!&mdash;most things! Certainly! And now&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went into certain technical matters, and Alvina signed some documents. At
+last she was free to go. She had been almost an hour in the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, good-morning, Miss Houghton. You will hear from me, and I from you. I
+wish you a pleasant experience in your new occupation. You are not leaving
+Woodhouse for ever.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-bye!” she said. And she hurried to the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Try as she might, she felt as if she had had a blow which knocked her down. She
+felt she had had a blow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the lawyer’s gate she stood a minute. There, across a little hollow, rose
+the cemetery hill. There were her graves: her mother’s, Miss Frost’s, her
+father’s. Looking, she made out the white cross at Miss Frost’s grave, the grey
+stone at her parents’. Then she turned slowly, under the church wall, back to
+Manchester House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She felt humiliated. She felt she did not want to see anybody at all. She did
+not want to see Miss Pinnegar, nor the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: and least of all,
+Ciccio. She felt strange in Woodhouse, almost as if the ground had risen from
+under her feet and hit her over the mouth. The fact that Manchester House and
+its very furniture was under seal to be sold on behalf of her father’s
+creditors made her feel as if all her Woodhouse life had suddenly gone smash.
+She loathed the thought of Manchester House. She loathed staying another minute
+in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet she did not want to go to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras either. The church
+clock above her clanged eleven. She ought to take the twelve-forty train to
+Mansfield. Yet instead of going home she turned off down the alley towards the
+fields and the brook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How many times had she gone that road! How many times had she seen Miss Frost
+bravely striding home that way, from her music-pupils. How many years had she
+noticed a particular wild cherry-tree come into blossom, a particular bit of
+black-thorn scatter its whiteness in among the pleached twigs of a hawthorn
+hedge. How often, how many springs had Miss Frost come home with a bit of this
+black-thorn in her hand!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina did <i>not</i> want to go to Mansfield that afternoon. She felt
+insulted. She knew she would be much cheaper in Madame’s eyes. She knew her own
+position with the troupe would be humiliating. It would be openly a little
+humiliating. But it would be much more maddeningly humiliating to stay in
+Woodhouse and experience the full flavour of Woodhouse’s calculated
+benevolence. She hardly knew which was worse: the cool look of insolent
+half-contempt, half-satisfaction with which Madame would receive the news of
+her financial downfall, or the officious patronage which she would meet from
+the Woodhouse magnates. She knew exactly how Madame’s black eyes would shine,
+how her mouth would curl with a sneering, slightly triumphant smile, as she
+heard the news. And she could hear the bullying tone in which Henry Wagstaff
+would dictate the Woodhouse benevolence to her. She wanted to go away from them
+all&mdash;from them all&mdash;for ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even from Ciccio. For she felt he insulted her too. Subtly, they all did it.
+They had regard for her possibilities as an heiress. Five hundred, even two
+hundred pounds would have made all the difference. Useless to deny it. Even to
+Ciccio. Ciccio would have had a lifelong respect for her, if she had come with
+even so paltry a sum as two hundred pounds. Now she had nothing, he would
+coolly withhold this respect. She felt he might jeer at her. And she could not
+get away from this feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mercifully she had the bit of ready money. And she had a few trinkets which
+might be sold. Nothing else. Mercifully, for the mere moment, she was
+independent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whatever else she did, she must go back and pack. She must pack her two boxes,
+and leave them ready. For she felt that once she had left, she could never come
+back to Woodhouse again. If England had cliffs all round&mdash;why, when there
+was nowhere else to go and no getting beyond, she could walk over one of the
+cliffs. Meanwhile, she had her short run before her. She banked hard on her
+independence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she turned back to the town. She would not be able to take the twelve-forty
+train, for it was already mid-day. But she was glad. She wanted some time to
+herself. She would send Ciccio on. Slowly she climbed the familiar
+hill&mdash;slowly&mdash;and rather bitterly. She felt her native place insulted
+her: and she felt the Natchas insulted her. In the midst of the insult she
+remained isolated upon herself, and she wished to be alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found Ciccio waiting at the end of the yard: eternally waiting, it seemed.
+He was impatient.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ve been a long time,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We shall have to make haste to catch the train.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t go by this train. I shall have to come on later. You can just eat a
+mouthful of lunch, and go now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went indoors. Miss Pinnegar had not yet come down. Mrs. Rollings was
+busily peeling potatoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mr. Marasca is going by the train, he’ll have to have a little cold meat,”
+said Alvina. “Would you mind putting it ready while I go upstairs?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sharpses and Fullbankses sent them bills,” said Mrs. Rollings. Alvina opened
+them, and turned pale. It was thirty pounds, the total funeral expenses. She
+had completely forgotten them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And Mr. Atterwell wants to know what you’d like put on th’ headstone for your
+father&mdash;if you’d write it down.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Rollings popped on the potatoes for Miss Pinnegar’s dinner, and spread the
+cloth for Ciccio. When he was eating, Miss Pinnegar came in. She inquired for
+Alvina&mdash;and went upstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you had your dinner?” she said. For there was Alvina sitting writing a
+letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m going by a later train,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Both of you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. He’s going now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar came downstairs again, and went through to the scullery. When
+Alvina came down, she returned to the living room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Give this letter to Madame,” Alvina said to Ciccio. “I shall be at the hall by
+seven tonight. I shall go straight there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why can’t you come now?” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t possibly,” said Alvina. “The lawyer has just told me father’s debts
+come to much more than everything is worth. Nothing is ours&mdash;not even the
+plate you’re eating from. Everything is under seal to be sold to pay off what
+is owing. So I’ve got to get my own clothes and boots together, or they’ll be
+sold with the rest. Mr. Beeby wants you to go round at seven this evening, Miss
+Pinnegar&mdash;before I forget.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really!” gasped Miss Pinnegar. “Really! The house and the furniture and
+everything got to be sold up? Then we’re on the streets! I can’t believe it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So he told me,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But how positively awful,” said Miss Pinnegar, sinking motionless into a
+chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s not more than I expected,” said Alvina. “I’m putting my things into my
+two trunks, and I shall just ask Mrs. Slaney to store them for me. Then I’ve
+the bag I shall travel with.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really!” gasped Miss Pinnegar. “I can’t believe it! And when have we got to
+get out?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I don’t think there’s a desperate hurry. They’ll take an inventory of all
+the things, and we can live on here till they’re actually ready for the sale.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And when will that be?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know. A week or two.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And is the cinematograph to be sold the same?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;everything! The piano&mdash;even mother’s portrait&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s impossible to believe it,” said Miss Pinnegar. “It’s impossible. He can
+never have left things so bad.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ciccio,” said Alvina. “You’ll really have to go if you are to catch the train.
+You’ll give Madame my letter, won’t you? I should hate you to miss the train. I
+know she can’t bear me already, for all the fuss and upset I cause.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio rose slowly, wiping his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll be there at seven o’clock?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At the theatre,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And without more ado, he left.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Rollings came in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ve heard?” said Miss Pinnegar dramatically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I heard somethink,” said Mrs. Rollings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sold up! Everything to be sold up. Every stick and rag! I never thought I
+should live to see the day,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You might almost have expected it,” said Mrs. Rollings. “But you’re all right,
+yourself, Miss Pinnegar. Your money isn’t with his, is it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Miss Pinnegar. “What little I have put by is safe. But it’s not
+enough to live on. It’s not enough to keep me, even supposing I only live
+another ten years. If I only spend a pound a week, it costs fifty-two pounds a
+year. And for ten years, look at it, it’s five hundred and twenty pounds. And
+you couldn’t say less. And I haven’t half that amount. I never had more than a
+wage, you know. Why, Miss Frost earned a good deal more than I do. And
+<i>she</i> didn’t leave much more than fifty. Where’s the money to come
+from&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But if you’ve enough to start a little business&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, it’s what I shall <i>have</i> to do. It’s what I shall have to do. And
+then what about you? What about you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, don’t bother about me,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, it’s all very well, don’t bother. But when you come to my age, you know
+you’ve <i>got</i> to bother, and bother a great deal, if you’re not going to
+find yourself in a position you’d be sorry for. You <i>have</i> to bother. And
+<i>you’ll</i> have to bother before you’ve done.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha, sufficient for a good many days, it seems to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Pinnegar was in a real temper. To Alvina this seemed an odd way of taking
+it. The three women sat down to an uncomfortable dinner of cold meat and hot
+potatoes and warmed-up pudding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But whatever you do,” pronounced Miss Pinnegar; “whatever you do, and however
+you strive, in this life, you’re knocked down in the end. You’re always knocked
+down.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It doesn’t matter,” said Alvina, “if it’s only in the end. It doesn’t matter
+if you’ve had your life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ve never had your life, till you’re dead,” said Miss Pinnegar. “And if you
+work and strive, you’ve a right to the fruits of your work.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It doesn’t matter,” said Alvina laconically, “so long as you’ve enjoyed
+working and striving.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Miss Pinnegar was too angry to be philosophic. Alvina knew it was useless
+to be either angry or otherwise emotional. None the less, she also felt as if
+she had been knocked down. And she almost envied poor Miss Pinnegar the
+prospect of a little, day-by-day haberdashery shop in Tamworth. Her own problem
+seemed so much more menacing. “Answer or die,” said the Sphinx of fate. Miss
+Pinnegar could answer her own fate according to its question. She could say
+“haberdashery shop,” and her sphinx would recognize this answer as true to
+nature, and would be satisfied. But every individual has his own, or her own
+fate, and her own sphinx. Alvina’s sphinx was an old, deep thoroughbred, she
+would take no mongrel answers. And her thoroughbred teeth were long and sharp.
+To Alvina, the last of the fantastic but pure-bred race of Houghton, the
+problem of her fate was terribly abstruse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only thing to do was not to solve it: to stray on, and answer fate with
+whatever came into one’s head. No good striving with fate. Trust to a lucky
+shot, or take the consequences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Miss Pinnegar,” said Alvina. “Have we any money in hand?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is about twenty pounds in the bank. It’s all shown in my books,” said
+Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We couldn’t take it, could we?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Every penny shows in the books.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina pondered again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are there more bills to come in?” she asked. “I mean my bills. Do I owe
+anything?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think you do,” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m going to keep the insurance money, any way. They can say what they like.
+I’ve got it, and I’m going to keep it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar, “it’s not my business. But there’s Sharps and
+Fullbanks to pay.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll pay those,” said Alvina. “You tell Atterwell what to put on father’s
+stone. How much does it cost?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Five shillings a letter, you remember.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, we’ll just put the name and the date. How much will that be? James
+Houghton. Born 17th January&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll have to put ‘Also of,’” said Miss Pinnegar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Also of&mdash;” said Alvina.
+“One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;six&mdash;. Six
+letters&mdash;thirty shillings. Seems an awful lot for <i>Also of</i>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you can’t leave it out,” said Miss Pinnegar. “You can’t economize over
+that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I begrudge it,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI<br/>
+HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT</h2>
+
+<p>
+For days, after joining the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, Alvina was very quiet, subdued,
+and rather remote, sensible of her humiliating position as a hanger-on. They
+none of them took much notice of her. They drifted on, rather disjointedly. The
+cordiality, the <i>joie de vivre</i> did not revive. Madame was a little
+irritable, and very exacting, and inclined to be spiteful. Ciccio went his way
+with Geoffrey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the second week, Madame found out that a man had been surreptitiously
+inquiring about them at their lodgings, from the landlady and the landlady’s
+blowsy daughter. It must have been a detective&mdash;some shoddy detective.
+Madame waited. Then she sent Max over to Mansfield, on some fictitious errand.
+Yes, the lousy-looking dogs of detectives had been there too, making the most
+minute enquiries as to the behaviour of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, what they did,
+how their sleeping was arranged, how Madame addressed the men, what attitude
+the men took towards Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame waited again. And again, when they moved to Doncaster, the same two
+mongrel-looking fellows were lurking in the street, and plying the inmates of
+their lodging-house with questions. All the Natchas caught sight of the men.
+And Madame cleverly wormed out of the righteous and respectable landlady what
+the men had asked. Once more it was about the sleeping
+accommodation&mdash;whether the landlady heard anything in the
+night&mdash;whether she noticed anything in the bedrooms, in the beds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No doubt about it, the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were under suspicion. They were being
+followed, and watched. What for? Madame made a shrewd guess. “They want to say
+we are immoral foreigners,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what have our personal morals got to do with them?” said Max angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;but the English! They are so pure,” said Madame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know,” said Louis, “somebody must have put them up to it&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps,” said Madame, “somebody on account of Allaye.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina went white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “White Slave Traffic! Mr. May said it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame slowly nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mr. May!” she said. “Mr. May! It is he. He knows all about morals&mdash;and
+immorals. Yes, I know. Yes&mdash;yes&mdash;yes! He suspects all our immoral
+doings, <i>mes braves</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But there aren’t any, except mine,” cried Alvina, pale to the lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You! You! There you are!” Madame smiled archly, and rather mockingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What are we to do?” said Max, pale on the cheekbones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Curse them! Curse them!” Louis was muttering, in his rolling accent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait,” said Madame. “Wait. They will not do anything to us. You are only dirty
+foreigners, <i>mes braves</i>. At the most they will ask us only to leave their
+pure country.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We don’t interfere with none of them,” cried Max.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Curse them,” muttered Louis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never mind, <i>mon cher</i>. You are in a pure country. Let us wait.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you think it’s me,” said Alvina, “I can go away.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, my dear, you are only the excuse,” said Madame, smiling indulgently at
+her. “Let us wait, and see.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took it smilingly. But her cheeks were white as paper, and her eyes black
+as drops of ink, with anger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait and see!” she chanted ironically. “Wait and see! If we must leave the
+dear country&mdash;then <i>adieu!</i>” And she gravely bowed to an imaginary
+England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I feel it’s my fault. I feel I ought to go away,” cried Alvina, who was
+terribly distressed, seeing Madame’s glitter and pallor, and the black brows of
+the men. Never had Ciccio’s brow looked so ominously black. And Alvina felt it
+was all her fault. Never had she experienced such a horrible feeling: as if
+something repulsive were creeping on her from behind. Every minute of these
+weeks was a horror to her: the sense of the low-down dogs of detectives hanging
+round, sliding behind them, trying to get hold of some clear proof of
+immorality on their part. And then&mdash;the unknown vengeance of the
+authorities. All the repulsive secrecy, and all the absolute power of the
+police authorities. The sense of a great malevolent power which had them all
+the time in its grip, and was watching, feeling, waiting to strike the morbid
+blow: the sense of the utter helplessness of individuals who were not even
+accused, only watched and enmeshed! the feeling that they, the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, herself included, must be monsters of hideous vice, to have
+provoked all this: and yet the sane knowledge that they, none of them,
+<i>were</i> monsters of vice; this was quite killing. The sight of a policeman
+would send up Alvina’s heart in a flame of fear, agony; yet she knew she had
+nothing legally to be afraid of. Every knock at the door was horrible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She simply could not understand it. Yet there it was: they were watched,
+followed. Of that there was no question. And all she could imagine was that the
+troupe was secretly accused of White Slave Traffic by somebody in Woodhouse.
+Probably Mr. May had gone the round of the benevolent magnates of Woodhouse,
+concerning himself with her virtue, and currying favour with his concern. Of
+this she became convinced, that it was concern for her virtue which had started
+the whole business: and that the first instigator was Mr. May, who had got
+round some vulgar magistrate or County Councillor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame did not consider Alvina’s view very seriously. She thought it was some
+personal malevolence against the Tawaras themselves, probably put up by some
+other professionals, with whom Madame was not popular.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Be that as it may, for some weeks they went about in the shadow of this
+repulsive finger which was following after them, to touch them and destroy them
+with the black smear of shame. The men were silent and inclined to be sulky.
+They seemed to hold together. They seemed to be united into a strong,
+four-square silence and tension. They kept to themselves&mdash;and Alvina kept
+to herself&mdash;and Madame kept to herself. So they went about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And slowly the cloud melted. It never broke. Alvina felt that the very force of
+the sullen, silent fearlessness and fury in the Tawaras had prevented its
+bursting. Once there had been a weakening, a cringing, they would all have been
+lost. But their hearts hardened with black, indomitable anger. And the cloud
+melted, it passed away. There was no sign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Early summer was now at hand. Alvina no longer felt at home with the Natchas.
+While the trouble was hanging over, they seemed to ignore her altogether. The
+men hardly spoke to her. They hardly spoke to Madame, for that matter. They
+kept within the four-square enclosure of themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Alvina felt herself particularly excluded, left out. And when the trouble
+of the detectives began to pass off, and the men became more cheerful again,
+wanted her to jest and be familiar with them, she responded verbally, but in
+her heart there was no response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame had been quite generous with her. She allowed her to pay for her room,
+and the expense of travelling. But she had her food with the rest. Wherever she
+was, Madame bought the food for the party, and cooked it herself. And Alvina
+came in with the rest: she paid no board.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She waited, however, for Madame to suggest a small salary&mdash;or at least,
+that the troupe should pay her living expenses. But Madame did not make such a
+suggestion. So Alvina knew that she was not very badly wanted. And she guarded
+her money, and watched for some other opportunity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It became her habit to go every morning to the public library of the town in
+which she found herself, to look through the advertisements: advertisements for
+maternity nurses, for nursery governesses, pianists, travelling companions,
+even ladies’ maids. For some weeks she found nothing, though she wrote several
+letters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One morning Ciccio, who had begun to hang round her again, accompanied her as
+she set out to the library. But her heart was closed against him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why are you going to the library?” he asked her. It was in Lancaster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To look at the papers and magazines.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha-a! To find a job, eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His cuteness startled her for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I found one I should take it,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hé! I know that,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It so happened that that very morning she saw on the notice-board of the
+library an announcement that the Borough Council wished to engage the services
+of an experienced maternity nurse, applications to be made to the medical
+board. Alvina wrote down the directions. Ciccio watched her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is a maternity nurse?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“An <i>accoucheuse</i>!” she said. “The nurse who attends when babies are
+born.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you know how to do that?” he said, incredulous, and jeering slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was trained to do it,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said no more, but walked by her side as she returned to the lodgings. As
+they drew near the lodgings, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t want to stop with us any more?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made a slight, mocking gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘I can’t,’” he repeated. “Why do you always say you can’t?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because I can’t,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pff&mdash;!” he went, with a whistling sound of contempt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she went indoors to her room. Fortunately, when she had finally cleared her
+things from Manchester House, she had brought with her her nurse’s certificate,
+and recommendations from doctors. She wrote out her application, took the tram
+to the Town Hall and dropped it in the letterbox there. Then she wired home to
+her doctor for another reference. After which she went to the library and got
+out a book on her subject. If summoned, she would have to go before the medical
+board on Monday. She had a week. She read and pondered hard, recalling all her
+previous experience and knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered if she ought to appear before the board in uniform. Her nurse’s
+dresses were packed in her trunk at Mrs. Slaney’s, in Woodhouse. It was now
+May. The whole business at Woodhouse was finished. Manchester House and all the
+furniture was sold to some boot-and-shoe people: at least the boot-and-shoe
+people had the house. They had given four thousand pounds for it&mdash;which
+was above the lawyer’s estimate. On the other hand, the theatre was sold for
+almost nothing. It all worked out that some thirty-three pounds, which the
+creditors made up to fifty pounds, remained for Alvina. She insisted on Miss
+Pinnegar’s having half of this. And so that was all over. Miss Pinnegar was
+already in Tamworth, and her little shop would be opened next week. She wrote
+happily and excitedly about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes fate acts swiftly and without a hitch. On Thursday Alvina received
+her notice that she was to appear before the Board on the following Monday. And
+yet she could not bring herself to speak of it to Madame till the Saturday
+evening. When they were all at supper, she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Madame, I applied for a post of maternity nurse, to the Borough of Lancaster.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Madame raised her eyebrows. Ciccio had said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh really! You never told me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought it would be no use if it all came to nothing. They want me to go and
+see them on Monday, and then they will decide&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really! Do they! On Monday? And then if you get this work you will stay here?
+Yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, of course.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course! Of course! Yes! H’m! And if not?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two women looked at each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you <i>don’t</i> get it&mdash;! You are not <i>sure</i>?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “I am not a bit sure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well then&mdash;! Now! And if you don’t get it&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What shall I do, you mean?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, what shall you do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How! you don’t know! Shall you come back to us, then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will if you like&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I like! If <i>I</i> like! Come, it is not a question of if <i>I</i> like.
+It is what do you want to do yourself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I feel you don’t want me very badly,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why? Why do you feel? Who makes you? Which of us makes you feel so? Tell me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nobody in particular. But I feel it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh we-ell! If nobody makes you, and yet you feel it, it must be in yourself,
+don’t you see? Eh? Isn’t it so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps it is,” admitted Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We-ell then! We-ell&mdash;” So Madame gave her her congé. “But if you like to
+come back&mdash;if you <i>laike</i>&mdash;then&mdash;” Madame shrugged her
+shoulders&mdash;“you must come, I suppose.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young men were watching. They seemed indifferent. Ciccio turned aside, with
+his faint, stupid smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning Madame gave Alvina all her belongings, from the little safe she
+called her bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is the money&mdash;so&mdash;and so&mdash;and so&mdash;that is correct.
+Please count it once more!&mdash;” Alvina counted it and kept it clutched in
+her hand. “And there are your rings, and your chain, and your
+locket&mdash;see&mdash;all&mdash;everything&mdash;! But not the brooch. Where
+is the brooch? Here! Shall I give it back, hein?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I gave it to you,” said Alvina, offended. She looked into Madame’s black eyes.
+Madame dropped her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, you gave it. But I thought, you see, as you have now not much mo-oney,
+perhaps you would like to take it again&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, thank you,” said Alvina, and she went away, leaving Madame with the red
+brooch in her plump hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank goodness I’ve given her something valuable,” thought Alvina to herself,
+as she went trembling to her room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had packed her bag. She had to find new rooms. She bade good-bye to the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. Her face was cold and distant, but she smiled slightly as
+she bade them good-bye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And perhaps,” said Madame, “per-haps you will come to Wigan tomorrow
+afternoon&mdash;or evening? Yes?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went out and found a little hotel, where she took her room for the night,
+explaining the cause of her visit to Lancaster. Her heart was hard and burning.
+A deep, burning, silent anger against everything possessed her, and a profound
+indifference to mankind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And therefore, the next day, everything went as if by magic. She had decided
+that at the least sign of indifference from the medical board people she would
+walk away, take her bag, and go to Windermere. She had never been to the Lakes.
+And Windermere was not far off. She would not endure one single hint of
+contumely from any one else. She would go straight to Windermere, to see the
+big lake. Why not do as she wished! She could be quite happy by herself among
+the lakes. And she would be absolutely free, absolutely free. She rather looked
+forward to leaving the Town Hall, hurrying to take her bag and off to the
+station and freedom. Hadn’t she still got about a hundred pounds? Why bother
+for one moment? To be quite alone in the whole world&mdash;and quite, quite
+free, with her hundred pounds&mdash;the prospect attracted her sincerely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And therefore, everything went charmingly at the Town Hall. The medical board
+were charming to her&mdash;charming. There was no hesitation at all. From the
+first moment she was engaged. And she was given a pleasant room in a hospital
+in a garden, and the matron was charming to her, and the doctors most
+courteous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When could she undertake to commence her duties? When did they want her? The
+very <i>moment</i> she could come. She could begin tomorrow&mdash;but she had
+no uniform. Oh, the matron would lend her uniform and aprons, till her box
+arrived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So there she was&mdash;by afternoon installed in her pleasant little room
+looking on the garden, and dressed in a nurse’s uniform. It was all sudden like
+magic. She had wired to Madame, she had wired for her box. She was another
+person.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Needless to say, she was glad. Needless to say that, in the morning, when she
+had thoroughly bathed, and dressed in clean clothes, and put on the white
+dress, the white apron, and the white cap, she felt another person. So clean,
+she felt, so thankful! Her skin seemed caressed and live with cleanliness and
+whiteness, luminous she felt. It was so different from being with the Natchas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the garden the snowballs, guelder-roses, swayed softly among green foliage,
+there was pink may-blossom, and single scarlet may-blossom, and underneath the
+young green of the trees, irises rearing purple and moth-white. A young
+gardener was working&mdash;and a convalescent slowly trailed a few paces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having ten minutes still, Alvina sat down and wrote to Ciccio: “I am glad I
+have got this post as nurse here. Every one is most kind, and I feel at home
+already. I feel quite happy here. I shall think of my days with the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, and of you, who were such a stranger to me.
+Good-bye.&mdash;A. H.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This she addressed and posted. No doubt Madame would find occasion to read it.
+But let her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina now settled down to her new work. There was of course a great deal to
+do, for she had work both in the hospital and out in the town, though chiefly
+out in the town. She went rapidly from case to case, as she was summoned. And
+she was summoned at all hours. So that it was tiring work, which left her no
+time to herself, except just in snatches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had no serious acquaintance with anybody, she was too busy. The matron and
+sisters and doctors and patients were all part of her day’s work, and she
+regarded them as such. The men she chiefly ignored: she felt much more friendly
+with the matron. She had many a cup of tea and many a chat in the matron’s
+room, in the quiet, sunny afternoons when the work was not pressing. Alvina
+took her quiet moments when she could: for she never knew when she would be
+rung up by one or other of the doctors in the town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so, from the matron, she learned to crochet. It was work she had never
+taken to. But now she had her ball of cotton and her hook, and she worked away
+as she chatted. She was in good health, and she was getting fatter again. With
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, she had improved a good deal, her colour and her
+strength had returned. But undoubtedly the nursing life, arduous as it was,
+suited her best. She became a handsome, reposeful woman, jolly with the other
+nurses, really happy with her friend the matron, who was well-bred and wise,
+and never over-intimate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor with whom Alvina had most to do was a Dr. Mitchell, a Scotchman. He
+had a large practice among the poor, and was an energetic man. He was about
+fifty-four years old, tall, largely-built, with a good figure, but with
+extraordinarily large feet and hands. His face was red and clean-shaven, his
+eyes blue, his teeth very good. He laughed and talked rather mouthingly.
+Alvina, who knew what the nurses told her, knew that he had come as a poor boy
+and bottle-washer to Dr. Robertson, a fellow-Scotchman, and that he had made
+his way up gradually till he became a doctor himself, and had an independent
+practice. Now he was quite rich&mdash;and a bachelor. But the nurses did not
+set their bonnets at him very much, because he was rather mouthy and
+overbearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the houses of the poor he was a great autocrat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is that stuff you’ve got there!” he inquired largely, seeing a bottle of
+somebody’s Soothing Syrup by a poor woman’s bedside. “Take it and throw it down
+the sink, and the next time you want a soothing syrup put a little
+boot-blacking in hot water. It’ll do you just as much good.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Imagine the slow, pompous, large-mouthed way in which the red-faced,
+handsomely-built man pronounced these words, and you realize why the poor set
+such store by him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was eagle-eyed. Wherever he went, there was a scuffle directly his foot was
+heard on the stairs. And he knew they were hiding something. He sniffed the
+air: he glanced round with a sharp eye: and during the course of his visit
+picked up a blue mug which was pushed behind the looking-glass. He peered
+inside&mdash;and smelled it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stout?” he said, in a tone of indignant inquiry: God-Almighty would presumably
+take on just such a tone, finding the core of an apple flung away among the
+dead-nettle of paradise: “Stout! Have you been drinking stout?” This as he
+gazed down on the wan mother in the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They gave me a drop, doctor. I felt that low.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor marched out of the room, still holding the mug in his hand. The sick
+woman watched him with haunted eyes. The attendant women threw up their hands
+and looked at one another. Was he going for ever? There came a sudden smash.
+The doctor had flung the blue mug downstairs. He returned with a solemn stride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There!” he said. “And the next person that gives you stout will be thrown down
+along with the mug.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh doctor, the bit o’ comfort!” wailed the sick woman. “It ud never do me no
+harm.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Harm! Harm! With a stomach as weak as yours! Harm! Do you know better than I
+do? What have I come here for? To be told by <i>you</i> what will do you harm
+and what won’t? It appears to me you need no doctor here, you know everything
+already&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no, doctor. It’s not like that. But when you feel as if you’d sink through
+the bed, an’ you don’t know what to do with yourself&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Take a little beef-tea, or a little rice pudding. Take <i>nourishment</i>,
+don’t take that muck. Do you hear&mdash;” charging upon the attendant women,
+who shrank against the wall&mdash;“she’s to have nothing alcoholic at all, and
+don’t let me catch you giving it her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They say there’s nobbut fower per cent. i’ stout,” retorted the daring female.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fower per cent.,” mimicked the doctor brutally. “Why, what does an ignorant
+creature like <i>you</i> know about fower per cent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woman muttered a little under her breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What? Speak out. Let me hear what you’ve got to say, my woman. I’ve no doubt
+it’s something for my benefit&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the affronted woman rushed out of the room, and burst into tears on the
+landing. After which Dr. Mitchell, mollified, largely told the patient how she
+was to behave, concluding:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nourishment! Nourishment is what you want. Nonsense, don’t tell me you can’t
+take it. Push it down if it won’t go down by itself&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh doctor&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t say <i>oh doctor</i> to me. Do as I tell you. That’s <i>your</i>
+business.” After which he marched out, and the rattle of his motor car was
+shortly heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina got used to scenes like these. She wondered why the people stood it. But
+soon she realized that they loved it&mdash;particularly the women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, nurse, stop till Dr. Mitchell’s been. I’m scared to death of him, for fear
+he’s going to shout at me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why does everybody put up with him?” asked innocent Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, he’s good-hearted, nurse, he <i>does</i> feel for you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And everywhere it was the same: “Oh, he’s got a heart, you know. He’s rough,
+but he’s got a heart. I’d rather have him than your smarmy slormin sort. Oh,
+you feel safe with Dr. Mitchell, I don’t care what you say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to Alvina this peculiar form of blustering, bullying heart which had all
+the women scurrying like chickens was not particularly attractive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men did not like Dr. Mitchell, and would not have him if possible. Yet
+since he was club doctor and panel doctor, they had to submit. The first thing
+he said to a sick or injured labourer, invariably, was:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And keep off the beer.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh ay!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Keep off the beer, or I shan’t set foot in this house again.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tha’s got a red enough face on thee, tha nedna shout.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My face is red with exposure to all weathers, attending ignorant people like
+you. I never touch alcohol in any form.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, an’ I dunna. I drink a drop o’ beer, if that’s what you ca’ touchin’
+alcohol. An’ I’m none th’ wuss for it, tha sees.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ve heard what I’ve told you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, I have.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And if you go on with the beer, you may go on with curing yourself. <i>I</i>
+shan’t attend you. You know I mean what I say, Mrs. Larrick”&mdash;this to the
+wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I do, doctor. And I know it’s true what you say. An’ I’m at him night an’ day
+about it&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh well, if he will hear no reason, he must suffer for it. He mustn’t think
+<i>I’m</i> going to be running after him, if he disobeys my orders.” And the
+doctor stalked off, and the woman began to complain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None the less the women had their complaints against Dr. Mitchell. If ever
+Alvina entered a clean house on a wet day, she was sure to hear the housewife
+chuntering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh my lawk, come in nurse! What a day! Doctor’s not been yet. And he’s bound
+to come now I’ve just cleaned up, trapesin’ wi’ his gret feet. He’s got the
+biggest understandin’s of any man i’ Lancaster. My husband says they’re the
+best pair o’ pasties i’ th’ kingdom. An’ he does make such a mess, for he never
+stops to wipe his feet on th’ mat, marches straight up your clean
+stairs&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why don’t you tell him to wipe his feet?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh my word! Fancy me telling him! He’d jump down my throat with both feet
+afore I’d opened my mouth. He’s not to be spoken to, he isn’t. He’s my-lord, he
+is. You mustn’t look, or you’re done for.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina laughed. She knew they all liked him for browbeating them, and having a
+heart over and above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes he was given a good hit&mdash;though nearly always by a man. It
+happened he was in a workman’s house when the man was at dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Canna yer gi’e a man summat better nor this ’ere pap, Missis?” said the hairy
+husband, turning up his nose at the rice pudding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh go on,” cried the wife. “I hadna time for owt else.” Dr. Mitchell was just
+stooping his handsome figure in the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rice pudding!” he exclaimed largely. “You couldn’t have anything more
+wholesome and nourishing. I have a rice pudding every day of my
+life&mdash;every day of my life, I do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man was eating his pudding and pearling his big moustache copiously with
+it. He did not answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you doctor!” cried the woman. “And never no different.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never,” said the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fancy that! You’re that fond of them?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I find they agree with me. They are light and digestible. And my stomach is as
+weak as a baby’s.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The labourer wiped his big moustache on his sleeve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mine <i>isna</i>, tha sees,” he said, “so pap’s no use. ’S watter ter me. I
+want ter feel as I’ve had summat: a bit o’ suetty dumplin’ an’ a pint o’ hale,
+summat ter fill th’ hole up. An’ tha’d be th’ same if tha did my work.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I did your work,” sneered the doctor. “Why I do ten times the work that any
+one of you does. It’s just the work that has ruined my digestion, the never
+getting a quiet meal, and never a whole night’s rest. When do you think
+<i>I</i> can sit at table and digest my dinner? I have to be off looking after
+people like you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh, tha can ta’e th’ titty-bottle wi’ thee,” said the labourer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Dr. Mitchell was furious for weeks over this. It put him in a black rage to
+have his great manliness insulted. Alvina was quietly amused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor began by being rather lordly and condescending with her. But luckily
+she felt she knew her work at least as well as he knew it. She smiled and let
+him condescend. Certainly she neither feared nor even admired him. To tell the
+truth, she rather disliked him: the great, red-faced bachelor of fifty-three,
+with his bald spot and his stomach as weak as a baby’s, and his mouthing
+imperiousness and his good heart which was as selfish as it could be. Nothing
+can be more cocksuredly selfish than a good heart which believes in its own
+beneficence. He was a little too much the teetotaller on the one hand to be so
+largely manly on the other. Alvina preferred the labourers with their awful
+long moustaches that got full of food. And he was a little too loud-mouthedly
+lordly to be in human good taste.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a matter of fact, he was conscious of the fact that he had risen to be a
+gentleman. Now if a man is conscious of being a <i>gentleman</i>, he is bound
+to be a little less than a <i>man</i>. But if he is gnawed with anxiety lest he
+may <i>not</i> be a gentleman, he is only pitiable. There is a third case,
+however. If a man must loftily, by his manner, assert that he is <i>now</i> a
+gentleman, he shows himself a clown. For Alvina, poor Dr. Mitchell fell into
+this third category, of clowns. She tolerated him good-humouredly, as women so
+often tolerate ninnies and <i>poseurs</i>. She smiled to herself when she saw
+his large and important presence on the board. She smiled when she saw him at a
+sale, buying the grandest pieces of antique furniture. She smiled when he
+talked of going up to Scotland, for grouse shooting, or of snatching an hour on
+Sunday morning, for golf. And she talked him over, with quiet, delicate malice,
+with the matron. He was no favourite at the hospital.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gradually Dr. Mitchell’s manner changed towards her. From his imperious
+condescension he took to a tone of uneasy equality. This did not suit him. Dr.
+Mitchell had no equals: he had only the vast stratum of inferiors, towards whom
+he exercised his quite profitable beneficence&mdash;it brought him in about two
+thousand a year: and then his superiors, people who had been born with money.
+It was the tradesmen and professionals who had started at the bottom and
+clambered to the motor-car footing, who distressed him. And therefore, whilst
+he treated Alvina on this uneasy tradesman footing, he felt himself in a false
+position.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kept her attitude of quiet amusement, and little by little he sank. From
+being a lofty creature soaring over her head, he was now like a big fish poking
+its nose above water and making eyes at her. He treated her with rather
+presuming deference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You look tired this morning,” he barked at her one hot day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think it’s thunder,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thunder! Work, you mean,” and he gave a slight smile. “I’m going to drive you
+back.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no, thanks, don’t trouble! I’ve got to call on the way.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where have you got to call?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well. That takes you no more than five minutes. I’ll wait for you. Now
+take your cloak.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was surprised. Yet, like other women, she submitted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they drove he saw a man with a barrow of cucumbers. He stopped the car and
+leaned towards the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Take that barrow-load of poison and <i>bury</i> it!” he shouted, in his strong
+voice. The busy street hesitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s that, mister?” replied the mystified hawker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Mitchell pointed to the green pile of cucumbers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Take that barrow-load of poison, and bury it,” he called, “before you do
+anybody any more harm with it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What barrow-load of poison’s that?” asked the hawker, approaching. A crowd
+began to gather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What barrow-load of poison is that!” repeated the doctor. “Why your
+barrow-load of cucumbers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh,” said the man, scrutinizing his cucumbers carefully. To be sure, some were
+a little yellow at the end. “How’s that? Cumbers is right enough: fresh from
+market this morning.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fresh or not fresh,” said the doctor, mouthing his words distinctly, “you
+might as well put poison into your stomach, as those things. Cucumbers are the
+worst thing you can eat.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” said the man, stuttering. “That’s ’appen for them as doesn’t like them. I
+niver knowed a cumber do <i>me</i> no harm, an’ I eat ’em like a happle.”
+Whereupon the hawker took a “cumber” from his barrow, bit off the end, and
+chewed it till the sap squirted. “What’s wrong with that?” he said, holding up
+the bitten cucumber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m not talking about what’s wrong with that,” said the doctor. “My business
+is what’s wrong with the stomach it goes into. I’m a doctor. And I know that
+those things cause me half my work. They cause half the internal troubles
+people suffer from in summertime.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh ay! That’s no loss to you, is it? Me an’ you’s partners. More cumbers I
+sell, more graft for you, ’cordin’ to that. What’s wrong then. <i>Cum-bers!
+Fine fresh Cum-berrrs! All fresh and juisty, all cheap and tasty&mdash;!</i>”
+yelled the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am a doctor not only to cure illness, but to prevent it where I can. And
+cucumbers are poison to everybody.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>Cum-bers! Cum-bers! Fresh cumbers!</i>” yelled the man,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Mitchell started his car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When will they learn intelligence?” he said to Alvina, smiling and showing his
+white, even teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t care, you know, myself,” she said. “I should always let people do what
+they wanted&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Even if you knew it would do them harm?” he queried, smiling with amiable
+condescension.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, why not! It’s their own affair. And they’ll do themselves harm one way or
+another.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you wouldn’t try to prevent it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You might as well try to stop the sea with your fingers.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You think so?” smiled the doctor. “I see, you are a pessimist. You are a
+pessimist with regard to human nature.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Am I?” smiled Alvina, thinking the rose would smell as sweet. It seemed to
+please the doctor to find that Alvina was a pessimist with regard to human
+nature. It seemed to give her an air of distinction. In his eyes, she
+<i>seemed</i> distinguished. He was in a fair way to dote on her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She, of course, when he began to admire her, liked him much better, and even
+saw graceful, boyish attractions in him. There was really something childish
+about him. And this something childish, since it looked up to her as if she
+were the saving grace, naturally flattered her and made her feel gentler
+towards him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got in the habit of picking her up in his car, when he could. And he would
+tap at the matron’s door, smiling and showing all his beautiful teeth, just
+about tea-time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“May I come in?” His voice sounded almost flirty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Certainly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I see you’re having tea! Very nice, a cup of tea at this hour!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have one too, doctor.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will with pleasure.” And he sat down wreathed with smiles. Alvina rose to
+get a cup. “I didn’t intend to disturb you, nurse,” he said. “Men are always
+intruders,” he smiled to the matron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sometimes,” said the matron, “women are charmed to be intruded upon.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh really!” his eyes sparkled. “Perhaps <i>you</i> wouldn’t say so, nurse?” he
+said, turning to Alvina. Alvina was just reaching at the cupboard. Very
+charming she looked, in her fresh dress and cap and soft brown hair, very
+attractive her figure, with its full, soft loins. She turned round to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh yes,” she said. “I quite agree with the matron.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, you do!” He did not quite know how to take it. “But you mind being
+disturbed at your tea, I am sure.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “We are so used to being disturbed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rather weak, doctor?” said the matron, pouring the tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very weak, please.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor was a little laboured in his gallantry, but unmistakably gallant.
+When he was gone, the matron looked demure, and Alvina confused. Each waited
+for the other to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you think Dr. Mitchell is quite coming out?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite! <i>Quite</i> the ladies’ man! I wonder who it is can be <i>bringing</i>
+him out. A very praiseworthy work, I am sure.” She looked wickedly at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, don’t look at me,” laughed Alvina, “<i>I</i> know nothing about it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you think it may be <i>me</i>!” said the matron, mischievous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sure of it, matron! He begins to show some taste at last.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There now!” said the matron. “I shall put my cap straight.” And she went to
+the mirror, fluffing her hair and settling her cap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There!” she said, bobbing a little curtsey to Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They both laughed, and went off to work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there was no mistake, Dr. Mitchell was beginning to expand. With Alvina he
+quite unbent, and seemed even to sun himself when she was near, to attract her
+attention. He smiled and smirked and became oddly self-conscious: rather
+uncomfortable. He liked to hang over her chair, and he made a great event of
+offering her a cigarette whenever they met, although he himself never smoked.
+He had a gold cigarette case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day he asked her in to see his garden. He had a pleasant old square house
+with a big walled garden. He showed her his flowers and his wall-fruit, and
+asked her to eat his strawberries. He bade her admire his asparagus. And then
+he gave her tea in the drawing-room, with strawberries and cream and cakes, of
+all of which he ate nothing. But he smiled expansively all the time. He was a
+made man: and now he was really letting himself go, luxuriating in everything;
+above all, in Alvina, who poured tea gracefully from the old Georgian tea-pot,
+and smiled so pleasantly above the Queen Anne tea-cups.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she, wicked that she was, admired every detail of his drawing-room. It was
+a pleasant room indeed, with roses outside the French door, and a lawn in
+sunshine beyond, with bright red flowers in beds. But indoors, it was
+insistently antique. Alvina admired the Jacobean sideboard and the Jacobean
+arm-chairs and the Hepplewhite wall-chairs and the Sheraton settee and the
+Chippendale stands and the Axminster carpet and the bronze clock with
+Shakespeare and Ariosto reclining on it&mdash;yes, she even admired Shakespeare
+on the clock&mdash;and the ormolu cabinet and the bead-work foot-stools and the
+dreadful Sèvres dish with a cherub in it and&mdash;but why enumerate. She
+admired <i>everything</i>! And Dr. Mitchell’s heart expanded in his bosom till
+he felt it would burst, unless he either fell at her feet or did something
+extraordinary. He had never even imagined what it was to be so expanded: what a
+delicious feeling. He could have kissed her feet in an ecstasy of wild
+expansion. But habit, so far, prevented his doing more than beam.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another day he said to her, when they were talking of age:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are as young as you feel. Why, when I was twenty I felt I had all the
+cares and responsibility of the world on my shoulders. And now I am middle-aged
+more or less, I feel as light as if I were just beginning life.” He beamed down
+at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps you <i>are</i> only just beginning your <i>own</i> life,” she said.
+“You have lived for your work till now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It may be that,” he said. “It may be that up till now I have lived for others,
+for my patients. And now perhaps I may be allowed to live a little more for
+myself.” He beamed with real luxury, saw the real luxury of life begin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why shouldn’t you?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh yes, I intend to,” he said, with confidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He really, by degrees, made up his mind to marry now, and to retire in part
+from his work. That is, he would hire another assistant, and give himself a
+fair amount of leisure. He was inordinately proud of his house. And now he
+looked forward to the treat of his life: hanging round the woman he had made
+his wife, following her about, feeling proud of her and his house, talking to
+her from morning till night, really finding himself in her. When he had to go
+his rounds she would go with him in the car: he made up his mind she would be
+willing to accompany him. He would teach her to drive, and they would sit side
+by side, she driving him and waiting for him. And he would run out of the
+houses of his patients, and find her sitting there, and he would get in beside
+her and feel so snug and so sure and so happy as she drove him off to the next
+case, he informing her about his work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And if ever she did not go out with him, she would be there on the doorstep
+waiting for him the moment she heard the car. And they would have long, cosy
+evenings together in the drawing-room, as he luxuriated in her very presence.
+She would sit on his knees and they would be snug for hours, before they went
+warmly and deliciously to bed. And in the morning he need not rush off. He
+would loiter about with her, they would loiter down the garden looking at every
+new flower and every new fruit, she would wear fresh flowery dresses and no cap
+on her hair, he would never be able to tear himself away from her. Every
+morning it would be unbearable to have to tear himself away from her, and every
+hour he would be rushing back to her. They would be simply everything to one
+another. And how he would enjoy it! Ah!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pondered as to whether he would have children. A child would take her away
+from him. That was his first thought. But then&mdash;! Ah well, he would have
+to leave it till the time. Love’s young dream is never so delicious as at the
+virgin age of fifty-three.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he was quite cautious. He made no definite advances till he had put a plain
+question. It was August Bank Holiday, that for ever black day of the
+declaration of war, when his question was put. For this year of our story is
+the fatal year 1914.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was quite a stir in the town over the declaration of war. But most people
+felt that the news was only intended to give an extra thrill to the
+all-important event of Bank Holiday. Half the world had gone to Blackpool or
+Southport, the other half had gone to the Lakes or into the country. Lancaster
+was busy with a sort of fête, notwithstanding. And as the weather was decent,
+everybody was in a real holiday mood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So that Dr. Mitchell, who had contrived to pick up Alvina at the Hospital,
+contrived to bring her to his house at half-past three, for tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you think of this new war?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, it will be over in six weeks,” said the doctor easily. And there they left
+it. Only, with a fleeting thought, Alvina wondered if it would affect the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She had never heard any more of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where would you have liked to go today?” said the doctor, turning to smile at
+her as he drove the car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think to Windermere&mdash;into the Lakes,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We might make a tour of the Lakes before long,” he said. She was not thinking,
+so she took no particular notice of the speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How nice!” she said vaguely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We could go in the car, and take them as we chose,” said the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said, wondering at him now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they had had tea, quietly and gallantly tête-à-tête in his drawing-room,
+he asked her if she would like to see the other rooms of the house. She thanked
+him, and he showed her the substantial oak dining-room, and the little room
+with medical works and a revolving chair, which he called his study: then the
+kitchen and the pantry, the housekeeper looking askance; then upstairs to his
+bedroom, which was very fine with old mahogany tall-boys and silver
+candle-sticks on the dressing-table, and brushes with green ivory backs, and a
+hygienic white bed and straw mats: then the visitors’ bedroom corresponding,
+with its old satin-wood furniture and cream-coloured chairs with large,
+pale-blue cushions, and a pale carpet with reddish wreaths. Very nice, lovely,
+awfully nice, I do like that, isn’t that beautiful, I’ve never seen anything
+like that! came the gratifying fireworks of admiration from Alvina. And he
+smiled and gloated. But in her mind she was thinking of Manchester House, and
+how dark and horrible it was, how she hated it, but how it had impressed Ciccio
+and Geoffrey, how they would have loved to feel themselves masters of it, and
+how done in the eye they were. She smiled to herself rather grimly. For this
+afternoon she was feeling unaccountably uneasy and wistful, yearning into the
+distance again: a trick she thought she had happily lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor dragged her up even to the slanting attics. He was a big man, and he
+always wore navy blue suits, well-tailored and immaculate. Unconsciously she
+felt that big men in good navy-blue suits, especially if they had reddish faces
+and rather big feet and if their hair was wearing thin, were a special type all
+to themselves, solid and rather namby-pamby and tiresome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What very nice attics! I think the many angles which the roof makes, the
+different slants, you know, are so attractive. Oh, and the fascinating little
+window!” She crouched in the hollow of the small dormer window. “Fascinating!
+See the town and the hills! I know I should want this room for my own.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then have it,” he said. “Have it for <i>one</i> of your own.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She crept out of the window recess and looked up at him. He was leaning forward
+to her, smiling, self-conscious, tentative, and eager. She thought it best to
+laugh it off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was only talking like a child, from the imagination,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I quite understand that,” he replied deliberately. “But I am speaking what I
+<i>mean</i>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not answer, but looked at him reproachfully. He was smiling and
+smirking broadly at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you marry me, and come and have this garret for your own?” He spoke as
+if he were offering her a chocolate. He smiled with curious uncertainty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” she said vaguely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His smile broadened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well now,” he said, “make up your mind. I’m not good at <i>talking</i> about
+love, you know. But I think I’m pretty good at <i>feeling</i> it, you know. I
+want you to come here and be happy: with me.” He added the two last words as a
+sort of sly post-scriptum, and as if to commit himself finally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I’ve never thought about it,” she said, rapidly cogitating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know you haven’t. But think about it now&mdash;” He began to be hugely
+pleased with himself. “Think about it now. And tell me if you could put up with
+<i>me</i>, as well as the garret.” He beamed and put his head a little on one
+side&mdash;rather like Mr. May, for one second. But he was much more dangerous
+than Mr. May. He was overbearing, and had the devil’s own temper if he was
+thwarted. This she knew. He was a big man in a navy blue suit, with very white
+teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again she thought she had better laugh it off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s you I <i>am</i> thinking about,” she laughed, flirting still. “It’s you I
+<i>am</i> wondering about.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” he said, rather pleased with himself, “you wonder about me till you’ve
+made up your mind&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will&mdash;” she said, seizing the opportunity. “I’ll wonder about you till
+I’ve made up my mind&mdash;shall I?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said. “That’s what I wish you to do. And the next time I ask you,
+you’ll let me know. That’s it, isn’t it?” He smiled indulgently down on her:
+thought her face young and charming, charming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said. “But don’t ask me too soon, will you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How, too soon&mdash;?” He smiled delightedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll give me time to wonder about you, won’t you? You won’t ask me again
+this month, will you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This month?” His eyes beamed with pleasure. He enjoyed the procrastination as
+much as she did. “But the month’s only just begun! However! Yes, you shall have
+your way. I won’t ask you again this month.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I’ll promise to wonder about you all the month,” she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s a bargain,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went downstairs, and Alvina returned to her duties. She was very much
+excited, very much excited indeed. A big, well-to-do man in a navy blue suit,
+of handsome appearance, aged fifty-three, with white teeth and a delicate
+stomach: it <i>was</i> exciting. A sure position, a very nice home and lovely
+things in it, once they were dragged about a bit. And of course he’d adore her.
+That went without saying. She was as fussy as if some one had given her a
+lovely new pair of boots. She was really fussy and pleased with herself: and
+<i>quite</i> decided she’d take it all on. That was how it put itself to her:
+she would take it all on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course there was the man himself to consider. But he was quite presentable.
+There was nothing at all against it: nothing at all. If he had pressed her
+during the first half of the month of August, he would almost certainly have
+got her. But he only beamed in anticipation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the stir and restlessness of the war had begun, and was making itself
+felt even in Lancaster. And the excitement and the unease began to wear through
+Alvina’s rather glamorous fussiness. Some of her old fretfulness came back on
+her. Her spirit, which had been as if asleep these months, now woke rather
+irritably, and chafed against its collar. Who was this elderly man, that she
+should marry him? Who was he, that she should be kissed by him. Actually kissed
+and fondled by him! Repulsive. She avoided him like the plague. Fancy reposing
+against his broad, navy blue waistcoat! She started as if she had been stung.
+Fancy seeing his red, smiling face just above hers, coming down to embrace her!
+She pushed it away with her open hand. And she ran away, to avoid the thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet! And yet! She would be so comfortable, she would be so well-off for the
+rest of her life. The hateful problem of material circumstance would be solved
+for ever. And she knew well how hateful material circumstances can make life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Therefore, she could not decide in a hurry. But she bore poor Dr. Mitchell a
+deep grudge, that he could not grant her all the advantages of his offer, and
+excuse her the acceptance of him himself. She dared not decide in a hurry. And
+this very fear, like a yoke on her, made her resent the man who drove her to
+decision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes she rebelled. Sometimes she laughed unpleasantly in the man’s face:
+though she dared not go <i>too</i> far: for she was a little afraid of him and
+his rabid temper, also. In her moments of sullen rebellion she thought of
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. She thought of them deeply. She wondered where they were,
+what they were doing, how the war had affected them. Poor Geoffrey was a
+Frenchman&mdash;he would have to go to France to fight. Max and Louis were
+Swiss, it would not affect them: nor Ciccio, who was Italian. She wondered if
+the troupe was in England: if they would continue together when Geoffrey was
+gone. She wondered if they thought of her. She felt they did. She felt they did
+not forget her. She felt there was a connection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In fact, during the latter part of August she wondered a good deal more about
+the Natchas than about Dr. Mitchell. But wondering about the Natchas would not
+help her. She felt, if she knew where they were, she would fly to them. But
+then she knew she wouldn’t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she was at the station she saw crowds and bustle. People were seeing their
+young men off. Beer was flowing: sailors on the train were tipsy: women were
+holding young men by the lapel of the coat. And when the train drew away, the
+young men waving, the women cried aloud and sobbed after them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A chill ran down Alvina’s spine. This was another matter, apart from her Dr.
+Mitchell. It made him feel very unreal, trivial. She did not know what she was
+going to do. She realized she must do something&mdash;take some part in the
+wild dislocation of life. She knew that she would put off Dr. Mitchell again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She talked the matter over with the matron. The matron advised her to
+procrastinate. Why not volunteer for war-service? True, she was a maternity
+nurse, and this was hardly the qualification needed for the nursing of
+soldiers. But still, she <i>was</i> a nurse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina felt this was the thing to do. Everywhere was a stir and a seethe of
+excitement. Men were active, women were needed too. She put down her name on
+the list of volunteers for active service. This was on the last day of August.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the first of September Dr. Mitchell was round at the hospital early, when
+Alvina was just beginning her morning duties there. He went into the matron’s
+room, and asked for Nurse Houghton. The matron left them together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor was excited. He smiled broadly, but with a tension of nervous
+excitement. Alvina was troubled. Her heart beat fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now!” said Dr. Mitchell. “What have you to say to me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up at him with confused eyes. He smiled excitedly and meaningful at
+her, and came a little nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Today is the day when you answer, isn’t it?” he said. “Now then, let me hear
+what you have to say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she only watched him with large, troubled eyes, and did not speak. He came
+still nearer to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well then,” he said, “I am to take it that silence gives consent.” And he
+laughed nervously, with nervous anticipation, as he tried to put his arm round
+her. But she stepped suddenly back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, not yet,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t given my answer,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Give it then,” he said, testily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve volunteered for active service,” she stammered. “I felt I ought to do
+something.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” he asked. He could put a nasty intonation into that monosyllable. “I
+should have thought you would answer <i>me</i> first.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not answer, but watched him. She did not like him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I only signed yesterday,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why didn’t you leave it till tomorrow? It would have looked better.” He was
+angry. But he saw a half-frightened, half-guilty look on her face, and during
+the weeks of anticipation he had worked himself up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But put that aside,” he smiled again, a little dangerously. “You have still to
+answer my question. Having volunteered for war service doesn’t prevent your
+being engaged to me, does it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina watched him with large eyes. And again he came very near to her, so that
+his blue-serge waistcoat seemed, to impinge on her, and his purplish red face
+was above her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d rather not be engaged, under the circumstances,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” came the nasty monosyllable. “What have the circumstances got to do with
+it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Everything is so uncertain,” she said. “I’d rather wait.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wait! Haven’t you waited long enough? There’s nothing at all to prevent your
+getting engaged to me now. Nothing whatsoever! Come now. I’m old enough not to
+be played with. And I’m much too much in love with you to let you go on
+indefinitely like this. Come now!” He smiled imminent, and held out his large
+hand for her hand. “Let me put the ring on your finger. It will be the proudest
+day of my life when I make you my wife. Give me your hand&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was wavering. For one thing, mere curiosity made her want to see the
+ring. She half lifted her hand. And but for the knowledge that he would kiss
+her, she would have given it. But he would kiss her&mdash;and against that she
+obstinately set her will. She put her hand behind her back, and looked
+obstinately into his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t play a game with me,” he said dangerously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she only continued to look mockingly and obstinately into his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come,” he said, beckoning for her to give her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a barely perceptible shake of the head, she refused, staring at him all
+the time. His ungovernable temper got the better of him. He saw red, and
+without knowing, seized her by the shoulder, swung her back, and thrust her,
+pressed her against the wall as if he would push her through it. His face was
+blind with anger, like a hot, red sun. Suddenly, almost instantaneously, he
+came to himself again and drew back his hands, shaking his right hand as if
+some rat had bitten it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sorry!” he shouted, beside himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m
+sorry.” He dithered before her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She recovered her equilibrium, and, pale to the lips, looked at him with sombre
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m sorry!” he continued loudly, in his strange frenzy like a small boy.
+“Don’t remember! Don’t remember! Don’t think I did it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His face was a kind of blank, and unconsciously he wrung the hand that had
+gripped her, as if it pained him. She watched him, and wondered why on earth
+all this frenzy. She was left rather cold, she did not at all feel the strong
+feelings he seemed to expect of her. There was nothing so very unnatural, after
+all, in being bumped up suddenly against the wall. Certainly her shoulder hurt
+where he had gripped it. But there were plenty of worse hurts in the world. She
+watched him with wide, distant eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he fell on his knees before her, as she backed against the bookcase, and he
+caught hold of the edge of her dress-bottom, drawing it to him. Which made her
+rather abashed, and much more uncomfortable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Forgive me!” he said. “Don’t remember! Forgive me! Love me! Love me! Forgive
+me and love me! Forgive me and love me!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Alvina was looking down dismayed on the great, red-faced, elderly man, who
+in his crying-out showed his white teeth like a child, and as she was gently
+trying to draw her skirt from his clutch, the door opened, and there stood the
+matron, in her big frilled cap. Alvina glanced at her, flushed crimson and
+looked down to the man. She touched his face with her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never mind,” she said. “It’s nothing. Don’t think about it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He caught her hand and clung to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Love me! Love me! Love me!” he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The matron softly closed the door again, withdrawing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Love me! Love me!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was absolutely dumbfounded by this scene. She had no idea men did such
+things. It did not touch her, it dumbfounded her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor, clinging to her hand, struggled to his feet and flung his arms
+round her, clasping her wildly to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You love me! You love me, don’t you?” he said, vibrating and beside himself as
+he pressed her to his breast and hid his face against her hair. At such a
+moment, what was the good of saying she didn’t? But she didn’t. Pity for his
+shame, however, kept her silent, motionless and silent in his arms, smothered
+against the blue-serge waistcoat of his broad breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was beginning to come to himself. He became silent. But he still strained
+her fast, he had no idea of letting her go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will take my ring, won’t you?” he said at last, still in the strange,
+lamentable voice. “You will take my ring.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said coldly. Anything for a quiet emergence from this scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fumbled feverishly in his pocket with one hand, holding her still fast by
+the other arm. And with one hand he managed to extract the ring from its case,
+letting the case roll away on the floor. It was a diamond solitaire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Which finger? Which finger is it?” he asked, beginning to smile rather weakly.
+She extricated her hand, and held out her engagement finger. Upon it was the
+mourning-ring Miss Frost had always worn. The doctor slipped the diamond
+solitaire above the mourning ring, and folded Alvina to his breast again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now,” he said, almost in his normal voice. “Now I know you love me.” The
+pleased self-satisfaction in his voice made her angry. She managed to extricate
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will come along with me now?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t,” she answered. “I must get back to my work here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nurse Allen can do that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’d rather not.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where are you going today?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told him her cases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, you will come and have tea with me. I shall expect you to have tea with
+me every day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Alvina was straightening her crushed cap before the mirror, and did not
+answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We can see as much as we like of each other now we’re engaged,” he said,
+smiling with satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wonder where the matron is,” said Alvina, suddenly going into the cool white
+corridor. He followed her. And they met the matron just coming out of the ward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Matron!” said Dr. Mitchell, with a return of his old mouthing importance. “You
+may congratulate Nurse Houghton and me on our engagement&mdash;” He smiled
+largely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I may congratulate <i>you</i>, you mean,” said the matron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, of course. And both of us, since we are now one,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not quite, yet,” said the matron gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at length she managed to get rid of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At once she went to look for Alvina, who had gone to her duties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, I <i>suppose</i> it is all right,” said the matron gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No it isn’t,” said Alvina. “I shall <i>never</i> marry him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, never is a long while! Did he hear me come in?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I’m sure he didn’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank goodness for that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes indeed! It was perfectly horrible. Following me round on his knees and
+shouting for me to love him! Perfectly horrible!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said the matron. “You never know what men will do till you’ve known
+them. And then you need be surprised at nothing, <i>nothing</i>. I’m surprised
+at nothing they do&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I must say,” said Alvina, “I was surprised. Very unpleasantly.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you accepted him&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Anything to quieten him&mdash;like a hysterical child.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but I’m not sure you haven’t taken a very risky way of quietening him,
+giving him what he wanted&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think,” said Alvina, “I can look after myself. I may be moved any day now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well&mdash;!” said the matron. “He may prevent your getting moved, you know.
+He’s on the board. And if he says you are indispensable&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a new idea for Alvina to cogitate. She had counted on a speedy escape.
+She put his ring in her apron pocket, and there she forgot it until he pounced
+on her in the afternoon, in the house of one of her patients. He waited for
+her, to take her off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is your ring?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she realized that it lay in the pocket of a soiled, discarded
+apron&mdash;perhaps lost for ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shan’t wear it on duty,” she said. “You know that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had to go to tea with him. She avoided his love-making, by telling him any
+sort of spooniness revolted her. And he was too much an old bachelor to take
+easily to a fondling habit&mdash;before marriage, at least. So he mercifully
+left her alone: he was on the whole devoutly thankful she wanted to be left
+alone. But he wanted her to be there. That was his greatest craving. He wanted
+her to be always there. And so he craved for marriage: to possess her entirely,
+and to have her always there with him, so that he was never alone. Alone and
+apart from all the world: but by her side, always by her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now when shall we fix the marriage?” he said. “It is no good putting it back.
+We both know what we are doing. And now the engagement is announced&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her anxiously. She could see the hysterical little boy under the
+great, authoritative man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, not till after Christmas!” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“After Christmas!” he started as if he had been bitten. “Nonsense! It’s
+nonsense to wait so long. Next month, at the latest.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t think so soon.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not? The sooner the better. You had better send in your resignation at
+once, so that you’re free.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh but is there any need? I may be transferred for war service.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s not likely. You’re our only maternity nurse&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the days went by. She had tea with him practically every afternoon, and
+she got used to him. They discussed the furnishing&mdash;she could not help
+suggesting a few alterations, a few arrangements according to <i>her</i> idea.
+And he drew up a plan of a wedding tour in Scotland. Yet she was quite certain
+she would not marry him. The matron laughed at her certainty. “You will drift
+into it,” she said. “He is tying you down by too many little threads.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, well, you’ll see!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said the matron. “I <i>shall</i> see.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And it was true that Alvina’s will was indeterminate, at this time. She was
+<i>resolved</i> not to marry. But her will, like a spring that is hitched
+somehow, did not fly direct against the doctor. She had sent in her
+resignation, as he suggested. But not that she might be free to marry him, but
+that she might be at liberty to flee him. So she told herself. Yet she worked
+into his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day she sat with the doctor in the car near the station&mdash;it was
+towards the end of September&mdash;held up by a squad of soldiers in khaki, who
+were marching off with their band wildly playing, to embark on the special
+troop train that was coming down from the north. The town was in great
+excitement. War-fever was spreading everywhere. Men were rushing to
+enlist&mdash;and being constantly rejected, for it was still the days of
+regular standards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the crowds surged on the pavement, as the soldiers tramped to the station,
+as the traffic waited, there came a certain flow in the opposite direction. The
+4:15 train had come in. People were struggling along with luggage, children
+were running with spades and buckets, cabs were crawling along with families:
+it was the seaside people coming home. Alvina watched the two crowds mingle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as she watched she saw two men, one carrying a mandoline case and a
+suit-case which she knew. It was Ciccio. She did not know the other man; some
+theatrical individual. The two men halted almost near the car, to watch the
+band go by. Alvina saw Ciccio quite near to her. She would have liked to squirt
+water down his brown, handsome, oblivious neck. She felt she hated him. He
+stood there, watching the music, his lips curling in his faintly-derisive
+Italian manner, as he talked to the other man. His eyelashes were as long and
+dark as ever, his eyes had still the attractive look of being set in with a
+smutty finger. He had got the same brownish suit on, which she disliked, the
+same black hat set slightly, jauntily over one eye. He looked common: and yet
+with that peculiar southern aloofness which gave him a certain beauty and
+distinction in her eyes. She felt she hated him, rather. She felt she had been
+let down by him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The band had passed. A child ran against the wheel of the standing car. Alvina
+suddenly reached forward and made a loud, screeching flourish on the hooter.
+Every one looked round, including the laden, tramping soldiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We can’t move yet,” said Dr. Mitchell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Alvina was looking at Ciccio at that moment. He had turned with the rest,
+looking inquiringly at the car. And his quick eyes, the whites of which showed
+so white against his duskiness, the yellow pupils so non-human, met hers with a
+quick flash of recognition. His mouth began to curl in a smile of greeting. But
+she stared at him without moving a muscle, just blankly stared, abstracting
+every scrap of feeling, even of animosity or coldness, out of her gaze. She saw
+the smile die on his lips, his eyes glance sideways, and again sideways, with
+that curious animal shyness which characterized him. It was as if he did not
+want to see her looking at him, and ran from side to side like a caged weasel,
+avoiding her blank, glaucous look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned pleasantly to Dr. Mitchell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What did you say?” she asked sweetly.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII<br/>
+ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED</h2>
+
+<p>
+Alvina found it pleasant to be respected as she was respected in Lancaster. It
+is not only the prophet who hath honour <i>save</i> in his own country: it is
+every one with individuality. In this northern town Alvina found that her
+individuality really told. Already she belonged to the revered caste of
+medicine-men. And into the bargain she was a personality, a person.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well and good. She was not going to cheapen herself. She felt that even in the
+eyes of the natives&mdash;the well-to-do part, at least&mdash;she lost a
+<i>little</i> of her distinction when she was engaged to Dr. Mitchell. The
+engagement had been announced in <i>The Times</i>, <i>The Morning Post</i>,
+<i>The Manchester Guardian</i>, and the local <i>News</i>. No fear about its
+being known. And it cast a slight slur of vulgar familiarity over her. In
+Woodhouse, she knew, it elevated her in the common esteem tremendously. But she
+was no longer in Woodhouse. She was in Lancaster. And in Lancaster her
+engagement pigeonholed her. Apart from Dr. Mitchell she had a magic
+potentiality. Connected with him, she was a known and labelled quantity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This she gathered from her contact with the local gentry. The matron was a
+woman of family, who somehow managed, in her big, white, frilled cap, to be
+distinguished like an abbess of old. The really toney women of the place came
+to take tea in her room, and these little teas in the hospital were like a
+little elegant female conspiracy. There was a slight flavour of art and
+literature about. The matron had known Walter Pater, in the somewhat remote
+past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was admitted to these teas with the few women who formed the toney
+intellectual élite of this northern town. There was a certain freemasonry in
+the matron’s room. The matron, a lady-doctor, a clergyman’s daughter, and the
+wives of two industrial magnates of the place, these five, and then Alvina,
+formed the little group. They did not meet a great deal outside the hospital.
+But they always met with that curious female freemasonry which can form a law
+unto itself even among most conventional women. They talked as they would never
+talk before men, or before feminine outsiders. They threw aside the whole
+vestment of convention. They discussed plainly the things they thought
+about&mdash;even the most secret&mdash;and they were quite calm about the
+things they did&mdash;even the most impossible. Alvina felt that her
+transgression was a very mild affair, and that her engagement was really
+<i>infra dig</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And are you going to marry him?” asked Mrs. Tuke, with a long, cool look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t <i>imagine</i> myself&mdash;” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, but so many things happen outside one’s imagination. That’s where your
+body has you. I can’t <i>imagine</i> that I’m going to have a child&mdash;” She
+lowered her eyelids wearily and sardonically over her large eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tuke was the wife of the son of a local manufacturer. She was about
+twenty-eight years old, pale, with great dark-grey eyes and an arched nose and
+black hair, very like a head on one of the lovely Syracusan coins. The odd look
+of a smile which wasn’t a smile, at the corners of the mouth, the arched nose,
+and the slowness of the big, full, classic eyes gave her the dangerous Greek
+look of the Syracusan women of the past: the dangerous, heavily-civilized women
+of old Sicily: those who laughed about the latomia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But do you think you can have a child without wanting it <i>at all</i>?” asked
+Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, but there isn’t <i>one bit</i> of me wants it, not <i>one bit</i>. My
+<i>flesh</i> doesn’t want it. And my mind doesn’t&mdash;yet there it is!” She
+spread her fine hands with a flicker of inevitability.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Something must want it,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” said Mrs. Tuke. “The universe is one big machine, and we’re just part of
+it.” She flicked out her grey silk handkerchief, and dabbed her nose, watching
+with big, black-grey eyes the fresh face of Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s not <i>one bit</i> of me concerned in having this child,” she
+persisted to Alvina. “My flesh isn’t concerned, and my mind isn’t. And
+<i>yet</i>!&mdash;<i>le voilà!</i>&mdash;I’m just <i>planté</i>. I can’t
+<i>imagine</i> why I married Tommy. And yet&mdash;I did&mdash;!” She shook her
+head as if it was all just beyond her, and the pseudo-smile at the corners of
+her ageless mouth deepened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was to nurse Mrs. Tuke. The baby was expected at the end of August. But
+already the middle of September was here, and the baby had not arrived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Tukes were not very rich&mdash;the young ones, that is. Tommy wanted to
+compose music, so he lived on what his father gave him. His father gave him a
+little house outside the town, a house furnished with expensive bits of old
+furniture, in a way that the townspeople thought insane. But there you
+are&mdash;Effie would insist on dabbing a rare bit of yellow brocade on the
+wall, instead of a picture, and in painting apple-green shelves in the recesses
+of the whitewashed wall of the dining-room. Then she enamelled the
+hall-furniture yellow, and decorated it with curious green and lavender lines
+and flowers, and had unearthly cushions and Sardinian pottery with unspeakable
+peaked griffins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What were you to make of such a woman! Alvina slept in her house these days,
+instead of at the hospital. For Effie was a very bad sleeper. She would sit up
+in bed, the two glossy black plaits hanging beside her white, arch face,
+wrapping loosely round her her dressing-gown of a sort of plumbago-coloured,
+dark-grey silk lined with fine silk of metallic blue, and there, ivory and
+jet-black and grey like black-lead, she would sit in the white bedclothes
+flicking her handkerchief and revealing a flicker of kingfisher-blue silk and
+white silk night dress, complaining of her neuritis nerve and her own
+impossible condition, and begging Alvina to stay with her another half-hour,
+and suddenly studying the big, blood-red stone on her finger as if she was
+reading something in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe I shall be like the woman in the <i>Cent Nouvelles</i> and carry my
+child for five years. Do you know that story? She said that eating a parsley
+leaf on which bits of snow were sticking started the child in her. It might
+just as well&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina would laugh and get tired. There was about her a kind of half bitter
+sanity and nonchalance which the nervous woman liked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One night as they were sitting thus in the bedroom, at nearly eleven o’clock,
+they started and listened. Dogs in the distance had also started to yelp. A
+mandoline was wailing its vibration in the night outside, rapidly, delicately
+quivering. Alvina went pale. She knew it was Ciccio. She had seen him lurking
+in the streets of the town, but had never spoken to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What’s this?” cried Mrs. Tuke, cocking her head on one side. “Music! A
+mandoline! How extraordinary! Do you think it’s a serenade?&mdash;” And she
+lifted her brows archly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should think it is,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How extraordinary! What a moment to choose to serenade the lady! <i>Isn’t</i>
+it like life&mdash;! I <i>must</i> look at it&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She got out of bed with some difficulty, wrapped her dressing-gown round her,
+pushed her feet into slippers, and went to the window. She opened the sash. It
+was a lovely moonlight night of September. Below lay the little front garden,
+with its short drive and its iron gates that closed on the high-road. From the
+shadow of the high-road came the noise of the mandoline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hello, Tommy!” called Mrs. Tuke to her husband, whom she saw on the drive
+below her. “How’s your musical ear&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right. Doesn’t it disturb you?” came the man’s voice from the moonlight
+below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not a bit. I like it. I’m waiting for the voice. ‘<i>O Richard, O mon
+roi!</i>’&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the music had stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There!” cried Mrs. Tuke. “You’ve frightened him off! And we’re dying to be
+serenaded, aren’t we, nurse?” She turned to Alvina. “Do give me my fur, will
+you? Thanks so much. Won’t you open the other window and look out
+there&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina went to the second window. She stood looking out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do play again!” Mrs. Tuke called into the night. “Do sing something.” And with
+her white arm she reached for a glory rose that hung in the moonlight from the
+wall, and with a flash of her white arm she flung it toward the garden
+wall&mdash;ineffectually, of course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you play again?” she called into the night, to the unseen. “Tommy, go
+indoors, the bird won’t sing when you’re about.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s an Italian by the sound of him. Nothing I hate more than emotional
+Italian music. Perfectly nauseating.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never mind, dear. I know it sounds as if all their insides were coming out of
+their mouth. But we want to be serenaded, don’t we, nurse?&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina stood at her window, but did not answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah-h?” came the odd query from Mrs. Tuke. “Don’t you like it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Alvina. “Very much.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And aren’t you dying for the song?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There!” cried Mrs. Tuke, into the moonlight. “Una canzone
+bella-bella&mdash;molto bella&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pronounced her syllables one by one, calling into the night. It sounded
+comical. There came a rude laugh from the drive below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go indoors, Tommy! He won’t sing if you’re there. Nothing will sing if you’re
+there,” called the young woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They heard a footstep on the gravel, and then the slam of the hall door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now!” cried Mrs. Tuke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They waited. And sure enough, came the fine tinkle of the mandoline, and after
+a few moments, the song. It was one of the well-known Neapolitan songs, and
+Ciccio sang it as it should be sung.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tuke went across to Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Doesn’t he put his <i>bowels</i> into it&mdash;?” she said, laying her hand on
+her own full figure, and rolling her eyes mockingly. “I’m <i>sure</i> it’s more
+effective than senna-pods.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she returned to her own window, huddled her furs over her breast, and
+rested her white elbows in the moonlight.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“Torn’ a Surrientu<br/>
+Fammi campar&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The song suddenly ended, in a clamorous, animal sort of yearning. Mrs. Tuke was
+quite still, resting her chin on her fingers. Alvina also was still. Then Mrs.
+Tuke slowly reached for the rose-buds on the old wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Molto bella!” she cried, half ironically. “Molto bella! Je vous envoie une
+rose&mdash;” And she threw the roses out on to the drive. A man’s figure was
+seen hovering outside the gate, on the high-road. “Entrez!” called Mrs. Tuke.
+“Entrez! Prenez votre rose. Come in and take your rose.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man’s voice called something from the distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” cried Mrs. Tuke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Je ne peux pas entrer.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Vous ne pouvez pas entrer? Pourquoi alors! La porte n’est pas fermée à clef.
+Entrez donc!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Non. On n’entre pas&mdash;” called the well-known voice of Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quoi faire, alors! Alvina, take him the rose to the gate, will you? Yes do!
+Their singing is horrible, I think. I can’t go down to him. But do take him the
+roses, and see what he looks like. Yes do!” Mrs. Tuke’s eyes were arched and
+excited. Alvina looked at her slowly. Alvina also was smiling to herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went slowly down the stairs and out of the front door. From a bush at the
+side she pulled two sweet-smelling roses. Then in the drive she picked up
+Effie’s flowers. Ciccio was standing outside the gate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allaye!” he said, in a soft, yearning voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mrs. Tuke sent you these roses,” said Alvina, putting the flowers through the
+bars of the gate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allaye!” he said, caressing her hand, kissing it with a soft, passionate,
+yearning mouth. Alvina shivered. Quickly he opened the gate and drew her
+through. He drew her into the shadow of the wall, and put his arms round her,
+lifting her from her feet with passionate yearning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allaye!” he said. “I love you, Allaye, my beautiful, Allaye. I love you,
+Allaye!” He held her fast to his breast and began to walk away with her. His
+throbbing, muscular power seemed completely to envelop her. He was just walking
+away with her down the road, clinging fast to her, enveloping her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nurse! Nurse! I can’t see you! Nurse!&mdash;” came the long call of Mrs. Tuke
+through the night. Dogs began to bark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Put me down,” murmured Alvina. “Put me down, Ciccio.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come with me to Italy. Come with me to Italy, Allaye. I can’t go to Italy by
+myself, Allaye. Come with me, be married to me&mdash;Allaye, Allaye&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice was a strange, hoarse whisper just above her face, he still held her
+in his throbbing, heavy embrace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;yes!” she whispered. “Yes&mdash;yes! But put me down, Ciccio. Put me
+down.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come to Italy with me, Allaye. Come with me,” he still reiterated, in a voice
+hoarse with pain and yearning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nurse! Nurse! Wherever are you? Nurse! I want you,” sang the uneasy, querulous
+voice of Mrs. Tuke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do put me down!” murmured Alvina, stirring in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He slowly relaxed his clasp, and she slid down like rain to earth. But still he
+clung to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come with me, Allaye! Come with me to Italy!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw his face, beautiful, non-human in the moonlight, and she shuddered
+slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes!” she said. “I will come. But let me go now. Where is your mandoline?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned round and looked up the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nurse! You absolutely <i>must</i> come. I can’t bear it,” cried the strange
+voice of Mrs. Tuke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina slipped from the man, who was a little bewildered, and through the gate
+into the drive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You must come!” came the voice in pain from the upper window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina ran upstairs. She found Mrs. Tuke crouched in a chair, with a drawn,
+horrified, terrified face. As her pains suddenly gripped her, she uttered an
+exclamation, and pressed her clenched fists hard on her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The pains have begun,” said Alvina, hurrying to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, it’s horrible! It’s horrible! I don’t want it!” cried the woman in
+travail. Alvina comforted her and reassured her as best she could. And from
+outside, once more, came the despairing howl of the Neapolitan song, animal and
+inhuman on the night.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“E tu dic’ Io part’, addio!<br/>
+T’alluntare di sta core,<br/>
+Nel paese del amore<br/>
+Tien’ o cor’ di non turnar’<br/>
+&mdash;Ma nun me lasciar’&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was almost unendurable. But suddenly Mrs. Tuke became quite still, and sat
+with her fists clenched on her knees, her two jet-black plaits dropping on
+either side of her ivory face, her big eyes fixed staring into space. At the
+line&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Ma nun me lasciar’&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+she began to murmur softly to herself&mdash;“Yes, it’s dreadful! It’s horrible!
+I can’t understand it. What does it mean, that noise? It’s as bad as these
+pains. What does it mean? What does he say? I can understand a little
+Italian&mdash;” She paused. And again came the sudden complaint:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Ma nun me lasciar’&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ma nun me lasciar’&mdash;!” she murmured, repeating the music. “That
+means&mdash;Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! But why? Why shouldn’t one human
+being go away from another? What does it mean? That <i>awful</i> noise! Isn’t
+love the most horrible thing! I think it’s horrible. It just does one in, and
+turns one into a sort of howling animal. I’m howling with one sort of pain,
+he’s howling with another. Two hellish animals howling through the night! I’m
+not myself, he’s not himself. Oh, I think it’s horrible. What does he look
+like, Nurse? Is he beautiful? Is he a great hefty brute?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked with big, slow, enigmatic eyes at Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s a man I knew before,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tuke’s face woke from its half-trance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really! Oh! A man you knew before! Where?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s a long story,” said Alvina. “In a travelling music-hall troupe.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In a travelling music-hall troupe! How extraordinary! Why, how did you come
+across such an individual&mdash;?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina explained as briefly as possible. Mrs. Tuke watched her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really!” she said. “You’ve done all those things!” And she scrutinized
+Alvina’s face. “You’ve had some effect on him, that’s evident,” she said. Then
+she shuddered, and dabbed her nose with her handkerchief. “Oh, the flesh is a
+<i>beastly</i> thing!” she cried. “To make a man howl outside there like that,
+because you’re here. And to make me howl because I’ve got a child inside me.
+It’s unbearable! What does he look like, really?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” said Alvina. “Not extraordinary. Rather a hefty brute&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Tuke glanced at her, to detect the irony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should like to see him,” she said. “Do you think I might?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” said Alvina, non-committal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you think he might come up? Ask him. Do let me see him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you really want to?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course&mdash;” Mrs. Tuke watched Alvina with big, dark, slow eyes. Then she
+dragged herself to her feet. Alvina helped her into bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do ask him to come up for a minute,” Effie said. “We’ll give him a glass of
+Tommy’s famous port. Do let me see him. Yes do!” She stretched out her long
+white arm to Alvina, with sudden imploring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina laughed, and turned doubtfully away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The night was silent outside. But she found Ciccio leaning against a
+gate-pillar. He started up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allaye!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you come in for a moment? I can’t leave Mrs. Tuke.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio obediently followed Alvina into the house and up the stairs, without a
+word. He was ushered into the bedroom. He drew back when he saw Effie in the
+bed, sitting with her long plaits and her dark eyes, and the subtle-seeming
+smile at the corners of her mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do come in!” she said. “I want to thank you for the music. Nurse says it was
+for her, but I enjoyed it also. Would you tell me the words? I think it’s a
+wonderful song.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio hung back against the door, his head dropped, and the shy, suspicious,
+faintly malicious smile on his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have a glass of port, do!” said Effie. “Nurse, give us all one. I should like
+one too. And a biscuit.” Again she stretched out her long white arm from the
+sudden blue lining of her wrap, suddenly, as if taken with the desire. Ciccio
+shifted on his feet, watching Alvina pour out the port.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He swallowed his in one swallow, and put aside his glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have some more!” said Effie, watching over the top of her glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled faintly, stupidly, and shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you? Now tell me the words of the song&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her from out of the dusky hollows of his brow, and did not answer.
+The faint, stupid half-smile, half-sneer was on his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you tell them me? I understood one line&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio smiled more pronouncedly as he watched her, but did not speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I understood one line,” said Effie, making big eyes at him. “<i>Ma non me
+lasciare</i>&mdash;<i>Don’t leave me!</i> There, isn’t that it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled, stirred on his feet, and nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t leave me! There, I knew it was that. Why don’t you want Nurse to leave
+you? Do you want her to be with you <i>every minute</i>?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled a little contemptuously, awkwardly, and turned aside his face,
+glancing at Alvina. Effie’s watchful eyes caught the glance. It was swift, and
+full of the terrible yearning which so horrified her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the same moment a spasm crossed her face, her expression went blank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall we go down?” said Alvina to Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned immediately, with his cap in his hand, and followed. In the hall he
+pricked up his ears as he took the mandoline from the chest. He could hear the
+stifled cries and exclamations from Mrs. Tuke. At the same moment the door of
+the study opened, and the musician, a burly fellow with troubled hair, came
+out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is that Mrs. Tuke?” he snapped anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. The pains have begun,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh God! And have you left her!” He was quite irascible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only for a minute,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But with a <i>Pf</i>! of angry indignation, he was climbing the stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is going to have a child,” said Alvina to Ciccio. “I shall have to go back
+to her.” And she held out her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not take her hand, but looked down into her face with the same slightly
+distorted look of overwhelming yearning, yearning heavy and unbearable, in
+which he was carried towards her as on a flood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Allaye!” he said, with a faint lift of the lip that showed his teeth, like a
+pained animal: a curious sort of smile. He could not go away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall have to go back to her,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall you come with me to Italy, Allaye?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. Where is Madame?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gone! Gigi&mdash;all gone.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gone where?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gone back to France&mdash;called up.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And Madame and Louis and Max?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Switzerland.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood helplessly looking at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, I must go,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her with his yellow eyes, from under his long black lashes, like
+some chained animal, haunted by doom. She turned and left him standing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found Mrs. Tuke wildly clutching the edge of the sheets, and crying: “No,
+Tommy dear. I’m awfully fond of you, you know I am. But go away. Oh God, go
+away. And put a space between us. Put a space between us!” she almost shrieked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pushed up his hair. He had been working on a big choral work which he was
+composing, and by this time he was almost demented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can’t you stand my presence!” he shouted, and dashed downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nurse!” cried Effie. “It’s <i>no use</i> trying to get a grip on life. You’re
+just at the mercy of <i>Forces</i>,” she shrieked angrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not?” said Alvina. “There are good life-forces. Even the will of God is a
+life-force.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t understand! I want to be <i>myself</i>. And I’m <i>not</i> myself.
+I’m just torn to pieces by <i>Forces</i>. It’s horrible&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, it’s not my fault. I didn’t make the universe,” said Alvina. “If you
+have to be torn to pieces by forces, well, you have. Other forces will put you
+together again.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t want them to. I want to be myself. I don’t want to be nailed together
+like a chair, with a hammer. I want to be myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t be nailed together like a chair. You should have faith in life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I hate life. It’s nothing but a mass of forces. <i>I</i> am intelligent.
+Life isn’t intelligent. Look at it at this moment. Do you call this
+intelligent? Oh&mdash;Oh! It’s horrible! Oh&mdash;!” She was wild and sweating
+with her pains. Tommy flounced out downstairs, beside himself. He was heard
+talking to some one in the moonlight outside. To Ciccio. He had already
+telephoned wildly for the doctor. But the doctor had replied that Nurse would
+ring him up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment Mrs. Tuke recovered her breath she began again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I hate life, and faith, and such things. Faith is only fear. And life is a
+mass of unintelligent forces to which intelligent beings are submitted.
+Prostituted. Oh&mdash;oh!!&mdash;prostituted&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps life itself is something bigger than intelligence,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Bigger than intelligence!” shrieked Effie. “<i>Nothing</i> is bigger than
+intelligence. Your man is a hefty brute. His yellow eyes <i>aren’t</i>
+intelligent. They’re <i>animal</i>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Alvina. “Something else. I wish he didn’t attract me&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There! Because you’re not content to be at the mercy of <i>Forces</i>!” cried
+Effie. “I’m not. I’m not. I want to be myself. And so forces tear me to pieces!
+Tear me to pie&mdash;eee&mdash;Oh-h-h! No!&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Downstairs Tommy had walked Ciccio back into the house again, and the two men
+were drinking port in the study, discussing Italy, for which Tommy had a great
+sentimental affection, though he hated all Italian music after the younger
+Scarlatti. They drank port all through the night, Tommy being strictly
+forbidden to interfere upstairs, or even to fetch the doctor. They drank three
+and a half bottles of port, and were discovered in the morning by Alvina fast
+asleep in the study, with the electric light still burning. Tommy slept with
+his fair and ruffled head hanging over the edge of the couch like some great
+loose fruit, Ciccio was on the floor, face downwards, his face in his folded
+arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina had a great difficulty in waking the inert Ciccio. In the end, she had
+to leave him and rouse Tommy first: who in rousing fell off the sofa with a
+crash which woke him disagreeably. So that he turned on Alvina in a fury, and
+asked her what the hell she thought she was doing. In answer to which Alvina
+held up a finger warningly, and Tommy, suddenly remembering, fell back as if he
+had been struck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is sleeping now,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it a boy or a girl?” he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It isn’t born yet,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh God, it’s an accursed fugue!” cried the bemused Tommy. After which they
+proceeded to wake Ciccio, who was like the dead doll in Petrushka, all loose
+and floppy. When he was awake, however, he smiled at Alvina, and said:
+“Allaye!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dark, waking smile upset her badly.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII<br/>
+THE WEDDED WIFE</h2>
+
+<p>
+The upshot of it all was that Alvina ran away to Scarborough without telling
+anybody. It was in the first week in October. She asked for a week-end, to make
+some arrangements for her marriage. The marriage was presumably with Dr.
+Mitchell&mdash;though she had given him no definite word. However, her month’s
+notice was up, so she was legally free. And therefore she packed a rather large
+bag with all her ordinary things, and set off in her everyday dress, leaving
+the nursing paraphernalia behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She knew Scarborough quite well: and quite quickly found rooms which she had
+occupied before, in a boarding-house where she had stayed with Miss Frost long
+ago. Having recovered from her journey, she went out on to the cliffs on the
+north side. It was evening, and the sea was before her. What was she to do?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had run away from both men&mdash;from Ciccio as well as from Mitchell. She
+had spent the last fortnight more or less avoiding the pair of them. Now she
+had a moment to herself. She was even free from Mrs. Tuke, who in her own way
+was more exacting than the men. Mrs. Tuke had a baby daughter, and was getting
+well. Ciccio was living with the Tukes. Tommy had taken a fancy to him, and had
+half engaged him as a sort of personal attendant: the sort of thing Tommy would
+do, not having paid his butcher’s bills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Alvina sat on the cliffs in a mood of exasperation. She was sick of being
+badgered about. She didn’t really want to marry anybody. Why should she? She
+was thankful beyond measure to be by herself. How sick she was of other people
+and their importunities! What was she to do? She decided to offer herself
+again, in a little while, for war service&mdash;in a new town this time.
+Meanwhile she wanted to be by herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made excursions, she walked on the moors, in the brief but lovely days of
+early October. For three days it was all so sweet and lovely&mdash;perfect
+liberty, pure, almost paradisal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fourth day it rained: simply rained all day long, and was cold, dismal,
+disheartening beyond words. There she sat, stranded in the dismalness, and knew
+no way out. She went to bed at nine o’clock, having decided in a jerk to go to
+London and find work in the war-hospitals at once: not to leave off until she
+had found it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in the night she dreamed that Alexander, her first fiancé, was with her on
+the quay of some harbour, and was reproaching her bitterly, even reviling her,
+for having come too late, so that they had missed their ship. They were there
+to catch the boat&mdash;and she, for dilatoriness, was an hour late, and she
+could see the broad stern of the steamer not far off. Just an hour late. She
+showed Alexander her watch&mdash;exactly ten o’clock, instead of nine. And he
+was more angry than ever, because her watch was slow. He pointed to the harbour
+clock&mdash;it was ten minutes past ten.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she woke up she was thinking of Alexander. It was such a long time since
+she had thought of him. She wondered if he had a right to be angry with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day was still grey, with sweepy rain-clouds on the sea&mdash;gruesome,
+objectionable. It was a prolongation of yesterday. Well, despair was no good,
+and being miserable was no good either. She got no satisfaction out of either
+mood. The only thing to do was to act: seize hold of life and wring its neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took the time-table that hung in the hall: the time-table, that magic
+carpet of today. When in doubt, <i>move</i>. This was the maxim. Move. Where
+to?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another click of a resolution. She would wire to Ciccio and meet
+him&mdash;where? York&mdash;Leeds&mdash;Halifax&mdash;? She looked up the
+places in the time-table, and decided on Leeds. She wrote out a telegram, that
+she would be at Leeds that evening. Would he get it in time? Chance it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hurried off and sent the telegram. Then she took a little luggage, told the
+people of her house she would be back next day, and set off. She did not like
+whirling in the direction of Lancaster. But no matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She waited a long time for the train from the north to come in. The first
+person she saw was Tommy. He waved to her and jumped from the moving train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I say!” he said. “So glad to see you! Ciccio is with me. Effie insisted on my
+coming to see you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was Ciccio climbing down with the bag. A sort of servant! This was too
+much for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So you came with your valet?” she said, as Ciccio stood with the bag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not a bit,” said Tommy, laying his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “We’re
+the best of friends. I don’t carry bags because my heart is rather groggy. I
+say, nurse, excuse me, but I like you better in uniform. Black doesn’t suit
+you. You don’t <i>mind</i>&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I do. But I’ve only got black clothes, except uniforms.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well look here now&mdash;! You’re not going on anywhere tonight, are you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is too late.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well now, let’s turn into the hotel and have a talk. I’m acting under Effie’s
+orders, as you may gather&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the hotel Tommy gave her a letter from his wife: to the tune of&mdash;don’t
+marry this Italian, you’ll put yourself in a wretched hole, and one wants to
+avoid getting into holes. <i>I know</i>&mdash;concluded Effie, on a sinister
+note.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tommy sang another tune. Ciccio was a lovely chap, a rare chap, a treat. He,
+Tommy, could quite understand any woman’s wanting to marry him&mdash;didn’t
+agree a bit with Effie. But marriage, you know, was so final. And then with
+this war on: you never knew how things might turn out: a foreigner and all
+that. And then&mdash;you won’t mind what I say&mdash;? We won’t talk about
+class and that rot. If the man’s good enough, he’s good enough by himself. But
+is he your intellectual equal, nurse? After all, it’s a big point. You don’t
+want to marry a man you can’t talk to. Ciccio’s a treat to be with, because
+he’s so natural. But it isn’t a <i>mental</i> treat&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina thought of Mrs. Tuke, who complained that Tommy talked music and
+pseudo-philosophy <i>by the hour</i> when he was wound up. She saw Effie’s
+long, outstretched arm of repudiation and weariness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course!”&mdash;another of Mrs. Tuke’s exclamations. “Why not <i>be</i>
+atavistic if you <i>can</i> be, and follow at a man’s heel just because he’s a
+man. Be like barbarous women, a slave.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During all this, Ciccio stayed out of the room, as bidden. It was not till
+Alvina sat before her mirror that he opened her door softly, and entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I come in,” he said, and he closed the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina remained with her hair-brush suspended, watching him. He came to her,
+smiling softly, to take her in his arms. But she put the chair between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why did you bring Mr. Tuke?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t brought him,” he said, watching her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why did you show him the telegram?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was Mrs. Tuke took it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why did you give it her?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was she who gave it me, in her room. She kept it in her room till I came
+and took it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” said Alvina. “Go back to the Tukes.” And she began again to brush
+her hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio watched her with narrowing eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What you mean?” he said. “I shan’t go, Allaye. You come with me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha!” she sniffed scornfully. “I shall go where I like.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But slowly he shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll come, Allaye,” he said. “You come with me, with Ciccio.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shuddered at the soft, plaintive entreaty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How can I go with you? How can I depend on you at all?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again he shook his head. His eyes had a curious yellow fire, beseeching,
+plaintive, with a demon quality of yearning compulsion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, you come with me, Allaye. You come with me, to Italy. You don’t go to
+that other man. He is too old, not healthy. You come with me to Italy. Why do
+you send a telegram?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina sat down and covered her face, trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!” she moaned. “I can’t do it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, you come with me. I have money. You come with me, to my place in the
+mountains, to my uncle’s house. Fine house, you like it. Come with me, Allaye.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could not look at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why do you want me?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why I want you?” He gave a curious laugh, almost of ridicule. “I don’t know
+that. You ask me another, eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was silent, sitting looking downwards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t, I think,” she said abstractedly, looking up at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled, a fine, subtle smile, like a demon’s, but inexpressibly gentle. He
+made her shiver as if she was mesmerized. And he was reaching forward to her as
+a snake reaches, nor could she recoil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You come, Allaye,” he said softly, with his foreign intonation. “You come. You
+come to Italy with me. Yes?” He put his hand on her, and she started as if she
+had been struck. But his hands, with the soft, powerful clasp, only closed her
+faster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes?” he said. “Yes? All right, eh? All right!”&mdash;he had a strange
+mesmeric power over her, as if he possessed the sensual secrets, and she was to
+be subjected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t,” she moaned, trying to struggle. But she was powerless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dark and insidious he was: he had no regard for her. How could a man’s
+movements be so soft and gentle, and yet so inhumanly regardless! He had no
+regard for her. Why didn’t she revolt? Why couldn’t she? She was as if
+bewitched. She couldn’t fight against her bewitchment. Why? Because he seemed
+to her beautiful, so beautiful. And this left her numb, submissive. Why must
+she see him beautiful? Why was she will-less? She felt herself like one of the
+old sacred prostitutes: a sacred prostitute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning, very early, they left for Scarborough, leaving a letter for the
+sleeping Tommy. In Scarborough they went to the registrar’s office: they could
+be married in a fortnight’s time. And so the fortnight passed, and she was
+under his spell. Only she knew it. She felt extinguished. Ciccio talked to her:
+but only ordinary things. There was no wonderful intimacy of speech, such as
+she had always imagined, and always craved for. No. He loved her&mdash;but it
+was in a dark, mesmeric way, which did not let her be herself. His love did not
+stimulate her or excite her. It extinguished her. She had to be the quiescent,
+obscure woman: she felt as if she were veiled. Her thoughts were dim, in the
+dim back regions of consciousness&mdash;yet, somewhere, she almost exulted.
+Atavism! Mrs. Tuke’s word would play in her mind. Was it atavism, this sinking
+into extinction under the spell of Ciccio? Was it atavism, this strange,
+sleep-like submission to his being? Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was. But it was
+also heavy and sweet and rich. Somewhere, she was content. Somewhere even she
+was vastly proud of the dark veiled eternal loneliness she felt, under his
+shadow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it had to be. She shuddered when she touched him, because he was so
+beautiful, and she was so submitted. She quivered when he moved as if she were
+his shadow. Yet her mind remained distantly clear. She would criticize him,
+find fault with him, the things he did. But <i>ultimately</i> she could find no
+fault with him. She had lost the power. She didn’t care. She had lost the power
+to care about his faults. Strange, sweet, poisonous indifference! She was
+drugged. And she knew it. Would she ever wake out of her dark, warm coma? She
+shuddered, and hoped not. Mrs. Tuke would say atavism. Atavism! The word
+recurred curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But under all her questionings she felt well; a nonchalance deep as sleep, a
+passivity and indifference so dark and sweet she felt it must be evil. Evil!
+She was evil. And yet she had no power to be otherwise. They were legally
+married. And she was glad. She was relieved by knowing she could not escape.
+She was Mrs. Marasca. What was the good of trying to be Miss Houghton any
+longer? Marasca, the bitter cherry. Some dark poison fruit she had eaten. How
+glad she was she had eaten it! How beautiful he was! And no one saw it but
+herself. For her it was so potent it made her tremble when she noticed him. His
+beauty, his dark shadow. Ciccio really was much handsomer since his marriage.
+He seemed to emerge. Before, he had seemed to make himself invisible in the
+streets, in England, altogether. But now something unfolded in him, he was a
+potent, glamorous presence, people turned to watch him. There was a certain
+dark, leopard-like pride in the air about him, something that the English
+people watched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wanted to go to Italy. And now it was <i>his</i> will which counted. Alvina,
+as his wife, must submit. He took her to London the day after the marriage. He
+wanted to get away to Italy. He did not like being in England, a foreigner,
+amid the beginnings of the spy craze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In London they stayed at his cousin’s house. His cousin kept a restaurant in
+Battersea, and was a flourishing London Italian, a real London product with all
+the good English virtues of cleanliness and honesty added to an Italian
+shrewdness. His name was Giuseppe Califano, and he was pale, and he had four
+children of whom he was very proud. He received Alvina with an affable respect,
+as if she were an asset in the family, but as if he were a little uneasy and
+disapproving. She had <i>come down</i>, in marrying Ciccio. She had lost caste.
+He rather seemed to exult over her degradation. For he was a northernized
+Italian, he had accepted English standards. His children were English brats. He
+almost patronized Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then a long, slow look from her remote blue eyes brought him up sharp, and
+he envied Ciccio suddenly, he was almost in love with her himself. She
+disturbed him. She disturbed him in his new English aplomb of a London
+<i>restaurateur</i>, and she disturbed in him the old Italian dark soul, to
+which he was renegade. He tried treating her as an English lady. But the slow,
+remote look in her eyes made this fall flat. He had to be Italian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he was jealous of Ciccio. In Ciccio’s face was a lurking smile, and round
+his fine nose there seemed a subtle, semi-defiant triumph. After all, he had
+triumphed over his well-to-do, Anglicized cousin. With a stealthy, leopard-like
+pride Ciccio went through the streets of London in those wild early days of
+war. He was the one victor, arching stealthily over the vanquished north.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina saw nothing of all these complexities. For the time being, she was all
+dark and potent. Things were curious to her. It was curious to be in Battersea,
+in this English-Italian household, where the children spoke English more
+readily than Italian. It was strange to be high over the restaurant, to see the
+trees of the park, to hear the clang of trams. It was strange to walk out and
+come to the river. It was strange to feel the seethe of war and dread in the
+air. But she did not question. She seemed steeped in the passional influence of
+the man, as in some narcotic. She even forgot Mrs. Tuke’s atavism. Vague and
+unquestioning she went through the days, she accompanied Ciccio into town, she
+went with him to make purchases, or she sat by his side in the music hall, or
+she stayed in her room and sewed, or she sat at meals with the Califanos, a
+vague brightness on her face. And Mrs. Califano was very nice to her, very
+gentle, though with a suspicion of malicious triumph, mockery, beneath her
+gentleness. Still, she was nice and womanly, hovering as she was between her
+English emancipation and her Italian subordination. She half pitied Alvina, and
+was more than half jealous of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was aware of nothing&mdash;only of the presence of Ciccio. It was his
+physical presence which cast a spell over her. She lived within his aura. And
+she submitted to him as if he had extended his dark nature over her. She knew
+nothing about him. She lived mindlessly within his presence, quivering within
+his influence, as if his blood beat in her. She <i>knew</i> she was subjected.
+One tiny corner of her knew, and watched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was very happy, and his face had a real beauty. His eyes glowed with
+lustrous secrecy, like the eyes of some victorious, happy wild creature seen
+remote under a bush. And he was very good to her. His tenderness made her
+quiver into a swoon of complete self-forgetfulness, as if the flood-gates of
+her depths opened. The depth of his warm, mindless, enveloping love was
+immeasurable. She felt she could sink forever into his warm, pulsating embrace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Afterwards, later on, when she was inclined to criticize him, she would
+remember the moment when she saw his face at the Italian Consulate in London.
+There were many people at the Consulate, clamouring for passports&mdash;a wild
+and ill-regulated crowd. They had waited their turn and got inside&mdash;Ciccio
+was not good at pushing his way. And inside a courteous tall old man with a
+white beard had lifted the flap for Alvina to go inside the office and sit down
+to fill in the form. She thanked the old man, who bowed as if he had a
+reputation to keep up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio followed, and it was he who had to sit down and fill up the form,
+because she did not understand the Italian questions. She stood at his side,
+watching the excited, laughing, noisy, east-end Italians at the desk. The whole
+place had a certain free-and-easy confusion, a human, unofficial, muddling
+liveliness which was not quite like England, even though it was in the middle
+of London.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What was your mother’s name?” Ciccio was asking her. She turned to him. He sat
+with the pen perched flourishingly at the end of his fingers, suspended in the
+serious and artistic business of filling in a form. And his face had a dark
+luminousness, like a dark transparence which was shut and has now expanded. She
+quivered, as if it was more than she could bear. For his face was open like a
+flower right to the depths of his soul, a dark, lovely translucency, vulnerable
+to the deep quick of his soul. The lovely, rich darkness of his southern
+nature, so different from her own, exposing itself now in its passional
+vulnerability, made her go white with a kind of fear. For an instant, her face
+seemed drawn and old as she looked down at him, answering his questions. Then
+her eyes became sightless with tears, she stooped as if to look at his writing,
+and quickly kissed his fingers that held the pen, there in the midst of the
+crowded, vulgar Consulate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stayed suspended, again looking up at her with the bright, unfolded eyes of
+a wild creature which plays and is not seen. A faint smile, very beautiful to
+her, was on his face. What did he see when he looked at her? She did not know,
+she did not know. And she would never know. For an instant, she swore inside
+herself that God Himself should not take her away from this man. She would
+commit herself to him through every eternity. And then the vagueness came over
+her again, she turned aside, photographically seeing the crowd in the
+Consulate, but really unconscious. His movement as he rose seemed to move her
+in her sleep, she turned to him at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was early in November before they could leave for Italy, and her dim,
+lustrous state lasted all the time. She found herself at Charing Cross in the
+early morning, in all the bustle of catching the Continental train. Giuseppe
+was there, and Gemma his wife, and two of the children, besides three other
+Italian friends of Ciccio. They all crowded up the platform. Giuseppe had
+insisted that Ciccio should take second-class tickets. They were very early.
+Alvina and Ciccio were installed in a second-class compartment, with all their
+packages, Ciccio was pale, yellowish under his tawny skin, and nervous. He
+stood excitedly on the platform talking in Italian&mdash;or rather, in his own
+dialect&mdash;whilst Alvina sat quite still in her corner. Sometimes one of the
+women or one of the children came to say a few words to her, or Giuseppe
+hurried to her with illustrated papers. They treated her as if she were some
+sort of invalid or angel, now she was leaving. But most of their attention they
+gave to Ciccio, talking at him rapidly all at once, whilst he answered, and
+glanced in this way and that, under his fine lashes, and smiled his old,
+nervous, meaningless smile. He was curiously upset.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time came to shut the doors. The women and children kissed Alvina, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll be all right, eh? Going to Italy&mdash;!” And then profound and
+meaningful nods, which she could not interpret, but which were fraught surely
+with good-fellowship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they all kissed Ciccio. The men took him in their arms and kissed him on
+either cheek, the children lifted their faces in eager anticipation of the
+double kiss. Strange, how eager they were for this embrace&mdash;how they all
+kept taking Ciccio’s hand, one after the other, whilst he smiled constrainedly
+and nervously.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV<br/>
+THE JOURNEY ACROSS</h2>
+
+<p>
+The train began to move. Giuseppe ran alongside, holding Ciccio’s hand still;
+the women and children were crying and waving their handkerchiefs, the other
+men were shouting messages, making strange, eager gestures. And Alvina sat
+quite still, wonderingly. And so the big, heavy train drew out, leaving the
+others small and dim on the platform. It was foggy, the river was a sea of
+yellow beneath the ponderous iron bridge. The morning was dim and dank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train was very full. Next to Alvina sat a trim Frenchwoman reading
+<i>L’Aiglon</i>. There was a terrible encumbrance of packages and luggage
+everywhere. Opposite her sat Ciccio, his black overcoat open over his pale-grey
+suit, his black hat a little over his left eye. He glanced at her from time to
+time, smiling constrainedly. She remained very still. They ran through Bromley
+and out into the open country. It was grey, with shivers of grey sunshine. On
+the downs there was thin snow. The air in the train was hot, heavy with the
+crowd and tense with excitement and uneasiness. The train seemed to rush
+ponderously, massively, across the Weald.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so, through Folkestone to the sea. There was sun in the sky now, and white
+clouds, in the sort of hollow sky-dome above the grey earth with its horizon
+walls of fog. The air was still. The sea heaved with a sucking noise inside the
+dock. Alvina and Ciccio sat aft on the second-class deck, their bags near them.
+He put a white muffler round himself, Alvina hugged herself in her beaver scarf
+and muff. She looked tender and beautiful in her still vagueness, and Ciccio,
+hovering about her, was beautiful too, his estrangement gave him a certain
+wistful nobility which for the moment put him beyond all class inferiority. The
+passengers glanced at them across the magic of estrangement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sea was very still. The sun was fairly high in the open sky, where white
+cloud-tops showed against the pale, wintry blue. Across the sea came a silver
+sun-track. And Alvina and Ciccio looked at the sun, which stood a little to the
+right of the ship’s course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The sun!” said Ciccio, nodding towards the orb and smiling to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I love it,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled again, silently. He was strangely moved: she did not know why.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wind was cold over the wintry sea, though the sun’s beams were warm. They
+rose, walked round the cabins. Other ships were at sea&mdash;destroyers and
+battleships, grey, low, and sinister on the water. Then a tall bright schooner
+glimmered far down the channel. Some brown fishing smacks kept together. All
+was very still in the wintry sunshine of the Channel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they turned to walk to the stern of the boat. And Alvina’s heart suddenly
+contracted. She caught Ciccio’s arm, as the boat rolled gently. For there
+behind, behind all the sunshine, was England. England, beyond the water, rising
+with ash-grey, corpse-grey cliffs, and streaks of snow on the downs above.
+England, like a long, ash-grey coffin slowly submerging. She watched it,
+fascinated and terrified. It seemed to repudiate the sunshine, to remain
+unilluminated, long and ash-grey and dead, with streaks of snow like cerements.
+That was England! Her thoughts flew to Woodhouse, the grey centre of it all.
+Home!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heart died within her. Never had she felt so utterly strange and far-off.
+Ciccio at her side was as nothing, as spell-bound she watched, away off, behind
+all the sunshine and the sea, the grey, snow-streaked substance of England
+slowly receding and sinking, submerging. She felt she could not believe it. It
+was like looking at something else. What? It was like a long, ash-grey coffin,
+winter, slowly submerging in the sea. England?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned again to the sun. But clouds and veils were already weaving in the
+sky. The cold was beginning to soak in, moreover. She sat very still for a long
+time, almost an eternity. And when she looked round again there was only a bank
+of mist behind, beyond the sea: a bank of mist, and a few grey, stalking ships.
+She must watch for the coast of France.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there it was already, looming up grey and amorphous, patched with snow. It
+had a grey, heaped, sordid look in the November light. She had imagined
+Boulogne gay and brilliant. Whereas it was more grey and dismal than England.
+But not that magical, mystic, phantom look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ship slowly put about, and backed into the harbour. She watched the quay
+approach. Ciccio was gathering up the luggage. Then came the first cry one ever
+hears: “<i>Porteur! Porteur!</i> Want a <i>porteur</i>?” A porter in a blouse
+strung the luggage on his strap, and Ciccio and Alvina entered the crush for
+the exit and the passport inspection. There was a tense, eager, frightened
+crowd, and officials shouting directions in French and English. Alvina found
+herself at last before a table where bearded men in uniforms were splashing
+open the big pink sheets of the English passports: she felt strange and uneasy,
+that her passport was unimpressive and Italian. The official scrutinized her,
+and asked questions of Ciccio. Nobody asked her anything&mdash;she might have
+been Ciccio’s shadow. So they went through to the vast, crowded cavern of a
+Customs house, where they found their porter waving to them in the mob. Ciccio
+fought in the mob while the porter whisked off Alvina to get seats in the big
+train. And at last she was planted once more in a seat, with Ciccio’s place
+reserved beside her. And there she sat, looking across the railway lines at the
+harbour, in the last burst of grey sunshine. Men looked at her, officials
+stared at her, soldiers made remarks about her. And at last, after an eternity,
+Ciccio came along the platform, the porter trotting behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sat and ate the food they had brought, and drank wine and tea. And after
+weary hours the train set off through snow-patched country to Paris. Everywhere
+was crowded, the train was stuffy without being warm. Next to Alvina sat a
+large, fat, youngish Frenchman who overflowed over her in a hot fashion.
+Darkness began to fall. The train was very late. There were strange and
+frightening delays. Strange lights appeared in the sky, everybody seemed to be
+listening for strange noises. It was all such a whirl and confusion that Alvina
+lost count, relapsed into a sort of stupidity. Gleams, flashes, noises and then
+at last the frenzy of Paris.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was night, a black city, and snow falling, and no train that night across to
+the Gare de Lyon. In a state of semi-stupefaction after all the questionings
+and examinings and blusterings, they were finally allowed to go straight across
+Paris. But this meant another wild tussle with a Paris taxi-driver, in the
+filtering snow. So they were deposited in the Gare de Lyon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the first person who rushed upon them was Geoffrey, in a rather grimy
+private’s uniform. He had already seen some hard service, and had a wild,
+bewildered look. He kissed Ciccio and burst into tears on his shoulder, there
+in the great turmoil of the entrance hall of the Gare de Lyon. People looked,
+but nobody seemed surprised. Geoffrey sobbed, and the tears came silently down
+Ciccio’s cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve waited for you since five o’clock, and I’ve got to go back now. Ciccio!
+Ciccio! I wanted so badly to see you. I shall never see thee again, brother, my
+brother!” cried Gigi, and a sob shook him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gigi! Mon Gigi. Tu as done regu ma lettre?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yesterday. O Ciccio, Ciccio, I shall die without thee!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But no, Gigi, frère. You won’t die.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, Ciccio, I shall. I know I shall.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I say <i>no</i>, brother,” said Ciccio. But a spasm suddenly took him, he
+pulled off his hat and put it over his face and sobbed into it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Adieu, ami! Adieu!” cried Gigi, clutching the other man’s arm. Ciccio took his
+hat from his tear-stained face and put it on his head. Then the two men
+embraced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>Toujours à toi!</i>” said Geoffrey, with a strange, solemn salute in front
+of Ciccio and Alvina. Then he turned on his heel and marched rapidly out of the
+station, his soiled soldier’s overcoat flapping in the wind at the door. Ciccio
+watched him go. Then he turned and looked with haunted eyes into the eyes of
+Alvina. And then they hurried down the desolate platform in the darkness. Many
+people, Italians, largely, were camped waiting there, while bits of snow
+wavered down. Ciccio bought food and hired cushions. The train backed in. There
+was a horrible fight for seats, men scrambling through windows. Alvina got a
+place&mdash;but Ciccio had to stay in the corridor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the long night journey through France, slow and blind. The train was now
+so hot that the iron plate on the floor burnt Alvina’s feet. Outside she saw
+glimpses of snow. A fat Italian hotel-keeper put on a smoking cap, covered the
+light, and spread himself before Alvina. In the next carriage a child was
+screaming. It screamed all the night&mdash;all the way from Paris to Chambéry
+it screamed. The train came to sudden halts, and stood still in the snow. The
+hotel-keeper snored. Alvina became almost comatose, in the burning heat of the
+carriage. And again the train rumbled on. And again she saw glimpses of
+stations, glimpses of snow, through the chinks in the curtained windows. And
+again there was a jerk and a sudden halt, a drowsy mutter from the sleepers,
+somebody uncovering the light, and somebody covering it again, somebody looking
+out, somebody tramping down the corridor, the child screaming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The child belonged to two poor Italians&mdash;Milanese&mdash;a shred of a thin
+little man, and a rather loose woman. They had five tiny children, all boys:
+and the four who could stand on their feet all wore scarlet caps. The fifth was
+a baby. Alvina had seen a French official yelling at the poor shred of a young
+father on the platform.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When morning came, and the bleary people pulled the curtains, it was a clear
+dawn, and they were in the south of France. There was no sign of snow. The
+landscape was half southern, half Alpine. White houses with brownish tiles
+stood among almond trees and cactus. It was beautiful, and Alvina felt she had
+known it all before, in a happier life. The morning was graceful almost as
+spring. She went out in the corridor to talk to Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was on his feet with his back to the inner window, rolling slightly to the
+motion of the train. His face was pale, he had that sombre, haunted, unhappy
+look. Alvina, thrilled by the southern country, was smiling excitedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is my first morning abroad,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I love it here,” she said. “Isn’t this like Italy?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked darkly out of the window, and shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the sombre look remained on his face. She watched him. And her heart sank
+as she had never known it sink before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you thinking of Gigi?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her, with a faint, unhappy, bitter smile, but he said nothing. He
+seemed far off from her. A wild unhappiness beat inside her breast. She went
+down the corridor, away from him, to avoid this new agony, which after all was
+not her agony. She listened to the chatter of French and Italian in the
+corridor. She felt the excitement and terror of France, inside the railway
+carriage: and outside she saw white oxen slowly ploughing, beneath the
+lingering yellow poplars of the sub-Alps, she saw peasants looking up, she saw
+a woman holding a baby to her breast, watching the train, she saw the excited,
+yeasty crowds at the station. And they passed a river, and a great lake. And it
+all seemed bigger, nobler than England. She felt vaster influences spreading
+around, the Past was greater, more magnificent in these regions. For the first
+time the nostalgia of the vast Roman and classic world took possession of her.
+And she found it splendid. For the first time she opened her eyes on a
+continent, the Alpine core of a continent. And for the first time she realized
+what it was to escape from the smallish perfection of England, into the grander
+imperfection of a great continent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Near Chambéry they went down for breakfast to the restaurant car. And secretly,
+she was very happy. Ciccio’s distress made her uneasy. But underneath she was
+extraordinarily relieved and glad. Ciccio did not trouble her very much. The
+sense of the bigness of the lands about her, the excitement of travelling with
+Continental people, the pleasantness of her coffee and rolls and honey, the
+feeling that vast events were taking place&mdash;all this stimulated her. She
+had brushed, as it were, the fringe of the terror of the war and the invasion.
+Fear was seething around her. And yet she was excited and glad. The vast world
+was in one of its convulsions, and she was moving amongst it. Somewhere, she
+believed in the convulsion, the event elated her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train began to climb up to Modane. How wonderful the Alps were!&mdash;what
+a bigness, an unbreakable power was in the mountains! Up and up the train
+crept, and she looked at the rocky slopes, the glistening peaks of snow in the
+blue heaven, the hollow valleys with fir trees and low-roofed houses. There
+were quarries near the railway, and men working. There was a strange mountain
+town, dirty-looking. And still the train climbed up and up, in the hot morning
+sunshine, creeping slowly round the mountain loops, so that a little brown dog
+from one of the cottages ran alongside the train for a long way, barking at
+Alvina, even running ahead of the creeping, snorting train, and barking at the
+people ahead. Alvina, looking out, saw the two unfamiliar engines snorting out
+their smoke round the bend ahead. And the morning wore away to mid-day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio became excited as they neared Modane, the frontier station. His eye lit
+up again, he pulled himself together for the entrance into Italy. Slowly the
+train rolled in to the dismal station. And then a confusion indescribable, of
+porters and masses of luggage, the unspeakable crush and crowd at the customs
+barriers, the more intense crowd through the passport office, all like a
+madness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were out on the platform again, they had secured their places. Ciccio
+wanted to have luncheon in the station restaurant. They went through the
+passages. And there in the dirty station gang-ways and big corridors dozens of
+Italians were lying on the ground, men, women, children, camping with their
+bundles and packages in heaps. They were either emigrants or refugees. Alvina
+had never seen people herd about like cattle, dumb, brute cattle. It impressed
+her. She could not grasp that an Italian labourer would lie down just where he
+was tired, in the street, on a station, in any corner, like a dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the afternoon they were slipping down the Alps towards Turin. And everywhere
+was snow&mdash;deep, white, wonderful snow, beautiful and fresh, glistening in
+the afternoon light all down the mountain slopes, on the railway track, almost
+seeming to touch the train. And twilight was falling. And at the stations
+people crowded in once more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been dark a long time when they reached Turin. Many people alighted from
+the train, many surged to get in. But Ciccio and Alvina had seats side by side.
+They were becoming tired now. But they were in Italy. Once more they went down
+for a meal. And then the train set off again in the night for Alessandria and
+Genoa, Pisa and Rome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was night, the train ran better, there was a more easy sense in Italy.
+Ciccio talked a little with other travelling companions. And Alvina settled her
+cushion, and slept more or less till Genoa. After the long wait at Genoa she
+dozed off again. She woke to see the sea in the moonlight beneath her&mdash;a
+lovely silvery sea, coming right to the carriage. The train seemed to be
+tripping on the edge of the Mediterranean, round bays, and between dark rocks
+and under castles, a night-time fairy-land, for hours. She watched spell-bound:
+spell-bound by the magic of the world itself. And she thought to herself:
+“Whatever life may be, and whatever horror men have made of it, the world is a
+lovely place, a magic place, something to marvel over. The world is an amazing
+place.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This thought dozed her off again. Yet she had a consciousness of tunnels and
+hills and of broad marshes pallid under a moon and a coming dawn. And in the
+dawn there was Pisa. She watched the word hanging in the station in the
+dimness: “Pisa.” Ciccio told her people were changing for Florence. It all
+seemed wonderful to her&mdash;wonderful. She sat and watched the black
+station&mdash;then she heard the sound of the child’s trumpet. And it did not
+occur to her to connect the train’s moving on with the sound of the trumpet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she saw the golden dawn, a golden sun coming out of level country. She
+loved it. She loved being in Italy. She loved the lounging carelessness of the
+train, she liked having Italian money, hearing the Italians round
+her&mdash;though they were neither as beautiful nor as melodious as she
+expected. She loved watching the glowing antique landscape. She read and read
+again: “E pericoloso sporgersi,” and “E vietato fumare,” and the other little
+magical notices on the carriages. Ciccio told her what they meant, and how to
+say them. And sympathetic Italians opposite at once asked him if they were
+married and who and what his bride was, and they gazed at her with bright,
+approving eyes, though she felt terribly bedraggled and travel-worn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You come from England? Yes! Nice contry!” said a man in a corner, leaning
+forward to make this display of his linguistic capacity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not so nice as this,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina repeated herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not so nice? Oh? No! Fog, eh!” The fat man whisked his fingers in the air, to
+indicate fog in the atmosphere. “But nice contry!
+Very&mdash;<i>convenient</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat up in triumph, having achieved this word. And the conversation once more
+became a spatter of Italian. The women were very interested. They looked at
+Alvina, at every atom of her. And she divined that they were wondering if she
+was already with child. Sure enough, they were asking Ciccio in Italian if she
+was “making him a baby.” But he shook his head and did not know, just a bit
+constrained. So they ate slices of sausages and bread and fried rice-balls,
+with wonderfully greasy fingers, and they drank red wine in big throatfuls out
+of bottles, and they offered their fare to Ciccio and Alvina, and were charmed
+when she said to Ciccio she <i>would</i> have some bread and sausage. He picked
+the strips off the sausage for her with his fingers, and made her a sandwich
+with a roll. The women watched her bite it, and bright-eyed and pleased they
+said, nodding their heads&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Buono? Buono?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she, who knew this word, understood, and replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, good! Buono!” nodding her head likewise. Which caused immense
+satisfaction. The women showed the whole paper of sausage slices, and nodded
+and beamed and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Se vuole ancora&mdash;!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Alvina bit her wide sandwich, and smiled, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, awfully nice!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the women looked at each other and said something, and Ciccio interposed,
+shaking his head. But one woman ostentatiously wiped a bottle mouth with a
+clean handkerchief, and offered the bottle to Alvina, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Vino buono. Vecchio! Vecchio!” nodding violently and indicating that she
+should drink. She looked at Ciccio, and he looked back at her, doubtingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I drink some?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you like,” he replied, making an Italian gesture of indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she drank some of the wine, and it dribbled on to her chin. She was not good
+at managing a bottle. But she liked the feeling of warmth it gave her. She was
+very tired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Si piace? Piace?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you like it,” interpreted Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, very much. What is very much?” she asked of Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Molto.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Si, molto. Of course, I knew molto, from, music,” she added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women made noises, and smiled and nodded, and so the train pulsed on till
+they came to Rome. There was again, the wild scramble with luggage, a general
+leave taking, and then the masses of people on the station at Rome. <i>Roma!
+Roma!</i> What was it to Alvina but a name, and a crowded, excited station, and
+Ciccio running after the luggage, and the pair of them eating in a station
+restaurant?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost immediately after eating, they were in the train once more, with new
+fellow travellers, running south this time towards Naples. In a daze of
+increasing weariness Alvina watched the dreary, to her sordid-seeming Campagna
+that skirts the railway, the broken aqueduct trailing in the near distance over
+the stricken plain. She saw a tram-car, far out from everywhere, running up to
+cross the railway. She saw it was going to Frascati.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And slowly the hills approached&mdash;they passed the vines of the foothills,
+the reeds, and were among the mountains. Wonderful little towns perched
+fortified on rocks and peaks, mountains rose straight up off the level plain,
+like old topographical prints, rivers wandered in the wild, rocky places, it
+all seemed ancient and shaggy, savage still, under all its remote civilization,
+this region of the Alban Mountains south of Rome. So the train clambered up and
+down, and went round corners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had not far to go now. Alvina was almost too tired to care what it would
+be like. They were going to Ciccio’s native village. They were to stay in the
+house of his uncle, his mother’s brother. This uncle had been a model in
+London. He had built a house on the land left by Ciccio’s grandfather. He lived
+alone now, for his wife was dead and his children were abroad. Giuseppe was his
+son: Giuseppe of Battersea, in whose house Alvina had stayed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This much Alvina knew. She knew that a portion of the land down at
+Pescocalascio belonged to Ciccio: a bit of half-savage, ancient earth that had
+been left to his mother by old Francesco Califano, her hard-grinding peasant
+father. This land remained integral in the property, and was worked by Ciccio’s
+two uncles, Pancrazio and Giovanni. Pancrazio was the well-to-do uncle, who had
+been a model and had built a “villa.” Giovanni was not much good. That was how
+Ciccio put it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They expected Pancrazio to meet them at the station. Ciccio collected his
+bundles and put his hat straight and peered out of the window into the steep
+mountains of the afternoon. There was a town in the opening between steep
+hills, a town on a flat plain that ran into the mountains like a gulf. The
+train drew up. They had arrived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina was so tired she could hardly climb down to the platform. It was about
+four o’clock. Ciccio looked up and down for Pancrazio, but could not see him.
+So he put his luggage into a pile on the platform, told Alvina to stand by it,
+whilst he went off for the registered boxes. A porter came and asked her
+questions, of which she understood nothing. Then at last came Ciccio,
+shouldering one small trunk, whilst a porter followed, shouldering another. Out
+they trotted, leaving Alvina abandoned with the pile of hand luggage. She
+waited. The train drew out. Ciccio and the porter came bustling back. They took
+her out through the little gate, to where, in the flat desert space behind the
+railway, stood two great drab motor-omnibuses, and a rank of open carriages.
+Ciccio was handing up the handbags to the roof of one of the big
+post-omnibuses. When it was finished the man on the roof came down, and Ciccio
+gave him and the station porter each sixpence. The station-porter immediately
+threw his coin on the ground with a gesture of indignant contempt, spread his
+arms wide and expostulated violently. Ciccio expostulated back again, and they
+pecked at each other, verbally, like two birds. It ended by the rolling up of
+the burly, black moustached driver of the omnibus. Whereupon Ciccio quite
+amicably gave the porter two nickel twopences in addition to the sixpence,
+whereupon the porter quite lovingly wished him “buon’ viaggio.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Alvina was stowed into the body of the omnibus, with Ciccio at her side.
+They were no sooner seated than a voice was heard, in beautifully-modulated
+English:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are here! Why how have I missed you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Pancrazio, a smallish, rather battered-looking, shabby Italian of sixty
+or more, with a big moustache and reddish-rimmed eyes and a deeply-lined face.
+He was presented to Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How have I missed you?” he said. “I was on the station when the train came,
+and I did not see you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was evident he had taken wine. He had no further opportunity to talk.
+The compartment was full of large, mountain-peasants with black hats and big
+cloaks and overcoats. They found Pancrazio a seat at the far end, and there he
+sat, with his deeply-lined, impassive face and slightly glazed eyes. He had
+yellow-brown eyes like Ciccio. But in the uncle the eyelids dropped in a
+curious, heavy way, the eyes looked dull like those of some old, rakish
+tom-cat, they were slightly rimmed with red. A curious person! And his English,
+though slow, was beautifully pronounced. He glanced at Alvina with slow,
+impersonal glances, not at all a stare. And he sat for the most part impassive
+and abstract as a Red Indian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the last moment a large black priest was crammed in, and the door shut
+behind him. Every available seat was let down and occupied. The second great
+post-omnibus rolled away, and then the one for Mola followed, rolling Alvina
+and Ciccio over the next stage of their journey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun was already slanting to the mountain tops, shadows were falling on the
+gulf of the plain. The omnibus charged at a great speed along a straight white
+road, which cut through the cultivated level straight towards the core of the
+mountain. By the road-side, peasant men in cloaks, peasant women in
+full-gathered dresses with white bodices or blouses having great full sleeves,
+tramped in the ridge of grass, driving cows or goats, or leading heavily-laden
+asses. The women had coloured kerchiefs on their heads, like the women Alvina
+remembered at the Sunday-School treats, who used to tell fortunes with green
+little love-birds. And they all tramped along towards the blue shadow of the
+closing-in mountains, leaving the peaks of the town behind on the left.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At a branch-road the ’bus suddenly stopped, and there it sat calmly in the road
+beside an icy brook, in the falling twilight. Great moth-white oxen waved past,
+drawing a long, low load of wood; the peasants left behind began to come up
+again, in picturesque groups. The icy brook tinkled, goats, pigs and cows
+wandered and shook their bells along the grassy borders of the road and the
+flat, unbroken fields, being driven slowly home. Peasants jumped out of the
+omnibus on to the road, to chat&mdash;and a sharp air came in. High overhead,
+as the sun went down, was the curious icy radiance of snow mountains, and a
+pinkness, while shadow deepened in the valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, after about half an hour, the youth who was conductor of the omnibus
+came running down the wild side-road, everybody clambered in, and away the
+vehicle charged, into the neck of the plain. With a growl and a rush it swooped
+up the first loop of the ascent. Great precipices rose on the right, the
+ruddiness of sunset above them. The road wound and swirled, trying to get up
+the pass. The omnibus pegged slowly up, then charged round a corner, swirled
+into another loop, and pegged heavily once more. It seemed dark between the
+closing-in mountains. The rocks rose very high, the road looped and swerved
+from one side of the wide defile to the other, the vehicle pulsed and
+persisted. Sometimes there was a house, sometimes a wood of oak-trees,
+sometimes the glimpse of a ravine, then the tall white glisten of snow above
+the earthly blackness. And still they went on and on, up the darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peering ahead, Alvina thought she saw the hollow between the peaks, which was
+the top of the pass. And every time the omnibus took a new turn, she thought it
+was coming out on the top of this hollow between the heights. But no&mdash;the
+road coiled right away again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wild little village came in sight. This was the destination. Again no. Only
+the tall, handsome mountain youth who had sat across from her, descended
+grumbling because the ’bus had brought him past his road, the driver having
+refused to pull up. Everybody expostulated with him, and he dropped into the
+shadow. The big priest squeezed into his place. The ’bus wound on and on, and
+always towards that hollow sky-line between the high peaks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last they ran up between buildings nipped between high rock-faces, and out
+into a little market-place, the crown of the pass. The luggage was got out and
+lifted down. Alvina descended. There she was, in a wild centre of an old,
+unfinished little mountain town. The façade of a church rose from a small
+eminence. A white road ran to the right, where a great open valley showed
+faintly beyond and beneath. Low, squalid sort of buildings stood
+around&mdash;with some high buildings. And there were bare little trees. The
+stars were in the sky, the air was icy. People stood darkly, excitedly about,
+women with an odd, shell-pattern head-dress of gofered linen, something like a
+parlour-maid’s cap, came and stared hard. They were hard-faced mountain women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pancrazio was talking to Ciccio in dialect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I couldn’t get a cart to come down,” he said in English. “But I shall find one
+here. Now what will you do? Put the luggage in Grazia’s place while you
+wait?&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went across the open place to a sort of shop called the Post Restaurant.
+It was a little hole with an earthen floor and a smell of cats. Three crones
+were sitting over a low brass brazier, in which charcoal and ashes smouldered.
+Men were drinking. Ciccio ordered coffee with rum&mdash;and the hard-faced
+Grazia, in her unfresh head-dress, dabbled the little dirty coffee-cups in
+dirty water, took the coffee-pot out of the ashes, poured in the old black
+boiling coffee three parts full, and slopped the cup over with rum. Then she
+dashed in a spoonful of sugar, to add to the pool in the saucer, and her
+customers were served.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, Ciccio drank up, so Alvina did likewise, burning her lips smartly.
+Ciccio paid and ducked his way out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now what will you buy?” asked Pancrazio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Buy?” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Food,” said Pancrazio. “Have you brought food?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they trailed up stony dark ways to a butcher, and got a big red slice of
+meat; to a baker, and got enormous flat loaves. Sugar and coffee they bought.
+And Pancrazio lamented in his elegant English that no butter was to be
+obtained. Everywhere the hard-faced women came and stared into Alvina’s face,
+asking questions. And both Ciccio and Pancrazio answered rather coldly, with
+some <i>hauteur</i>. There was evidently not too much intimacy between the
+people of Pescocalascio and these semi-townfolk of Ossona. Alvina felt as if
+she were in a strange, hostile country, in the darkness of the savage little
+mountain town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last they were ready. They mounted into a two-wheeled cart, Alvina and
+Ciccio behind, Pancrazio and the driver in front, the luggage promiscuous. The
+bigger things were left for the morrow. It was icy cold, with a flashing
+darkness. The moon would not rise till later.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so, without any light but that of the stars, the cart went spanking and
+rattling downhill, down the pale road which wound down the head of the valley
+to the gulf of darkness below. Down in the darkness into the darkness they
+rattled, wildly, and without heed, the young driver making strange noises to
+his dim horse, cracking a whip and asking endless questions of Pancrazio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina sat close to Ciccio. He remained almost impassive. The wind was cold,
+the stars flashed. And they rattled down the rough, broad road under the rocks,
+down and down in the darkness. Ciccio sat crouching forwards, staring ahead.
+Alvina was aware of mountains, rocks, and stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I didn’t know it was so <i>wild</i>!” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is not much,” he said. There was a sad, plangent note in his voice. He put
+his hand upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t like it?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think it’s lovely&mdash;wonderful,” she said, dazed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held her passionately. But she did not feel she needed protecting. It was
+all wonderful and amazing to her. She could not understand why he seemed upset
+and in a sort of despair. To her there was magnificence in the lustrous stars
+and the steepnesses, magic, rather terrible and grand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They came down to the level valley bed, and went rolling along. There was a
+house, and a lurid red fire burning outside against the wall, and dark figures
+about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is that?” she said. “What are they doing?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” said Ciccio. “Cosa fanno li&mdash;eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ka&mdash;? Fanno il buga’&mdash;” said the driver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They are doing some washing,” said Pancrazio, explanatory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Washing!” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Boiling the clothes,” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the cart rattled and bumped, in the cold night, down the high-way in the
+valley. Alvina could make out the darkness of the slopes. Overhead she saw the
+brilliance of Orion. She felt she was quite, quite lost. She had gone out of
+the world, over the border, into some place of mystery. She was lost to
+Woodhouse, to Lancaster, to England&mdash;all lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They passed through a darkness of woods, with a swift sound of cold water. And
+then suddenly the cart pulled up. Some one came out of a lighted doorway in the
+darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We must get down here&mdash;the cart doesn’t go any further,” said Pancrazio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are we there?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, it is about a mile. But we must leave the cart.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio asked questions in Italian. Alvina climbed down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-evening! Are you cold?” came a loud, raucous, American-Italian female
+voice. It was another relation of Ciccio’s. Alvina stared and looked at the
+handsome, sinister, raucous-voiced young woman who stood in the light of the
+doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Rather cold,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come in, and warm yourself,” said the young woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My sister’s husband lives here,” explained Pancrazio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina went through the doorway into the room. It was a sort of inn. On the
+earthen floor glowed a great round pan of charcoal, which looked like a flat
+pool of fire. Men in hats and cloaks sat at a table playing cards by the light
+of a small lamp, a man was pouring wine. The room seemed like a cave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Warm yourself,” said the young woman, pointing to the flat disc of fire on the
+floor. She put a chair up to it, and Alvina sat down. The men in the room
+stared, but went on noisily with their cards. Ciccio came in with luggage. Men
+got up and greeted him effusively, watching Alvina between whiles as if she
+were some alien creature. Words of American sounded among the Italian dialect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There seemed to be a confab of some sort, aside. Ciccio came and said to her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They want to know if we will stay the night here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would rather go on home,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He averted his face at the word home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You see,” said Pancrazio, “I think you might be more comfortable here, than in
+my poor house. You see I have no woman to care for it&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina glanced round the cave of a room, at the rough fellows in their black
+hats. She was thinking how she would be “more comfortable” here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would rather go on,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then we will get the donkey,” said Pancrazio stoically. And Alvina followed
+him out on to the high-road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From a shed issued a smallish, brigand-looking fellow carrying a lantern. He
+had his cloak over his nose and his hat over his eyes. His legs were bundled
+with white rag, crossed and crossed with hide straps, and he was shod in silent
+skin sandals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is my brother Giovanni,” said Pancrazio. “He is not quite sensible.” Then
+he broke into a loud flood of dialect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giovanni touched his hat to Alvina, and gave the lantern to Pancrazio. Then he
+disappeared, returning in a few moments with the ass. Ciccio came out with the
+baggage, and by the light of the lantern the things were slung on either side
+of the ass, in a rather precarious heap. Pancrazio tested the rope again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There! Go on, and I shall come in a minute.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay-er-er!” cried Giovanni at the ass, striking the flank of the beast. Then he
+took the leading rope and led up on the dark high-way, stalking with his dingy
+white legs under his muffled cloak, leading the ass. Alvina noticed the shuffle
+of his skin-sandalled feet, the quiet step of the ass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She walked with Ciccio near the side of the road. He carried the lantern. The
+ass with its load plodded a few steps ahead. There were trees on the road-side,
+and a small channel of invisible but noisy water. Big rocks jutted sometimes.
+It was freezing, the mountain high-road was congealed. High stars flashed
+overhead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How strange it is!” said Alvina to Ciccio. “Are you glad you have come home?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It isn’t my home,” he replied, as if the word fretted him. “Yes, I like to see
+it again. But it isn’t the place for young people to live in. You will see how
+you like it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered at his uneasiness. It was the same in Pancrazio. The latter now
+came running to catch them up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think you will be tired,” he said. “You ought to have stayed at my
+relation’s house down there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I am not tired,” said Alvina. “But I’m hungry.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, we shall eat something when we come to my house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They plodded in the darkness of the valley high-road. Pancrazio took the
+lantern and went to examine the load, hitching the ropes. A great flat loaf
+fell out, and rolled away, and smack came a little valise. Pancrazio broke into
+a flood of dialect to Giovanni, handing him the lantern. Ciccio picked up the
+bread and put it under his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Break me a little piece,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in the darkness they both chewed bread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a while, Pancrazio halted with the ass just ahead, and took the lantern
+from Giovanni.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We must leave the road here,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with the lantern he carefully, courteously showed Alvina a small track
+descending in the side of the bank, between bushes. Alvina ventured down the
+steep descent, Pancrazio following showing a light. In the rear was Giovanni,
+making noises at the ass. They all picked their way down into the great
+white-bouldered bed of a mountain river. It was a wide, strange bed of dry
+boulders, pallid under the stars. There was a sound of a rushing river,
+glacial-sounding. The place seemed wild and desolate. In the distance was a
+darkness of bushes, along the far shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pancrazio swinging the lantern, they threaded their way through the uneven
+boulders till they came to the river itself&mdash;not very wide, but rushing
+fast. A long, slender, drooping plank crossed over. Alvina crossed rather
+tremulous, followed by Pancrazio with the light, and Ciccio with the bread and
+the valise. They could hear the click of the ass and the ejaculations of
+Giovanni.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pancrazio went back over the stream with the light. Alvina saw the dim ass come
+up, wander uneasily to the stream, plant his fore legs, and sniff the water,
+his nose right down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Er! Err!” cried Pancrazio, striking the beast on the flank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it only lifted its nose and turned aside. It would not take the stream.
+Pancrazio seized the leading rope angrily and turned upstream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why were donkeys made! They are beasts without sense,” his voice floated
+angrily across the chill darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio laughed. He and Alvina stood in the wide, stony river-bed, in the strong
+starlight, watching the dim figures of the ass and the men crawl upstream with
+the lantern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the same performance, the white muzzle of the ass stooping down to sniff
+the water suspiciously, his hind-quarters tilted up with the load. Again the
+angry yells and blows from Pancrazio. And the ass seemed to be taking the
+water. But no! After a long deliberation he drew back. Angry language sounded
+through the crystal air. The group with the lantern moved again upstream,
+becoming smaller.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina and Ciccio stood and watched. The lantern looked small up the distance.
+But there&mdash;a clocking, shouting, splashing sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He is going over,” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pancrazio came hurrying back to the plank with the lantern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh the stupid beast! I could kill him!” cried he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isn’t he used to the water?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, he is. But he won’t go except where he thinks he will go. You might kill
+him before he should go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They picked their way across the river bed, to the wild scrub and bushes of the
+farther side. There they waited for the ass, which came up clicking over the
+boulders, led by the patient Giovanni. And then they took a difficult, rocky
+track ascending between banks. Alvina felt the uneven scramble a great effort.
+But she got up. Again they waited for the ass. And then again they struck off
+to the right, under some trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A house appeared dimly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is that it?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. It belongs to me. But that is not my house. A few steps further. Now we
+are on my land.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were treading a rough sort of grass-land&mdash;and still climbing. It
+ended in a sudden little scramble between big stones, and suddenly they were on
+the threshold of a quite important-looking house: but it was all dark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” exclaimed Pancrazio, “they have done nothing that I told them.” He made
+queer noises of exasperation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What?” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Neither made a fire nor anything. Wait a minute&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ass came up. Ciccio, Alvina, Giovanni and the ass waited in the frosty
+starlight under the wild house. Pancrazio disappeared round the back. Ciccio
+talked to Giovanni. He seemed uneasy, as if he felt depressed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pancrazio returned with the lantern, and opened the big door. Alvina followed
+him into a stone-floored, wide passage, where stood farm implements, where a
+little of straw and beans lay in a corner, and whence rose bare wooden stairs.
+So much she saw in the glimpse of lantern-light, as Pancrazio pulled the string
+and entered the kitchen: a dim-walled room with a vaulted roof and a great
+dark, open hearth, fireless: a bare room, with a little rough dark furniture:
+an unswept stone floor: iron-barred windows, rather small, in the
+deep-thickness of the wall, one-half shut with a drab shutter. It was rather
+like a room on the stage, gloomy, not meant to be lived in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will make a light,” said Pancrazio, taking a lamp from the mantel-piece, and
+proceeding to wind it up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio stood behind Alvina, silent. He had put down the bread and valise on a
+wooden chest. She turned to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s a beautiful room,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which, with its high, vaulted roof, its dirty whitewash, its great black
+chimney, it really was. But Ciccio did not understand. He smiled gloomily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lamp was lighted. Alvina looked round in wonder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now I will make a fire. You, Ciccio, will help Giovanni with the donkey,” said
+Pancrazio, scuttling with the lantern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina looked at the room. There was a wooden settle in front of the hearth,
+stretching its back to the room. There was a little table under a square,
+recessed window, on whose sloping ledge were newspapers, scattered letters,
+nails and a hammer. On the table were dried beans and two maize cobs. In a
+corner were shelves, with two chipped enamel plates, and a small table
+underneath, on which stood a bucket of water with a dipper. Then there was a
+wooden chest, two little chairs, and a litter of faggots, cane, vine-twigs,
+bare maize-hubs, oak-twigs filling the corner by the hearth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pancrazio came scrambling in with fresh faggots.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They have not done what I told them, the tiresome people!” he said. “I told
+them to make a fire and prepare the house. You will be uncomfortable in my poor
+home. I have no woman, nothing, everything is wrong&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He broke the pieces of cane and kindled them in the hearth. Soon there was a
+good blaze. Ciccio came in with the bags and the food.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I had better go upstairs and take my things off,” said Alvina. “I am so
+hungry.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You had better keep your coat on,” said Pancrazio. “The room is cold.” Which
+it was, ice-cold. She shuddered a little. She took off her hat and fur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall we fry some meat?” said Pancrazio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took a frying-pan, found lard in the wooden chest&mdash;it was the
+food-chest&mdash;and proceeded to fry pieces of meat in a frying-pan over the
+fire. Alvina wanted to lay the table. But there was no cloth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We will sit here, as I do, to eat,” said Pancrazio. He produced two enamel
+plates and one soup-plate, three penny iron forks and two old knives, and a
+little grey, coarse salt in a wooden bowl. These he placed on the seat of the
+settle in front of the fire. Ciccio was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The settle was dark and greasy. Alvina feared for her clothes. But she sat with
+her enamel plate and her impossible fork, a piece of meat and a chunk of bread,
+and ate. It was difficult&mdash;but the food was good, and the fire blazed.
+Only there was a film of wood-smoke in the room, rather smarting. Ciccio sat on
+the settle beside her, and ate in large mouthfuls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think it’s fun,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her with dark, haunted, gloomy eyes. She wondered what was the
+matter with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you think it’s fun?” she said, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t like it,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not?” she cried, in panic lest he prophesied truly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pancrazio scuttled in and out with the lantern. He brought wrinkled pears, and
+green, round grapes, and walnuts, on a white cloth, and presented them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think my pears are still good,” he said. “You must eat them, and excuse my
+uncomfortable house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giovanni came in with a big bowl of soup and a bottle of milk. There was room
+only for three on the settle before the hearth. He pushed his chair among the
+litter of fire-kindling, and sat down. He had bright, bluish eyes, and a
+fattish face&mdash;was a man of about fifty, but had a simple, kindly, slightly
+imbecile face. All the men kept their hats on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The soup was from Giovanni’s cottage. It was for Pancrazio and him. But there
+was only one spoon. So Pancrazio ate a dozen spoonfuls, and handed the bowl to
+Giovanni&mdash;who protested and tried to refuse&mdash;but accepted, and ate
+ten spoonfuls, then handed the bowl back to his brother, with the spoon. So
+they finished the bowl between them. Then Pancrazio found wine&mdash;a whitish
+wine, not very good, for which he apologized. And he invited Alvina to coffee.
+Which she accepted gladly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For though the fire was warm in front, behind was very cold. Pancrazio stuck a
+long pointed stick down the handle of a saucepan, and gave this utensil to
+Ciccio, to hold over the fire and scald the milk, whilst he put the tin
+coffee-pot in the ashes. He took a long iron tube or blow-pipe, which rested on
+two little feet at the far end. This he gave to Giovanni to blow the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giovanni was a fire-worshipper. His eyes sparkled as he took the blowing tube.
+He put fresh faggots behind the fire&mdash;though Pancrazio forbade him. He
+arranged the burning faggots. And then softly he blew a red-hot fire for the
+coffee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Basta! Basta!” said Ciccio. But Giovanni blew on, his eyes sparkling, looking
+to Alvina. He was making the fire beautiful for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was one cup, one enamelled mug, one little bowl. This was the
+coffee-service. Pancrazio noisily ground the coffee. He seemed to do
+everything, old, stooping as he was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Giovanni took his leave&mdash;the kettle which hung on the hook over
+the fire was boiling over. Ciccio burnt his hand lifting it off. And at last,
+at last Alvina could go to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pancrazio went first with the candle&mdash;then Ciccio with the black
+kettle&mdash;then Alvina. The men still had their hats on. Their boots tramped
+noisily on the bare stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bedroom was very cold. It was a fair-sized room with a concrete floor and
+white walls, and window-door opening on a little balcony. There were two high
+white beds on opposite sides of the room. The wash-stand was a little tripod
+thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The air was very cold, freezing, the stone floor was dead cold to the feet.
+Ciccio sat down on a chair and began to take off his boots. She went to the
+window. The moon had risen. There was a flood of light on dazzling white snow
+tops, glimmering and marvellous in the evanescent night. She went out for a
+moment on to the balcony. It was a wonder-world: the moon over the snow
+heights, the pallid valley-bed away below; the river hoarse, and round about
+her, scrubby, blue-dark foothills with twiggy trees. Magical it all
+was&mdash;but so cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You had better shut the door,” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came indoors. She was dead tired, and stunned with cold, and hopelessly
+dirty after that journey. Ciccio had gone to bed without washing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why does the bed rustle?” she asked him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was stuffed with dry maize-leaves, the dry sheathes from the
+cobs&mdash;stuffed enormously high. He rustled like a snake among dead foliage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina washed her hands. There was nothing to do with the water but throw it
+out of the door. Then she washed her face, thoroughly, in good hot water. What
+a blessed relief! She sighed as she dried herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It does one good!” she sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio watched her as she quickly brushed her hair. She was almost stupefied
+with weariness and the cold, bruising air. Blindly she crept into the high,
+rustling bed. But it was made high in the middle. And it was icy cold. It
+shocked her almost as if she had fallen into water. She shuddered, and became
+semi-conscious with fatigue. The blankets were heavy, heavy. She was dazed with
+excitement and wonder. She felt vaguely that Ciccio was miserable, and wondered
+why.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She woke with a start an hour or so later. The moon was in the room. She did
+not know where she was. And she was frightened. And she was cold. A real terror
+took hold of her. Ciccio in his bed was quite still. Everything seemed electric
+with horror. She felt she would die instantly, everything was so terrible
+around her. She could not move. She felt that everything around her was
+horrific, extinguishing her, putting her out. Her very being was threatened. In
+another instant she would be transfixed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Making a violent effort she sat up. The silence of Ciccio in his bed was as
+horrible as the rest of the night. She had a horror of him also. What would she
+do, where should she flee? She was lost&mdash;lost&mdash;lost utterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The knowledge sank into her like ice. Then deliberately she got out of bed and
+went across to him. He was horrible and frightening, but he was warm. She felt
+his power and his warmth invade her and extinguish her. The mad and desperate
+passion that was in him sent her completely unconscious again, completely
+unconscious.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV<br/>
+THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO</h2>
+
+<p>
+There is no mistake about it, Alvina was a lost girl. She was cut off from
+everything she belonged to. Ovid isolated in Thrace might well lament. The soul
+itself needs its own mysterious nourishment. This nourishment lacking, nothing
+is well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Pescocalascio it was the mysterious influence of the mountains and valleys
+themselves which seemed always to be annihilating the Englishwoman: nay, not
+only her, but the very natives themselves. Ciccio and Pancrazio clung to her,
+essentially, as if she saved them also from extinction. It needed all her
+courage. Truly, she had to support the souls of the two men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first she did not realize. She was only stunned with the strangeness of it
+all: startled, half-enraptured with the terrific beauty of the place,
+half-horrified by its savage annihilation of her. But she was stunned. The days
+went by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seems there are places which resist us, which have the power to overthrow
+our psychic being. It seems as if every country has its potent negative
+centres, localities which savagely and triumphantly refuse our living culture.
+And Alvina had struck one of them, here on the edge of the Abruzzi.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was not in the village of Pescocalascio itself. That was a long hour’s walk
+away. Pancrazio’s house was the chief of a tiny hamlet of three houses, called
+Califano because the Califanos had made it. There was the ancient, savage hole
+of a house, quite windowless, where Pancrazio and Ciccio’s mother had been
+born: the family home. Then there was Pancrazio’s villa. And then, a little
+below, another newish, modern house in a sort of wild meadow, inhabited by the
+peasants who worked the land. Ten minutes’ walk away was another cluster of
+seven or eight houses, where Giovanni lived. But there was no shop, no post
+nearer than Pescocalascio, an hour’s heavy road up deep and rocky, wearying
+tracks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet, what could be more lovely than the sunny days: pure, hot, blue days
+among the mountain foothills: irregular, steep little hills half wild with
+twiggy brown oak-trees and marshes and broom heaths, half cultivated, in a
+wild, scattered fashion. Lovely, in the lost hollows beyond a marsh, to see
+Ciccio slowly ploughing with two great white oxen: lovely to go with Pancrazio
+down to the wild scrub that bordered the river-bed, then over the
+white-bouldered, massive desert and across stream to the other scrubby savage
+shore, and so up to the high-road. Pancrazio was very happy if Alvina would
+accompany him. He liked it that she was not afraid. And her sense of the beauty
+of the place was an infinite relief to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing could have been more marvellous than the winter twilight. Sometimes
+Alvina and Pancrazio were late returning with the ass. And then gingerly the
+ass would step down the steep banks, already beginning to freeze when the sun
+went down. And again and again he would balk the stream, while a violet-blue
+dusk descended on the white, wide stream-bed, and the scrub and lower hills
+became dark, and in heaven, oh, almost unbearably lovely, the snow of the near
+mountains was burning rose, against the dark-blue heavens. How unspeakably
+lovely it was, no one could ever tell, the grand, pagan twilight of the
+valleys, savage, cold, with a sense of ancient gods who knew the right for
+human sacrifice. It stole away the soul of Alvina. She felt transfigured in it,
+clairvoyant in another mystery of life. A savage hardness came in her heart.
+The gods who had demanded human sacrifice were quite right, immutably right.
+The fierce, savage gods who dipped their lips in blood, these were the true
+gods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The terror, the agony, the nostalgia of the heathen past was a constant torture
+to her mediumistic soul. She did not know what it was. But it was a kind of
+neuralgia in the very soul, never to be located in the human body, and yet
+physical. Coming over the brow of a heathy, rocky hillock, and seeing Ciccio
+beyond leaning deep over the plough, in his white shirt-sleeves following the
+slow, waving, moth-pale oxen across a small track of land turned up in the
+heathen hollow, her soul would go all faint, she would almost swoon with
+realization of the world that had gone before. And Ciccio was so silent, there
+seemed so much dumb magic and anguish in him, as if he were for ever afraid of
+himself and the thing he was. He seemed, in his silence, to <i>concentrate</i>
+upon her so terribly. She believed she would not live.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes she would go gathering acorns, large, fine acorns, a precious crop in
+that land where the fat pig was almost an object of veneration. Silently she
+would crouch filling the pannier. And far off she would hear the sound of
+Giovanni chopping wood, of Ciccio calling to the oxen or Pancrazio making
+noises to the ass, or the sound of a peasant’s mattock. Over all the constant
+speech of the passing river, and the real breathing presence of the upper
+snows. And a wild, terrible happiness would take hold of her, beyond despair,
+but very like despair. No one would ever find her. She had gone beyond the
+world into the pre-world, she had reopened on the old eternity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Maria, the little elvish old wife of Giovanni, would come up with the
+cows. One cow she held by a rope round its horns, and she hauled it from the
+patches of young corn into the rough grass, from the little plantation of trees
+in among the heath. Maria wore the full-pleated white-sleeved dress of the
+peasants, and a red kerchief on her head. But her dress was dirty, and her face
+was dirty, and the big gold rings of her ears hung from ears which perhaps had
+never been washed. She was rather smoke-dried too, from perpetual wood-smoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maria in her red kerchief hauling the white cow, and screaming at it, would
+come laughing towards Alvina, who was rather afraid of cows. And then,
+screaming high in dialect, Maria would talk to her. Alvina smiled and tried to
+understand. Impossible. It was not strictly a human speech. It was rather like
+the crying of half-articulate animals. It certainly was not Italian. And yet
+Alvina by dint of constant hearing began to pick up the coagulated phrases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She liked Maria. She liked them all. They were all very kind to her, as far as
+they knew. But they did not know. And they were kind with each other. For they
+all seemed lost, like lost, forlorn aborigines, and they treated Alvina as if
+she were a higher being. They loved her that she would strip maize-cobs or pick
+acorns. But they were all anxious to serve her. And it seemed as if they needed
+some one to serve. It seemed as if Alvina, the Englishwoman, had a certain
+magic glamour for them, and so long as she was happy, it was a supreme joy and
+relief to them to have her there. But it seemed to her she would not live.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when she was unhappy! Ah, the dreadful days of cold rain mingled with
+sleet, when the world outside was more than impossible, and the house inside
+was a horror. The natives kept themselves alive by going about constantly
+working, dumb and elemental. But what was Alvina to do?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the house was unspeakable. The only two habitable rooms were the kitchen
+and Alvina’s bedroom: and the kitchen, with its little grated windows high up
+in the wall, one of which had a broken pane and must keep one-half of its
+shutters closed, was like a dark cavern vaulted and bitter with wood-smoke.
+Seated on the settle before the fire, the hard, greasy settle, Alvina could
+indeed keep the fire going, with faggots of green oak. But the smoke hurt her
+chest, she was not clean for one moment, and she could do nothing else. The
+bedroom again was just impossibly cold. And there was no other place. And from
+far away came the wild braying of an ass, primeval and desperate in the snow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The house was quite large; but uninhabitable. Downstairs, on the left of the
+wide passage where the ass occasionally stood out of the weather, and where the
+chickens wandered in search of treasure, was a big, long apartment where
+Pancrazio kept implements and tools and potatoes and pumpkins, and where four
+or five rabbits hopped unexpectedly out of the shadows. Opposite this, on the
+right, was the cantina, a dark place with wine-barrels and more agricultural
+stores. This was the whole of the downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Going upstairs, half way up, at the turn of the stairs was the opening of a
+sort of barn, a great wire-netting behind which showed a glow of orange
+maize-cobs and some wheat. Upstairs were four rooms. But Alvina’s room alone
+was furnished. Pancrazio slept in the unfurnished bedroom opposite, on a pile
+of old clothes. Beyond was a room with litter in it, a chest of drawers, and
+rubbish of old books and photographs Pancrazio had brought from England. There
+was a battered photograph of Lord Leighton, among others. The fourth room,
+approached through the corn-chamber, was always locked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside was just as hopeless. There had been a little garden within the stone
+enclosure. But fowls, geese, and the ass had made an end of this.
+Fowl-droppings were everywhere, indoors and out, the ass left his pile of
+droppings to steam in the winter air on the threshold, while his heartrending
+bray rent the air. Roads there were none: only deep tracks, like profound ruts
+with rocks in them, in the hollows, and rocky, grooved tracks over the brows.
+The hollow grooves were full of mud and water, and one struggled slipperily
+from rock to rock, or along narrow grass-ledges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was to be done, then, on mornings that were dark with sleet? Pancrazio
+would bring a kettle of hot water at about half-past eight. For had he not
+travelled Europe with English gentlemen, as a sort of model-valet! Had he not
+<i>loved</i> his English gentlemen? Even now, he was infinitely happier
+performing these little attentions for Alvina than attending to his wretched
+domains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio rose early, and went about in the hap-hazard, useless way of Italians
+all day long, getting nothing done. Alvina came out of the icy bedroom to the
+black kitchen. Pancrazio would be gallantly heating milk for her, at the end of
+a long stick. So she would sit on the settle and drink her coffee and milk,
+into which she dipped her dry bread. Then the day was before her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She washed her cup and her enamelled plate, and she tried to clean the kitchen.
+But Pancrazio had on the fire a great black pot, dangling from the chain. He
+was boiling food for the eternal pig&mdash;the only creature for which any
+cooking was done. Ciccio was tramping in with faggots. Pancrazio went in and
+out, back and forth from his pot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina stroked her brow and decided on a method. Once she was rid of Pancrazio,
+she would wash every cup and plate and utensil in boiling water. Well, at last
+Pancrazio went off with his great black pan, and she set to. But there were not
+six pieces of crockery in the house, and not more than six cooking utensils.
+These were soon scrubbed. Then she scrubbed the two little tables and the
+shelves. She lined the food-chest with clean paper. She washed the high
+window-ledges and the narrow mantel-piece, that had large mounds of dusty
+candle-wax, in deposits. Then she tackled the settle. She scrubbed it also.
+Then she looked at the floor. And even she, English housewife as she was,
+realized the futility of trying to wash it. As well try to wash the earth
+itself outside. It was just a piece of stone-laid earth. She swept it as well
+as she could, and made a little order in the faggot-heap in the corner. Then
+she washed the little, high-up windows, to try and let in light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what was the difference? A dank wet soapy smell, and not much more. Maria
+had kept scuffling admiringly in and out, crying her wonderment and approval.
+She had most ostentatiously chased out an obtrusive hen, from this temple of
+cleanliness. And that was all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was hopeless. The same black walls, the same floor, the same cold from
+behind, the same green-oak wood-smoke, the same bucket of water from the
+well&mdash;the same come-and-go of aimless busy men, the same cackle of wet
+hens, the same hopeless nothingness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina stood up against it for a time. And then she caught a bad cold, and was
+wretched. Probably it was the wood-smoke. But her chest was raw, she felt weak
+and miserable. She could not sit in her bedroom, for it was too cold. If she
+sat in the darkness of the kitchen she was hurt with smoke, and perpetually
+cold behind her neck. And Pancrazio rather resented the amount of faggots
+consumed for nothing. The only hope would have been in work. But there was
+nothing in that house to be done. How could she even sew?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was to prepare the mid-day and evening meals. But with no pots, and over a
+smoking wood fire, what could she prepare? Black and greasy, she boiled
+potatoes and fried meat in lard, in a long-handled frying pan. Then Pancrazio
+decreed that Maria should prepare macaroni with the tomato sauce, and thick
+vegetable soup, and sometimes polenta. This coarse, heavy food was wearying
+beyond words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina began to feel she would die, in the awful comfortless meaninglessness of
+it all. True, sunny days returned and some magic. But she was weak and feverish
+with her cold, which would not get better. So that even in the sunshine the
+crude comfortlessness and inferior savagery of the place only repelled her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The others were depressed when she was unhappy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you wish you were back in England?” Ciccio asked her, with a little
+sardonic bitterness in his voice. She looked at him without answering. He
+ducked and went away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We will make a fire-place in the other bedroom,” said Pancrazio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner said than done. Ciccio persuaded Alvina to stay in bed a few days.
+She was thankful to take refuge. Then she heard a rare come-and-go. Pancrazio,
+Ciccio, Giovanni, Maria and a mason all set about the fire-place. Up and down
+stairs they went, Maria carrying stone and lime on her head, and swerving in
+Alvina’s doorway, with her burden perched aloft, to shout a few unintelligible
+words. In the intervals of lime-carrying she brought the invalid her soup or
+her coffee or her hot milk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It turned out quite a good job&mdash;a pleasant room with two windows, that
+would have all the sun in the afternoon, and would see the mountains on one
+hand, the far-off village perched up on the other. When she was well enough
+they set off one early Monday morning to the market in Ossona. They left the
+house by starlight, but dawn was coming by the time they reached the river. At
+the high-road, Pancrazio harnessed the ass, and after endless delay they jogged
+off to Ossona. The dawning mountains were wonderful, dim-green and mauve and
+rose, the ground rang with frost. Along the roads many peasants were trooping
+to market, women in their best dresses, some of thick heavy silk with the
+white, full-sleeved bodices, dresses green, lavender, dark-red, with gay
+kerchiefs on the head: men muffled in cloaks, treading silently in their
+pointed skin sandals: asses with loads, carts full of peasants, a belated cow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The market was lovely, there in the crown of the pass, in the old town, on the
+frosty sunny morning. Bulls, cows, sheep, pigs, goats stood and lay about under
+the bare little trees on the platform high over the valley: some one had
+kindled a great fire of brush-wood, and men crowded round, out of the blue
+frost. From laden asses vegetables were unloaded, from little carts all kinds
+of things, boots, pots, tin-ware, hats, sweet-things, and heaps of corn and
+beans and seeds. By eight o’clock in the December morning the market was in
+full swing: a great crowd of handsome mountain people, all peasants, nearly all
+in costume, with different head-dresses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio and Pancrazio and Alvina went quietly about. They bought pots and pans
+and vegetables and sweet-things and thick rush matting and two wooden
+arm-chairs and one old soft arm-chair, going quietly and bargaining modestly
+among the crowd, as Anglicized Italians do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun came on to the market at about nine o’clock, and then, from the terrace
+of the town gate, Alvina looked down on the wonderful sight of all the coloured
+dresses of the peasant women, the black hats of the men, the heaps of goods,
+the squealing pigs, the pale lovely cattle, the many tethered asses&mdash;and
+she wondered if she would die before she became one with it altogether. It was
+impossible for her to become one with it altogether. Ciccio would have to take
+her to England again, or to America. He was always hinting at America.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then, Italy might enter the war. Even here it was the great theme of
+conversation. She looked down on the seethe of the market. The sun was warm on
+her. Ciccio and Pancrazio were bargaining for two cowskin rugs: she saw Ciccio
+standing with his head rather forward. Her husband! She felt her heart die away
+within her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All those other peasant women, did they feel as she did?&mdash;the same sort of
+acquiescent passion, the same lapse of life? She believed they did. The same
+helpless passion for the man, the same remoteness from the world’s actuality?
+Probably, under all their tension of money and money-grubbing and vindictive
+mountain morality and rather horrible religion, probably they felt the same.
+She was one with them. But she could never endure it for a life-time. It was
+only a test on her. Ciccio must take her to America, or England&mdash;to
+America preferably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And even as he turned to look for her, she felt a strange thrilling in her
+bowels: a sort of trill strangely within her, yet extraneous to her. She caught
+her hand to her flank. And Ciccio was looking up for her from the market
+beneath, searching with that quick, hasty look. He caught sight of her. She
+seemed to glow with a delicate light for him, there beyond all the women. He
+came straight towards her, smiling his slow, enigmatic smile. He could not bear
+it if he lost her. She knew how he loved her&mdash;almost inhumanly,
+elementally, without communication. And she stood with her hand to her side,
+her face frightened. She hardly noticed him. It seemed to her she was with
+child. And yet in the whole market-place she was aware of nothing but him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have bought the skins,” he said. “Twenty-seven lire each.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him, his dark skin, his golden eyes&mdash;so near to her, so
+unified with her, yet so incommunicably remote. How far off was his being from
+hers!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe I’m going to have a child,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Eh?” he ejaculated quickly. But he had understood. His eyes shone weirdly on
+her. She felt the strange terror and loveliness of his passion. And she wished
+she could lie down there by that town gate, in the sun, and swoon for ever
+unconscious. Living was almost too great a demand on her. His yellow, luminous
+eyes watched her and enveloped her. There was nothing for her but to yield,
+yield, yield. And yet she could not sink to earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw Pancrazio carrying the skins to the little cart, which was tilted up
+under a small, pale-stemmed tree on the platform above the valley. Then she saw
+him making his way quickly back through the crowd, to rejoin them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Did you feel something?” said Ciccio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes&mdash;here&mdash;!” she said, pressing her hand on her side as the
+sensation trilled once more upon her consciousness. She looked at him with
+remote, frightened eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s good&mdash;” he said, his eyes full of a triumphant, incommunicable
+meaning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well!&mdash;And now,” said Pancrazio, coming up, “shall we go and eat
+something?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They jogged home in the little flat cart in the wintry afternoon. It was almost
+night before they had got the ass untackled from the shafts, at the wild lonely
+house where Pancrazio left the cart. Giovanni was there with the lantern.
+Ciccio went on ahead with Alvina, whilst the others stood to load up the ass by
+the high-way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio watched Alvina carefully. When they were over the river, and among the
+dark scrub, he took her in his arms and kissed her with long, terrible passion.
+She saw the snow-ridges flare with evening, beyond his cheek. They had glowed
+dawn as she crossed the river outwards, they were white-fiery now in the dusk
+sky as she returned. What strange valley of shadow was she threading? What was
+the terrible man’s passion that haunted her like a dark angel? Why was she so
+much beyond herself?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI<br/>
+SUSPENSE</h2>
+
+<p>
+Christmas was at hand. There was a heap of maize cobs still unstripped. Alvina
+sat with Ciccio stripping them, in the corn-place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you be able to stop here till the baby is born?” he asked her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She watched the films of the leaves come off from the burning gold maize cob
+under his fingers, the long, ruddy cone of fruition. The heap of maize on one
+side burned like hot sunshine, she felt it really gave off warmth, it glowed,
+it burned. On the other side the filmy, crackly, sere sheaths were also faintly
+sunny. Again and again the long, red-gold, full ear of corn came clear in his
+hands, and was put gently aside. He looked up at her, with his yellow eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I think so,” she said. “Will you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, if they let me. I should like it to be born here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you like to bring up a child here?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You wouldn’t be happy here, so long,” he said, sadly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He slowly shook his head: indefinite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was settling down. She had her room upstairs, her cups and plates and
+spoons, her own things. Pancrazio had gone back to his old habit, he went
+across and ate with Giovanni and Maria, Ciccio and Alvina had their meals in
+their pleasant room upstairs. They were happy alone. Only sometimes the
+terrible influence of the place preyed on her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, she had a clean room of her own, where she could sew and read. She had
+written to the matron and Mrs. Tuke, and Mrs. Tuke had sent books. Also she
+helped Ciccio when she could, and Maria was teaching her to spin the white
+sheep’s wool into coarse thread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning Pancrazio and Giovanni had gone off somewhere, Alvina and Ciccio
+were alone on the place, stripping the last maize. Suddenly, in the grey
+morning air, a wild music burst out: the drone of a bagpipe, and a man’s high
+voice half singing, half yelling a brief verse, at the end of which a wild
+flourish on some other reedy wood instrument. Alvina sat still in surprise. It
+was a strange, high, rapid, yelling music, the very voice of the mountains.
+Beautiful, in our musical sense of the word, it was not. But oh, the magic, the
+nostalgia of the untamed, heathen past which it evoked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is for Christmas,” said Ciccio. “They will come every day now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina rose and went round to the little balcony. Two men stood below, amid the
+crumbling of finely falling snow. One, the elder, had a bagpipe whose bag was
+patched with shirting: the younger was dressed in greenish clothes, he had his
+face lifted, and was yelling the verses of the unintelligible Christmas ballad:
+short, rapid verses, followed by a brilliant flourish on a short wooden pipe he
+held ready in his hand. Alvina felt he was going to be out of breath. But no,
+rapid and high came the next verse, verse after verse, with the wild scream on
+the little new pipe in between, over the roar of the bagpipe. And the crumbs of
+snow were like a speckled veil, faintly drifting the atmosphere and powdering
+the littered threshold where they stood&mdash;a threshold littered with
+faggots, leaves, straw, fowls and geese and ass droppings, and rag thrown out
+from the house, and pieces of paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The carol suddenly ended, the young man snatched off his hat to Alvina who
+stood above, and in the same breath he was gone, followed by the bagpipe.
+Alvina saw them dropping hurriedly down the incline between the twiggy wild
+oaks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They will come every day now, till Christmas,” said Ciccio. “They go to every
+house.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And sure enough, when Alvina went down, in the cold, silent house, and out to
+the well in the still crumbling snow, she heard the sound far off, strange,
+yelling, wonderful: and the same ache for she knew not what overcame her, so
+that she felt one might go mad, there in the veiled silence of these mountains,
+in the great hilly valley cut off from the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio worked all day on the land or round about. He was building a little
+earth closet also: the obvious and unscreened place outside was impossible. It
+was curious how little he went to Pescocalascio, how little he mixed with the
+natives. He seemed always to withhold something from them. Only with his
+relatives, of whom he had many, he was more free, in a kind of family intimacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet even here he was guarded. His uncle at the mill, an unwashed, fat man with
+a wife who tinkled with gold and grime, and who shouted a few lost words of
+American, insisted on giving Alvina wine and a sort of cake made with cheese
+and rice. Ciccio too was feasted, in the dark hole of a room. And the two
+natives seemed to press their cheer on Alvina and Ciccio whole-heartedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How nice they are!” said Alvina when she had left. “They give so freely.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Ciccio smiled a wry smile, silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why do you make a face?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s because you are a foreigner, and they think you will go away again,” he
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I should have thought that would make them less generous,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. They like to give to foreigners. They don’t like to give to the people
+here. Giocomo puts water in the wine which he sells to the people who go by.
+And if I leave the donkey in her shed, I give Marta Maria something, or the
+next time she won’t let me have it. Ha, they are&mdash;they are sly ones, the
+people here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They are like that everywhere,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. But nowhere they say so many bad things about people as
+here&mdash;nowhere where I have ever been.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was strange to Alvina to feel the deep-bed-rock distrust which all the
+hill-peasants seemed to have of one another. They were watchful, venomous,
+dangerous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah,” said Pancrazio, “I am glad there is a woman in my house once more.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But did <i>nobody</i> come in and do for you before?” asked Alvina. “Why
+didn’t you pay somebody?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nobody will come,” said Pancrazio, in his slow, aristocratic English. “Nobody
+will come, because I am a man, and if somebody should see her at my house, they
+will all talk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Talk!” Alvina looked at the deeply-lined man of sixty-six, “But what will they
+say?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Many bad things. Many bad things indeed. They are not good people here. All
+saying bad things, and all jealous. They don’t like me because I have a
+house&mdash;they think I am too much a <i>signore</i>. They say to me ‘Why do
+you think you are a signore?’ Oh, they are bad people, envious, you cannot have
+anything to do with them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They are nice to me,” said Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They think you will go away. But if you stay, they will say bad things. You
+must wait. Oh, they are evil people, evil against one another, against
+everybody but strangers who don’t know them&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina felt the curious passion in Pancrazio’s voice, the passion of a man who
+has lived for many years in England and known the social confidence of England,
+and who, coming back, is deeply injured by the ancient malevolence of the
+remote, somewhat gloomy hill-peasantry. She understood also why he was so glad
+to have her in his house, so proud, why he loved serving her. She seemed to see
+a fairness, a luminousness in the northern soul, something free, touched with
+divinity such as “these people here” lacked entirely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she went to Ossona with him, she knew everybody questioned him about her
+and Ciccio. She began to get the drift of the questions&mdash;which Pancrazio
+answered with reserve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And how long are they staying?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was an invariable, envious question. And invariably Pancrazio answered
+with a reserved&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Some months. As long as <i>they</i> like.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Alvina could feel waves of black envy go out against Pancrazio, because she
+was domiciled with him, and because she sat with him in the flat cart, driving
+to Ossona.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet Pancrazio himself was a study. He was thin, and very shabby, and rather out
+of shape. Only in his yellow eyes lurked a strange sardonic fire, and a leer
+which puzzled her. When Ciccio happened to be out in the evening he would sit
+with her and tell her stories of Lord Leighton and Millais and Alma Tadema and
+other academicians dead and living. There would sometimes be a strange
+passivity on his worn face, an impassive, almost Red Indian look. And then
+again he would stir into a curious, arch, malevolent laugh, for all the world
+like a debauched old tom-cat. His narration was like this: either simple, bare,
+stoical, with a touch of nobility; or else satiric, malicious, with a strange,
+rather repellent jeering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Leighton&mdash;he wasn’t Lord Leighton then&mdash;he wouldn’t have me to sit
+for him, because my figure was too poor, he didn’t like it. He liked fair young
+men, with plenty of flesh. But once, when he was doing a picture&mdash;I don’t
+know if you know it? It is a crucifixion, with a man on a cross, and&mdash;” He
+described the picture. “No! Well, the model had to be tied hanging on to a
+wooden cross. And it made you suffer! Ah!” Here the odd, arch, diabolic yellow
+flare lit up through the stoicism of Pancrazio’s eyes. “Because Leighton, he
+was cruel to his model. He wouldn’t let you rest. ‘Damn you, you’ve got to keep
+still till I’ve finished with you, you devil,’ so he said. Well, for this man
+on the cross, he couldn’t get a model who would do it for him. They all tried
+it once, but they would not go again. So they said to him, he must try
+Califano, because Califano was the only man who would stand it. At last then he
+sent for me. ‘I don’t like your damned figure, Califano,’ he said to me, ‘but
+nobody will do this if you won’t. Now will you do it? ‘Yes!’ I said, ‘I will.’
+So he tied me up on the cross. And he paid me well, so I stood it. Well, he
+kept me tied up, hanging you know forwards naked on this cross, for four hours.
+And then it was luncheon. And after luncheon he would tie me again. Well, I
+suffered. I suffered so much, that I must lean against the wall to support me
+to walk home. And in the night I could not sleep, I could cry with the pains in
+my arms and my ribs, I had no sleep. ‘You’ve said you’d do it, so now you
+must,’ he said to me. ‘And I will do it,’ I said. And so he tied me up. This
+cross, you know, was on a little raised place&mdash;I don’t know what you call
+it&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A platform,” suggested Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A platform. Now one day when he came to do something to me, when I was tied
+up, he slipped back over this platform, and he pulled me, who was tied on the
+cross, with him. So we all fell down, he with the naked man on top of him, and
+the heavy cross on top of us both. I could not move, because I was tied. And it
+was so, with me on top of him, and the heavy cross, that he could not get out.
+So he had to lie shouting underneath me until some one came to the studio to
+untie me. No, we were not hurt, because the top of the cross fell so that it
+did not crush us. ‘Now you have had a taste of the cross,’ I said to him. ‘Yes,
+you devil, but I shan’t let you off,’ he said to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To make the time go he would ask me questions. Once he said, ‘Now, Califano,
+what time is it? I give you three guesses, and if you guess right once I give
+you sixpence.’ So I guessed three o’clock. ‘That’s one. Now then, what time is
+it? ‘Again, three o’clock. ‘That’s two guesses gone, you silly devil. Now then,
+what time is it? ‘So now I was obstinate, and I said <i>Three o’clock</i>. He
+took out his watch. ‘Why damn you, how did you know? I give you a
+shilling&mdash;’ It was three o’clock, as I said, so he gave me a shilling
+instead of sixpence as he had said&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was strange, in the silent winter afternoon, downstairs in the black
+kitchen, to sit drinking a cup of tea with Pancrazio and hearing these stories
+of English painters. It was strange to look at the battered figure of
+Pancrazio, and think how much he had been crucified through the long years in
+London, for the sake of late Victorian art. It was strangest of all to see
+through his yellow, often dull, red-rimmed eyes these blithe and
+well-conditioned painters. Pancrazio looked on them admiringly and
+contemptuously, as an old, rakish tom-cat might look on such frivolous
+well-groomed young gentlemen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a matter of fact Pancrazio had never been rakish or debauched, but
+mountain-moral, timid. So that the queer, half-sinister drop of his eyelids was
+curious, and the strange, wicked yellow flare that came into his eyes was
+almost frightening. There was in the man a sort of sulphur-yellow flame of
+passion which would light up in his battered body and give him an almost
+diabolic look. Alvina felt that if she were left much alone with him she would
+need all her English ascendancy not to be afraid of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a Sunday morning just before Christmas when Alvina and Ciccio and
+Pancrazio set off for Pescocalascio for the first time. Snow had
+fallen&mdash;not much round the house, but deep between the banks as they
+climbed. And the sun was very bright. So that the mountains were dazzling. The
+snow was wet on the roads. They wound between oak-trees and under the
+broom-scrub, climbing over the jumbled hills that lay between the mountains,
+until the village came near. They got on to a broader track, where the path
+from a distant village joined theirs. They were all talking, in the bright
+clear air of the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little man came down an upper path. As he joined them near the village he
+hailed them in English:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good morning. Nice morning.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Does everybody speak English here?” asked Alvina.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have been eighteen years in Glasgow. I am only here for a trip.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a little Italian shop-keeper from Glasgow. He was most friendly,
+insisted on paying for drinks, and coffee and almond biscuits for Alvina.
+Evidently he also was grateful to Britain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The village was wonderful. It occupied the crown of an eminence in the midst of
+the wide valley. From the terrace of the high-road the valley spread below,
+with all its jumble of hills, and two rivers, set in the walls of the
+mountains, a wide space, but imprisoned. It glistened with snow under the blue
+sky. But the lowest hollows were brown. In the distance, Ossona hung at the
+edge of a platform. Many villages clung like pale swarms of birds to the far
+slopes, or perched on the hills beneath. It was a world within a world, a
+valley of many hills and townlets and streams shut in beyond access.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pescocalascio itself was crowded. The roads were sloppy with snow. But none the
+less, peasants in full dress, their feet soaked in the skin sandals, were
+trooping in the sun, purchasing, selling, bargaining for cloth, talking all the
+time. In the shop, which was also a sort of inn, an ancient woman was making
+coffee over a charcoal brazier, while a crowd of peasants sat at the tables at
+the back, eating the food they had brought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Post was due at mid-day. Ciccio went to fetch it, whilst Pancrazio took Alvina
+to the summit, to the castle. There, in the level region, boys were snowballing
+and shouting. The ancient castle, badly cracked by the last earthquake, looked
+wonderfully down on the valley of many hills beneath, Califano a speck down the
+left, Ossona a blot to the right, suspended, its towers and its castle clear in
+the light. Behind the castle of Pescocalascio was a deep, steep valley, almost
+a gorge, at the bottom of which a river ran, and where Pancrazio pointed out
+the electricity works of the village, deep in the gloom. Above this gorge, at
+the end, rose the long slopes of the mountains, up to the vivid snow&mdash;and
+across again was the wall of the Abruzzi.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went down, past the ruined houses broken by the earthquake. Ciccio still
+had not come with the post. A crowd surged at the post-office door, in a steep,
+black, wet side-street. Alvina’s feet were sodden. Pancrazio took her to the
+place where she could drink coffee and a strega, to make her warm. On the
+platform of the high-way, above the valley, people were parading in the hot
+sun. Alvina noticed some ultra-smart young men. They came up to Pancrazio,
+speaking English. Alvina hated their Cockney accent and florid showy vulgar
+presence. They were more models. Pancrazio was cool with them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina sat apart from the crowd of peasants, on a chair the old crone had
+ostentatiously dusted for her. Pancrazio ordered beer for himself. Ciccio came
+with letters&mdash;long-delayed letters, that had been censored. Alvina’s heart
+went down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first she opened was from Miss Pinnegar&mdash;all war and fear and anxiety.
+The second was a letter, a real insulting letter from Dr. Mitchell. “I little
+thought, at the time when I was hoping to make you my wife, that you were
+carrying on with a dirty Italian organ-grinder. So your fair-seeming face
+covered the schemes and vice of your true nature. Well, I can only thank
+Providence which spared me the disgust and shame of marrying you, and I hope
+that, when I meet you on the streets of Leicester Square, I shall have forgiven
+you sufficiently to be able to throw you a coin&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a pretty little epistle! In spite of herself, she went pale and
+trembled. She glanced at Ciccio. Fortunately he was turning round talking to
+another man. She rose and went to the ruddy brazier, as if to warm her hands.
+She threw on the screwed-up letter. The old crone said something unintelligible
+to her. She watched the letter catch fire&mdash;glanced at the peasants at the
+table&mdash;and out at the wide, wild valley. The world beyond could not help,
+but it still had the power to injure one here. She felt she had received a
+bitter blow. A black hatred for the Mitchells of this world filled her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could hardly bear to open the third letter. It was from Mrs. Tuke, and
+again, all war. Would Italy join the Allies? She ought to, her every interest
+lay that way. Could Alvina bear to be so far off, when such terrible events
+were happening near home? Could she possibly be happy? Nurses were so valuable
+now. She, Mrs. Tuke, had volunteered. She would do whatever she could. She had
+had to leave off nursing Jenifer, who had an <i>excellent</i> Scotch nurse,
+much better than a mother. Well, Alvina and Mrs. Tuke might yet meet in some
+hospital in France. So the letter ended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina sat down, pale and trembling. Pancrazio was watching her curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you bad news?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only the war.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ha!” and the Italian gesture of half-bitter “what can one do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were talking war&mdash;all talking war. The dandy young models had left
+England because of the war, expecting Italy to come in. And everybody talked,
+talked, talked. Alvina looked round her. It all seemed alien to her, bruising
+upon the spirit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you think I shall ever be able to come here alone and do my shopping by
+myself?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You must never come alone,” said Pancrazio, in his curious, benevolent
+courtesy. “Either Ciccio or I will come with you. You must never come so far
+alone.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are a stranger here. You are not a contadina&mdash;” Alvina could feel the
+oriental idea of women, which still leaves its mark on the Mediterranean,
+threatening her with surveillance and subjection. She sat in her chair, with
+cold wet feet, looking at the sunshine outside, the wet snow, the moving
+figures in the strong light, the men drinking at the counter, the cluster of
+peasant women bargaining for dress-material. Ciccio was still turning talking
+in the rapid way to his neighbour. She knew it was war. She noticed the
+movement of his finely-modelled cheek, a little sallow this morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she rose hastily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want to go into the sun,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she stood above the valley in the strong, tiring light, she glanced round.
+Ciccio inside the shop had risen, but he was still turning to his neighbour and
+was talking with all his hands and all his body. He did not talk with his mind
+and lips alone. His whole physique, his whole living body spoke and uttered and
+emphasized itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A certain weariness possessed her. She was beginning to realize something about
+him: how he had no sense of home and domestic life, as an Englishman has.
+Ciccio’s home would never be his castle. His castle was the piazza of
+Pescocalascio. His home was nothing to him but a possession, and a hole to
+sleep in. He didn’t <i>live</i> in it. He lived in the open air, and in the
+community. When the true Italian came out in him, his veriest home was the
+piazza of Pescocalascio, the little sort of market-place where the roads met in
+the village, under the castle, and where the men stood in groups and talked,
+talked, talked. This was where Ciccio belonged: his active, mindful self. His
+active, mindful self was none of hers. She only had his passive self, and his
+family passion. His masculine mind and intelligence had its home in the little
+public square of his village. She knew this as she watched him now, with all
+his body talking politics. He could not break off till he had finished. And
+then, with a swift, intimate handshake to the group with whom he had been
+engaged, he came away, putting all his interest off from himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried to make him talk and discuss with her. But he wouldn’t. An obstinate
+spirit made him darkly refuse masculine conversation with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If Italy goes to war, you will have to join up?” she asked him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he said, with a smile at the futility of the question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I shall have to stay here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded, rather gloomily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you want to go?” she persisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I don’t want to go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you think Italy ought to join in?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then you <i>do</i> want to go&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want to go if Italy goes in&mdash;and she ought to go in&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Curious, he was somewhat afraid of her, he half venerated her, and half
+despised her. When she tried to make him discuss, in the masculine way, he shut
+obstinately against her, something like a child, and the slow, fine smile of
+dislike came on his face. Instinctively he shut off all masculine communication
+from her, particularly politics and religion. He would discuss both, violently,
+with other men. In politics he was something of a Socialist, in religion a
+freethinker. But all this had nothing to do with Alvina. He would not enter on
+a discussion in English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somewhere in her soul, she knew the finality of his refusal to hold discussion
+with a woman. So, though at times her heart hardened with indignant anger, she
+let herself remain outside. The more so, as she felt that in matters
+intellectual he was rather stupid. Let him go to the piazza or to the
+wine-shop, and talk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To do him justice, he went little. Pescocalascio was only half his own village.
+The nostalgia, the campanilismo from which Italians suffer, the craving to be
+in sight of the native church-tower, to stand and talk in the native market
+place or piazza, this was only half formed in Ciccio, taken away as he had been
+from Pescocalascio when so small a boy. He spent most of his time working in
+the fields and woods, most of his evenings at home, often weaving a special
+kind of fishnet or net-basket from fine, frail strips of cane. It was a work he
+had learned at Naples long ago. Alvina meanwhile would sew for the child, or
+spin wool. She became quite clever at drawing the strands of wool from her
+distaff, rolling them fine and even between her fingers, and keeping her bobbin
+rapidly spinning away below, dangling at the end of the thread. To tell the
+truth, she was happy in the quietness with Ciccio, now they had their own
+pleasant room. She loved his presence. She loved the quality of his silence, so
+rich and physical. She felt he was never very far away: that he was a good deal
+a stranger in Califano, as she was: that he clung to her presence as she to
+his. Then Pancrazio also contrived to serve her and shelter her, he too, loved
+her for being there. They both revered her because she was with child. So that
+she lived more and more in a little, isolate, illusory, wonderful world then,
+content, moreover, because the living cost so little. She had sixty pounds of
+her own money, always intact in the little case. And after all, the high-way
+beyond the river led to Ossona, and Ossona gave access to the railway, and the
+railway would take her anywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the month of January passed, with its short days and its bits of snow and
+bursts of sunshine. On sunny days Alvina walked down to the desolate river-bed,
+which fascinated her. When Pancrazio was carrying up stone or lime on the ass,
+she accompanied him. And Pancrazio was always carrying up something, for he
+loved the extraneous jobs like building a fire-place much more than the heavy
+work of the land. Then she would find little tufts of wild narcissus among the
+rocks, gold-centred pale little things, many on one stem. And their scent was
+powerful and magical, like the sound of the men who came all those days and
+sang before Christmas. She loved them. There was green hellebore too, a
+fascinating plant&mdash;and one or two little treasures, the last of the
+rose-coloured Alpine cyclamens, near the earth, with snake-skin leaves, and so
+rose, so rose, like violets for shadowiness. She sat and cried over the first
+she found: heaven knows why.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In February, as the days opened, the first almond trees flowered among grey
+olives, in warm, level corners between the hills. But it was March before the
+real flowering began. And then she had continual bowl-fuls of white and blue
+violets, she had sprays of almond blossom, silver-warm and lustrous, then
+sprays of peach and apricot, pink and fluttering. It was a great joy to wander
+looking for flowers. She came upon a bankside all wide with lavender crocuses.
+The sun was on them for the moment, and they were opened flat, great
+five-pointed, seven-pointed lilac stars, with burning centres, burning with a
+strange lavender flame, as she had seen some metal burn lilac-flamed in the
+laboratory of the hospital at Islington. All down the oak-dry bankside they
+burned their great exposed stars. And she felt like going down on her knees and
+bending her forehead to the earth in an oriental submission, they were so
+royal, so lovely, so supreme. She came again to them in the morning, when the
+sky was grey, and they were closed, sharp clubs, wonderfully fragile on their
+stems of sap, among leaves and old grass and wild periwinkle. They had
+wonderful dark stripes running up their cheeks, the crocuses, like the clear
+proud stripes on a badger’s face, or on some proud cat. She took a handful of
+the sappy, shut, striped flames. In her room they opened into a grand bowl of
+lilac fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+March was a lovely month. The men were busy in the hills. She wandered,
+extending her range. Sometimes with a strange fear. But it was a fear of the
+elements rather than of man. One day she went along the high-road with her
+letters, towards the village of Casa Latina. The high-road was depressing,
+wherever there were houses. For the houses had that sordid, ramshackle, slummy
+look almost invariable on an Italian high-road. They were patched with a
+hideous, greenish mould-colour, blotched, as if with leprosy. It frightened
+her, till Pancrazio told her it was only the copper sulphate that had sprayed
+the vines hitched on to the walls. But none the less the houses were sordid,
+unkempt, slummy. One house by itself could make a complete slum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Casa Latina was across the valley, in the shadow. Approaching it were rows of
+low cabins&mdash;fairly new. They were the one-storey dwellings commanded after
+the earthquake. And hideous they were. The village itself was old, dark, in
+perpetual shadow of the mountain. Streams of cold water ran round it. The
+piazza was gloomy, forsaken. But there was a great, twin-towered church,
+wonderful from outside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went inside, and was almost sick with repulsion. The place was large,
+whitewashed, and crowded with figures in glass cases and ex voto offerings. The
+lousy-looking, dressed-up dolls, life size and tinselly, that stood in the
+glass cases; the blood-streaked Jesus on the crucifix; the mouldering,
+mumbling, filthy peasant women on their knees; all the sense of trashy,
+repulsive, degraded fetish-worship was too much for her. She hurried out,
+shrinking from the contamination of the dirty leather door-curtain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Enough of Casa Latina. She would never go <i>there</i> again. She was beginning
+to feel that, if she lived in this part of the world at all, she must avoid the
+<i>inside</i> of it. She must never, if she could help it, enter into any
+interior but her own&mdash;neither into house nor church nor even shop or
+post-office, if she could help it. The moment she went through a door the sense
+of dark repulsiveness came over her. If she was to save her sanity she must
+keep to the open air, and avoid any contact with human interiors. When she
+thought of the insides of the native people she shuddered with repulsion, as in
+the great, degraded church of Casa Latina. They were horrible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet the outside world was so fair. Corn and maize were growing green and
+silken, vines were in the small bud. Everywhere little grape hyacinths hung
+their blue bells. It was a pity they reminded her of the many-breasted Artemis,
+a picture of whom, or of whose statue, she had seen somewhere. Artemis with her
+clusters of breasts was horrible to her, now she had come south: nauseating
+beyond words. And the milky grape hyacinths reminded her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned with thankfulness to the magenta anemones that were so gay. Some one
+told her that wherever Venus had shed a tear for Adonis, one of these flowers
+had sprung. They were not tear-like. And yet their red-purple silkiness had
+something pre-world about it, at last. The more she wandered, the more the
+shadow of the by-gone pagan world seemed to come over her. Sometimes she felt
+she would shriek and go mad, so strong was the influence on her, something
+pre-world and, it seemed to her now, vindictive. She seemed to feel in the air
+strange Furies, Lemures, things that had haunted her with their tomb-frenzied
+vindictiveness since she was a child and had pored over the illustrated
+Classical Dictionary. Black and cruel presences were in the under-air. They
+were furtive and slinking. They bewitched you with loveliness, and lurked with
+fangs to hurt you afterwards. There it was: the fangs sheathed in beauty: the
+beauty first, and then, horribly, inevitably, the fangs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Being a great deal alone, in the strange place, fancies possessed her, people
+took on strange shapes. Even Ciccio and Pancrazio. And it came that she never
+wandered far from the house, from her room, after the first months. She seemed
+to hide herself in her room. There she sewed and spun wool and read, and learnt
+Italian. Her men were not at all anxious to teach her Italian. Indeed her chief
+teacher, at first, was a young fellow called Bussolo. He was a model from
+London, and he came down to Califano sometimes, hanging about, anxious to speak
+English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alvina did not care for him. He was a dandy with pale grey eyes and a heavy
+figure. Yet he had a certain penetrating intelligence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, this country is a country for old men. It is only for old men,” he said,
+talking of Pescocalascio. “You won’t stop here. Nobody young can stop here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The odd plangent certitude in his voice penetrated her. And all the young
+people said the same thing. They were all waiting to go away. But for the
+moment the war held them up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio and Pancrazio were busy with the vines. As she watched them hoeing,
+crouching, tying, tending, grafting, mindless and utterly absorbed, hour after
+hour, day after day, thinking vines, living vines, she wondered they didn’t
+begin to sprout vine-buds and vine stems from their own elbows and neck-joints.
+There was something to her unnatural in the quality of the attention the men
+gave to the wine. It was a sort of worship, almost a degradation again. And
+heaven knows, Pancrazio’s wine was poor enough, his grapes almost invariably
+bruised with hail-stones, and half-rotten instead of ripe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The loveliness of April came, with hot sunshine. Astonishing the ferocity of
+the sun, when he really took upon himself to blaze. Alvina was amazed. The
+burning day quite carried her away. She loved it: it made her quite careless
+about everything, she was just swept along in the powerful flood of the
+sunshine. In the end, she felt that intense sunlight had on her the effect of
+night: a sort of darkness, and a suspension of life. She had to hide in her
+room till the cold wind blew again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the declaration of war drew nearer, and became inevitable. She knew
+Ciccio would go. And with him went the chance of her escape. She steeled
+herself to bear the agony of the knowledge that he would go, and she would be
+left alone in this place, which sometimes she hated with a hatred unspeakable.
+After a spell of hot, intensely dry weather she felt she would die in this
+valley, wither and go to powder as some exposed April roses withered and dried
+into dust against a hot wall. Then the cool wind came in a storm, the next day
+there was grey sky and soft air. The rose-coloured wild gladioli among the
+young green corn were a dream of beauty, the morning of the world. The lovely,
+pristine morning of the world, before our epoch began. Rose-red gladioli among
+corn, in among the rocks, and small irises, black-purple and yellow blotched
+with brown, like a wasp, standing low in little desert places, that would seem
+forlorn but for this weird, dark-lustrous magnificence. Then there were the
+tiny irises, only one finger tall, growing in dry places, frail as crocuses,
+and much tinier, and blue, blue as the eye of the morning heaven, which was a
+morning earlier, more pristine than ours. The lovely translucent pale irises,
+tiny and morning-blue, they lasted only a few hours. But nothing could be more
+exquisite, like gods on earth. It was the flowers that brought back to Alvina
+the passionate nostalgia for the place. The human influence was a bit horrible
+to her. But the flowers that came out and uttered the earth in magical
+expression, they cast a spell on her, bewitched her and stole her own soul away
+from her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went down to Ciccio where he was weeding armfuls of rose-red gladioli from
+the half-grown wheat, and cutting the lushness of the first weedy herbage. He
+threw down his sheaves of gladioli, and with his sickle began to cut the forest
+of bright yellow corn-marigolds. He looked intent, he seemed to work
+feverishly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Must they all be cut?” she said, as she went to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He threw aside the great armful of yellow flowers, took off his cap, and wiped
+the sweat from his brow. The sickle dangled loose in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have declared war,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In an instant she realized that she had seen the figure of the old post-carrier
+dodging between the rocks. Rose-red and gold-yellow of the flowers swam in her
+eyes. Ciccio’s dusk-yellow eyes were watching her. She sank on her knees on a
+sheaf of corn-marigolds. Her eyes, watching him, were vulnerable as if stricken
+to death. Indeed she felt she would die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will have to go?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, we shall all have to go.” There seemed a certain sound of triumph in his
+voice. Cruel!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sank lower on the flowers, and her head dropped. But she would not be
+beaten. She lifted her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you are very long,” she said, “I shall go to England. I can’t stay here
+very long without you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will have Pancrazio&mdash;and the child,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. But I shall still be myself. I can’t stay here very long without you. I
+shall go to England.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her narrowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t think they’ll let you,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes they will.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At moments she hated him. He seemed to want to crush her altogether. She was
+always making little plans in her mind&mdash;how she could get out of that
+great cruel valley and escape to Rome, to English people. She would find the
+English Consul and he would help her. She would do anything rather than be
+really crushed. She knew how easy it would be, once her spirit broke, for her
+to die and be buried in the cemetery at Pescocalascio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they would all be so sentimental about her&mdash;just as Pancrazio was. She
+felt that in some way Pancrazio had killed his wife&mdash;not consciously, but
+unconsciously, as Ciccio might kill <i>her</i>. Pancrazio would tell Alvina
+about his wife and her ailments. And he seemed always anxious to prove that he
+had been so good to her. No doubt he had been good to her, also. But there was
+something underneath&mdash;malevolent in his spirit, some caged-in sort of
+cruelty, malignant beyond his control. It crept out in his stories. And it
+revealed itself in his fear of his dead wife. Alvina knew that in the night the
+elderly man was afraid of his dead wife, and of her ghost or her avenging
+spirit. He would huddle over the fire in fear. In the same way the cemetery had
+a fascination of horror for him&mdash;as, she noticed, for most of the natives.
+It was an ugly, square place, all stone slabs and wall-cupboards, enclosed in
+four-square stone walls, and lying away beneath Pescocalascio village obvious
+as if it were on a plate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is our cemetery,” Pancrazio said, pointing it out to her, “where we shall
+all be carried some day.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there was fear, horror in his voice. He told her how the men had carried
+his wife there&mdash;a long journey over the hill-tracks, almost two hours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were days of waiting&mdash;horrible days of waiting for Ciccio to be
+called up. One batch of young men left the village&mdash;and there was a
+lugubrious sort of saturnalia, men and women alike got rather drunk, the young
+men left amid howls of lamentation and shrieks of distress. Crowds accompanied
+them to Ossona, whence they were marched towards the railway. It was a horrible
+event.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A shiver of horror and death went through the valley. In a lugubrious way, they
+seemed to enjoy it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll never be satisfied till you’ve gone,” she said to Ciccio. “Why don’t
+they be quick and call you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It will be next week,” he said, looking at her darkly. In the twilight he came
+to her, when she could hardly see him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you sorry you came here with me, Allaye?” he asked. There was malice in
+the very question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She put down the spoon and looked up from the fire. He stood shadowy, his head
+ducked forward, the firelight faint on his enigmatic, timeless, half-smiling
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m not sorry,” she answered slowly, using all her courage. “Because I love
+you&mdash;”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She crouched quite still on the hearth. He turned aside his face. After a
+moment or two he went out. She stirred her pot slowly and sadly. She had to go
+downstairs for something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there on the landing she saw him standing in the darkness with his arm over
+his face, as if fending a blow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it?” she said, laying her hand on him. He uncovered his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would take you away if I could,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can wait for you,” she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He threw himself in a chair that stood at a table there on the broad landing,
+and buried his head in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t wait for me! Don’t wait for me!” he cried, his voice muffled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not?” she said, filled with terror. He made no sign. “Why not?” she
+insisted. And she laid her fingers on his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got up and turned to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I love you, even if it kills me,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he only turned aside again, leaned his arm against the wall, and hid his
+face, utterly noiseless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it?” she said. “What is it? I don’t understand.” He wiped his sleeve
+across his face, and turned to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t any hope,” he said, in a dull, dogged voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She felt her heart and the child die within her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was she to bear a hopeless child?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You <i>have</i> hope. Don’t make a scene,” she snapped. And she went
+downstairs, as she had intended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when she got into the kitchen, she forgot what she had come for. She sat in
+the darkness on the seat, with all life gone dark and still, death and eternity
+settled down on her. Death and eternity were settled down on her as she sat
+alone. And she seemed to hear him moaning upstairs&mdash;“I can’t come back. I
+can’t come back.” She heard it. She heard it so distinctly, that she never knew
+whether it had been an actual utterance, or whether it was her inner ear which
+had heard the inner, unutterable sound. She wanted to answer, to call to him.
+But she could not. Heavy, mute, powerless, there she sat like a lump of
+darkness, in that doomed Italian kitchen. “I can’t come back.” She heard it so
+fatally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was interrupted by the entrance of Pancrazio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” he cried, startled when, having come near the fire, he caught sight of
+her. And he said something, frightened, in Italian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it you? Why are you in the darkness?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am just going upstairs again.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You frightened me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went up to finish the preparing of the meal. Ciccio came down to Pancrazio.
+The latter had brought a newspaper. The two men sat on the settle, with the
+lamp between them, reading and talking the news.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ciccio’s group was called up for the following week, as he had said. The
+departure hung over them like a doom. Those were perhaps the worst days of all:
+the days of the impending departure. Neither of them spoke about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the night before he left she could bear the silence no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will come back, won’t you?” she said, as he sat motionless in his chair in
+the bedroom. It was a hot, luminous night. There was still a late scent of
+orange blossom from the garden, the nightingale was shaking the air with his
+sound. At times other, honey scents wafted from the hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will come back?” she insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who knows?” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you make up your mind to come back, you will come back. We have our fate in
+our hands,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You think so?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know it. If you don’t come back it will be because you don’t want
+to&mdash;no other reason. It won’t be because you can’t. It will be because you
+don’t want to.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who told you so?” he asked, with the same cruel smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know it,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he still sat with his hands abandoned between his knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So make up your mind,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat motionless for a long while: while she undressed and brushed her hair
+and went to bed. And still he sat there unmoving, like a corpse. It was like
+having some unnatural, doomed, unbearable presence in the room. She blew out
+the light, that she need not see him. But in the darkness it was worse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last he stirred&mdash;he rose. He came hesitating across to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll come back, Allaye,” he said quietly. “Be damned to them all.” She heard
+unspeakable pain in his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To whom?” she said, sitting up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not answer, but put his arms round her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll come back, and we’ll go to America,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll come back to me,” she whispered, in an ecstasy of pain and relief. It
+was not her affair, where they should go, so long as he really returned to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll come back,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sure?” she whispered, straining him to her.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lost Girl, by D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Lost Girl
+
+
+Author: D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 3, 2007  [eBook #23727]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST GIRL***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Roger Frank, Roberta Staehlin, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE LOST GIRL
+
+by
+
+D. H. LAWRENCE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Thomas Seltzer
+1921
+
+Copyright, 1921,
+by Thomas Seltzer, Inc.
+All rights reserved
+
+First Printing, February, 1921
+Second Printing, February, 1921
+Third Printing, September, 1921
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+
+   I THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE           7
+
+  II THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON              27
+
+ III THE MATERNITY NURSE                      36
+
+  IV TWO WOMEN DIE                            49
+
+   V THE BEAU                                 64
+
+  VI HOUGHTON'S LAST ENDEAVOUR                95
+
+ VII NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA                       130
+
+VIII CICCIO                                  164
+
+  IX ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE                   191
+
+   X THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE            235
+
+  XI HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT                   273
+
+ XII ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED                  304
+
+XIII THE WEDDED WIFE                         317
+
+ XIV THE JOURNEY ACROSS                      327
+
+  XV THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO               350
+
+ XVI SUSPENSE                                359
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
+
+
+Take a mining townlet like Woodhouse, with a population of ten
+thousand people, and three generations behind it. This space of
+three generations argues a certain well-established society. The old
+"County" has fled from the sight of so much disembowelled coal, to
+flourish on mineral rights in regions still idyllic. Remains one
+great and inaccessible magnate, the local coal owner: three
+generations old, and clambering on the bottom step of the "County,"
+kicking off the mass below. Rule him out.
+
+A well established society in Woodhouse, full of fine shades,
+ranging from the dark of coal-dust to grit of stone-mason and
+sawdust of timber-merchant, through the lustre of lard and butter
+and meat, to the perfume of the chemist and the disinfectant of the
+doctor, on to the serene gold-tarnish of bank-managers, cashiers for
+the firm, clergymen and such-like, as far as the automobile
+refulgence of the general-manager of all the collieries. Here the
+_ne plus ultra_. The general manager lives in the shrubberied
+seclusion of the so-called Manor. The genuine Hall, abandoned by the
+"County," has been taken over as offices by the firm.
+
+Here we are then: a vast substratum of colliers; a thick sprinkling
+of tradespeople intermingled with small employers of labour and
+diversified by elementary schoolmasters and nonconformist clergy; a
+higher layer of bank-managers, rich millers and well-to-do
+ironmasters, episcopal clergy and the managers of collieries, then
+the rich and sticky cherry of the local coal-owner glistening over
+all.
+
+Such the complicated social system of a small industrial town in the
+Midlands of England, in this year of grace 1920. But let us go back
+a little. Such it was in the last calm year of plenty, 1913.
+
+A calm year of plenty. But one chronic and dreary malady: that of
+the odd women. Why, in the name of all prosperity, should every
+class but the lowest in such a society hang overburdened with Dead
+Sea fruit of odd women, unmarried, unmarriageable women, called old
+maids? Why is it that every tradesman, every school-master, every
+bank-manager, and every clergyman produces one, two, three or more
+old maids? Do the middle-classes, particularly the lower
+middle-classes, give birth to more girls than boys? Or do the lower
+middle-class men assiduously climb up or down, in marriage, thus
+leaving their true partners stranded? Or are middle-class women very
+squeamish in their choice of husbands?
+
+However it be, it is a tragedy. Or perhaps it is not.
+
+Perhaps these unmarried women of the middle-classes are the famous
+sexless-workers of our ant-industrial society, of which we hear so
+much. Perhaps all they lack is an occupation: in short, a job. But
+perhaps we might hear their own opinion, before we lay the law down.
+
+In Woodhouse, there was a terrible crop of old maids among the
+"nobs," the tradespeople and the clergy. The whole town of women,
+colliers' wives and all, held its breath as it saw a chance of one
+of these daughters of comfort and woe getting off. They flocked to
+the well-to-do weddings with an intoxication of relief. For let
+class-jealousy be what it may, a woman hates to see another woman
+left stalely on the shelf, without a chance. They all _wanted_ the
+middle-class girls to find husbands. Every one wanted it, including
+the girls themselves. Hence the dismalness.
+
+Now James Houghton had only one child: his daughter Alvina. Surely
+Alvina Houghton--
+
+But let us retreat to the early eighties, when Alvina was a baby: or
+even further back, to the palmy days of James Houghton. In his palmy
+days, James Houghton was _cr�me de la cr�me_ of Woodhouse society.
+The house of Houghton had always been well-to-do: tradespeople, we
+must admit; but after a few generations of affluence, tradespeople
+acquire a distinct _cachet_. Now James Houghton, at the age of
+twenty-eight, inherited a splendid business in Manchester goods, in
+Woodhouse. He was a tall, thin, elegant young man with side-whiskers,
+genuinely refined, somewhat in the Bulwer style. He had a taste for
+elegant conversation and elegant literature and elegant Christianity:
+a tall, thin, brittle young man, rather fluttering in his manner, full
+of facile ideas, and with a beautiful speaking voice: most beautiful.
+Withal, of course, a tradesman. He courted a small, dark woman, older
+than himself, daughter of a Derbyshire squire. He expected to get at
+least ten thousand pounds with her. In which he was disappointed, for
+he got only eight hundred. Being of a romantic-commercial nature, he
+never forgave her, but always treated her with the most elegant
+courtesy. To seehim peel and prepare an apple for her was an exquisite
+sight. But that peeled and quartered apple was her portion. This
+elegant Adam of commerce gave Eve her own back, nicely cored, and had
+no more to do with her. Meanwhile Alvina was born.
+
+Before all this, however, before his marriage, James Houghton had
+built Manchester House. It was a vast square building--vast, that
+is, for Woodhouse--standing on the main street and high-road of the
+small but growing town. The lower front consisted of two fine shops,
+one for Manchester goods, one for silk and woollens. This was James
+Houghton's commercial poem.
+
+For James Houghton was a dreamer, and something of a poet: commercial,
+be it understood. He liked the novels of George Macdonald, and the
+fantasies of that author, extremely. He wove one continual fantasy for
+himself, a fantasy of commerce. He dreamed of silks and poplins,
+luscious in texture and of unforeseen exquisiteness: he dreamed of
+carriages of the "County" arrested before his windows, of exquisite
+women ruffling charmed, entranced to his counter. And charming,
+entrancing, he served them his lovely fabrics, which only he and they
+could sufficiently appreciate. His fame spread, until Alexandra,
+Princess of Wales, and Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, the two
+best-dressed women in Europe, floated down from heaven to the shop in
+Woodhouse, and sallied forth to show what could be done by purchasing
+from James Houghton.
+
+We cannot say why James Houghton failed to become the Liberty or the
+Snelgrove of his day. Perhaps he had too much imagination. Be that as
+it may, in those early days when he brought his wife to her new home,
+his window on the Manchester side was a foam and a may-blossom of
+muslins and prints, his window on the London side was an autumn evening
+of silks and rich fabrics. What wife could fail to be dazzled! But she,
+poor darling, from her stone hall in stony Derbyshire, was a little bit
+repulsed by the man's dancing in front of his stock, like David before
+the ark.
+
+The home to which he brought her was a monument. In the great bedroom
+over the shop he had his furniture _built_: built of solid mahogany: oh
+too, too solid. No doubt he hopped or skipped himself with satisfaction
+into the monstrous matrimonial bed: it could only be mounted by means
+of a stool and chair. But the poor, secluded little woman, older than
+he, must have climbed up with a heavy heart, to lie and face the gloomy
+Bastille of mahogany, the great cupboard opposite, or to turn wearily
+sideways to the great cheval mirror, which performed a perpetual and
+hideous bow before her grace. Such furniture! It could never be removed
+from the room.
+
+The little child was born in the second year. And then James Houghton
+decamped to a small, half-furnished bedroom at the other end of the
+house, where he slept on a rough board and played the anchorite for the
+rest of his days. His wife was left alone with her baby and the
+built-in furniture. She developed heart disease, as a result of nervous
+repressions.
+
+But like a butterfly James fluttered over his fabrics. He was a tyrant
+to his shop-girls. No French marquis in a Dickens' novel could have
+been more elegant and _raffin�_ and heartless. The girls detested him.
+And yet, his curious refinement and enthusiasm bore them away. They
+submitted to him. The shop attracted much curiosity. But the
+poor-spirited Woodhouse people were weak buyers. They wearied James
+Houghton with their demand for common zephyrs, for red flannel which
+they would scallop with black worsted, for black alpacas and bombazines
+and merinos. He fluffed out his silk-striped muslins, his India
+cotton-prints. But the natives shied off as if he had offered them the
+poisoned robes of Herakles.
+
+There was a sale. These sales contributed a good deal to Mrs.
+Houghton's nervous heart-disease. They brought the first signs of wear
+and tear into the face of James Houghton. At first, of course, he
+merely marked down, with discretion, his less-expensive stock of prints
+and muslins, nuns-veilings and muslin delaines, with a few fancy
+braidings and trimmings in guimp or bronze to enliven the affair. And
+Woodhouse bought cautiously.
+
+After the sale, however, James Houghton felt himself at liberty to
+plunge into an orgy of new stock. He flitted, with a tense look on his
+face, to Manchester. After which huge bundles, bales and boxes arrived
+in Woodhouse, and were dumped on the pavement of the shop. Friday
+evening came, and with it a revelation in Houghton's window: the first
+piqu�s, the first strangely-woven and honey-combed toilet covers and
+bed quilts, the first frill-caps and aprons for maid-servants: a wonder
+in white. That was how James advertised it. "A Wonder in White." Who
+knows but that he had been reading Wilkie Collins' famous novel!
+
+As the nine days of the wonder-in-white passed and receded, James
+disappeared in the direction of London. A few Fridays later he came out
+with his Winter Touch. Weird and wonderful winter coats, for
+ladies--everything James handled was for ladies, he scorned the coarser
+sex--: weird and wonderful winter coats for ladies, of thick, black,
+pockmarked cloth, stood and flourished their bear-fur cuffs in the
+background, while tippets, boas, muffs and winter-fancies coquetted in
+front of the window-space. Friday-night crowds gathered outside: the
+gas-lamps shone their brightest: James Houghton hovered in the
+background like an author on his first night in the theatre. The
+result was a sensation. Ten villages stared and crushed round the plate
+glass. It was a sensation: but what sensation! In the breasts of the
+crowd, wonder, admiration, _fear_, and ridicule. Let us stress the word
+fear. The inhabitants of Woodhouse were afraid lest James Houghton
+should impose his standards upon them. His goods were in excellent
+taste: but his customers were in as bad taste as possible. They stood
+outside and pointed, giggled, and jeered. Poor James, like an author on
+his first night, saw his work fall more than flat.
+
+But still he believed in his own excellence: and quite justly. What
+he failed to perceive was that the crowd hated excellence. Woodhouse
+wanted a gently graduated progress in mediocrity, a mediocrity so
+stale and flat that it fell outside the imagination of any sensitive
+mortal. Woodhouse wanted a series of vulgar little thrills, as one
+tawdry mediocrity was imported from Nottingham or Birmingham to take
+the place of some tawdry mediocrity which Nottingham and Birmingham
+had already discarded. That Woodhouse, as a very condition of its
+own being, hated any approach to originality or real taste, this
+James Houghton could never learn. He thought he had not been clever
+enough, when he had been far, far too clever already. He always
+thought that Dame Fortune was a capricious and fastidious dame, a
+sort of Elizabeth of Austria or Alexandra, Princess of Wales,
+elegant beyond his grasp. Whereas Dame Fortune, even in London or
+Vienna, let alone in Woodhouse, was a vulgar woman of the middle and
+lower middle-class, ready to put her heavy foot on anything that was
+not vulgar, machine-made, and appropriate to the herd. When he saw
+his delicate originalities, as well as his faint flourishes of
+draper's fantasy, squashed flat under the calm and solid foot of
+vulgar Dame Fortune, he fell into fits of depression bordering on
+mysticism, and talked to his wife in a vague way of higher
+influences and the angel Israfel. She, poor lady, was thoroughly
+scared by Israfel, and completely unhooked by the vagaries of James.
+
+At last--we hurry down the slope of James' misfortunes--the real
+days of Houghton's Great Sales began. Houghton's Great Bargain
+Events were really events. After some years of hanging on, he let go
+splendidly. He marked down his prints, his chintzes, his dimities
+and his veilings with a grand and lavish hand. Bang went his blue
+pencil through 3/11, and nobly he subscribed 1/0-3/4. Prices fell
+like nuts. A lofty one-and-eleven rolled down to six-three, 1/6
+magically shrank into 4-3/4d, whilst good solid prints exposed
+themselves at 3-3/4d per yard.
+
+Now this was really an opportunity. Moreover the goods, having
+become a little stale during their years of ineffectuality, were
+beginning to approximate to the public taste. And besides, good
+sound stuff it was, no matter what the pattern. And so the little
+Woodhouse girls went to school in petties and drawers made of
+material which James had destined for fair summer dresses: petties
+and drawers of which the little Woodhouse girls were ashamed, for
+all that. For if they should chance to turn up their little skirts,
+be sure they would raise a chorus among their companions: "Yah-h-h,
+yer've got Houghton's threp'ny draws on!"
+
+All this time James Houghton walked on air. He still saw the Fata
+Morgana snatching his fabrics round her lovely form, and pointing
+him to wealth untold. True, he became also Superintendent of the
+Sunday School. But whether this was an act of vanity, or whether it
+was an attempt to establish an Entente Cordiale with higher powers,
+who shall judge.
+
+Meanwhile his wife became more and more an invalid; the little
+Alvina was a pretty, growing child. Woodhouse was really impressed
+by the sight of Mrs. Houghton, small, pale and withheld, taking a
+walk with her dainty little girl, so fresh in an ermine tippet and a
+muff. Mrs. Houghton in shiny black bear's-fur, the child in the
+white and spotted ermine, passing silent and shadowy down the
+street, made an impression which the people did not forget.
+
+But Mrs. Houghton had pains at her heart. If, during her walk, she
+saw two little boys having a scrimmage, she had to run to them with
+pence and entreaty, leaving them dumfounded, whilst she leaned blue
+at the lips against a wall. If she saw a carter crack his whip over
+the ears of the horse, as the horse laboured uphill, she had to
+cover her eyes and avert her face, and all her strength left her.
+
+So she stayed more and more in her room, and the child was given to
+the charge of a governess. Miss Frost was a handsome, vigorous young
+woman of about thirty years of age, with grey-white hair and
+gold-rimmed spectacles. The white hair was not at all tragical: it
+was a family _trait_.
+
+Miss Frost mattered more than any one else to Alvina Houghton,
+during the first long twenty-five years of the girl's life. The
+governess was a strong, generous woman, a musician by nature. She
+had a sweet voice, and sang in the choir of the chapel, and took the
+first class of girls in the Sunday-School of which James Houghton
+was Superintendent. She disliked and rather despised James Houghton,
+saw in him elements of a hypocrite, detested his airy and gracious
+selfishness, his lack of human feeling, and most of all, his fairy
+fantasy. As James went further into life, he became a dreamer. Sad
+indeed that he died before the days of Freud. He enjoyed the most
+wonderful and fairy-like dreams, which he could describe perfectly,
+in charming, delicate language. At such times his beautifully
+modulated voice all but sang, his grey eyes gleamed fiercely under
+his bushy, hairy eyebrows, his pale face with its side-whiskers had
+a strange _lueur_, his long thin hands fluttered occasionally. He
+had become meagre in figure, his skimpy but genteel coat would be
+buttoned over his breast, as he recounted his dream-adventures,
+adventures that were half Edgar Allan Poe, half Andersen, with
+touches of Vathek and Lord Byron and George Macdonald: perhaps more
+than a touch of the last. Ladies were always struck by these
+accounts. But Miss Frost never felt so strongly moved to impatience
+as when she was within hearing.
+
+For twenty years, she and James Houghton treated each other with a
+courteous distance. Sometimes she broke into open impatience with
+him, sometimes he answered her tartly: "Indeed, indeed! Oh, indeed!
+Well, well, I'm sorry you find it so--" as if the injury consisted
+in her finding it so. Then he would flit away to the Conservative
+Club, with a fleet, light, hurried step, as if pressed by fate. At
+the club he played chess--at which he was excellent--and conversed.
+Then he flitted back at half-past twelve, to dinner.
+
+The whole morale of the house rested immediately on Miss Frost. She
+saw her line in the first year. She must defend the little Alvina,
+whom she loved as her own, and the nervous, petulant, heart-stricken
+woman, the mother, from the vagaries of James. Not that James had
+any vices. He did not drink or smoke, was abstemious and clean as an
+anchorite, and never lowered his fine tone. But still, the two
+unprotected ones must be sheltered from him. Miss Frost
+imperceptibly took into her hands the reins of the domestic
+government. Her rule was quiet, strong, and generous. She was not
+seeking her own way. She was steering the poor domestic ship of
+Manchester House, illuminating its dark rooms with her own sure,
+radiant presence: her silver-white hair, and her pale, heavy,
+reposeful face seemed to give off a certain radiance. She seemed to
+give weight, ballast, and repose to the staggering and bewildered
+home. She controlled the maid, and suggested the meals--meals which
+James ate without knowing what he ate. She brought in flowers and
+books, and, very rarely, a visitor. Visitors were out of place in
+the dark sombreness of Manchester House. Her flowers charmed the
+petulant invalid, her books she sometimes discussed with the airy
+James: after which discussions she was invariably filled with
+exasperation and impatience, whilst James invariably retired to the
+shop, and was heard raising his musical voice, which the work-girls
+hated, to one or other of the work-girls.
+
+James certainly had an irritating way of speaking of a book. He
+talked of incidents, and effects, and suggestions, as if the whole
+thing had just been a sensational-�sthetic attribute to himself. Not
+a grain of human feeling in the man, said Miss Frost, flushing pink
+with exasperation. She herself invariably took the human line.
+
+Meanwhile the shops began to take on a hopeless and frowsy look.
+After ten years' sales, spring sales, summer sales, autumn sales,
+winter sales, James began to give up the drapery dream. He himself
+could not bear any more to put the heavy, pock-holed black cloth
+coat, with wild bear cuffs and collar, on to the stand. He had
+marked it down from five guineas to one guinea, and then, oh ignoble
+day, to ten-and-six. He nearly kissed the gipsy woman with a basket
+of tin saucepan-lids, when at last she bought it for five shillings,
+at the end of one of his winter sales. But even she, in spite of the
+bitter sleety day, would not put the coat on in the shop. She
+carried it over her arm down to the Miners' Arms. And later, with a
+shock that really hurt him, James, peeping bird-like out of his shop
+door, saw her sitting driving a dirty rag-and-bone cart with a
+green-white, mouldy pony, and flourishing her arms like some wild
+and hairy-decorated squaw. For the long bear-fur, wet with sleet,
+seemed like a _chevaux de frise_ of long porcupine quills round her
+fore-arms and her neck. Yet such good, such wonderful material! James
+eyed it for one moment, and then fled like a rabbit to the stove in
+his back regions.
+
+The higher powers did not seem to fulfil the terms of treaty which
+James hoped for. He began to back out from the Entente. The Sunday
+School was a great trial to him. Instead of being carried away by
+his grace and eloquence, the nasty louts of colliery boys and girls
+openly banged their feet and made deafening noises when he tried to
+speak. He said many acid and withering things, as he stood there on
+the rostrum. But what is the good of saying acid things to those
+little fiends and gall-bladders, the colliery children. The
+situation was saved by Miss Frost's sweeping together all the big
+girls, under her surveillance, and by her organizing that the tall
+and handsome blacksmith who taught the lower boys should extend his
+influence over the upper boys. His influence was more than
+effectual. It consisted in gripping any recalcitrant boy just above
+the knee, and jesting with him in a jocular manner, in the dialect.
+The blacksmith's hand was all a blacksmith's hand need be, and his
+dialect was as broad as could be wished. Between the grip and the
+homely idiom no boy could endure without squealing. So the Sunday
+School paid more attention to James, whose prayers were beautiful.
+But then one of the boys, a proteg� of Miss Frost, having been left
+for half an hour in the obscure room with Mrs. Houghton, gave away
+the secret of the blacksmith's grip, which secret so haunted the
+poor lady that it marked a stage in the increase of her malady, and
+made Sunday afternoon a nightmare to her. And then James Houghton
+resented something in the coarse Scotch manner of the minister of
+that day. So that the superintendency of the Sunday School came to
+an end.
+
+At the same time, Solomon had to divide his baby. That is, he let
+the London side of his shop to W. H. Johnson, the tailor and
+haberdasher, a parvenu little fellow whose English would not bear
+analysis. Bitter as it was, it had to be. Carpenters and joiners
+appeared, and the premises were completely severed. From her room in
+the shadows at the back the invalid heard the hammering and sawing,
+and suffered. W. H. Johnson came out with a spick-and-span window,
+and had his wife, a shrewd, quiet woman, and his daughter, a
+handsome, loud girl, to help him on Friday evenings. Men flocked
+in--even women, buying their husbands a sixpence-halfpenny tie. They
+could have bought a tie for four-three from James Houghton. But no,
+they would rather give sixpence-halfpenny for W.H. Johnson's fresh
+but rubbishy stuff. And James, who had tried to rise to another
+successful sale, saw the streams pass into the other doorway, and
+heard the heavy feet on the hollow boards of the other shop: his
+shop no more.
+
+After this cut at his pride and integrity he lay in retirement for a
+while, mystically inclined. Probably he would have come to
+Swedenborg, had not his clipt wings spread for a new flight. He hit
+upon the brilliant idea of working up his derelict fabrics into
+ready-mades: not men's clothes, oh no: women's, or rather, ladies'.
+Ladies' Tailoring, said the new announcement.
+
+James Houghton was happy once more. A zig-zag wooden stair-way was
+rigged up the high back of Manchester House. In the great lofts
+sewing-machines of various patterns and movements were installed. A
+manageress was advertised for, and work-girls were hired. So a new
+phase of life started. At half-past six in the morning there was a
+clatter of feet and of girls' excited tongues along the back-yard
+and up the wooden stair-way outside the back wall. The poor invalid
+heard every clack and every vibration. She could never get over her
+nervous apprehension of an invasion. Every morning alike, she felt
+an invasion of some enemy was breaking in on her. And all day long
+the low, steady rumble of sewing-machines overhead seemed like the
+low drumming of a bombardment upon her weak heart. To make matters
+worse, James Houghton decided that he must have his sewing-machines
+driven by some extra-human force. He installed another plant of
+machinery--acetylene or some such contrivance--which was intended to
+drive all the little machines from one big belt. Hence a further
+throbbing and shaking in the upper regions, truly terrible to
+endure. But, fortunately or unfortunately, the acetylene plant was
+not a success. Girls got their thumbs pierced, and sewing machines
+absolutely refused to stop sewing, once they had started, and
+absolutely refused to start, once they had stopped. So that after a
+while, one loft was reserved for disused and rusty, but expensive
+engines.
+
+Dame Fortune, who had refused to be taken by fine fabrics and fancy
+trimmings, was just as reluctant to be captured by ready-mades.
+Again the good dame was thoroughly lower middle-class. James
+Houghton designed "robes." Now Robes were the mode. Perhaps it was
+Alexandra, Princess of Wales, who gave glory to the slim,
+glove-fitting Princess Robe. Be that as it may, James Houghton
+designed robes. His work-girls, a race even more callous than
+shop-girls, proclaimed the fact that James tried on his own
+inventions upon his own elegant thin person, before the privacy of
+his own cheval mirror. And even if he did, why not? Miss Frost,
+hearing this legend, looked sideways at the enthusiast.
+
+Let us remark in time that Miss Frost had already ceased to draw any
+maintenance from James Houghton. Far from it, she herself
+contributed to the upkeep of the domestic hearth and board. She had
+fully decided never to leave her two charges. She knew that a
+governess was an impossible item in Manchester House, as things
+went. And so she trudged the country, giving music lessons to the
+daughters of tradesmen and of colliers who boasted pianofortes. She
+even taught heavy-handed but dauntless colliers, who were seized
+with a passion to "play." Miles she trudged, on her round from
+village to village: a white-haired woman with a long, quick stride,
+a strong figure, and a quick, handsome smile when once her face
+awoke behind her gold-rimmed glasses. Like many short-sighted
+people, she had a certain intent look of one who goes her own way.
+
+The miners knew her, and entertained the highest respect and
+admiration for her. As they streamed in a grimy stream home from
+pit, they diverged like some magic dark river from off the pavement
+into the horse-way, to give her room as she approached. And the men
+who knew her well enough to salute her, by calling her name "Miss
+Frost!" giving it the proper intonation of salute, were fussy men
+indeed. "She's a lady if ever there was one," they said. And they
+meant it. Hearing her name, poor Miss Frost would flash a smile and
+a nod from behind her spectacles, but whose black face she smiled to
+she never, or rarely knew. If she did chance to get an inkling, then
+gladly she called in reply "Mr. Lamb," or "Mr. Calladine." In her
+way she was a proud woman, for she was regarded with cordial
+respect, touched with veneration, by at least a thousand colliers,
+and by perhaps as many colliers' wives. That is something, for any
+woman.
+
+Miss Frost charged fifteen shillings for thirteen weeks' lessons,
+two lessons a week. And at that she was considered rather dear. She
+was supposed to be making money. What money she made went chiefly to
+support the Houghton household. In the meanwhile she drilled Alvina
+thoroughly in theory and pianoforte practice, for Alvina was
+naturally musical, and besides this she imparted to the girl the
+elements of a young lady's education, including the drawing of
+flowers in water-colour, and the translation of a Lamartine poem.
+
+Now incredible as it may seem, fate threw another prop to the
+falling house of Houghton, in the person of the manageress of the
+work-girls, Miss Pinnegar. James Houghton complained of Fortune, yet
+to what other man would Fortune have sent two such women as Miss
+Frost and Miss Pinnegar, _gratis_? Yet there they were. And doubtful
+if James was ever grateful for their presence.
+
+If Miss Frost saved him from heaven knows what domestic d�b�cle and
+horror, Miss Pinnegar saved him from the workhouse. Let us not mince
+matters. For a dozen years Miss Frost supported the heart-stricken,
+nervous invalid, Clariss Houghton: for more than twenty years she
+cherished, tended and protected the young Alvina, shielding the
+child alike from a neurotic mother and a father such as James. For
+nearly twenty years she saw that food was set on the table, and
+clean sheets were spread on the beds: and all the time remained
+virtually in the position of an outsider, without one grain of
+established authority.
+
+And then to find Miss Pinnegar! In her way, Miss Pinnegar was very
+different from Miss Frost. She was a rather short, stout,
+mouse-coloured, creepy kind of woman with a high colour in her
+cheeks, and dun, close hair like a cap. It was evident she was not a
+lady: her grammar was not without reproach. She had pale grey eyes,
+and a padding step, and a soft voice, and almost purplish cheeks.
+Mrs. Houghton, Miss Frost, and Alvina did not like her. They
+suffered her unwillingly.
+
+But from the first she had a curious ascendancy over James Houghton.
+One would have expected his �sthetic eye to be offended. But no
+doubt it was her voice: her soft, near, sure voice, which seemed
+almost like a secret touch upon her hearer. Now many of her hearers
+disliked being secretly touched, as it were beneath their clothing.
+Miss Frost abhorred it: so did Mrs. Houghton. Miss Frost's voice was
+clear and straight as a bell-note, open as the day. Yet Alvina,
+though in loyalty she adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, did not
+really mind the quiet suggestive power of Miss Pinnegar. For Miss
+Pinnegar was not vulgarly insinuating. On the contrary, the things
+she said were rather clumsy and downright. It was only that she
+seemed to weigh what she said, secretly, before she said it, and
+then she approached as if she would slip it into her hearer's
+consciousness without his being aware of it. She seemed to slide her
+speeches unnoticed into one's ears, so that one accepted them
+without the slightest challenge. That was just her manner of
+approach. In her own way, she was as loyal and unselfish as Miss
+Frost. There are such poles of opposition between honesties and
+loyalties.
+
+Miss Pinnegar had the _second_ class of girls in the Sunday School,
+and she took second, subservient place in Manchester House. By force
+of nature, Miss Frost took first place. Only when Miss Pinnegar
+spoke to Mr. Houghton--nay, the very way she addressed herself to
+him--"What do _you_ think, Mr. Houghton?"--then there seemed to be
+assumed an immediacy of correspondence between the two, and an
+unquestioned priority in their unison, his and hers, which was a
+cruel thorn in Miss Frost's outspoken breast. This sort of secret
+intimacy and secret exulting in having, _really_, the chief power,
+was most repugnant to the white-haired woman. Not that there was, in
+fact, any secrecy, or any form of unwarranted correspondence between
+James Houghton and Miss Pinnegar. Far from it. Each of them would
+have found any suggestion of such a possibility repulsive in the
+extreme. It was simply an implicit correspondence between their two
+psyches, an immediacy of understanding which preceded all
+expression, tacit, wireless.
+
+Miss Pinnegar lived in: so that the household consisted of the
+invalid, who mostly sat, in her black dress with a white lace collar
+fastened by a twisted gold brooch, in her own dim room, doing
+nothing, nervous and heart-suffering; then James, and the thin young
+Alvina, who adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, and then these two
+strange women. Miss Pinnegar never lifted up her voice in household
+affairs: she seemed, by her silence, to admit her own inadequacy in
+culture and intellect, when topics of interest were being discussed,
+only coming out now and then with defiant platitudes and
+truisms--for almost defiantly she took the commonplace, vulgarian
+point of view; yet after everything she would turn with her quiet,
+triumphant assurance to James Houghton, and start on some point of
+business, soft, assured, ascendant. The others shut their ears.
+
+Now Miss Pinnegar had to get her footing slowly. She had to let
+James run the gamut of his creations. Each Friday night new wonders,
+robes and ladies' "suits"--the phrase was very new--garnished the
+window of Houghton's shop. It was one of the sights of the place,
+Houghton's window on Friday night. Young or old, no individual,
+certainly no female left Woodhouse without spending an excited and
+usually hilarious ten minutes on the pavement under the window.
+Muffled shrieks of young damsels who had just got their first view,
+guffaws of sympathetic youths, continued giggling and expostulation
+and "Eh, but what price the umbrella skirt, my girl!" and "You'd
+like to marry me in _that_, my boy--what? not half!"--or else "Eh,
+now, if you'd seen me in _that_ you'd have fallen in love with me at
+first sight, shouldn't you?"--with a probable answer "I should have
+fallen over myself making haste to get away"--loud guffaws:--all
+this was the regular Friday night's entertainment in Woodhouse.
+James Houghton's shop was regarded as a weekly comic issue. His
+piqu� costumes with glass buttons and sort of steel-trimming collars
+and cuffs were immortal.
+
+But why, once more, drag it out. Miss Pinnegar served in the shop on
+Friday nights. She stood by her man. Sometimes when the shrieks grew
+loudest she came to the shop door and looked with her pale grey eyes
+at the ridiculous mob of lasses in tam-o-shanters and youths half
+buried in caps. And she imposed a silence. They edged away.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Pinnegar pursued the sober and even tenor of her own
+way. Whilst James lashed out, to use the local phrase, in robes and
+"suits," Miss Pinnegar steadily ground away, producing strong,
+indestructible shirts and singlets for the colliers, sound,
+serviceable aprons for the colliers' wives, good print dresses for
+servants, and so on. She executed no flights of fancy. She had her
+goods made to suit her people. And so, underneath the foam and froth
+of James' creative adventure flowed a slow but steady stream of
+output and income. The women of Woodhouse came at last to _depend_
+on Miss Pinnegar. Growing lads in the pit reduce their garments to
+shreds with amazing expedition. "I'll go to Miss Pinnegar for thy
+shirts this time, my lad," said the harassed mothers, "and see if
+_they'll_ stand thee." It was almost like a threat. But it served
+Manchester House.
+
+James bought very little stock in these days: just remnants and
+pieces for his immortal robes. It was Miss Pinnegar who saw the
+travellers and ordered the unions and calicoes and grey flannel.
+James hovered round and said the last word, of course. But what was
+his last word but an echo of Miss Pinnegar's penultimate! He was not
+interested in unions and twills.
+
+His own stock remained on hand. Time, like a slow whirlpool
+churned it over into sight and out of sight, like a mass of dead
+sea-weed in a backwash. There was a regular series of sales
+fortnightly. The display of "creations" fell off. The new
+entertainment was the Friday-night's sale. James would attack some
+portion of his stock, make a wild jumble of it, spend a delirious
+Wednesday and Thursday marking down, and then open on Friday
+afternoon. In the evening there was a crush. A good moir� underskirt
+for one-and-eleven-three was not to be neglected, and a handsome
+string-lace collarette for six-three would iron out and be worth at
+least three-and-six. That was how it went: it would nearly all of
+it iron out into something really nice, poor James' crumpled stock.
+His fine, semi-transparent face flushed pink, his eyes flashed as he
+took in the sixpences and handed back knots of tape or packets of
+pins for the notorious farthings. What matter if the farthing change
+had originally cost him a halfpenny! His shop was crowded with women
+peeping and pawing and turning things over and commenting in loud,
+unfeeling tones. For there were still many comic items. Once, for
+example, he suddenly heaped up piles of hats, trimmed and untrimmed,
+the weirdest, sauciest, most screaming shapes. Woodhouse enjoyed
+itself that night.
+
+And all the time, in her quiet, polite, think-the-more fashion Miss
+Pinnegar waited on the people, showing them considerable forbearance
+and just a tinge of contempt. She became very tired those
+evenings--her hair under its invisible hairnet became flatter, her
+cheeks hung down purplish and mottled. But while James stood she
+stood. The people did not like her, yet she influenced them. And the
+stock slowly wilted, withered. Some was scrapped. The shop seemed to
+have digested some of its indigestible contents.
+
+James accumulated sixpences in a miserly fashion. Luckily for her
+work-girls, Miss Pinnegar took her own orders, and received payments
+for her own productions. Some of her regular customers paid her a
+shilling a week--or less. But it made a small, steady income. She
+reserved her own modest share, paid the expenses of her department,
+and left the residue to James.
+
+James had accumulated sixpences, and made a little space in his
+shop. He had desisted from "creations." Time now for a new flight.
+He decided it was better to be a manufacturer than a tradesman. His
+shop, already only half its original size, was again too big. It
+might be split once more. Rents had risen in Woodhouse. Why not cut
+off another shop from his premises?
+
+No sooner said than done. In came the architect, with whom he had
+played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one
+good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left
+a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present
+space. But as we age we dwindle.
+
+More hammering and alterations, and James found himself cooped in a
+long, long narrow shop, very dark at the back, with a high oblong
+window and a door that came in at a pinched corner. Next door to him
+was a cheerful new grocer of the cheap and florid type. The new
+grocer whistled "Just Like the Ivy," and shouted boisterously to his
+shop-boy. In his doorway, protruding on James' sensitive vision, was
+a pyramid of sixpence-halfpenny tins of salmon, red, shiny tins with
+pink halved salmons depicted, and another yellow pyramid of
+four-pence-halfpenny tins of pineapple. Bacon dangled in pale rolls
+_almost_ over James' doorway, whilst straw and paper, redolent of
+cheese, lard, and stale eggs filtered through the threshold.
+
+This was coming down in the world, with a vengeance. But what James
+lost downstairs he tried to recover upstairs. Heaven knows what he
+would have done, but for Miss Pinnegar. She kept her own work-rooms
+against him, with a soft, heavy, silent tenacity that would have
+beaten stronger men than James. But his strength lay in his
+pliability. He rummaged in the empty lofts, and among the discarded
+machinery. He rigged up the engines afresh, bought two new machines,
+and started an elastic department, making elastic for garters and
+for hat-chins.
+
+He was immensely proud of his first cards of elastic, and saw Dame
+Fortune this time fast in his yielding hands. But, becoming used to
+disillusionment, he almost welcomed it. Within six months he
+realized that every inch of elastic cost him exactly sixty per cent.
+more than he could sell it for, and so he scrapped his new
+department. Luckily, he sold one machine and even gained two pounds
+on it.
+
+After this, he made one last effort. This was hosiery webbing, which
+could be cut up and made into as-yet-unheard-of garments. Miss
+Pinnegar kept her thumb on this enterprise, so that it was not much
+more than abortive. And then James left her alone.
+
+Meanwhile the shop slowly churned its oddments. Every Thursday
+afternoon James sorted out tangles of bits and bobs, antique
+garments and occasional finds. With these he trimmed his window, so
+that it looked like a historical museum, rather soiled and scrappy.
+Indoors he made baskets of assortments: threepenny, sixpenny,
+ninepenny and shilling baskets, rather like a bran pie in which
+everything was a plum. And then, on Friday evening, thin and alert
+he hovered behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his
+narrow chest, his face agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers,
+so that they only grew becomingly as low as his ears. His rather
+large, grey moustache was brushed off his mouth. His hair, gone very
+thin, was brushed frail and floating over his baldness. But still a
+gentleman, still courteous, with a charming voice he suggested the
+possibilities of a pad of green parrots' tail-feathers, or of a few
+yards of pink-pearl trimming or of old chenille fringe. The women
+would pinch the thick, exquisite old chenille fringe, delicate and
+faded, curious to feel its softness. But they wouldn't give
+threepence for it. Tapes, ribbons, braids, buttons, feathers,
+jabots, bussels, appliqu�s, fringes, jet-trimmings, bugle-trimmings,
+bundles of old coloured machine-lace, many bundles of strange cord,
+in all colours, for old-fashioned braid-patterning, ribbons with
+H.M.S. Birkenhead, for boys' sailor caps--everything that nobody
+wanted, did the women turn over and over, till they chanced on a
+find. And James' quick eyes watched the slow surge of his flotsam,
+as the pot boiled but did not boil away. Wonderful that he did not
+think of the days when these bits and bobs were new treasures. But
+he did not.
+
+And at his side Miss Pinnegar quietly took orders for shirts,
+discussed and agreed, made measurements and received instalments.
+
+The shop was now only opened on Friday afternoons and evenings, so
+every day, twice a day, James was seen dithering bare-headed and
+hastily down the street, as if pressed by fate, to the Conservative
+Club, and twice a day he was seen as hastily returning, to his
+meals. He was becoming an old man: his daughter was a young woman:
+but in his own mind he was just the same, and his daughter was a
+little child, his wife a young invalid whom he must charm by some
+few delicate attentions--such as the peeled apple.
+
+At the club he got into more mischief. He met men who wanted to
+extend a brickfield down by the railway. The brickfield was called
+Klondyke. James had now a new direction to run in: down hill towards
+Bagthorpe, to Klondyke. Big penny-daisies grew in tufts on the brink
+of the yellow clay at Klondyke, yellow eggs-and-bacon spread their
+midsummer mats of flower. James came home with clay smeared all over
+him, discoursing brilliantly on grit and paste and presses and kilns
+and stamps. He carried home a rough and pinkish brick, and gloated
+over it. It was a _hard_ brick, it was a non-porous brick. It was an
+ugly brick, painfully heavy and parched-looking.
+
+This time he was sure: Dame Fortune would rise like Persephone out
+of the earth. He was all the more sure, because other men of the
+town were in with him at this venture: sound, moneyed grocers and
+plumbers. They were all going to become rich.
+
+Klondyke lasted a year and a half, and was not so bad, for in the
+end, all things considered, James had lost not more than five per
+cent. of his money. In fact, all things considered, he was about
+square. And yet he felt Klondyke as the greatest blow of all. Miss
+Pinnegar would have aided and abetted him in another scheme, if it
+would but have cheered him. Even Miss Frost was nice with him. But
+to no purpose. In the year after Klondyke he became an old man, he
+seemed to have lost all his feathers, he acquired a plucked,
+tottering look.
+
+Yet he roused up, after a coal-strike. Throttle-Ha'penny put new
+life into him. During a coal-strike the miners themselves began
+digging in the fields, just near the houses, for the surface coal.
+They found a plentiful seam of drossy, yellowish coal behind the
+Methodist New Connection Chapel. The seam was opened in the side of
+a bank, and approached by a footrill, a sloping shaft down which the
+men walked. When the strike was over, two or three miners still
+remained working the soft, drossy coal, which they sold for
+eight-and-sixpence a ton--or sixpence a hundredweight. But a mining
+population scorned such dirt, as they called it.
+
+James Houghton, however, was seized with a desire to work the
+Connection Meadow seam, as he called it. He gathered two miner
+partners--he trotted endlessly up to the field, he talked, as he had
+never talked before, with inumerable colliers. Everybody he met he
+stopped, to talk Connection Meadow.
+
+And so at last he sank a shaft, sixty feet deep, rigged up a
+corrugated-iron engine-house with a winding-engine, and lowered his
+men one at a time down the shaft, in a big bucket. The whole affair
+was ricketty, amateurish, and twopenny. The name Connection Meadow
+was forgotten within three months. Everybody knew the place as
+Throttle-Ha'penny. "What!" said a collier to his wife: "have we got
+no coal? You'd better get a bit from Throttle-Ha'penny." "Nay,"
+replied the wife, "I'm sure I shan't. I'm sure I shan't burn that
+muck, and smother myself with white ash."
+
+It was in the early Throttle-Ha'penny days that Mrs. Houghton died.
+James Houghton cried, and put a black band on his Sunday silk hat.
+But he was too feverishly busy at Throttle-Ha'penny, selling his
+hundredweights of ash-pit fodder, as the natives called it, to
+realize anything else.
+
+He had three men and two boys working his pit, besides a
+superannuated old man driving the winding engine. And in spite of
+all jeering, he flourished. Shabby old coal-carts rambled up behind
+the New Connection, and filled from the pit-bank. The coal improved
+a little in quality: it was cheap and it was handy. James could sell
+at last fifty or sixty tons a week: for the stuff was easy getting.
+And now at last he was actually handling money. He saw millions
+ahead.
+
+This went on for more than a year. A year after the death of Mrs.
+Houghton, Miss Frost became ill and suddenly died. Again James
+Houghton cried and trembled. But it was Throttle-Ha'penny that made
+him tremble. He trembled in all his limbs, at the touch of success.
+He saw himself making noble provision for his only daughter.
+
+But alas--it is wearying to repeat the same thing over and over.
+First the Board of Trade began to make difficulties. Then there was
+a fault in the seam. Then the roof of Throttle-Ha'penny was so loose
+and soft, James could not afford timber to hold it up. In short,
+when his daughter Alvina was about twenty-seven years old,
+Throttle-Ha'penny closed down. There was a sale of poor machinery,
+and James Houghton came home to the dark, gloomy house--to Miss
+Pinnegar and Alvina.
+
+It was a pinched, dreary house. James seemed down for the last time.
+But Miss Pinnegar persuaded him to take the shop again on Friday
+evening. For the rest, faded and peaked, he hurried shadowily down
+to the club.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON
+
+
+The heroine of this story is Alvina Houghton. If we leave her out of
+the first chapter of her own story it is because, during the first
+twenty-five years of her life, she really was left out of count, or
+so overshadowed as to be negligible. She and her mother were the
+phantom passengers in the ship of James Houghton's fortunes.
+
+In Manchester House, every voice lowered its tone. And so from the
+first Alvina spoke with a quiet, refined, almost convent voice. She
+was a thin child with delicate limbs and face, and wide, grey-blue,
+ironic eyes. Even as a small girl she had that odd ironic tilt of
+the eyelids which gave her a look as if she were hanging back in
+mockery. If she were, she was quite unaware of it, for under Miss
+Frost's care she received no education in irony or mockery. Miss
+Frost was straightforward, good-humoured, and a little earnest.
+Consequently Alvina, or Vina as she was called, understood only the
+explicit mode of good-humoured straightforwardness.
+
+It was doubtful which shadow was greater over the child: that of
+Manchester House, gloomy and a little sinister, or that of Miss
+Frost, benevolent and protective. Sufficient that the girl herself
+worshipped Miss Frost: or believed she did.
+
+Alvina never went to school. She had her lessons from her beloved
+governess, she worked at the piano, she took her walks, and for
+social life she went to the Congregational Chapel, and to the
+functions connected with the chapel. While she was little, she went
+to Sunday School twice and to Chapel once on Sundays. Then
+occasionally there was a magic lantern or a penny reading, to which
+Miss Frost accompanied her. As she grew older she entered the choir
+at chapel, she attended Christian Endeavour and P.S.A., and the
+Literary Society on Monday evenings. Chapel provided her with a
+whole social activity, in the course of which she met certain groups
+of people, made certain friends, found opportunity for strolls into
+the country and jaunts to the local entertainments. Over and above
+this, every Thursday evening she went to the subscription library to
+change the week's supply of books, and there again she met friends
+and acquaintances. It is hard to overestimate the value of church or
+chapel--but particularly chapel--as a social institution, in places
+like Woodhouse. The Congregational Chapel provided Alvina with a
+whole outer life, lacking which she would have been poor indeed. She
+was not particularly religious by inclination. Perhaps her father's
+beautiful prayers put her off. So she neither questioned nor
+accepted, but just let be.
+
+She grew up a slim girl, rather distinguished in appearance, with a
+slender face, a fine, slightly arched nose, and beautiful grey-blue
+eyes over which the lids tilted with a very odd, sardonic tilt. The
+sardonic quality was, however, quite in abeyance. She was ladylike,
+not vehement at all. In the street her walk had a delicate,
+lingering motion, her face looked still. In conversation she had
+rather a quick, hurried manner, with intervals of well-bred repose
+and attention. Her voice was like her father's, flexible and
+curiously attractive.
+
+Sometimes, however, she would have fits of boisterous hilarity, not
+quite natural, with a strange note half pathetic, half jeering. Her
+father tended to a supercilious, sneering tone. In Vina it came out
+in mad bursts of hilarious jeering. This made Miss Frost uneasy. She
+would watch the girl's strange face, that could take on a gargoyle
+look. She would see the eyes rolling strangely under sardonic
+eyelids, and then Miss Frost would feel that never, never had she
+known anything so utterly alien and incomprehensible and
+unsympathetic as her own beloved Vina. For twenty years the strong,
+protective governess reared and tended her lamb, her dove, only to
+see the lamb open a wolf's mouth, to hear the dove utter the wild
+cackle of a daw or a magpie, a strange sound of derision. At such
+times Miss Frost's heart went cold within her. She dared not
+realize. And she chid and checked her ward, restored her to the
+usual impulsive, affectionate demureness. Then she dismissed the
+whole matter. It was just an accidental aberration on the girl's
+part from her own true nature. Miss Frost taught Alvina thoroughly
+the qualities of her own true nature, and Alvina believed what she
+was taught. She remained for twenty years the demure, refined
+creature of her governess' desire. But there was an odd, derisive
+look at the back of her eyes, a look of old knowledge and
+deliberate derision. She herself was unconscious of it. But it was
+there. And this it was, perhaps, that scared away the young men.
+
+Alvina reached the age of twenty-three, and it looked as if she were
+destined to join the ranks of the old maids, so many of whom found
+cold comfort in the Chapel. For she had no suitors. True there were
+extraordinarily few young men of her class--for whatever her
+condition, she had certain breeding and inherent culture--in
+Woodhouse. The young men of the same social standing as herself were
+in some curious way outsiders to her. Knowing nothing, yet her
+ancient sapience went deep, deeper than Woodhouse could fathom. The
+young men did not like her for it. They did not like the tilt of her
+eyelids.
+
+Miss Frost, with anxious foreseeing, persuaded the girl to take over
+some pupils, to teach them the piano. The work was distasteful to
+Alvina. She was not a good teacher. She persevered in an off-hand
+way, somewhat indifferent, albeit dutiful.
+
+When she was twenty-three years old, Alvina met a man called Graham.
+He was an Australian, who had been in Edinburgh taking his medical
+degree. Before going back to Australia, he came to spend some months
+practising with old Dr. Fordham in Woodhouse--Dr. Fordham being in
+some way connected with his mother.
+
+Alexander Graham called to see Mrs. Houghton. Mrs. Houghton did not
+like him. She said he was creepy. He was a man of medium height,
+dark in colouring, with very dark eyes, and a body which seemed to
+move inside his clothing. He was amiable and polite, laughed often,
+showing his teeth. It was his teeth which Miss Frost could not
+stand. She seemed to see a strong mouthful of cruel, compact teeth.
+She declared he had dark blood in his veins, that he was not a man
+to be trusted, and that never, never would he make any woman's life
+happy.
+
+Yet in spite of all, Alvina was attracted by him. The two would stay
+together in the parlour, laughing and talking by the hour. What they
+could find to talk about was a mystery. Yet there they were,
+laughing and chatting, with a running insinuating sound through it
+all which made Miss Frost pace up and down unable to bear herself.
+
+The man was always running in when Miss Frost was out. He contrived
+to meet Alvina in the evening, to take a walk with her. He went a
+long walk with her one night, and wanted to make love to her. But
+her upbringing was too strong for her.
+
+"Oh no," she said. "We are only friends."
+
+He knew her upbringing was too strong for him also.
+
+"We're more than friends," he said. "We're more than friends."
+
+"I don't think so," she said.
+
+"Yes we are," he insisted, trying to put his arm round her waist.
+
+"Oh, don't!" she cried. "Let us go home."
+
+And then he burst out with wild and thick protestations of love,
+which thrilled her and repelled her slightly.
+
+"Anyhow I must tell Miss Frost," she said.
+
+"Yes, yes," he answered. "Yes, yes. Let us be engaged at once."
+
+As they passed under the lamps he saw her face lifted, the eyes
+shining, the delicate nostrils dilated, as of one who scents battle
+and laughs to herself. She seemed to laugh with a certain proud,
+sinister recklessness. His hands trembled with desire.
+
+So they were engaged. He bought her a ring, an emerald set in tiny
+diamonds. Miss Frost looked grave and silent, but would not openly
+deny her approval.
+
+"You like him, don't you? You don't dislike him?" Alvina insisted.
+
+"I don't dislike him," replied Miss Frost. "How can I? He is a
+perfect stranger to me."
+
+And with this Alvina subtly contented herself. Her father treated
+the young man with suave attention, punctuated by fits of jerky
+hostility and jealousy. Her mother merely sighed, and took sal
+volatile.
+
+To tell the truth, Alvina herself was a little repelled by the man's
+love-making. She found him fascinating, but a trifle repulsive. And
+she was not sure whether she hated the repulsive element, or whether
+she rather gloried in it. She kept her look of arch, half-derisive
+recklessness, which was so unbearably painful to Miss Frost, and so
+exciting to the dark little man. It was a strange look in a refined,
+really virgin girl--oddly sinister. And her voice had a curious
+bronze-like resonance that acted straight on the nerves of her
+hearers: unpleasantly on most English nerves, but like fire on the
+different susceptibilities of the young man--the darkie, as people
+called him.
+
+But after all, he had only six weeks in England, before sailing to
+Sydney. He suggested that he and Alvina should marry before he
+sailed. Miss Frost would not hear of it. He must see his people
+first, she said.
+
+So the time passed, and he sailed. Alvina missed him, missed the
+extreme excitement of him rather than the human being he was. Miss
+Frost set to work to regain her influence over her ward, to remove
+that arch, reckless, almost lewd look from the girl's face. It was a
+question of heart against sensuality. Miss Frost tried and tried to
+wake again the girl's loving heart--which loving heart was certainly
+not occupied by _that man_. It was a hard task, an anxious, bitter
+task Miss Frost had set herself.
+
+But at last she succeeded. Alvina seemed to thaw. The hard shining
+of her eyes softened again to a sort of demureness and tenderness.
+The influence of the man was revoked, the girl was left uninhabited,
+empty and uneasy.
+
+She was due to follow her Alexander in three months' time, to
+Sydney. Came letters from him, en route--and then a cablegram from
+Australia. He had arrived. Alvina should have been preparing her
+trousseau, to follow. But owing to her change of heart, she lingered
+indecisive.
+
+"_Do_ you love him, dear?" said Miss Frost with emphasis, knitting
+her thick, passionate, earnest eyebrows. "Do you love him
+sufficiently? _That's_ the point."
+
+The way Miss Frost put the question implied that Alvina did not and
+could not love him--because Miss Frost could not. Alvina lifted her
+large, blue eyes, confused, half-tender towards her governess, half
+shining with unconscious derision.
+
+"I don't really know," she said, laughing hurriedly. "I don't
+really."
+
+Miss Frost scrutinized her, and replied with a meaningful:
+
+"Well--!"
+
+To Miss Frost it was clear as daylight. To Alvina not so. In her
+periods of lucidity, when she saw as clear as daylight also, she
+certainly did not love the little man. She felt him a terrible
+outsider, an inferior, to tell the truth. She wondered how he could
+have the slightest attraction for her. In fact she could not
+understand it at all. She was as free of him as if he had never
+existed. The square green emerald on her finger was almost
+non-sensical. She was quite, quite sure of herself.
+
+And then, most irritating, a complete _volte face_ in her feelings.
+The clear-as-daylight mood disappeared as daylight is bound to
+disappear. She found herself in a night where the little man loomed
+large, terribly large, potent and magical, while Miss Frost had
+dwindled to nothingness. At such times she wished with all her force
+that she could travel like a cablegram to Australia. She felt it was
+the only way. She felt the dark, passionate receptivity of Alexander
+overwhelmed her, enveloped her even from the Antipodes. She felt
+herself going distracted--she felt she was going out of her mind.
+For she could not act.
+
+Her mother and Miss Frost were fixed in one line. Her father said:
+
+"Well, of course, you'll do as you think best. There's a great risk
+in going so far--a great risk. You would be entirely unprotected."
+
+"I don't mind being unprotected," said Alvina perversely.
+
+"Because you don't understand what it means," said her father.
+
+He looked at her quickly. Perhaps he understood her better than the
+others.
+
+"Personally," said Miss Pinnegar, speaking of Alexander, "I don't
+care for him. But every one has their own taste."
+
+Alvina felt she was being overborne, and that she was letting
+herself be overborne. She was half relieved. She seemed to nestle
+into the well-known surety of Woodhouse. The other unknown had
+frightened her.
+
+Miss Frost now took a definite line.
+
+"I feel you don't love him, dear. I'm almost sure you don't. So now
+you have to choose. Your mother dreads your going--she dreads it. I
+am certain you would never see her again. She says she can't bear
+it--she can't bear the thought of you out there with Alexander. It
+makes her shudder. She suffers dreadfully, you know. So you will
+have to choose, dear. You will have to choose for the best."
+
+Alvina was made stubborn by pressure. She herself had come fully to
+believe that she did not love him. She was quite sure she did not
+love him. But out of a certain perversity, she wanted to go.
+
+Came his letter from Sydney, and one from his parents to her and one
+to her parents. All seemed straightforward--not _very_ cordial, but
+sufficiently. Over Alexander's letter Miss Frost shed bitter tears.
+To her it seemed so shallow and heartless, with terms of endearment
+stuck in like exclamation marks. He semed to have no thought, no
+feeling for the girl herself. All he wanted was to hurry her out
+there. He did not even mention the grief of her parting from her
+English parents and friends: not a word. Just a rush to get her out
+there, winding up with "And now, dear, I shall not be myself till I
+see you here in Sydney--Your ever-loving Alexander." A selfish,
+sensual creature, who would forget the dear little Vina in three
+months, if she did not turn up, and who would neglect her in six
+months, if she did. Probably Miss Frost was right.
+
+Alvina knew the tears she was costing all round. She went upstairs
+and looked at his photograph--his dark and impertinent muzzle. Who
+was _he_, after all? She did not know him. With cold eyes she looked
+at him, and found him repugnant.
+
+She went across to her governess's room, and found Miss Frost in a
+strange mood of trepidation.
+
+"Don't trust me, dear, don't trust what I say," poor Miss Frost
+ejaculated hurriedly, even wildly. "Don't notice what I have said.
+Act for yourself, dear. Act for yourself entirely. I am sure I am
+wrong in trying to influence you. I know I am wrong. It is wrong and
+foolish of me. Act just for yourself, dear--the rest doesn't matter.
+The rest doesn't matter. Don't take _any_ notice of what I have
+said. I know I am wrong."
+
+For the first time in her life Alvina saw her beloved governess
+flustered, the beautiful white hair looking a little draggled, the
+grey, near-sighted eyes, so deep and kind behind the gold-rimmed
+glasses, now distracted and scared. Alvina immediately burst into
+tears and flung herself into the arms of Miss Frost. Miss Frost also
+cried as if her heart would break, catching her indrawn breath with
+a strange sound of anguish, forlornness, the terrible crying of a
+woman with a loving heart, whose heart has never been able to relax.
+Alvina was hushed. In a second, she became the elder of the two. The
+terrible poignancy of the woman of fifty-two, who now at last had
+broken down, silenced the girl of twenty-three, and roused all her
+passionate tenderness. The terrible sound of "Never now, never
+now--it is too late," which seemed to ring in the curious, indrawn
+cries of the elder woman, filled the girl with a deep wisdom. She
+knew the same would ring in her mother's dying cry. Married or
+unmarried, it was the same--the same anguish, realized in all its
+pain after the age of fifty--the loss in never having been able to
+relax, to submit.
+
+Alvina felt very strong and rich in the fact of her youth. For her
+it was not too late. For Miss Frost it was for ever too late.
+
+"I don't want to go, dear," said Alvina to the elder woman. "I know
+I don't care for him. He is nothing to me."
+
+Miss Frost became gradually silent, and turned aside her face. After
+this there was a hush in the house. Alvina announced her intention
+of breaking off her engagement. Her mother kissed her, and cried,
+and said, with the selfishness of an invalid:
+
+"I couldn't have parted with you, I couldn't." Whilst the father
+said:
+
+"I think you are wise, Vina. I have thought a lot about it."
+
+So Alvina packed up his ring and his letters and little presents,
+and posted them over the seas. She was relieved, really: as if she
+had escaped some very trying ordeal. For some days she went about
+happily, in pure relief. She loved everybody. She was charming and
+sunny and gentle with everybody, particularly with Miss Frost, whom
+she loved with a deep, tender, rather sore love. Poor Miss Frost
+seemed to have lost a part of her confidence, to have taken on a new
+wistfulness, a new silence and remoteness. It was as if she found
+her busy contact with life a strain now. Perhaps she was getting
+old. Perhaps her proud heart had given way.
+
+Alvina had kept a little photograph of the man. She would often go
+and look at it. Love?--no, it was not love! It was something more
+primitive still. It was curiosity, deep, radical, burning curiosity.
+How she looked and looked at his dark, impertinent-seeming face. A
+flicker of derision came into her eyes. Yet still she looked.
+
+In the same manner she would look into the faces of the young men of
+Woodhouse. But she never found there what she found in her
+photograph. They all seemed like blank sheets of paper in
+comparison. There was a curious pale surface-look in the faces of
+the young men of Woodhouse: or, if there was some underneath
+suggestive power, it was a little abject or humiliating, inferior,
+common. They were all either blank or common.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MATERNITY NURSE
+
+
+Of course Alvina made everybody pay for her mood of submission and
+sweetness. In a month's time she was quite intolerable.
+
+"I can't stay here all my life," she declared, stretching her eyes
+in a way that irritated the other inmates of Manchester House
+extremely. "I know I can't. I can't bear it. I simply can't bear it,
+and there's an end of it. I can't, I tell you. I can't bear it. I'm
+buried alive--simply buried alive. And it's more than I can stand.
+It is, really."
+
+There was an odd clang, like a taunt, in her voice. She was trying
+them all.
+
+"But what do you want, dear?" asked Miss Frost, knitting her dark
+brows in agitation.
+
+"I want to go away," said Alvina bluntly.
+
+Miss Frost gave a slight gesture with her right hand, of helpless
+impatience. It was so characteristic, that Alvina almost laughed.
+
+"But where do you want to go?" asked Miss Frost.
+
+"I don't know. I don't care," said Alvina. "Anywhere, if I can get
+out of Woodhouse."
+
+"Do you wish you had gone to Australia?" put in Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"No, I don't wish I had gone to Australia," retorted Alvina with a
+rude laugh. "Australia isn't the only other place besides
+Woodhouse."
+
+Miss Pinnegar was naturally offended. But the curious insolence
+which sometimes came out in the girl was inherited direct from her
+father.
+
+"You see, dear," said Miss Frost, agitated: "if you knew what you
+wanted, it would be easier to see the way."
+
+"I want to be a nurse," rapped out Alvina.
+
+Miss Frost stood still, with the stillness of a middle-aged
+disapproving woman, and looked at her charge. She believed that
+Alvina was just speaking at random. Yet she dared not check her, in
+her present mood.
+
+Alvina was indeed speaking at random. She had never thought of being
+a nurse--the idea had never entered her head. If it had she would
+certainly never have entertained it. But she had heard Alexander
+speak of Nurse This and Sister That. And so she had rapped out her
+declaration. And having rapped it out, she prepared herself to stick
+to it. Nothing like leaping before you look.
+
+"A nurse!" repeated Miss Frost. "But do you feel yourself fitted to
+be a nurse? Do you think you could bear it?"
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I could," retorted Alvina. "I want to be a maternity
+nurse--" She looked strangely, even outrageously, at her governess.
+"I want to be a maternity nurse. Then I shouldn't have to attend
+operations." And she laughed quickly.
+
+Miss Frost's right hand beat like a wounded bird. It was reminiscent
+of the way she beat time, insistently, when she was giving music
+lessons, sitting close beside her pupils at the piano. Now it beat
+without time or reason. Alvina smiled brightly and cruelly.
+
+"Whatever put such an idea into your head, Vina?" asked poor Miss
+Frost.
+
+"I don't know," said Alvina, still more archly and brightly.
+
+"Of course you don't mean it, dear," said Miss Frost, quailing.
+
+"Yes, I do. Why should I say it if I don't."
+
+Miss Frost would have done anything to escape the arch, bright,
+cruel eyes of her charge.
+
+"Then we must think about it," she said, numbly. And she went away.
+
+Alvina floated off to her room, and sat by the window looking down
+on the street. The bright, arch look was still on her face. But her
+heart was sore. She wanted to cry, and fling herself on the breast
+of her darling. But she couldn't. No, for her life she couldn't.
+Some little devil sat in her breast and kept her smiling archly.
+
+Somewhat to her amazement, he sat steadily on for days and days.
+Every minute she expected him to go. Every minute she expected to
+break down, to burst into tears and tenderness and reconciliation.
+But no--she did not break down. She persisted. They all waited for
+the old loving Vina to be herself again. But the new and
+recalcitrant Vina still shone hard. She found a copy of _The
+Lancet_, and saw an advertisement of a home in Islington where
+maternity nurses would be fully trained and equipped in six months'
+time. The fee was sixty guineas. Alvina declared her intention of
+departing to this training home. She had two hundred pounds of her
+own, bequeathed by her grandfather.
+
+In Manchester House they were all horrified--not moved with grief,
+this time, but shocked. It seemed such a repulsive and indelicate
+step to take. Which it was. And which, in her curious perverseness,
+Alvina must have intended it to be. Mrs. Houghton assumed a remote
+air of silence, as if she did not hear any more, did not belong. She
+lapsed far away. She was really very weak. Miss Pinnegar said: "Well
+really, if she wants to do it, why, she might as well try." And, as
+often with Miss Pinnegar, this speech seemed to contain a veiled
+threat.
+
+"A maternity nurse!" said James Houghton. "A maternity nurse! What
+exactly do you mean by a maternity nurse?"
+
+"A trained mid-wife," said Miss Pinnegar curtly. "That's it, isn't
+it? It is as far as I can see. A trained mid-wife."
+
+"Yes, of course," said Alvina brightly.
+
+"But--!" stammered James Houghton, pushing his spectacles up on to
+his forehead, and making his long fleece of painfully thin hair
+uncover his baldness. "I can't understand that any young girl of
+any--any upbringing, any upbringing whatever, should want to choose
+such a--such an--occupation. I can't understand it."
+
+"Can't you?" said Alvina brightly.
+
+"Oh well, if she _does_--" said Miss Pinnegar cryptically.
+
+Miss Frost said very little. But she had serious confidential talks
+with Dr. Fordham. Dr. Fordham didn't approve, certainly he
+didn't--but neither did he see any great harm in it. At that time it
+was rather the thing for young ladies to enter the nursing
+profession, if their hopes had been blighted or checked in another
+direction! And so, enquiries were made. Enquiries were made.
+
+The upshot was, that Alvina was to go to Islington for her six
+months' training. There was a great bustle, preparing her nursing
+outfit. Instead of a trousseau, nurse's uniforms in fine
+blue-and-white stripe, with great white aprons. Instead of a wreath
+of orange blossom, a rather chic nurse's bonnet of blue silk, and
+for a trailing veil, a blue silk fall.
+
+Well and good! Alvina expected to become frightened, as the time
+drew near. But no, she wasn't a bit frightened. Miss Frost watched
+her narrowly. Would there not be a return of the old, tender,
+sensitive, shrinking Vina--the exquisitely sensitive and nervous,
+loving girl? No, astounding as it may seem, there was no return of
+such a creature. Alvina remained bright and ready, the half-hilarious
+clang remained in her voice, taunting. She kissed them all good-bye,
+brightly and sprightlily, and off she set. She wasn't nervous.
+
+She came to St. Pancras, she got her cab, she drove off to her
+destination--and as she drove, she looked out of the window. Horrid,
+vast, stony, dilapidated, crumbly-stuccoed streets and squares of
+Islington, grey, grey, greyer by far than Woodhouse, and
+interminable. How exceedingly sordid and disgusting! But instead of
+being repelled and heartbroken, Alvina enjoyed it. She felt her
+trunk rumble on the top of the cab, and still she looked out on the
+ghastly dilapidated flat facades of Islington, and still she smiled
+brightly, as if there were some charm in it all. Perhaps for her
+there was a charm in it all. Perhaps it acted like a tonic on the
+little devil in her breast. Perhaps if she had seen tufts of
+snowdrops--it was February--and yew-hedges and cottage windows, she
+would have broken down. As it was, she just enjoyed it. She enjoyed
+glimpsing in through uncurtained windows, into sordid rooms where
+human beings moved as if sordidly unaware. She enjoyed the smell of
+a toasted bloater, rather burnt. So common! so indescribably common!
+And she detested bloaters, because of the hairy feel of the spines
+in her mouth. But to smell them like this, to know that she was in
+the region of "penny beef-steaks," gave her a perverse pleasure.
+
+The cab stopped at a yellow house at the corner of a square where
+some shabby bare trees were flecked with bits of blown paper, bits
+of paper and refuse cluttered inside the round railings of each
+tree. She went up some dirty-yellowish steps, and rang the
+"Patients'" bell, because she knew she ought not to ring the
+"Tradesmen's." A servant, not exactly dirty, but unattractive, let
+her into a hall painted a dull drab, and floored with cocoa-matting,
+otherwise bare. Then up bare stairs to a room where a stout, pale,
+common woman with two warts on her face, was drinking tea. It was
+three o'clock. This was the matron. The matron soon deposited her in
+a bedroom, not very small, but bare and hard and dusty-seeming, and
+there left her. Alvina sat down on her chair, looked at her box
+opposite her, looked round the uninviting room, and smiled to
+herself. Then she rose and went to the window: a very dirty window,
+looking down into a sort of well of an area, with other wells
+ranging along, and straight opposite like a reflection another solid
+range of back-premises, with iron stair-ways and horrid little doors
+and washing and little W. C.'s and people creeping up and down like
+vermin. Alvina shivered a little, but still smiled. Then slowly she
+began to take off her hat. She put it down on the drab-painted chest
+of drawers.
+
+Presently the servant came in with a tray, set it down, lit a naked
+gas-jet, which roared faintly, and drew down a crackly dark-green
+blind, which showed a tendency to fly back again alertly to the
+ceiling.
+
+"Thank you," said Alvina, and the girl departed.
+
+Then Miss Houghton drank her black tea and ate her bread and
+margarine.
+
+Surely enough books have been written about heroines in similar
+circumstances. There is no need to go into the details of Alvina's
+six months in Islington.
+
+The food was objectionable--yet Alvina got fat on it. The air was
+filthy--and yet never had her colour been so warm and fresh, her
+skin so soft. Her companions were almost without exception vulgar
+and coarse--yet never had she got on so well with women of her own
+age--or older than herself. She was ready with a laugh and a word,
+and though she was unable to venture on indecencies herself, yet she
+had an amazing faculty for _looking_ knowing and indecent beyond
+words, rolling her eyes and pitching her eyebrows in a certain
+way--oh, it was quite sufficient for her companions! And yet, if
+they had ever actually demanded a dirty story or a really open
+indecency from her, she would have been floored.
+
+But she enjoyed it. Amazing how she enjoyed it. She did not care
+_how_ revolting and indecent these nurses were--she put on a look as
+if she were in with it all, and it all passed off as easy as
+winking. She swung her haunches and arched her eyes with the best
+of them. And they behaved as if she were exactly one of themselves.
+And yet, with the curious cold tact of women, they left her alone,
+one and all, in private: just ignored her.
+
+It is truly incredible how Alvina became blooming and bouncing at
+this time. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was always
+ready with her hard, nurse's laugh and her nurse's quips. No one was
+better than she at _double-entendres._ No one could better give the
+nurse's leer. She had it all in a fortnight. And never once did she
+feel anything but exhilarated and in full swing. It seemed to her
+she had not a moment's time to brood or reflect about things--she
+was too much in the swing. Every moment, in the swing, living, or
+active in full swing. When she got into bed she went to sleep. When
+she awoke, it was morning, and she got up. As soon as she was up and
+dressed she had somebody to answer, something to say, something to
+do. Time passed like an express train--and she seemed to have known
+no other life than this.
+
+Not far away was a lying-in hospital. A dreadful place it was. There
+she had to go, right off, and help with cases. There she had to
+attend lectures and demonstrations. There she met the doctors and
+students. Well, a pretty lot they were, one way and another. When
+she had put on flesh and become pink and bouncing she was just their
+sort: just their very ticket. Her voice had the right twang, her
+eyes the right roll, her haunches the right swing. She seemed
+altogether just the ticket. And yet she wasn't.
+
+It would be useless to say she was not shocked. She was profoundly
+and awfully shocked. Her whole state was perhaps largely the result
+of shock: a sort of play-acting based on hysteria. But the dreadful
+things she saw in the lying-in hospital, and afterwards, went deep,
+and finished her youth and her tutelage for ever. How many infernos
+deeper than Miss Frost could ever know, did she not travel? the
+inferno of the human animal, the human organism in its convulsions,
+the human social beast in its abjection and its degradation.
+
+For in her latter half she had to visit the slum cases. And such
+cases! A woman lying on a bare, filthy floor, a few old coats thrown
+over her, and vermin crawling everywhere, in spite of sanitary
+inspectors. But what did the woman, the sufferer, herself care! She
+ground her teeth and screamed and yelled with pains. In her calm
+periods she lay stupid and indifferent--or she cursed a little. But
+abject, stupid indifference was the bottom of it all: abject, brutal
+indifference to everything--yes, everything. Just a piece of female
+functioning, no more.
+
+Alvina was supposed to receive a certain fee for these cases she
+attended in their homes. A small proportion of her fee she kept for
+herself, the rest she handed over to the Home. That was the
+agreement. She received her grudged fee callously, threatened and
+exacted it when it was not forthcoming. Ha!--if they didn't have to
+pay you at all, these slum-people, they would treat you with more
+contempt than if you were one of themselves. It was one of the
+hardest lessons Alvina had to learn--to bully these people, in their
+own hovels, into some sort of obedience to her commands, and some
+sort of respect for her presence. She had to fight tooth and nail
+for this end. And in a week she was as hard and callous to them as
+they to her. And so her work was well done. She did not hate them.
+There they were. They had a certain life, and you had to take them
+at their own worth in their own way. What else! If one should be
+gentle, one was gentle. The difficulty did not lie there. The
+difficulty lay in being sufficiently rough and hard: that was the
+trouble. It cost a great struggle to be hard and callous enough.
+Glad she would have been to be allowed to treat them quietly and
+gently, with consideration. But pah--it was not their line. They
+wanted to be callous, and if you were not callous to match, they
+made a fool of you and prevented your doing your work.
+
+Was Alvina her own real self all this time? The mighty question
+arises upon us, what is one's own real self? It certainly is not
+what we think we are and ought to be. Alvina had been bred to think
+of herself as a delicate, tender, chaste creature with unselfish
+inclinations and a pure, "high" mind. Well, so she was, in the
+more-or-less exhausted part of herself. But high-mindedness had
+really come to an end with James Houghton, had really reached the
+point, not only of pathetic, but of dry and anti-human, repulsive
+quixotry. In Alvina high-mindedness was already stretched beyond the
+breaking point. Being a woman of some flexibility of temper,
+wrought through generations to a fine, pliant hardness, she flew
+back. She went right back on high-mindedness. Did she thereby betray
+it?
+
+We think not. If we turn over the head of the penny and look at the
+tail, we don't thereby deny or betray the head. We do but adjust it
+to its own complement. And so with high-mindedness. It is but one
+side of the medal--the crowned reverse. On the obverse the three
+legs still go kicking the soft-footed spin of the universe, the
+dolphin flirts and the crab leers.
+
+So Alvina spun her medal, and her medal came down tails. Heads or
+tails? Heads for generations. Then tails. See the poetic justice.
+
+Now Alvina decided to accept the decision of her fate. Or rather,
+being sufficiently a woman, she didn't decide anything. She _was_
+her own fate. She went through her training experiences like another
+being. She was not herself, said Everybody. When she came home to
+Woodhouse at Easter, in her bonnet and cloak, everybody was simply
+knocked out. Imagine that this frail, pallid, diffident girl, so
+ladylike, was now a rather fat, warm-coloured young woman, strapping
+and strong-looking, and with a certain bounce. Imagine her mother's
+startled, almost expiring:
+
+"Why, Vina dear!"
+
+Vina laughed. She knew how they were all feeling.
+
+"At least it agrees with your _health_," said her father,
+sarcastically, to which Miss Pinnegar answered:
+
+"Well, that's a good deal."
+
+But Miss Frost said nothing the first day. Only the second day, at
+breakfast, as Alvina ate rather rapidly and rather well, the
+white-haired woman said quietly, with a tinge of cold contempt:
+
+"How changed you are, dear!"
+
+"Am I?" laughed Alvina. "Oh, not really." And she gave the arch look
+with her eyes, which made Miss Frost shudder.
+
+Inwardly, Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from questioning.
+Alvina was always speaking of the doctors: Doctor Young and Doctor
+Headley and Doctor James. She spoke of theatres and music-halls with
+these young men, and the jolly good time she had with them. And her
+blue-grey eyes seemed to have become harder and greyer, lighter
+somehow. In her wistfulness and her tender pathos, Alvina's eyes
+would deepen their blue, so beautiful. And now, in her floridity,
+they were bright and arch and light-grey. The deep, tender, flowery
+blue was gone for ever. They were luminous and crystalline, like the
+eyes of a changeling.
+
+Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from question. She wanted, she
+_needed_ to ask of her charge: "Alvina, have you betrayed yourself
+with any of these young men?" But coldly her heart abstained from
+asking--or even from seriously thinking. She left the matter
+untouched for the moment. She was already too much shocked.
+
+Certainly Alvina represented the young doctors as very nice, but
+rather fast young fellows. "My word, you have to have your wits
+about you with them!" Imagine such a speech from a girl tenderly
+nurtured: a speech uttered in her own home, and accompanied by a
+florid laugh, which would lead a chaste, generous woman like Miss
+Frost to imagine--well, she merely abstained from imagining
+anything. She had that strength of mind. She never for one moment
+attempted to answer the question to herself, as to whether Alvina
+had betrayed herself with any of these young doctors, or not. The
+question remained stated, but completely unanswered--coldly awaiting
+its answer. Only when Miss Frost kissed Alvina good-bye at the
+station, tears came to her eyes, and she said hurriedly, in a low
+voice:
+
+"Remember we are all praying for you, dear!"
+
+"No, don't do that!" cried Alvina involuntarily, without knowing
+what she said.
+
+And then the train moved out, and she saw her darling standing there
+on the station, the pale, well-modelled face looking out from behind
+the gold-rimmed spectacles, wistfully, the strong, rather stout
+figure standing very still and unchangeable, under its coat and
+skirt of dark purple, the white hair glistening under the folded
+dark hat. Alvina threw herself down on the seat of her carriage. She
+loved her darling. She would love her through eternity. She knew she
+was right--amply and beautifully right, her darling, her beloved
+Miss Frost. Eternally and gloriously right.
+
+And yet--and yet--it was a right which was fulfilled. There were
+other rights. There was another side to the medal. Purity and
+high-mindedness--the beautiful, but unbearable tyranny. The
+beautiful, unbearable tyranny of Miss Frost! It was time now for
+Miss Frost to die. It was time for that perfected flower to be
+gathered to immortality. A lovely _immortel_. But an obstruction to
+other, purple and carmine blossoms which were in bud on the stem. A
+lovely edelweiss--but time it was gathered into eternity.
+Black-purple and red anemones were due, real Adonis blood, and
+strange individual orchids, spotted and fantastic. Time for Miss
+Frost to die. She, Alvina, who loved her as no one else would ever
+love her, with that love which goes to the core of the universe,
+knew that it was time for her darling to be folded, oh, so gently
+and softly, into immortality. Mortality was busy with the day after
+her day. It was time for Miss Frost to die. As Alvina sat motionless
+in the train, running from Woodhouse to Tibshelf, it decided itself
+in her.
+
+She was glad to be back in Islington, among all the horrors of her
+confinement cases. The doctors she knew hailed her. On the whole,
+these young men had not any too deep respect for the nurses as a
+whole. Why drag in respect? Human functions were too obviously
+established to make any great fuss about. And so the doctors put
+their arms round Alvina's waist, because she was plump, and they
+kissed her face, because the skin was soft. And she laughed and
+squirmed a little, so that they felt all the more her warmth and
+softness under their arm's pressure.
+
+"It's no use, you know," she said, laughing rather breathless, but
+looking into their eyes with a curious definite look of unchangeable
+resistance. This only piqued them.
+
+"What's no use?" they asked.
+
+She shook her head slightly.
+
+"It isn't any use your behaving like that with me," she said, with
+the same challenging definiteness, finality: a flat negative.
+
+"Who're you telling?" they said.
+
+For she did not at all forbid them to "behave like that." Not in the
+least. She almost encouraged them. She laughed and arched her eyes
+and flirted. But her backbone became only the stronger and firmer.
+Soft and supple as she was, her backbone never yielded for an
+instant. It could not. She had to confess that she liked the young
+doctors. They were alert, their faces were clean and bright-looking.
+She liked the sort of intimacy with them, when they kissed her and
+wrestled with her in the empty laboratories or corridors--often in
+the intervals of most critical and appalling cases. She liked their
+arm round her waist, the kisses as she reached back her face,
+straining away, the sometimes desperate struggles. They took
+unpardonable liberties. They pinched her haunches and attacked her
+in unheard-of ways. Sometimes her blood really came up in the fight,
+and she felt as if, with her hands, she could tear any man, any male
+creature, limb from limb. A super-human, voltaic force filled her.
+For a moment she surged in massive, inhuman, female strength. The
+men always wilted. And invariably, when they wilted, she touched
+them with a sudden gentle touch, pitying. So that she always
+remained friends with them. When her curious Amazonic power left her
+again, and she was just a mere woman, she made shy eyes at them once
+more, and treated them with the inevitable female-to-male homage.
+
+The men liked her. They cocked their eyes at her, when she was not
+looking, and wondered at her. They wondered over her. They had been
+beaten by her, every one of them. But they did not openly know it.
+They looked at her, as if she were Woman itself, some creature not
+quite personal. What they noticed, all of them, was the way her
+brown hair looped over her ears. There was something chaste, and
+noble, and war-like about it. The remote quality which hung about
+her in the midst of her intimacies and her frequencies, nothing high
+or lofty, but something given to the struggle and as yet invincible
+in the struggle, made them seek her out.
+
+They felt safe with her. They knew she would not let them down. She
+would not intrigue into marriage, or try and make use of them in any
+way. She didn't care about them. And so, because of her isolate
+self-sufficiency in the fray, her wild, overweening backbone, they
+were ready to attend on her and serve her. Headley in particular
+hoped he might overcome her. He was a well-built fellow with sandy
+hair and a pugnacious face. The battle-spirit was really roused in
+him, and he heartily liked the woman. If he could have overcome her
+he would have been mad to marry her.
+
+With him, she summoned up all her mettle. She had never to be off
+her guard for a single minute. The treacherous suddenness of his
+attack--for he was treachery itself--had to be met by the voltaic
+suddenness of her resistance and counter-attack. It was nothing less
+than magical the way the soft, slumbering body of the woman could
+leap in one jet into terrible, overwhelming voltaic force, something
+strange and massive, at the first treacherous touch of the man's
+determined hand. His strength was so different from hers--quick,
+muscular, lambent. But hers was deep and heaving, like the strange
+heaving of an earthquake, or the heave of a bull as it rises from
+earth. And by sheer non-human power, electric and paralysing, she
+could overcome the brawny red-headed fellow.
+
+He was nearly a match for her. But she did not like him. The two
+were enemies--and good acquaintances. They were more or less
+matched. But as he found himself continually foiled, he became
+sulky, like a bear with a sore head. And then she avoided him.
+
+She really liked Young and James much better. James was a quick,
+slender, dark-haired fellow, a gentleman, who was always trying to
+catch her out with his quickness. She liked his fine, slim limbs,
+and his exaggerated generosity. He would ask her out to ridiculously
+expensive suppers, and send her sweets and flowers, fabulously
+recherch�. He was always immaculately well-dressed.
+
+"Of course, as a lady _and_ a nurse," he said to her, "you are two
+sorts of women in one."
+
+But she was not impressed by his wisdom.
+
+She was most strongly inclined to Young. He was a plump young man of
+middle height, with those blue eyes of a little boy which are so
+knowing: particularly of a woman's secrets. It is a strange thing
+that these childish men have such a deep, half-perverse knowledge of
+the other sex. Young was certainly innocent as far as acts went. Yet
+his hair was going thin at the crown already.
+
+He also played with her--being a doctor, and she a nurse who
+encouraged it. He too touched her and kissed her: and did _not_
+rouse her to contest. For his touch and his kiss had that nearness
+of a little boy's, which nearly melted her. She could almost have
+succumbed to him. If it had not been that with him there was no
+question of succumbing. She would have had to take him between her
+hands and caress and cajole him like a cherub, into a fall. And
+though she would have like to do so, yet that inflexible stiffness
+of her backbone prevented her. She could not do as she liked. There
+was an inflexible fate within her, which shaped her ends.
+
+Sometimes she wondered to herself, over her own virginity. Was it
+worth much, after all, behaving as she did? Did she care about it,
+anyhow? Didn't she rather despise it? To sin in thought was as bad
+as to sin in act. If the thought was the same as the act, how much
+more was her behaviour equivalent to a whole committal? She wished
+she were wholly committed. She wished she had gone the whole length.
+
+But sophistry and wishing did her no good. There she was, still
+isolate. And still there was that in her which would preserve her
+intact, sophistry and deliberate intention notwithstanding. Her time
+was up. She was returning to Woodhouse virgin as she had left it. In
+a measure she felt herself beaten. Why? Who knows. But so it was,
+she felt herself beaten, condemned to go back to what she was
+before. Fate had been too strong for her and her desires: fate which
+was not an external association of forces, but which was integral in
+her own nature. Her own inscrutable nature was her fate: sore
+against her will.
+
+It was August when she came home, in her nurse's uniform. She was
+beaten by fate, as far as chastity and virginity went. But she came
+home with high material hopes. Here was James Houghton's own
+daughter. She had an affluent future ahead of her. A fully-qualified
+maternity nurse, she was going to bring all the babies of the
+district easily and triumphantly into the world. She was going to
+charge the regulation fee of two guineas a case: and even on a
+modest estimate of ten babies a month, she would have twenty
+guineas. For well-to-do mothers she would charge from three to five
+guineas. At this calculation she would make an easy three hundred a
+year, without slaving either. She would be independent, she could
+laugh every one in the face.
+
+She bounced back into Woodhouse to make her fortune.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TWO WOMEN DIE
+
+
+It goes without saying that Alvina Houghton did not make her fortune
+as a maternity nurse. Being her father's daughter, we might almost
+expect that she did not make a penny. But she did--just a few pence.
+She had exactly four cases--and then no more.
+
+The reason is obvious. Who in Woodhouse was going to afford a
+two-guinea nurse, for a confinement? And who who was going to engage
+Alvina Houghton, even if they were ready to stretch their
+purse-strings? After all, they all knew her as _Miss_ Houghton, with
+a stress on the _Miss_, and they could not conceive of her as Nurse
+Houghton. Besides, there seemed something positively indecent in
+technically engaging one who was so much part of themselves. They
+all preferred either a simple mid-wife, or a nurse procured out of
+the unknown by the doctor.
+
+If Alvina wanted to make her fortune--or even her living--she should
+have gone to a strange town. She was so advised by every one she
+knew. But she never for one moment reflected on the advice. She had
+become a maternity nurse in order to practise in Woodhouse, just as
+James Houghton had purchased his elegancies to sell in Woodhouse.
+And father and daughter alike calmly expected Woodhouse demand to
+rise to their supply. So both alike were defeated in their
+expectations.
+
+For a little while Alvina flaunted about in her nurse's uniform.
+Then she left it off. And as she left it off she lost her bounce,
+her colour, and her flesh. Gradually she shrank back to the old,
+slim, reticent pallor, with eyes a little too large for her face.
+And now it seemed her face was a little too long, a little gaunt.
+And in her civilian clothes she seemed a little dowdy, shabby. And
+altogether, she looked older: she looked more than her age, which
+was only twenty-four years. Here was the old Alvina come back, rather
+battered and deteriorated, apparently. There was even a tiny touch of
+the trollops in her dowdiness--so the shrewd-eyed collier-wives
+decided. But she was a lady still, and unbeaten. Undeniably she was a
+lady. And that was rather irritating to the well-to-do and florid
+daughter of W.H. Johnson, next door but one. Undeniably a lady, and
+undeniably unmastered. This last was irritating to the good-natured
+but easy-coming young men in the Chapel Choir, where she resumed her
+seat. These young men had the good nature of dogs that wag their tails
+and expect to be patted. And Alvina did not pat them. To be sure, a
+pat from such a shabbily-black-kid-gloved hand would not have been so
+flattering--she need not imagine it! The way she hung back and looked
+at them, the young men, as knowing as if she were a prostitute, and
+yet with the well-bred indifference of a lady--well, it was almost
+offensive.
+
+As a matter of fact, Alvina was detached for the time being from her
+interest in young men. Manchester House had settled down on her like
+a doom. There was the quartered shop, through which one had to worm
+one's encumbered way in the gloom--unless one liked to go miles
+round a back street, to the yard entry. There was James Houghton,
+faintly powdered with coal-dust, flitting back and forth in a fever
+of nervous frenzy, to Throttle-Ha'penny--so carried away that he
+never saw his daughter at all the first time he came in, after her
+return. And when she reminded him of her presence, with her--"Hello,
+father!"--he merely glancied hurriedly at her, as if vexed with her
+interruption, and said:
+
+"Well, Alvina, you're back. You're back to find us busy." And he
+went off into his ecstasy again.
+
+Mrs. Houghton was now very weak, and so nervous in her weakness that
+she could not bear the slightest sound. Her greatest horror was lest
+her husband should come into the room. On his entry she became blue
+at the lips immediately, so he had to hurry out again. At last he
+stayed away, only hurriedly asking, each time he came into the
+house, "How is Mrs. Houghton? Ha!" Then off into uninterrupted
+Throttle-Ha'penny ecstasy once more.
+
+When Alvina went up to her mother's room, on her return, all the
+poor invalid could do was to tremble into tears, and cry faintly:
+
+"Child, you look dreadful. It isn't you."
+
+This from the pathetic little figure in the bed had struck Alvina
+like a blow.
+
+"Why not, mother?" she asked.
+
+But for her mother she had to remove her nurse's uniform. And at the
+same time, she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a
+woman who came in, and the servant had been nursing the invalid
+between them. Miss Frost was worn and rather heavy: her old buoyancy
+and brightness was gone. She had become irritable also. She was very
+glad that Alvina had returned to take this responsibility of nursing
+off her shoulders. For her wonderful energy had ebbed and oozed
+away.
+
+Alvina said nothing, but settled down to her task. She was quiet and
+technical with her mother. The two loved one another, with a curious
+impersonal love which had not a single word to exchange: an almost
+after-death love. In these days Mrs. Houghton never talked--unless
+to fret a little. So Alvina sat for many hours in the lofty, sombre
+bedroom, looking out silently on the street, or hurriedly rising to
+attend the sick woman. For continually came the fretful murmur:
+
+"Vina!"
+
+To sit still--who knows the long discipline of it, nowadays, as our
+mothers and grandmothers knew. To sit still, for days, months, and
+years--perforce to sit still, with some dignity of tranquil bearing.
+Alvina was old-fashioned. She had the old, womanly faculty for
+sitting quiet and collected--not indeed for a life-time, but for
+long spells together. And so it was during these months nursing her
+mother. She attended constantly on the invalid: she did a good deal
+of work about the house: she took her walks and occupied her place
+in the choir on Sunday mornings. And yet, from August to January,
+she seemed to be seated in her chair in the bedroom, sometimes
+reading, but mostly quite still, her hands quietly in her lap, her
+mind subdued by musing. She did not even think, not even remember.
+Even such activity would have made her presence too disturbing in
+the room. She sat quite still, with all her activities in
+abeyance--except that strange will-to-passivity which was by no
+means a relaxation, but a severe, deep, soul-discipline.
+
+For the moment there was a sense of prosperity--or probable
+prosperity, in the house. And there was an abundance of
+Throttle-Ha'penny coal. It was dirty ashy stuff. The lower bars of
+the grate were constantly blanked in with white powdery ash, which
+it was fatal to try to poke away. For if you poked and poked, you
+raised white cumulus clouds of ash, and you were left at last with a
+few darkening and sulphurous embers. But even so, by continuous
+application, you could keep the room moderately warm, without
+feeling you were consuming the house's meat and drink in the grate.
+Which was one blessing.
+
+The days, the months darkened past, and Alvina returned to her old
+thinness and pallor. Her fore-arms were thin, they rested very still
+in her lap, there was a ladylike stillness about them as she took
+her walk, in her lingering, yet watchful fashion. She saw
+everything. Yet she passed without attracting any attention.
+
+Early in the year her mother died. Her father came and wept
+self-conscious tears, Miss Frost cried a little, painfully. And
+Alvina cried also: she did not quite know why or wherefore. Her poor
+mother! Alvina had the old-fashioned wisdom to let be, and not to
+think. After all, it was not for her to reconstruct her parents'
+lives. She came after them. Her day was not their day, their life
+was not hers. Returning up-channel to re-discover their course was
+quite another matter from flowing down-stream into the unknown, as
+they had done thirty years before. This supercilious and impertinent
+exploration of the generation gone by, by the present generation, is
+nothing to our credit. As a matter of fact, no generation repeats
+the mistakes of the generation ahead, any more than any river
+repeats its course. So the young need not be so proud of their
+superiority over the old. The young generation glibly makes its own
+mistakes: and _how_ detestable these new mistakes are, why, only the
+future will be able to tell us. But be sure they are quite as
+detestable, quite as full of lies and hypocrisy, as any of the
+mistakes of our parents. There is no such thing as _absolute_
+wisdom.
+
+Wisdom has reference only to the past. The future remains for ever
+an infinite field for mistakes. You can't know beforehand.
+
+So Alvina refrained from pondering on her mother's life and fate.
+Whatever the fate of the mother, the fate of the daughter will be
+otherwise. That is organically inevitable. The business of the
+daughter is with her own fate, not with her mother's.
+
+Miss Frost however meditated bitterly on the fate of the poor dead
+woman. Bitterly she brooded on the lot of woman. Here was Clariss
+Houghton, married, and a mother--and dead. What a life! Who was
+responsible? James Houghton. What ought James Houghton to have done
+differently? Everything. In short, he should have been somebody
+else, and not himself. Which is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of
+idealism. The universe should be something else, and not what it is:
+so the nonsense of idealistic conclusion. The cat should not catch
+the mouse, the mouse should not nibble holes in the table-cloth, and
+so on and so on, in the House that Jack Built.
+
+But Miss Frost sat by the dead in grief and despair. This was the
+end of another woman's life: such an end! Poor Clariss: guilty
+James.
+
+Yet why? Why was James more guilty than Clariss? Is the only aim and
+end of a man's life, to make some woman, or parcel of women, happy?
+Why? Why should anybody expect to be _made happy_, and develop
+heart-disease if she isn't? Surely Clariss' heart-disease was a more
+emphatic sign of obstinate self-importance than ever James'
+shop-windows were. She expected to be _made happy_. Every woman in
+Europe and America expects it. On her own head then if she is made
+unhappy: for her expectation is arrogant and impertinent. The be-all
+and end-all of life doesn't lie in feminine happiness--or in any
+happiness. Happiness is a sort of soap-tablet--he won't be happy
+till he gets it, and when he's got it, the precious baby, it'll cost
+him his eyes and his stomach. Could anything be more puerile than a
+mankind howling because it isn't happy: like a baby in the bath!
+
+Poor Clariss, however, was dead--and if she had developed
+heart-disease because she wasn't happy, well, she had died of her
+own heart-disease, poor thing. Wherein lies every moral that mankind
+can wish to draw.
+
+Miss Frost wept in anguish, and saw nothing but another woman
+betrayed to sorrow and a slow death. Sorrow and a slow death,
+because a man had married her. Miss Frost wept also for herself, for
+her own sorrow and slow death. Sorrow and slow death, because a man
+had _not_ married her. Wretched man, what is he to do with these
+exigeant and never-to-be-satisfied women? Our mothers pined because
+our fathers drank and were rakes. Our wives pine because we are
+virtuous but inadequate. Who is this sphinx, this woman? Where is
+the Oedipus that will solve her riddle of happiness, and then
+strangle her?--only to marry his own mother!
+
+In the months that followed her mother's death, Alvina went on the
+same, in abeyance. She took over the housekeeping, and received one
+or two overflow pupils from Miss Frost, young girls to whom she gave
+lessons in the dark drawing-room of Manchester House. She was
+busy--chiefly with housekeeping. There seemed a great deal to put in
+order after her mother's death.
+
+She sorted all her mother's clothes--expensive, old-fashioned
+clothes, hardly worn. What was to be done with them? She gave them
+away, without consulting anybody. She kept a few private things, she
+inherited a few pieces of jewellery. Remarkable how little trace her
+mother left--hardly a trace.
+
+She decided to move into the big, monumental bedroom in front of the
+house. She liked space, she liked the windows. She was strictly
+mistress, too. So she took her place. Her mother's little
+sitting-room was cold and disused.
+
+Then Alvina went through all the linen. There was still abundance,
+and it was all sound. James had had such large ideas of setting up
+house, in the beginning. And now he begrudged the household
+expenses, begrudged the very soap and candles, and even would have
+liked to introduce margarine instead of butter. This last
+degradation the women refused. But James was above food.
+
+The old Alvina seemed completely herself again. She was quiet,
+dutiful, affectionate. She appealed in her old, childish way to Miss
+Frost, and Miss Frost called her "Dear!" with all the old protective
+gentleness. But there was a difference. Underneath her appearance of
+appeal, Alvina was almost coldly independent. She did what she
+thought she would. The old manner of intimacy persisted between her
+and her darling. And perhaps neither of them knew that the intimacy
+itself had gone. But it had. There was no spontaneous interchange
+between them. It was a kind of deadlock. Each knew the great love
+she felt for the other. But now it was a love static, inoperative.
+The warm flow did not run any more. Yet each would have died for the
+other, would have done anything to spare the other hurt.
+
+Miss Frost was becoming tired, dragged looking. She would sink into
+a chair as if she wished never to rise again--never to make the
+effort. And Alvina quickly would attend on her, bring her tea and
+take away her music, try to make everything smooth. And continually
+the young woman exhorted the elder to work less, to give up her
+pupils. But Miss Frost answered quickly, nervously:
+
+"When I don't work I shan't live."
+
+"But why--?" came the long query from Alvina. And in her
+expostulation there was a touch of mockery for such a creed.
+
+Miss Frost did not answer. Her face took on a greyish tinge.
+
+In these days Alvina struck up an odd friendship with Miss Pinnegar,
+after so many years of opposition. She felt herself more in sympathy
+with Miss Pinnegar--it was so easy to get on with her, she left so
+much unsaid. What was left unsaid mattered more to Alvina now than
+anything that was expressed. She began to hate outspokenness and
+direct speaking-forth of the whole mind. It nauseated her. She
+wanted tacit admission of difference, not open, wholehearted
+communication. And Miss Pinnegar made this admission all along. She
+never made you feel for an instant that she was one with you. She
+was never even near. She kept quietly on her own ground, and left
+you on yours. And across the space came her quiet commonplaces--but
+fraught with space.
+
+With Miss Frost all was openness, explicit and downright. Not that
+Miss Frost trespassed. She was far more well-bred than Miss
+Pinnegar. But her very breeding had that Protestant, northern
+quality which assumes that we have all the same high standards,
+really, and all the same divine nature, intrinsically. It is a fine
+assumption. But willy-nilly, it sickened Alvina at this time.
+
+She preferred Miss Pinnegar, and admired Miss Pinnegar's humble
+wisdom with a new admiration. The two were talking of Dr. Headley,
+who, they read in the newspaper, had disgraced himself finally.
+
+"I suppose," said Miss Pinnegar, "it takes his sort to make all
+sorts."
+
+Such bits of homely wisdom were like relief from cramp and pain, to
+Alvina. "It takes his sort to make all sorts." It took her sort too.
+And it took her father's sort--as well as her mother's and Miss
+Frost's. It took every sort to make all sorts. Why have standards
+and a regulation pattern? Why have a human criterion? There's the
+point! Why, in the name of all the free heavens, have human
+criteria? Why? Simply for bullying and narrowness.
+
+Alvina felt at her ease with Miss Pinnegar. The two women talked
+away to one another, in their quiet moments: and slipped apart like
+conspirators when Miss Frost came in: as if there was something to
+be ashamed of. If there was, heaven knows what it might have been,
+for their talk was ordinary enough. But Alvina liked to be with Miss
+Pinnegar in the kitchen. Miss Pinnegar wasn't competent and
+masterful like Miss Frost: she was ordinary and uninspired, with
+quiet, unobserved movements. But she was deep, and there was some
+secret satisfaction in her very quality of secrecy.
+
+So the days and weeks and months slipped by, and Alvina was hidden
+like a mole in the dark chambers of Manchester House, busy with
+cooking and cleaning and arranging, getting the house in her own
+order, and attending to her pupils. She took her walk in the
+afternoon. Once and only once she went to Throttle-Ha'penny, and,
+seized with sudden curiosity, insisted on being wound down in the
+iron bucket to the little workings underneath. Everything was quite
+tidy in the short gang-ways down below, timbered and in sound order.
+The miners were competent enough. But water dripped dismally in
+places, and there was a stale feeling in the air.
+
+Her father accompanied her, pointed her to the seam of
+yellow-flecked coal, the shale and the bind, the direction of the
+trend. He had already an airy-fairy kind of knowledge of the whole
+affair, and seemed like some not quite trustworthy conjuror who had
+conjured it all up by sleight of hand. In the background the miners
+stood grey and ghostly, in the candle-light, and seemed to listen
+sardonically. One of them, facile in his subordinate way as James in
+his authoritative, kept chiming in:
+
+"Ay, that's the road it goes, Miss Huffen--yis, yo'll see th' roof
+theer bellies down a bit--s' loose. No, you dunna get th' puddin'
+stones i' this pit--s' not deep enough. Eh, they come down on you
+plumb, as if th' roof had laid its egg on you. Ay, it runs a bit
+thin down here--six inches. You see th' bed's soft, it's a sort o'
+clay-bind, it's not clunch such as you get deeper. Oh, it's easy
+workin'--you don't have to knock your guts out. There's no need for
+shots, Miss Huffen--we bring it down--you see here--" And he
+stooped, pointing to a shallow, shelving excavation which he was
+making under the coal. The working was low, you must stoop all the
+time. The roof and the timbered sides of the way seemed to press on
+you. It was as if she were in her tomb for ever, like the dead and
+everlasting Egyptians. She was frightened, but fascinated. The
+collier kept on talking to her, stretching his bare, grey-black
+hairy arm across her vision, and pointing with his knotted hand. The
+thick-wicked tallow candles guttered and smelled. There was a
+thickness in the air, a sense of dark, fluid presence in the thick
+atmosphere, the dark, fluid, viscous voice of the collier making a
+broad-vowelled, clapping sound in her ear. He seemed to linger near
+her as if he knew--as if he knew--what? Something for ever
+unknowable and inadmissible, something that belonged purely to the
+underground: to the slaves who work underground: knowledge
+humiliated, subjected, but ponderous and inevitable. And still his
+voice went on clapping in her ear, and still his presence edged near
+her, and seemed to impinge on her--a smallish, semi-grotesque,
+grey-obscure figure with a naked brandished forearm: not human: a
+creature of the subterranean world, melted out like a bat, fluid.
+She felt herself melting out also, to become a mere vocal ghost, a
+presence in the thick atmosphere. Her lungs felt thick and slow, her
+mind dissolved, she felt she could cling like a bat in the long
+swoon of the crannied, underworld darkness. Cling like a bat and
+sway for ever swooning in the draughts of the darkness--
+
+When she was up on the earth again she blinked and peered at the
+world in amazement. What a pretty, luminous place it was, carved in
+substantial luminosity. What a strange and lovely place, bubbling
+iridescent-golden on the surface of the underworld. Iridescent
+golden--could anything be more fascinating! Like lovely glancing
+surface on fluid pitch. But a velvet surface. A velvet surface of
+golden light, velvet-pile of gold and pale luminosity, and strange
+beautiful elevations of houses and trees, and depressions of fields
+and roads, all golden and floating like atmospheric majolica. Never
+had the common ugliness of Woodhouse seemed so entrancing. She
+thought she had never seen such beauty--a lovely luminous majolica,
+living and palpitating, the glossy, svelte world-surface, the
+exquisite face of all the darkness. It was like a vision. Perhaps
+gnomes and subterranean workers, enslaved in the era of light, see
+with such eyes. Perhaps that is why they are absolutely blind to
+conventional ugliness. For truly nothing could be more hideous than
+Woodhouse, as the miners had built it and disposed it. And yet, the
+very cabbage-stumps and rotten fences of the gardens, the very
+back-yards were instinct with magic, molten as they seemed with the
+bubbling-up of the under-darkness, bubbling up of majolica weight
+and luminosity, quite ignorant of the sky, heavy and satisfying.
+
+Slaves of the underworld! She watched the swing of the grey colliers
+along the pavement with a new fascination, hypnotized by a new
+vision. Slaves--the underground trolls and iron-workers, magic,
+mischievous, and enslaved, of the ancient stories. But tall--the
+miners seemed to her to loom tall and grey, in their enslaved magic.
+Slaves who would cause the superimposed day-order to fall. Not
+because, individually, they wanted to. But because, collectively,
+something bubbled up in them, the force of darkness which had no
+master and no control. It would bubble and stir in them as
+earthquakes stir the earth. It would be simply disastrous, because
+it had no master. There was no dark master in the world. The puerile
+world went on crying out for a new Jesus, another Saviour from the
+sky, another heavenly superman. When what was wanted was a Dark
+Master from the underworld.
+
+So they streamed past her, home from work--grey from head to foot,
+distorted in shape, cramped, with curious faces that came out pallid
+from under their dirt. Their walk was heavy-footed and slurring,
+their bearing stiff and grotesque. A stream they were--yet they
+seemed to her to loom like strange, valid figures of fairy-lore,
+unrealized and as yet unexperienced. The miners, the iron-workers,
+those who fashion the stuff of the underworld.
+
+As it always comes to its children, the nostalgia of the repulsive,
+heavy-footed Midlands came over her again, even whilst she was
+there in the midst. The curious, dark, inexplicable and yet
+insatiable craving--as if for an earthquake. To feel the earth heave
+and shudder and shatter the world from beneath. To go down in the
+d�b�cle.
+
+And so, in spite of everything, poverty, dowdiness, obscurity, and
+nothingness, she was content to stay in abeyance at home for the
+time. True, she was filled with the same old, slow, dreadful craving
+of the Midlands: a craving insatiable and inexplicable. But the very
+craving kept her still. For at this time she did not translate it
+into a desire, or need, for love. At the back of her mind somewhere
+was the fixed idea, the fixed intention of finding love, a man. But
+as yet, at this period, the idea was in abeyance, it did not act.
+The craving that possessed her as it possesses everybody, in a
+greater or less degree, in those parts, sustained her darkly and
+unconsciously.
+
+A hot summer waned into autumn, the long, bewildering days drew in,
+the transient nights, only a few breaths of shadow between noon and
+noon, deepened and strengthened. A restlessness came over everybody.
+There was another short strike among the miners. James Houghton,
+like an excited beetle, scurried to and fro, feeling he was making
+his fortune. Never had Woodhouse been so thronged on Fridays with
+purchasers and money-spenders. The place seemed surcharged with
+life.
+
+Autumn lasted beautiful till end of October. And then suddenly, cold
+rain, endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through
+the wind and rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had
+seemed almost to blossom again in the long hot days, regaining a
+free cheerfulness that amounted almost to liveliness, and who even
+caused a sort of scandal by her intimacy with a rather handsome but
+common stranger, an insurance agent who had come into the place with
+a good, unused tenor voice--now she wilted again. She had given the
+rather florid young man tea in her room, and had laboured away at
+his fine, metallic voice, correcting him and teaching him and
+laughing with him and spending really a remarkable number of hours
+alone with him in her room in Woodhouse--for she had given up
+tramping the country, and had hired a music-room in a quiet street,
+where she gave her lessons. And the young man had hung round, and
+had never wanted to go away. They would prolong their t�te-�-t�te
+and their singing on till ten o'clock at night, and Miss Frost would
+return to Manchester House flushed and handsome and a little shy,
+while the young man, who was common, took on a new boldness in the
+streets. He had auburn hair, high colouring, and a rather
+challenging bearing. He took on a new boldness, his own estimate of
+himself rose considerably, with Miss Frost and his trained voice to
+justify him. He was a little insolent and condescending to the
+natives, who disliked him. For their lives they could not imagine
+what Miss Frost could find in him. They began even to dislike her,
+and a pretty scandal was started about the pair, in the pleasant
+room where Miss Frost had her piano, her books, and her flowers. The
+scandal was as unjust as most scandals are. Yet truly, all that
+summer and autumn Miss Frost had a new and slightly aggressive
+cheerfulness and humour. And Manchester House saw little of her,
+comparatively.
+
+And then, at the end of September, the young man was removed by his
+Insurance Company to another district. And at the end of October set
+in the most abominable and unbearable weather, deluges of rain and
+north winds, cutting the tender, summer-unfolded people to pieces.
+Miss Frost wilted at once. A silence came over her. She shuddered
+when she had to leave the fire. She went in the morning to her room,
+and stayed there all the day, in a hot, close atmosphere, shuddering
+when her pupils brought the outside weather with them to her.
+
+She was always subject to bronchitis. In November she had a bad
+bronchitis cold. Then suddenly one morning she could not get up.
+Alvina went in and found her semi-conscious.
+
+The girl was almost mad. She flew to the rescue. She despatched her
+father instantly for the doctor, she heaped the sticks in the
+bedroom grate and made a bright fire, she brough hot milk and
+brandy.
+
+"Thank you, dear, thank you. It's a bronchial cold," whispered Miss
+Frost hurriedly, trying to sip the milk. She could not. She didn't
+want it.
+
+"I've sent for the doctor," said Alvina, in her cool voice, wherein
+none the less there rang the old hesitancy of sheer love.
+
+Miss Frost lifted her eyes:
+
+"There's no need," she said, and she smiled winsomely at Alvina.
+
+It was pneumonia. Useless to talk of the distracted anguish of
+Alvina during the next two days. She was so swift and sensitive in
+her nursing, she seemed to have second sight. She talked to nobody.
+In her silence her soul was alone with the soul of her darling. The
+long semi-consciousness and the tearing pain of pneumonia, the
+anguished sickness.
+
+But sometimes the grey eyes would open and smile with delicate
+winsomeness at Alvina, and Alvina smiled back, with a cheery,
+answering winsomeness. But that costs something.
+
+On the evening of the second day, Miss Frost got her hand from under
+the bedclothes, and laid it on Alvina's hand. Alvina leaned down to
+her.
+
+"Everything is for you, my love," whispered Miss Frost, looking with
+strange eyes on Alvina's face.
+
+"Don't talk, Miss Frost," moaned Alvina.
+
+"Everything is for you," murmured the sick woman--"except--" and she
+enumerated some tiny legacies which showed her generous, thoughtful
+nature.
+
+"Yes, I shall remember," said Alvina, beyond tears now.
+
+Miss Frost smiled with her old bright, wonderful look, that had a
+touch of queenliness in it.
+
+"Kiss me, dear," she whispered.
+
+Alvina kissed her, and could not suppress the whimpering of her
+too-much grief.
+
+The night passed slowly. Sometimes the grey eyes of the sick woman
+rested dark, dilated, haggard on Alvina's face, with a heavy, almost
+accusing look, sinister. Then they closed again. And sometimes they
+looked pathetic, with a mute, stricken appeal. Then again they
+closed--only to open again tense with pain. Alvina wiped her
+blood-phlegmed lips.
+
+In the morning she died--lay there haggard, death-smeared, with her
+lovely white hair smeared also, and disorderly: she who had been so
+beautiful and clean always.
+
+Alvina knew death--which is untellable. She knew that her darling
+carried away a portion of her own soul into death.
+
+But she was alone. And the agony of being alone, the agony of grief,
+passionate, passionate grief for her darling who was torn into
+death--the agony of self-reproach, regret; the agony of remembrance;
+the agony of the looks of the dying woman, winsome, and sinisterly
+accusing, and pathetically, despairingly appealing--probe after
+probe of mortal agony, which throughout eternity would never lose
+its power to pierce to the quick!
+
+Alvina seemed to keep strangely calm and aloof all the days after
+the death. Only when she was alone she suffered till she felt her
+heart really broke.
+
+"I shall never feel anything any more," she said in her abrupt way
+to Miss Frost's friend, another woman of over fifty.
+
+"Nonsense, child!" expostulated Mrs. Lawson gently.
+
+"I shan't! I shall never have a heart to feel anything any more,"
+said Alvina, with a strange, distraught roll of the eyes.
+
+"Not like this, child. But you'll feel other things--"
+
+"I haven't the heart," persisted Alvina.
+
+"Not yet," said Mrs. Lawson gently. "You can't expect--But
+time--time brings back--"
+
+"Oh well--but I don't believe it," said Alvina.
+
+People thought her rather hard. To one of her gossips Miss Pinnegar
+confessed:
+
+"I thought she'd have felt it more. She cared more for her than she
+did for her own mother--and her mother knew it. Mrs. Houghton
+complained bitterly, sometimes, that _she_ had _no_ love. They were
+everything to one another, Miss Frost and Alvina. I should have
+thought she'd have felt it more. But you never know. A good thing if
+she doesn't, really."
+
+Miss Pinnegar herself did not care one little bit that Miss Frost
+was dead. She did not feel herself implicated.
+
+The nearest relatives came down, and everything was settled. The
+will was found, just a brief line on a piece of notepaper expressing
+a wish that Alvina should have everything. Alvina herself told the
+verbal requests. All was quietly fulfilled.
+
+As it might well be. For there was nothing to leave. Just
+sixty-three pounds in the bank--no more: then the clothes, piano,
+books and music. Miss Frost's brother had these latter, at his own
+request: the books and music, and the piano. Alvina inherited the
+few simple trinkets, and about forty-five pounds in money.
+
+"Poor Miss Frost," cried Mrs. Lawson, weeping rather bitterly--"she
+saved nothing for herself. You can see why she never wanted to grow
+old, so that she couldn't work. You can see. It's a shame, it's a
+shame, one of the best women that ever trod earth."
+
+Manchester House settled down to its deeper silence, its darker
+gloom. Miss Frost was irreparably gone. With her, the reality went
+out of the house. It seemed to be silently waiting to disappear. And
+Alvina and Miss Pinnegar might move about and talk in vain. They
+could never remove the sense of waiting to finish: it was all just
+waiting to finish. And the three, James and Alvina and Miss
+Pinnegar, waited lingering through the months, for the house to come
+to an end. With Miss Frost its spirit passed away: it was no more.
+Dark, empty-feeling, it seemed all the time like a house just before
+a sale.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BEAU
+
+
+Throttle-Ha'penny worked fitfully through the winter, and in the
+spring broke down. By this time James Houghton had a pathetic,
+childish look which touched the hearts of Alvina and Miss Pinnegar.
+They began to treat him with a certain feminine indulgence, as he
+fluttered round, agitated and bewildered. He was like a bird that
+has flown into a room and is exhausted, enfeebled by its attempts to
+fly through the false freedom of the window-glass. Sometimes he
+would sit moping in a corner, with his head under his wing. But Miss
+Pinnegar chased him forth, like the stealthy cat she was, chased him
+up to the work-room to consider some detail of work, chased him into
+the shop to turn over the old d�bris of the stock. At one time he
+showed the alarming symptom of brooding over his wife's death. Miss
+Pinnegar was thoroughly scared. But she was not inventive. It was
+left to Alvina to suggest: "Why doesn't father let the shop, and
+some of the house?"
+
+Let the shop! Let the last inch of frontage on the street! James
+thought of it. Let the shop! Permit the name of Houghton to
+disappear from the list of tradesmen? Withdraw? Disappear? Become a
+nameless nobody, occupying obscure premises?
+
+He thought about it. And thinking about it, became so indignant at the
+thought that he pulled his scattered energies together within his frail
+frame. And then he came out with the most original of all his schemes.
+Manchester House was to be fitted up as a boarding-house for the better
+classes, and was to make a fortune catering for the needs of these
+gentry, who had now nowhere to go. Yes, Manchester House should be
+fitted up as a sort of quiet family hotel for the better classes. The
+shop should be turned into an elegant hall-entrance, carpeted, with a
+hall-porter and a wide plate-glass door, round-arched, in the round
+arch of which the words: "Manchester House" should appear large and
+distinguished, making an arch also, whilst underneath, more refined and
+smaller, should show the words: "Private Hotel." James was to be
+proprietor and secretary, keeping the books and attending to
+correspondence: Miss Pinnegar was to be manageress, superintending the
+servants and directing the house, whilst Alvina was to occupy the
+equivocal position of "hostess." She was to shake hands with the
+guests: she was to play the piano, and she was to nurse the sick. For
+in the prospectus James would include: "Trained nurse always on the
+premises."
+
+"Why!" cried Miss Pinnegar, for once brutally and angrily hostile to
+him: "You'll make it sound like a private lunatic asylum."
+
+"Will you explain why?" answered James tartly.
+
+For himself, he was enraptured with the scheme. He began to tot up
+ideas and expenses. There would be the handsome entrance and hall:
+there would be an extension of the kitchen and scullery: there would
+be an installing of new hot-water and sanitary arrangements: there
+would be a light lift-arrangment from the kitchen: there would be a
+handsome glazed balcony or loggia or terrace on the first floor at
+the back, over the whole length of the back-yard. This loggia would
+give a wonderful outlook to the south-west and the west. In the
+immediate foreground, to be sure, would be the yard of the
+livery-stables and the rather slummy dwellings of the colliers,
+sloping downhill. But these could be easily overlooked, for the eye
+would instinctively wander across the green and shallow valley, to
+the long upslope opposite, showing the Manor set in its clump of
+trees, and farms and haystacks pleasantly dotted, and moderately far
+off coal-mines with twinkling headstocks and narrow railwaylines
+crossing the arable fields, and heaps of burning slag. The balcony
+or covered terrace--James settled down at last to the word
+_terrace_--was to be one of the features of the house: _the_
+feature. It was to be fitted up as a sort of elegant lounging
+restaurant. Elegant teas, at two-and-six per head, and elegant
+suppers, at five shillings without wine, were to be served here.
+
+As a teetotaller and a man of ascetic views, James, in his first
+shallow moments, before he thought about it, assumed that his house
+should be entirely non-alcoholic. A temperance house! Already he
+winced. We all know what a provincial Temperance Hotel is. Besides,
+there is magic in the sound of wine. _Wines Served_. The legend
+attracted him immensely--as a teetotaller, it had a mysterious,
+hypnotic influence. He must have wines. He knew nothing about them.
+But Alfred Swayn, from the Liquor Vaults, would put him in the
+running in five minutes.
+
+It was most curious to see Miss Pinnegar turtle up at the mention of
+this scheme. When first it was disclosed to her, her colour came up
+like a turkey's in a flush of indignant anger.
+
+"It's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous!" she blurted, bridling and
+ducking her head and turning aside, like an indignant turkey.
+
+"Ridiculous! Why? Will you explain why!" retorted James, turtling
+also.
+
+"It's absolutely ridiculous!" she repeated, unable to do more than
+splutter.
+
+"Well, we'll see," said James, rising to superiority.
+
+And again he began to dart absorbedly about, like a bird building a
+nest. Miss Pinnegar watched him with a sort of sullen fury. She went
+to the shop door to peep out after him. She saw him slip into the
+Liquor Vaults, and she came back to announce to Alvina:
+
+"He's taken to drink!"
+
+"Drink?" said Alvina.
+
+"That's what it is," said Miss Pinnegar vindictively. "Drink!"
+
+Alvina sank down and laughed till she was weak. It all seemed really
+too funny to her--too funny.
+
+"I can't see what it is to laugh at," said Miss Pinnegar.
+"Disgraceful--it's disgraceful! But I'm not going to stop to be made
+a fool of. I shall be no manageress, I tell you. It's absolutely
+ridiculous. Who does he think will come to the place? He's out of
+his mind--and it's drink; that's what it is! Going into the Liquor
+Vaults at ten o'clock in the morning! That's where he gets his
+ideas--out of whiskey--or brandy! But he's not going to make a fool
+of me--"
+
+"Oh dear!" sighed Alvina, laughing herself into composure and a
+little weariness. "I know it's _perfectly_ ridiculous. We shall have
+to stop him."
+
+"I've said all I can say," blurted Miss Pinnegar.
+
+As soon as James came in to a meal, the two women attacked him.
+
+"But father," said Alvina, "there'll be nobody to come."
+
+"Plenty of people--plenty of people," said her father. "Look at The
+Shakespeare's Head, in Knarborough."
+
+"Knarborough! Is this Knarborough!" blurted Miss Pinnegar. "Where
+are the business men here? Where are the foreigners coming here for
+business, where's our lace-trade and our stocking-trade?"
+
+"There _are_ business men," said James. "And there are ladies."
+
+"Who," retorted Miss Pinnegar, "is going to give half-a-crown for a
+tea? They expect tea and bread-and-butter for fourpence, and cake
+for sixpence, and apricots or pineapple for ninepence, and
+ham-and-tongue for a shilling, and fried ham and eggs and jam and
+cake as much as they can eat for one-and-two. If they expect a
+knife-and-fork tea for a shilling, what are you going to give them
+for half-a-crown?"
+
+"I know what I shall offer," said James. "And we may make it two
+shillings." Through his mind flitted the idea of 1/11-1/2--but he
+rejected it. "You don't realize that I'm catering for a higher class
+of custom--"
+
+"But there _isn't_ any higher class in Woodhouse, father," said
+Alvina, unable to restrain a laugh.
+
+"If you create a supply you create a demand," he retorted.
+
+"But how can you create a supply of better class people?" asked
+Alvina mockingly.
+
+James took on his refined, abstracted look, as if he were
+preoccupied on higher planes. It was the look of an obstinate little
+boy who poses on the side of the angels--or so the women saw it.
+
+Miss Pinnegar was prepared to combat him now by sheer weight of
+opposition. She would pitch her dead negative will obstinately
+against him. She would not speak to him, she would not observe his
+presence, she was stone deaf and stone blind: there _was_ no James.
+This nettled him. And she miscalculated him. He merely took another
+circuit, and rose another flight higher on the spiral of his
+spiritual egotism. He believed himself finely and sacredly in the
+right, that he was frustrated by lower beings, above whom it was his
+duty to rise, to soar. So he soared to serene heights, and his
+Private Hotel seemed a celestial injunction, an erection on a higher
+plane.
+
+He saw the architect: and then, with his plans and schemes, he saw
+the builder and contractor. The builder gave an estimate of six or
+seven hundred--but James had better see the plumber and fitter who
+was going to instal the new hot water and sanitary system. James was
+a little dashed. He had calculated much less. Having only a few
+hundred pounds in possession after Throttle-Ha'penny, he was
+prepared to mortgage Manchester House if he could keep in hand a
+sufficent sum of money for the running of his establishment for a
+year. He knew he would have to sacrifice Miss Pinnegar's work-room.
+He knew, and he feared Miss Pinnegar's violent and unmitigated
+hostility. Still--his obstinate spirit rose--he was quite prepared
+to risk everything on this last throw.
+
+Miss Allsop, daughter of the builder, called to see Alvina. The
+Allsops were great Chapel people, and Cassie Allsop was one of the
+old maids. She was thin and nipped and wistful looking, about
+forty-two years old. In private, she was tyrannously exacting with
+the servants, and spiteful, rather mean with her motherless nieces.
+But in public she had this nipped, wistful look.
+
+Alvina was surprised by this visit. When she found Miss Allsop at
+the back door, all her inherent hostility awoke.
+
+"Oh, is it you, Miss Allsop! Will you come in."
+
+They sat in the middle room, the common living room of the house.
+
+"I called," said Miss Allsop, coming to the point at once, and
+speaking in her Sunday-school-teacher voice, "to ask you if you know
+about this Private Hotel scheme of your father's?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh, you do! Well, we wondered. Mr. Houghton came to father about
+the building alterations yesterday. They'll be awfully expensive."
+
+"Will they?" said Alvina, making big, mocking eyes.
+
+"Yes, very. What do _you_ think of the scheme?"
+
+"I?--well--!" Alvina hesitated, then broke into a laugh. "To tell
+the truth I haven't thought much about it at all."
+
+"Well I think you should," said Miss Allsop severely. "Father's sure
+it won't pay--and it will cost I don't know how much. It is bound
+to be a dead loss. And your father's getting on. You'll be left
+stranded in the world without a penny to bless yourself with. I
+think it's an awful outlook for you."
+
+"Do you?" said Alvina.
+
+Here she was, with a bang, planked upon the shelf among the old
+maids.
+
+"Oh, I do. Sincerely! I should do all I could to prevent him, if I
+were you."
+
+Miss Allsop took her departure. Alvina felt herself jolted in her
+mood. An old maid along with Cassie Allsop!--and James Houghton
+fooling about with the last bit of money, mortgaging Manchester
+House up to the hilt. Alvina sank in a kind of weary mortification,
+in which _her_ peculiar obstinacy persisted devilishly and
+spitefully. "Oh well, so be it," said her spirit vindictively. "Let
+the meagre, mean, despicable fate fulfil itself." Her old anger
+against her father arose again.
+
+Arthur Witham, the plumber, came in with James Houghton to examine
+the house. Arthur Witham was also one of the Chapel men--as had been
+his common, interfering, uneducated father before him. The father
+had left each of his sons a fair little sum of money, which Arthur,
+the eldest, had already increased ten-fold. He was sly and slow and
+uneducated also, and spoke with a broad accent. But he was not
+bad-looking, a tight fellow with big blue eyes, who aspired to keep
+his "h's" in the right place, and would have been a gentleman if he
+could.
+
+Against her usual habit, Alvina joined the plumber and her father in
+the scullery. Arthur Witham saluted her with some respect. She liked
+his blue eyes and tight figure. He was keen and sly in business,
+very watchful, and slow to commit himself. Now he poked and peered
+and crept under the sink. Alvina watched him half disappear--she
+handed him a candle--and she laughed to herself seeing his tight,
+well-shaped hind-quarters protruding from under the sink like the
+wrong end of a dog from a kennel. He was keen after money, was
+Arthur--and bossy, creeping slyly after his own self-importance and
+power. He wanted power--and he would creep quietly after it till he
+got it: as much as he was capable of. His "h's" were a barbed-wire
+fence and entanglement, preventing his unlimited progress.
+
+He emerged from under the sink, and they went to the kitchen and
+afterwards upstairs. Alvina followed them persistently, but a little
+aloof, and silent. When the tour of inspection was almost over, she
+said innocently:
+
+"Won't it cost a great deal?"
+
+Arthur Witham slowly shook his head. Then he looked at her. She
+smiled rather archly into his eyes.
+
+"It won't be done for nothing," he said, looking at her again.
+
+"We can go into that later," said James, leading off the plumber.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Houghton," said Arthur Witham.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Witham," replied Alvina brightly.
+
+But she lingered in the background, and as Arthur Witham was going
+she heard him say: "Well, I'll work it out, Mr. Houghton. I'll work
+it out, and let you know tonight. I'll get the figures by tonight."
+
+The younger man's tone was a little off-hand, just a little
+supercilious with her father, she thought. James's star was setting.
+
+In the afternoon, directly after dinner, Alvina went out. She
+entered the shop, where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty
+stood about, varied by sheets of glass and fancy paper. Lottie
+Witham, Arthur's wife, appeared. She was a woman of thirty-five, a
+bit of a shrew, with social ambitions and no children.
+
+"Is Mr. Witham in?" said Alvina.
+
+Mrs. Witham eyed her.
+
+"I'll see," she answered, and she left the shop.
+
+Presently Arthur entered, in his shirt-sleeves: rather
+attractive-looking.
+
+"I don't know what you'll think of me, and what I've come for," said
+Alvina, with hurried amiability. Arthur lifted his blue eyes to her,
+and Mrs. Witham appeared in the background, in the inner doorway.
+
+"Why, what is it?" said Arthur stolidly.
+
+"Make it as dear as you can, for father," said Alvina, laughing
+nervously.
+
+Arthur's blue eyes rested on her face. Mrs. Witham advanced into the
+shop.
+
+"Why? What's that for?" asked Lottie Witham shrewdly.
+
+Alvina turned to the woman.
+
+"Don't say anything," she said. "But we don't want father to go on
+with this scheme. It's bound to fail. And Miss Pinnegar and I can't
+have anything to do with it anyway. I shall go away."
+
+"It's bound to fail," said Arthur Witham stolidly.
+
+"And father has no money, I'm sure," said Alvina.
+
+Lottie Witham eyed the thin, nervous face of Alvina. For some
+reason, she liked her. And of course, Alvina was considered a lady
+in Woodhouse. That was what it had come to, with James's declining
+fortunes: she was merely _considered_ a lady. The consideration was
+no longer indisputable.
+
+"Shall you come in a minute?" said Lottie Witham, lifting the flap
+of the counter. It was a rare and bold stroke on Mrs. Witham's part.
+Alvina's immediate instinct was to refuse. But she liked Arthur
+Witham, in his shirt sleeves.
+
+"Well--I must be back in a minute," she said, as she entered the
+embrasure of the counter. She felt as if she were really venturing
+on new ground. She was led into the new drawing-room, done in new
+peacock-and-bronze brocade furniture, with gilt and brass and white
+walls. This was the Withams' new house, and Lottie was proud of it.
+The two women had a short confidential chat. Arthur lingered in the
+doorway a while, then went away.
+
+Alvina did not really like Lottie Witham. Yet the other woman was
+sharp and shrewd in the uptake, and for some reason she fancied
+Alvina. So she was invited to tea at Manchester House.
+
+After this, so many difficulties rose up in James Houghton's way
+that he was worried almost out of his life. His two women left him
+alone. Outside difficulties multiplied on him till he abandoned his
+scheme--he was simply driven out of it by untoward circumstances.
+
+Lottie Witham came to tea, and was shown over Manchester House. She
+had no opinion at all of Manchester House--wouldn't hang a cat in
+such a gloomy hole. _Still_, she was rather impressed by the sense
+of superiority.
+
+"Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed as she stood in Alvina's bedroom,
+and looked at the enormous furniture, the lofty tableland of the
+bed.
+
+"Oh my goodness! I wouldn't sleep in _that_ for a trifle, by myself!
+Aren't you frightened out of your life? Even if I had Arthur at one
+side of me, I should be that frightened on the other side I
+shouldn't know what to do. Do you sleep here by yourself?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina laughing. "I haven't got an Arthur, even for one
+side."
+
+"Oh, my word, you'd want a husband on both sides, in that bed," said
+Lottie Witham.
+
+Alvina was asked back to tea--on Wednesday afternoon, closing day.
+Arthur was there to tea--very ill at ease and feeling as if his
+hands were swollen. Alvina got on better with his wife, who watched
+closely to learn from her guest the secret of repose. The
+indefinable repose and inevitability of a lady--even of a lady who
+is nervous and agitated--this was the problem which occupied
+Lottie's shrewd and active, but lower-class mind. She even did not
+resent Alvina's laughing attempts to draw out the clumsy Arthur:
+because Alvina was a lady, and her tactics must be studied.
+
+Alvina really liked Arthur, and thought a good deal about
+him--heaven knows why. He and Lottie were quite happy together, and
+he was absorbed in his petty ambitions. In his limited way, he was
+invincibly ambitious. He would end by making a sufficient fortune,
+and by being a town councillor and a J.P. But beyond Woodhouse he
+did not exist. Why then should Alvina be attracted by him? Perhaps
+because of his "closeness," and his secret determinedness.
+
+When she met him in the street she would stop him--though he was
+always busy--and make him exchange a few words with her. And when
+she had tea at his house, she would try to rouse his attention. But
+though he looked at her, steadily, with his blue eyes, from under
+his long lashes, still, she knew, he looked at her objectively. He
+never conceived any connection with her whatsoever.
+
+It was Lottie who had a scheming mind. In the family of three
+brothers there was one--not black sheep, but white. There was one
+who was climbing out, to be a gentleman. This was Albert, the second
+brother. He had been a school-teacher in Woodhouse: had gone out to
+South Africa and occupied a post in a sort of Grammar School in one
+of the cities of Cape Colony. He had accumulated some money, to add
+to his patrimony. Now he was in England, at Oxford, where he would
+take his belated degree. When he had got his degree, he would return
+to South Africa to become head of his school, at seven hundred a
+year.
+
+Albert was thirty-two years old, and unmarried. Lottie was
+determined he should take back to the Cape a suitable wife:
+presumably Alvina. He spent his vacations in Woodhouse--and he was
+only in his first year at Oxford. Well now, what could be more
+suitable--a young man at Oxford, a young lady in Woodhouse. Lottie
+told Alvina all about him, and Alvina was quite excited to meet him.
+She imagined him a taller, more fascinating, educated Arthur.
+
+For the fear of being an old maid, the fear of her own virginity was
+really gaining on Alvina. There was a terrible sombre futility,
+nothingness, in Manchester House. She was twenty-six years old. Her
+life was utterly barren now Miss Frost had gone. She was shabby and
+penniless, a mere household drudge: for James begrudged even a girl
+to help in the kitchen. She was looking faded and worn. Panic, the
+terrible and deadly panic which overcomes so many unmarried women at
+about the age of thirty, was beginning to overcome her. She would
+not care about marriage, if even she had a lover. But some sort of
+_terror_ hunted her to the search of a lover. She would become
+loose, she would become a prostitute, she said to herself, rather
+than die off like Cassie Allsop and the rest, wither slowly and
+ignominiously and hideously on the tree. She would rather kill
+herself.
+
+But it needs a certain natural gift to become a loose woman or a
+prostitute. If you haven't got the qualities which attract loose
+men, what are you to do? Supposing it isn't in your nature to
+attract loose and promiscuous men! Why, then you can't be a
+prostitute, if you try your head off: nor even a loose woman. Since
+_willing_ won't do it. It requires a second party to come to an
+agreement.
+
+Therefore all Alvina's desperate and profligate schemes and ideas
+fell to nought before the inexorable in her nature. And the
+inexorable in her nature was highly exclusive and selective, an
+inevitable negation of looseness or prostitution. Hence men were
+afraid of her--of her power, once they had committed themselves. She
+would involve and lead a man on, she would destroy him rather than
+not get of him what she wanted. And what she wanted was something
+serious and risky. Not mere marriage--oh dear no! But a profound and
+dangerous inter-relationship. As well ask the paddlers in the small
+surf of passion to plunge themselves into the heaving gulf of
+mid-ocean. Bah, with their trousers turned up to their knees it was
+enough for them to wet their toes in the dangerous sea. They were
+having nothing to do with such desperate nereids as Alvina.
+
+She had cast her mind on Arthur. Truly ridiculous. But there was
+something compact and energetic and wilful about him that she
+magnified ten-fold and so obtained, imaginatively, an attractive
+lover. She brooded her days shabbily away in Manchester House, busy
+with housework drudgery. Since the collapse of Throttle-Ha'penny,
+James Houghton had become so stingy that it was like an inflammation
+in him. A silver sixpence had a pale and celestial radiance which he
+could not forego, a nebulous whiteness which made him feel he had
+heaven in his hold. How then could he let it go. Even a brown penny
+seemed alive and pulsing with mysterious blood, potent, magical. He
+loved the flock of his busy pennies, in the shop, as if they had
+been divine bees bringing him sustenance from the infinite. But the
+pennies he saw dribbling away in household expenses troubled him
+acutely, as if they were live things leaving his fold. It was a
+constant struggle to get from him enough money for necessities.
+
+And so the household diet became meagre in the extreme, the coal was
+eked out inch by inch, and when Alvina must have her boots mended
+she must draw on her own little stock of money. For James Houghton
+had the impudence to make her an allowance of two shillings a week.
+She was very angry. Yet her anger was of that dangerous,
+half-ironical sort which wears away its subject and has no outward
+effect. A feeling of half-bitter mockery kept her going. In the
+ponderous, rather sordid nullity of Manchester House she became
+shadowy and absorbed, absorbed in nothing in particular, yet
+absorbed. She was always more or less busy: and certainly there was
+always something to be done, whether she did it or not.
+
+The shop was opened once a week, on Friday evenings. James Houghton
+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.
+
+Alvina looked at Arthur. Arthur was short and dark-haired and nicely
+coloured. But, now his brother was there, he too seemed to have a
+dumb, aqueous silence, fish-like and aloof, about him. He seemed to
+swim like a fish in his own little element. Strange it all was,
+like Alice in Wonderland. Alvina understood now Lottie's strained
+sort of thinness, a haggard, sinewy, sea-weedy look. The poor thing
+was all the time swimming for her life.
+
+For Alvina it was a most curious tea-party. She listened and smiled
+and made vague answers to Albert, who leaned his broad, thin,
+brittle shoulders towards her. Lottie seemed rather shadowily to
+preside. But it was Arthur who came out into communication. And now,
+uttering his rather broad-mouthed speeches, she seemed to hear in
+him a quieter, subtler edition of his father. His father had been a
+little, terrifically loud-voiced, hard-skinned man, amazingly
+uneducated and amazingly bullying, who had tyrannized for many years
+over the Sunday School children during morning service. He had been
+an odd-looking creature with round grey whiskers: to Alvina, always
+a creature, never a man: an atrocious leprechaun from under the
+Chapel floor. And how he used to dig the children in the back with
+his horrible iron thumb, if the poor things happened to whisper or
+nod in chapel!
+
+These were his children--most curious chips of the old block. Who
+ever would have believed she would have been taking tea with them.
+
+"Why don't you have a bicycle, and go out on it?" Arthur was saying.
+
+"But I can't ride," said Alvina.
+
+"You'd learn in a couple of lessons. There's nothing in riding a
+bicycle."
+
+"I don't believe I ever should," laughed Alvina.
+
+"You don't mean to say you're nervous?" said Arthur rudely and
+sneeringly.
+
+"I _am_," she persisted.
+
+"You needn't be nervous with me," smiled Albert broadly, with his
+odd, genuine gallantry. "I'll hold you on."
+
+"But I haven't got a bicycle," said Alvina, feeling she was slowly
+colouring to a deep, uneasy blush.
+
+"You can have mine to learn on," said Lottie. "Albert will look
+after it."
+
+"There's your chance," said Arthur rudely. "Take it while you've got
+it."
+
+Now Alvina did not want to learn to ride a bicycle. The two Miss
+Carlins, two more old maids, had made themselves ridiculous for
+ever by becoming twin cycle fiends. And the horrible energetic
+strain of peddling a bicycle over miles and miles of high-way did
+not attract Alvina at all. She was completely indifferent to
+sight-seeing and scouring about. She liked taking a walk, in her
+lingering indifferent fashion. But rushing about in any way was
+hateful to her. And then, to be taught to ride a bicycle by Albert
+Witham! Her very soul stood still.
+
+"Yes," said Albert, beaming down at her from his strange pale eyes.
+"Come on. When will you have your first lesson?"
+
+"Oh," cried Alvina in confusion. "I can't promise. I haven't time,
+really."
+
+"Time!" exclaimed Arthur rudely. "But what do you do wi' yourself
+all day?"
+
+"I have to keep house," she said, looking at him archly.
+
+"House! You can put a chain round its neck, and tie it up," he
+retorted.
+
+Albert laughed, showing all his teeth.
+
+"I'm sure you find plenty to do, with everything on your hands,"
+said Lottie to Alvina.
+
+"I do!" said Alvina. "By evening I'm quite tired--though you mayn't
+believe it, since you say I do nothing," she added, laughing
+confusedly to Arthur.
+
+But he, hard-headed little fortune-maker, replied:
+
+"You have a girl to help you, don't you!"
+
+Albert, however, was beaming at her sympathetically.
+
+"You have too much to do indoors," he said. "It would do you good to
+get a bit of exercise out of doors. Come down to the Coach Road
+tomorrow afternoon, and let me give you a lesson. Go on--"
+
+Now the coach-road was a level drive between beautiful park-like
+grass-stretches, down in the valley. It was a delightful place for
+learning to ride a bicycle, but open in full view of all the world.
+Alvina would have died of shame. She began to laugh nervously and
+hurriedly at the very thought.
+
+"No, I can't. I really can't. Thanks, awfully," she said.
+
+"Can't you really!" said Albert. "Oh well, we'll say another day,
+shall we?"
+
+"When I feel I can," she said.
+
+"Yes, when you feel like it," replied Albert.
+
+"That's more it," said Arthur. "It's not the time. It's the
+nervousness." Again Albert beamed at her sympathetically, and said:
+
+"Oh, I'll hold you. You needn't be afraid."
+
+"But I'm not afraid," she said.
+
+"You won't _say_ you are," interposed Arthur. "Women's faults
+mustn't be owned up to."
+
+Alvina was beginning to feel quite dazed. Their mechanical,
+overbearing way was something she was unaccustomed to. It was like
+the jaws of a pair of insentient iron pincers. She rose, saying she
+must go.
+
+Albert rose also, and reached for his straw hat, with its coloured
+band.
+
+"I'll stroll up with you, if you don't mind," he said. And he took
+his place at her side along the Knarborough Road, where everybody
+turned to look. For, of course, he had a sort of fame in Woodhouse.
+She went with him laughing and chatting. But she did not feel at all
+comfortable. He seemed so pleased. Only he was not pleased with
+_her_. He was pleased with himself on her account: inordinately
+pleased with himself. In his world, as in a fish's, there was but
+his own swimming self: and if he chanced to have something swimming
+alongside and doing him credit, why, so much the more complacently
+he smiled.
+
+He walked stiff and erect, with his head pressed rather back, so
+that he always seemed to be advancing from the head and shoulders,
+in a flat kind of advance, horizontal. He did not seem to be walking
+with his whole body. His manner was oddly gallant, with a gallantry
+that completely missed the individual in the woman, circled round
+her and flew home gratified to his own hive. The way he raised his
+hat, the way he inclined and smiled flatly, even rather excitedly,
+as he talked, was all a little discomforting and comical.
+
+He left her at the shop door, saying:
+
+"I shall see you again, I hope."
+
+"Oh, yes," she replied, rattling the door anxiously, for it was
+locked. She heard her father's step at last tripping down the shop.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Houghton," said Albert suavely and with a certain
+confidence, as James peered out.
+
+"Oh, good-evening!" said James, letting Alvina pass, and shutting
+the door in Albert's face.
+
+"Who was that?" he asked her sharply.
+
+"Albert Witham," she replied.
+
+"What has _he_ got to do with you?" said James shrewishly.
+
+"Nothing, I hope."
+
+She fled into the obscurity of Manchester House, out of the grey
+summer evening. The Withams threw her off her pivot, and made her
+feel she was not herself. She felt she didn't know, she couldn't
+feel, she was just scattered and decentralized. And she was rather
+afraid of the Witham brothers. She might be their victim. She
+intended to avoid them.
+
+The following days she saw Albert, in his Norfolk jacket and flannel
+trousers and his straw hat, strolling past several times and looking
+in through the shop door and up at the upper windows. But she hid
+herself thoroughly. When she went out, it was by the back way. So
+she avoided him.
+
+But on Sunday evening, there he sat, rather stiff and brittle in the
+old Withams' pew, his head pressed a little back, so that his face
+and neck seemed slightly flattened. He wore very low, turn-down
+starched collars that showed all his neck. And he kept looking up at
+her during the service--she sat in the choir-loft--gazing up at her
+with apparently love-lorn eyes and a faint, intimate smile--the sort
+of _je-sais-tout_ look of a private swain. Arthur also occasionally
+cast a judicious eye on her, as if she were a chimney that needed
+repairing, and he must estimate the cost, and whether it was worth
+it.
+
+Sure enough, as she came out through the narrow choir gate into
+Knarborough Road, there was Albert stepping forward like a
+policeman, and saluting her and smiling down on her.
+
+"I don't know if I'm presuming--" he said, in a mock deferential
+way that showed he didn't imagine he _could_ presume.
+
+"Oh, not at all," said Alvina airily. He smiled with assurance.
+
+"You haven't got any engagement, then, for this evening?" he said.
+
+"No," she replied simply.
+
+"We might take a walk. What do you think?" he said, glancing down
+the road in either direction.
+
+What, after all, was she to think? All the girls were pairing off
+with the boys for the after-chapel stroll and spoon.
+
+"I don't mind," she said. "But I can't go far. I've got to be in at
+nine."
+
+"Which way shall we go?" he said.
+
+He steered off, turned downhill through the common gardens, and
+proposed to take her the not-very-original walk up Flint's Lane, and
+along the railway line--the colliery railway, that is--then back up
+the Marlpool Road: a sort of circle. She agreed.
+
+They did not find a great deal to talk about. She questioned him
+about his plans, and about the Cape. But save for bare outlines,
+which he gave readily enough, he was rather close.
+
+"What do you do on Sunday nights as a rule?" he asked her.
+
+"Oh, I have a walk with Lucy Grainger--or I go down to Hallam's--or
+go home," she answered.
+
+"You don't go walks with the fellows, then?"
+
+"Father would never have it," she replied.
+
+"What will he say now?" he asked, with self-satisfaction.
+
+"Goodness knows!" she laughed.
+
+"Goodness usually does," he answered archly.
+
+When they came to the rather stumbly railway, he said:
+
+"Won't you take my arm?"--offering her the said member.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," she said. "Thanks."
+
+"Go on," he said, pressing a little nearer to her, and offering his
+arm. "There's nothing against it, is there?"
+
+"Oh, it's not that," she said.
+
+And feeling in a false position, she took his arm, rather
+unwillingly. He drew a little nearer to her, and walked with a
+slight prance.
+
+"We get on better, don't we?" he said, giving her hand the tiniest
+squeeze with his arm against his side.
+
+"Much!" she replied, with a laugh.
+
+Then he lowered his voice oddly.
+
+"It's many a day since I was on this railroad," he said.
+
+"Is this one of your old walks?" she asked, malicious.
+
+"Yes, I've been it once or twice--with girls that are all married
+now."
+
+"Didn't you want to marry?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I may have done. But it never came off, somehow.
+I've sometimes thought it never would come off."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know, exactly. It didn't seem to, you know. Perhaps neither
+of us was properly inclined."
+
+"I should think so," she said.
+
+"And yet," he admitted slyly, "I should _like_ to marry--" To this
+she did not answer.
+
+"Shouldn't you?" he continued.
+
+"When I meet the right man," she laughed.
+
+"That's it," he said. "There, that's just it! And you _haven't_ met
+him?" His voice seemed smiling with a sort of triumph, as if he had
+caught her out.
+
+"Well--once I thought I had--when I was engaged to Alexander."
+
+"But you found you were mistaken?" he insisted.
+
+"No. Mother was so ill at the time--"
+
+"There's always something to consider," he said.
+
+She kept on wondering what she should do if he wanted to kiss her.
+The mere incongruity of such a desire on his part formed a problem.
+Luckily, for this evening he formulated no desire, but left her in
+the shop-door soon after nine, with the request:
+
+"I shall see you in the week, shan't I?"
+
+"I'm not sure. I can't promise now," she said hurriedly.
+"Good-night."
+
+What she felt chiefly about him was a decentralized perplexity, very
+much akin to no feeling at all.
+
+"Who do you think took me for a walk, Miss Pinnegar?" she said,
+laughing, to her confidante.
+
+"I can't imagine," replied Miss Pinnegar, eyeing her.
+
+"You never would imagine," said Alvina. "Albert Witham."
+
+"Albert Witham!" exclaimed Miss Pinnegar, standing quite motionless.
+
+"It may well take your breath away," said Alvina.
+
+"No, it's not that!" hurriedly expostulated Miss Pinnegar. "Well--!
+Well, I declare!--" and then, on a new note: "Well, he's very
+eligible, I think."
+
+"Most eligible!" replied Alvina.
+
+"Yes, he is," insisted Miss Pinnegar. "I think it's very good."
+
+"What's very good?" asked Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar hesitated. She looked at Alvina. She reconsidered.
+
+"Of course he's not the man I should have imagined for you, but--"
+
+"You think he'll do?" said Alvina.
+
+"Why not?" said Miss Pinnegar. "Why shouldn't he do--if you like
+him."
+
+"Ah--!" cried Alvina, sinking on the sofa with a laugh. "That's it."
+
+"Of course you couldn't have anything to do with him if you don't
+care for him," pronounced Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Albert continued to hang around. He did not make any direct attack
+for a few days. Suddenly one evening he appeared at the back door
+with a bunch of white stocks in his hand. His face lit up with a
+sudden, odd smile when she opened the door--a broad, pale-gleaming,
+remarkable smile.
+
+"Lottie wanted to know if you'd come to tea tomorrow," he said
+straight out, looking at her with the pale light in his eyes, that
+smiled palely right into her eyes, but did not see her at all. He
+was waiting on the doorstep to come in.
+
+"Will you come in?" said Alvina. "Father is in."
+
+"Yes, I don't mind," he said, pleased. He mounted the steps, still
+holding his bunch of white stocks.
+
+James Houghton screwed round in his chair and peered over his
+spectacles to see who was coming.
+
+"Father," said Alvina, "you know Mr. Witham, don't you?"
+
+James Houghton half rose. He still peered over his glasses at the
+intruder.
+
+"Well--I do by sight. How do you do?"
+
+He held out his frail hand.
+
+Albert held back, with the flowers in his own hand, and giving his
+broad, pleased, pale-gleaming smile from father to daughter, he
+said:
+
+"What am I to do with these? Will you accept them, Miss Houghton?"
+He stared at her with shining, pallid smiling eyes.
+
+"Are they for me?" she said, with false brightness. "Thank you."
+
+James Houghton looked over the top of his spectacles, searchingly,
+at the flowers, as if they had been a bunch of white and
+sharp-toothed ferrets. Then he looked as suspiciously at the hand
+which Albert at last extended to him. He shook it slightly, and
+said:
+
+"Take a seat."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm disturbing you in your reading," said Albert, still
+having the drawn, excited smile on his face.
+
+"Well--" said James Houghton. "The light is fading."
+
+Alvina came in with the flowers in a jar. She set them on the table.
+
+"Haven't they a lovely scent?" she said.
+
+"Do you think so?" he replied, again with the excited smile. There
+was a pause. Albert, rather embarrassed, reached forward, saying:
+
+"May I see what you're reading!" And he turned over the book.
+"'Tommy and Grizel!' Oh yes! What do you think of it?"
+
+"Well," said James, "I am only in the beginning."
+
+"I think it's interesting, myself," said Albert, "as a study of a
+man who can't get away from himself. You meet a lot of people like
+that. What I wonder is why they find it such a drawback."
+
+"Find what a drawback?" asked James.
+
+"Not being able to get away from themselves. That
+self-consciousness. It hampers them, and interferes with their power
+of action. Now I wonder why self-consciousness should hinder a man
+in his action? Why does it cause misgiving? I think I'm
+self-conscious, but I don't think I have so many misgivings. I don't
+see that they're necessary."
+
+"Certainly I think Tommy is a weak character. I believe he's a
+despicable character," said James.
+
+"No, I don't know so much about that," said Albert. "I shouldn't say
+weak, exactly. He's only weak in one direction. No, what I wonder is
+why he feels guilty. If you feel self-conscious, there's no need to
+feel guilty about it, is there?"
+
+He stared with his strange, smiling stare at James.
+
+"I shouldn't say so," replied James. "But if a man never knows his
+own mind, he certainly can't be much of a man."
+
+"I don't see it," replied Albert. "What's the matter is that he
+feels guilty for not knowing his own mind. That's the unnecessary
+part. The guilty feeling--"
+
+Albert seemed insistent on this point, which had no particular
+interest for James.
+
+"Where we've got to make a change," said Albert, "is in the feeling
+that other people have a right to tell us what we ought to feel and
+do. Nobody knows what another man ought to feel. Every man has his
+own special feelings, and his own right to them. That's where it is
+with education. You ought not to want all your children to feel
+alike. Their natures are all different, and so they should all feel
+different, about practically everything."
+
+"There would be no end to the confusion," said James.
+
+"There needn't be any confusion to speak of. You agree to a number
+of rules and conventions and laws, for social purposes. But in
+private you feel just as you do feel, without occasion for trying to
+feel something else."
+
+"I don't know," said James. "There are certain feelings common to
+humanity, such as love, and honour, and truth."
+
+"Would you call them feelings?" said Albert. "I should say what is
+common is the idea. The idea is common to humanity, once you've put
+it into words. But the feeling varies with every man. The same idea
+represents a different kind of feeling in every different
+individual. It seems to me that's what we've got to recognize if
+we're going to do anything with education. We don't want to produce
+mass feelings. Don't you agree?"
+
+Poor James was too bewildered to know whether to agree or not to
+agree.
+
+"Shall we have a light, Alvina?" he said to his daughter.
+
+Alvina lit the incandescent gas-jet that hung in the middle of the
+room. The hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as
+she reached up to it. But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly.
+It seemed as if his words came off him without affecting him at all.
+He did not think about what he was feeling, and he did not feel what
+he was thinking about. And therefore she hardly heard what he said.
+Yet she believed he was clever.
+
+It was evident Albert was quite blissfully happy, in his own way,
+sitting there at the end of the sofa not far from the fire, and
+talking animatedly. The uncomfortable thing was that though he
+talked in the direction of his interlocutor, he did not speak _to_
+him: merely said his words towards him. James, however, was such an
+airy feather himself he did not remark this, but only felt a little
+self-important at sustaining such a subtle conversation with a man
+from Oxford. Alvina, who never expected to be interested in clever
+conversations, after a long experience of her father, found her
+expectation justified again. She was not interested.
+
+The man was quite nicely dressed, in the regulation tweed jacket and
+flannel trousers and brown shoes. He was even rather smart, judging
+from his yellow socks and yellow-and-brown tie. Miss Pinnegar eyed
+him with approval when she came in.
+
+"Good-evening!" she said, just a trifle condescendingly, as she
+shook hands. "How do you find Woodhouse, after being away so long?"
+Her way of speaking was so quiet, as if she hardly spoke aloud.
+
+"Well," he answered. "I find it the same in many ways."
+
+"You wouldn't like to settle here again?"
+
+"I don't think I should. It feels a little cramped, you know, after
+a new country. But it has its attractions." Here he smiled
+meaningful.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar. "I suppose the old connections count for
+something."
+
+"They do. Oh decidedly they do. There's no associations like the old
+ones." He smiled flatly as he looked towards Alvina.
+
+"You find it so, do you!" returned Miss Pinnegar. "You don't find
+that the new connections make up for the old?"
+
+"Not altogether, they don't. There's something missing--" Again he
+looked towards Alvina. But she did not answer his look.
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar. "I'm glad we still count for something,
+in spite of the greater attractions. How long have you in England?"
+
+"Another year. Just a year. This time next year I expect I shall be
+sailing back to the Cape." He smiled as if in anticipation. Yet it
+was hard to believe that it mattered to him--or that anything
+mattered.
+
+"And is Oxford agreeable to you?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, yes. I keep myself busy."
+
+"What are your subjects?" asked James.
+
+"English and History. But I do mental science for my own interest."
+
+Alvina had taken up a piece of sewing. She sat under the light,
+brooding a little. What _had_ all this to do with her. The man
+talked on, and beamed in her direction. And she felt a little
+important. But moved or touched?--not the least in the world.
+
+She wondered if any one would ask him to supper--bread and cheese
+and currant-loaf, and water, was all that offered. No one asked him,
+and at last he rose.
+
+"Show Mr. Witham out through the shop, Alvina," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Alvina piloted the man through the long, dark, encumbered way of the
+shop. At the door he said:
+
+"You've never said whether you're coming to tea on Thursday."
+
+"I don't think I can," said Alvina.
+
+He seemed rather taken aback.
+
+"Why?" he said. "What stops you?"
+
+"I've so much to do."
+
+He smiled slowly and satirically.
+
+"Won't it keep?" he said.
+
+"No, really. I can't come on Thursday--thank you so much.
+Good-night!" She gave him her hand and turned quickly into the shop,
+closing the door. He remained standing in the porch, staring at the
+closed door. Then, lifting his lip, he turned away.
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar decidedly, as Alvina re-entered. "You can
+say what you like--but I think he's _very pleasant_, _very_
+pleasant."
+
+"Extremely intelligent," said James Houghton, shifting in his chair.
+
+"I was awfully bored," said Alvina.
+
+They both looked at her, irritated.
+
+After this she really did what she could to avoid him. When she saw
+him sauntering down the street in all his leisure, a sort of anger
+possessed her. On Sunday, she slipped down from the choir into the
+Chapel, and out through the main entrance, whilst he awaited her at
+the small exit. And by good luck, when he called one evening in the
+week, she was out. She returned down the yard. And there, through
+the uncurtained window, she saw him sitting awaiting her. Without a
+thought, she turned on her heel and fled away. She did not come in
+till he had gone.
+
+"How late you are!" said Miss Pinnegar. "Mr. Witham was here till
+ten minutes ago."
+
+"Yes," laughed Alvina. "I came down the yard and saw him. So I went
+back till he'd gone."
+
+Miss Pinnegar looked at her in displeasure:
+
+"I suppose you know your own mind," she said.
+
+"How do you explain such behaviour?" said her father pettishly.
+
+"I didn't want to meet him," she said.
+
+The next evening was Saturday. Alvina had inherited Miss Frost's
+task of attending to the Chapel flowers once a quarter. She had been
+round the gardens of her friends, and gathered the scarlet and hot
+yellow and purple flowers of August, asters, red stocks, tall
+Japanese sunflowers, coreopsis, geraniums. With these in her basket
+she slipped out towards evening, to the Chapel. She knew Mr.
+Calladine, the caretaker would not lock up till she had been.
+
+The moment she got inside the Chapel--it was a big, airy, pleasant
+building--she heard hammering from the organ-loft, and saw the
+flicker of a candle. Some workman busy before Sunday. She shut the
+baize door behind her, and hurried across to the vestry, for vases,
+then out to the tap, for water. All was warm and still.
+
+It was full early evening. The yellow light streamed through the
+side windows, the big stained-glass window at the end was deep and
+full of glowing colour, in which the yellows and reds were richest.
+Above in the organ-loft the hammering continued. She arranged her
+flowers in many vases, till the communion table was like the window,
+a tangle of strong yellow, and crimson, and purple, and
+bronze-green. She tried to keep the effect light and kaleidoscopic,
+an interplay of tossed pieces of strong, hot colour, vibrating and
+lightly intermingled. It was very gorgeous, for a communion table.
+But the day of white lilies was over.
+
+Suddenly there was a terrific crash and bang and tumble, up in the
+organ-loft, followed by a cursing.
+
+"Are you hurt?" called Alvina, looking up into space. The candle had
+disappeared.
+
+But there was no reply. Feeling curious, she went out of the Chapel
+to the stairs in the side porch, and ran up to the organ. She went
+round the side--and there she saw a man in his shirt-sleeves sitting
+crouched in the obscurity on the floor between the organ and the
+wall of the back, while a collapsed pair of steps lay between her
+and him. It was too dark to see who it was.
+
+"That rotten pair of steps came down with me," said the infuriated
+voice of Arthur Witham, "and about broke my leg."
+
+Alvina advanced towards him, picking her way over the steps. He was
+sitting nursing his leg.
+
+"Is it bad?" she asked, stooping towards him.
+
+In the shadow he lifted up his face. It was pale, and his eyes were
+savage with anger. Her face was near his.
+
+"It is bad," he said furious because of the shock. The shock had
+thrown him off his balance.
+
+"Let me see," she said.
+
+He removed his hands from clasping his shin, some distance above the
+ankle. She put her fingers over the bone, over his stocking, to feel
+if there was any fracture. Immediately her fingers were wet with
+blood. Then he did a curious thing. With both his hands he pressed
+her hand down over his wounded leg, pressed it with all his might,
+as if her hand were a plaster. For some moments he sat pressing her
+hand over his broken shin, completely oblivious, as some people are
+when they have had a shock and a hurt, intense on one point of
+consciousness only, and for the rest unconscious.
+
+Then he began to come to himself. The pain modified itself. He could
+not bear the sudden acute hurt to his shin. That was one of his
+sensitive, unbearable parts.
+
+"The bone isn't broken," she said professionally. "But you'd better
+get the stocking out of it."
+
+Without a thought, he pulled his trouser-leg higher and rolled down
+his stocking, extremely gingerly, and sick with pain.
+
+"Can you show a light?" he said.
+
+She found the candle. And she knew where matches always rested, on a
+little ledge of the organ. So she brought him a light, whilst he
+examined his broken shin. The blood was flowing, but not so much. It
+was a nasty cut bruise, swelling and looking very painful. He sat
+looking at it absorbedly, bent over it in the candle-light.
+
+"It's not so very bad, when the pain goes off," she said, noticing
+the black hairs of his shin. "We'd better tie it up. Have you got a
+handkerchief?"
+
+"It's in my jacket," he said.
+
+She looked round for his jacket. He annoyed her a little, by being
+completely oblivious of her. She got his handkerchief and wiped her
+fingers on it. Then of her own kerchief she made a pad for the
+wound.
+
+"Shall I tie it up, then?" she said.
+
+But he did not answer. He sat still nursing his leg, looking at his
+hurt, while the blood slowly trickled down the wet hairs towards his
+ankle. There was nothing to do but wait for him.
+
+"Shall I tie it up, then?" she repeated at length, a little
+impatient. So he put his leg a little forward.
+
+She looked at the wound, and wiped it a little. Then she folded the
+pad of her own handkerchief, and laid it over the hurt. And again he
+did the same thing, he took her hand as if it were a plaster, and
+applied it to his wound, pressing it cautiously but firmly down. She
+was rather angry. He took no notice of her at all. And she, waiting,
+seemed to go into a dream, a sleep, her arm trembled a little,
+stretched out and fixed. She seemed to lose count, under the firm
+compression he imposed on her. It was as if the pressure on her hand
+pressed her into oblivion.
+
+"Tie it up," he said briskly.
+
+And she, obedient, began to tie the bandage with numb fingers. He
+seemed to have taken the use out of her.
+
+When she had finished, he scrambled to his feet, looked at the organ
+which he was repairing, and looked at the collapsed pair of steps.
+
+"A rotten pair of things to have, to put a man's life in danger," he
+said, towards the steps. Then stubbornly, he rigged them up again,
+and stared again at his interrupted job.
+
+"You won't go on, will you?" she asked.
+
+"It's got to be done, Sunday tomorrow," he said. "If you'd hold them
+steps a minute! There isn't more than a minute's fixing to do. It's
+all done, but fixing."
+
+"Hadn't you better leave it," she said.
+
+"Would you mind holding the steps, so that they don't let me down
+again," he said. Then he took the candle, and hobbled stubbornly and
+angrily up again, with spanner and hammer. For some minutes he
+worked, tapping and readjusting, whilst she held the ricketty steps
+and stared at him from below, the shapeless bulk of his trousers.
+Strange the difference--she could not help thinking it--between the
+vulnerable hairy, and somehow childish leg of the real man, and the
+shapeless form of these workmen's trousers. The kernel, the man
+himself--seemed so tender--the covering so stiff and insentient.
+
+And was he not going to speak to her--not one human word of
+recognition? Men are the most curious and unreal creatures. After
+all he had made use of her. Think how he had pressed her hand gently
+but firmly down, down over his bruise, how he had taken the virtue
+out of her, till she felt all weak and dim. And after that was he
+going to relapse into his tough and ugly workman's hide, and treat
+her as if _she_ were a pair of steps, which might let him down or
+hold him up, as might be.
+
+As she stood clinging to the steps she felt weak and a little
+hysterical. She wanted to summon her strength, to have her own back
+from him. After all he had taken the virtue from her, he might have
+the grace to say thank you, and treat her as if she were a human
+being.
+
+At last he left off tinkering, and looked round.
+
+"Have you finished?" she said.
+
+"Yes," he answered crossly.
+
+And taking the candle he began to clamber down. When he got to the
+bottom he crouched over his leg and felt the bandage.
+
+"That gives you what for," he said, as if it were her fault.
+
+"Is the bandage holding?" she said.
+
+"I think so," he answered churlishly.
+
+"Aren't you going to make sure?" she said.
+
+"Oh, it's all right," he said, turning aside and taking up his
+tools. "I'll make my way home."
+
+"So will I," she answered.
+
+She took the candle and went a little in front. He hurried into his
+coat and gathered his tools, anxious to get away. She faced him,
+holding the candle.
+
+"Look at my hand," she said, holding it out. It was smeared with
+blood, as was the cuff of her dress--a black-and-white striped
+cotton dress.
+
+"Is it hurt?" he said.
+
+"No, but look at it. Look here!" She showed the bloodstains on her
+dress.
+
+"It'll wash out," he said, frightened of her.
+
+"Yes, so it will. But for the present it's there. Don't you think
+you ought to thank me?"
+
+He recoiled a little.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I'm very much obliged."
+
+"You ought to be more than that," she said.
+
+He did not answer, but looked her up and down.
+
+"We'll be going down," he said. "We s'll have folks talking."
+
+Suddenly she began to laugh. It seemed so comical. What a position!
+The candle shook as she laughed. What a man, answering her like a
+little automaton! Seriously, quite seriously he said it to her--"We
+s'll have folks talking!" She laughed in a breathless, hurried way,
+as they tramped downstairs.
+
+At the bottom of the stairs Calladine, the caretaker, met them. He
+was a tall thin man with a black moustache--about fifty years old.
+
+"Have you done for tonight, all of you?" he said, grinning in echo
+to Alvina's still fluttering laughter.
+
+"That's a nice rotten pair of steps you've got up there for a
+death-trap," said Arthur angrily. "Come down on top of me, and I'm
+lucky I haven't got my leg broken. It _is_ near enough."
+
+"Come down with you, did they?" said Calladine good-humouredly. "I
+never knowed 'em come down wi' me."
+
+"You ought to, then. My leg's as near broke as it can be."
+
+"What, have you hurt yourself?"
+
+"I should think I have. Look here--" And he began to pull up his
+trouser leg. But Alvina had given the candle to Calladine, and fled.
+She had a last view of Arthur stooping over his precious leg, while
+Calladine stooped his length and held down the candle.
+
+When she got home she took off her dress and washed herself hard and
+washed the stained sleeve, thoroughly, thoroughly, and threw away
+the wash water and rinsed the wash-bowls with fresh water,
+scrupulously. Then she dressed herself in her black dress once
+more, did her hair, and went downstairs.
+
+But she could not sew--and she could not settle down. It was
+Saturday evening, and her father had opened the shop, Miss Pinnegar
+had gone to Knarborough. She would be back at nine o'clock. Alvina
+set about to make a mock woodcock, or a mock something or other,
+with cheese and an egg and bits of toast. Her eyes were dilated and
+as if amused, mocking, her face quivered a little with irony that
+was not all enjoyable.
+
+"I'm glad you've come," said Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar entered. "The
+supper's just done. I'll ask father if he'll close the shop."
+
+Of course James would not close the shop, though he was merely
+wasting light. He nipped in to eat his supper, and started out again
+with a mouthful the moment he heard the ping of the bell. He kept
+his customers chatting as long as he could. His love for
+conversation had degenerated into a spasmodic passion for chatter.
+
+Alvina looked across at Miss Pinnegar, as the two sat at the meagre
+supper-table. Her eyes were dilated and arched with a mocking,
+almost satanic look.
+
+"I've made up my mind about Albert Witham," said Alvina. Miss
+Pinnegar looked at her.
+
+"Which way?" she asked, demurely, but a little sharp.
+
+"It's all off," said Alvina, breaking into a nervous laugh.
+
+"Why? What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing has happened. I can't stand him."
+
+"Why?--suddenly--" said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"It's not sudden," laughed Alvina. "Not at all. I can't stand him. I
+never could. And I won't try. There! Isn't that plain?" And she went
+off into her hurried laugh, partly at herself, partly at Arthur,
+partly at Albert, partly at Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Oh, well, if you're so sure--" said Miss Pinnegar rather bitingly.
+
+"I _am_ quite sure--" said Alvina. "I'm quite certain."
+
+"Cock-sure people are often most mistaken," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"I'd rather have my own mistakes than somebody else's rights," said
+Alvina.
+
+"Then don't expect anybody to pay for your mistakes," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"It would be all the same if I did," said Alvina.
+
+When she lay in bed, she stared at the light of the street-lamp on
+the wall. She was thinking busily: but heaven knows what she was
+thinking. She had sharpened the edge of her temper. She was waiting
+till tomorrow. She was waiting till she saw Albert Witham. She
+wanted to finish off with him. She was keen to cut clean through any
+correspondence with him. She stared for many hours at the light of
+the street-lamp, and there was a narrowed look in her eyes.
+
+The next day she did not go to Morning Service, but stayed at home
+to cook the dinner. In the evening she sat in her place in the
+choir. In the Withams' pew sat Lottie and Albert--no Arthur. Albert
+kept glancing up. Alvina could not bear the sight of him--she simply
+could not bear the sight of him. Yet in her low, sweet voice she
+sang the alto to the hymns, right to the vesper:
+
+    "Lord keep us safe this night
+    Secure from all our fears,
+    May angels guard us while we sleep
+    Till morning light appears--"
+
+As she sang her alto, and as the soft and emotional harmony of the
+vesper swelled luxuriously through the chapel, she was peeping over
+her folded hands at Lottie's hat. She could not bear Lottie's hats.
+There was something aggressive and vulgar about them. And she simply
+detested the look of the back of Albert's head, as he too stooped to
+the vesper prayer. It looked mean and rather common. She remembered
+Arthur had the same look, bending to prayer. There!--why had she not
+seen it before! That petty, vulgar little look! How could she have
+thought twice of Arthur. She had made a fool of herself, as usual.
+Him and his little leg. She grimaced round the chapel, waiting for
+people to bob up their heads and take their departure.
+
+At the gate Albert was waiting for her. He came forward lifting his
+hat with a smiling and familiar "Good evening!"
+
+"Good evening," she murmured.
+
+"It's ages since I've seen you," he said. "And I've looked out for
+you everywhere."
+
+It was raining a little. She put up her umbrella.
+
+"You'll take a little stroll. The rain isn't much," he said.
+
+"No, thank you," she said. "I must go home."
+
+"Why, what's your hurry! Walk as far as Beeby Bridge. Go on."
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"How's that? What makes you refuse?"
+
+"I don't want to."
+
+He paused and looked down at her. The cold and supercilious look of
+anger, a little spiteful, came into his face.
+
+"Do you mean because of the rain?" he said.
+
+"No. I hope you don't mind. But I don't want to take any more walks.
+I don't mean anything by them."
+
+"Oh, as for that," he said, taking the words out of her mouth. "Why
+should you mean anything by them!" He smiled down on her.
+
+She looked him straight in the face.
+
+"But I'd rather not take any more walks, thank you--none at all,"
+she said, looking him full in the eyes.
+
+"You wouldn't!" he replied, stiffening.
+
+"Yes. I'm quite sure," she said.
+
+"As sure as all that, are you!" he said, with a sneering grimace. He
+stood eyeing her insolently up and down.
+
+"Good-night," she said. His sneering made her furious. Putting her
+umbrella between him and her, she walked off.
+
+"Good-night then," he replied, unseen by her. But his voice was
+sneering and impotent.
+
+She went home quivering. But her soul was burning with satisfaction.
+She had shaken them off.
+
+Later she wondered if she had been unkind to him. But it was
+done--and done for ever. _Vogue la gal�re._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HOUGHTON'S LAST ENDEAVOUR
+
+
+The trouble with her ship was that it would _not_ sail. It rode
+water-logged in the rotting port of home. All very well to have
+wild, reckless moods of irony and independence, if you have to pay
+for them by withering dustily on the shelf.
+
+Alvina fell again into humility and fear: she began to show symptoms
+of her mother's heart trouble. For day followed day, month followed
+month, season after season went by, and she grubbed away like a
+housemaid in Manchester House, she hurried round doing the shopping,
+she sang in the choir on Sundays, she attended the various chapel
+events, she went out to visit friends, and laughed and talked and
+played games. But all the time, what was there actually in her life?
+Not much. She was withering towards old-maiddom. Already in her
+twenty-eighth year, she spent her days grubbing in the house, whilst
+her father became an elderly, frail man still too lively in mind and
+spirit. Miss Pinnegar began to grow grey and elderly too, money
+became scarcer and scarcer, there was a black day ahead when her
+father would die and the home be broken up, and she would have to
+tackle life as a worker.
+
+There lay the only alternative: in work. She might slave her days
+away teaching the piano, as Miss Frost had done: she might find a
+subordinate post as nurse: she might sit in the cash-desk of some
+shop. Some work of some sort would be found for her. And she would
+sink into the routine of her job, as did so many women, and grow old
+and die, chattering and fluttering. She would have what is called
+her independence. But, seriously faced with that treasure, and
+without the option of refusing it, strange how hideous she found it.
+
+Work!--a job! More even than she rebelled against the Withams did
+she rebel against a job. Albert Witham was distasteful to her--or
+rather, he was not exactly distasteful, he was chiefly incongruous.
+She could never get over the feeling that he was mouthing and
+smiling at her through the glass wall of an aquarium, he being on
+the watery side. Whether she would ever be able to take to his
+strange and dishuman element, who knows? Anyway it would be some
+sort of an adventure: better than a job. She rebelled with all her
+backbone against the word _job_. Even the substitutes, _employment_
+or _work_, were detestable, unbearable. Emphatically, she did not
+want to work for a wage. It was too humiliating. Could anything be
+more _infra dig_ than the performing of a set of special actions day
+in day out, for a life-time, in order to receive some shillings
+every seventh day. Shameful! A condition of shame. The most vulgar,
+sordid and humiliating of all forms of slavery: so mechanical. Far
+better be a slave outright, in contact with all the whims and
+impulses of a human being, than serve some mechanical routine of
+modern work.
+
+She trembled with anger, impotence, and fear. For months, the
+thought of Albert was a torment to her. She might have married him.
+He would have been strange, a strange fish. But were it not better
+to take the strange leap, over into his element, than to condemn
+oneself to the routine of a job? He would have been curious and
+dishuman. But after all, it would have been an experience. In a way,
+she liked him. There was something odd and integral about him, which
+she liked. He was not a liar. In his own line, he was honest and
+direct. Then he would take her to South Africa: a whole new
+_milieu_. And perhaps she would have children. She shivered a
+little. No, not his children! He seemed so curiously cold-blooded.
+And yet, why not? Why not his curious, pale, half cold-blooded
+children, like little fishes of her own? Why not? Everything was
+possible: and even desirable, once one could see the strangeness of
+it. Once she could plunge through the wall of the aquarium! Once she
+could kiss him!
+
+Therefore Miss Pinnegar's quiet harping on the string was
+unbearable.
+
+"I can't understand that you disliked Mr. Witham so much?" said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"We never can understand those things," said Alvina. "I can't
+understand why I dislike tapioca and arrowroot--but I do."
+
+"That's different," said Miss Pinnegar shortly.
+
+"It's no more easy to understand," said Alvina.
+
+"Because there's no need to understand it," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"And is there need to understand the other?"
+
+"Certainly. I can see nothing wrong with him," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Alvina went away in silence. This was in the first months after she
+had given Albert his dismissal. He was at Oxford again--would not
+return to Woodhouse till Christmas. Between her and the Woodhouse
+Withams there was a decided coldness. They never looked at her
+now--nor she at them.
+
+None the less, as Christmas drew near Alvina worked up her feelings.
+Perhaps she would be reconciled to him. She would slip across and
+smile to him. She would take the plunge, once and for all--and kiss
+him and marry him and bear the little half-fishes, his children. She
+worked herself into quite a fever of anticipation.
+
+But when she saw him, the first evening, sitting stiff and staring
+flatly in front of him in Chapel, staring away from everything in
+the world, at heaven knows what--just as fishes stare--then his
+dishumanness came over her again like an arrest, and arrested all
+her flights of fancy. He stared flatly in front of him, and flatly
+set a wall of oblivion between him and her. She trembled and let be.
+
+After Christmas, however, she had nothing at all to think forward
+to. And it was then she seemed to shrink: she seemed positively to
+shrink.
+
+"You never spoke to Mr. Witham?" Miss Pinnegar asked.
+
+"He never spoke to me," replied Alvina.
+
+"He raised his hat to me."
+
+"_You_ ought to have married him, Miss Pinnegar," said Alvina. "He
+would have been right for you." And she laughed rather mockingly.
+
+"There is no need to make provision for me," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+And after this, she was a long time before she forgave Alvina, and
+was really friendly again. Perhaps she would never have forgiven her
+if she had not found her weeping rather bitterly in her mother's
+abandoned sitting-room.
+
+Now so far, the story of Alvina is commonplace enough. It is more or
+less the story of thousands of girls. They all find work. It is the
+ordinary solution of everything. And if we were dealing with an
+ordinary girl we should have to carry on mildly and dully down the
+long years of employment; or, at the best, marriage with some dull
+school-teacher or office-clerk.
+
+But we protest that Alvina is not ordinary. Ordinary people,
+ordinary fates. But extraordinary people, extraordinary fates. Or
+else no fate at all. The all-to-one-pattern modern system is too
+much for most extraordinary individuals. It just kills them off or
+throws them disused aside.
+
+There have been enough stories about ordinary people. I should think
+the Duke of Clarence must even have found malmsey nauseating, when
+he choked and went purple and was really asphyxiated in a butt of
+it. And ordinary people are no malmsey. Just ordinary tap-water. And
+we have been drenched and deluged and so nearly drowned in perpetual
+floods of ordinariness, that tap-water tends to become a really
+hateful fluid to us. We loathe its out-of-the-tap tastelessness. We
+detest ordinary people. We are in peril of our lives from them: and
+in peril of our souls too, for they would damn us one and all to the
+ordinary. Every individual should, by nature, have his extraordinary
+points. But nowadays you may look for them with a microscope, they
+are so worn-down by the regular machine-friction of our average and
+mechanical days.
+
+There was no hope for Alvina in the ordinary. If help came, it would
+have to come from the extraordinary. Hence the extreme peril of her
+case. Hence the bitter fear and humiliation she felt as she drudged
+shabbily on in Manchester House, hiding herself as much as possible
+from public view. Men can suck the heady juice of exalted
+self-importance from the bitter weed of failure--failures are
+usually the most conceited of men: even as was James Houghton. But
+to a woman, failure is another matter. For her it means failure to
+live, failure to establish her own life on the face of the earth.
+And this is humiliating, the ultimate humiliation.
+
+And so the slow years crept round, and the completed coil of each
+one was a further heavy, strangling noose. Alvina had passed her
+twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and even her
+twenty-ninth year. She was in her thirtieth. It ought to be a
+laughing matter. But it isn't.
+
+          Ach, schon zwanzig
+          Ach, schon zwanzig
+       Immer noch durch's Leben tanz' ich
+
+       Jeder, Jeder will mich k�ssen
+       Mir das Leben zu vers�ssen.
+
+          Ach, schon dreissig
+          Ach, schon dreissig
+       Immer M�dchen, M�dchen heiss' ich.
+       In dem Zopf schon graue H�rchen
+       Ach, wie schnell vergehn die J�hrchen.
+
+          Ach, schon vierzig
+          Ach, schon vierzig
+       Und noch immer Keiner find 'sich.
+       Im gesicht schon graue Flecken
+       Ach, das muss im Spiegel stecken.
+
+          Ach, schon f�nfzig
+          Ach, schon f�nfzig
+       Und noch immer Keiner will 'mich;
+       Soll ich mich mit B�nden zieren
+       Soll ich einen Schleier f�hren?
+          Dann heisst's, die Alte putzt sich,
+          Sie ist fu'fzig, sie ist fu'fzig.
+
+True enough, in Alvina's pig-tail of soft brown the grey hairs were
+already showing. True enough, she still preferred to be thought of
+as a girl. And the slow-footed years, so heavy in passing, were so
+imperceptibly numerous in their accumulation.
+
+But we are not going to follow our song to its fatal and dreary
+conclusion. Presumably, the _ordinary_ old-maid heroine nowadays is
+destined to die in her fifties, she is not allowed to be the
+long-liver of the by-gone novels. Let the song suffice her.
+
+James Houghton had still another kick in him. He had one last scheme
+up his sleeve. Looking out on a changing world, it was the popular
+novelties which had the last fascination for him. The Skating Rink,
+like another Charybdis, had all but entangled him in its swirl as he
+pushed painfully off from the rocks of Throttle-Ha'penny. But he had
+escaped, and for almost three years had lain obscurely in port, like
+a frail and finished bark, selling the last of his bits and bobs,
+and making little splashes in warehouse-oddments. Miss Pinnegar
+thought he had really gone quiet.
+
+But alas, at that degenerated and shabby, down-at-heel club he met
+another tempter: a plump man who had been in the music-hall line as
+a sort of agent. This man had catered for the little shows of
+little towns. He had been in America, out West, doing shows there.
+He had trailed his way back to England, where he had left his wife
+and daughter. But he did not resume his family life. Wherever he
+was, his wife was a hundred miles away. Now he found himself more or
+less stranded in Woodhouse. He had _nearly_ fixed himself up with a
+music-hall in the Potteries--as manager: he had all-but got such
+another place at Ickley, in Derbyshire: he had forced his way
+through the industrial and mining townlets, prospecting for any sort
+of music-hall or show from which he could get a picking. And now, in
+very low water, he found himself at Woodhouse.
+
+Woodhouse had a cinema already: a famous Empire run-up by Jordan,
+the sly builder and decorator who had got on so surprisingly. In
+James's younger days, Jordan was an obscure and illiterate nobody.
+And now he had a motor car, and looked at the tottering James with
+sardonic contempt, from under his heavy, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He
+was rather stout, frail in health, but silent and insuperable, was
+A. W. Jordan.
+
+"I missed a chance there," said James, fluttering. "I missed a rare
+chance there. I ought to have been first with a cinema."
+
+He admitted as much to Mr. May, the stranger who was looking for
+some sort of "managing" job. Mr. May, who also was plump and who
+could hold his tongue, but whose pink, fat face and light-blue eyes
+had a loud look, for all that, put the speech in his pipe and smoked
+it. Not that he smoked a pipe: always cigarettes. But he seized on
+James's admission, as something to be made the most of.
+
+Now Mr. May's mind, though quick, was pedestrian, not winged. He had
+come to Woodhouse not to look at Jordan's "Empire," but at the
+temporary wooden structure that stood in the old Cattle
+Market--"Wright's Cinematograph and Variety Theatre." Wright's was
+not a superior show, like the Woodhouse Empire. Yet it was always
+packed with colliers and work-lasses. But unfortunately there was no
+chance of Mr. May's getting a finger in the Cattle Market pie.
+Wright's was a family affair. Mr. and Mrs. Wright and a son and two
+daughters with their husbands: a tight old lock-up family concern.
+Yet it was the kind of show that appealed to Mr. May: pictures
+between the turns. The cinematograph was but an item in the program,
+amidst the more thrilling incidents--to Mr. May--of conjurors,
+popular songs, five-minute farces, performing birds, and comics. Mr.
+May was too human to believe that a show should consist entirely of
+the dithering eye-ache of a film.
+
+He was becoming really depressed by his failure to find any opening.
+He had his family to keep--and though his honesty was of the variety
+sort, he had a heavy conscience in the direction of his wife and
+daughter. Having been so long in America, he had acquired American
+qualities, one of which was this heavy sort of private innocence,
+coupled with complacent and natural unscrupulousness in "matters of
+business." A man of some odd sensitiveness in material things, he
+liked to have his clothes neat and spick, his linen immaculate, his
+face clean-shaved like a cherub. But alas, his clothes were now
+old-fashioned, so that their rather expensive smartness was
+detrimental to his chances, in spite of their scrupulous look of
+having come almost new out of the bandbox that morning. His rather
+small felt hats still curved jauntily over his full pink face. But
+his eyes looked lugubrious, as if he felt he had not deserved so
+much bad luck, and there were bilious lines beneath them.
+
+So Mr. May, in his room in the Moon and Stars, which was the best inn
+in Woodhouse--he must have a good h�tel--lugubriously considered his
+position. Woodhouse offered little or nothing. He must go to Alfreton.
+And would he find anything there? Ah, where, where in this hateful
+world was there refuge for a man saddled with responsibilities, who
+wanted to do his best and was given no opportunity? Mr. May had
+travelled in his Pullman car and gone straight to the best hotel in the
+town, like any other American with money--in America. He had done it
+smart, too. And now, in this grubby penny-picking England, he saw his
+boots being worn-down at the heel, and was afraid of being stranded
+without cash even for a railway ticket. If he had to clear out without
+paying his hotel bill--well, that was the world's fault. He had to
+live. But he must perforce keep enough in hand for a ticket to
+Birmingham. He always said his wife was in London. And he always walked
+down to Lumley to post his letters. He was full of evasions.
+
+So again he walked down to Lumley to post his letters. And he looked
+at Lumley. And he found it a damn god-forsaken hell of a hole. It
+was a long straggle of a dusty road down in the valley, with a
+pale-grey dust and spatter from the pottery, and big chimneys
+bellying forth black smoke right by the road. Then there was a short
+cross-way, up which one saw the iron foundry, a black and rusty
+place. A little further on was the railway junction, and beyond
+that, more houses stretching to Hathersedge, where the stocking
+factories were busy. Compared with Lumley, Woodhouse, whose church
+could be seen sticking up proudly and vulgarly on an eminence, above
+trees and meadow-slopes, was an idyllic heaven.
+
+Mr. May turned in to the Derby Hotel to have a small whiskey. And of
+course he entered into conversation.
+
+"You seem somewhat quiet at Lumley," he said, in his odd,
+refined-showman's voice. "Have you _nothing at all_ in the way of
+amusement?"
+
+"They all go up to Woodhouse, else to Hathersedge."
+
+"But couldn't you support some place of your own--some _rival_ to
+Wright's Variety?"
+
+"Ay--'appen--if somebody started it."
+
+And so it was that James was inoculated with the idea of starting a
+cinema on the virgin soil of Lumley. To the women he said not a
+word. But on the very first morning that Mr. May broached the
+subject, he became a new man. He fluttered like a boy, he fluttered
+as if he had just grown wings.
+
+"Let us go down," said Mr. May, "and look at a site. You pledge
+yourself to nothing--you don't compromise yourself. You merely have
+a site in your mind."
+
+And so it came to pass that, next morning, this oddly assorted
+couple went down to Lumley together. James was very shabby, in his
+black coat and dark grey trousers, and his cheap grey cap. He bent
+forward as he walked, and still nipped along hurriedly, as if
+pursued by fate. His face was thin and still handsome. Odd that his
+cheap cap, by incongruity, made him look more a gentleman. But it
+did. As he walked he glanced alertly hither and thither, and saluted
+everybody.
+
+By his side, somewhat tight and tubby, with his chest out and his
+head back, went the prim figure of Mr. May, reminding one of a
+consequential bird of the smaller species. His plumbago-grey suit
+fitted exactly--save that it was perhaps a little tight. The jacket
+and waistcoat were bound with silk braid of exactly the same shade
+as the cloth. His soft collar, immaculately fresh, had a dark stripe
+like his shirt. His boots were black, with grey su�de uppers: but a
+_little_ down at heel. His dark-grey hat was jaunty. Altogether he
+looked very spruce, though a _little_ behind the fashions: very pink
+faced, though his blue eyes were bilious beneath: very much on the
+spot, although the spot was the wrong one.
+
+They discoursed amiably as they went, James bending forward, Mr. May
+bending back. Mr. May took the refined man-of-the-world tone.
+
+"Of course," he said--he used the two words very often, and
+pronounced the second, rather mincingly, to rhyme with _sauce_: "Of
+course," said Mr. May, "it's a disgusting place--_disgusting_! I
+never was in a worse, in all the _cauce_ of my travels. But
+_then_--that isn't the point--"
+
+He spread his plump hands from his immaculate shirt-cuffs.
+
+"No, it isn't. Decidedly it isn't. That's beside the point
+altogether. What we want--" began James.
+
+"Is an audience--of _cauce_--! And we have it--! Virgin soil--!
+
+"Yes, decidedly. Untouched! An unspoiled market."
+
+"An unspoiled market!" reiterated Mr. May, in full confirmation,
+though with a faint flicker of a smile. "How very _fortunate_ for
+us."
+
+"Properly handled," said James. "Properly handled."
+
+"Why yes--of _cauce_! Why _shouldn't_ we handle it properly!"
+
+"Oh, we shall manage that, we shall manage that," came the quick,
+slightly husky voice of James.
+
+"Of _cauce_ we shall! Why bless my life, if we can't manage an
+audience in Lumley, what _can_ we do."
+
+"We have a guide in the matter of their taste," said James. "We can
+see what Wright's are doing--and Jordan's--and we can go to
+Hathersedge and Knarborough and Alfreton--beforehand, that is--"
+
+"Why certainly--if you think it's _necessary_. I'll do all that for
+you. _And_ I'll interview the managers and the performers
+themselves--as if I were a journalist, don't you see. I've done a
+fair amount of journalism, and nothing easier than to get cards from
+various newspapers."
+
+"Yes, that's a good suggestion," said James. "As if you were going
+to write an account in the newspapers--excellent."
+
+"And so simple! You pick up just _all_ the information you require."
+
+"Decidedly--decidedly!" said James.
+
+And so behold our two heroes sniffing round the sordid backs and
+wasted meadows and marshy places of Lumley. They found one barren
+patch where two caravans were standing. A woman was peeling
+potatoes, sitting on the bottom step of her caravan. A half-caste
+girl came up with a large pale-blue enamelled jug of water. In the
+background were two booths covered up with coloured canvas.
+Hammering was heard inside.
+
+"Good-morning!" said Mr. May, stopping before the woman. "'Tisn't
+fair time, is it?"
+
+"No, it's no fair," said the woman.
+
+"I see. You're just on your own. Getting on all right?"
+
+"Fair," said the woman.
+
+"Only fair! Sorry. Good-morning."
+
+Mr. May's quick eye, roving round, had seen a negro stoop from under
+the canvas that covered one booth. The negro was thin, and looked
+young but rather frail, and limped. His face was very like that of
+the young negro in Watteau's drawing--pathetic, wistful,
+north-bitten. In an instant Mr. May had taken all in: the man was
+the woman's husband--they were acclimatized in these regions: the
+booth where he had been hammering was a Hoop-La. The other would be
+a cocoanut-shy. Feeling the instant American dislike for the
+presence of a negro, Mr. May moved off with James.
+
+They found out that the woman was a Lumley woman, that she had two
+children, that the negro was a most quiet and respectable chap, but
+that the family kept to itself, and didn't mix up with Lumley.
+
+"I should think so," said Mr. May, a little disgusted even at the
+suggestion.
+
+Then he proceeded to find out how long they had stood on this
+ground--three months--how long they would remain--only another week,
+then they were moving off to Alfreton fair--who was the owner of the
+pitch--Mr. Bows, the butcher. Ah! And what was the ground used for?
+Oh, it was building land. But the foundation wasn't very good.
+
+"The very thing! Aren't we _fortunate_!" cried Mr. May, perking up
+the moment they were in the street. But this cheerfulness and brisk
+perkiness was a great strain on him. He missed his eleven o'clock
+whiskey terribly--terribly--his pick-me-up! And he daren't confess
+it to James, who, he knew, was T-T. So he dragged his weary and
+hollow way up to Woodhouse, and sank with a long "Oh!" of nervous
+exhaustion in the private bar of the Moon and Stars. He wrinkled his
+short nose. The smell of the place was distasteful to him. The
+_disgusting_ beer that the colliers drank. Oh!--he _was_ so tired.
+He sank back with his whiskey and stared blankly, dismally in front
+of him. Beneath his eyes he looked more bilious still. He felt
+thoroughly out of luck, and petulant.
+
+None the less he sallied out with all his old bright perkiness, the
+next time he had to meet James. He hadn't yet broached the question
+of costs. When would he be able to get an advance from James? He
+_must_ hurry the matter forward. He brushed his crisp, curly brown
+hair carefully before the mirror. How grey he was at the temples! No
+wonder, dear me, with such a life! He was in his shirt-sleeves. His
+waistcoat, with its grey satin back, fitted him tightly. He had
+filled out--but he hadn't developed a corporation. Not at all. He
+looked at himself sideways, and feared dismally he was thinner. He
+was one of those men who carry themselves in a birdie fashion, so
+that their tail sticks out a little behind, jauntily. How
+wonderfully the satin of his waistcoat had worn! He looked at his
+shirt-cuffs. They were going. Luckily, when he had had the shirts
+made he had secured enough material for the renewing of cuffs and
+neckbands. He put on his coat, from which he had flicked the
+faintest suspicion of dust, and again settled himself to go out and
+meet James on the question of an advance. He simply must have an
+advance.
+
+He didn't get it that day, none the less. The next morning he was
+ringing for his tea at six o'clock. And before ten he had already
+flitted to Lumley and back, he had already had a word with Mr. Bows,
+about that pitch, and, overcoming all his repugnance, a word with
+the quiet, frail, sad negro, about Alfreton fair, and the chance of
+buying some sort of collapsible building, for his cinematograph.
+
+With all this news he met James--not at the shabby club, but in the
+deserted reading-room of the so-called Artizans Hall--where never an
+artizan entered, but only men of James's class. Here they took the
+chessboard and pretended to start a game. But their conversation
+was rapid and secretive.
+
+Mr. May disclosed all his discoveries. And then he said,
+tentatively:
+
+"Hadn't we better think about the financial part now? If we're going
+to look round for an erection"--curious that he always called it an
+erection--"we shall have to know what we are going to spend."
+
+"Yes--yes. Well--" said James vaguely, nervously, giving a glance at
+Mr. May. Whilst Mr. May abstractedly fingered his black knight.
+
+"You see at the moment," said Mr. May, "I have no funds that I can
+represent in cash. I have no doubt a little _later_--if we need
+it--I can find a few hundreds. Many things are _due_--numbers of
+things. But it is so difficult to _collect_ one's dues, particularly
+from America." He lifted his blue eyes to James Houghton. "Of course
+we can _delay_ for some time, until I get my supplies. Or I can act
+just as your manager--you can _employ_ me--"
+
+He watched James's face. James looked down at the chessboard. He was
+fluttering with excitement. He did not want a partner. He wanted to
+be in this all by himself. He hated partners.
+
+"You will agree to be manager, at a fixed salary?" said James
+hurriedly and huskily, his fine fingers slowly rubbing each other,
+along the sides.
+
+"Why yes, willingly, if you'll give me the option of becoming your
+partner upon terms of mutual agreement, later on."
+
+James did not quite like this.
+
+"What terms are you thinking of?" he asked.
+
+"Well, it doesn't matter for the moment. Suppose for the moment I
+enter an engagement as your manager, at a salary, let us say, of--of
+what, do you think?"
+
+"So much a week?" said James pointedly.
+
+"Hadn't we better make it monthly?"
+
+The two men looked at one another.
+
+"With a month's notice on either hand?" continued Mr. May.
+
+"How much?" said James, avaricious.
+
+Mr. May studied his own nicely kept hands.
+
+"Well, I don't see how I can do it under twenty pounds a month. Of
+course it's ridiculously low. In America I _never_ accepted less
+than three hundred dollars a month, and that was my poorest and
+lowest. But of _cauce_, England's not America--more's the pity."
+
+But James was shaking his head in a vibrating movement.
+
+"Impossible!" he replied shrewdly. "Impossible! Twenty pounds a
+month? Impossible. I couldn't do it. I couldn't think of it."
+
+"Then name a figure. Say what you _can_ think of," retorted Mr. May,
+rather annoyed by this shrewd, shaking head of a doddering
+provincial, and by his own sudden collapse into mean subordination.
+
+"I can't make it more than ten pounds a month," said James sharply.
+
+"What!" screamed Mr. May. "What am I to live on? What is my wife to
+live on?"
+
+"I've got to make it pay," said James. "If I've got to make it pay,
+I must keep down expenses at the beginning."
+
+"No,--on the contrary. You must be prepared to spend something at
+the beginning. If you go in a pinch-and-scrape fashion in the
+beginning, you will get nowhere at all. Ten pounds a month! Why it's
+impossible! Ten pounds a month! But how am I to _live_?"
+
+James's head still vibrated in a negative fashion. And the two men
+came to no agreement _that_ morning. Mr. May went home more sick and
+weary than ever, and took his whiskey more biliously. But James was
+lit with the light of battle.
+
+Poor Mr. May had to gather together his wits and his sprightliness
+for his next meeting. He had decided he must make a percentage in
+other ways. He schemed in all known ways. He would accept the ten
+pounds--but really, did ever you hear of anything so ridiculous in
+your life, _ten pounds!_--dirty old screw, dirty, screwing old
+woman! He would accept the ten pounds; but he would get his own
+back.
+
+He flitted down once more to the negro, to ask him of a certain
+wooden show-house, with section sides and roof, an old travelling
+theatre which stood closed on Selverhay Common, and might probably
+be sold. He pressed across once more to Mr. Bows. He wrote various
+letters and drew up certain notes. And the next morning, by eight
+o'clock, he was on his way to Selverhay: walking, poor man, the long
+and uninteresting seven miles on his small and rather tight-shod
+feet, through country that had been once beautiful but was now
+scrubbled all over with mining villages, on and on up heavy hills
+and down others, asking his way from uncouth clowns, till at last he
+came to the Common, which wasn't a Common at all, but a sort of
+village more depressing than usual: naked, high, exposed to heaven
+and to full barren view.
+
+There he saw the theatre-booth. It was old and sordid-looking, painted
+dark-red and dishevelled with narrow, tattered announcements. The
+grass was growing high up the wooden sides. If only it wasn't rotten?
+He crouched and probed and pierced with his pen-knife, till a
+country-policeman in a high helmet like a jug saw him, got off his
+bicycle and came stealthily across the grass wheeling the same bicycle,
+and startled poor Mr. May almost into apoplexy by demanding behind him,
+in a loud voice:
+
+"What're you after?"
+
+Mr. May rose up with flushed face and swollen neck-veins, holding
+his pen-knife in his hand.
+
+"Oh," he said, "good-morning." He settled his waistcoat and glanced
+over the tall, lanky constable and the glittering bicycle. "I was
+taking a look at this old erection, with a view to buying it. I'm
+afraid it's going rotten from the bottom."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," said the policeman suspiciously, watching Mr.
+May shut the pocket knife.
+
+"I'm afraid that makes it useless for my purpose," said Mr. May.
+
+The policeman did not deign to answer.
+
+"Could you tell me where I can find out about it, anyway?" Mr. May
+used his most affable, man of the world manner. But the policeman
+continued to stare him up and down, as if he were some marvellous
+specimen unknown on the normal, honest earth.
+
+"What, find out?" said the constable.
+
+"About being able to buy it," said Mr. May, a little testily. It was
+with great difficulty he preserved his man-to-man openness and
+brightness.
+
+"They aren't here," said the constable.
+
+"Oh indeed! Where _are_ they? And _who_ are they?"
+
+The policeman eyed him more suspiciously than ever.
+
+"Cowlard's their name. An' they live in Offerton when they aren't
+travelling."
+
+"Cowlard--thank you." Mr. May took out his pocket-book.
+"C-o-w-l-a-r-d--is that right? And the address, please?"
+
+"I dunno th' street. But you can find out from the Three Bells.
+That's Missis' sister."
+
+"The Three Bells--thank you. Offerton did you say?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Offerton!--where's that?"
+
+"About eight mile."
+
+"Really--and how do you get there?"
+
+"You can walk--or go by train."
+
+"Oh, there is a station?"
+
+"Station!" The policeman looked at him as if he were either a
+criminal or a fool.
+
+"Yes. There _is_ a station there?"
+
+"Ay--biggest next to Chesterfield--"
+
+Suddenly it dawned on Mr. May.
+
+"Oh-h!" he said. "You mean _Alfreton_--"
+
+"Alfreton, yes." The policeman was now convinced the man was a
+wrong-'un. But fortunately he was not a pushing constable, he did
+not want to rise in the police-scale: thought himself safest at the
+bottom.
+
+"And which is the way to the station here?" asked Mr. May.
+
+"Do yer want Pinxon or Bull'ill?"
+
+"Pinxon or Bull'ill?"
+
+"There's two," said the policeman.
+
+"For Selverhay?" asked Mr. May.
+
+"Yes, them's the two."
+
+"And which is the best?"
+
+"Depends what trains is runnin'. Sometimes yer have to wait an hour
+or two--"
+
+"You don't know the trains, do you--?"
+
+"There's one in th' afternoon--but I don't know if it'd be gone by
+the time you get down."
+
+"To where?"
+
+"Bull'ill."
+
+"Oh Bull'ill! Well, perhaps I'll try. Could you tell me the way?"
+
+When, after an hour's painful walk, Mr. May came to Bullwell Station
+and found there was no train till six in the evening, he felt he
+was earning every penny he would ever get from Mr. Houghton.
+
+The first intelligence which Miss Pinnegar and Alvina gathered of
+the coming adventure was given them when James announced that he had
+let the shop to Marsden, the grocer next door. Marsden had agreed to
+take over James's premises at the same rent as that of the premises
+he already occupied, and moreover to do all alterations and put in
+all fixtures himself. This was a grand scoop for James: not a penny
+was it going to cost him, and the rent was clear profit.
+
+"But when?" cried Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"He takes possession on the first of October."
+
+"Well--it's a good idea. The shop isn't worth while," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"Certainly it isn't," said James, rubbing his hands: a sign that he
+was rarely excited and pleased.
+
+"And you'll just retire, and live quietly," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"I shall see," said James. And with those fatal words he wafted away
+to find Mr. May.
+
+James was now nearly seventy years old. Yet he nipped about like a
+leaf in the wind. Only, it was a frail leaf.
+
+"Father's got something going," said Alvina, in a warning voice.
+
+"I believe he has," said Miss Pinnegar pensively. "I wonder what it
+is, now."
+
+"I can't imagine," laughed Alvina. "But I'll bet it's something
+awful--else he'd have told us."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar slowly. "Most likely he would. I wonder
+what it can be."
+
+"I haven't an idea," said Alvina.
+
+Both women were so retired, they had heard nothing of James's little
+trips down to Lumley. So they watched like cats for their man's
+return, at dinner-time.
+
+Miss Pinnegar saw him coming along talking excitedly to Mr. May,
+who, all in grey, with his chest perkily stuck out like a robin, was
+looking rather pinker than usual. Having come to an agreement, he
+had ventured on whiskey and soda in honour, and James had actually
+taken a glass of port.
+
+"Alvina!" Miss Pinnegar called discreetly down the shop. "Alvina!
+Quick!"
+
+Alvina flew down to peep round the corner of the shop window. There
+stood the two men, Mr. May like a perky, pink-faced grey bird
+standing cocking his head in attention to James Houghton, and
+occasionally catching James by the lapel of his coat, in a vain
+desire to get a word in, whilst James's head nodded and his face
+simply wagged with excited speech, as he skipped from foot to foot,
+and shifted round his listener.
+
+"Who _ever_ can that common-looking man be?" said Miss Pinnegar, her
+heart going down to her boots.
+
+"I can't imagine," said Alvina, laughing at the comic sight.
+
+"Don't you think he's dreadful?" said the poor elderly woman.
+
+"Perfectly impossible. Did ever you see such a pink face?"
+
+"_And_ the braid binding!" said Miss Pinnegar in indignation.
+
+"Father might almost have sold him the suit," said Alvina.
+
+"Let us hope he hasn't sold your father, that's all," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+The two men had moved a few steps further towards home, and the
+women prepared to flee indoors. Of course it was frightfully wrong
+to be standing peeping in the high street at all. But who could
+consider the proprieties now?
+
+"They've stopped again," said Miss Pinnegar, recalling Alvina.
+
+The two men were having a few more excited words, their voices just
+audible.
+
+"I do wonder who he can be," murmured Miss Pinnegar miserably.
+
+"In the theatrical line, I'm sure," declared Alvina.
+
+"Do you think so?" said Miss Pinnegar. "Can't be! Can't be!"
+
+"He couldn't be anything else, don't you think?"
+
+"Oh I _can't_ believe it, I can't."
+
+But now Mr. May had laid his detaining hand on James's arm. And now
+he was shaking his employer by the hand. And now James, in his cheap
+little cap, was smiling a formal farewell. And Mr. May, with a
+graceful wave of his grey-su�de-gloved hand, was turning back to the
+Moon and Stars, strutting, whilst James was running home on
+tip-toe, in his natural hurry.
+
+Alvina hastily retreated, but Miss Pinnegar stood it out. James
+started as he nipped into the shop entrance, and found her
+confronting him.
+
+"Oh--Miss Pinnegar!" he said, and made to slip by her.
+
+"Who was that man?" she asked sharply, as if James were a child whom
+she could endure no more.
+
+"Eh? I beg your pardon?" said James, starting back.
+
+"Who was that man?"
+
+"Eh? Which man?"
+
+James was a little deaf, and a little husky.
+
+"The man--" Miss Pinnegar turned to the door. "There! That man!"
+
+James also came to the door, and peered out as if he expected to see
+a sight. The sight of Mr. May's tight and perky back, the jaunty
+little hat and the grey su�de hands retreating quite surprised him.
+He was angry at being introduced to the sight.
+
+"Oh," he said. "That's my manager." And he turned hastily down the
+shop, asking for his dinner.
+
+Miss Pinnegar stood for some moments in pure oblivion in the shop
+entrance. Her consciousness left her. When she recovered, she felt
+she was on the brink of hysteria and collapse. But she hardened
+herself once more, though the effort cost her a year of her life.
+She had never collapsed, she had never fallen into hysteria.
+
+She gathered herself together, though bent a little as from a blow,
+and, closing the shop door, followed James to the living room, like
+the inevitable. He was eating his dinner, and seemed oblivious of
+her entry. There was a smell of Irish stew.
+
+"What manager?" said Miss Pinnegar, short, silent, and inevitable in
+the doorway.
+
+But James was in one of his abstractions, his trances.
+
+"What manager?" persisted Miss Pinnegar.
+
+But he still bent unknowing over his plate and gobbled his Irish
+stew.
+
+"Mr. Houghton!" said Miss Pinnegar, in a sudden changed voice. She
+had gone a livid yellow colour. And she gave a queer, sharp little
+rap on the table with her hand.
+
+James started. He looked up bewildered, as one startled out of
+sleep.
+
+"Eh?" he said, gaping. "Eh?"
+
+"Answer me," said Miss Pinnegar. "What manager?"
+
+"Manager? Eh? Manager? What manager?"
+
+She advanced a little nearer, menacing in her black dress. James
+shrank.
+
+"What manager?" he re-echoed. "My manager. The manager of my
+cinema."
+
+Miss Pinnegar looked at him, and looked at him, and did not speak.
+In that moment all the anger which was due to him from all womanhood
+was silently discharged at him, like a black bolt of silent
+electricity. But Miss Pinnegar, the engine of wrath, felt she would
+burst.
+
+"Cinema! Cinema! Do you mean to tell me--" but she was really
+suffocated, the vessels of her heart and breast were bursting. She
+had to lean her hand on the table.
+
+It was a terrible moment. She looked ghastly and terrible, with her
+mask-like face and her stony eyes and her bluish lips. Some fearful
+thunderbolt seemed to fall. James withered, and was still. There was
+silence for minutes, a suspension.
+
+And in those minutes, she finished with him. She finished with him
+for ever. When she had sufficiently recovered, she went to her
+chair, and sat down before her plate. And in a while she began to
+eat, as if she were alone.
+
+Poor Alvina, for whom this had been a dreadful and uncalled-for
+moment, had looked from one to another, and had also dropped her
+head to her plate. James too, with bent head, had forgotten to eat.
+Miss Pinnegar ate very slowly, alone.
+
+"Don't you want your dinner, Alvina?" she said at length.
+
+"Not as much as I did," said Alvina.
+
+"Why not?" said Miss Pinnegar. She sounded short, almost like Miss
+Frost. Oddly like Miss Frost.
+
+Alvina took up her fork and began to eat automatically.
+
+"I always think," said Miss Pinnegar, "Irish stew is more tasty with
+a bit of Swede in it."
+
+"So do I, really," said Alvina. "But Swedes aren't come yet."
+
+"Oh! Didn't we have some on Tuesday?"
+
+"No, they were yellow turnips--but they weren't Swedes."
+
+"Well then, yellow turnip. I like a little yellow turnip," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"I might have put some in, if I'd known," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes. We will another time," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Not another word about the cinema: not another breath. As soon as
+James had eaten his plum tart, he ran away.
+
+"What can he have been doing?" said Alvina when he had gone.
+
+"Buying a cinema show--and that man we saw is his manager. It's
+quite simple."
+
+"But what are we going to do with a cinema show?" said Alvina.
+
+"It's what is _he_ going to do. It doesn't concern me. It's no
+concern of mine. I shall not lend him anything, I shall not think
+about it, it will be the same to me as if there _were_ no cinema.
+Which is all I have to say," announced Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"But he's gone and done it," said Alvina.
+
+"Then let him go through with it. It's no affair of mine. After all,
+your father's affairs don't concern me. It would be impertinent of
+me to introduce myself into them."
+
+"They don't concern _me_ very much," said Alvina.
+
+"You're different. You're his daughter. He's no connection of mine,
+I'm glad to say. I pity your mother."
+
+"Oh, but he was always alike," said Alvina.
+
+"That's where it is," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+There was something fatal about her feelings. Once they had gone
+cold, they would never warm up again. As well try to warm up a
+frozen mouse. It only putrifies.
+
+But poor Miss Pinnegar after this looked older, and seemed to get a
+little round-backed. And the things she said reminded Alvina so
+often of Miss Frost.
+
+James fluttered into conversation with his daughter the next
+evening, after Miss Pinnegar had retired.
+
+"I told you I had bought a cinematograph building," said James. "We
+are negotiating for the machinery now: the dynamo and so on."
+
+"But where is it to be?" asked Alvina.
+
+"Down at Lumley. I'll take you and show you the site tomorrow. The
+building--it is a frame-section travelling theatre--will arrive on
+Thursday--next Thursday."
+
+"But who is in with you, father?"
+
+"I am quite alone--quite alone," said James Houghton. "I have found
+an excellent manager, who knows the whole business thoroughly--a Mr.
+May. Very nice man. Very nice man."
+
+"Rather short and dressed in grey?"
+
+"Yes. And I have been thinking--if Miss Pinnegar will take the cash
+and issue tickets: if she will take over the ticket-office: and you
+will play the piano: and if Mr. May learns the control of the
+machine--he is having lessons now--: and if I am the indoors
+attendant, we shan't need any more staff."
+
+"Miss Pinnegar won't take the cash, father."
+
+"Why not? Why not?"
+
+"I can't say why not. But she won't do anything--and if I were you I
+wouldn't ask her."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Oh, well," said James, huffy. "She isn't indispensable."
+
+And Alvina was to play the piano! Here was a blow for her! She
+hurried off to her bedroom to laugh and cry at once. She just saw
+herself at that piano, banging off the _Merry Widow Waltz_, and, in
+tender moments, _The Rosary_. Time after time, _The Rosary_. While
+the pictures flickered and the audience gave shouts and some grubby
+boy called "Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let,
+penny a bar!" away she banged at another tune.
+
+What a sight for the gods! She burst out laughing. And at the same
+time, she thought of her mother and Miss Frost, and she cried as if
+her heart would break. And then all kinds of comic and incongruous
+tunes came into her head. She imagined herself dressing up with most
+priceless variations. _Linger Longer Lucy_, for example. She began
+to spin imaginary harmonies and variations in her head, upon the
+theme of _Linger Longer Lucy_.
+
+       "Linger longer Lucy, linger longer Loo.
+        How I love to linger longer linger long o' you.
+        Listen while I sing, love, promise you'll be true,
+        And linger longer longer linger linger longer Loo."
+
+All the tunes that used to make Miss Frost so angry. All the Dream
+Waltzes and Maiden's Prayers, and the awful songs.
+
+          "For in Spooney-ooney Island
+           Is there any one cares for me?
+           In Spooney-ooney Island
+           Why surely there ought to be--"
+
+Poor Miss Frost! Alvina imagined herself leading a chorus of
+collier louts, in a bad atmosphere of "Woodbines" and oranges,
+during the intervals when the pictures had collapsed.
+
+       "How'd you like to spoon with me?
+        How'd you like to spoon with me?
+                                       (_Why ra-ther!_)
+
+        Underneath the oak-tree nice and shady
+        Calling me your tootsey-wootsey lady?
+        How'd you like to hug and squeeze,
+                                       (_Just try me!_)
+
+        Dandle me upon your knee,
+        Calling me your little lovey-dovey--
+        How'd you like to spoon with me?
+                                       (_Oh-h--Go on!_)"
+
+Alvina worked herself into quite a fever, with her imaginings.
+
+In the morning she told Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar, "you see me issuing tickets, don't you?
+Yes--well. I'm afraid he will have to do that part himself. And
+you're going to play the piano. It's a disgrace! It's a disgrace!
+It's a disgrace! It's a mercy Miss Frost and your mother are dead.
+He's lost every bit of shame--every bit--if he ever had any--which I
+doubt very much. Well, all I can say, I'm glad I am not concerned.
+And I'm sorry for you, for being his daughter. I'm heart sorry for
+you, I am. Well, well--no sense of shame--no sense of shame--"
+
+And Miss Pinnegar padded out of the room.
+
+Alvina walked down to Lumley and was shown the site and was
+introduced to Mr. May. He bowed to her in his best American fashion,
+and treated her with admirable American deference.
+
+"Don't you think," he said to her, "it's an admirable scheme?"
+
+"Wonderful," she replied.
+
+"Of cauce," he said, "the erection will be a merely temporary one.
+Of cauce it won't be anything to _look_ at: just an old wooden
+travelling theatre. But _then_--all we need is to make a start."
+
+"And you are going to work the film?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he said with pride, "I spend every evening with the operator
+at Marsh's in Knarborough. Very interesting I find it--very
+interesting indeed. And _you_ are going to play the piano?" he said,
+perking his head on one side and looking at her archly.
+
+"So father says," she answered.
+
+"But what do _you_ say?" queried Mr. May.
+
+"I suppose I don't have any say."
+
+"Oh but _surely_. Surely you won't do it if you don't wish to. That
+would never do. Can't we hire some young fellow--?" And he turned to
+Mr. Houghton with a note of query.
+
+"Alvina can play as well as anybody in Woodhouse," said James. "We
+mustn't add to our expenses. And wages in particular--"
+
+"But surely Miss Houghton will have her wage. The labourer is worthy
+of his hire. Surely! Even of _her_ hire, to put it in the feminine.
+And for the same wage you could get some unimportant fellow with
+strong wrists. I'm afraid it will tire Miss Houghton to death--"
+
+"I don't think so," said James. "I don't think so. Many of the turns
+she will not need to accompany--"
+
+"Well, if it comes to that," said Mr. May, "I can accompany some of
+them myself, when I'm not operating the film. I'm not an expert
+pianist--but I can play a little, you know--" And he trilled his
+fingers up and down an imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina,
+cocking his eye at her smiling a little archly.
+
+"I'm sure," he continued, "I can accompany anything except a man
+juggling dinner-plates--and then I'd be afraid of making him drop
+the plates. But songs--oh, songs! _Con molto espressione!_"
+
+And again he trilled the imaginary keyboard, and smiled his rather
+fat cheeks at Alvina.
+
+She began to like him. There was something a little dainty about
+him, when you knew him better--really rather fastidious. A showman,
+true enough! Blatant too. But fastidiously so.
+
+He came fairly frequently to Manchester House after this. Miss
+Pinnegar was rather stiff with him and he did not like her. But he
+was very happy sitting chatting t�te-�-t�te with Alvina.
+
+"Where is your wife?" said Alvina to him.
+
+"My wife! Oh, don't speak of _her_," he said comically. "She's in
+London."
+
+"Why not speak of her?" asked Alvina.
+
+"Oh, every reason for not speaking of her. We don't get on at _all_
+well, she and I."
+
+"What a pity," said Alvina.
+
+"Dreadful pity! But what are you to do?" He laughed comically. Then
+he became grave. "No," he said. "She's an impossible person."
+
+"I see," said Alvina.
+
+"I'm sure you _don't_ see," said Mr. May. "Don't--" and here he laid
+his hand on Alvina's arm--"don't run away with the idea that she's
+_immoral_! You'd never make a greater mistake. Oh dear me, no.
+Morality's her strongest point. Live on three lettuce leaves, and
+give the rest to the char. That's her. Oh, dreadful times we had in
+those first years. We only lived together for three years. But dear
+_me_! how awful it was!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"There was no pleasing the woman. She wouldn't eat. If I said to her
+'What shall we have for supper, Grace?' as sure as anything she'd
+answer 'Oh, I shall take a bath when I go to bed--that will be my
+supper.' She was one of these advanced vegetarian women, don't you
+know."
+
+"How extraordinary!" said Alvina.
+
+"Extraordinary! I should think so. Extraordinary hard lines on _me_.
+And she wouldn't let _me_ eat either. She followed me to the kitchen in
+a _fury_ while I cooked for myself. Why imagine! I prepared a dish of
+champignons: oh, most _beautiful_ champignons, beautiful--and I put
+them on the stove to fry in butter: beautiful young champignons. I'm
+hanged if she didn't go into the kitchen while my back was turned, and
+pour a pint of old carrot-water into the pan. I was _furious_.
+Imagine!--beautiful fresh young champignons--"
+
+"Fresh mushrooms," said Alvina.
+
+"Mushrooms--most beautiful things in the world. Oh! don't you think
+so?" And he rolled his eyes oddly to heaven.
+
+"They _are_ good," said Alvina.
+
+"I should say so. And swamped--_swamped_ with her dirty old carrot
+water. Oh I was so angry. And all she could say was, 'Well, I
+didn't want to waste it!' Didn't want to waste her old carrot water,
+and so _ruined_ my champignons. _Can_ you imagine such a person?"
+
+"It must have been trying."
+
+"I should think it was. I lost weight. I lost I don't know how many
+pounds, the first year I was married to that woman. She hated me to
+eat. Why, one of her great accusations against me, at the last, was
+when she said: 'I've looked round the larder,' she said to me, 'and
+seen it was quite empty, and I thought to myself: _Now_ he _can't_
+cook a supper! And _then_ you did!' There! What do you think of
+that? The spite of it! 'And _then_ you did!'"
+
+"What did she expect you to live on?" asked Alvina.
+
+"Nibble a lettuce leaf with her, and drink water from the tap--and
+then elevate myself with a Bernard Shaw pamphlet. That was the sort
+of woman she was. All it gave _me_ was gas in the stomach."
+
+"So overbearing!" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh!" he turned his eyes to heaven, and spread his hands. "I didn't
+believe my senses. I didn't know such people existed. And her
+friends! Oh the dreadful friends she had--these Fabians! Oh, their
+eugenics. They wanted to examine my private morals, for eugenic
+reasons. Oh, you can't imagine such a state. Worse than the Spanish
+Inquisition. And I stood it for three years. _How_ I stood it, I
+don't know--"
+
+"Now don't you see her?"
+
+"Never! I never let her know where I am! But I _support_ her, of
+cauce."
+
+"And your daughter?"
+
+"Oh, she's the dearest child in the world. I saw her at a friend's
+when I came back from America. Dearest little thing in the world.
+But of _cauce_ suspicious of me. Treats me as if she didn't _know_
+me--"
+
+"What a pity!"
+
+"Oh--unbearable!" He spread his plump, manicured hands, on one
+finger of which was a green intaglio ring.
+
+"How old is your daughter?"
+
+"Fourteen."
+
+"What is her name?"
+
+"Gemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud
+Callum, the _danseuse_."
+
+Curious the intimacy Mr. May established with Alvina at once. But
+it was all purely verbal, descriptive. He made no physical advances.
+On the contrary, he was like a dove-grey, disconsolate bird pecking
+the crumbs of Alvina's sympathy, and cocking his eye all the time to
+watch that she did not advance one step towards him. If he had seen
+the least sign of coming-on-ness in her, he would have fluttered off
+in a great dither. Nothing _horrified_ him more than a woman who was
+coming-on towards him. It horrified him, it exasperated him, it made
+him hate the whole tribe of women: horrific two-legged cats without
+whiskers. If he had been a bird, his innate horror of a cat would
+have been such. He liked the _angel_, and particularly the
+angel-mother in woman. Oh!--that he worshipped. But coming-on-ness!
+
+So he never wanted to be seen out-of-doors with Alvina; if he met
+her in the street he bowed and passed on: bowed very deep and
+reverential, indeed, but passed on, with his little back a little
+more strutty and assertive than ever. Decidedly he turned his back
+on her in public.
+
+But Miss Pinnegar, a regular old, grey, dangerous she-puss, eyed him
+from the corner of her pale eye, as he turned tail.
+
+"So unmanly!" she murmured. "In his dress, in his way, in
+everything--so unmanly."
+
+"If I was you, Alvina," she said, "I shouldn't see so much of Mr.
+May, in the drawing-room. People will talk."
+
+"I should almost feel flattered," laughed Alvina.
+
+"What do you mean?" snapped Miss Pinnegar.
+
+None the less, Mr. May was dependable in matters of business. He was
+up at half-past five in the morning, and by seven was well on his
+way. He sailed like a stiff little ship before a steady breeze,
+hither and thither, out of Woodhouse and back again, and across from
+side to side. Sharp and snappy, he was, on the spot. He trussed
+himself up, when he was angry or displeased, and sharp, snip-snap
+came his words, rather like scissors.
+
+"But how is it--" he attacked Arthur Witham--"that the gas isn't
+connected with the main yet? It was to be ready yesterday."
+
+"We've had to wait for the fixings for them brackets," said Arthur.
+
+"_Had_ to _wait_ for _fixings_! But didn't you know a fortnight ago
+that you'd want the fixings?"
+
+"I thought we should have some as would do."
+
+"Oh! you thought so! Really! Kind of you to think so. And have you
+just thought about those that are coming, or have you made sure?"
+
+Arthur looked at him sullenly. He hated him. But Mr. May's sharp
+touch was not to be foiled.
+
+"I hope you'll go further than _thinking_," said Mr. May. "Thinking
+seems such a slow process. And when do you expect the fittings--?"
+
+"Tomorrow."
+
+"What! Another day! Another day _still!_ But you're strangely
+indifferent to time, in your line of business. Oh! _Tomorrow!_
+Imagine it! Two days late already, and then _tomorrow!_ Well I hope
+by tomorrow you mean _Wednesday_, and not tomorrow's tomorrow, or
+some other absurd and fanciful date that you've just _thought
+about_. But now, _do_ have the thing finished by tomorrow--" here he
+laid his hand cajoling on Arthur's arm. "You promise me it will all
+be ready by tomorrow, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, I'll do it if anybody could do it."
+
+"Don't say 'if anybody could do it.' Say it shall be done."
+
+"It shall if I can possibly manage it--"
+
+"Oh--very well then. Mind you manage it--and thank you _very_ much.
+I shall be _most_ obliged, if it _is_ done."
+
+Arthur was annoyed, but he was kept to the scratch. And so, early in
+October the place was ready, and Woodhouse was plastered with
+placards announcing "Houghton's Pleasure Palace." Poor Mr. May could
+not but see an irony in the Palace part of the phrase. "We can
+guarantee the _pleasure_," he said. "But personally, I feel I can't
+take the responsibility for the palace."
+
+But James, to use the vulgar expression, was in his eye-holes.
+
+"Oh, father's in his eye-holes," said Alvina to Mr. May.
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. May, puzzled and concerned.
+
+But it merely meant that James was having the time of his life. He
+was drawing out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion
+strips, with the mystic script, in big black letters: Houghton's
+Picture Palace, underneath which, quite small: Opens at Lumley on
+October 7th, at 6:30 P.M. Everywhere you went, these vermilion and
+black bars sprang from the wall at you. Then there were other
+notices, in delicate pale-blue and pale red, like a genuine theatre
+notice, giving full programs. And beneath these a broad-letter
+notice announced, in green letters on a yellow ground: "Final and
+Ultimate Clearance Sale at Houghton's, Knarborough Road, on Friday,
+September 30th. Come and Buy Without Price."
+
+James was in his eye-holes. He collected all his odds and ends from
+every corner of Manchester House. He sorted them in heaps, and
+marked the heaps in his own mind. And then he let go. He pasted up
+notices all over the window and all over the shop: "Take what you
+want and Pay what you Like."
+
+He and Miss Pinnegar kept shop. The women flocked in. They turned
+things over. It nearly killed James to take the prices they offered.
+But take them he did. But he exacted that they should buy one
+article at a time. "One piece at a time, if you don't mind," he
+said, when they came up with their three-a-penny handfuls. It was
+not till later in the evening that he relaxed this rule.
+
+Well, by eleven o'clock he had cleared out a good deal--really, a
+very great deal--and many women had bought what they didn't want, at
+their own figure. Feverish but content, James shut the shop for the
+last time. Next day, by eleven, he had removed all his belongings,
+the door that connected the house with the shop was screwed up fast,
+the grocer strolled in and looked round his bare extension, took the
+key from James, and immediately set his boy to paste a new notice in
+the window, tearing down all James's announcements. Poor James had
+to run round, down Knarborough Road, and down Wellington Street as
+far as the Livery Stable, then down long narrow passages, before he
+could get into his own house, from his own shop.
+
+But he did not mind. Every hour brought the first performance of his
+Pleasure Palace nearer. He was satisfied with Mr. May: he had to
+admit that he was satisfied with Mr. May. The Palace stood firm at
+last--oh, it was so ricketty when it arrived!--and it glowed with a
+new coat, all over, of dark-red paint, like ox-blood. It was
+tittivated up with a touch of lavender and yellow round the door and
+round the decorated wooden eaving. It had a new wooden slope up to
+the doors--and inside, a new wooden floor, with red-velvet seats in
+front, before the curtain, and old chapel-pews behind. The collier
+youths recognized the pews.
+
+"Hey! These 'ere's the pews out of the old Primitive Chapel."
+
+"Sorry ah! We'n come ter hear t' parson."
+
+Theme for endless jokes. And the Pleasure Palace was christened, in
+some lucky stroke, Houghton's Endeavour, a reference to that
+particular Chapel effort called the Christian Endeavour, where
+Alvina and Miss Pinnegar both figured.
+
+"Wheer art off, Sorry?"
+
+"Lumley."
+
+"Houghton's Endeavour?"
+
+"Ah."
+
+"Rotten."
+
+So, when one laconic young collier accosted another. But we
+anticipate.
+
+Mr. May had worked hard to get a program for the first week. His
+pictures were: "The Human Bird," which turned out to be a ski-ing
+film from Norway, purely descriptive; "The Pancake," a humorous
+film: and then his grand serial: "The Silent Grip." And then, for
+Turns, his first item was Miss Poppy Traherne, a lady in innumerable
+petticoats, who could whirl herself into anything you like, from an
+arum lily in green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and
+a cup-and-saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne. The next turn
+was The Baxter Brothers, who ran up and down each other's backs and
+up and down each other's front, and stood on each other's heads and
+on their own heads, and perched for a moment on each other's
+shoulders, as if each of them was a flight of stairs with a landing,
+and the three of them were three flights, three storeys up, the top
+flight continually running down and becoming the bottom flight,
+while the middle flight collapsed and became a horizontal corridor.
+
+Alvina had to open the performance by playing an overture called
+"Welcome All": a ridiculous piece. She was excited and unhappy. On
+the Monday morning there was a rehearsal, Mr. May conducting. She
+played "Welcome All," and then took the thumbed sheets which Miss
+Poppy Traherne carried with her. Miss Poppy was rather exacting. As
+she whirled her skirts she kept saying: "A little faster,
+please"--"A little slower"--in a rather haughty, official voice that
+was somewhat muffled by the swim of her drapery. "Can you give it
+_expression_?" she cried, as she got the arum lily in full blow, and
+there was a sound of real ecstasy in her tones. But why she should
+have called "Stronger! Stronger!" as she came into being as a cup
+and saucer, Alvina could not imagine: unless Miss Poppy was fancying
+herself a strong cup of tea.
+
+However, she subsided into her mere self, panted frantically, and
+then, in a hoarse voice, demanded if she was in the bare front of
+the show. She scorned to count "Welcome All." Mr. May said Yes. She
+was the first item. Whereupon she began to raise a dust. Mr.
+Houghton said, hurriedly interposing, that he meant to make a little
+opening speech. Miss Poppy eyed him as if he were a cuckoo-clock,
+and she had to wait till he'd finished cuckooing. Then she said:
+
+"That's not every night. There's six nights to a week." James was
+properly snubbed. It ended by Mr. May metamorphizing himself into a
+pug dog: he said he had got the "costoom" in his bag: and doing a
+lump-of-sugar scene with one of the Baxter Brothers, as a brief
+first item. Miss Poppy's professional virginity was thus saved from
+outrage.
+
+At the back of the stage there was half-a-yard of curtain screening
+the two dressing-rooms, ladies and gents. In her spare time Alvina
+sat in the ladies' dressing room, or in its lower doorway, for there
+was not room right inside. She watched the ladies making up--she
+gave some slight assistance. She saw the men's feet, in their shabby
+pumps, on the other side of the curtain, and she heard the men's
+gruff voices. Often a slangy conversation was carried on through the
+curtain--for most of the turns were acquainted with each other: very
+affable before each other's faces, very sniffy behind each other's
+backs.
+
+Poor Alvina was in a state of bewilderment. She was extremely
+nice--oh, much too nice with the female turns. They treated her with
+a sort of off-hand friendliness, and they snubbed and patronized her
+and were a little spiteful with her because Mr. May treated her with
+attention and deference. She felt bewildered, a little excited, and
+as if she was not herself.
+
+The first evening actually came. Her father had produced a pink
+cr�pe de Chine blouse and a back-comb massed with brilliants--both
+of which she refused to wear. She stuck to her black blouse and
+black shirt, and her simple hair-dressing. Mr. May said "Of cauce!
+She wasn't intended to attract attention to herself." Miss Pinnegar
+actually walked down the hill with her, and began to cry when she
+saw the ox-blood red erection, with its gas-flares in front. It was
+the first time she had seen it. She went on with Alvina to the
+little stage door at the back, and up the steps into the scrap of
+dressing-room. But she fled out again from the sight of Miss Poppy
+in her yellow hair and green knickers with green-lace frills. Poor
+Miss Pinnegar! She stood outside on the trodden grass behind the
+Band of Hope, and really cried. Luckily she had put a veil on.
+
+She went valiantly round to the front entrance, and climbed the
+steps. The crowd was just coming. There was James's face peeping
+inside the little ticket-window.
+
+"One!" he said officially, pushing out the ticket. And then he
+recognized her. "Oh," he said, "_You're_ not going to pay."
+
+"Yes I am," she said, and she left her fourpence, and James's
+coppery, grimy fingers scooped it in, as the youth behind Miss
+Pinnegar shoved her forward.
+
+"Arf way down, fourpenny," said the man at the door, poking her in
+the direction of Mr. May, who wanted to put her in the red velvet.
+But she marched down one of the pews, and took her seat.
+
+The place was crowded with a whooping, whistling, excited audience.
+The curtain was down. James had let it out to his fellow tradesmen,
+and it represented a patchwork of local adverts. There was a fat
+porker and a fat pork-pie, and the pig was saying: "You all know
+where to find me. Inside the crust at Frank Churchill's, Knarborough
+Road, Woodhouse." Round about the name of W. H. Johnson floated a
+bowler hat, a collar-and-necktie, a pair of braces and an umbrella.
+And so on and so on. It all made you feel very homely. But Miss
+Pinnegar was sadly hot and squeezed in her pew.
+
+Time came, and the colliers began to drum their feet. It was exactly
+the excited, crowded audience Mr. May wanted. He darted out to drive
+James round in front of the curtain. But James, fascinated by raking
+in the money so fast, could not be shifted from the pay-box, and the
+two men nearly had a fight. At last Mr. May was seen shooing James,
+like a scuffled chicken, down the side gangway and on to the stage.
+
+James before the illuminated curtain of local adverts, bowing and
+beginning and not making a single word audible! The crowd quieted
+itself, the eloquence flowed on. The crowd was sick of James, and
+began to shuffle. "Come down, come down!" hissed Mr. May frantically
+from in front. But James did not move. He would flow on all night.
+Mr. May waved excitedly at Alvina, who sat obscurely at the piano,
+and darted on to the stage. He raised his voice and drowned James.
+James ceased to wave his penny-blackened hands, Alvina struck up
+"Welcome All" as loudly and emphatically as she could.
+
+And all the time Miss Pinnegar sat like a sphinx--like a sphinx.
+What she thought she did not know herself. But stolidly she stared
+at James, and anxiously she glanced sideways at the pounding Alvina.
+She knew Alvina had to pound until she received the cue that Mr. May
+was fitted in his pug-dog "Costoom."
+
+A twitch of the curtain. Alvina wound up her final flourish, the
+curtain rose, and:
+
+"Well really!" said Miss Pinnegar, out loud.
+
+There was Mr. May as a pug dog begging, too lifelike and too
+impossible. The audience shouted. Alvina sat with her hands in her
+lap. The Pug was a great success.
+
+Curtain! A few bars of Toreador--and then Miss Poppy's sheets of
+music. Soft music. Miss Poppy was on the ground under a green scarf.
+And so the accumulating dilation, on to the whirling climax of the
+perfect arum lily. Sudden curtain, and a yell of ecstasy from the
+colliers. Of all blossoms, the arum, the arum lily is most mystical
+and portentous.
+
+Now a crash and rumble from Alvina's piano. This is the storm from
+whence the rainbow emerges. Up goes the curtain--Miss Poppy twirling
+till her skirts lift as in a breeze, rise up and become a rainbow
+above her now darkened legs. The footlights are all but
+extinguished. Miss Poppy is all but extinguished also.
+
+The rainbow is not so moving as the arum lily. But the Catherine
+wheel, done at the last moment on one leg and then an amazing leap
+into the air backwards, again brings down the house.
+
+Miss Poppy herself sets all store on her cup and saucer. But the
+audience, vulgar as ever, cannot quite see it.
+
+And so, Alvina slips away with Miss Poppy's music-sheets, while Mr.
+May sits down like a professional at the piano and makes things fly
+for the up-and-down-stairs Baxter Bros. Meanwhile, Alvina's pale
+face hovering like a ghost in the side darkness, as it were under
+the stage.
+
+The lamps go out: gurglings and kissings--and then the dither on the
+screen: "The Human Bird," in awful shivery letters. It's not a very
+good machine, and Mr. May is not a very good operator. Audience
+distinctly critical. Lights up--an "Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let,
+penny a bar!" even as in Alvina's dream--and then "The Pancake"--so
+the first half over. Lights up for the interval.
+
+Miss Pinnegar sighed and folded her hands. She looked neither to
+right nor to left. In spite of herself, in spite of outraged shame
+and decency, she was excited. But she felt such excitement was not
+wholesome. In vain the boy most pertinently yelled "Chot-let" at
+her. She looked neither to right nor left. But when she saw Alvina
+nodding to her with a quick smile from the side gangway under the
+stage, she almost burst into tears. It was too much for her, all at
+once. And Alvina looked almost indecently excited. As she slipped
+across in front of the audience, to the piano, to play the seductive
+"Dream Waltz!" she looked almost fussy, like her father. James,
+needless to say, flittered and hurried hither and thither around the
+audience and the stage, like a wagtail on the brink of a pool.
+
+The second half consisted of a comic drama acted by two Baxter
+Bros., disguised as women, and Miss Poppy disguised as a man--with a
+couple of locals thrown in to do the guardsman and the Count. This
+went very well. The winding up was the first instalment of "The
+Silent Grip."
+
+When lights went up and Alvina solemnly struck "God Save Our
+Gracious King," the audience was on its feet and not very quiet,
+evidently hissing with excitement like doughnuts in the pan even
+when the pan is taken off the fire. Mr. Houghton thanked them for
+their courtesy and attention, and hoped--And nobody took the
+slightest notice.
+
+Miss Pinnegar stayed last, waiting for Alvina. And Alvina, in her
+excitement, waited for Mr. May and her father.
+
+Mr. May fairly pranced into the empty hall.
+
+"Well!" he said, shutting both his fists and flourishing them in
+Miss Pinnegar's face. "How did it go?"
+
+"I think it went very well," she said.
+
+"Very well! I should think so, indeed. It went like a house on fire.
+What? Didn't it?" And he laughed a high, excited little laugh.
+
+James was counting pennies for his life, in the cash-place, and
+dropping them into a Gladstone bag. The others had to wait for him.
+At last he locked his bag.
+
+"Well," said Mr. May, "done well?"
+
+"Fairly well," said James, huskily excited. "Fairly well."
+
+"Only fairly? Oh-h!" And Mr. May suddenly picked up the bag. James
+turned as if he would snatch it from him. "Well! Feel that, for
+fairly well!" said Mr. May, handing the bag to Alvina.
+
+"Goodness!" she cried, handing it to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Would you believe it?" said Miss Pinnegar, relinquishing it to
+James. But she spoke coldly, aloof.
+
+Mr. May turned off the gas at the meter, came talking through the
+darkness of the empty theatre, picking his way with a flash-light.
+
+"C'est le premier pas qui coute," he said, in a sort of American
+French, as he locked the doors and put the key in his pocket. James
+tripped silently alongside, bowed under the weight of his Gladstone
+bag of pennies.
+
+"How much have we taken, father?" asked Alvina gaily.
+
+"I haven't counted," he snapped.
+
+When he got home he hurried upstairs to his bare chamber. He swept
+his table clear, and then, in an expert fashion, he seized handfuls
+of coin and piled them in little columns on his board. There was an
+army of fat pennies, a dozen to a column, along the back, rows and
+rows of fat brown rank-and-file. In front of these, rows of slim
+halfpence, like an advance-guard. And commanding all, a stout column
+of half-crowns, a few stoutish and important florin-figures, like
+general and colonels, then quite a file of shillings, like so many
+captains, and a little cloud of silvery lieutenant sixpences. Right
+at the end, like a frail drummer boy, a thin stick of threepenny
+pieces.
+
+There they all were: burly dragoons of stout pennies, heavy and
+holding their ground, with a screen of halfpenny light infantry,
+officered by the immovable half-crown general, who in his turn was
+flanked by all his staff of florin colonels and shilling captains,
+from whom lightly moved the nimble sixpenny lieutenants all
+ignoring the wan, frail Joey of the threepenny-bits.
+
+Time after time James ran his almighty eye over his army. He loved
+them. He loved to feel that his table was pressed down, that it
+groaned under their weight. He loved to see the pence, like
+innumerable pillars of cloud, standing waiting to lead on into
+wildernesses of unopened resource, while the silver, as pillars of
+light, should guide the way down the long night of fortune. Their
+weight sank sensually into his muscle, and gave him gratification.
+The dark redness of bronze, like full-blooded fleas, seemed alive
+and pulsing, the silver was magic as if winged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA
+
+
+Mr. May and Alvina became almost inseparable, and Woodhouse buzzed
+with scandal. Woodhouse could not believe that Mr. May was
+absolutely final in his horror of any sort of coming-on-ness in a
+woman. It could not believe that he was only _so_ fond of Alvina
+because she was like a sister to him, poor, lonely, harassed soul
+that he was: a pure sister who really hadn't any body. For although
+Mr. May was rather fond, in an epicurean way, of his own body, yet
+other people's bodies rather made him shudder. So that his grand
+utterance on Alvina was: "She's not physical, she's mental."
+
+He even explained to her one day how it was, in his na�ve fashion.
+
+"There are two kinds of friendships," he said, "physical and mental.
+The physical is a thing of the moment. Of cauce you quite _like_ the
+individual, you remain quite nice with them, and so on,--to keep the
+thing as decent as possible. It _is_ quite decent, so long as you
+keep it so. But it is a thing of the moment. Which you know. It may
+last a week or two, or a month or two. But you know from the
+beginning it is going to end--quite finally--quite soon. You take it
+for what it is. But it's so different with the mental friendships.
+_They_ are lasting. They are eternal--if anything human (he said
+yuman) ever is eternal, ever _can_ be eternal." He pressed his hands
+together in an odd cherubic manner. He was quite sincere: if man
+ever _can_ be quite sincere.
+
+Alvina was quite content to be one of his mental and eternal
+friends, or rather _friendships_--since she existed _in abstractu_
+as far as he was concerned. For she did not find him at all
+physically moving. Physically he was not there: he was oddly an
+absentee. But his na�vet� roused the serpent's tooth of her bitter
+irony.
+
+"And your wife?" she said to him.
+
+"Oh, my wife! Dreadful thought! _There_ I made the great mistake of
+trying to find the two in one person! And _didn't_ I fall between
+two stools! Oh dear, _didn't_ I? Oh, I fell between the two stools
+beautifully, beautifully! And _then_--she nearly set the stools on
+top of me. I thought I should never get up again. When I was
+physical, she was mental--Bernard Shaw and cold baths for
+supper!--and when I was mental she was physical, and threw her arms
+round my neck. In the morning, mark you. Always in the morning, when
+I was on the alert for business. Yes, invariably. What do you think
+of it? Could the devil himself have invented anything more trying?
+Oh dear me, don't mention it. Oh, what a time I had! Wonder I'm
+alive. Yes, really! Although you smile."
+
+Alvina did more than smile. She laughed outright. And yet she
+remained good friends with the odd little man.
+
+He bought himself a new, smart overcoat, that fitted his figure, and
+a new velour hat. And she even noticed, one day when he was curling
+himself up cosily on the sofa, that he had pale blue silk underwear,
+and purple silk suspenders. She wondered where he got them, and how
+he afforded them. But there they were.
+
+James seemed for the time being wrapt in his
+undertaking--particularly in the takings part of it. He seemed for
+the time being contented--or nearly so, nearly so. Certainly there
+was money coming in. But then he had to pay off all he had borrowed
+to buy his erection and its furnishings, and a bulk of pennies
+sublimated into a very small �.s.d. account, at the bank.
+
+The Endeavour was successful--yes, it was successful. But not
+overwhelmingly so. On wet nights Woodhouse did not care to trail
+down to Lumley. And then Lumley was one of those depressed, negative
+spots on the face of the earth which have no pull at all. In that
+region of sharp hills with fine hill-brows, and shallow, rather
+dreary canal-valleys, it was the places on the hill-brows, like
+Woodhouse and Hathersedge and Rapton which flourished, while the
+dreary places down along the canals existed only for work-places,
+not for life and pleasure. It was just like James to have planted
+his endeavour down in the stagnant dust and rust of potteries and
+foundries, where no illusion could bloom.
+
+He had dreamed of crowded houses every night, and of raised prices.
+But there was no probability of his being able to raise his prices.
+He had to figure lower than the Woodhouse Empire. He was second-rate
+from the start. His hope now lay in the tramway which was being
+built from Knarborough away through the country--a black country
+indeed--through Woodhouse and Lumley and Hathersedge, to Rapton.
+When once this tramway-system was working, he would have a supply of
+youths and lasses always on tap, as it were. So he spread his
+rainbow wings towards the future, and began to say:
+
+"When we've got the trams, I shall buy a new machine and finer
+lenses, and I shall extend my premises."
+
+Mr. May did not talk business to Alvina. He was terribly secretive
+with respect to business. But he said to her once, in the early year
+following their opening:
+
+"Well, how do you think we're doing, Miss Houghton?"
+
+"We're not doing any better than we did at first, I think," she
+said.
+
+"No," he answered. "No! That's true. That's perfectly true. But why?
+They seem to like the programs."
+
+"I think they do," said Alvina. "I think they like them when they're
+there. But isn't it funny, they don't seem to want to come to them.
+I know they always talk as if we were second-rate. And they only
+come because they can't get to the Empire, or up to Hathersedge.
+We're a stop-gap. I know we are."
+
+Mr. May looked down in the mouth. He cocked his blue eyes at her,
+miserable and frightened. Failure began to frighten him abjectly.
+
+"Why do you think that is?" he said.
+
+"I don't believe they like the turns," she said.
+
+"But _look_ how they applaud them! _Look_ how pleased they are!"
+
+"I know. I know they like them once they're there, and they see
+them. But they don't come again. They crowd the Empire--and the
+Empire is only pictures now; and it's much cheaper to run."
+
+He watched her dismally.
+
+"I can't believe they want nothing but pictures. I can't believe
+they want everything in the flat," he said, coaxing and miserable.
+He himself was not interested in the film. His interest was still
+the human interest in living performers and their living feats.
+"Why," he continued, "they are ever so much more excited after a
+good turn, than after any film."
+
+"I know they are," said Alvina. "But I don't believe they want to be
+excited in that way."
+
+"In what way?" asked Mr. May plaintively.
+
+"By the things which the artistes do. I believe they're jealous."
+
+"Oh nonsense!" exploded Mr. May, starting as if he had been shot.
+Then he laid his hand on her arm. "But forgive my rudeness! I don't
+mean it, of _cauce_! But do you mean to say that these collier louts
+and factory girls are jealous of the things the artistes do, because
+they could never do them themselves?"
+
+"I'm sure they are," said Alvina.
+
+"But I _can't_ believe it," said Mr. May, pouting up his mouth and
+smiling at her as if she were a whimsical child. "What a low opinion
+you have of human nature!"
+
+"Have I?" laughed Alvina. "I've never reckoned it up. But I'm sure
+that these common people here are jealous if anybody does anything
+or has anything they can't have themselves."
+
+"I can't believe it," protested Mr. May. "Could they be so _silly_!
+And then why aren't they jealous of the extraordinary things which
+are done on the film?"
+
+"Because they don't see the flesh-and-blood people. I'm sure that's
+it. The film is only pictures, like pictures in the _Daily Mirror_.
+And pictures don't have any feelings apart from their own feelings.
+I mean the feelings of the people who watch them. Pictures don't
+have any life except in the people who watch them. And that's why
+they like them. Because they make them feel that they are
+everything."
+
+"The pictures make the colliers and lasses feel that they themselves
+are everything? But how? They identify themselves with the heroes
+and heroines on the screen?"
+
+"Yes--they take it all to themselves--and there isn't anything
+except themselves. I know it's like that. It's because they can
+spread themselves over a film, and they _can't_ over a living
+performer. They're up against the performer himself. And they hate
+it."
+
+Mr. May watched her long and dismally.
+
+"I _can't_ believe people are like that!--sane people!" he said.
+"Why, to me the whole joy is in the living personality, the curious
+_personality_ of the artiste. That's what I enjoy so much."
+
+"I know. But that's where you're different from them."
+
+"But _am_ I?"
+
+"Yes. You're not as up to the mark as they are."
+
+"Not up to the mark? What do you mean? Do you mean they are more
+intelligent?"
+
+"No, but they're more modern. You like things which aren't yourself.
+But they don't. They hate to admire anything that they can't take to
+themselves. They hate anything that isn't themselves. And that's why
+they like pictures. It's all themselves to them, all the time."
+
+He still puzzled.
+
+"You know I don't follow you," he said, a little mocking, as if she
+were making a fool of herself.
+
+"Because you don't know them. You don't know the common people. You
+don't know how conceited they are."
+
+He watched her a long time.
+
+"And you think we ought to cut out the variety, and give nothing but
+pictures, like the Empire?" he said.
+
+"I believe it takes best," she said.
+
+"And costs less," he answered. "But _then_! It's so dull. Oh my
+_word_, it's so dull. I don't think I could bear it."
+
+"And our pictures aren't good enough," she said. "We should have to
+get a new machine, and pay for the expensive films. Our pictures do
+shake, and our films are rather ragged."
+
+"But then, _surely_ they're good enough!" he said.
+
+That was how matters stood. The Endeavour paid its way, and made
+just a margin of profit--no more. Spring went on to summer, and then
+there was a very shadowy margin of profit. But James was not at all
+daunted. He was waiting now for the trams, and building up hopes
+since he could not build in bricks and mortar.
+
+The navvies were busy in troops along the Knarborough Road, and down
+Lumley Hill. Alvina became quite used to them. As she went down the
+hill soon after six o'clock in the evening, she met them trooping
+home. And some of them she liked. There was an outlawed look about
+them as they swung along the pavement--some of them; and there was a
+certain lurking set of the head which rather frightened her because
+it fascinated her. There was one tall young fellow with a red face
+and fair hair, who looked as if he had fronted the seas and the
+arctic sun. He looked at her. They knew each other quite well, in
+passing. And he would glance at perky Mr. May. Alvina tried to
+fathom what the young fellow's look meant. She wondered what he
+thought of Mr. May.
+
+She was surprised to hear Mr. May's opinion of the navvy.
+
+"_He's_ a handsome young man, now!" exclaimed her companion one
+evening as the navvies passed. And all three turned round, to find
+all three turning round. Alvina laughed, and made eyes. At that
+moment she would cheerfully have gone along with the navvy. She was
+getting so tired of Mr. May's quiet prance.
+
+On the whole, Alvina enjoyed the cinema and the life it brought her.
+She accepted it. And she became somewhat vulgarized in her bearing.
+She was _d�class�e_: she had lost her class altogether. The other
+daughters of respectable tradesmen avoided her now, or spoke to her
+only from a distance. She was supposed to be "carrying on" with Mr.
+May.
+
+Alvina did not care. She rather liked it. She liked being
+_d�class�e_. She liked feeling an outsider. At last she seemed to
+stand on her own ground. She laughed to herself as she went back and
+forth from Woodhouse to Lumley, between Manchester House and the
+Pleasure Palace. She laughed when she saw her father's theatre-notices
+plastered about. She laughed when she saw his thrilling announcements
+in the _Woodhouse Weekly_. She laughed when she knew that all the
+Woodhouse youths recognized her, and looked on her as one of their
+ inferior entertainers. She was off the map: and she liked it.
+
+For after all, she got a good deal of fun out of it. There was not
+only the continual activity. There were the artistes. Every week she
+met a new set of stars--three or four as a rule. She rehearsed with
+them on Monday afternoons, and she saw them every evening, and twice
+a week at matinees. James now gave two performances each
+evening--and he always had _some_ audience. So that Alvina had
+opportunity to come into contact with all the odd people of the
+inferior stage. She found they were very much of a type: a little
+frowsy, a little flea-bitten as a rule, indifferent to ordinary
+morality, and philosophical even if irritable. They were often very
+irritable. And they had always a certain fund of callous
+philosophy. Alvina did not _like_ them--you were not supposed,
+really, to get deeply emotional over them. But she found it amusing
+to see them all and know them all. It was so different from
+Woodhouse, where everything was priced and ticketed. These people
+were nomads. They didn't care a straw who you were or who you
+weren't. They had a most irritable professional vanity, and that was
+all. It was most odd to watch them. They weren't very squeamish. If
+the young gentlemen liked to peep round the curtain when the young
+lady was in her knickers: oh, well, she rather roundly told them
+off, perhaps, but nobody minded. The fact that ladies wore knickers
+and black silk stockings thrilled nobody, any more than grease-paint
+or false moustaches thrilled. It was all part of the stock-in-trade.
+As for immorality--well, what did it amount to? Not a great deal.
+Most of the men cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about
+any more carnal vice, and most of the girls were good pals with each
+other, men were only there to act with: even if the act was a
+private love-farce of an improper description. What's the odds? You
+couldn't get excited about it: not as a rule.
+
+Mr. May usually took rooms for the artistes in a house down in
+Lumley. When any one particular was coming, he would go to a rather
+better-class widow in Woodhouse. He never let Alvina take any part
+in the making of these arrangements, except with the widow in
+Woodhouse, who had long ago been a servant at Manchester House, and
+even now came in to do cleaning.
+
+Odd, eccentric people they were, these entertainers. Most of them
+had a streak of imagination, and most of them drank. Most of them
+were middle-aged. Most of them had an abstracted manner; in ordinary
+life, they seemed left aside, somehow. Odd, extraneous creatures,
+often a little depressed, feeling life slip away from them. The
+cinema was killing them.
+
+Alvina had quite a serious flirtation with a man who played a flute
+and piccolo. He was about fifty years old, still handsome, and
+growing stout. When sober, he was completely reserved. When rather
+drunk, he talked charmingly and amusingly--oh, most charmingly.
+Alvina quite loved him. But alas, _how_ he drank! But what a charm
+he had! He went, and she saw him no more.
+
+The usual rather American-looking, clean-shaven, slightly pasty
+young man left Alvina quite cold, though he had an amiable and truly
+chivalrous _galanterie_. He was quite likeable. But so unattractive.
+Alvina was more fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did
+marvellous things with six ferrets, or the Jap who was tattooed all
+over, and had the most amazing strong wrists, so that he could throw
+down any collier, with one turn of the hand. Queer cuts these!--but
+just a little bit beyond her. She watched them rather from a
+distance. She wished she could jump across the distance.
+Particularly with the Jap, who was almost quite naked, but clothed
+with the most exquisite tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle
+that flew with terrible spread wings between his shoulders, or the
+strange mazy pattern that netted the roundness of his buttocks. He
+was not very large, but nicely shaped, and with no hair on his
+smooth, tattooed body. He was almost blue in colour--that is, his
+tattooing was blue, with pickings of brilliant vermilion: as for
+instance round the nipples, and in a strange red serpent's-jaws over
+the navel. A serpent went round his loins and haunches. He told her
+how many times he had had blood-poisoning, during the process of his
+tattooing. He was a queer, black-eyed creature, with a look of
+silence and toad-like lewdness. He frightened her. But when he was
+dressed in common clothes, and was just a cheap, shoddy-looking
+European Jap, he was more frightening still. For his face--he was
+not tattooed above a certain ring low on his neck--was yellow and
+flat and basking with one eye open, like some age-old serpent. She
+felt he was smiling horribly all the time: lewd, unthinkable. A
+strange sight he was in Woodhouse, on a sunny morning; a
+shabby-looking bit of riff-raff of the East, rather down at the
+heel. Who could have imagined the terrible eagle of his shoulders,
+the serpent of his loins, his supple, magic skin?
+
+The summer passed again, and autumn. Winter was a better time for
+James Houghton. The trams, moreover, would begin to run in January.
+
+He wanted to arrange a good program for the week when the trams
+started. A long time ahead, Mr. May prepared it. The one item was
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe. The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe consisted
+of five persons, Madame Rochard and four young men. They were a
+strictly Red Indian troupe. But one of the young men, the German
+Swiss, was a famous yodeller, and another, the French Swiss, was a
+good comic with a French accent, whilst Madame and the German did a
+screaming two-person farce. Their great turn, of course, was the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara Red Indian scene.
+
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were due in the third week in January,
+arriving from the Potteries on the Sunday evening. When Alvina came
+in from Chapel that Sunday evening, she found her widow, Mrs.
+Rollings, seated in the living room talking with James, who had an
+anxious look. Since opening the Pleasure Palace James was less
+regular at Chapel. And moreover, he was getting old and shaky, and
+Sunday was the one evening he might spend in peace. Add that on this
+particular black Sunday night it was sleeting dismally outside, and
+James had already a bit of a cough, and we shall see that he did
+right to stay at home.
+
+Mrs. Rollings sat nursing a bottle. She was to go to the chemist for
+some cough-cure, because Madame had got a bad cold. The chemist was
+gone to Chapel--he wouldn't open till eight.
+
+Madame and the four young men had arrived at about six. Madame, said
+Mrs. Rollings, was a little fat woman, and she was complaining all
+the time that she had got a cold on her chest, laying her hand on
+her chest and trying her breathing and going "He-e-e-er! Herr!" to
+see if she could breathe properly. She, Mrs. Rollings, had suggested
+that Madame should put her feet in hot mustard and water, but Madame
+said she must have something to clear her chest. The four young men
+were four nice civil young fellows. They evidently liked Madame.
+Madame had insisted on cooking the chops for the young men. She
+herself had eaten one, but she laid her hand on her chest when she
+swallowed. One of the young men had gone out to get her some brandy,
+and he had come back with half-a-dozen large bottles of Bass as
+well.
+
+Mr. Houghton was very much concerned over Madame's cold. He asked
+the same questions again and again, to try and make sure how bad it
+was. But Mrs. Rollings didn't seem quite to know. James wrinkled his
+brow. Supposing Madame could not take her part! He was most anxious.
+
+"Do you think you might go across with Mrs. Rollings and see how
+this woman is, Alvina?" he said to his daughter.
+
+"I should think you'll never turn Alvina out on such a night," said
+Miss Pinnegar. "And besides, it isn't right. Where is Mr. May? It's
+his business to go."
+
+"Oh!" returned Alvina. "_I_ don't mind going. Wait a minute, I'll
+see if we haven't got some of those pastilles for burning. If it's
+very bad, I can make one of those plasters mother used."
+
+And she ran upstairs. She was curious to see what Madame and her
+four young men were like.
+
+With Mrs. Rollings she called at the chemist's back door, and then
+they hurried through the sleet to the widow's dwelling. It was not
+far. As they went up the entry they heard the sound of voices. But
+in the kitchen all was quiet. The voices came from the front room.
+
+Mrs. Rollings tapped.
+
+"Come in!" said a rather sharp voice. Alvina entered on the widow's
+heels.
+
+"I've brought you the cough stuff," said the widow. "And Miss
+Huff'n's come as well, to see how you was."
+
+Four young men were sitting round the table in their shirt-sleeves,
+with bottles of Bass. There was much cigarette smoke. By the fire,
+which was burning brightly, sat a plump, pale woman with dark bright
+eyes and finely-drawn eyebrows: she might be any age between forty
+and fifty. There were grey threads in her tidy black hair. She was
+neatly dressed in a well-made black dress with a small lace collar.
+There was a slight look of self-commiseration on her face. She had a
+cigarette between her drooped fingers.
+
+She rose as if with difficulty, and held out her plump hand, on
+which four or five rings showed. She had dropped the cigarette
+unnoticed into the hearth.
+
+"How do you do," she said. "I didn't catch your name." Madame's
+voice was a little plaintive and plangent now, like a bronze reed
+mournfully vibrating.
+
+"Alvina Houghton," said Alvina.
+
+"Daughter of him as owns the thee-etter where you're goin' to act,"
+interposed the widow.
+
+"Oh yes! Yes! I see. Miss Houghton. I didn't know how it was said.
+Huff-ton--yes? Miss Houghton. I've got a bad cold on my chest--"
+laying her plump hand with the rings on her plump bosom. "But let me
+introduce you to my young men--" A wave of the plump hand, whose
+forefinger was very slightly cigarette-stained, towards the table.
+
+The four young men had risen, and stood looking at Alvina and
+Madame. The room was small, rather bare, with horse-hair and
+white-crochet antimacassars and a linoleum floor. The table also was
+covered with a brightly-patterned American oil-cloth, shiny but
+clean. A naked gas-jet hung over it. For furniture, there were just
+chairs, arm-chairs, table, and a horse-hair antimacassar-ed sofa.
+Yet the little room seemed very full--full of people, young men with
+smart waistcoats and ties, but without coats.
+
+"That is Max," said Madame. "I shall tell you only their names, and
+not their family names, because that is easier for you--"
+
+In the meantime Max had bowed. He was a tall Swiss with almond eyes
+and a flattish face and a rather stiff, ramrod figure.
+
+"And that is Louis--" Louis bowed gracefully. He was a Swiss
+Frenchman, moderately tall, with prominent cheekbones and a wing
+of glossy black hair falling on his temple.
+
+"And that is G�offroi--Geoffrey--" Geoffrey made his bow--a
+broad-shouldered, watchful, taciturn man from Alpine France.
+
+"And that is Francesco--Frank--" Francesco gave a faint curl of his
+lip, half smile, as he saluted her involuntarily in a military
+fashion. He was dark, rather tall and loose, with yellow-tawny eyes.
+He was an Italian from the south. Madame gave another look at him.
+"He doesn't like his English name of Frank. You will see, he pulls a
+face. No, he doesn't like it. We call him Ciccio also--" But Ciccio
+was dropping his head sheepishly, with the same faint smile on his
+face, half grimace, and stooping to his chair, wanting to sit down.
+
+"These are my family of young men," said Madame. "We are drawn from
+three races, though only Ciccio is not of our mountains. Will you
+please to sit down."
+
+They all took their chairs. There was a pause.
+
+"My young men drink a little beer, after their horrible journey. As
+a rule, I do not like them to drink. But tonight they have a little
+beer. I do not take any myself, because I am afraid of inflaming
+myself." She laid her hand on her breast, and took long, uneasy
+breaths. "I feel it. I feel it _here_." She patted her breast. "It
+makes me afraid for tomorrow. Will you perhaps take a glass of beer?
+Ciccio, ask for another glass--" Ciccio, at the end of the table,
+did not rise, but looked round at Alvina as if he presumed there
+would be no need for him to move. The odd, supercilious curl of the
+lip persisted. Madame glared at him. But he turned the handsome side
+of his cheek towards her, with the faintest flicker of a sneer.
+
+"No, thank you. I never take beer," said Alvina hurriedly.
+
+"No? Never? Oh!" Madame folded her hands, but her black eyes still
+darted venom at Ciccio. The rest of the young men fingered their
+glasses and put their cigarettes to their lips and blew the smoke
+down their noses, uncomfortably.
+
+Madame closed her eyes and leaned back a moment. Then her face
+looked transparent and pallid, there were dark rings under her eyes,
+the beautifully-brushed hair shone dark like black glass above her
+ears. She was obviously unwell. The young men looked at her, and
+muttered to one another.
+
+"I'm afraid your cold is rather bad," said Alvina. "Will you let me
+take your temperature?"
+
+Madame started and looked frightened.
+
+"Oh, I don't think you should trouble to do that," she said.
+
+Max, the tall, highly-coloured Swiss, turned to her, saying:
+
+"Yes, you must have your temperature taken, and then we s'll know,
+shan't we. I had a hundred and five when we were in Redruth."
+
+Alvina had taken the thermometer from her pocket. Ciccio meanwhile
+muttered something in French--evidently something rude--meant for
+Max.
+
+"What shall I do if I can't work tomorrow!" moaned Madame, seeing
+Alvina hold up the thermometer towards the light. "Max, what shall
+we do?"
+
+"You will stay in bed, and we must do the White Prisoner scene,"
+said Max, rather staccato and official.
+
+Ciccio curled his lip and put his head aside. Alvina went across to
+Madame with the thermometer. Madame lifted her plump hand and fended
+off Alvina, while she made her last declaration:
+
+"Never--never have I missed my work, for a single day, for ten
+years. Never. If I am going to lie abandoned, I had better die at
+once."
+
+"Lie abandoned!" said Max. "You know you won't do no such thing.
+What are you talking about?"
+
+"Take the thermometer," said Geoffrey roughly, but with feeling.
+
+"Tomorrow, see, you will be well. Quite certain!" said Louis. Madame
+mournfully shook her head, opened her mouth, and sat back with
+closed eyes and the stump of the thermometer comically protruding
+from a corner of her lips. Meanwhile Alvina took her plump white
+wrist and felt her pulse.
+
+"We can practise--" began Geoffrey.
+
+"Sh!" said Max, holding up his finger and looking anxiously at
+Alvina and Madame, who still leaned back with the stump of the
+thermometer jauntily perking up from her pursed mouth, while her
+face was rather ghastly.
+
+Max and Louis watched anxiously. Geoffrey sat blowing the smoke down
+his nose, while Ciccio callously lit another cigarette, striking a
+match on his boot-heel and puffing from under the tip of his rather
+long nose. Then he took the cigarette from his mouth, turned his
+head, slowly spat on the floor, and rubbed his foot on his spit. Max
+flapped his eyelids and looked all disdain, murmuring something
+about "ein schmutziges italienisches Volk," whilst Louis, refusing
+either to see or to hear, framed the word "chien" on his lips.
+
+Then quick as lightning both turned their attention again to Madame.
+
+Her temperature was a hundred and two.
+
+"You'd better go to bed," said Alvina. "Have you eaten anything?"
+
+"One little mouthful," said Madame plaintively.
+
+Max sat looking pale and stricken, Louis had hurried forward to take
+Madame's hand. He kissed it quickly, then turned aside his head
+because of the tears in his eyes. Geoffrey gulped beer in large
+throatfuls, and Ciccio, with his head bent, was watching from under
+his eyebrows.
+
+"I'll run round for the doctor--" said Alvina.
+
+"Don't! Don't do that, my dear! Don't you go and do that! I'm likely
+to a temperature--"
+
+"Liable to a temperature," murmured Louis pathetically.
+
+"I'll go to bed," said Madame, obediently rising.
+
+"Wait a bit. I'll see if there's a fire in the bedroom," said
+Alvina.
+
+"Oh, my dear, you are too good. Open the door for her, Ciccio--"
+
+Ciccio reached across at the door, but was too late. Max had
+hastened to usher Alvina out. Madame sank back in her chair.
+
+"Never for ten years," she was wailing. "Quoi faire, ah, quoi
+faire! Que ferez-vous, mes pauvres, sans votre Kishw�gin. Que
+vais-je faire, mourir dans un tel pays! La bonne demoiselle--la
+bonne demoiselle--elle a du coeur. Elle pourrait aussi �tre belle,
+s'il y avait un peu plus de chair. Max, liebster, schau ich sehr
+elend aus? Ach, oh jeh, oh jeh!"
+
+"Ach nein, Madame, ach nein. Nicht so furchtbar elend," said Max.
+
+"Manca il cuore solamente al Ciccio," moaned Madame. "Che natura
+povera, senza sentimento--niente di bello. Ahim�, che amico, che
+ragazzo duro, aspero--"
+
+"Trova?" said Ciccio, with a curl of the lip. He looked, as he
+dropped his long, beautiful lashes, as if he might weep for all
+that, if he were not bound to be misbehaving just now.
+
+So Madame moaned in four languages as she posed pallid in her
+arm-chair. Usually she spoke in French only, with her young men. But
+this was an extra occasion.
+
+"La pauvre Kishw�gin!" murmured Madame. "Elle va finir au monde.
+Elle passe--la pauvre Kishw�gin."
+
+Kishw�gin was Madame's Red Indian name, the name under which she
+danced her Squaw's fire-dance.
+
+Now that she knew she was ill, Madame seemed to become more ill. Her
+breath came in little pants. She had a pain in her side. A feverish
+flush seemed to mount her cheek. The young men were all extremely
+uncomfortable. Louis did not conceal his tears. Only Ciccio kept the
+thin smile on his lips, and added to Madame's annoyance and pain.
+
+Alvina came down to take her to bed. The young men all rose, and
+kissed Madame's hand as she went out: her poor jewelled hand, that
+was faintly perfumed with eau de Cologne. She spoke an appropriate
+good-night, to each of them.
+
+"Good-night, my faithful Max, I trust myself to you. Good-night,
+Louis, the tender heart. Good-night valiant Geoffrey. Ah Ciccio, do
+not add to the weight of my heart. Be good _braves_, all, be
+brothers in one accord. One little prayer for poor Kishw�gin.
+Good-night!"
+
+After which valediction she slowly climbed the stairs, putting her
+hand on her knee at each step, with the effort.
+
+"No--no," she said to Max, who would have followed to her
+assistance. "Do not come up. No--no!"
+
+Her bedroom was tidy and proper.
+
+"Tonight," she moaned, "I shan't be able to see that the boys'
+rooms are well in order. They are not to be trusted, no. They need
+an overseeing eye: especially Ciccio; especially Ciccio!"
+
+She sank down by the fire and began to undo her dress.
+
+"You must let me help you," said Alvina. "You know I have been a
+nurse."
+
+"Ah, you are too kind, too kind, dear young lady. I am a lonely old
+woman. I am not used to attentions. Best leave me."
+
+"Let me help you," said Alvina.
+
+"Alas, ahim�! Who would have thought Kishw�gin would need help. I
+danced last night with the boys in the theatre in Leek: and tonight
+I am put to bed in--what is the name of this place, dear?--It seems
+I don't remember it."
+
+"Woodhouse," said Alvina.
+
+"Woodhouse! Woodhouse! Is there not something called Woodlouse? I
+believe. Ugh, horrible! Why is it horrible?"
+
+Alvina quickly undressed the plump, trim little woman. She seemed so
+soft. Alvina could not imagine how she could be a dancer on the
+stage, strenuous. But Madame's softness could flash into wild
+energy, sudden convulsive power, like a cuttle-fish. Alvina brushed
+out the long black hair, and plaited it lightly. Then she got Madame
+into bed.
+
+"Ah," sighed Madame, "the good bed! The good bed! But cold--it is so
+cold. Would you hang up my dress, dear, and fold my stockings?"
+
+Alvina quickly folded and put aside the dainty underclothing. Queer,
+dainty woman, was Madame, even to her wonderful threaded
+black-and-gold garters.
+
+"My poor boys--no Kishw�gin tomorrow! You don't think I need see a
+priest, dear? A priest!" said Madame, her teeth chattering.
+
+"Priest! Oh no! You'll be better when we can get you warm. I think
+it's only a chill. Mrs. Rollings is warming a blanket--"
+
+Alvina ran downstairs. Max opened the sitting-room door and stood
+watching at the sound of footsteps. His rather bony fists were
+clenched beneath his loose shirt-cuffs, his eyebrows tragically
+lifted.
+
+"Is she much ill?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. But I don't think so. Do you mind heating the
+blanket while Mrs. Rollings makes thin gruel?"
+
+Max and Louis stood heating blankets. Louis' trousers were cut
+rather tight at the waist, and gave him a female look. Max was
+straight and stiff. Mrs. Rollings asked Geoffrey to fill the
+coal-scuttles and carry one upstairs. Geoffrey obediently went out
+with a lantern to the coal-shed. Afterwards he was to carry up the
+horse-hair arm-chair.
+
+"I must go home for some things," said Alvina to Ciccio. "Will you
+come and carry them for me?"
+
+He started up, and with one movement threw away his cigarette. He
+did not look at Alvina. His beautiful lashes seemed to screen his
+eyes. He was fairly tall, but loosely built for an Italian, with
+slightly sloping shoulders. Alvina noticed the brown, slender
+Mediterranean hand, as he put his fingers to his lips. It was a hand
+such as she did not know, prehensile and tender and dusky. With an
+odd graceful slouch he went into the passage and reached for his
+coat.
+
+He did not say a word, but held aloof as he walked with Alvina.
+
+"I'm sorry for Madame," said Alvina, as she hurried rather
+breathless through the night. "She does think for you men."
+
+But Ciccio vouchsafed no answer, and walked with his hands in the
+pockets of his water-proof, wincing from the weather.
+
+"I'm afraid she will never be able to dance tomorrow," said Alvina.
+
+"You think she won't be able?" he said.
+
+"I'm almost sure she won't."
+
+After which he said nothing, and Alvina also kept silence till they
+came to the black dark passage and encumbered yard at the back of
+the house.
+
+"I don't think you can see at all," she said. "It's this way." She
+groped for him in the dark, and met his groping hand.
+
+"This way," she said.
+
+It was curious how light his fingers were in their clasp--almost
+like a child's touch. So they came under the light from the window
+of the sitting-room.
+
+Alvina hurried indoors, and the young man followed.
+
+"I shall have to stay with Madame tonight," she explained hurriedly.
+"She's feverish, but she may throw it off if we can get her into a
+sweat." And Alvina ran upstairs collecting things necessary. Ciccio
+stood back near the door, and answered all Miss Pinnegar's
+entreaties to come to the fire with a shake of the head and a slight
+smile of the lips, bashful and stupid.
+
+"But do come and warm yourself before you go out again," said Miss
+Pinnegar, looking at the man as he drooped his head in the distance.
+He still shook dissent, but opened his mouth at last.
+
+"It makes it colder after," he said, showing his teeth in a slight,
+stupid smile.
+
+"Oh well, if you think so," said Miss Pinnegar, nettled. She
+couldn't make heads or tails of him, and didn't try.
+
+When they got back, Madame was light-headed, and talking excitedly
+of her dance, her young men. The three young men were terrified.
+They had got the blankets scorching hot. Alvina smeared the plasters
+and applied them to Madame's side, where the pain was. What a
+white-skinned, soft, plump child she seemed! Her pain meant a touch
+of pleurisy, for sure. The men hovered outside the door. Alvina
+wrapped the poor patient in the hot blankets, got a few spoonfuls of
+hot gruel and whiskey down her throat, fastened her down in bed,
+lowered the light and banished the men from the stairs. Then she sat
+down to watch. Madame chafed, moaned, murmured feverishly. Alvina
+soothed her, and put her hands in bed. And at last the poor dear
+became quiet. Her brow was faintly moist. She fell into a quiet
+sleep, perspiring freely. Alvina watched her still, soothed her when
+she suddenly started and began to break out of the bedclothes,
+quieted her, pressed her gently, firmly down, folded her tight and
+made her submit to the perspiration against which, in convulsive
+starts, she fought and strove, crying that she was suffocating, she
+was too hot, too hot.
+
+"Lie still, lie still," said Alvina. "You must keep warm."
+
+Poor Madame moaned. How she hated seething in the bath of her own
+perspiration. Her wilful nature rebelled strongly. She would have
+thrown aside her coverings and gasped into the cold air, if Alvina
+had not pressed her down with that soft, inevitable pressure.
+
+So the hours passed, till about one o'clock, when the perspiration
+became less profuse, and the patient was really better, really
+quieter. Then Alvina went downstairs for a moment. She saw the light
+still burning in the front room. Tapping, she entered. There sat Max
+by the fire, a picture of misery, with Louis opposite him, nodding
+asleep after his tears. On the sofa Geoffrey snored lightly, while
+Ciccio sat with his head on the table, his arms spread out, dead
+asleep. Again she noticed the tender, dusky Mediterranean hands, the
+slender wrists, slender for a man naturally loose and muscular.
+
+"Haven't you gone to bed?" whispered Alvina. "Why?"
+
+Louis started awake. Max, the only stubborn watcher, shook his head
+lugubriously.
+
+"But she's better," whispered Alvina. "She's perspired. She's
+better. She's sleeping naturally."
+
+Max stared with round, sleep-whitened, owlish eyes, pessimistic and
+sceptical:
+
+"Yes," persisted Alvina. "Come and look at her. But don't wake her,
+whatever you do."
+
+Max took off his slippers and rose to his tall height. Louis, like a
+scared chicken, followed. Each man held his slippers in his hand.
+They noiselessly entered and peeped stealthily over the heaped
+bedclothes. Madame was lying, looking a little flushed and very
+girlish, sleeping lightly, with a strand of black hair stuck to her
+cheek, and her lips lightly parted.
+
+Max watched her for some moments. Then suddenly he straightened
+himself, pushed back his brown hair that was brushed up in the
+German fashion, and crossed himself, dropping his knee as before an
+altar; crossed himself and dropped his knee once more; and then a
+third time crossed himself and inclined before the altar. Then he
+straightened himself again, and turned aside.
+
+Louis also crossed himself. His tears burst out. He bowed and took
+the edge of a blanket to his lips, kissing it reverently. Then he
+covered his face with his hand.
+
+Meanwhile Madame slept lightly and innocently on.
+
+Alvina turned to go. Max silently followed, leading Louis by the
+arm. When they got downstairs, Max and Louis threw themselves in
+each other's arms, and kissed each other on either cheek, gravely,
+in Continental fashion.
+
+"She is better," said Max gravely, in French.
+
+"Thanks to God," replied Louis.
+
+Alvina witnessed all this with some amazement. The men did not heed
+her. Max went over and shook Geoffrey, Louis put his hand on
+Ciccio's shoulder. The sleepers were difficult to wake. The wakers
+shook the sleeping, but in vain. At last Geoffrey began to stir.
+But in vain Louis lifted Ciccio's shoulders from the table. The head
+and the hands dropped inert. The long black lashes lay motionless,
+the rather long, fine Greek nose drew the same light breaths, the
+mouth remained shut. Strange fine black hair, he had, close as fur,
+animal, and naked, frail-seeming, tawny hands. There was a silver
+ring on one hand.
+
+Alvina suddenly seized one of the inert hands that slid on the
+table-cloth as Louis shook the young man's shoulders. Tight she
+pressed the hand. Ciccio opened his tawny-yellowish eyes, that
+seemed to have been put in with a dirty finger, as the saying goes,
+owing to the sootiness of the lashes and brows. He was quite drunk
+with his first sleep, and saw nothing.
+
+"Wake up," said Alvina, laughing, pressing his hand again.
+
+He lifted his head once more, suddenly clasped her hand, his eyes
+came to consciousness, his hand relaxed, he recognized her, and he
+sat back in his chair, turning his face aside and lowering his
+lashes.
+
+"Get up, great beast," Louis was saying softly in French, pushing
+him as ox-drivers sometimes push their oxen. Ciccio staggered to his
+feet.
+
+"She is better," they told him. "We are going to bed."
+
+They took their candles and trooped off upstairs, each one bowing to
+Alvina as he passed. Max solemnly, Louis gallant, the other two dumb
+and sleepy. They occupied the two attic chambers.
+
+Alvina carried up the loose bed from the sofa, and slept on the
+floor before the fire in Madame's room.
+
+Madame slept well and long, rousing and stirring and settling off
+again. It was eight o'clock before she asked her first question.
+Alvina was already up.
+
+"Oh--alors--Then I am better, I am quite well. I can dance today."
+
+"I don't think today," said Alvina. "But perhaps tomorrow."
+
+"No, today," said Madame. "I can dance today, because I am quite
+well. I am Kishw�gin."
+
+"You are better. But you must lie still today. Yes, really--you will
+find you are weak when you try to stand."
+
+Madame watched Alvina's thin face with sullen eyes.
+
+"You are an Englishwoman, severe and materialist," she said.
+
+Alvina started and looked round at her with wide blue eyes.
+
+"Why?" she said. There was a wan, pathetic look about her, a sort of
+heroism which Madame detested, but which now she found touching.
+
+"Come!" said Madame, stretching out her plump jewelled hand. "Come,
+I am an ungrateful woman. Come, they are not good for you, the
+people, I see it. Come to me."
+
+Alvina went slowly to Madame, and took the outstretched hand. Madame
+kissed her hand, then drew her down and kissed her on either cheek,
+gravely, as the young men had kissed each other.
+
+"You have been good to Kishw�gin, and Kishw�gin has a heart that
+remembers. There, Miss Houghton, I shall do what you tell me.
+Kishw�gin obeys you." And Madame patted Alvina's hand and nodded her
+head sagely.
+
+"Shall I take your temperature?" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, my dear, you shall. You shall bid me, and I shall obey."
+
+So Madame lay back on her pillow, submissively pursing the
+thermometer between her lips and watching Alvina with black eyes.
+
+"It's all right," said Alvina, as she looked at the thermometer.
+"Normal."
+
+"Normal!" re-echoed Madame's rather guttural voice. "Good! Well,
+then when shall I dance?"
+
+Alvina turned and looked at her.
+
+"I think, truly," said Alvina, "it shouldn't be before Thursday or
+Friday."
+
+"Thursday!" repeated Madame. "You say Thursday?" There was a note of
+strong rebellion in her voice.
+
+"You'll be so weak. You've only just escaped pleurisy. I can only
+say what I truly think, can't I?"
+
+"Ah, you Englishwomen," said Madame, watching with black eyes. "I
+think you like to have your own way. In all things, to have your own
+way. And over all people. You are so good, to have your own way.
+Yes, you good Englishwomen. Thursday. Very well, it shall be
+Thursday. Till Thursday, then, Kishw�gin does not exist."
+
+And she subsided, already rather weak, upon her pillow again. When
+she had taken her tea and was washed and her room was tidied, she
+summoned the young men. Alvina had warned Max that she wanted
+Madame to be kept as quiet as possible this day.
+
+As soon as the first of the four appeared, in his shirt-sleeves and
+his slippers, in the doorway, Madame said:
+
+"Ah, there you are, my young men! Come in! Come in! It is not
+Kishw�gin addresses you. Kishw�gin does not exist till Thursday, as
+the English demoiselle makes it." She held out her hand, faintly
+perfumed with eau de Cologne--the whole room smelled of eau de
+Cologne--and Max stooped his brittle spine and kissed it. She
+touched his cheek gently with her other hand.
+
+"My faithful Max, my support."
+
+Louis came smiling with a bunch of violets and pinky anemones. He
+laid them down on the bed before her, and took her hand, bowing and
+kissing it reverently.
+
+"You are better, dear Madame?" he said, smiling long at her.
+
+"Better, yes, gentle Louis. And better for thy flowers, chivalric
+heart." She put the violets and anemones to her face with both
+hands, and then gently laid them aside to extend her hand to
+Geoffrey.
+
+"The good Geoffrey will do his best, while there is no Kishw�gin?"
+she said as he stooped to her salute.
+
+"Bien s�r, Madame."
+
+"Ciccio, a button off thy shirt-cuff. Where is my needle?" She
+looked round the room as Ciccio kissed her hand.
+
+"Did you want anything?" said Alvina, who had not followed the
+French.
+
+"My needle, to sew on this button. It is there, in the silk bag."
+
+"I will do it," said Alvina.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+While Alvina sewed on the button, Madame spoke to her young men,
+principally to Max. They were to obey Max, she said, for he was
+their eldest brother. This afternoon they would practise well the
+scene of the White Prisoner. Very carefully they must practise, and
+they must find some one who would play the young squaw--for in this
+scene she had practically nothing to do, the young squaw, but just
+sit and stand. Miss Houghton--but ah, Miss Houghton must play the
+piano, she could not take the part of the young squaw. Some other
+then.
+
+While the interview was going on, Mr. May arrived, full of concern.
+
+"Shan't we have the procession!" he cried.
+
+"Ah, the procession!" cried Madame.
+
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe upon request would signalize its entry
+into any town by a procession. The young men were dressed as Indian
+_braves_, and headed by Kishw�gin they rode on horseback through the
+main streets. Ciccio, who was the crack horseman, having served a
+very well-known horsey Marchese in an Italian cavalry regiment, did
+a bit of show riding.
+
+Mr. May was very keen on the procession. He had the horses in
+readiness. The morning was faintly sunny, after the sleet and bad
+weather. And now he arrived to find Madame in bed and the young men
+holding council with her.
+
+"How _very_ unfortunate!" cried Mr. May. "How _very_ unfortunate!"
+
+"Dreadful! Dreadful!" wailed Madame from the bed.
+
+"But can't we do _anything_?"
+
+"Yes--you can do the White Prisoner scene--the young men can do
+that, if you find a dummy squaw. Ah, I think I must get up after
+all."
+
+Alvina saw the look of fret and exhaustion in Madame's face.
+
+"Won't you all go downstairs now?" said Alvina. "Mr. Max knows what
+you must do."
+
+And she shooed the five men out of the bedroom.
+
+"I _must_ get up. I won't dance. I will be a dummy. But I must be
+there. It is too dre-eadful, too dre-eadful!" wailed Madame.
+
+"Don't take any notice of them. They can manage by themselves. Men
+are such babies. Let them carry it through by themselves."
+
+"Children--they are all children!" wailed Madame. "All children! And
+so, what will they do without their old _gouvernante_? My poor
+_braves_, what will they do without Kishw�gin? It is too dreadful,
+too dre-eadful, yes. The poor Mr. May--so _disappointed_."
+
+"Then let him _be_ disappointed," cried Alvina, as she forcibly
+tucked up Madame and made her lie still.
+
+"You are hard! You are a hard Englishwoman. All alike. All alike!"
+Madame subsided fretfully and weakly. Alvina moved softly about.
+And in a few minutes Madame was sleeping again.
+
+Alvina went downstairs. Mr. May was listening to Max, who was
+telling in German all about the White Prisoner scene. Mr. May had
+spent his boyhood in a German school. He cocked his head on one
+side, and, laying his hand on Max's arm, entertained him in odd
+German. The others were silent. Ciccio made no pretence of
+listening, but smoked and stared at his own feet. Louis and Geoffrey
+half understood, so Louis nodded with a look of deep comprehension,
+whilst Geoffrey uttered short, snappy "Ja!--Ja!--Doch!--Eben!"
+rather irrelevant.
+
+"I'll be the squaw," cried Mr. May in English, breaking off and
+turning round to the company. He perked up his head in an odd,
+parrot-like fashion. "_I'll_ be the squaw! What's her name?
+Kishw�gin? I'll be Kishw�gin." And he bridled and beamed
+self-consciously.
+
+The two tall Swiss looked down on him, faintly smiling. Ciccio,
+sitting with his arms on his knees on the sofa, screwed round his
+head and watched the phenomenon of Mr. May with inscrutable,
+expressionless attention.
+
+"Let us go," said Mr. May, bubbling with new importance. "Let us go
+and rehearse _this morning_, and let us do the procession this
+afternoon, when the colliers are just coming home. There! What?
+Isn't that exactly the idea? Well! Will you be ready at once,
+_now_?"
+
+He looked excitedly at the young men. They nodded with slow gravity,
+as if they were already _braves_. And they turned to put on their
+boots. Soon they were all trooping down to Lumley, Mr. May prancing
+like a little circus-pony beside Alvina, the four young men rolling
+ahead.
+
+"What do you think of it?" cried Mr. May. "We've saved the
+situation--what? Don't you think so? Don't you think we can
+congratulate ourselves."
+
+They found Mr. Houghton fussing about in the theatre. He was on
+tenterhooks of agitation, knowing Madame was ill.
+
+Max gave a brilliant display of yodelling.
+
+"But I must _explain_ to them," cried Mr. May. "I must _explain_ to
+them what yodel means."
+
+And turning to the empty theatre, he began, stretching forth his
+hand.
+
+"In the high Alps of Switzerland, where eternal snows and glaciers
+reign over luscious meadows full of flowers, if you should chance to
+awaken, as I have done, in some lonely wooden farm amid the mountain
+pastures, you--er--you--let me see--if you--no--if you should chance
+to _spend the night_ in some lonely wooden farm, amid the upland
+pastures, dawn will awake you with a wild, inhuman song, you will
+open your eyes to the first gleam of icy, eternal sunbeams, your
+ears will be ringing with weird singing, that has no words and no
+meaning, but sounds as if some wild and icy god were warbling to
+himself as he wandered among the peaks of dawn. You look forth
+across the flowers to the blue snow, and you see, far off, a small
+figure of a man moving among the grass. It is a peasant singing his
+mountain song, warbling like some creature that lifted up its voice
+on the edge of the eternal snows, before the human race began--"
+
+During this oration James Houghton sat with his chin in his hand,
+devoured with bitter jealousy, measuring Mr. May's eloquence. And
+then he started, as Max, tall and handsome now in Tyrolese costume,
+white shirt and green, square braces, short trousers of chamois
+leather stitched with green and red, firm-planted naked knees, naked
+ankles and heavy shoes, warbled his native Yodel strains, a piercing
+and disturbing sound. He was flushed, erect, keen tempered and
+fierce and mountainous. There was a fierce, icy passion in the man.
+Alvina began to understand Madame's subjection to him.
+
+Louis and Geoffrey did a farce dialogue, two foreigners at the same
+moment spying a purse in the street, struggling with each other and
+protesting they wanted to take it to the policeman, Ciccio, who
+stood solid and ridiculous. Mr. Houghton nodded slowly and gravely,
+as if to give his measured approval.
+
+Then all retired to dress for the great scene. Alvina practised the
+music Madame carried with her. If Madame found a good pianist, she
+welcomed the accompaniment: if not, she dispensed with it.
+
+"Am I all right?" said a smirking voice.
+
+And there was Kishw�gin, dusky, coy, with long black hair and a
+short chamois dress, gaiters and moccasins and bare arms: _so_ coy,
+and _so_ smirking. Alvina burst out laughing.
+
+"But shan't I do?" protested Mr. May, hurt.
+
+"Yes, you're wonderful," said Alvina, choking. "But I _must_ laugh."
+
+"But why? Tell me why?" asked Mr. May anxiously. "Is it my
+_appearance_ you laugh at, or is it only _me_? If it's me I don't
+mind. But if it's my appearance, tell me so."
+
+Here an appalling figure of Ciccio in war-paint strolled on to the
+stage. He was naked to the waist, wore scalp-fringed trousers, was
+dusky-red-skinned, had long black hair and eagle's feathers--only
+two feathers--and a face wonderfully and terribly painted with
+white, red, yellow, and black lines. He was evidently pleased with
+himself. His curious soft slouch, and curious way of lifting his lip
+from his white teeth, in a sort of smile, was very convincing.
+
+"You haven't got the girdle," he said, touching Mr. May's plump
+waist--"and some flowers in your hair."
+
+Mr. May here gave a sharp cry and a jump. A bear on its hind legs,
+slow, shambling, rolling its loose shoulders, was stretching a paw
+towards him. The bear dropped heavily on four paws again, and a
+laugh came from its muzzle.
+
+"You won't have to dance," said Geoffrey out of the bear.
+
+"Come and put in the flowers," said Mr. May anxiously, to Alvina.
+
+In the dressing-room, the dividing-curtain was drawn. Max, in
+deerskin trousers but with unpainted torso looked very white and
+strange as he put the last touches of war-paint on Louis' face. He
+glanced round at Alvina, then went on with his work. There was a
+sort of nobility about his erect white form and stiffly-carried
+head, the semi-luminous brown hair. He seemed curiously superior.
+
+Alvina adjusted the maidenly Mr. May. Louis arose, a _brave_ like
+Ciccio, in war-paint even more hideous. Max slipped on a tattered
+hunting-shirt and cartridge belt. His face was a little darkened. He
+was the white prisoner.
+
+They arranged the scenery, while Alvina watched. It was soon done. A
+back cloth of tree-trunks and dark forest: a wigwam, a fire, and a
+cradle hanging from a pole. As they worked, Alvina tried in vain to
+dissociate the two _braves_ from their war-paint. The lines were
+drawn so cleverly that the grimace of ferocity was fixed and
+horrible, so that even in the quiet work of scene-shifting Louis'
+stiffish, female grace seemed full of latent cruelty, whilst
+Ciccio's more muscular slouch made her feel she would not trust him
+for one single moment. Awful things men were, savage, cruel,
+underneath their civilization.
+
+The scene had its beauty. It began with Kishw�gin alone at the door
+of the wigwam, cooking, listening, giving an occasional push to the
+hanging cradle, and, if only Madame were taking the part, crooning
+an Indian cradle-song. Enter the _brave_ Louis with his white
+prisoner, Max, who has his hands bound to his side. Kishw�gin
+gravely salutes her husband--the bound prisoner is seated by the
+fire--Kishw�gin serves food, and asks permission to feed the
+prisoner. The _brave_ Louis, hearing a sound, starts up with his bow
+and arrow. There is a dumb scene of sympathy between Kishw�gin and
+the prisoner--the prisoner wants his bonds cut. Re-enter the _brave_
+Louis--he is angry with Kishw�gin--enter the _brave_ Ciccio hauling
+a bear, apparently dead. Kishw�gin examines the bear, Ciccio
+examines the prisoner. Ciccio tortures the prisoner, makes him
+stand, makes him caper unwillingly. Kishw�gin swings the cradle. The
+prisoner is tripped up--falls, and cannot rise. He lies near the
+fallen bear. Kishw�gin carries food to Ciccio. The two _braves_
+converse in dumb show, Kishw�gin swings the cradle and croons. The
+men rise once more and bend over the prisoner. As they do so, there
+is a muffled roar. The bear is sitting up. Louis swings round, and
+at the same moment the bear strikes him down. Ciccio springs forward
+and stabs the bear, then closes with it. Kishw�gin runs and cuts the
+prisoner's bonds. He rises, and stands trying to lift his numbed and
+powerless arms, while the bear slowly crushes Ciccio, and Kishw�gin
+kneels over her husband. The bear drops Ciccio lifeless, and turns
+to Kishw�gin. At that moment Max manages to kill the bear--he takes
+Kishw�gin by the hand and kneels with her beside the dead Louis.
+
+It was wonderful how well the men played their different parts. But
+Mr. May was a little too frisky as Kishw�gin. However, it would do.
+
+Ciccio got dressed as soon as possible, to go and look at the horses
+hired for the afternoon procession. Alvina accompanied him, Mr. May
+and the others were busy.
+
+"You know I think it's quite wonderful, your scene," she said to
+Ciccio.
+
+He turned and looked down at her. His yellow, dusky-set eyes rested
+on her good-naturedly, without seeing her, his lip curled in a
+self-conscious, contemptuous sort of smile.
+
+"Not without Madame," he said, with the slow, half-sneering, stupid
+smile. "Without Madame--" he lifted his shoulders and spread his
+hands and tilted his brows--"fool's play, you know."
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I think Mr. May is good, considering. What does
+Madame _do_?" she asked a little jealously.
+
+"Do?" He looked down at her with the same long, half-sardonic look
+of his yellow eyes, like a cat looking casually at a bird which
+flutters past. And again he made his shrugging motion. "She does it
+all, really. The others--they are nothing--what they are Madame has
+made them. And now they think they've done it all, you see. You see,
+that's it."
+
+"But how has Madame made it all? Thought it out, you mean?"
+
+"Thought it out, yes. And then _done_ it. You should see her
+dance--ah! You should see her dance round the bear, when I bring him
+in! Ah, a beautiful thing, you know. She claps her hand--" And
+Ciccio stood still in the street, with his hat cocked a little on
+one side, rather common-looking, and he smiled along his fine nose
+at Alvina, and he clapped his hands lightly, and he tilted his
+eyebrows and his eyelids as if facially he were imitating a dance,
+and all the time his lips smiled stupidly. As he gave a little
+assertive shake of his head, finishing, there came a great yell of
+laughter from the opposite pavement, where a gang of pottery lasses,
+in aprons all spattered with grey clay, and hair and boots and skin
+spattered with pallid spots, had stood to watch. The girls opposite
+shrieked again, for all the world like a gang of grey baboons.
+Ciccio turned round and looked at them with a sneer along his nose.
+They yelled the louder. And he was horribly uncomfortable, walking
+there beside Alvina with his rather small and effeminately-shod
+feet.
+
+"How stupid they are," said Alvina. "I've got used to them."
+
+"They should be--" he lifted his hand with a sharp, vicious
+movement--"_smacked_," he concluded, lowering his hand again.
+
+"Who is going to do it?" said Alvina.
+
+He gave a Neapolitan grimace, and twiddled the fingers of one hand
+outspread in the air, as if to say: "There you are! You've got to
+thank the fools who've failed to do it."
+
+"Why do you all love Madame so much?" Alvina asked.
+
+"How, love?" he said, making a little grimace. "We like her--we love
+her--as if she were a mother. You say _love_--" He raised his
+shoulders slightly, with a shrug. And all the time he looked down at
+Alvina from under his dusky eyelashes, as if watching her sideways,
+and his mouth had the peculiar, stupid, self-conscious, half-jeering
+smile. Alvina was a little bit annoyed. But she felt that a great
+instinctive good-naturedness came out of him, he was self-conscious
+and constrained, knowing she did not follow his language of gesture.
+For him, it was not yet quite natural to express himself in speech.
+Gesture and grimace were instantaneous, and spoke worlds of things,
+if you would but accept them.
+
+But certainly he was stupid, in her sense of the word. She could
+hear Mr. May's verdict of him: "Like a child, you know, just as
+charming and just as tiresome and just as stupid."
+
+"Where is your home?" she asked him.
+
+"In Italy." She felt a fool.
+
+"Which part?" she insisted.
+
+"Naples," he said, looking down at her sideways, searchingly.
+
+"It must be lovely," she said.
+
+"Ha--!" He threw his head on one side and spread out his hands, as
+if to say--"What do you want, if you don't find Naples lovely."
+
+"I should like to see it. But I shouldn't like to die," she said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"They say 'See Naples and die,'" she laughed.
+
+He opened his mouth, and understood. Then he smiled at her directly.
+
+"You know what that means?" he said cutely. "It means see Naples and
+die afterwards. Don't die _before_ you've seen it." He smiled with a
+knowing smile.
+
+"I see! I see!" she cried. "I never thought of that."
+
+He was pleased with her surprise and amusement.
+
+"Ah Naples!" he said. "She is lovely--" He spread his hand across
+the air in front of him--"The sea--and Posilippo--and Sorrento--and
+Capri--Ah-h! You've never been out of England?"
+
+"No," she said. "I should love to go."
+
+He looked down into her eyes. It was his instinct to say at once he
+would take her.
+
+"You've seen nothing--nothing," he said to her.
+
+"But if Naples is so lovely, how could you leave it?" she asked.
+
+"What?"
+
+She repeated her question. For answer, he looked at her, held out
+his hand, and rubbing the ball of his thumb across the tips of his
+fingers, said, with a fine, handsome smile:
+
+"Pennies! Money! You can't earn money in Naples. Ah, Naples is
+beautiful, but she is poor. You live in the sun, and you earn
+fourteen, fifteen pence a day--"
+
+"Not enough," she said.
+
+He put his head on one side and tilted his brows, as if to say "What
+are you to do?" And the smile on his mouth was sad, fine, and
+charming. There was an indefinable air of sadness or wistfulness
+about him, something so robust and fragile at the same time, that
+she was drawn in a strange way.
+
+"But you'll go back?" she said.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To Italy. To Naples."
+
+"Yes, I shall go back to Italy," he said, as if unwilling to commit
+himself. "But perhaps I shan't go back to Naples."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"Ah, never! I don't say never. I shall go to Naples, to see my
+mother's sister. But I shan't go to live--"
+
+"Have you a mother and father?"
+
+"I? No! I have a brother and two sisters--in America. Parents, none.
+They are dead."
+
+"And you wander about the world--" she said.
+
+He looked at her, and made a slight, sad gesture, indifferent also.
+
+"But you have Madame for a mother," she said.
+
+He made another gesture this time: pressed down the corners of his
+mouth as if he didn't like it. Then he turned with the slow, fine
+smile.
+
+"Does a man want two mothers? Eh?" he said, as if he posed a
+conundrum.
+
+"I shouldn't think so," laughed Alvina.
+
+He glanced at her to see what she meant, what she understood.
+
+"My mother is dead, see!" he said. "Frenchwomen--Frenchwomen--they
+have their babies till they are a hundred--"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Alvina, laughing.
+
+"A Frenchman is a little man when he's seven years old--and if his
+mother comes, he is a little baby boy when he's seventy. Do you know
+that?"
+
+"I _didn't_ know it," said Alvina.
+
+"But now--you do," he said, lurching round a corner with her.
+
+They had come to the stables. Three of the horses were there,
+including the thoroughbred Ciccio was going to ride. He stood and
+examined the beasts critically. Then he spoke to them with strange
+sounds, patted them, stroked them down, felt them, slid his hand
+down them, over them, under them, and felt their legs.
+
+Then, he looked up from stooping there under the horses, with a
+long, slow look of his yellow eyes, at Alvina. She felt
+unconsciously flattered. His long, yellow look lingered, holding her
+eyes. She wondered what he was thinking. Yet he never spoke. He
+turned again to the horses. They seemed to understand him, to prick
+up alert.
+
+"This is mine," he said, with his hand on the neck of the old
+thoroughbred. It was a bay with a white blaze.
+
+"I think he's nice," she said. "He seems so sensitive."
+
+"In England," he answered suddenly, "horses live a long time,
+because they _don't_ live--never alive--see? In England
+railway-engines are alive, and horses go on wheels." He smiled into
+her eyes as if she understood. She was a trifle nervous as he smiled
+at her from out of the stable, so yellow-eyed and half-mysterious,
+derisive. Her impulse was to turn and go away from the stable. But a
+deeper impulse made her smile into his face, as she said to him:
+
+"They like you to touch them."
+
+"Who?" His eyes kept hers. Curious how _dark_ they seemed, with only
+a yellow ring of pupil. He was looking right into her, beyond her
+usual self, impersonal.
+
+"The horses," she said. She was afraid of his long, cat-like look.
+Yet she felt convinced of his ultimate good-nature. He seemed to her
+to be the only passionately good-natured man she had ever seen. She
+watched him vaguely, with strange vague trust, implicit belief in
+him. In him--in what?
+
+That afternoon the colliers trooping home in the winter afternoon
+were rejoiced with a spectacle: Kishw�gin, in her deerskin, fringed
+gaiters and fringed frock of deerskin, her long hair down her back,
+and with marvellous cloths and trappings on her steed, riding
+astride on a tall white horse, followed by Max in chieftain's robes
+and chieftain's long head-dress of dyed feathers, then by the others
+in war-paint and feathers and brilliant Navajo blankets. They
+carried bows and spears. Ciccio was without his blanket, naked to
+the waist, in war-paint, and brandishing a long spear. He dashed up
+from the rear, saluted the chieftain with his arm and his spear on
+high as he swept past, suddenly drew up his rearing steed, and
+trotted slowly back again, making his horse perform its paces. He
+was extraordinarily velvety and alive on horseback.
+
+Crowds of excited, shouting children ran chattering along the
+pavements. The colliers, as they tramped grey and heavy, in an
+intermittent stream uphill from the low grey west, stood on the
+pavement in wonder as the cavalcade approached and passed, jingling
+the silver bells of its trappings, vibrating the wonderful colours
+of the barred blankets and saddle cloths, the scarlet wool of the
+accoutrements, the bright tips of feathers. Women shrieked as
+Ciccio, in his war-paint, wheeled near the pavement. Children
+screamed and ran. The colliers shouted. Ciccio smiled in his
+terrifying war-paint, brandished his spear and trotted softly, like
+a flower on its stem, round to the procession.
+
+Miss Pinnegar and Alvina and James Houghton had come round into
+Knarborough Road to watch. It was a great moment. Looking along the
+road they saw all the shopkeepers at their doors, the pavements
+eager. And then, in the distance, the white horse jingling its
+trappings of scarlet hair and bells, with the dusky Kishw�gin
+sitting on the saddle-blanket of brilliant, lurid stripes, sitting
+impassive and all dusky above that intermittent flashing of colour:
+then the chieftain, dark-faced, erect, easy, swathed in a white
+blanket, with scarlet and black stripes, and all his strange crest
+of white, tip-dyed feathers swaying down his back: as he came nearer
+one saw the wolfskin and the brilliant moccasins against the black
+sides of his horse; Louis and Goeffrey followed, lurid, horrid in
+the face, wearing blankets with stroke after stroke of blazing
+colour upon their duskiness, and sitting stern, holding their
+spears: lastly, Ciccio, on his bay horse with a green seat,
+flickering hither and thither in the rear, his feathers swaying, his
+horse sweating, his face ghastlily smiling in its war-paint. So they
+advanced down the grey pallor of Knarborough Road, in the late
+wintry afternoon. Somewhere the sun was setting, and far overhead
+was a flush of orange.
+
+"Well I never!" murmured Miss Pinnegar. "Well I never!"
+
+The strange savageness of the striped Navajo blankets seemed to her
+unsettling, advancing down Knarborough Road: she examined Kishw�gin
+curiously.
+
+"Can you _believe_ that that's Mr. May--he's exactly like a girl.
+Well, well--it makes you wonder what is and what isn't. But _aren't_
+they good? What? Most striking. Exactly like Indians. You can't
+believe your eyes. My word what a terrifying race they--" Here she
+uttered a scream and ran back clutching the wall as Ciccio swept
+past, brushing her with his horse's tail, and actually swinging his
+spear so as to touch Alvina and James Houghton lightly with the butt
+of it. James too started with a cry, the mob at the corner screamed.
+But Alvina caught the slow, mischievous smile as the painted horror
+showed his teeth in passing; she was able to flash back an excited
+laugh. She felt his yellow-tawny eyes linger on her, in that one
+second, as if negligently.
+
+"I call that too much!" Miss Pinnegar was crying, thoroughly upset.
+"Now that was unnecessary! Why it was enough to scare one to death.
+Besides, it's dangerous. It ought to be put a stop to. I don't
+believe in letting these show-people have liberties."
+
+The cavalcade was slowly passing, with its uneasy horses and its
+flare of striped colour and its silent riders. Ciccio was trotting
+softly back, on his green saddle-cloth, suave as velvet, his dusky,
+naked torso beautiful.
+
+"Eh, you'd think he'd get his death," the women in the crowd were
+saying.
+
+"A proper savage one, that. Makes your blood run cold--"
+
+"Ay, an' a man for all that, take's painted face for what's worth. A
+tidy man, _I_ say."
+
+He did not look at Alvina. The faint, mischievous smile uncovered
+his teeth. He fell in suddenly behind Geoffrey, with a jerk of his
+steed, calling out to Geoffrey in Italian.
+
+It was becoming cold. The cavalcade fell into a trot, Mr. May
+shaking rather badly. Ciccio halted, rested his lance against a
+lamp-post, switched his green blanket from beneath him, flung it
+round him as he sat, and darted off. They had all disappeared over
+the brow of Lumley Hill, descending. He was gone too. In the wintry
+twilight the crowd began, lingeringly, to turn away. And in some
+strange way, it manifested its disapproval of the spectacle: as
+grown-up men and women, they were a little bit insulted by such a
+show. It was an anachronism. They wanted a direct appeal to the
+mind. Miss Pinnegar expressed it.
+
+"Well," she said, when she was safely back in Manchester House, with
+the gas lighted, and as she was pouring the boiling water into the
+tea-pot, "You may say what you like. It's interesting in a way, just
+to show what savage Red-Indians were like. But it's childish. It's
+only childishness. I can't understand, myself, how people can go on
+liking shows. Nothing happens. It's not like the cinema, where you
+see it all and take it all in at once; you _know_ everything at a
+glance. You don't know anything by looking at these people. You know
+they're only men dressed up, for money. I can't see why you should
+encourage it. I don't hold with idle show-people, parading round, I
+don't, myself. I like to go to the cinema once a week. It's
+instruction, you take it all in at a glance, all you need to know,
+and it lasts you for a week. You can get to know everything about
+people's actual lives from the cinema. I don't see why you want
+people dressing up and showing off."
+
+They sat down to their tea and toast and marmalade, during this
+harangue. Miss Pinnegar was always like a douche of cold water to
+Alvina, bringing her back to consciousness after a delicious
+excitement. In a minute Madame and Ciccio and all seemed to become
+unreal--the actual unrealities: while the ragged dithering pictures
+of the film were actual, real as the day. And Alvina was always put
+out when this happened. She really hated Miss Pinnegar. Yet she had
+nothing to answer. They _were_ unreal, Madame and Ciccio and the
+rest. Ciccio was just a fantasy blown in on the wind, to blow away
+again. The real, permanent thing was Woodhouse, the _semper idem_
+Knarborough Road, and the unchangeable grubby gloom of Manchester
+House, with the stuffy, padding Miss Pinnegar, and her father, whose
+fingers, whose very soul seemed dirty with pennies. These were the
+solid, permanent fact. These were life itself. And Ciccio, splashing
+up on his bay horse and green cloth, he was a mountebank and an
+extraneous nonentity, a coloured old rag blown down the Knarborough
+Road into Limbo. Into Limbo. Whilst Miss Pinnegar and her father sat
+frowsily on for ever, eating their toast and cutting off the crust,
+and sipping their third cup of tea. They would never blow
+away--never, never. Woodhouse was there to eternity. And the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe was blowing like a rag of old paper into
+Limbo. Nothingness! Poor Madame! Poor gallant histrionic Madame! The
+frowsy Miss Pinnegar could crumple her up and throw her down the
+utilitarian drain, and have done with her. Whilst Miss Pinnegar
+lived on for ever.
+
+This put Alvina into a sharp temper.
+
+"Miss Pinnegar," she said. "I do think you go on in the most
+unattractive way sometimes. You're a regular spoil-sport."
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar tartly. "I don't approve of your way of
+sport, I'm afraid."
+
+"You can't disapprove of it as much as I hate your spoil-sport
+existence," said Alvina in a flare.
+
+"Alvina, are you mad!" said her father.
+
+"Wonder I'm not," said Alvina, "considering what my life is."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CICCIO
+
+
+Madame did not pick up her spirits, after her cold. For two days she
+lay in bed, attended by Mrs. Rollings and Alvina and the young men.
+But she was most careful never to give any room for scandal. The
+young men might not approach her save in the presence of some third
+party. And then it was strictly a visit of ceremony or business.
+
+"Oh, your Woodhouse, how glad I shall be when I have left it," she
+said to Alvina. "I feel it is unlucky for me."
+
+"Do you?" said Alvina. "But if you'd had this bad cold in some
+places, you might have been much worse, don't you think."
+
+"Oh my dear!" cried Madame. "Do you think I could confuse you in my
+dislike of this Woodhouse? Oh no! You are not Woodhouse. On the
+contrary, I think it is unkind for you also, this place. You
+look--also--what shall I say--thin, not very happy."
+
+It was a note of interrogation.
+
+"I'm sure I dislike Woodhouse much more than you can," replied
+Alvina.
+
+"I am sure. Yes! I am sure. I see it. Why don't you go away? Why
+don't you marry?"
+
+"Nobody wants to marry me," said Alvina.
+
+Madame looked at her searchingly, with shrewd black eyes under her
+arched eyebrows.
+
+"How!" she exclaimed. "How don't they? You are not bad looking, only
+a little too thin--too haggard--"
+
+She watched Alvina. Alvina laughed uncomfortably.
+
+"Is there _nobody_?" persisted Madame.
+
+"Not now," said Alvina. "Absolutely nobody." She looked with a
+confused laugh into Madame's strict black eyes. "You see I didn't
+care for the Woodhouse young men, either. I _couldn't_."
+
+Madame nodded slowly up and down. A secret satisfaction came over
+her pallid, waxy countenance, in which her black eyes were like twin
+swift extraneous creatures: oddly like two bright little dark
+animals in the snow.
+
+"Sure!" she said, sapient. "Sure! How could you? But there are other
+men besides these here--" She waved her hand to the window.
+
+"I don't meet them, do I?" said Alvina.
+
+"No, not often. But sometimes! sometimes!"
+
+There was a silence between the two women, very pregnant.
+
+"Englishwomen," said Madame, "are so practical. Why are they?"
+
+"I suppose they can't help it," said Alvina. "But they're not half
+so practical and clever as _you_, Madame."
+
+"Oh la--la! I am practical differently. I am practical
+impractically--" she stumbled over the words. "But your Sue now, in
+Jude the Obscure--is it not an interesting book? And is she not
+always too practically practical. If she had been impractically
+practical she could have been quite happy. Do you know what I
+mean?--no. But she is ridiculous. Sue: so Anna Kar�nine. Ridiculous
+both. Don't you think?"
+
+"Why?" said Alvina.
+
+"Why did they both make everybody unhappy, when they had the man
+they wanted, and enough money? I think they are both so silly. If
+they had been beaten, they would have lost all their practical ideas
+and troubles, merely forgot them, and been happy enough. I am a
+woman who says it. Such ideas they have are not tragical. No, not at
+all. They are nonsense, you see, nonsense. That is all. Nonsense.
+Sue and Anna, they are--non-sensical. That is all. No tragedy
+whatsoever. Nonsense. I am a woman. I know men also. And I know
+nonsense when I see it. Englishwomen are all nonsense: the worst
+women in the world for nonsense."
+
+"Well, I am English," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, my dear, you are English. But you are not necessarily so
+non-sensical. Why are you at all?"
+
+"Nonsensical?" laughed Alvina. "But I don't know what you call my
+nonsense."
+
+"Ah," said Madame wearily. "They never understand. But I like you,
+my dear. I am an old woman--"
+
+"Younger than I," said Alvina.
+
+"Younger than you, because I am practical from the heart, and not
+only from the head. You are not practical from the heart. And yet
+you have a heart."
+
+"But all Englishwomen have good hearts," protested Alvina.
+
+"No! No!" objected Madame. "They are all ve-ry kind, and ve-ry
+practical with their kindness. But they have no heart in all their
+kindness. It is all head, all head: the kindness of the head."
+
+"I can't agree with you," said Alvina.
+
+"No. No. I don't expect it. But I don't mind. You are very kind to
+me, and I thank you. But it is from the head, you see. And so I
+thank you from the head. From the heart--no."
+
+Madame plucked her white fingers together and laid them on her
+breast with a gesture of repudiation. Her black eyes stared
+spitefully.
+
+"But Madame," said Alvina, nettled, "I should never be half such a
+good business woman as you. Isn't that from the head?"
+
+"Ha! of course! Of course you wouldn't be a good business woman.
+Because you are kind from the head. I--" she tapped her forehead and
+shook her head--"I am not kind from the head. From the head I am
+business-woman, good business-woman. Of course I am a good
+business-woman--of course! But--" here she changed her expression,
+widened her eyes, and laid her hand on her breast--"when the heart
+speaks--then I listen with the heart. I do not listen with the head.
+The heart hears the heart. The head--that is another thing. But you
+have blue eyes, you cannot understand. Only dark eyes--" She paused
+and mused.
+
+"And what about yellow eyes?" asked Alvina, laughing.
+
+Madame darted a look at her, her lips curling with a very faint,
+fine smile of derision. Yet for the first time her black eyes
+dilated and became warm.
+
+"Yellow eyes like Ciccio's?" she said, with her great watchful eyes
+and her smiling, subtle mouth. "They are the darkest of all." And
+she shook her head roguishly.
+
+"Are they!" said Alvina confusedly, feeling a blush burning up her
+throat into her face.
+
+"Ha--ha!" laughed Madame. "Ha-ha! I am an old woman, you see. My
+heart is old enough to be kind, and my head is old enough to be
+clever. My heart is kind to few people--very few--especially in this
+England. My young men know that. But perhaps to you it is kind."
+
+"Thank you," said Alvina.
+
+"There! From the head _Thank you_. It is not well done, you see. You
+see!"
+
+But Alvina ran away in confusion. She felt Madame was having her on
+a string.
+
+Mr. May enjoyed himself hugely playing Kishw�gin. When Madame came
+downstairs Louis, who was a good satirical mimic, imitated him.
+Alvina happened to come into their sitting-room in the midst of
+their bursts of laughter. They all stopped and looked at her
+cautiously.
+
+"Continuez! Continuez!" said Madame to Louis. And to Alvina: "Sit
+down, my dear, and see what a good actor we have in our Louis."
+
+Louis glanced round, laid his head a little on one side and drew in
+his chin, with Mr. May's smirk exactly, and wagging his tail
+slightly, he commenced to play the false Kishw�gin. He sidled and
+bridled and ejaculated with raised hands, and in the dumb show the
+tall Frenchman made such a ludicrous caricature of Mr. Houghton's
+manager that Madame wept again with laughter, whilst Max leaned back
+against the wall and giggled continuously like some pot
+involuntarily boiling. Geoffrey spread his shut fists across the
+table and shouted with laughter, Ciccio threw back his head and
+showed all his teeth in a loud laugh of delighted derision. Alvina
+laughed also. But she flushed. There was a certain biting,
+annihilating quality in Louis' derision of the absentee. And the
+others enjoyed it so much. At moments Alvina caught her lip between
+her teeth, it was so screamingly funny, and so annihilating. She
+laughed in spite of herself. In spite of herself she was shaken into
+a convulsion of laughter. Louis was masterful--he mastered her
+psyche. She laughed till her head lay helpless on the chair, she
+could not move. Helpless, inert she lay, in her orgasm of laughter.
+The end of Mr. May. Yet she was hurt.
+
+And then Madame wiped her own shrewd black eyes, and nodded slow
+approval. Suddenly Louis started and held up a warning finger. They
+all at once covered their smiles and pulled themselves together.
+Only Alvina lay silently laughing.
+
+"Oh, good morning, Mrs. Rollings!" they heard Mr. May's voice. "Your
+company is lively. Is Miss Houghton here? May I go through?"
+
+They heard his quick little step and his quick little tap.
+
+"Come in," called Madame.
+
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras all sat with straight faces. Only poor Alvina
+lay back in her chair in a new weak convulsion. Mr. May glanced
+quickly round, and advanced to Madame.
+
+"Oh, good-morning, Madame, so glad to see you downstairs," he said,
+taking her hand and bowing ceremoniously. "Excuse my intruding on
+your mirth!" He looked archly round. Alvina was still incompetent.
+She lay leaning sideways in her chair, and could not even speak to
+him.
+
+"It was evidently a good joke," he said. "May I hear it too?"
+
+"Oh," said Madame, drawling. "It was no joke. It was only Louis
+making a fool of himself, doing a turn."
+
+"Must have been a good one," said Mr. May. "Can't we put it on?"
+
+"No," drawled Madame, "it was nothing--just a non-sensical mood of
+the moment. Won't you sit down? You would like a little
+whiskey?--yes?"
+
+Max poured out whiskey and water for Mr. May.
+
+Alvina sat with her face averted, quiet, but unable to speak to Mr.
+May. Max and Louis had become polite. Geoffrey stared with his big,
+dark-blue eyes stolidly at the newcomer. Ciccio leaned with his arms
+on his knees, looking sideways under his long lashes at the inert
+Alvina.
+
+"Well," said Madame, "and are you satisfied with your houses?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Mr. May. "Quite! The two nights have been excellent.
+Excellent!"
+
+"Ah--I am glad. And Miss Houghton tells me I should not dance
+tomorrow, it is too soon."
+
+"Miss Houghton _knows_," said Mr. May archly.
+
+"Of course!" said Madame. "I must do as she tells me."
+
+"Why yes, since it is for your good, and not hers."
+
+"Of course! Of course! It is very kind of her."
+
+"Miss Houghton is _most_ kind--to _every one_," said Mr. May.
+
+"I am sure," said Madame. "And I am very glad you have been such a
+good Kishw�gin. That is very nice also."
+
+"Yes," replied Mr. May. "I begin to wonder if I have mistaken my
+vocation. I should have been _on_ the boards, instead of behind
+them."
+
+"No doubt," said Madame. "But it is a little late--"
+
+The eyes of the foreigners, watching him, flattered Mr. May.
+
+"I'm afraid it is," he said. "Yes. Popular taste is a mysterious
+thing. How do you feel, now? Do you feel they appreciate your work
+as much as they did?"
+
+Madame watched him with her black eyes.
+
+"No," she replied. "They don't. The pictures are driving us away.
+Perhaps we shall last for ten years more. And after that, we are
+finished."
+
+"You think so," said Mr. May, looking serious.
+
+"I am sure," she said, nodding sagely.
+
+"But why is it?" said Mr. May, angry and petulant.
+
+"Why is it? I don't know. I don't know. The pictures are cheap, and
+they are easy, and they cost the audience nothing, no feeling of the
+heart, no appreciation of the spirit, cost them nothing of these.
+And so they like them, and they don't like us, because they must
+_feel_ the things we do, from the heart, and appreciate them from
+the spirit. There!"
+
+"And they don't want to appreciate and to feel?" said Mr. May.
+
+"No. They don't want. They want it all through the eye, and
+finished--so! Just curiosity, impertinent curiosity. That's all. In
+all countries, the same. And so--in ten years' time--no more
+Kishw�gin at all."
+
+"No. Then what future have you?" said Mr. May gloomily.
+
+"I may be dead--who knows. If not, I shall have my little apartment
+in Lausanne, or in Bellizona, and I shall be a bourgeoise once more,
+and the good Catholic which I am."
+
+"Which I am also," said Mr. May.
+
+"So! Are you? An American Catholic?"
+
+"Well--English--Irish--American."
+
+"So!"
+
+Mr. May never felt more gloomy in his life than he did that day.
+Where, finally, was he to rest his troubled head?
+
+There was not all peace in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara group either. For
+Thursday, there was to be a change of program--"Kishw�gin's
+Wedding--" (with the white prisoner, be if said)--was to take the
+place of the previous scene. Max of course was the director of the
+rehearsal. Madame would not come near the theatre when she herself
+was not to be acting.
+
+Though very quiet and unobtrusive as a rule, Max could suddenly
+assume an air of _hauteur_ and overbearing which was really very
+annoying. Geoffrey always fumed under it. But Ciccio it put into
+unholy, ungovernable tempers. For Max, suddenly, would reveal his
+contempt of the Eyetalian, as he called Ciccio, using the Cockney
+word.
+
+"Bah! quelle t�te de veau," said Max, suddenly contemptuous and
+angry because Ciccio, who really was slow at taking in the things
+said to him, had once more failed to understand.
+
+"Comment?" queried Ciccio, in his slow, derisive way.
+
+"_Comment_!" sneered Max, in echo. "_What?_ _What?_ Why what _did_ I
+say? Calf's-head I said. Pig's-head, if that seems more suitable to
+you."
+
+"To whom? To me or to you?" said Ciccio, sidling up.
+
+"To you, lout of an Italian."
+
+Max's colour was up, he held himself erect, his brown hair seemed to
+rise erect from his forehead, his blue eyes glared fierce.
+
+"That is to say, to me, from an uncivilized German pig, ah? ah?"
+
+All this in French. Alvina, as she sat at the piano, saw Max tall
+and blanched with anger; Ciccio with his neck stuck out, oblivious
+and convulsed with rage, stretching his neck at Max. All were in
+ordinary dress, but without coats, acting in their shirt-sleeves.
+Ciccio was clutching a property knife.
+
+"Now! None of that! None of that!" said Mr. May, peremptory. But
+Ciccio, stretching forward taut and immobile with rage, was quite
+unconscious. His hand was fast on his stage knife.
+
+"A dirty Eyetalian," said Max, in English, turning to Mr. May. "They
+understand nothing."
+
+But the last word was smothered in Ciccio's spring and stab. Max
+half started on to his guard, received the blow on his collar-bone,
+near the pommel of the shoulder, reeled round on top of Mr. May,
+whilst Ciccio sprang like a cat down from the stage and bounded
+across the theatre and out of the door, leaving the knife rattling
+on the boards behind him. Max recovered and sprang like a demon,
+white with rage, straight out into the theatre after him.
+
+"Stop--stop--!" cried Mr. May.
+
+"Halte, Max! Max, Max, attends!" cried Louis and Geoffrey, as Louis
+sprang down after his friend. Thud went the boards again, with the
+spring of a man.
+
+Alvina, who had been seated waiting at the piano below, started up
+and overturned her chair as Ciccio rushed past her. Now Max, white,
+with set blue eyes, was upon her.
+
+"Don't--!" she cried, lifting her hand to stop his progress. He saw
+her, swerved, and hesitated, turned to leap over the seats and avoid
+her, when Louis caught him and flung his arms round him.
+
+"Max--attends, ami! Laisse le partir. Max, tu sais que je t'aime. Tu
+le sais, ami. Tu le sais. Laisse le partir."
+
+Max and Louis wrestled together in the gangway, Max looking down
+with hate on his friend. But Louis was determined also, he wrestled
+as fiercely as Max, and at last the latter began to yield. He was
+panting and beside himself. Louis still held him by the hand and by
+the arm.
+
+"Let him go, brother, he isn't worth it. What does he understand,
+Max, dear brother, what does he understand? These fellows from the
+south, they are half children, half animal. They don't know what
+they are doing. Has he hurt you, dear friend? Has he hurt you? It
+was a dummy knife, but it was a heavy blow--the dog of an Italian.
+Let us see."
+
+So gradually Max was brought to stand still. From under the edge of
+his waistcoat, on the shoulder, the blood was already staining the
+shirt.
+
+"Are you cut, brother, brother?" said Louis. "Let us see."
+
+Max now moved his arm with pain. They took off his waistcoat and
+pushed back his shirt. A nasty blackening wound, with the skin
+broken.
+
+"If the bone isn't broken!" said Louis anxiously. "If the bone isn't
+broken! Lift thy arm, fr�re--lift. It hurts you--so--. No--no--it is
+not broken--no--the bone is not broken."
+
+"There is no bone broken, I know," said Max.
+
+"The animal. He hasn't done _that_, at least."
+
+"Where do you imagine he's gone?" asked Mr. May.
+
+The foreigners shrugged their shoulders, and paid no heed. There was
+no more rehearsal.
+
+"We had best go home and speak to Madame," said Mr. May, who was
+very frightened for his evening performance.
+
+They locked up the Endeavour. Alvina was thinking of Ciccio. He was
+gone in his shirt sleeves. She had taken his jacket and hat from the
+dressing-room at the back, and carried them under her rain-coat,
+which she had on her arm.
+
+Madame was in a state of perturbation. She had heard some one come
+in at the back, and go upstairs, and go out again. Mrs. Rollings had
+told her it was the Italian, who had come in in his shirt-sleeves
+and gone out in his black coat and black hat, taking his bicycle,
+without saying a word. Poor Madame! She was struggling into her
+shoes, she had her hat on, when the others arrived.
+
+"What is it?" she cried.
+
+She heard a hurried explanation from Louis.
+
+"Ah, the animal, the animal, he wasn't worth all my pains!" cried poor
+Madame, sitting with one shoe off and one shoe on. "Why, Max, why didst
+thou not remain man enough to control that insulting mountain temper of
+thine. Have I not said, and said, and said that in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara
+there was but one nation, the Red Indian, and but one tribe, the tribe
+of Kishwe? And now thou hast called him a dirty Italian, or a dog of an
+Italian, and he has behaved like an animal. Too much, too much of an
+animal, too little _esprit_. But thou, Max, art almost as bad. Thy
+temper is a devil's, which maybe is worse than an animal's. Ah, this
+Woodhouse, a curse is on it, I know it is. Would we were away from it.
+Will the week never pass? We shall have to find Ciccio. Without him the
+company is ruined--until I get a substitute. I must get a substitute.
+And how?--and where?--in this country?--tell me that. I am tired of
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. There is no true tribe of Kishwe--no, never. I have
+had enough of Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Let us break up, let us part, _mes
+braves_, let us say adieu here in this _funeste_ Woodhouse."
+
+"Oh, Madame, dear Madame," said Louis, "let us hope. Let us swear a
+closer fidelity, dear Madame, our Kishw�gin. Let us never part.
+Max, thou dost not want to part, brother, well-loved? Thou dost not
+want to part, brother whom I love? And thou, Geoffrey, thou--"
+
+Madame burst into tears, Louis wept too, even Max turned aside his
+face, with tears. Alvina stole out of the room, followed by Mr. May.
+
+In a while Madame came out to them.
+
+"Oh," she said. "You have not gone away! We are wondering which way
+Ciccio will have gone, on to Knarborough or to Marchay. Geoffrey
+will go on his bicycle to find him. But shall it be to Knarborough
+or to Marchay?"
+
+"Ask the policeman in the market-place," said Alvina. "He's sure to
+have noticed him, because Ciccio's yellow bicycle is so uncommon."
+
+Mr. May tripped out on this errand, while the others discussed among
+themselves where Ciccio might be.
+
+Mr. May returned, and said that Ciccio had ridden off down the
+Knarborough Road. It was raining slightly.
+
+"Ah!" said Madame. "And now how to find him, in that great town. I
+am afraid he will leave us without pity."
+
+"Surely he will want to speak to Geoffrey before he goes," said
+Louis. "They were always good friends."
+
+They all looked at Geoffrey. He shrugged his broad shoulders.
+
+"Always good friends," he said. "Yes. He will perhaps wait for me at
+his cousin's in Battersea. In Knarborough, I don't know."
+
+"How much money had he?" asked Mr. May.
+
+Madame spread her hands and lifted her shoulders.
+
+"Who knows?" she said.
+
+"These Italians," said Louis, turning to Mr. May. "They have always
+money. In another country, they will not spend one sou if they can
+help. They are like this--" And he made the Neapolitan gesture
+drawing in the air with his fingers.
+
+"But would he abandon you all without a word?" cried Mr. May.
+
+"Yes! Yes!" said Madame, with a sort of stoic pathos. "_He_ would.
+He alone would do such a thing. But he would do it."
+
+"And what point would he make for?"
+
+"What point? You mean where would he go? To Battersea, no doubt, to
+his cousin--and then to Italy, if he thinks he has saved enough
+money to buy land, or whatever it is."
+
+"And so good-bye to him," said Mr. May bitterly.
+
+"Geoffrey ought to know," said Madame, looking at Geoffrey.
+
+Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, and would not give his comrade
+away.
+
+"No," he said. "I don't know. He will leave a message at Battersea,
+I know. But I don't know if he will go to Italy."
+
+"And you don't know where to find him in Knarborough?" asked Mr.
+May, sharply, very much on the spot.
+
+"No--I don't. Perhaps at the station he will go by train to London."
+It was evident Geoffrey was not going to help Mr. May.
+
+"Alors!" said Madame, cutting through this futility. "Go thou to
+Knarborough, Geoffrey, and see--and be back at the theatre for work.
+Go now. And if thou can'st find him, bring him again to us. Tell him
+to come out of kindness to me. Tell him."
+
+And she waved the young man away. He departed on his nine mile ride
+through the rain to Knarborough.
+
+"They know," said Madame. "They know each other's places. It is a
+little more than a year since we came to Knarborough. But they will
+remember."
+
+Geoffrey rode swiftly as possible through the mud. He did not care
+very much whether he found his friend or not. He liked the Italian,
+but he never looked on him as a permanency. He knew Ciccio was
+dissatisfied, and wanted a change. He knew that Italy was pulling
+him away from the troupe, with which he had been associated now for
+three years or more. And the Swiss from Martigny knew that the
+Neapolitan would go, breaking all ties, one day suddenly back to
+Italy. It was so, and Geoffrey was philosophical about it.
+
+He rode into town, and the first thing he did was to seek out the
+music-hall artistes at their lodgings. He knew a good many of them.
+They gave him a welcome and a whiskey--but none of them had seen
+Ciccio. They sent him off to other artistes, other lodging-houses.
+He went the round of associates known and unknown, of lodgings
+strange and familiar, of third-rate possible public houses. Then he
+went to the Italians down in the Marsh--he knew these people always
+ask for one another. And then, hurrying, he dashed to the Midland
+Station, and then to the Great Central Station, asking the porters
+on the London departure platform if they had seen his pal, a man
+with a yellow bicycle, and a black bicycle cape. All to no purpose.
+
+Geoffrey hurriedly lit his lamp and swung off in the dark back to
+Woodhouse. He was a powerfully built, imperturbable fellow. He
+pressed slowly uphill through the streets, then ran downhill into
+the darkness of the industrial country. He had continually to cross
+the new tram-lines, which were awkward, and he had occasionally to
+dodge the brilliantly-illuminated tram-cars which threaded their way
+across-country through so much darkness. All the time it rained, and
+his back wheel slipped under him, in the mud and on the new
+tram-track.
+
+As he pressed in the long darkness that lay between Slaters Mill and
+Durbeyhouses, he saw a light ahead--another cyclist. He moved to his
+side of the road. The light approached very fast. It was a strong
+acetylene flare. He watched it. A flash and a splash and he saw the
+humped back of what was probably Ciccio going by at a great pace on
+the low racing machine.
+
+"Hi Cic'--! Ciccio!" he yelled, dropping off his own bicycle.
+
+"Ha-er-er!" he heard the answering shout, unmistakably Italian, way
+down the darkness.
+
+He turned--saw the other cyclist had stopped. The flare swung round,
+and Ciccio softly rode up. He dropped off beside Geoffrey.
+
+"Toi!" said Ciccio.
+
+"H�! O� vas-tu?"
+
+"H�!" ejaculated Ciccio.
+
+Their conversation consisted a good deal in noises variously
+ejaculated.
+
+"Coming back?" asked Geoffrey.
+
+"Where've you been?" retorted Ciccio.
+
+"Knarborough--looking for thee. Where have you--?"
+
+"Buckled my front wheel at Durbeyhouses."
+
+"Come off?"
+
+"H�!"
+
+"Hurt?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Max is all right."
+
+"Merde!"
+
+"Come on, come back with me."
+
+"Nay." Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"Madame's crying. Wants thee to come back."
+
+Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"Come on, Cic'--" said Geoffrey.
+
+Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"Never?" said Geoffrey.
+
+"Basta--had enough," said Ciccio, with an invisible grimace.
+
+"Come for a bit, and we'll clear together."
+
+Ciccio again shook his head.
+
+"What, is it adieu?"
+
+Ciccio did not speak.
+
+"Don't go, comrade," said Geoffrey.
+
+"Faut," said Ciccio, slightly derisive.
+
+"Eh alors! I'd like to come with thee. What?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Doesn't matter. Thou'rt going to Italy?"
+
+"Who knows!--seems so."
+
+"I'd like to go back."
+
+"Eh alors!" Ciccio half veered round.
+
+"Wait for me a few days," said Geoffrey.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"See you tomorrow in Knarborough. Go to Mrs. Pym's, 6 Hampden
+Street. Gittiventi is there. Right, eh?"
+
+"I'll think about it."
+
+"Eleven o'clock, eh?"
+
+"I'll think about it."
+
+"Friends ever--Ciccio--eh?" Geoffrey held out his hand.
+
+Ciccio slowly took it. The two men leaned to each other and kissed
+farewell, on either cheek.
+
+"Tomorrow, Cic'--"
+
+"Au revoir, Gigi."
+
+Ciccio dropped on to his bicycle and was gone in a breath. Geoffrey
+waited a moment for a tram which was rushing brilliantly up to him
+in the rain. Then he mounted and rode in the opposite direction. He
+went straight down to Lumley, and Madame had to remain on
+tenterhooks till ten o'clock.
+
+She heard the news, and said:
+
+"Tomorrow I go to fetch him." And with this she went to bed.
+
+In the morning she was up betimes, sending a note to Alvina. Alvina
+appeared at nine o'clock.
+
+"You will come with me?" said Madame. "Come. Together we will go to
+Knarborough and bring back the naughty Ciccio. Come with me, because
+I haven't all my strength. Yes, you will? Good! Good! Let us tell
+the young men, and we will go now, on the tram-car."
+
+"But I am not properly dressed," said Alvina.
+
+"Who will see?" said Madame. "Come, let us go."
+
+They told Geoffrey they would meet him at the corner of Hampden
+Street at five minutes to eleven.
+
+"You see," said Madame to Alvina, "they are very funny, these young
+men, particularly Italians. You must never let them think you have
+caught them. Perhaps he will not let us see him--who knows? Perhaps
+he will go off to Italy all the same."
+
+They sat in the bumping tram-car, a long and wearying journey. And
+then they tramped the dreary, hideous streets of the manufacturing
+town. At the corner of the street they waited for Geoffrey, who rode
+up muddily on his bicycle.
+
+"Ask Ciccio to come out to us, and we will go and drink coffee at
+the Geisha Restaurant--or tea or something," said Madame.
+
+Again the two women waited wearily at the street-end. At last
+Geoffrey returned, shaking his head.
+
+"He won't come?" cried Madame.
+
+"No."
+
+"He says he is going back to Italy?"
+
+"To London."
+
+"It is the same. You can never trust them. Is he quite obstinate?"
+
+Geoffrey lifted his shoulders. Madame could see the beginnings of
+defection in him too. And she was tired and dispirited.
+
+"We shall have to finish the Natcha-Kee-Tawara, that is all," she
+said fretfully.
+
+Geoffrey watched her stolidly, impassively.
+
+"Dost thou want to go with him?" she asked suddenly.
+
+Geoffrey smiled sheepishly, and his colour deepened. But he did not
+speak.
+
+"Go then--" she said. "Go then! Go with him! But for the sake of my
+honour, finish this week at Woodhouse. Can I make Miss Houghton's
+father lose these two nights? Where is your shame? Finish this week
+and then go, go--But finish this week. Tell Francesco that. I have
+finished with him. But let him finish this engagement. Don't put me
+to shame, don't destroy my honour, and the honour of the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Tell him that."
+
+Geoffrey turned again into the house. Madame, in her chic little
+black hat and spotted veil, and her trim black coat-and-skirt, stood
+there at the street-corner staring before her, shivering a little
+with cold, but saying no word of any sort.
+
+Again Geoffrey appeared out of the doorway. His face was impassive.
+
+"He says he doesn't want," he said.
+
+"Ah!" she cried suddenly in French, "the ungrateful, the animal! He
+shall suffer. See if he shall not suffer. The low canaille, without
+faith or feeling. My Max, thou wert right. Ah, such canaille should
+be beaten, as dogs are beaten, till they follow at heel. Will no one
+beat him for me, no one? Yes. Go back. Tell him before he leaves
+England he shall feel the hand of Kishw�gin, and it shall be heavier
+than the Black Hand. Tell him that, the coward, that causes a
+woman's word to be broken against her will. Ah, canaille, canaille!
+Neither faith nor feeling, neither faith nor feeling. Trust them
+not, dogs of the south." She took a few agitated steps down the
+pavement. Then she raised her veil to wipe away her tears of anger
+and bitter disappointment.
+
+"Wait a bit," said Alvina. "I'll go." She was touched.
+
+"No. Don't you!" cried Madame.
+
+"Yes I will," she said. The light of battle was in her eyes. "You'll
+come with me to the door," she said to Geoffrey.
+
+Geoffrey started obediently, and led the way up a long narrow stair,
+covered with yellow-and-brown oil-cloth, rather worn, on to the top
+of the house.
+
+"Ciccio," he said, outside the door.
+
+"Oui!" came the curly voice of Ciccio.
+
+Geoffrey opened the door. Ciccio was sitting on a narrow bed, in a
+rather poor attic, under the steep slope of the roof.
+
+"Don't come in," said Alvina to Geoffrey, looking over her shoulder
+at him as she entered. Then she closed the door behind her, and
+stood with her back to it, facing the Italian. He sat loose on the
+bed, a cigarette between his fingers, dropping ash on the bare
+boards between his feet. He looked up curiously at Alvina. She stood
+watching him with wide, bright blue eyes, smiling slightly, and
+saying nothing. He looked up at her steadily, on his guard, from
+under his long black lashes.
+
+"Won't you come?" she said, smiling and looking into his eyes. He
+flicked off the ash of his cigarette with his little finger. She
+wondered why he wore the nail of his little finger so long, so very
+long. Still she smiled at him, and still he gave no sign.
+
+"Do come!" she urged, never taking her eyes from him.
+
+He made not the slightest movement, but sat with his hands dropped
+between his knees, watching her, the cigarette wavering up its blue
+thread of smoke.
+
+"Won't you?" she said, as she stood with her back to the door.
+"Won't you come?" She smiled strangely and vividly.
+
+Suddenly she took a pace forward, stooped, watching his face as if
+timidly, caught his brown hand in her own and lifted it towards
+herself. His hand started, dropped the cigarette, but was not
+withdrawn.
+
+"You will come, won't you?" she said, smiling gently into his
+strange, watchful yellow eyes, that looked fixedly into hers, the
+dark pupil opening round and softening. She smiled into his
+softening round eyes, the eyes of some animal which stares in one of
+its silent, gentler moments. And suddenly she kissed his hand,
+kissed it twice, quickly, on the fingers and the back. He wore a
+silver ring. Even as she kissed his fingers with her lips, the
+silver ring seemed to her a symbol of his subjection, inferiority.
+She drew his hand slightly. And he rose to his feet.
+
+She turned round and took the door-handle, still holding his fingers
+in her left hand.
+
+"You are coming, aren't you?" she said, looking over her shoulder
+into his eyes. And taking consent from his unchanging eyes, she let
+go his hand and slightly opened the door. He turned slowly, and
+taking his coat from a nail, slung it over his shoulders and drew it
+on. Then he picked up his hat, and put his foot on his half-smoked
+cigarette, which lay smoking still. He followed her out of the room,
+walking with his head rather forward, in the half loutish,
+sensual-subjected way of the Italians.
+
+As they entered the street, they saw the trim, French figure of
+Madame standing alone, as if abandoned. Her face was very white
+under her spotted veil, her eyes very black. She watched Ciccio
+following behind Alvina in his dark, hangdog fashion, and she did
+not move a muscle until he came to a standstill in front of her. She
+was watching his face.
+
+"Te voil� donc!" she said, without expression. "Allons boire un
+caf�, h�? Let us go and drink some coffee." She had now put an
+inflection of tenderness into her voice. But her eyes were black
+with anger. Ciccio smiled slowly, the slow, fine, stupid smile, and
+turned to walk alongside.
+
+Madame said nothing as they went. Geoffrey passed on his bicycle,
+calling out that he would go straight to Woodhouse.
+
+When the three sat with their cups of coffee, Madame pushed up her
+veil just above her eyes, so that it was a black band above her
+brows. Her face was pale and full like a child's, but almost stonily
+expressionless, her eyes were black and inscrutable. She watched
+both Ciccio and Alvina with her black, inscrutable looks.
+
+"Would you like also biscuits with your coffee, the two of you?" she
+said, with an amiable intonation which her strange black looks
+belied.
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. She was a little flushed, as if defiant, while
+Ciccio sat sheepishly, turning aside his ducked head, the slow,
+stupid, yet fine smile on his lips.
+
+"And no more trouble with Max, hein?--you Ciccio?" said Madame,
+still with the amiable intonation and the same black, watching eyes.
+"No more of these stupid scenes, hein? What? Do you answer me."
+
+"No more from me," he said, looking up at her with a narrow,
+cat-like look in his derisive eyes.
+
+"Ho? No? No more? Good then! It is good! We are glad, aren't we,
+Miss Houghton, that Ciccio has come back and there are to be no
+more rows?--hein?--aren't we?"
+
+"_I'm_ awfully glad," said Alvina.
+
+"Awfully glad--yes--awfully glad! You hear, you Ciccio. And you
+remember another time. What? Don't you? H�?"
+
+He looked up at her, the slow, derisive smile curling his lips.
+
+"Sure," he said slowly, with subtle intonation.
+
+"Yes. Good! Well then! Well then! We are all friends. We are all
+friends, aren't we, all the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? H�? What you think?
+What you say?"
+
+"Yes," said Ciccio, again looking up at her with his yellow,
+glinting eyes.
+
+"All right! All right then! It is all right--forgotten--" Madame
+sounded quite frank and restored. But the sullen watchfulness in her
+eyes, and the narrowed look in Ciccio's, as he glanced at her,
+showed another state behind the obviousness of the words. "And Miss
+Houghton is one of us! Yes? She has united us once more, and so she
+has become one of us." Madame smiled strangely from her blank, round
+white face.
+
+"I should love to be one of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes--well--why not? Why not become one? Why not? What you say,
+Ciccio? You can play the piano, perhaps do other things. Perhaps
+better than Kishw�gin. What you say, Ciccio, should she not join us?
+Is she not one of us?"
+
+He smiled and showed his teeth but did not answer.
+
+"Well, what is it? Say then? Shall she not?"
+
+"Yes," said Ciccio, unwilling to commit himself.
+
+"Yes, so I say! So I say. Quite a good idea! We will think of it,
+and speak perhaps to your father, and you shall come! Yes."
+
+So the two women returned to Woodhouse by the tram-car, while Ciccio
+rode home on his bicycle. It was surprising how little Madame and
+Alvina found to say to one another.
+
+Madame effected the reunion of her troupe, and all seemed pretty
+much as before. She had decided to dance the next night, the
+Saturday night. On Sunday the party would leave for Warsall, about
+thirty miles away, to fulfil their next engagement.
+
+That evening Ciccio, whenever he had a moment to spare, watched
+Alvina. She knew it. But she could not make out what his watching
+meant. In the same way he might have watched a serpent, had he found
+one gliding in the theatre. He looked at her sideways, furtively,
+but persistently. And yet he did not want to meet her glance. He
+avoided her, and watched her. As she saw him standing, in his
+negligent, muscular, slouching fashion, with his head dropped
+forward, and his eyes sideways, sometimes she disliked him. But
+there was a sort of _finesse_ about his face. His skin was
+delicately tawny, and slightly lustrous. The eyes were set in so
+dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one
+met the yellow pupils, sulphureous and remote. It was like meeting a
+lion. His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling
+lips seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture. He was
+waiting: silent there, with something muscular and remote about his
+very droop, he was waiting. What for? Alvina could not guess. She
+wanted to meet his eye, to have an open understanding with him. But
+he would not. When she went up to talk to him, he answered in his
+stupid fashion, with a smile of the mouth and no change of the eyes,
+saying nothing at all. Obstinately he held away from her. When he
+was in his war-paint, for one moment she hated his muscular,
+handsome, downward-drooping torso: so stupid and full. The fine
+sharp uprightness of Max seemed much finer, clearer, more manly.
+Ciccio's velvety, suave heaviness, the very heave of his muscles, so
+full and softly powerful, sickened her.
+
+She flashed away angrily on her piano. Madame, who was dancing
+Kishw�gin on the last evening, cast sharp glances at her. Alvina had
+avoided Madame as Ciccio had avoided Alvina--elusive and yet
+conscious, a distance, and yet a connection.
+
+Madame danced beautifully. No denying it, she was an artist. She
+became something quite different: fresh, virginal, pristine, a magic
+creature flickering there. She was infinitely delicate and
+attractive. Her _braves_ became glamorous and heroic at once, and
+magically she cast her spell over them. It was all very well for
+Alvina to bang the piano crossly. She could not put out the glow
+which surrounded Kishw�gin and her troupe. Ciccio was handsome now:
+without war-paint, and roused, fearless and at the same time
+suggestive, a dark, mysterious glamour on his face, passionate and
+remote. A stranger--and so beautiful. Alvina flashed at the piano,
+almost in tears. She hated his beauty. It shut her apart. She had
+nothing to do with it.
+
+Madame, with her long dark hair hanging in finely-brushed tresses,
+her cheek burning under its dusky stain, was another creature. How
+soft she was on her feet. How humble and remote she seemed, as
+across a chasm from the men. How submissive she was, with an
+eternity of inaccessible submission. Her hovering dance round the
+dead bear was exquisite: her dark, secretive curiosity, her
+admiration of the massive, male strength of the creature, her
+quivers of triumph over the dead beast, her cruel exultation, and
+her fear that he was not really dead. It was a lovely sight,
+suggesting the world's morning, before Eve had bitten any
+white-fleshed apple, whilst she was still dusky, dark-eyed, and
+still. And then her stealthy sympathy with the white prisoner! Now
+indeed she was the dusky Eve tempted into knowledge. Her fascination
+was ruthless. She kneeled by the dead _brave_, her husband, as she
+had knelt by the bear: in fear and admiration and doubt and
+exultation. She gave him the least little push with her foot. Dead
+meat like the bear! And a flash of delight went over her, that
+changed into a sob of mortal anguish. And then, flickering, wicked,
+doubtful, she watched Ciccio wrestling with the bear.
+
+She was the clue to all the action, was Kishw�gin. And her dark
+_braves_ seemed to become darker, more secret, malevolent, burning
+with a cruel fire, and at the same time wistful, knowing their end.
+Ciccio laughed in a strange way, as he wrestled with the bear, as he
+had never laughed on the previous evenings. The sound went out into
+the audience, a soft, malevolent, derisive sound. And when the bear
+was supposed to have crushed him, and he was to have fallen, he
+reeled out of the bear's arms and said to Madame, in his derisive
+voice:
+
+"Vivo sempre, Madame." And then he fell.
+
+Madame stopped as if shot, hearing his words: "I am still alive,
+Madame." She remained suspended motionless, suddenly wilted. Then
+all at once her hand went to her mouth with a scream:
+
+"The Bear!"
+
+So the scene concluded itself. But instead of the tender,
+half-wistful triumph of Kishw�gin, a triumph electric as it should
+have been when she took the white man's hand and kissed it, there
+was a doubt, a hesitancy, a nullity, and Max did not quite know what
+to do.
+
+After the performance, neither Madame nor Max dared say anything to
+Ciccio about his innovation into the play. Louis felt he had to
+speak--it was left to him.
+
+"I say, Cic'--" he said, "why did you change the scene? It might
+have spoiled everything if Madame wasn't such a genius. Why did you
+say that?"
+
+"Why," said Ciccio, answering Louis' French in Italian, "I am tired
+of being dead, you see."
+
+Madame and Max heard in silence.
+
+When Alvina had played _God Save the King_ she went round behind the
+stage. But Ciccio and Geoffrey had already packed up the property,
+and left. Madame was talking to James Houghton. Louis and Max were
+busy together. Mr. May came to Alvina.
+
+"Well," he said. "That closes another week. I think we've done very
+well, in face of difficulties, don't you?"
+
+"Wonderfully," she said.
+
+But poor Mr. May spoke and looked pathetically. He seemed to feel
+forlorn. Alvina was not attending to him. Her eye was roving. She
+took no notice of him.
+
+Madame came up.
+
+"Well, Miss Houghton," she said, "time to say good-bye, I suppose."
+
+"How do you feel after dancing?" asked Alvina.
+
+"Well--not so strong as usual--but not so bad, you know. I shall be
+all right--thanks to you. I think your father is more ill than I. To
+me he looks very ill."
+
+"Father wears himself away," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, and when we are no longer young, there is not so much to wear.
+Well, I must thank you once more--"
+
+"What time do you leave in the morning?"
+
+"By the train at half-past ten. If it doesn't rain, the young men
+will cycle--perhaps all of them. Then they will go when they like--"
+
+"I will come round to say good-bye--" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh no--don't disturb yourself--"
+
+"Yes, I want to take home the things--the kettle for the bronchitis,
+and those things--"
+
+"Oh thank you very much--but don't trouble yourself. I will send
+Ciccio with them--or one of the others--"
+
+"I should like to say good-bye to you all," persisted Alvina.
+
+Madame glanced round at Max and Louis.
+
+"Are we not all here? No. The two have gone. No! Well! Well what
+time will you come?"
+
+"About nine?"
+
+"Very well, and I leave at ten. Very well. Then _au revoir_ till the
+morning. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," said Alvina. Her colour was rather flushed.
+
+She walked up with Mr. May, and hardly noticed he was there. After
+supper, when James Houghton had gone up to count his pennies, Alvina
+said to Miss Pinnegar:
+
+"Don't you think father looks rather seedy, Miss Pinnegar?"
+
+"I've been thinking so a long time," said Miss Pinnegar tartly.
+
+"What do you think he ought to do?"
+
+"He's killing himself down there, in all weathers and freezing in
+that box-office, and then the bad atmosphere. He's killing himself,
+that's all."
+
+"What can we do?"
+
+"Nothing so long as there's that place down there. Nothing at all."
+
+Alvina thought so too. So she went to bed.
+
+She was up in time, and watching the clock. It was a grey morning,
+but not raining. At five minutes to nine, she hurried off to Mrs.
+Rollings. In the back yard the bicycles were out, glittering and
+muddy according to their owners. Ciccio was crouching mending a
+tire, crouching balanced on his toes, near the earth. He turned like
+a quick-eared animal glancing up as she approached, but did not
+rise.
+
+"Are you getting ready to go?" she said, looking down at him. He
+screwed his head round to her unwillingly, upside down, his chin
+tilted up at her. She did not know him thus inverted. Her eyes
+rested on his face, puzzled. His chin seemed so large, aggressive.
+He was a little bit repellent and brutal, inverted. Yet she
+continued:
+
+"Would you help me to carry back the things we brought for Madame?"
+
+He rose to his feet, but did not look at her. He was wearing broken
+cycling shoes. He stood looking at his bicycle tube.
+
+"Not just yet," she said. "I want to say good-bye to Madame. Will
+you come in half an hour?"
+
+"Yes, I will come," he said, still watching his bicycle tube, which
+sprawled nakedly on the floor. The forward drop of his head was
+curiously beautiful to her, the straight, powerful nape of the neck,
+the delicate shape of the back of the head, the black hair. The way
+the neck sprang from the strong, loose shoulders was beautiful.
+There was something mindless but _intent_ about the forward reach of
+his head. His face seemed colourless, neutral-tinted and
+expressionless.
+
+She went indoors. The young men were moving about making
+preparations.
+
+"Come upstairs, Miss Houghton!" called Madame's voice from above.
+Alvina mounted, to find Madame packing.
+
+"It is an uneasy moment, when we are busy to move," said Madame,
+looking up at Alvina as if she were a stranger.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm in the way. But I won't stay a minute."
+
+"Oh, it is all right. Here are the things you brought--" Madame
+indicated a little pile--"and thank you _very_ much, _very_ much. I
+feel you saved my life. And now let me give you one little token of
+my gratitude. It is not much, because we are not millionaires in the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Just a little remembrance of our troublesome
+visit to Woodhouse."
+
+She presented Alvina with a pair of exquisite bead moccasins, woven
+in a weird, lovely pattern, with soft deerskin soles and sides.
+
+"They belong to Kishw�gin, so it is Kishw�gin who gives them to you,
+because she is grateful to you for saving her life, or at least from
+a long illness."
+
+"Oh--but I don't want to take them--" said Alvina.
+
+"You don't like them? Why?"
+
+"I think they're lovely, lovely! But I don't want to take them from
+you--"
+
+"If I give them, you do not take them from me. You receive them.
+H�?" And Madame pressed back the slippers, opening her plump
+jewelled hands in a gesture of finality.
+
+"But I don't like to take _these_," said Alvina. "I feel they belong
+to Natcha-Kee-Tawara. And I don't want to rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara, do
+I? Do take them back."
+
+"No, I have given them. You cannot rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara in taking a
+pair of shoes--impossible!"
+
+"And I'm sure they are much too small for me."
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed Madame. "It is that! Try."
+
+"I know they are," said Alvina, laughing confusedly.
+
+She sat down and took off her own shoe. The moccasin was a little
+too short--just a little. But it was charming on the foot, charming.
+
+"Yes," said Madame. "It is too short. Very well. I must find you
+something else."
+
+"Please don't," said Alvina. "Please don't find me anything. I don't
+want anything. Please!"
+
+"What?" said Madame, eyeing her closely. "You don't want? Why? You
+don't want anything from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, or from Kishw�gin? H�?
+From which?"
+
+"Don't give me anything, please," said Alvina.
+
+"All right! All right then. I won't. I won't give you anything. I
+can't give you anything you want from Natcha-Kee-Tawara."
+
+And Madame busied herself again with the packing.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry you are going," said Alvina.
+
+"Sorry? Why? Yes, so am I sorry we shan't see you any more. Yes, so
+I am. But perhaps we shall see you another time--h�? I shall send
+you a post-card. Perhaps I shall send one of the young men on his
+bicycle, to bring you something which I shall buy for you. Yes?
+Shall I?"
+
+"Oh! I should be awfully glad--but don't buy--" Alvina checked
+herself in time. "Don't buy anything. Send me a little thing from
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. I _love_ the slippers--"
+
+"But they are too small," said Madame, who had been watching her
+with black eyes that read every motive. Madame too had her
+avaricious side, and was glad to get back the slippers. "Very
+well--very well, I will do that. I will send you some small thing
+from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, and one of the young men shall bring it.
+Perhaps Ciccio? H�?"
+
+"Thank you _so_ much," said Alvina, holding out her hand. "Good-bye.
+I'm so sorry you're going."
+
+"Well--well! We are not going so very far. Not so very far. Perhaps
+we shall see each other another day. It may be. Good-bye!"
+
+Madame took Alvina's hand, and smiled at her winsomely all at once,
+kindly, from her inscrutable black eyes. A sudden unusual kindness.
+Alvina flushed with surprise and a desire to cry.
+
+"Yes. I am sorry you are not with Natcha-Kee-Tawara. But we shall
+see. Good-bye. I shall do my packing."
+
+Alvina carried down the things she had to remove. Then she went to
+say good-bye to the young men, who were in various stages of their
+toilet. Max alone was quite presentable.
+
+Ciccio was just putting on the outer cover of his front tire. She
+watched his brown thumbs press it into place. He was quick and sure,
+much more capable, and even masterful, than you would have supposed,
+seeing his tawny Mediterranean hands. He spun the wheel round,
+patting it lightly.
+
+"Is it finished?"
+
+"Yes, I think." He reached his pump and blew up the tire. She
+watched his softly-applied force. What physical, muscular force
+there was in him. Then he swung round the bicycle, and stood it
+again on its wheels. After which he quickly folded his tools.
+
+"Will you come now?" she said.
+
+He turned, rubbing his hands together, and drying them on an old
+cloth. He went into the house, pulled on his coat and his cap, and
+picked up the things from the table.
+
+"Where are you going?" Max asked.
+
+Ciccio jerked his head towards Alvina.
+
+"Oh, allow me to carry them, Miss Houghton. He is not fit--" said
+Max.
+
+True, Ciccio had no collar on, and his shoes were burst.
+
+"I don't mind," said Alvina hastily. "He knows where they go. He
+brought them before."
+
+"But I will carry them. I am dressed. Allow me--" and he began to
+take the things. "You get dressed, Ciccio."
+
+Ciccio looked at Alvina.
+
+"Do you want?" he said, as if waiting for orders.
+
+"Do let Ciccio take them," said Alvina to Max. "Thank you _ever_ so
+much. But let him take them."
+
+So Alvina marched off through the Sunday morning streets, with the
+Italian, who was down at heel and encumbered with an armful of
+sick-room apparatus. She did not know what to say, and he said
+nothing.
+
+"We will go in this way," she said, suddenly opening the hall door.
+She had unlocked it before she went out, for that entrance was
+hardly ever used. So she showed the Italian into the sombre
+drawing-room, with its high black bookshelves with rows and rows of
+calf-bound volumes, its old red and flowered carpet, its grand piano
+littered with music. Ciccio put down the things as she directed, and
+stood with his cap in his hands, looking aside.
+
+"Thank you so much," she said, lingering.
+
+He curled his lips in a faint deprecatory smile.
+
+"Nothing," he murmured.
+
+His eye had wandered uncomfortably up to a portrait on the wall.
+
+"That was my mother," said Alvina.
+
+He glanced down at her, but did not answer.
+
+"I am so sorry you're going away," she said nervously. She stood
+looking up at him with wide blue eyes.
+
+The faint smile grew on the lower part of his face, which he kept
+averted. Then he looked at her.
+
+"We have to move," he said, with his eyes watching her reservedly,
+his mouth twisting with a half-bashful smile.
+
+"Do you like continually going away?" she said, her wide blue eyes
+fixed on his face.
+
+He nodded slightly.
+
+"We have to do it. I like it."
+
+What he said meant nothing to him. He now watched her fixedly, with
+a slightly mocking look, and a reserve he would not relinquish.
+
+"Do you think I shall ever see you again?" she said.
+
+"Should you like--?" he answered, with a sly smile and a faint
+shrug.
+
+"I should like awfully--" a flush grew on her cheek. She heard Miss
+Pinnegar's scarcely audible step approaching.
+
+He nodded at her slightly, watching her fixedly, turning up the
+corners of his eyes slyly, his nose seeming slyly to sharpen.
+
+"All right. Next week, eh? In the morning?"
+
+"Do!" cried Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar came through the door. He
+glanced quickly over his shoulder.
+
+"Oh!" cried Miss Pinnegar. "I couldn't imagine who it was." She eyed
+the young fellow sharply.
+
+"Couldn't you?" said Alvina. "We brought back these things."
+
+"Oh yes. Well--you'd better come into the other room, to the fire,"
+said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"I shall go along. Good-bye!" said Ciccio, and with a slight bow to
+Alvina, and a still slighter to Miss Pinnegar, he was out of the
+room and out of the front door, as if turning tail.
+
+"I suppose they're going this morning," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE
+
+
+Alvina wept when the Natchas had gone. She loved them so much, she
+wanted to be with them. Even Ciccio she regarded as only one of the
+Natchas. She looked forward to his coming as to a visit from the
+troupe.
+
+How dull the theatre was without them! She was tired of the
+Endeavour. She wished it did not exist. The rehearsal on the Monday
+morning bored her terribly. Her father was nervous and irritable.
+The previous week had tried him sorely. He had worked himself into a
+state of nervous apprehension such as nothing would have justified,
+unless perhaps, if the wooden walls of the Endeavour had burnt to
+the ground, with James inside victimized like another Samson. He had
+developed a nervous horror of all artistes. He did not feel safe for
+one single moment whilst he depended on a single one of them.
+
+"We shall have to convert into all pictures," he said in a nervous
+fever to Mr. May. "Don't make any more engagements after the end of
+next month."
+
+"Really!" said Mr. May. "Really! Have you quite decided?"
+
+"Yes quite! Yes quite!" James fluttered. "I have written about a new
+machine, and the supply of films from Chanticlers."
+
+"Really!" said Mr. May. "Oh well then, in that case--" But he was
+filled with dismay and chagrin.
+
+"Of cauce," he said later to Alvina, "I can't _possibly_ stop on if
+we are nothing but a picture show!" And he arched his blanched and
+dismal eyelids with ghastly finality.
+
+"Why?" cried Alvina.
+
+"Oh--why!" He was rather ironic. "Well, it's not my line at _all_.
+I'm not a _film-operator_!" And he put his head on one side with a
+grimace of contempt and superiority.
+
+"But you are, as well," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, _as well_. But not _only_! You _may_ wash the dishes in the
+scullery. But you're not only the _char_, are you?"
+
+"But is it the same?" cried Alvina.
+
+"Of cauce!" cried Mr. May. "Of _cauce_ it's the same."
+
+Alvina laughed, a little heartlessly, into his pallid, stricken
+eyes.
+
+"But what will you do?" she asked.
+
+"I shall have to look for something else," said the injured but
+dauntless little man. "There's nothing _else_, is there?"
+
+"Wouldn't you stay on?" she asked.
+
+"I wouldn't think of it. I wouldn't think of it." He turtled like an
+injured pigeon.
+
+"Well," she said, looking laconically into his face: "It's between
+you and father--"
+
+"Of _cauce_!" he said. "Naturally! Where else--!" But his tone was a
+little spiteful, as if he had rested his last hopes on Alvina.
+
+Alvina went away. She mentioned the coming change to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar, judicious but aloof, "it's a move in the
+right direction. But I doubt if it'll do any good."
+
+"Do you?" said Alvina. "Why?"
+
+"I don't believe in the place, and I never did," declared Miss
+Pinnegar. "I don't believe any good will come of it."
+
+"But why?" persisted Alvina. "What makes you feel so sure about it?"
+
+"I don't know. But that's how I feel. And I have from the first. It
+was wrong from the first. It was wrong to begin it."
+
+"But why?" insisted Alvina, laughing.
+
+"Your father had no business to be led into it. He'd no business to
+touch this show business. It isn't like him. It doesn't belong to
+him. He's gone against his own nature and his own life."
+
+"Oh but," said Alvina, "father was a showman even in the shop. He
+always was. Mother said he was like a showman in a booth."
+
+Miss Pinnegar was taken aback.
+
+"Well!" she said sharply. "If _that's_ what you've seen in
+him!"--there was a pause. "And in that case," she continued tartly,
+"I think some of the showman has come out in his daughter! or
+show-woman!--which doesn't improve it, to my idea."
+
+"Why is it any worse?" said Alvina. "I enjoy it--and so does
+father."
+
+"No," cried Miss Pinnegar. "There you're wrong! There you make a
+mistake. It's all against his better nature."
+
+"Really!" said Alvina, in surprise. "What a new idea! But which is
+father's better nature?"
+
+"You may not know it," said Miss Pinnegar coldly, "and if so, I can
+never tell you. But that doesn't alter it." She lapsed into dead
+silence for a moment. Then suddenly she broke out, vicious and cold:
+"He'll go on till he's killed himself, and _then_ he'll know."
+
+The little adverb _then_ came whistling across the space like a
+bullet. It made Alvina pause. Was her father going to die? She
+reflected. Well, all men must die.
+
+She forgot the question in others that occupied her. First, could
+she bear it, when the Endeavour was turned into another cheap and
+nasty film-shop? The strange figures of the artistes passing under
+her observation had really entertained her, week by week. Some weeks
+they had bored her, some weeks she had detested them, but there was
+always a chance in the coming week. Think of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras!
+
+She thought too much of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She knew it. And she
+tried to force her mind to the contemplation of the new state of
+things, when she banged at the piano to a set of dithering and
+boring pictures. There would be her father, herself, and Mr. May--or
+a new operator, a new manager. The new manager!--she thought of him
+for a moment--and thought of the mechanical factory-faced persons
+who _managed_ Wright's and the Woodhouse Empire.
+
+But her mind fell away from this barren study. She was obsessed by
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. They seemed to have fascinated her. Which of
+them it was, or what it was that had cast the spell over her, she
+did not know. But she was as if hypnotized. She longed to be with
+them. Her soul gravitated towards them all the time.
+
+Monday passed, and Ciccio did not come: Tuesday passed: and
+Wednesday. In her soul she was sceptical of their keeping their
+promise--either Madame or Ciccio. Why should they keep their
+promise? She knew what these nomadic artistes were. And her soul was
+stubborn within her.
+
+On Wednesday night there was another sensation at the Endeavour. Mr.
+May found James Houghton fainting in the box-office after the
+performance had begun. What to do? He could not interrupt Alvina,
+nor the performance. He sent the chocolate-and-orange boy across to
+the Pear Tree for brandy.
+
+James revived. "I'm all right," he said, in a brittle fashion. "I'm
+all right. Don't bother." So he sat with his head on his hand in the
+box-office, and Mr. May had to leave him to operate the film.
+
+When the interval arrived, Mr. May hurried to the box-office, a
+narrow hole that James could just sit in, and there he found the
+invalid in the same posture, semi-conscious. He gave him more
+brandy.
+
+"I'm all right, I tell you," said James, his eyes flaring. "Leave me
+alone." But he looked anything but all right.
+
+Mr. May hurried for Alvina. When the daughter entered the ticket
+place, her father was again in a state of torpor.
+
+"Father," she said, shaking his shoulder gently. "What's the
+matter."
+
+He murmured something, but was incoherent. She looked at his face.
+It was grey and blank.
+
+"We shall have to get him home," she said. "We shall have to get a
+cab."
+
+"Give him a little brandy," said Mr. May.
+
+The boy was sent for the cab, James swallowed a spoonful of brandy.
+He came to himself irritably.
+
+"What? What," he said. "I won't have all this fuss. Go on with the
+performance, there's no need to bother about me." His eye was wild.
+
+"You must go home, father," said Alvina.
+
+"Leave me alone! Will you leave me alone! Hectored by women all my
+life--hectored by women--first one, then another. I won't stand
+it--I won't stand it--" He looked at Alvina with a look of frenzy as
+he lapsed again, fell with his head on his hands on his
+ticket-board. Alvina looked at Mr. May.
+
+"We must get him home," she said. She covered him up with a coat,
+and sat by him. The performance went on without music. At last the
+cab came. James, unconscious, was driven up to Woodhouse. He had to
+be carried indoors. Alvina hurried ahead to make a light in the dark
+passage.
+
+"Father's ill!" she announced to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Didn't I say so!" said Miss Pinnegar, starting from her chair.
+
+The two women went out to meet the cab-man, who had James in his
+arms.
+
+"Can you manage?" cried Alvina, showing a light.
+
+"He doesn't weigh much," said the man.
+
+"Tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu!" went Miss Pinnegar's tongue, in a rapid
+tut-tut of distress. "What have I said, now," she exclaimed. "What
+have I said all along?"
+
+James was laid on the sofa. His eyes were half-shut. They made him
+drink brandy, the boy was sent for the doctor, Alvina's bed was
+warmed. The sick man was got to bed. And then started another vigil.
+Alvina sat up in the sick room. James started and muttered, but did
+not regain consciousness. Dawn came, and he was the same. Pneumonia
+and pleurisy and a touch of meningitis. Alvina drank her tea, took a
+little breakfast, and went to bed at about nine o'clock in the
+morning, leaving James in charge of Miss Pinnegar. Time was all
+deranged.
+
+Miss Pinnegar was a nervous nurse. She sat in horror and
+apprehension, her eyebrows raised, starting and looking at James in
+terror whenever he made a noise. She hurried to him and did what she
+could. But one would have said she was repulsed, she found her task
+unconsciously repugnant.
+
+During the course of the morning Mrs. Rollings came up and said that
+the Italian from last week had come, and could he speak to Miss
+Houghton.
+
+"Tell him she's resting, and Mr. Houghton is seriously ill," said
+Miss Pinnegar sharply.
+
+When Alvina came downstairs at about four in the afternoon she found
+a package: a comb of carved bone, and a message from Madame: "To
+Miss Houghton, with kindest greetings and most sincere thanks from
+Kishw�gin."
+
+The comb with its carved, beast-faced serpent was her portion.
+Alvina asked if there had been any other message. None.
+
+Mr. May came in, and stayed for a dismal half-hour. Then Alvina went
+back to her nursing. The patient was no better, still unconscious.
+Miss Pinnegar came down, red eyed and sullen looking. The condition
+of James gave little room for hope.
+
+In the early morning he died. Alvina called Mrs. Rollings, and they
+composed the body. It was still only five o'clock, and not light.
+Alvina went to lie down in her father's little, rather chilly
+chamber at the end of the corridor. She tried to sleep, but could
+not. At half-past seven she arose, and started the business of the
+new day. The doctor came--she went to the registrar--and so on.
+
+Mr. May came. It was decided to keep open the theatre. He would find
+some one else for the piano, some one else to issue the tickets.
+
+In the afternoon arrived Frederick Houghton, James's cousin and
+nearest relative. He was a middle-aged, blond, florid, church-going
+draper from Knarborough, well-to-do and very _bourgeois_. He tried
+to talk to Alvina in a fatherly fashion, or a friendly, or a helpful
+fashion. But Alvina could not listen to him. He got on her nerves.
+
+Hearing the gate bang, she rose and hurried to the window. She was
+in the drawing-room with her cousin, to give the interview its
+proper air of solemnity. She saw Ciccio rearing his yellow bicycle
+against the wall, and going with his head forward along the narrow,
+dark way of the back yard, to the scullery door.
+
+"Excuse me a minute," she said to her cousin, who looked up
+irritably as she left the room.
+
+She was just in time to open the door as Ciccio tapped. She stood on
+the doorstep above him. He looked up, with a faint smile, from under
+his black lashes.
+
+"How nice of you to come," she said. But her face was blanched and
+tired, without expression. Only her large eyes looked blue in their
+tiredness, as she glanced down at Ciccio. He seemed to her far away.
+
+"Madame asks how is Mr. Houghton," he said.
+
+"Father! He died this morning," she said quietly.
+
+"He died!" exclaimed the Italian, a flash of fear and dismay going
+over his face.
+
+"Yes--this morning." She had neither tears nor emotion, but just
+looked down on him abstractedly, from her height on the kitchen
+step. He dropped his eyes and looked at his feet. Then he lifted his
+eyes again, and looked at her. She looked back at him, as from
+across a distance. So they watched each other, as strangers across a
+wide, abstract distance.
+
+He turned and looked down the dark yard, towards the gate where he
+could just see the pale grey tire of his bicycle, and the yellow
+mud-guard. He seemed to be reflecting. If he went now, he went for
+ever. Involuntarily he turned and lifted his face again towards Alvina,
+as if studying her curiously. She remained there on the doorstep,
+neutral, blanched, with wide, still, neutral eyes. She did not seem to
+see him. He studied her with alert, yellow-dusky, inscrutable eyes,
+until she met his look. And then he gave the faintest gesture with his
+head, as of summons towards him. Her soul started, and died in her. And
+again he gave the slight, almost imperceptible jerk of the head,
+backwards and sideways, as if summoning her towards him. His face too
+was closed and expressionless. But in his eyes, which kept hers, there
+was a dark flicker of ascendancy. He was going to triumph over her. She
+knew it. And her soul sank as if it sank out of her body. It sank away
+out of her body, left her there powerless, soulless.
+
+And yet as he turned, with his head stretched forward, to move away:
+as he glanced slightly over his shoulder: she stepped down from the
+step, down to his level, to follow him. He went ducking along the
+dark yard, nearly to the gate. Near the gate, near his bicycle, was
+a corner made by a shed. Here he turned, lingeringly, to her, and
+she lingered in front of him.
+
+Her eyes were wide and neutral and submissive, with a new, awful
+submission as if she had lost her soul. So she looked up at him,
+like a victim. There was a faint smile in his eyes. He stretched
+forward over her.
+
+"You love me? Yes?--Yes?" he said, in a voice that seemed like a
+palpable contact on her.
+
+"Yes," she whispered involuntarily, soulless, like a victim. He put
+his arm round her, subtly, and lifted her.
+
+"Yes," he re-echoed, almost mocking in his triumph. "Yes. Yes!" And
+smiling, he kissed her, delicately, with a certain finesse of
+knowledge. She moaned in spirit, in his arms, felt herself dead,
+dead. And he kissed her with a finesse, a passionate finesse which
+seemed like coals of fire on her head.
+
+They heard footsteps. Miss Pinnegar was coming to look for her.
+Ciccio set her down, looked long into her eyes, inscrutably,
+smiling, and said:
+
+"I come tomorrow."
+
+With which he ducked and ran out of the yard, picking up his bicycle
+like a feather, and, taking no notice of Miss Pinnegar, letting the
+yard-door bang to behind him.
+
+"Alvina!" said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+But Alvina did not answer. She turned, slipped past, ran indoors and
+upstairs to the little bare bedroom she had made her own. She locked
+the door and kneeled down on the floor, bowing down her head to her
+knees in a paroxysm on the floor. In a paroxysm--because she loved
+him. She doubled herself up in a paroxysm on her knees on the
+floor--because she loved him. It was far more like pain, like agony,
+than like joy. She swayed herself to and fro in a paroxysm of
+unbearable sensation, because she loved him.
+
+Miss Pinnegar came and knocked at the door.
+
+"Alvina! Alvina! Oh, you are there! Whatever are you doing? Aren't
+you coming down to speak to your cousin?"
+
+"Soon," said Alvina.
+
+And taking a pillow from the bed, she crushed it against herself and
+swayed herself unconsciously, in her orgasm of unbearable feeling.
+Right in her bowels she felt it--the terrible, unbearable feeling.
+How could she bear it.
+
+She crouched over until she became still. A moment of stillness
+seemed to cover her like sleep: an eternity of sleep in that one
+second. Then she roused and got up. She went to the mirror, still,
+evanescent, and tidied her hair, smoothed her face. She was so
+still, so remote, she felt that nothing, nothing could ever touch
+her.
+
+And so she went downstairs, to that horrible cousin of her father's.
+She seemed so intangible, remote and virginal, that her cousin and
+Miss Pinnegar both failed to make anything of her. She answered
+their questions simply, but did not talk. They talked to each other.
+And at last the cousin went away, with a profound dislike of Miss
+Alvina.
+
+She did not notice. She was only glad he was gone. And she went
+about for the rest of the day elusive and vague. She slept deeply
+that night, without dreams.
+
+The next day was Saturday. It came with a great storm of wind and
+rain and hail: a fury. Alvina looked out in dismay. She knew Ciccio
+would not be able to come--he could not cycle, and it was impossible
+to get by train and return the same day. She was almost relieved.
+She was relieved by the intermission of fate, she was thankful for
+the day of neutrality.
+
+In the early afternoon came a telegram: Coming both tomorrow morning
+deepest sympathy Madame. Tomorrow was Sunday: and the funeral was in
+the afternoon. Alvina felt a burning inside her, thinking of Ciccio.
+She winced--and yet she wanted him to come. Terribly she wanted him
+to come.
+
+She showed the telegram to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Good gracious!" said the weary Miss Pinnegar. "Fancy those people.
+And I warrant they'll want to be at the funeral. As if he was
+anything to _them_--"
+
+"I think it's very nice of her," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh well," said Miss Pinnegar. "If you think so. I don't fancy he
+would have wanted such people following, myself. And what does she
+mean by _both_. Who's the other?" Miss Pinnegar looked sharply at
+Alvina.
+
+"Ciccio," said Alvina.
+
+"The Italian! Why goodness me! What's _he_ coming for? I can't make
+you out, Alvina. Is that his name, Chicho? I never heard such a
+name. Doesn't sound like a name at all to me. There won't be room
+for them in the cabs."
+
+"We'll order another."
+
+"More expense. I never knew such impertinent people--"
+
+But Alvina did not hear her. On the next morning she dressed herself
+carefully in her new dress. It was black voile. Carefully she did
+her hair. Ciccio and Madame were coming. The thought of Ciccio made
+her shudder. She hung about, waiting. Luckily none of the funeral
+guests would arrive till after one o'clock. Alvina sat listless,
+musing, by the fire in the drawing-room. She left everything now to
+Miss Pinnegar and Mrs. Rollings. Miss Pinnegar, red-eyed and
+yellow-skinned, was irritable beyond words.
+
+It was nearly mid-day when Alvina heard the gate. She hurried to
+open the front door. Madame was in her little black hat and her
+black spotted veil, Ciccio in a black overcoat was closing the yard
+door behind her.
+
+"Oh, my dear girl!" Madame cried, trotting forward with outstretched
+black-kid hands, one of which held an umbrella: "I am so shocked--I
+am so shocked to hear of your poor father. Am I to believe it?--am I
+really? No, I can't."
+
+She lifted her veil, kissed Alvina, and dabbed her eyes. Ciccio came
+up the steps. He took off his hat to Alvina, smiled slightly as he
+passed her. He looked rather pale, constrained. She closed the door
+and ushered them into the drawing-room.
+
+Madame looked round like a bird, examining the room and the
+furniture. She was evidently a little impressed. But all the time
+she was uttering her condolences.
+
+"Tell me, poor girl, how it happened?"
+
+"There isn't much to tell," said Alvina, and she gave the brief
+account of James's illness and death.
+
+"Worn out! Worn out!" Madame said, nodding slowly up and down. Her
+black veil, pushed up, sagged over her brows like a mourning band.
+"You cannot afford to waste the stamina. And will you keep on the
+theatre--with Mr. May--?"
+
+Ciccio was sitting looking towards the fire. His presence made
+Alvina tremble. She noticed how the fine black hair of his head
+showed no parting at all--it just grew like a close cap, and was
+pushed aside at the forehead. Sometimes he looked at her, as Madame
+talked, and again looked at her, and looked away.
+
+At last Madame came to a halt. There was a long pause.
+
+"You will stay to the funeral?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh my dear, we shall be too much--"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I have arranged for you--"
+
+"There! You think of everything. But I will come, not Ciccio. He
+will not trouble you."
+
+Ciccio looked up at Alvina.
+
+"I should like him to come," said Alvina simply. But a deep flush
+began to mount her face. She did not know where it came from, she
+felt so cold. And she wanted to cry.
+
+Madame watched her closely.
+
+"Siamo di accordo," came the voice of Ciccio.
+
+Alvina and Madame both looked at him. He sat constrained, with his
+face averted, his eyes dropped, but smiling.
+
+Madame looked closely at Alvina.
+
+"Is it true what he says?" she asked.
+
+"I don't understand him," said Alvina. "I don't understand what he
+said."
+
+"That you have agreed with him--"
+
+Madame and Ciccio both watched Alvina as she sat in her new black
+dress. Her eyes involuntarily turned to his.
+
+"I don't know," she said vaguely. "Have I--?" and she looked at him.
+
+Madame kept silence for some moments. Then she said gravely:
+
+"Well!--yes!--well!" She looked from one to another. "Well, there is
+a lot to consider. But if you have decided--"
+
+Neither of them answered. Madame suddenly rose and went to Alvina.
+She kissed her on either cheek.
+
+"I shall protect you," she said.
+
+Then she returned to her seat.
+
+"What have you said to Miss Houghton?" she said suddenly to Ciccio,
+tackling him direct, and speaking coldly.
+
+He looked at Madame with a faint derisive smile. Then he turned to
+Alvina. She bent her head and blushed.
+
+"Speak then," said Madame, "you have a reason." She seemed
+mistrustful of him.
+
+But he turned aside his face, and refused to speak, sitting as if he
+were unaware of Madame's presence.
+
+"Oh well," said Madame. "I shall be there, Signorino."
+
+She spoke with a half-playful threat. Ciccio curled his lip.
+
+"You do not know him yet," she said, turning to Alvina.
+
+"I know that," said Alvina, offended. Then she added: "Wouldn't you
+like to take off your hat?"
+
+"If you truly wish me to stay," said Madame.
+
+"Yes, please do. And will you hang your coat in the hall?" she said
+to Ciccio.
+
+"Oh!" said Madame roughly. "He will not stay to eat. He will go out
+to somewhere."
+
+Alvina looked at him.
+
+"Would you rather?" she said.
+
+He looked at her with sardonic yellow eyes.
+
+"If you want," he said, the awkward, derisive smile curling his lips
+and showing his teeth.
+
+She had a moment of sheer panic. Was he just stupid and bestial? The
+thought went clean through her. His yellow eyes watched her
+sardonically. It was the clean modelling of his dark, other-world
+face that decided her--for it sent the deep spasm across her.
+
+"I'd like you to stay," she said.
+
+A smile of triumph went over his face. Madame watched him stonily as
+she stood beside her chair, one hand lightly balanced on her hip.
+Alvina was reminded of Kishw�gin. But even in Madame's stony
+mistrust there was an element of attraction towards him. He had
+taken his cigarette case from his pocket.
+
+"On ne fume pas dans le salon," said Madame brutally.
+
+"Will you put your coat in the passage?--and do smoke if you wish,"
+said Alvina.
+
+He rose to his feet and took off his overcoat. His face was
+obstinate and mocking. He was rather floridly dressed, though in
+black, and wore boots of black patent leather with tan uppers.
+Handsome he was--but undeniably in bad taste. The silver ring was
+still on his finger--and his close, fine, unparted hair went badly
+with smart English clothes. He looked common--Alvina confessed it.
+And her heart sank. But what was she to do? He evidently was not
+happy. Obstinacy made him stick out the situation.
+
+Alvina and Madame went upstairs. Madame wanted to see the dead
+James. She looked at his frail, handsome, ethereal face, and crossed
+herself as she wept.
+
+"Un bel homme, cependant," she whispered. "Mort en un jour. C'est
+trop fort, voyez!" And she sniggered with fear and sobs.
+
+They went down to Alvina's bare room. Madame glanced round, as she
+did in every room she entered.
+
+"This was father's bedroom," said Alvina. "The other was mine. He
+wouldn't have it anything but like this--bare."
+
+"Nature of a monk, a hermit," whispered Madame. "Who would have
+thought it! Ah, the men, the men!"
+
+And she unpinned her hat and patted her hair before the small
+mirror, into which she had to peep to see herself. Alvina stood
+waiting.
+
+"And now--" whispered Madame, suddenly turning: "What about this
+Ciccio, hein?" It was ridiculous that she would not raise her voice
+above a whisper, upstairs there. But so it was.
+
+She scrutinized Alvina with her eyes of bright black glass. Alvina
+looked back at her, but did not know what to say.
+
+"What about him, hein? Will you marry him? Why will you?"
+
+"I suppose because I like him," said Alvina, flushing.
+
+Madame made a little grimace.
+
+"Oh yes!" she whispered, with a contemptuous mouth. "Oh
+yes!--because you like him! But you know nothing _of_ him--nothing.
+How can you like him, not knowing him? He may be a real bad
+character. How would you like him then?"
+
+"He isn't, is he?" said Alvina.
+
+"I don't know. I don't know. He may be. Even I, I don't know
+him--no, though he has been with me for three years. What is he? He
+is a man of the people, a boatman, a labourer, an artist's model. He
+sticks to nothing--"
+
+"How old is he?" asked Alvina.
+
+"He is twenty-five--a boy only. And you? You are older."
+
+"Thirty," confessed Alvina.
+
+"Thirty! Well now--so much difference! How can you trust him? How
+can you? Why does he want to marry you--why?"
+
+"I don't know--" said Alvina.
+
+"No, and I don't know. But I know something of these Italian men,
+who are labourers in every country, just labourers and under-men
+always, always down, down, down--" And Madame pressed her spread
+palms downwards. "And so--when they have a chance to come up--" she
+raised her hand with a spring--"they are very conceited, and they
+take their chance. He will want to rise, by you, and you will go
+down, with him. That is how it is. I have seen it before--yes--more
+than one time--"
+
+"But," said Alvina, laughing ruefully. "He can't rise much because
+of me, can he?"
+
+"How not? How not? In the first place, you are English, and he
+thinks to rise by that. Then you are not of the lower class, you are
+of the higher class, the class of the masters, such as employ Ciccio
+and men like him. How will he not rise in the world by you? Yes, he
+will rise very much. Or he will draw you down, down--Yes, one or
+another. And then he thinks that now you have money--now your father
+is dead--" here Madame glanced apprehensively at the closed
+door--"and they all like money, yes, very much, all Italians--"
+
+"Do they?" said Alvina, scared. "I'm sure there won't _be_ any
+money. I'm sure father is in debt."
+
+"What? You think? Do you? Really? Oh poor Miss Houghton! Well--and
+will you tell Ciccio that? Eh? Hein?"
+
+"Yes--certainly--if it matters," said poor Alvina.
+
+"Of course it matters. Of course it matters very much. It matters to
+him. Because he will not have much. He saves, saves, saves, as they
+all do, to go back to Italy and buy a piece of land. And if he has
+you, it will cost him much more, he cannot continue with
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. All will be much more difficult--"
+
+"Oh, I will tell him in time," said Alvina, pale at the lips.
+
+"You will tell him! Yes. That is better. And then you will see. But
+he is obstinate--as a mule. And if he will still have you, then you
+must think. Can you live in England as the wife of a labouring man,
+a dirty Eyetalian, as they all say? It is serious. It is not
+pleasant for you, who have not known it. I also have not known it.
+But I have seen--" Alvina watched with wide, troubled eyes, while
+Madame darted looks, as from bright, deep black glass.
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. "I should hate being a labourer's wife in a
+nasty little house in a street--"
+
+"In a house?" cried Madame. "It would not be in a house. They live
+many together in one house. It would be two rooms, or even one room,
+in another house with many people not quite clean, you see--"
+
+Alvina shook her head.
+
+"I couldn't stand that," she said finally.
+
+"No!" Madame nodded approval. "No! you could not. They live in a bad
+way, the Italians. They do not know the English home--never. They
+don't like it. Nor do they know the Swiss clean and proper house.
+No. They don't understand. They run into their holes to sleep or to
+shelter, and that is all."
+
+"The same in Italy?" said Alvina.
+
+"Even more--because there it is sunny very often--"
+
+"And you don't need a house," said Alvina. "I should like that."
+
+"Yes, it is nice--but you don't know the life. And you would be
+alone with people like animals. And if you go to Italy he will beat
+you--he will beat you--"
+
+"If I let him," said Alvina.
+
+"But you can't help it, away there from everybody. Nobody will help
+you. If you are a wife in Italy, nobody will help you. You are his
+property, when you marry by Italian law. It is not like England.
+There is no divorce in Italy. And if he beats you, you are
+helpless--"
+
+"But why should he beat me?" said Alvina. "Why should he want to?"
+
+"They do. They are so jealous. And then they go into their
+ungovernable tempers, horrible tempers--"
+
+"Only when they are provoked," said Alvina, thinking of Max.
+
+"Yes, but you will not know what provokes him. Who can _say_ when he
+will be provoked? And then he beats you--"
+
+There seemed to be a gathering triumph in Madame's bright black
+eyes. Alvina looked at her, and turned to the door.
+
+"At any rate I know now," she said, in rather a flat voice.
+
+"And it is _true_. It is all of it true," whispered Madame
+vindictively. Alvina wanted to run from her.
+
+"I _must_ go to the kitchen," she said. "Shall we go down?"
+
+Alvina did not go into the drawing-room with Madame. She was too
+much upset, and she had almost a horror of seeing Ciccio at that
+moment.
+
+Miss Pinnegar, her face stained carmine by the fire, was helping
+Mrs. Rollings with the dinner.
+
+"Are they both staying, or only one?" she said tartly.
+
+"Both," said Alvina, busying herself with the gravy, to hide her
+distress and confusion.
+
+"The man as well," said Miss Pinnegar. "What does the woman want to
+bring _him_ for? I'm sure I don't know what your father would say--a
+common show-fellow, _looks_ what he is--and staying to dinner."
+
+Miss Pinnegar was thoroughly out of temper as she tried the
+potatoes. Alvina set the table. Then she went to the drawing-room.
+
+"Will you come to dinner?" she said to her two guests.
+
+Ciccio rose, threw his cigarette into the fire, and looked round.
+Outside was a faint, watery sunshine: but at least it was out of
+doors. He felt himself imprisoned and out of his element. He had an
+irresistible impulse to go.
+
+When he got into the hall he laid his hand on his hat. The stupid,
+constrained smile was on his face.
+
+"I'll go now," he said.
+
+"We have set the table for you," said Alvina.
+
+"Stop now, since you have stopped for so long," said Madame, darting
+her black looks at him.
+
+But he hurried on his coat, looking stupid. Madame lifted her
+eyebrows disdainfully.
+
+"This is polite behaviour!" she said sarcastically.
+
+Alvina stood at a loss.
+
+"You return to the funeral?" said Madame coldly.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"When you are ready to go," he said.
+
+"At four o'clock," said Madame, "when the funeral has come home.
+Then we shall be in time for the train."
+
+He nodded, smiled stupidly, opened the door, and went.
+
+"This is just like him, to be so--so--" Madame could not express
+herself as she walked down to the kitchen.
+
+"Miss Pinnegar, this is Madame," said Alvina.
+
+"How do you do?" said Miss Pinnegar, a little distant and
+condescending. Madame eyed her keenly.
+
+"Where is the man? I don't know his name," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"He wouldn't stay," said Alvina. "What _is_ his name, Madame?"
+
+"Marasca--Francesco. Francesco Marasca--Neapolitan."
+
+"Marasca!" echoed Alvina.
+
+"It has a bad sound--a sound of a bad augury, bad sign," said
+Madame. "Ma-r�-sca!" She shook her head at the taste of the
+syllables.
+
+"Why do you think so?" said Alvina. "Do you think there is a meaning
+in sounds? goodness and badness?"
+
+"Yes," said Madame. "Certainly. Some sounds are good, they are for
+life, for creating, and some sounds are bad, they are for
+destroying. Ma-r�-sca!--that is bad, like swearing."
+
+"But what sort of badness? What does it do?" said Alvina.
+
+"What does it do? It sends life down--down--instead of lifting it
+up."
+
+"Why should things always go up? Why should life always go up?" said
+Alvina.
+
+"I don't know," said Madame, cutting her meat quickly. There was a
+pause.
+
+"And what about other names," interrupted Miss Pinnegar, a little
+lofty. "What about Houghton, for example?"
+
+Madame put down her fork, but kept her knife in her hand. She looked
+across the room, not at Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Houghton--! Huff-ton!" she said. "When it is said, it has a sound
+_against_: that is, against the neighbour, against humanity. But
+when it is written _Hough-ton!_ then it is different, it is _for_."
+
+"It is always pronounced _Huff-ton_," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"By us," said Alvina.
+
+"We ought to know," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Madame turned to look at the unhappy, elderly woman.
+
+"You are a relative of the family?" she said.
+
+"No, not a relative. But I've been here many years," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Madame. Miss Pinnegar was frightfully affronted. The
+meal, with the three women at table, passed painfully.
+
+Miss Pinnegar rose to go upstairs and weep. She felt very forlorn.
+Alvina rose to wipe the dishes, hastily, because the funeral guests
+would all be coming. Madame went into the drawing-room to smoke her
+sly cigarette.
+
+Mr. May was the first to turn up for the lugubrious affair: very
+tight and tailored, but a little extinguished, all in black. He
+never wore black, and was very unhappy in it, being almost morbidly
+sensitive to the impression the colour made on him. He was set to
+entertain Madame.
+
+She did not pretend distress, but sat black-eyed and watchful, very
+much her business self.
+
+"What about the theatre?--will it go on?" she asked.
+
+"Well I don't know. I don't know Miss Houghton's intentions," said
+Mr. May. He was a little stilted today.
+
+"It's hers?" said Madame.
+
+"Why, as far as I understand--"
+
+"And if she wants to sell out--?"
+
+Mr. May spread his hands, and looked dismal, but distant.
+
+"You should form a company, and carry on--" said Madame.
+
+Mr. May looked even more distant, drawing himself up in an odd
+fashion, so that he looked as if he were trussed. But Madame's
+shrewd black eyes and busy mind did not let him off.
+
+"Buy Miss Houghton out--" said Madame shrewdly.
+
+"Of cauce," said Mr. May. "Miss Houghton herself must decide."
+
+"Oh sure--! You--are you married?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Your wife here?"
+
+"My wife is in London."
+
+"And children--?"
+
+"A daughter."
+
+Madame slowly nodded her head up and down, as if she put thousands
+of two-and-two's together.
+
+"You think there will be much to come to Miss Houghton?" she said.
+
+"Do you mean property? I really can't say. I haven't enquired."
+
+"No, but you have a good idea, eh?"
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't.
+
+"No! Well! It won't be much, then?"
+
+"Really, I don't know. I should say, not a _large_ fortune--!"
+
+"No--eh?" Madame kept him fixed with her black eyes. "Do you think
+the other one will get anything?"
+
+"The _other one_--?" queried Mr. May, with an uprising cadence.
+Madame nodded slightly towards the kitchen.
+
+"The old one--the Miss--Miss Pin--Pinny--what you call her."
+
+"Miss Pinnegar! The manageress of the work-girls? Really, I don't
+know at all--" Mr. May was most freezing.
+
+"Ha--ha! Ha--ha!" mused Madame quietly. Then she asked: "Which
+work-girls do you say?"
+
+And she listened astutely to Mr. May's forced account of the
+work-room upstairs, extorting all the details she desired to gather.
+Then there was a pause. Madame glanced round the room.
+
+"Nice house!" she said. "Is it their own?"
+
+"So I _believe_--"
+
+Again Madame nodded sagely. "Debts perhaps--eh? Mortgage--" and she
+looked slyly sardonic.
+
+"Really!" said Mr. May, bouncing to his feet. "Do you mind if I go
+to speak to Mrs. Rollings--"
+
+"Oh no--go along," said Madame, and Mr. May skipped out in a temper.
+
+
+
+Madame was left alone in her comfortable chair, studying details of
+the room and making accounts in her own mind, until the actual
+funeral guests began to arrive. And then she had the satisfaction of
+sizing them up. Several arrived with wreaths. The coffin had been
+carried down and laid in the small sitting-room--Mrs. Houghton's
+sitting-room. It was covered with white wreaths and streamers of
+purple ribbon. There was a crush and a confusion.
+
+And then at last the hearse and the cabs had arrived--the coffin was
+carried out--Alvina followed, on the arm of her father's cousin,
+whom she disliked. Miss Pinnegar marshalled the other mourners. It
+was a wretched business.
+
+But it was a great funeral. There were nine cabs, besides the
+hearse--Woodhouse had revived its ancient respect for the house of
+Houghton. A posse of minor tradesmen followed the cabs--all in black
+and with black gloves. The richer tradesmen sat in the cabs.
+
+Poor Alvina, this was the only day in all her life when she was the
+centre of public attention. For once, every eye was upon her, every
+mind was thinking about her. Poor Alvina! said every member of the
+Woodhouse "middle class": Poor Alvina Houghton, said every collier's
+wife. Poor thing, left alone--and hardly a penny to bless herself
+with. Lucky if she's not left with a pile of debts. James Houghton
+ran through some money in his day. Ay, if she had her rights she'd
+be a rich woman. Why, her mother brought three or four thousands
+with her. Ay, but James sank it all in Throttle-Ha'penny and
+Klondyke and the Endeavour. Well, he was his own worst enemy. He
+paid his way. I'm not so sure about that. Look how he served his
+wife, and now Alvina. I'm not so sure he was his own worst enemy. He
+was bad enough enemy to his own flesh and blood. Ah well, he'll
+spend no more money, anyhow. No, he went sudden, didn't he? But he
+was getting very frail, if you noticed. Oh yes, why he fair seemed
+to totter down to Lumley. Do you reckon as that place pays its way?
+What, the Endeavour?--they say it does. They say it makes a nice
+bit. Well, it's mostly pretty full. Ay, it is. Perhaps it won't be
+now Mr. Houghton's gone. Perhaps not. I wonder if he _will_ leave
+much. I'm sure he won't. Everything he's got's mortgaged up to the
+hilt. He'll leave debts, you see if he doesn't. What is she going to
+do then? She'll have to go out of Manchester House--her and Miss
+Pinnegar. Wonder what she'll do. Perhaps she'll take up that
+nursing. She never made much of that, did she--and spent a sight of
+money on her training, they say. She's a bit like her father in the
+business line--all flukes. Pity some nice young man doesn't turn up
+and marry her. I don't know, she doesn't seem to hook on, does she?
+Why she's never had a proper boy. They make out she was engaged
+once. Ay, but nobody ever saw him, and it was off as soon as it was
+on. Can you remember she went with Albert Witham for a bit. Did she?
+No, I never knew. When was that? Why, when he was at Oxford, you
+know, learning for his head master's place. Why didn't she marry him
+then? Perhaps he never asked her. Ay, there's that to it. She'd have
+looked down her nose at him, times gone by. Ay, but that's all over,
+my boy. She'd snap at anybody now. Look how she carries on with that
+manager. Why, _that's_ something awful. Haven't you ever watched her
+in the Cinema? She never lets him alone. And it's anybody alike. Oh,
+she doesn't respect herself. I don't consider. No girl who respected
+herself would go on as she does, throwing herself at every feller's
+head. Does she, though? Ay, any performer or anybody. She's a tidy
+age, though. She's not much chance of getting off. How old do you
+reckon she is? Must be well over thirty. You never say. Well, she
+_looks_ it. She does beguy--a dragged old maid. Oh but she
+sprightles up a bit sometimes. Ay, when she thinks she's hooked on
+to somebody. I wonder why she never did take? It's funny. Oh, she
+was too high and mighty before, and now it's too late. Nobody wants
+her. And she's got no relations to go to either, has she? No, that's
+her father's cousin who she's walking with. Look, they're coming.
+He's a fine-looking man, isn't he? You'd have thought they'd have
+buried Miss Frost beside Mrs. Houghton. You would, wouldn't you? I
+should think Alvina will lie by Miss Frost. They say the grave was
+made for both of them. Ay, she was a lot more of a mother to her
+than her own mother. She _was_ good to them, Miss Frost was. Alvina
+thought the world of her. That's her stone--look, down there. Not a
+very grand one, considering. No, it isn't. Look, there's room for
+Alvina's name underneath. Sh!--
+
+Alvina had sat back in the cab and watched from her obscurity the
+many faces on the street: so familiar, so familiar, familiar as her
+own face. And now she seemed to see them from a great distance, out
+of her darkness. Her big cousin sat opposite her--how she disliked
+his presence.
+
+In chapel she cried, thinking of her mother, and Miss Frost, and her
+father. She felt so desolate--it all seemed so empty. Bitterly she
+cried, when she bent down during the prayer. And her crying started
+Miss Pinnegar, who cried almost as bitterly. It was all rather
+horrible. The afterwards--the horrible afterwards.
+
+There was the slow progress to the cemetery. It was a dull, cold
+day. Alvina shivered as she stood on the bleak hillside, by the open
+grave. Her coat did not seem warm enough, her old black seal-skin
+furs were not much protection. The minister stood on the plank by
+the grave, and she stood near, watching the white flowers blowing in
+the cold wind. She had watched them for her mother--and for Miss
+Frost. She felt a sudden clinging to Miss Pinnegar. Yet they would
+have to part. Miss Pinnegar had been so fond of her father, in a
+quaint, reserved way. Poor Miss Pinnegar, that was all life had
+offered her. Well, after all, it had been a home and a home life. To
+which home and home life Alvina now clung with a desperate yearning,
+knowing inevitably she was going to lose it, now her father was
+gone. Strange, that he was gone. But he was weary, worn very thin
+and weary. He had lived his day. How different it all was, now, at
+his death, from the time when Alvina knew him as a little child and
+thought him such a fine gentleman. You live and learn and lose.
+
+For one moment she looked at Madame, who was shuddering with cold,
+her face hidden behind her black spotted veil. But Madame seemed
+immensely remote: so unreal. And Ciccio--what was his name? She
+could not think of it. What was it? She tried to think of Madame's
+slow enunciation. Marasca--maraschino. Marasca! Maraschino! What was
+maraschino? Where had she heard it. Cudgelling her brains, she
+remembered the doctors, and the suppers after the theatre. And
+maraschino--why, that was the favourite white liqueur of the
+innocent Dr. Young. She could remember even now the way he seemed to
+smack his lips, saying the word _maraschino_. Yet she didn't think
+much of it. Hot, bitterish stuff--nothing: not like green
+Chartreuse, which Dr. James gave her. Maraschino! Yes, that was it.
+Made from cherries. Well, Ciccio's name was nearly the same.
+Ridiculous! But she supposed Italian words were a good deal alike.
+
+Ciccio, the marasca, the bitter cherry, was standing on the edge of
+the crowd, looking on. He had no connection whatever with the
+proceedings--stood outside, self-conscious, uncomfortable, bitten by
+the wind, and hating the people who stared at him. He saw the trim,
+plump figure of Madame, like some trim plump partridge among a flock
+of barn-yard fowls. And he depended on her presence. Without her, he
+would have felt too horribly uncomfortable on that raw hillside. She
+and he were in some way allied. But these others, how alien and
+uncouth he felt them. Impressed by their fine clothes, the English
+working-classes were none the less barbarians to him, uncivilized:
+just as he was to them an uncivilized animal. Uncouth, they seemed
+to him, all raw angles and harshness, like their own weather. Not
+that he thought about them. But he felt it in his flesh, the
+harshness and discomfort of them. And Alvina was one of them. As she
+stood there by the grave, pale and pinched and reserved looking, she
+was of a piece with the hideous cold grey discomfort of the whole
+scene. Never had anything been more uncongenial to him. He was dying
+to get away--to clear out. That was all he wanted. Only some
+southern obstinacy made him watch, from the duskiness of his face,
+the pale, reserved girl at the grave. Perhaps he even disliked her,
+at that time. But he watched in his dislike.
+
+When the ceremony was over, and the mourners turned away to go back
+to the cabs, Madame pressed forward to Alvina.
+
+"I shall say good-bye now, Miss Houghton. We must go to the station
+for the train. And thank you, thank you. Good-bye."
+
+"But--" Alvina looked round.
+
+"Ciccio is there. I see him. We must catch the train."
+
+"Oh but--won't you drive? Won't you ask Ciccio to drive with you in
+the cab? Where is he?"
+
+Madame pointed him out as he hung back among the graves, his black
+hat cocked a little on one side. He was watching. Alvina broke away
+from her cousin, and went to him.
+
+"Madame is going to drive to the station," she said. "She wants you
+to get in with her."
+
+He looked round at the cabs.
+
+"All right," he said, and he picked his way across the graves to
+Madame, following Alvina.
+
+"So, we go together in the cab," said Madame to him. Then:
+"Good-bye, my dear Miss Houghton. Perhaps we shall meet once more.
+Who knows? My heart is with you, my dear." She put her arms round
+Alvina and kissed her, a little theatrically. The cousin looked on,
+very much aloof. Ciccio stood by.
+
+"Come then, Ciccio," said Madame.
+
+"Good-bye," said Alvina to him. "You'll come again, won't you?" She
+looked at him from her strained, pale face.
+
+"All right," he said, shaking her hand loosely. It sounded
+hopelessly indefinite.
+
+"You will come, won't you?" she repeated, staring at him with
+strained, unseeing blue eyes.
+
+"All right," he said, ducking and turning away.
+
+She stood quite still for a moment, quite lost. Then she went on
+with her cousin to her cab, home to the funeral tea.
+
+"Good-bye!" Madame fluttered a black-edged handkerchief. But Ciccio,
+most uncomfortable in his four-wheeler, kept hidden.
+
+The funeral tea, with its baked meats and sweets, was a terrible
+affair. But it came to an end, as everything comes to an end, and
+Miss Pinnegar and Alvina were left alone in the emptiness of
+Manchester House.
+
+"If you weren't here, Miss Pinnegar, I should be quite by myself,"
+said Alvina, blanched and strained.
+
+"Yes. And so should I without you," said Miss Pinnegar doggedly.
+They looked at each other. And that night both slept in Miss
+Pinnegar's bed, out of sheer terror of the empty house.
+
+During the days following the funeral, no one could have been more
+tiresome than Alvina. James had left everything to his daughter,
+excepting some rights in the work-shop, which were Miss Pinnegar's.
+But the question was, how much did "everything" amount to? There
+was something less than a hundred pounds in the bank. There was a
+mortgage on Manchester House. There were substantial bills owing on
+account of the Endeavour. Alvina had about a hundred pounds left
+from the insurance money, when all funeral expenses were paid. Of
+that she was sure, and of nothing else.
+
+For the rest, she was almost driven mad by people coming to talk to
+her. The lawyer came, the clergyman came, her cousin came, the old,
+stout, prosperous tradesmen of Woodhouse came, Mr. May came, Miss
+Pinnegar came. And they all had schemes, and they all had advice.
+The chief plan was that the theatre should be sold up: and that
+Manchester House should be sold, reserving a lease on the top floor,
+where Miss Pinnegar's work-rooms were: that Miss Pinnegar and Alvina
+should move into a small house, Miss Pinnegar keeping the work-room,
+Alvina giving music-lessons: that the two women should be partners
+in the work-shop.
+
+There were other plans, of course. There was a faction against the
+chapel faction, which favoured the plan sketched out above. The
+theatre faction, including Mr. May and some of the more florid
+tradesmen, favoured the risking of everything in the Endeavour.
+Alvina was to be the proprietress of the Endeavour, she was to run
+it on some sort of successful lines, and abandon all other
+enterprise. Minor plans included the election of Alvina to the post
+of parish nurse, at six pounds a month: a small private school; a
+small haberdashery shop; and a position in the office of her
+cousin's Knarborough business. To one and all Alvina answered with a
+tantalizing: "I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know. I
+can't say yet. I shall see. I shall see." Till one and all became
+angry with her. They were all so benevolent, and all so sure that
+they were proposing the very best thing she could do. And they were
+all nettled, even indignant that she did not jump at their
+proposals. She listened to them all. She even invited their advice.
+Continually she said: "Well, what do _you_ think of it?" And she
+repeated the chapel plan to the theatre group, the theatre plan to
+the chapel party, the nursing to the pianoforte proposers, the
+haberdashery shop to the private school advocates. "Tell me what
+_you_ think," she said repeatedly. And they all told her they
+thought _their_ plan was best. And bit by bit she told every
+advocate the proposal of every other advocate "Well, Lawyer Beeby
+thinks--" and "Well now, Mr. Clay, the minister, advises--" and so
+on and so on, till it was all buzzing through thirty benevolent and
+officious heads. And thirty benevolently-officious wills were
+striving to plant each one its own particular scheme of benevolence.
+And Alvina, na�ve and pathetic, egged them all on in their strife,
+without even knowing what she was doing. One thing only was certain.
+Some obstinate will in her own self absolutely refused to have her
+mind made up. She would _not_ have her mind made up for her, and she
+would not make it up for herself. And so everybody began to say "I'm
+getting tired of her. You talk to her, and you get no forrarder. She
+slips off to something else. I'm not going to bother with her any
+more." In truth, Woodhouse was in a fever, for three weeks or more,
+arranging Alvina's unarrangeable future for her. Offers of charity
+were innumerable--for three weeks.
+
+Meanwhile, the lawyer went on with the proving of the will and the
+drawing up of a final account of James's property; Mr. May went on
+with the Endeavour, though Alvina did not go down to play; Miss
+Pinnegar went on with the work-girls: and Alvina went on unmaking
+her mind.
+
+Ciccio did not come during the first week. Alvina had a post-card
+from Madame, from Cheshire: rather far off. But such was the buzz
+and excitement over her material future, such a fever was worked up
+round about her that Alvina, the petty-propertied heroine of the
+moment, was quite carried away in a storm of schemes and benevolent
+suggestions. She answered Madame's post-card, but did not give much
+thought to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. As a matter of fact, she was
+enjoying a real moment of importance, there at the centre of
+Woodhouse's rather domineering benevolence: a benevolence which she
+unconsciously, but systematically frustrated. All this scheming for
+selling out and making reservations and hanging on and fixing prices
+and getting private bids for Manchester House and for the Endeavour,
+the excitement of forming a Limited Company to run the Endeavour, of
+seeing a lawyer about the sale of Manchester House and the
+auctioneer about the sale of the furniture, of receiving men who
+wanted to pick up the machines upstairs cheap, and of keeping
+everything dangling, deciding nothing, putting everything off till
+she had seen somebody else, this for the moment fascinated her, went
+to her head. It was not until the second week had passed that her
+excitement began to merge into irritation, and not until the third
+week had gone by that she began to feel herself entangled in an
+asphyxiating web of indecision, and her heart began to sing because
+Ciccio had never turned up. Now she would have given anything to see
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras again. But she did not know where they were.
+Now she began to loathe the excitement of her property: doubtfully
+hers, every stick of it. Now she would give anything to get away
+from Woodhouse, from the horrible buzz and entanglement of her
+sordid affairs. Now again her wild recklessness came over her.
+
+She suddenly said she was going away somewhere: she would not say
+where. She cashed all the money she could: a hundred-and-twenty-five
+pounds. She took the train to Cheshire, to the last address of the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: she followed them to Stockport: and back to
+Chinley: and there she was stuck for the night. Next day she dashed
+back almost to Woodhouse, and swerved round to Sheffield. There, in
+that black town, thank heaven, she saw their announcement on the
+wall. She took a taxi to their theatre, and then on to their
+lodgings. The first thing she saw was Louis, in his shirt sleeves,
+on the landing above.
+
+She laughed with excitement and pleasure. She seemed another woman.
+Madame looked up, almost annoyed, when she entered.
+
+"I couldn't keep away from you, Madame," she cried.
+
+"Evidently," said Madame.
+
+Madame was darning socks for the young men. She was a wonderful
+mother for them, sewed for them, cooked for them, looked after them
+most carefully. Not many minutes was Madame idle.
+
+"Do you mind?" said Alvina.
+
+Madame darned for some moments without answering.
+
+"And how is everything at Woodhouse?" she asked.
+
+"I couldn't bear it any longer. I couldn't bear it. So I collected
+all the money I could, and ran away. Nobody knows where I am."
+
+Madame looked up with bright, black, censorious eyes, at the flushed
+girl opposite. Alvina had a certain strangeness and brightness,
+which Madame did not know, and a frankness which the Frenchwoman
+mistrusted, but found disarming.
+
+"And all the business, the will and all?" said Madame.
+
+"They're still fussing about it."
+
+"And there is some money?"
+
+"I have got a hundred pounds here," laughed Alvina. "What there will
+be when everything is settled, I don't know. But not very much, I'm
+sure of that."
+
+"How much do you think? A thousand pounds?"
+
+"Oh, it's just possible, you know. But it's just as likely there
+won't be another penny--"
+
+Madame nodded slowly, as always when she did her calculations.
+
+"And if there is nothing, what do you intend?" said Madame.
+
+"I don't know," said Alvina brightly.
+
+"And if there is something?"
+
+"I don't know either. But I thought, if you would let me play for
+you, I could keep myself for some time with my own money. You said
+perhaps I might be with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. I wish you would let
+me."
+
+Madame bent her head so that nothing showed but the bright black
+folds of her hair. Then she looked up, with a slow, subtle, rather
+jeering smile.
+
+"Ciccio didn't come to see you, hein?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "Yet he promised."
+
+Again Madame smiled sardonically.
+
+"Do you call it a promise?" she said. "You are easy to be satisfied
+with a word. A hundred pounds? No more?"
+
+"A hundred and twenty--"
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"In my bag at the station--in notes. And I've got a little here--"
+Alvina opened her purse, and took out some little gold and silver.
+
+"At the station!" exclaimed Madame, smiling grimly. "Then perhaps
+you have nothing."
+
+"Oh, I think it's quite safe, don't you--?"
+
+"Yes--maybe--since it is England. And you think a hundred and twenty
+pounds is enough?"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To satisfy Ciccio."
+
+"I wasn't thinking of him," cried Alvina.
+
+"No?" said Madame ironically. "I can propose it to him. Wait one
+moment." She went to the door and called Ciccio.
+
+He entered, looking not very good-tempered.
+
+"Be so good, my dear," said Madame to him, "to go to the station and
+fetch Miss Houghton's little bag. You have got the ticket, have
+you?" Alvina handed the luggage ticket to Madame. "Midland Railway,"
+said Madame. "And, Ciccio, you are listening--? Mind! There is a
+hundred and twenty pounds of Miss Houghton's money in the bag. You
+hear? Mind it is not lost."
+
+"It's all I have," said Alvina.
+
+"For the time, for the time--till the will is proved, it is all the
+cash she has. So mind doubly. You hear?"
+
+"All right," said Ciccio.
+
+"Tell him what sort of a bag, Miss Houghton," said Madame.
+
+Alvina told him. He ducked and went. Madame listened for his final
+departure. Then she nodded sagely at Alvina.
+
+"Take off your hat and coat, my dear. Soon we will have tea--when
+Cic' returns. Let him think, let him think what he likes. So much
+money is certain, perhaps there will be more. Let him think. It will
+make all the difference that there is so much cash--yes, so much--"
+
+"But would it _really_ make a difference to him?" cried Alvina.
+
+"Oh my dear!" exclaimed Madame. "Why should it not? We are on earth,
+where we must eat. We are not in Paradise. If it were a thousand
+pounds, then he would want very badly to marry you. But a hundred
+and twenty is better than a blow to the eye, eh? Why sure!"
+
+"It's dreadful, though--!" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh la-la! Dreadful! If it was Max, who is sentimental, then no, the
+money is nothing. But all the others--why, you see, they are men,
+and they know which side to butter their bread. Men are like cats,
+my dear, they don't like their bread without butter. Why should
+they? Nor do I, nor do I."
+
+"Can I help with the darning?" said Alvina.
+
+"Hein? I shall give you Ciccio's socks, yes? He pushes holes in the
+toes--you see?" Madame poked two fingers through the hole in the
+toe of a red-and-black sock, and smiled a little maliciously at
+Alvina.
+
+"I don't mind which sock I darn," she said.
+
+"No? You don't? Well then, I give you another. But if you like I
+will speak to him--"
+
+"What to say?" asked Alvina.
+
+"To say that you have so much money, and hope to have more. And that
+you like him--Yes? Am I right? You like him very much?--hein? Is it
+so?"
+
+"And then what?" said Alvina.
+
+"That he should tell me if he should like to marry you also--quite
+simply. What? Yes?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "Don't say anything--not yet."
+
+"H�? Not yet? Not yet. All right, not yet then. You will see--"
+
+Alvina sat darning the sock and smiling at her own shamelessness.
+The point that amused her most of all was the fact that she was not
+by any means sure she wanted to marry him. There was Madame spinning
+her web like a plump prolific black spider. There was Ciccio, the
+unrestful fly. And there was herself, who didn't know in the least
+what she was doing. There sat two of them, Madame and herself,
+darning socks in a stuffy little bedroom with a gas fire, as if they
+had been born to it. And after all, Woodhouse wasn't fifty miles
+away.
+
+Madame went downstairs to get tea ready. Wherever she was, she
+superintended the cooking and the preparation of meals for her young
+men, scrupulous and quick. She called Alvina downstairs. Ciccio came
+in with the bag.
+
+"See, my dear, that your money is safe," said Madame.
+
+Alvina unfastened her bag and counted the crisp white notes.
+
+"And now," said Madame, "I shall lock it in my little bank, yes,
+where it will be safe. And I shall give you a receipt, which the
+young men will witness."
+
+The party sat down to tea, in the stuffy sitting-room.
+
+"Now, boys," said Madame, "what do you say? Shall Miss Houghton join
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Shall she be our pianist?"
+
+The eyes of the four young men rested on Alvina. Max, as being the
+responsible party, looked business-like. Louis was tender, Geoffrey
+round-eyed and inquisitive, Ciccio furtive.
+
+"With great pleasure," said Max. "But can the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras
+afford to pay a pianist for themselves?"
+
+"No," said Madame. "No. I think not. Miss Houghton will come for one
+month, to prove, and in that time she shall pay for herself. Yes? So
+she fancies it."
+
+"Can we pay her expenses?" said Max.
+
+"No," said Alvina. "Let me pay everything for myself, for a month. I
+should like to be with you, awfully--"
+
+She looked across with a look half mischievous, half beseeching at
+the erect Max. He bowed as he sat at table.
+
+"I think we shall all be honoured," he said.
+
+"Certainly," said Louis, bowing also over his tea-cup.
+
+Geoffrey inclined his head, and Ciccio lowered his eyelashes in
+indication of agreement.
+
+"Now then," said Madame briskly, "we are all agreed. Tonight we will
+have a bottle of wine on it. Yes, gentlemen? What d'you say?
+Chianti--hein?"
+
+They all bowed above the table.
+
+"And Miss Houghton shall have her professional name, eh? Because we
+cannot say Miss Houghton--what?"
+
+"Do call me Alvina," said Alvina.
+
+"Alvina--Al-vy-na! No, excuse me, my dear, I don't like it. I don't
+like this 'vy' sound. Tonight we shall find a name."
+
+After tea they inquired for a room for Alvina. There was none in the
+house. But two doors away was another decent lodging-house, where a
+bedroom on the top floor was found for her.
+
+"I think you are very well here," said Madame.
+
+"Quite nice," said Alvina, looking round the hideous little room,
+and remembering her other term of probation, as a maternity nurse.
+
+She dressed as attractively as possible, in her new dress of black
+voile, and imitating Madame, she put four jewelled rings on her
+fingers. As a rule she only wore the mourning-ring of black enamel
+and diamond, which had been always on Miss Frost's finger. Now she
+left off this, and took four diamond rings, and one good sapphire.
+She looked at herself in her mirror as she had never done before,
+really interested in the effect she made. And in her dress she
+pinned a valuable old ruby brooch.
+
+Then she went down to Madame's house. Madame eyed her shrewdly, with
+just a touch of jealousy: the eternal jealousy that must exist
+between the plump, pale partridge of a Frenchwoman, whose black hair
+is so glossy and tidy, whose black eyes are so acute, whose black
+dress is so neat and _chic_, and the rather thin Englishwoman in
+soft voile, with soft, rather loose brown hair and demure, blue-grey
+eyes.
+
+"Oh--a difference--what a difference! When you have a little more
+flesh--then--" Madame made a slight click with her tongue. "What a
+good brooch, eh?" Madame fingered the brooch. "Old paste--old
+paste--antique--"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "They are real rubies. It was my
+great-grandmother's."
+
+"Do you mean it? Real? Are you sure--"
+
+"I think I'm quite sure."
+
+Madame scrutinized the jewels with a fine eye.
+
+"Hm!" she said. And Alvina did not know whether she was sceptical,
+or jealous, or admiring, or really impressed.
+
+"And the diamonds are real?" said Madame, making Alvina hold up her
+hands.
+
+"I've always understood so," said Alvina.
+
+Madame scrutinized, and slowly nodded her head. Then she looked into
+Alvina's eyes, really a little jealous.
+
+"Another four thousand francs there," she said, nodding sagely.
+
+"Really!" said Alvina.
+
+"For sure. It's enough--it's enough--"
+
+And there was a silence between the two women.
+
+The young men had been out shopping for the supper. Louis, who knew
+where to find French and German stuff, came in with bundles, Ciccio
+returned with a couple of flasks, Geoffrey with sundry moist papers
+of edibles. Alvina helped Madame to put the anchovies and sardines
+and tunny and ham and salami on various plates, she broke off a bit
+of fern from one of the flower-pots, to stick in the pork-pie, she
+set the table with its ugly knives and forks and glasses. All the
+time her rings sparkled, her red brooch sent out beams, she laughed
+and was gay, she was quick, and she flattered Madame by being very
+deferential to her. Whether she was herself or not, in the hideous,
+common, stuffy sitting-room of the lodging-house she did not know or
+care. But she felt excited and gay. She knew the young men were
+watching her. Max gave his assistance wherever possible. Geoffrey
+watched her rings, half spell-bound. But Alvina was concerned only
+to flatter the plump, white, soft vanity of Madame. She carefully
+chose for Madame the finest plate, the clearest glass, the
+whitest-hafted knife, the most delicate fork. All of which Madame
+saw, with acute eyes.
+
+At the theatre the same: Alvina played for Kishw�gin, only for
+Kishw�gin. And Madame had the time of her life.
+
+"You know, my dear," she said afterward to Alvina, "I understand
+sympathy in music. Music goes straight to the heart." And she kissed
+Alvina on both cheeks, throwing her arms round her neck
+dramatically.
+
+"I'm _so_ glad," said the wily Alvina.
+
+And the young men stirred uneasily, and smiled furtively.
+
+They hurried home to the famous supper. Madame sat at one end of the
+table, Alvina at the other. Madame had Max and Louis by her side,
+Alvina had Ciccio and Geoffrey. Ciccio was on Alvina's right hand: a
+delicate hint.
+
+They began with hors d'oeuvres and tumblers three parts full of
+Chianti. Alvina wanted to water her wine, but was not allowed to
+insult the sacred liquid. There was a spirit of great liveliness and
+conviviality. Madame became paler, her eyes blacker, with the wine
+she drank, her voice became a little raucous.
+
+"Tonight," she said, "the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras make their feast of
+affiliation. The white daughter has entered the tribe of the
+Hirondelles, swallows that pass from land to land, and build their
+nests between roof and wall. A new swallow, a new Huron from the
+tents of the pale-face, from the lodges of the north, from the tribe
+of the Yenghees." Madame's black eyes glared with a kind of wild
+triumph down the table at Alvina. "Nameless, without having a name,
+comes the maiden with the red jewels, dark-hearted, with the red
+beams. Wine from the pale-face shadows, drunken wine for Kishw�gin,
+strange wine for the _braves_ in their nostrils, Vaali, _� vous_."
+
+Madame lifted her glass.
+
+"Vaali, drink to her--Boire � elle--" She thrust her glass forwards
+in the air. The young men thrust their glasses up towards Alvina, in
+a cluster. She could see their mouths all smiling, their teeth white
+as they cried in their throats: "Vaali! Vaali! Boire � vous."
+
+Ciccio was near to her. Under the table he laid his hand on her
+knee. Quickly she put forward her hand to protect herself. He took
+her hand, and looked at her along the glass as he drank. She saw his
+throat move as the wine went down it. He put down his glass, still
+watching her.
+
+"Vaali!" he said, in his throat. Then across the table "H�,
+Gigi--Viale! Le Petit Chemin! Comment? Me prends-tu? L'all�e--"
+
+There came a great burst of laughter from Louis.
+
+"It is good, it is good!" he cried. "Oh Madame! Viale, it is Italian
+for the little way, the alley. That is too rich."
+
+Max went off into a high and ribald laugh.
+
+"L'all�e italienne!" he said, and shouted with laughter.
+
+"Alley or avenue, what does it matter," cried Madame in French, "so
+long as it is a good journey."
+
+Here Geoffrey at last saw the joke. With a strange determined
+flourish he filled his glass, cocking up his elbow.
+
+"A toi, Cic'--et bon voyage!" he said, and then he tilted up his
+chin and swallowed in great throatfuls.
+
+"Certainly! Certainly!" cried Madame. "To thy good journey, my
+Ciccio, for thou art not a great traveller--"
+
+"Na, pour _�a_, y'a plus d'une voie," said Geoffrey.
+
+During this passage in French Alvina sat with very bright eyes
+looking from one to another, and not understanding. But she knew it
+was something improper, on her account. Her eyes had a bright,
+slightly-bewildered look as she turned from one face to another.
+Ciccio had let go her hand, and was wiping his lips with his
+fingers. He too was a little self-conscious.
+
+"Assez de cette �ternelle voix italienne," said Madame. "Courage,
+courage au chemin d'Angleterre."
+
+"Assez de cette �ternelle voix rauque," said Ciccio, looking round.
+Madame suddenly pulled herself together.
+
+"They will not have my name. They will call you Allay!" she said to
+Alvina. "Is it good? Will it do?"
+
+"Quite," said Alvina.
+
+And she could not understand why Gigi, and then the others after
+him, went off into a shout of laughter. She kept looking round with
+bright, puzzled eyes. Her face was slightly flushed and tender
+looking, she looked na�ve, young.
+
+"Then you will become one of the tribe of Natcha-Kee-Tawara, of the
+name Allaye? Yes?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina.
+
+"And obey the strict rules of the tribe. Do you agree?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then listen." Madame primmed and preened herself like a black
+pigeon, and darted glances out of her black eyes.
+
+"We are one tribe, one nation--say it."
+
+"We are one tribe, one nation," repeated Alvina.
+
+"Say all," cried Madame.
+
+"We are one tribe, one nation--" they shouted, with varying accent.
+
+"Good!" said Madame. "And no nation do we know but the nation of the
+Hirondelles--"
+
+"No nation do we know but the nation of the Hirondelles," came the
+ragged chant of strong male voices, resonant and gay with mockery.
+
+"Hurons--Hirondelles, means _swallows_," said Madame.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Alvina.
+
+"So! you know! Well, then! We know no nation but the Hirondelles. WE
+HAVE NO LAW BUT HURON LAW!"
+
+"We have no law but Huron law!" sang the response, in a deep,
+sardonic chant.
+
+"WE HAVE NO LAWGIVER EXCEPT KISHW�GIN."
+
+"We have no lawgiver except Kishw�gin," they sang sonorous.
+
+"WE HAVE NO HOME BUT THE TENT OF KISHW�GIN."
+
+"We have no home but the tent of Kishw�gin."
+
+"THERE IS NO GOOD BUT THE GOOD OF NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA."
+
+"There is no good but the good of Natcha-Kee-Tawara."
+
+"WE ARE THE HIRONDELLES."
+
+"We are the Hirondelles."
+
+"WE ARE KISHW�GIN."
+
+"We are Kishw�gin."
+
+"WE ARE MONDAGUA."
+
+"We are Mondagua--"
+
+"WE ARE ATONQUOIS--"
+
+"We are Atonquois--"
+
+"WE ARE PACOHUILA--"
+
+"We are Pacohuila--"
+
+"WE ARE WALGATCHKA--"
+
+"We are Walgatchka--"
+
+"WE ARE ALLAYE--"
+
+"We are Allaye--"
+
+"La musica! Pacohuila, la musica!" cried Madame, starting to her
+feet and sounding frenzied.
+
+Ciccio got up quickly and took his mandoline from its case.
+
+"A--A--Ai--Aii--eee--ya--" began Madame, with a long, faint wail.
+And on the wailing mandoline the music started. She began to dance a
+slight but intense dance. Then she waved for a partner, and set up a
+tarantella wail. Louis threw off his coat and sprang to tarantella
+attention, Ciccio rang out the peculiar tarantella, and Madame and
+Louis danced in the tight space.
+
+"Brava--Brava!" cried the others, when Madame sank into her place.
+And they crowded forward to kiss her hand. One after the other, they
+kissed her fingers, whilst she laid her left hand languidly on the
+head of one man after another, as she sat slightly panting. Ciccio
+however did not come up, but sat faintly twanging the mandoline. Nor
+did Alvina leave her place.
+
+"Pacohuila!" cried Madame, with an imperious gesture. "Allaye!
+Come--"
+
+Ciccio laid down his mandoline and went to kiss the fingers of
+Kishw�gin. Alvina also went forward. Madame held out her hand.
+Alvina kissed it. Madame laid her hand on the head of Alvina.
+
+"This is the squaw Allaye, this is the daughter of Kishw�gin," she
+said, in her Tawara manner.
+
+"And where is the _brave_ of Allaye, where is the arm that upholds
+the daughter of Kishw�gin, which of the Swallows spreads his wings
+over the gentle head of the new one!"
+
+"Pacohuila!" said Louis.
+
+"Pacohuila! Pacohuila! Pacohuila!" said the others.
+
+"Spread soft wings, spread dark-roofed wings, Pacohuila," said
+Kishw�gin, and Ciccio, in his shirt-sleeves solemnly spread his
+arms.
+
+"Stoop, stoop, Allaye, beneath the wings of Pacohuila," said
+Kishw�gin, faintly pressing Alvina on the shoulder.
+
+Alvina stooped and crouched under the right arm of Pacohuila.
+
+"Has the bird flown home?" chanted Kishw�gin, to one of the strains
+of their music.
+
+"The bird is home--" chanted the men.
+
+"Is the nest warm?" chanted Kishw�gin.
+
+"The nest is warm."
+
+"Does the he-bird stoop--?"
+
+"He stoops."
+
+"Who takes Allaye?"
+
+"Pacohuila."
+
+Ciccio gently stooped and raised Alvina to her feet.
+
+"C'est �a!" said Madame, kissing her. "And now, children, unless the
+Sheffield policeman will knock at our door, we must retire to our
+wigwams all--"
+
+Ciccio was watching Alvina. Madame made him a secret, imperative
+gesture that he should accompany the young woman.
+
+"You have your key, Allaye?" she said.
+
+"Did I have a key?" said Alvina.
+
+Madame smiled subtly as she produced a latch-key.
+
+"Kishw�gin must open your doors for you all," she said. Then, with a
+slight flourish, she presented the key to Ciccio. "I give it to him?
+Yes?" she added, with her subtle, malicious smile.
+
+Ciccio, smiling slightly, and keeping his head ducked, took the key.
+Alvina looked brightly, as if bewildered, from one to another.
+
+"Also the light!" said Madame, producing a pocket flash-light, which
+she triumphantly handed to Ciccio. Alvina watched him. She noticed
+how he dropped his head forward from his straight, strong shoulders,
+how beautiful that was, the strong, forward-inclining nape and back
+of the head. It produced a kind of dazed submission in her, the
+drugged sense of unknown beauty.
+
+"And so good-night, Allaye--bonne nuit, fille des Tawara." Madame
+kissed her, and darted black, unaccountable looks at her.
+
+Each _brave_ also kissed her hand, with a profound salute. Then the
+men shook hands warmly with Ciccio, murmuring to him.
+
+He did not put on his hat nor his coat, but ran round as he was to
+the neighbouring house with her, and opened the door. She entered,
+and he followed, flashing on the light. So she climbed weakly up the
+dusty, drab stairs, he following. When she came to her door, she
+turned and looked at him. His face was scarcely visible, it seemed,
+and yet so strange and beautiful. It was the unknown beauty which
+almost killed her.
+
+"You aren't coming?" she quavered.
+
+He gave an odd, half-gay, half-mocking twitch of his thick dark
+brows, and began to laugh silently. Then he nodded again, laughing
+at her boldly, carelessly, triumphantly, like the dark Southerner he
+was. Her instinct was to defend herself. When suddenly she found
+herself in the dark.
+
+She gasped. And as she gasped, he quite gently put her inside her
+room, and closed the door, keeping one arm round her all the time.
+She felt his heavy muscular predominance. So he took her in both
+arms, powerful, mysterious, horrible in the pitch dark. Yet the
+sense of the unknown beauty of him weighed her down like some force.
+If for one moment she could have escaped from that black spell of
+his beauty, she would have been free. But she could not. He was
+awful to her, shameless so that she died under his shamelessness,
+his smiling, progressive shamelessness. Yet she could not see him
+ugly. If only she could, for one second, have seen him ugly, he
+would not have killed her and made her his slave as he did. But the
+spell was on her, of his darkness and unfathomed handsomeness. And
+he killed her. He simply took her and assassinated her. How she
+suffered no one can tell. Yet all the time, his lustrous dark
+beauty, unbearable.
+
+When later she pressed her face on his chest and cried, he held her
+gently as if she was a child, but took no notice, and she felt in
+the darkness that he smiled. It was utterly dark, and she knew he
+smiled, and she began to get hysterical. But he only kissed her, his
+smiling deepening to a heavy laughter, silent and invisible, but
+sensible, as he carried her away once more. He intended her to be
+his slave, she knew. And he seemed to throw her down and suffocate
+her like a wave. And she could have fought, if only the sense of his
+dark, rich handsomeness had not numbed her like a venom. So she was
+suffocated in his passion.
+
+In the morning when it was light he turned and looked at her from
+under his long black lashes, a long, steady, cruel, faintly-smiling
+look from his tawny eyes, searching her as if to see whether she
+were still alive. And she looked back at him, heavy-eyed and half
+subjected. He smiled slightly at her, rose, and left her. And she
+turned her face to the wall, feeling beaten. Yet not quite beaten
+to death. Save for the fatal numbness of her love for him, she could
+still have escaped him. But she lay inert, as if envenomed. He
+wanted to make her his slave.
+
+When she went down to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras for breakfast she found
+them waiting for her. She was rather frail and tender-looking, with
+wondering eyes that showed she had been crying.
+
+"Come, daughter of the Tawaras," said Madame brightly to her. "We
+have been waiting for you. Good-morning, and all happiness, eh?
+Look, it is a gift-day for you--"
+
+Madame smilingly led Alvina to her place. Beside her plate was a
+bunch of violets, a bunch of carnations, a pair of exquisite bead
+moccasins, and a pair of fine doeskin gloves delicately decorated
+with feather-work on the cuffs. The slippers were from Kishw�gin,
+the gloves from Mondagua, the carnations from Atonquois, the violets
+from Walgatchka--all _To the Daughter of the Tawaras, Allaye_, as it
+said on the little cards.
+
+"The gift of Pacohuila you know," said Madame, smiling. "The
+brothers of Pacohuila are your brothers."
+
+One by one they went to her and each one laid the back of her
+fingers against his forehead, saying in turn:
+
+"I am your brother Mondagua, Allaye!"
+
+"I am your brother Atonquois, Allaye!"
+
+"I am your brother Walgatchka, Allaye, best brother, you know--" So
+spoke Geoffrey, looking at her with large, almost solemn eyes of
+affection. Alvina smiled a little wanly, wondering where she was. It
+was all so solemn. Was it all mockery, play-acting? She felt
+bitterly inclined to cry.
+
+Meanwhile Madame came in with the coffee, which she always made
+herself, and the party sat down to breakfast. Ciccio sat on Alvina's
+right, but he seemed to avoid looking at her or speaking to her. All
+the time he looked across the table, with the half-asserted, knowing
+look in his eyes, at Gigi: and all the time he addressed himself to
+Gigi, with the throaty, rich, plangent quality in his voice, that
+Alvina could not bear, it seemed terrible to her: and he spoke in
+French: and the two men seemed to be exchanging unspeakable
+communications. So that Alvina, for all her wistfulness and
+subjectedness, was at last seriously offended. She rose as soon as
+possible from table. In her own heart she wanted attention and
+public recognition from Ciccio--none of which she got. She returned
+to her own house, to her own room, anxious to tidy everything, not
+wishing to have her landlady in the room. And she half expected
+Ciccio to come to speak to her.
+
+As she was busy washing a garment in the bowl, her landlady knocked
+and entered. She was a rough and rather beery-looking Yorkshire
+woman, not attractive.
+
+"Oh, yo'n made yer bed then, han' yer!"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. "I've done everything."
+
+"I see yer han. Yo'n bin sharp."
+
+Alvina did not answer.
+
+"Seems yer doin' yersen a bit o' weshin'."
+
+Still Alvina didn't answer.
+
+"Yo' can 'ing it i' th' back yard."
+
+"I think it'll dry here," said Alvina.
+
+"Isna much dryin' up here. Send us howd when 't's ready. Yo'll
+'appen be wantin' it. I can dry it off for yer i' t' kitchen. You
+don't take a drop o' nothink, do yer?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I don't like it."
+
+"Summat a bit stronger 'n 't bottle, my sakes alive! Well, yo mun
+ha'e yer fling, like t' rest. But coom na, which on 'em is it? I
+catched sight on 'im goin' out, but I didna ma'e out then which on
+'em it wor. He--eh, it's a pity you don't take a drop of nothink,
+it's a world's pity. Is it the fairest on 'em, the tallest."
+
+"No," said Alvina. "The darkest one."
+
+"Oh ay! Well, 's a strappin' anuff feller, for them as goes that
+road. I thought Madame was partikler. I s'll charge yer a bit more,
+yer know. I s'll 'ave to make a bit out of it. _I'm_ partikler as a
+rule. I don't like 'em comin' in an' goin' out, you know. Things get
+said. You look so quiet, you do. Come now, it's worth a hextra quart
+to me, else I shan't have it, I shan't. You can't make as free as
+all that with the house, you know, be it what it may--"
+
+She stood red-faced and dour in the doorway. Alvina quietly gave her
+half-a-sovereign.
+
+"Nay, lass," said the woman, "if you share niver a drop o' th'
+lashins, you mun split it. Five shillin's is oceans, ma wench. I'm
+not down on you--not me. On'y we've got to keep up appearances a
+bit, you know. Dash my rags, it's a caution!"
+
+"I haven't got five shillings--" said Alvina.
+
+"Yer've not? All right, gi'e 's ha 'efcrown today, an' t'other
+termorrer. It'll keep, it'll keep. God bless you for a good wench.
+A' open 'eart 's worth all your bum-righteousness. It is for me. An'
+a sight more. You're all right, ma wench, you're all right--"
+
+And the rather bleary woman went nodding away.
+
+Alvina ought to have minded. But she didn't. She even laughed into
+her ricketty mirror. At the back of her thoughts, all she minded was
+that Ciccio did not pay her some attention. She really expected him
+now to come to speak to her. If she could have imagined how far he
+was from any such intention.
+
+So she loitered unwillingly at her window high over the grey, hard,
+cobbled street, and saw her landlady hastening along the black
+asphalt pavement, her dirty apron thrown discreetly over what was
+most obviously a quart jug. She followed the squat, intent figure
+with her eye, to the public-house at the corner. And then she saw
+Ciccio humped over his yellow bicycle, going for a steep and
+perilous ride with Gigi.
+
+Still she lingered in her sordid room. She could feel Madame was
+expecting her. But she felt inert, weak, incommunicative. Only a
+real fear of offending Madame drove her down at last.
+
+Max opened the door to let her in.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "You've come. We were wondering about you."
+
+"Thank you," she said, as she passed into the dirty hall where still
+two bicycles stood.
+
+"Madame is in the kitchen," he said.
+
+Alvina found Madame trussed in a large white apron, busy rubbing a
+yellow-fleshed hen with lemon, previous to boiling.
+
+"Ah!" said Madame. "So there you are! I have been out and done my
+shopping, and already begun to prepare the dinner. Yes, you may help
+me. Can you wash leeks? Yes? Every grain of sand? Shall I trust you
+then--?"
+
+Madame usually had a kitchen to herself, in the morning. She either
+ousted her landlady, or used her as second cook. For Madame was a
+gourmet, if not gourmand. If she inclined towards self-indulgence in
+any direction, it was in the direction of food. She _loved_ a good
+table. And hence the Tawaras saved less money than they might. She
+was an exacting, tormenting, bullying cook. Alvina, who knew well
+enough how to prepare a simple dinner, was offended by Madame's
+exactions. Madame turning back the green leaves of a leek, and
+hunting a speck of earth down into the white, like a flea in a bed,
+was too much for Alvina.
+
+"I'm afraid I shall never be particular enough," she said. "Can't I
+do anything else for you?"
+
+"For me? I need nothing to be done for me. But for the young
+men--yes, I will show you in one minute--"
+
+And she took Alvina upstairs to her room, and gave her a pair of the
+thin leather trousers fringed with hair, belonging to one of the
+_braves_. A seam had ripped. Madame gave Alvina a fine awl and some
+waxed thread.
+
+"The leather is not good in these things of Gigi's," she said. "It
+is badly prepared. See, like this." And she showed Alvina another
+place where the garment was repaired. "Keep on your apron. At the
+week-end you must fetch more clothes, not spoil this beautiful gown
+of voile. Where have you left your diamonds? What? In your room? Are
+they locked? Oh my dear--!" Madame turned pale and darted looks of
+fire at Alvina. "If they are stolen--!" she cried. "Oh! I have
+become quite weak, hearing you!" She panted and shook her head. "If
+they are not stolen, you have the Holy Saints alone to be thankful
+for keeping them. But run, run!"
+
+And Madame really stamped her foot.
+
+"Bring me everything you've got--every _thing_ that is valuable. I
+shall lock it up. How _can_ you--"
+
+Alvina was hustled off to her lodging. Fortunately nothing was gone.
+She brought all to Madame, and Madame fingered the treasures
+lovingly.
+
+"Now what you want you must ask me for," she said.
+
+With what close curiosity Madame examined the ruby brooch.
+
+"You can have that if you like, Madame," said Alvina.
+
+"You mean--what?"
+
+"I will give you that brooch if you like to take it--"
+
+"Give me this--!" cried Madame, and a flash went over her face. Then
+she changed into a sort of wheedling. "No--no. I shan't take it! I
+shan't take it. You don't want to give away such a thing."
+
+"I don't mind," said Alvina. "Do take it if you like it."
+
+"Oh no! Oh no! I can't take it. A beautiful thing it is, really. It
+would be worth over a thousand francs, because I believe it is quite
+genuine."
+
+"I'm sure it's genuine," said Alvina. "Do have it since you like
+it."
+
+"Oh, I can't! I can't!--"
+
+"Yes do--"
+
+"The beautiful red stones!--antique gems, antique gems--! And do you
+really give it to me?"
+
+"Yes, I should like to."
+
+"You are a girl with a noble heart--" Madame threw her arms round
+Alvina's neck, and kissed her. Alvina felt very cool about it.
+Madame locked up the jewels quickly, after one last look.
+
+"My fowl," she said, "which must not boil too fast."
+
+At length Alvina was called down to dinner. The young men were at
+table, talking as young men do, not very interestingly. After the
+meal, Ciccio sat and twanged his mandoline, making its crying noise
+vibrate through the house.
+
+"I shall go and look at the town," said Alvina.
+
+"And who shall go with you?" asked Madame.
+
+"I will go alone," said Alvina, "unless you will come, Madame."
+
+"Alas no, I can't. I can't come. Will you really go alone?"
+
+"Yes, I want to go to the women's shops," said Alvina.
+
+"You want to! All right then! And you will come home at tea-time,
+yes?"
+
+As soon as Alvina had gone out Ciccio put away his mandoline and lit
+a cigarette. Then after a while he hailed Geoffrey, and the two
+young men sallied forth. Alvina, emerging from a draper's shop in
+Rotherhampton Broadway, found them loitering on the pavement
+outside. And they strolled along with her. So she went into a shop
+that sold ladies' underwear, leaving them on the pavement. She
+stayed as long as she could. But there they were when she came out.
+They had endless lounging patience.
+
+"I thought you would be gone on," she said.
+
+"No hurry," said Ciccio, and he took away her parcels from her, as
+if he had a right. She wished he wouldn't tilt the flap of his black
+hat over one eye, and she wished there wasn't quite so much
+waist-line in the cut of his coat, and that he didn't smoke
+cigarettes against the end of his nose in the street. But wishing
+wouldn't alter him. He strayed alongside as if he half belonged, and
+half didn't--most irritating.
+
+She wasted as much time as possible in the shops, then they took the
+tram home again. Ciccio paid the three fares, laying his hand
+restrainingly on Gigi's hand, when Gigi's hand sought pence in his
+trouser pocket, and throwing his arm over his friend's shoulder, in
+affectionate but vulgar triumph, when the fares were paid. Alvina
+was on her high horse.
+
+They tried to talk to her, they tried to ingratiate themselves--but
+she wasn't having any. She talked with icy pleasantness. And so the
+tea-time passed, and the time after tea. The performance went rather
+mechanically, at the theatre, and the supper at home, with bottled
+beer and boiled ham, was a conventionally cheerful affair. Even
+Madame was a little afraid of Alvina this evening.
+
+"I am tired, I shall go early to my room," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, I think we are all tired," said Madame.
+
+"Why is it?" said Max metaphysically--"why is it that two merry
+evenings never follow one behind the other."
+
+"Max, beer makes thee a _farceur_ of a fine quality," said Madame.
+Alvina rose.
+
+"Please don't get up," she said to the others. "I have my key and
+can see quite well," she said. "Good-night all."
+
+They rose and bowed their good-nights. But Ciccio, with an obstinate
+and ugly little smile on his face, followed her.
+
+"Please don't come," she said, turning at the street door. But
+obstinately he lounged into the street with her. He followed her to
+her door.
+
+"Did you bring the flash-light?" she said. "The stair is so dark."
+
+He looked at her, and turned as if to get the light. Quickly she
+opened the house-door and slipped inside, shutting it sharply in his
+face. He stood for some moments looking at the door, and an ugly
+little look mounted his straight nose. He too turned indoors.
+
+Alvina hurried to bed and slept well. And the next day the same, she
+was all icy pleasantness. The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were a little bit
+put out by her. She was a spoke in their wheel, a scotch to their
+facility. She made them irritable. And that evening--it was
+Friday--Ciccio did not rise to accompany her to her house. And she
+knew they were relieved that she had gone.
+
+That did not please her. The next day, which was Saturday, the last
+and greatest day of the week, she found herself again somewhat of an
+outsider in the troupe. The tribe had assembled in its old unison.
+She was the intruder, the interloper. And Ciccio never looked at
+her, only showed her the half-averted side of his cheek, on which
+was a slightly jeering, ugly look.
+
+"Will you go to Woodhouse tomorrow?" Madame asked her, rather
+coolly. They none of them called her Allaye any more.
+
+"I'd better fetch some things, hadn't I?" said Alvina.
+
+"Certainly, if you think you will stay with us."
+
+This was a nasty slap in the face for her. But:
+
+"I want to," she said.
+
+"Yes! Then you will go to Woodhouse tomorrow, and come to Mansfield
+on Monday morning? Like that shall it be? You will stay one night at
+Woodhouse?"
+
+Through Alvina's mind flitted the rapid thought--"They want an
+evening without me." Her pride mounted obstinately. She very nearly
+said--"I may stay in Woodhouse altogether." But she held her tongue.
+
+After all, they were very common people. They ought to be glad to
+have her. Look how Madame snapped up that brooch! And look what an
+uncouth lout Ciccio was! After all, she was demeaning herself
+shamefully staying with them in common, sordid lodgings. After all,
+she had been bred up differently from that. They had horribly low
+standards--such low standards--not only of morality, but of life
+altogether. Really, she had come down in the world, conforming to
+such standards of life. She evoked the images of her mother and Miss
+Frost: ladies, and noble women both. Whatever could she be thinking
+of herself!
+
+However, there was time for her to retrace her steps. She had not
+given herself away. Except to Ciccio. And her heart burned when she
+thought of him, partly with anger and mortification, partly, alas,
+with undeniable and unsatisfied love. Let her bridle as she might,
+her heart burned, and she wanted to look at him, she wanted him to
+notice her. And instinct told her that he might ignore her for ever.
+She went to her room an unhappy woman, and wept and fretted till
+morning, chafing between humiliation and yearning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
+
+
+Alvina rose chastened and wistful. As she was doing her hair, she
+heard the plaintive nasal sound of Ciccio's mandoline. She looked
+down the mixed vista of back-yards and little gardens, and was able
+to catch sight of a portion of Ciccio, who was sitting on a box in
+the blue-brick yard of his house, bare-headed and in his
+shirt-sleeves, twitching away at the wailing mandoline. It was not a
+warm morning, but there was a streak of sunshine. Alvina had noticed
+that Ciccio did not seem to feel the cold, unless it were a wind or
+a driving rain. He was playing the wildly-yearning Neapolitan songs,
+of which Alvina knew nothing. But, although she only saw a section
+of him, the glimpse of his head was enough to rouse in her that
+overwhelming fascination, which came and went in spells. His
+remoteness, his southernness, something velvety and dark. So easily
+she might miss him altogether! Within a hair's-breadth she had let
+him disappear.
+
+She hurried down. Geoffrey opened the door to her. She smiled at him
+in a quick, luminous smile, a magic change in her.
+
+"I could hear Ciccio playing," she said.
+
+Geoffrey spread his rather thick lips in a smile, and jerked his
+head in the direction of the back door, with a deep, intimate look
+into Alvina's eyes, as if to say his friend was lovesick.
+
+"Shall I go through?" said Alvina.
+
+Geoffrey laid his large hand on her shoulder for a moment, looked
+into her eyes, and nodded. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, with a
+rather flat, handsome face, well-coloured, and with the look of the
+Alpine ox about him, slow, eternal, even a little mysterious. Alvina
+was startled by the deep, mysterious look in his dark-fringed
+ox-eyes. The odd arch of his eyebrows made him suddenly seem not
+quite human to her. She smiled to him again, startled. But he only
+inclined his head, and with his heavy hand on her shoulder gently
+impelled her towards Ciccio.
+
+When she came out at the back she smiled straight into Ciccio's
+face, with her sudden, luminous smile. His hand on the mandoline
+trembled into silence. He sat looking at her with an instant
+re-establishment of knowledge. And yet she shrank from the long,
+inscrutable gaze of his black-set, tawny eyes. She resented him a
+little. And yet she went forward to him and stood so that her dress
+touched him. And still he gazed up at her, with the heavy,
+unspeaking look, that seemed to bear her down: he seemed like some
+creature that was watching her for his purposes. She looked aside at
+the black garden, which had a wiry goose-berry bush.
+
+"You will come with me to Woodhouse?" she said.
+
+He did not answer till she turned to him again. Then, as she met his
+eyes,
+
+"To Woodhouse?" he said, watching her, to fix her.
+
+"Yes," she said, a little pale at the lips.
+
+And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his
+mouth. She wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred
+his tawny eyes with their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched
+her as a cat watches a bird, but without the white gleam of
+ferocity. In his eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth, something
+fathomless, deepening black and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.
+
+"Will you?" she repeated.
+
+But his eyes had already begun to glimmer their consent. He turned
+aside his face, as if unwilling to give a straight answer.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Play something to me," she cried.
+
+He lifted his face to her, and shook his head slightly.
+
+"Yes do," she said, looking down on him.
+
+And he bent his head to the mandoline, and suddenly began to sing a
+Neapolitan song, in a faint, compressed head-voice, looking up at
+her again as his lips moved, looking straight into her face with a
+curious mocking caress as the muted _voix blanche_ came through his
+lips at her, amid the louder quavering of the mandoline. The sound
+penetrated her like a thread of fire, hurting, but delicious, the
+high thread of his voice. She could see the Adam's apple move in his
+throat, his brows tilted as he looked along his lashes at her all the
+time. Here was the strange sphinx singing again, and herself between
+its paws! She seemed almost to melt into his power.
+
+Madame intervened to save her.
+
+"What, serenade before breakfast! You have strong stomachs, I say.
+Eggs and ham are more the question, hein? Come, you smell them,
+don't you?"
+
+A flicker of contempt and derision went over Ciccio's face as he
+broke off and looked aside.
+
+"I prefer the serenade," said Alvina. "I've had ham and eggs
+before."
+
+"You do, hein? Well--always, you won't. And now you must eat the ham
+and eggs, however. Yes? Isn't it so?"
+
+Ciccio rose to his feet, and looked at Alvina: as he would have
+looked at Gigi, had Gigi been there. His eyes said unspeakable
+things about Madame. Alvina flashed a laugh, suddenly. And a
+good-humoured, half-mocking smile came over his face too.
+
+They turned to follow Madame into the house. And as Alvina went
+before him, she felt his fingers stroke the nape of her neck, and
+pass in a soft touch right down her back. She started as if some
+unseen creature had stroked her with its paw, and she glanced
+swiftly round, to see the face of Ciccio mischievous behind her
+shoulder.
+
+"Now I think," said Madame, "that today we all take the same train.
+We go by the Great Central as far as the junction, together. Then
+you, Allaye, go on to Knarborough, and we leave you until tomorrow.
+And now there is not much time."
+
+"I am going to Woodhouse," said Ciccio in French.
+
+"You also! By the train, or the bicycle?"
+
+"Train," said Ciccio.
+
+"Waste so much money?"
+
+Ciccio raised his shoulders slightly.
+
+When breakfast was over, and Alvina had gone to her room, Geoffrey
+went out into the back yard, where the bicycles stood.
+
+"Cic'," he said. "I should like to go with thee to Woodhouse. Come
+on bicycle with me."
+
+Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"I'm going in train with _her_," he said.
+
+Geoffrey darkened with his heavy anger.
+
+"I would like to see how it is, there, _chez elle_," he said.
+
+"Ask _her_," said Ciccio.
+
+Geoffrey watched him suddenly.
+
+"Thou forsakest me," he said. "I would like to see it, there."
+
+"Ask _her_," repeated Ciccio. "Then come on bicycle."
+
+"You're content to leave me," muttered Geoffrey.
+
+Ciccio touched his friend on his broad cheek, and smiled at him with
+affection.
+
+"I don't leave thee, Gigi. I asked thy advice. You said, Go. But
+come. Go and ask her, and then come. Come on bicycle, eh? Ask her!
+Go on! Go and ask her."
+
+Alvina was surprised to hear a tap at her door, and Gigi's voice, in
+his strong foreign accent:
+
+"Mees Houghton, I carry your bag."
+
+She opened her door in surprise. She was all ready.
+
+"There it is," she said, smiling at him.
+
+But he confronted her like a powerful ox, full of dangerous force.
+Her smile had reassured him.
+
+"Na, Allaye," he said, "tell me something."
+
+"What?" laughed Alvina.
+
+"Can I come to Woodhouse?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"Today. Can I come on bicycle, to tea, eh? At your house with you
+and Ciccio? Eh?"
+
+He was smiling with a thick, doubtful, half sullen smile.
+
+"Do!" said Alvina.
+
+He looked at her with his large, dark-blue eyes.
+
+"Really, eh?" he said, holding out his large hand.
+
+She shook hands with him warmly.
+
+"Yes, really!" she said. "I wish you would."
+
+"Good," he said, a broad smile on his thick mouth. And all the time
+he watched her curiously, from his large eyes.
+
+"Ciccio--a good chap, eh?" he said.
+
+"Is he?" laughed Alvina.
+
+"Ha-a--!" Gigi shook his head solemnly. "The best!" He made such
+solemn eyes, Alvina laughed. He laughed too, and picked up her bag
+as if it were a bubble.
+
+"Na Cic'--" he said, as he saw Ciccio in the street. "Sommes
+d'accord."
+
+"Ben!" said Ciccio, holding out his hand for the bag. "Donne."
+
+"Ne-ne," said Gigi, shrugging.
+
+Alvina found herself on the new and busy station that Sunday morning,
+one of the little theatrical company. It was an odd experience. They
+were so obviously a theatrical company--people apart from the world.
+Madame was darting her black eyes here and there, behind her spotted
+veil, and standing with the ostensible self-possession of her
+profession. Max was circling round with large strides, round a big
+black box on which the red words Natcha-Kee-Tawara showed mystic, and
+round the small bunch of stage fittings at the end of the platform.
+Louis was waiting to get the tickets, Gigi and Ciccio were bringing up
+the bicycles. They were a whole train of departure in themselves, busy,
+bustling, cheerful--and curiously apart, vagrants.
+
+Alvina strolled away towards the half-open bookstall. Geoffrey was
+standing monumental between her and the company. She returned to
+him.
+
+"What time shall we expect you?" she said.
+
+He smiled at her in his broad, friendly fashion.
+
+"Expect me to be there? Why--" he rolled his eyes and proceeded to
+calculate. "At four o'clock."
+
+"Just about the time when we get there," she said.
+
+He looked at her sagely, and nodded.
+
+They were a good-humoured company in the railway carriage. The men
+smoked cigarettes and tapped off the ash on the heels of their
+boots, Madame watched every traveller with professional curiosity.
+Max scrutinized the newspaper, Lloyds, and pointed out items to
+Louis, who read them over Max's shoulder, Ciccio suddenly smacked
+Geoffrey on the thigh, and looked laughing into his face. So till
+they arrived at the junction. And then there was a kissing and a
+taking of farewells, as if the company were separating for ever.
+Louis darted into the refreshment bar and returned with little pies
+and oranges, which he deposited in the carriage, Madame presented
+Alvina with a packet of chocolate. And it was "Good-bye, good-bye,
+Allaye! Good-bye, Ciccio! Bon voyage. Have a good time, both."
+
+So Alvina sped on in the fast train to Knarborough with Ciccio.
+
+"I _do_ like them all," she said.
+
+He opened his mouth slightly and lifted his head up and down. She
+saw in the movement how affectionate he was, and in his own way, how
+emotional. He loved them all. She put her hand to his. He gave her
+hand one sudden squeeze, of physical understanding, then left it as
+if nothing had happened. There were other people in the carriage
+with them. She could not help feeling how sudden and lovely that
+moment's grasp of his hand was: so warm, so whole.
+
+And thus they watched the Sunday morning landscape slip by, as they
+ran into Knarborough. They went out to a little restaurant to eat.
+It was one o'clock.
+
+"Isn't it strange, that we are travelling together like this?" she
+said, as she sat opposite him.
+
+He smiled, looking into her eyes.
+
+"You think it's strange?" he said, showing his teeth slightly.
+
+"Don't you?" she cried.
+
+He gave a slight, laconic laugh.
+
+"And I can hardly bear it that I love you so much," she said,
+quavering, across the potatoes.
+
+He glanced furtively round, to see if any one was listening, if any
+one might hear. He would have hated it. But no one was near. Beneath
+the tiny table, he took her two knees between his knees, and pressed
+them with a slow, immensely powerful pressure. Helplessly she put
+her hand across the table to him. He covered it for one moment with
+his hand, then ignored it. But her knees were still between the
+powerful, living vice of his knees.
+
+"Eat!" he said to her, smiling, motioning to her plate. And he
+relaxed her.
+
+They decided to go out to Woodhouse on the tram-car, a long hour's
+ride. Sitting on the top of the covered car, in the atmosphere of
+strong tobacco smoke, he seemed self-conscious, withdrawn into his
+own cover, so obviously a dark-skinned foreigner. And Alvina, as she
+sat beside him, was reminded of the woman with the negro husband,
+down in Lumley. She understood the woman's reserve. She herself
+felt, in the same way, something of an outcast, because of the man
+at her side. An outcast! And glad to be an outcast. She clung to
+Ciccio's dark, despised foreign nature. She loved it, she
+worshipped it, she defied all the other world. Dark, he sat beside
+her, drawn in to himself, overcast by his presumed inferiority among
+these northern industrial people. And she was with him, on his side,
+outside the pale of her own people.
+
+There were already acquaintances on the tram. She nodded in answer
+to their salutation, but so obviously from a distance, that they
+kept turning round to eye her and Ciccio. But they left her alone.
+The breach between her and them was established for ever--and it was
+her will which established it.
+
+So up and down the weary hills of the hilly, industrial countryside,
+till at last they drew near to Woodhouse. They passed the ruins of
+Throttle-Ha'penny, and Alvina glanced at it indifferent. They ran
+along the Knarborough Road. A fair number of Woodhouse young people
+were strolling along the pavements in their Sunday clothes. She knew
+them all. She knew Lizzie Bates's fox furs, and Fanny Clough's lilac
+costume, and Mrs. Smitham's winged hat. She knew them all. And
+almost inevitably the old Woodhouse feeling began to steal over her,
+she was glad they could not see her, she was a little ashamed of
+Ciccio. She wished, for the moment, Ciccio were not there. And as
+the time came to get down, she looked anxiously back and forth to
+see at which halt she had better descend--where fewer people would
+notice her. But then she threw her scruples to the wind, and
+descended into the staring, Sunday afternoon street, attended by
+Ciccio, who carried her bag. She knew she was a marked figure.
+
+They slipped round to Manchester House. Miss Pinnegar expected
+Alvina, but by the train, which came later. So she had to be knocked
+up, for she was lying down. She opened the door looking a little
+patched in her cheeks, because of her curious colouring, and a
+little forlorn, and a little dumpy, and a little irritable.
+
+"I didn't know there'd be two of you," was her greeting.
+
+"Didn't you," said Alvina, kissing her. "Ciccio came to carry my
+bag."
+
+"Oh," said Miss Pinnegar. "How do you do?" and she thrust out her
+hand to him. He shook it loosely.
+
+"I had your wire," said Miss Pinnegar. "You said the train. Mrs.
+Rollings is coming in at four again--"
+
+"Oh all right--" said Alvina.
+
+The house was silent and afternoon-like. Ciccio took off his coat
+and sat down in Mr. Houghton's chair. Alvina told him to smoke. He
+kept silent and reserved. Miss Pinnegar, a poor, patch-cheeked,
+rather round-backed figure with grey-brown fringe, stood as if she
+did not quite know what to say or do.
+
+She followed Alvina upstairs to her room.
+
+"I can't think why you bring _him_ here," snapped Miss Pinnegar. "I
+don't know what you're thinking about. The whole place is talking
+already."
+
+"I don't care," said Alvina. "I like him."
+
+"Oh--for shame!" cried Miss Pinnegar, lifting her hand with Miss
+Frost's helpless, involuntary movement. "What do you think of
+yourself? And your father a month dead."
+
+"It doesn't matter. Father _is_ dead. And I'm sure the dead don't
+mind."
+
+"I never _knew_ such things as you say."
+
+"Why? I mean them."
+
+Miss Pinnegar stood blank and helpless.
+
+"You're not asking him to stay the night," she blurted.
+
+"Yes. And I'm going back with him to Madame tomorrow. You know I'm
+part of the company now, as pianist."
+
+"And are you going to marry him?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How _can_ you say you don't know! Why, it's awful. You make me feel
+I shall go out of my mind."
+
+"But I _don't_ know," said Alvina.
+
+"It's incredible! Simply incredible! I believe you're out of your
+senses. I used to think sometimes there was something wrong with
+your mother. And that's what it is with you. You're not quite right
+in your mind. You need to be looked after."
+
+"Do I, Miss Pinnegar! Ah, well, don't you trouble to look after me,
+will you?"
+
+"No one will if I don't."
+
+"I hope no one will."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I'm ashamed to live another day in Woodhouse," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"_I'm_ leaving it for ever," said Alvina.
+
+"I should think so," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Suddenly she sank into a chair, and burst into tears, wailing:
+
+"Your poor father! Your poor father!"
+
+"I'm sure the dead are all right. Why must you pity him?"
+
+"You're a lost girl!" cried Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Am I really?" laughed Alvina. It sounded funny.
+
+"Yes, you're a lost girl," sobbed Miss Pinnegar, on a final note of
+despair.
+
+"I like being lost," said Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar wept herself into silence. She looked huddled and
+forlorn. Alvina went to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.
+
+"Don't fret, Miss Pinnegar," she said. "Don't be silly. I love to be
+with Ciccio and Madame. Perhaps in the end I shall marry him. But if
+I don't--" her hand suddenly gripped Miss Pinnegar's heavy arm till
+it hurt--"I wouldn't lose a minute of him, no, not for anything
+would I."
+
+Poor Miss Pinnegar dwindled, convinced.
+
+"You make it hard for _me_, in Woodhouse," she said, hopeless.
+
+"Never mind," said Alvina, kissing her. "Woodhouse isn't heaven and
+earth."
+
+"It's been my home for forty years."
+
+"It's been mine for thirty. That's why I'm glad to leave it." There
+was a pause.
+
+"I've been thinking," said Miss Pinnegar, "about opening a little
+business in Tamworth. You know the Watsons are there."
+
+"I believe you'd be happy," said Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar pulled herself together. She had energy and courage
+still.
+
+"I don't want to stay here, anyhow," she said. "Woodhouse has
+nothing for me any more."
+
+"Of course it hasn't," said Alvina. "I think you'd be happier away
+from it."
+
+"Yes--probably I should--now!"
+
+None the less, poor Miss Pinnegar was grey-haired, she was almost a
+dumpy, odd old woman.
+
+They went downstairs. Miss Pinnegar put on the kettle.
+
+"Would you like to see the house?" said Alvina to Ciccio.
+
+He nodded. And she took him from room to room. His eyes looked
+quickly and curiously over everything, noticing things, but without
+criticism.
+
+"This was my mother's little sitting-room," she said. "She sat here
+for years, in this chair."
+
+"Always here?" he said, looking into Alvina's face.
+
+"Yes. She was ill with her heart. This is another photograph of her.
+I'm not like her."
+
+"Who is _that_?" he asked, pointing to a photograph of the handsome,
+white-haired Miss Frost.
+
+"That was Miss Frost, my governess. She lived here till she died. I
+loved her--she meant everything to me."
+
+"She also dead--?"
+
+"Yes, five years ago."
+
+They went to the drawing-room. He laid his hand on the keys of the
+piano, sounding a chord.
+
+"Play," she said.
+
+He shook his head, smiling slightly. But he wished her to play. She
+sat and played one of Kishw�gin's pieces. He listened, faintly
+smiling.
+
+"Fine piano--eh?" he said, looking into her face.
+
+"I like the tone," she said.
+
+"Is it yours?"
+
+"The piano? Yes. I suppose everything is mine--in name at least. I
+don't know how father's affairs are really."
+
+He looked at her, and again his eye wandered over the room. He saw a
+little coloured portrait of a child with a fleece of brownish-gold
+hair and surprised eyes, in a pale-blue stiff frock with a broad
+dark-blue sash.
+
+"You?" he said.
+
+"Do you recognize me?" she said. "Aren't I comical?"
+
+She took him upstairs--first to the monumental bedroom.
+
+"This was mother's room," she said. "Now it is mine."
+
+He looked at her, then at the things in the room, then out of the
+window, then at her again. She flushed, and hurried to show him his
+room, and the bath-room. Then she went downstairs.
+
+He kept glancing up at the height of the ceilings, the size of the
+rooms, taking in the size and proportion of the house, and the
+quality of the fittings.
+
+"It is a big house," he said. "Yours?"
+
+"Mine in name," said Alvina. "Father left all to me--and his debts
+as well, you see."
+
+"Much debts?"
+
+"Oh yes! I don't quite know how much. But perhaps more debts than
+there is property. I shall go and see the lawyer in the morning.
+Perhaps there will be nothing at all left for me, when everything is
+paid."
+
+She had stopped on the stairs, telling him this, turning round to
+him, who was on the steps above. He looked down on her, calculating.
+Then he smiled sourly.
+
+"Bad job, eh, if it is all gone--!" he said.
+
+"I don't mind, really, if I can live," she said.
+
+He spread his hands, deprecating, not understanding. Then he glanced
+up the stairs and along the corridor again, and downstairs into the
+hall.
+
+"A fine big house. Grand if it was yours," he said.
+
+"I wish it were," she said rather pathetically, "if you like it so
+much."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"H�!" he said. "How not like it!"
+
+"I don't like it," she said. "I think it's a gloomy miserable hole.
+I hate it. I've lived here all my life and seen everything bad
+happen here. I hate it."
+
+"Why?" he said, with a curious, sarcastic intonation.
+
+"It's a bad job it isn't yours, for certain," he said, as they
+entered the living-room, where Miss Pinnegar sat cutting bread and
+butter.
+
+"What?" said Miss Pinnegar sharply.
+
+"The house," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh well, we don't know. We'll hope for the best," replied Miss
+Pinnegar, arranging the bread and butter on the plate. Then, rather
+tart, she added: "It is a bad job. And a good many things are a bad
+job, besides that. If Miss Houghton had what she _ought_ to have,
+things would be very different, I assure you."
+
+"Oh yes," said Ciccio, to whom this address was directed.
+
+"Very different indeed. If all the money hadn't been--lost--in the
+way it has, Miss Houghton wouldn't be playing the piano, for one
+thing, in a cinematograph show."
+
+"No, perhaps not," said Ciccio.
+
+"Certainly not. It's not the right thing for her to be doing, _at
+all_!"
+
+"You think not?" said Ciccio.
+
+"Do you imagine it is?" said Miss Pinnegar, turning point blank on
+him as he sat by the fire.
+
+He looked curiously at Miss Pinnegar, grinning slightly.
+
+"H�!" he said. "How do I know!"
+
+"I should have thought it was obvious," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"H�!" he ejaculated, not fully understanding.
+
+"But of course those that are used to nothing better can't see
+anything but what they're used to," she said, rising and shaking the
+crumbs from her black silk apron, into the fire. He watched her.
+
+Miss Pinnegar went away into the scullery. Alvina was laying a fire
+in the drawing-room. She came with a dustpan to take some coal from
+the fire of the living-room.
+
+"What do you want?" said Ciccio, rising. And he took the shovel from
+her hand.
+
+"Big, hot fires, aren't they?" he said, as he lifted the burning
+coals from the glowing mass of the grate.
+
+"Enough," said Alvina. "Enough! We'll put it in the drawing-room."
+He carried the shovel of flaming, smoking coals to the other room,
+and threw them in the grate on the sticks, watching Alvina put on
+more pieces of coal.
+
+"Fine, a fire! Quick work, eh? A beautiful thing, a fire! You know
+what they say in my place: You can live without food, but you can't
+live without fire."
+
+"But I thought it was always hot in Naples," said Alvina.
+
+"No, it isn't. And my village, you know, when I was small boy, that
+was in the mountains, an hour quick train from Naples. Cold in the
+winter, hot in the summer--"
+
+"As cold as England?" said Alvina.
+
+"H�--and colder. The wolves come down. You could hear them crying in
+the night, in the frost--"
+
+"How terrifying--!" said Alvina.
+
+"And they will kill the dogs! Always they kill the dogs. You know,
+they hate dogs, wolves do." He made a queer noise, to show how
+wolves hate dogs. Alvina understood, and laughed.
+
+"So should I, if I was a wolf," she said.
+
+"Yes--eh?" His eyes gleamed on her for a moment.
+
+"Ah but, the poor dogs! You find them bitten--carried away among the
+trees or the stones, hard to find them, poor things, the next day."
+
+"How frightened they must be--!" said Alvina.
+
+"Frightened--hu!" he made sudden gesticulations and ejaculations,
+which added volumes to his few words.
+
+"And did you like it, your village?" she said.
+
+He put his head on one side in deprecation.
+
+"No," he said, "because, you see--h�, there is nothing to do--no
+money--work--work--work--no life--you see nothing. When I was a
+small boy my father, he died, and my mother comes with me to Naples.
+Then I go with the little boats on the sea--fishing, carrying
+people--" He flourished his hand as if to make her understand all
+the things that must be wordless. He smiled at her--but there was a
+faint, poignant sadness and remoteness in him, a beauty of old
+fatality, and ultimate indifference to fate.
+
+"And were you very poor?"
+
+"Poor?--why yes! Nothing. Rags--no shoes--bread, little fish from
+the sea--shell-fish--"
+
+His hands flickered, his eyes rested on her with a profound look of
+knowledge. And it seemed, in spite of all, one state was very much
+the same to him as another, poverty was as much life as affluence.
+Only he had a sort of jealous idea that it was humiliating to be
+poor, and so, for vanity's sake, he would have possessions. The
+countless generations of civilization behind him had left him an
+instinct of the world's meaninglessness. Only his little modern
+education made money and independence an _id�e fixe_. Old instinct
+told him the world was nothing. But modern education, so shallow,
+was much more efficacious than instinct. It drove him to make a show
+of himself to the world. Alvina watching him, as if hypnotized, saw
+his old beauty, formed through civilization after civilization; and
+at the same time she saw his modern vulgarianism, and decadence.
+
+"And when you go back, you will go back to your old village?" she
+said.
+
+He made a gesture with his head and shoulders, evasive,
+non-committal.
+
+"I don't know, you see," he said.
+
+"What is the name of it?"
+
+"Pescocalascio." He said the word subduedly, unwillingly.
+
+"Tell me again," said Alvina.
+
+"Pescocalascio."
+
+She repeated it.
+
+"And tell me how you spell it," she said.
+
+He fumbled in his pocket for a pencil and a piece of paper. She rose
+and brought him an old sketch-book. He wrote, slowly, but with the
+beautiful Italian hand, the name of his village.
+
+"And write your name," she said.
+
+"Marasca Francesco," he wrote.
+
+"And write the name of your father and mother," she said. He looked
+at her enquiringly.
+
+"I want to see them," she said.
+
+"Marasca Giovanni," he wrote, and under that "Califano Maria."
+
+She looked at the four names, in the graceful Italian script. And
+one after the other she read them out. He corrected her, smiling
+gravely. When she said them properly, he nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said. "That's it. You say it well."
+
+At that moment Miss Pinnegar came in to say Mrs. Rollings had seen
+another of the young men riding down the street.
+
+"That's Gigi! He doesn't know how to come here," said Ciccio,
+quickly taking his hat and going out to find his friend.
+
+Geoffrey arrived, his broad face hot and perspiring.
+
+"Couldn't you find it?" said Alvina.
+
+"I find the house, but I couldn't find no door," said Geoffrey.
+
+They all laughed, and sat down to tea. Geoffrey and Ciccio talked to
+each other in French, and kept each other in countenance.
+Fortunately for them, Madame had seen to their table-manners. But
+still they were far too free and easy to suit Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Do you know," said Ciccio in French to Geoffrey, "what a fine house
+this is?"
+
+"No," said Geoffrey, rolling his large eyes round the room, and
+speaking with his cheek stuffed out with food. "Is it?"
+
+"Ah--if it was _hers_, you know--"
+
+And so, after tea, Ciccio said to Alvina:
+
+"Shall you let Geoffrey see the house?"
+
+The tour commenced again. Geoffrey, with his thick legs planted
+apart, gazed round the rooms, and made his comments in French to
+Ciccio. When they climbed the stairs, he fingered the big, smooth
+mahogany bannister-rail. In the bedroom he stared almost dismayed
+at the colossal bed and cupboard. In the bath-room he turned on the
+old-fashioned, silver taps.
+
+"Here is my room--" said Ciccio in French.
+
+"Assez �loign�!" replied Gigi. Ciccio also glanced along the
+corridor.
+
+"Yes," he said. "But an open course--"
+
+"Look, my boy--if you could marry _this_--" meaning the house.
+
+"Ha, she doesn't know if it hers any more! Perhaps the debts cover
+every bit of it."
+
+"Don't say so! Na, that's a pity, that's a pity! La pauvre
+fille--pauvre demoiselle!" lamented Geoffrey.
+
+"Isn't it a pity! What dost say?"
+
+"A thousand pities! A thousand pities! Look, my boy, love needs no
+havings, but marriage does. Love is for all, even the grasshoppers.
+But marriage means a kitchen. That's how it is. La pauvre
+demoiselle; c'est malheur pour elle."
+
+"That's true," said Ciccio. "Et aussi pour moi. For me as well."
+
+"For thee as well, cher! Perhaps--" said Geoffrey, laying his arm on
+Ciccio's shoulder, and giving him a sudden hug. They smiled to each
+other.
+
+"Who knows!" said Ciccio.
+
+"Who knows, truly, my Cic'."
+
+As they went downstairs to rejoin Alvina, whom they heard playing on
+the piano in the drawing-room, Geoffrey peeped once more into the
+big bedroom.
+
+"Tu n'es jamais mont� si haut, mon beau. Pour moi, �a serait
+difficile de m'�lever. J'aurais bien peur, moi. Tu te trouves aussi
+un peu �bahi, hein? n'est-ce pas?"
+
+"Y'a place pour trois," said Ciccio.
+
+"Non, je cr�verais, l� haut. Pas pour moi!"
+
+And they went laughing downstairs.
+
+Miss Pinnegar was sitting with Alvina, determined not to go to
+Chapel this evening. She sat, rather hulked, reading a novel. Alvina
+flirted with the two men, played the piano to them, and suggested a
+game of cards.
+
+"Oh, Alvina, you will never bring out the cards tonight!"
+expostulated poor Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"But, Miss Pinnegar, it can't possibly hurt anybody."
+
+"You know what I think--and what your father thought--and your
+mother and Miss Frost--"
+
+"You see I think it's only prejudice," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh very well!" said Miss Pinnegar angrily.
+
+And closing her book, she rose and went to the other room.
+
+Alvina brought out the cards, and a little box of pence which
+remained from Endeavour harvests. At that moment there was a knock.
+It was Mr. May. Miss Pinnegar brought him in, in triumph.
+
+"Oh!" he said. "Company! I heard you'd come, Miss Houghton, so I
+_hastened_ to pay my compliments. I didn't know you had _company_.
+How do you do, Francesco! How do you do, Geoffrey. Comment
+allez-vous, alors?"
+
+"Bien!" said Geoffrey. "You are going to take a hand?"
+
+"Cards on Sunday evening! Dear me, what a revolution! Of course, I'm
+not _bigoted_. If Miss Houghton asks me--"
+
+Miss Pinnegar looked solemnly at Alvina.
+
+"Yes, do take a hand, Mr. May," said Alvina.
+
+"Thank you, I will then, if I may. Especially as I see those
+tempting piles of pennies and ha'pennies. Who is bank, may I ask? Is
+Miss Pinnegar going to play too?"
+
+But Miss Pinnegar had turned her poor, bowed back, and departed.
+
+"I'm afraid she's offended," said Alvina.
+
+"But why? We don't put _her_ soul in danger, do we now? I'm a good
+Catholic, you know, I _can't_ do with these provincial little
+creeds. Who deals? Do you, Miss Houghton? But I'm afraid we shall
+have a rather _dry_ game? What? Isn't that your opinion?"
+
+The other men laughed.
+
+"If Miss Houghton would just _allow_ me to run round and bring
+something in. Yes? May I? That would be _so_ much more cheerful.
+What is your choice, gentlemen?"
+
+"Beer," said Ciccio, and Geoffrey nodded.
+
+"Beer! Oh really! Extraor'nary! I always take a little whiskey
+myself. What kind of beer? Ale?--or bitter? I'm afraid I'd better
+bring bottles. Now how can I secrete them? You haven't a small
+travelling case, Miss Houghton? Then I shall look as if I'd just
+been taking a _journey_. Which I have--to the Sun and back: and if
+_that_ isn't far enough, even for Miss Pinnegar and John Wesley,
+why, I'm sorry."
+
+Alvina produced the travelling case.
+
+"Excellent!" he said. "Excellent! It will hold half-a-dozen
+beautifully. Now--" he fell into a whisper--"hadn't I better sneak
+out at the front door, and so escape the clutches of the watch-dog?"
+
+Out he went, on tip-toe, the other two men grinning at him.
+Fortunately there were glasses, the best old glasses, in the side
+cupboard in the drawing room. But unfortunately, when Mr. May
+returned, a corkscrew was in request. So Alvina stole to the
+kitchen. Miss Pinnegar sat dumped by the fire, with her spectacles
+and her book. She watched like a lynx as Alvina returned. And she
+saw the tell-tale corkscrew. So she dumped a little deeper in her
+chair.
+
+"There was a sound of revelry by night!" For Mr. May, after a long
+depression, was in high feather. They shouted, positively shouted
+over their cards, they roared with excitement, expostulation, and
+laughter. Miss Pinnegar sat through it all. But at one point she
+could bear it no longer.
+
+The drawing-room door opened, and the dumpy, hulked, faded woman in
+a black serge dress stood like a rather squat avenging angel in the
+doorway.
+
+"What would your _father_ say to this?" she said sternly.
+
+The company suspended their laughter and their cards, and looked
+around. Miss Pinnegar wilted and felt strange under so many eyes.
+
+"Father!" said Alvina. "But why father?"
+
+"You lost girl!" said Miss Pinnegar, backing out and closing the
+door.
+
+Mr. May laughed so much that he knocked his whiskey over.
+
+"There," he cried, helpless, "look what she's cost me!" And he went
+off into another paroxysm, swelling like a turkey.
+
+Ciccio opened his mouth, laughing silently.
+
+"Lost girl! Lost girl! How lost, when you are at home?" said
+Geoffrey, making large eyes and looking hither and thither as if
+_he_ had lost something.
+
+They all went off again in a muffled burst.
+
+"No but, really," said Mr. May, "drinking and card-playing with
+strange men in the drawing-room on Sunday evening, of _cauce_ it's
+scandalous. It's _terrible_! I don't know how ever you'll be saved,
+after such a sin. And in Manchester House, too--!" He went off into
+another silent, turkey-scarlet burst of mirth, wriggling in his
+chair and squealing faintly: "Oh, I love it, I love it! _You lost
+girl!_ Why of _cauce_ she's lost! And Miss Pinnegar has only just
+found it out. Who _wouldn't_ be lost? Why even Miss Pinnegar would
+be lost if she could. Of _cauce_ she would! Quite natch'ral!"
+
+Mr. May wiped his eyes, with his handkerchief which had
+unfortunately mopped up his whiskey.
+
+So they played on, till Mr. May and Geoffrey had won all the
+pennies, except twopence of Ciccio's. Alvina was in debt.
+
+"Well I think it's been a most agreeable game," said Mr. May. "Most
+agreeable! Don't you all?"
+
+The two other men smiled and nodded.
+
+"I'm only sorry to think Miss Houghton has _lost_ so steadily all
+evening. Really quite remarkable. But _then_--you see--I comfort
+myself with the reflection 'Lucky in cards, unlucky in love.' I'm
+certainly _hounded_ with misfortune in love. And I'm _sure_ Miss
+Houghton would rather be unlucky in cards than in love. What, isn't
+it so?"
+
+"Of course," said Alvina.
+
+"There, you see, _of cauce_! Well, all we can do after that is to
+wish her success in love. Isn't that so, gentlemen? I'm sure _we_
+are all quite willing to do our best to contribute to it. Isn't it
+so, gentlemen? Aren't we all ready to do our best to contribute to
+Miss Houghton's happiness in love? Well then, let us drink to it."
+He lifted his glass, and bowed to Alvina. "With _every_ wish for
+your success in love, Miss Houghton, and your _devoted_ servant--"
+He bowed and drank.
+
+Geoffrey made large eyes at her as he held up his glass.
+
+"_I_ know you'll come out all right in love, _I_ know," he said
+heavily.
+
+"And you, Ciccio? Aren't you drinking?" said Mr. May.
+
+Ciccio held up his glass, looked at Alvina, made a little mouth at
+her, comical, and drank his beer.
+
+"Well," said Mr. May, "_beer_ must confirm it, since words won't."
+
+"What time is it?" said Alvina. "We must have supper."
+
+It was past nine o'clock. Alvina rose and went to the kitchen, the
+men trailing after her. Miss Pinnegar was not there. She was not
+anywhere.
+
+"Has she gone to bed?" said Mr. May. And he crept stealthily
+upstairs on tip-toe, a comical, flush-faced, tubby little man. He
+was familiar with the house. He returned prancing.
+
+"I heard her cough," he said. "There's a light under her door. She's
+gone to bed. Now haven't I always said she was a good soul? I shall
+drink her health. Miss Pinnegar--" and he bowed stiffly in the
+direction of the stairs--"your health, and a _good night's rest_."
+
+After which, giggling gaily, he seated himself at the head of the
+table and began to carve the cold mutton.
+
+"And where are the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras this week?" he asked. They
+told him.
+
+"Oh? And you two are cycling back to the camp of Kishw�gin tonight?
+We mustn't prolong our cheerfulness _too_ far."
+
+"Ciccio is staying to help me with my bag tomorrow," said Alvina.
+"You know I've joined the Tawaras permanently--as pianist."
+
+"No, I didn't know that! Oh really! Really! Oh! Well! I see!
+Permanently! Yes, I am surprised! Yes! As pianist? And if I might
+ask, what is your share of the tribal income?"
+
+"That isn't settled yet," said Alvina.
+
+"No! Exactly! Exactly! It _wouldn't_ be settled yet. And you say it
+is a permanent engagement? Of _cauce_, at such a figure."
+
+"Yes, it is a permanent engagement," said Alvina.
+
+"Really! What a blow you give me! You won't come back to the
+Endeavour? What? Not at all?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I shall sell out of the Endeavour."
+
+"Really! You've decided, have you? Oh! This is news to me. And is
+_this_ quite final, too?"
+
+"Quite," said Alvina.
+
+"I see! Putting two and two together, if I may say so--" and he
+glanced from her to the young men--"I _see_. Most decidedly, most
+one-sidedly, if I may use the vulgarism, I _see--e--e!_ Oh! but what
+a blow you give me! What a blow you give me!"
+
+"Why?" said Alvina.
+
+"What's to become of the Endeavour? and consequently, of poor me?"
+
+"Can't you keep it going?--form a company?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't. I've done my best. But I'm afraid, you know,
+you've landed me."
+
+"I'm so sorry," said Alvina. "I hope not."
+
+"Thank you for the _hope_" said Mr. May sarcastically. "They say
+hope is sweet. _I_ begin to find it a little _bitter_!"
+
+Poor man, he had already gone quite yellow in the face. Ciccio and
+Geoffrey watched him with dark-seeing eyes.
+
+"And when are you going to let this fatal decision take effect?"
+asked Mr. May.
+
+"I'm going to see the lawyer tomorrow, and I'm going to tell him to
+sell everything and clear up as soon as possible," said Alvina.
+
+"Sell everything! This house, and all it contains?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. "Everything."
+
+"Really!" Mr. May seemed smitten quite dumb. "I feel as if the world
+had suddenly come to an end," he said.
+
+"But hasn't your world often come to an end before?" said Alvina.
+
+"Well--I suppose, once or twice. But _never_ quite on top of me, you
+see, before--"
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"And have you told Miss Pinnegar?" said Mr. May.
+
+"Not finally. But she has decided to open a little business in
+Tamworth, where she has relations."
+
+"Has she! And are you _really_ going to _tour_ with these young
+people--?" he indicated Ciccio and Gigi. "And at _no_ salary!" His
+voice rose. "Why! It's almost _White Slave Traffic_, on Madame's
+part. Upon my word!"
+
+"I don't think so," said Alvina. "Don't you see that's insulting."
+
+"_Insulting!_ Well, I don't know. I think it's the _truth_--"
+
+"Not to be said to me, for all that," said Alvina, quivering with
+anger.
+
+"Oh!" perked Mr. May, yellow with strange rage. "Oh! I mustn't say
+what I think! Oh!"
+
+"Not if you think those things--" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh really! The difficulty is, you see, I'm afraid I _do_ think
+them--" Alvina watched him with big, heavy eyes.
+
+"Go away," she said. "Go away! I won't be insulted by you."
+
+"No _indeed!_" cried Mr. May, starting to his feet, his eyes almost
+bolting from his head. "No _indeed!_ I wouldn't _think_ of insulting
+you in the presence of these _two_ young gentlemen."
+
+Ciccio rose slowly, and with a slow, repeated motion of the head,
+indicated the door.
+
+"Allez!" he said.
+
+"_Certainement!_" cried Mr. May, flying at Ciccio, verbally, like an
+enraged hen yellow at the gills. "_Certainement!_ Je m'en vais.
+Cette compagnie n'est pas de ma choix."
+
+"Allez!" said Ciccio, more loudly.
+
+And Mr. May strutted out of the room like a bird bursting with its
+own rage. Ciccio stood with his hands on the table, listening. They
+heard Mr. May slam the front door.
+
+"Gone!" said Geoffrey.
+
+Ciccio smiled sneeringly.
+
+"Voyez, un cochon de lait," said Gigi amply and calmly.
+
+Ciccio sat down in his chair. Geoffrey poured out some beer for him,
+saying:
+
+"Drink, my Cic', the bubble has burst, prfff!" And Gigi knocked in
+his own puffed cheek with his fist. "Allaye, my dear, your health!
+We are the Tawaras. We are Allaye! We are Pacohuila! We are
+Walgatchka! Allons! The milk-pig is stewed and eaten. Voil�!" He
+drank, smiling broadly.
+
+"One by one," said Geoffrey, who was a little drunk: "One by one we
+put them out of the field, they are _hors de combat_. Who remains?
+Pacohuila, Walgatchka, Allaye--"
+
+He smiled very broadly. Alvina was sitting sunk in thought and
+torpor after her sudden anger.
+
+"Allaye, what do you think about? You are the bride of Tawara," said
+Geoffrey.
+
+Alvina looked at him, smiling rather wanly.
+
+"And who is Tawara?" she asked.
+
+He raised his shoulders and spread his hands and swayed his head
+from side to side, for all the world like a comic mandarin.
+
+"There!" he cried. "The question! Who is Tawara? Who? Tell me!
+Ciccio is he--and I am he--and Max and Louis--" he spread his hand
+to the distant members of the tribe.
+
+"I can't be the bride of all four of you," said Alvina, laughing.
+
+"No--no! No--no! Such a thing does not come into my mind. But you
+are the Bride of Tawara. You dwell in the tent of Pacohuila. And
+comes the day, should it ever be so, there is no room for you in the
+tent of Pacohuila, then the lodge of Walgatchka the bear is open for
+you. Open, yes, wide open--" He spread his arms from his ample
+chest, at the end of the table. "Open, and when Allaye enters, it is
+the lodge of Allaye, Walgatchka is the bear that serves Allaye. By
+the law of the Pale Face, by the law of the Yenghees, by the law of
+the Fransayes, Walgatchka shall be husband-bear to Allaye, that day
+she lifts the door-curtain of his tent--"
+
+He rolled his eyes and looked around. Alvina watched him.
+
+"But I might be afraid of a husband-bear," she said.
+
+Geoffrey got on to his feet.
+
+"By the Manitou," he said, "the head of the bear Walgatchka is
+humble--" here Geoffrey bowed his head--"his teeth are as soft as
+lilies--" here he opened his mouth and put his finger on his small
+close teeth--"his hands are as soft as bees that stroke a flower--"
+here he spread his hands and went and suddenly flopped on his knees
+beside Alvina, showing his hands and his teeth still, and rolling
+his eyes. "Allaye can have no fear at all of the bear Walgatchka,"
+he said, looking up at her comically.
+
+Ciccio, who had been watching and slightly grinning, here rose to
+his feet and took Geoffrey by the shoulder, pulling him up.
+
+"Basta!" he said. "Tu es saoul. You are drunk, my Gigi. Get up. How
+are you going to ride to Mansfield, hein?--great beast."
+
+"Ciccio," said Geoffrey solemnly. "I love thee, I love thee as a
+brother, and also more. I love thee as a brother, my Ciccio, as thou
+knowest. But--" and he puffed fiercely--"I am the slave of Allaye, I
+am the tame bear of Allaye."
+
+"Get up," said Ciccio, "get up! Per bacco! She doesn't want a tame
+bear." He smiled down on his friend.
+
+Geoffrey rose to his feet and flung his arms round Ciccio.
+
+"Cic'," he besought him. "Cic'--I love thee as a brother. But let me
+be the tame bear of Allaye, let me be the gentle bear of Allaye."
+
+"All right," said Ciccio. "Thou art the tame bear of Allaye."
+
+Geoffrey strained Ciccio to his breast.
+
+"Thank you! Thank you! Salute me, my own friend."
+
+And Ciccio kissed him on either cheek. Whereupon Geoffrey
+immediately flopped on his knees again before Alvina, and presented
+her his broad, rich-coloured cheek.
+
+"Salute your bear, Allaye," he cried. "Salute your slave, the tame
+bear Walgatchka, who is a wild bear for all except Allaye and his
+brother Pacohuila the Puma." Geoffrey growled realistically as a
+wild bear as he kneeled before Alvina, presenting his cheek.
+
+Alvina looked at Ciccio, who stood above, watching. Then she lightly
+kissed him on the cheek, and said:
+
+"Won't you go to bed and sleep?"
+
+Geoffrey staggered to his feet, shaking his head.
+
+"No--no--" he said. "No--no! Walgatchka must travel to the tent of
+Kishw�gin, to the Camp of the Tawaras."
+
+"Not tonight, _mon brave_," said Ciccio. "Tonight we stay here,
+hein. Why separate, hein?--fr�re?"
+
+Geoffrey again clasped Ciccio in his arms.
+
+"Pacohuila and Walgatchka are blood-brothers, two bodies, one blood.
+One blood, in two bodies; one stream, in two valleys: one lake,
+between two mountains."
+
+Here Geoffrey gazed with large, heavy eyes on Ciccio. Alvina brought
+a candle and lighted it.
+
+"You will manage in the one room?" she said. "I will give you
+another pillow."
+
+She led the way upstairs. Geoffrey followed, heavily. Then Ciccio.
+On the landing Alvina gave them the pillow and the candle, smiled,
+bade them good-night in a whisper, and went downstairs again. She
+cleared away the supper and carried away all glasses and bottles
+from the drawing-room. Then she washed up, removing all traces of
+the feast. The cards she restored to their old mahogany box.
+Manchester House looked itself again.
+
+She turned off the gas at the meter, and went upstairs to bed. From
+the far room she could hear the gentle, but profound vibrations of
+Geoffrey's snoring. She was tired after her day: too tired to
+trouble about anything any more.
+
+But in the morning she was first downstairs. She heard Miss
+Pinnegar, and hurried. Hastily she opened the windows and doors to
+drive away the smell of beer and smoke. She heard the men rumbling
+in the bath-room. And quickly she prepared breakfast and made a
+fire. Mrs. Rollings would not appear till later in the day. At a
+quarter to seven Miss Pinnegar came down, and went into the scullery
+to make her tea.
+
+"Did both the men stay?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, they both slept in the end room," said Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar said no more, but padded with her tea and her boiled
+egg into the living room. In the morning she was wordless.
+
+Ciccio came down, in his shirt-sleeves as usual, but wearing a
+collar. He greeted Miss Pinnegar politely.
+
+"Good-morning!" she said, and went on with her tea.
+
+Geoffrey appeared. Miss Pinnegar glanced once at him, sullenly, and
+briefly answered his good-morning. Then she went on with her egg,
+slow and persistent in her movements, mum.
+
+The men went out to attend to Geoffrey's bicycle. The morning was
+slow and grey, obscure. As they pumped up the tires, they heard some
+one padding behind. Miss Pinnegar came and unbolted the yard door,
+but ignored their presence. Then they saw her return and slowly
+mount the outer stair-ladder, which went up to the top floor. Two
+minutes afterwards they were startled by the irruption of the
+work-girls. As for the work-girls, they gave quite loud, startled
+squeals, suddenly seeing the two men on their right hand, in the
+obscure morning. And they lingered on the stair-way to gaze in rapt
+curiosity, poking and whispering, until Miss Pinnegar appeared
+overhead, and sharply rang a bell which hung beside the entrance
+door of the work-rooms.
+
+After which excitements Geoffrey and Ciccio went in to breakfast,
+which Alvina had prepared.
+
+"You have done it all, eh?" said Ciccio, glancing round.
+
+"Yes. I've made breakfast for years, now," said Alvina.
+
+"Not many more times here, eh?" he said, smiling significantly.
+
+"I hope not," said Alvina.
+
+Ciccio sat down almost like a husband--as if it were his right.
+
+Geoffrey was very quiet this morning. He ate his breakfast, and rose
+to go.
+
+"I shall see you soon," he said, smiling sheepishly and bowing to
+Alvina. Ciccio accompanied him to the street.
+
+When Ciccio returned, Alvina was once more washing dishes.
+
+"What time shall we go?" he said.
+
+"We'll catch the one train. I must see the lawyer this morning."
+
+"And what shall you say to him?"
+
+"I shall tell him to sell everything--"
+
+"And marry me?"
+
+She started, and looked at him.
+
+"You don't want to marry, do you?" she said.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Wouldn't you rather wait, and see--"
+
+"What?" he said.
+
+"See if there is any money."
+
+He watched her steadily, and his brow darkened.
+
+"Why?" he said.
+
+She began to tremble.
+
+"You'd like it better if there was money."
+
+A slow, sinister smile came on his mouth. His eyes never smiled,
+except to Geoffrey, when a flood of warm, laughing light sometimes
+suffused them.
+
+"You think I should!"
+
+"Yes. It's true, isn't it? You would!"
+
+He turned his eyes aside, and looked at her hands as she washed the
+forks. They trembled slightly. Then he looked back at her eyes
+again, that were watching him large and wistful and a little
+accusing.
+
+His impudent laugh came on his face.
+
+"Yes," he said, "it is always better if there is money." He put his
+hand on her, and she winced. "But I marry you for love, you know.
+You know what love is--" And he put his arms round her, and laughed
+down into her face.
+
+She strained away.
+
+"But you can have love without marriage," she said. "You know that."
+
+"All right! All right! Give me love, eh? I want that."
+
+She struggled against him.
+
+"But not now," she said.
+
+She saw the light in his eyes fix determinedly, and he nodded.
+
+"Now!" he said. "Now!"
+
+His yellow-tawny eyes looked down into hers, alien and overbearing.
+
+"I can't," she struggled. "I can't now."
+
+He laughed in a sinister way: yet with a certain warmheartedness.
+
+"Come to that big room--" he said.
+
+Her face flew fixed into opposition.
+
+"I can't now, really," she said grimly.
+
+His eyes looked down at hers. Her eyes looked back at him, hard and
+cold and determined. They remained motionless for some seconds.
+Then, a stray wisp of her hair catching his attention, desire filled
+his heart, warm and full, obliterating his anger in the combat. For
+a moment he softened. He saw her hardness becoming more assertive,
+and he wavered in sudden dislike, and almost dropped her. Then again
+the desire flushed his heart, his smile became reckless of her, and
+he picked her right up.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Now."
+
+For a second, she struggled frenziedly. But almost instantly she
+recognized how much stronger he was, and she was still, mute and
+motionless with anger. White, and mute, and motionless, she was taken
+to her room. And at the back of her mind all the time she wondered at
+his deliberate recklessness of her. Recklessly, he had his will of
+her--but deliberately, and thoroughly, not rushing to the issue, but
+taking everything he wanted of her, progressively, and fully, leaving
+her stark, with nothing, nothing of herself--nothing.
+
+When she could lie still she turned away from him, still mute. And
+he lay with his arms over her, motionless. Noises went on, in the
+street, overhead in the work-room. But theirs was complete silence.
+
+At last he rose and looked at her.
+
+"Love is a fine thing, Allaye," he said.
+
+She lay mute and unmoving. He approached, laid his hand on her
+breast, and kissed her.
+
+"Love," he said, asserting, and laughing.
+
+But still she was completely mute and motionless. He threw
+bedclothes over her and went downstairs, whistling softly.
+
+She knew she would have to break her own trance of obstinacy. So she
+snuggled down into the bedclothes, shivering deliciously, for her
+skin had become chilled. She didn't care a bit, really, about her
+own downfall. She snuggled deliciously in the sheets, and admitted
+to herself that she loved him. In truth, she loved him--and she was
+laughing to herself.
+
+Luxuriously, she resented having to get up and tackle her heap of
+broken garments. But she did it. She took other clothes, adjusted
+her hair, tied on her apron, and went downstairs once more. She
+could not find Ciccio: he had gone out. A stray cat darted from the
+scullery, and broke a plate in her leap. Alvina found her washing-up
+water cold. She put on more, and began to dry her dishes.
+
+Ciccio returned shortly, and stood in the doorway looking at her.
+She turned to him, unexpectedly laughing.
+
+"What do you think of yourself?" she laughed.
+
+"Well," he said, with a little nod, and a furtive look of triumph
+about him, evasive. He went past her and into the room. Her inside
+burned with love for him: so elusive, so beautiful, in his silent
+passing out of her sight. She wiped her dishes happily. Why was she
+so absurdly happy, she asked herself? And why did she still fight so
+hard against the sense of his dark, unseizable beauty? Unseizable,
+for ever unseizable! That made her almost his slave. She fought
+against her own desire to fall at his feet. Ridiculous to be so
+happy.
+
+She sang to herself as she went about her work downstairs. Then she
+went upstairs, to do the bedrooms and pack her bag. At ten o'clock
+she was to go to the family lawyer.
+
+She lingered over her possessions: what to take, and what not to
+take. And so doing she wasted her time. It was already ten o'clock
+when she hurried downstairs. He was sitting quite still, waiting. He
+looked up at her.
+
+"Now I must hurry," she said. "I don't think I shall be more than an
+hour."
+
+He put on his hat and went out with her.
+
+"I shall tell the lawyer I am engaged to you. Shall I?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Tell him what you like." He was indifferent.
+
+"Because," said Alvina gaily, "we can please ourselves what we do,
+whatever we say. I shall say we think of getting married in the
+summer, when we know each other better, and going to Italy."
+
+"Why shall you say all that?" said Ciccio.
+
+"Because I shall _have_ to give some account of myself, or they'll
+make me do something I don't want to do. You might come to the
+lawyer's with me, will you? He's an awfully nice old man. Then he'd
+believe in you."
+
+But Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"No," he said. "I shan't go. He doesn't want to see _me_."
+
+"Well, if you don't want to. But I remember your name, Francesco
+Marasca, and I remember Pescocalascio."
+
+Ciccio heard in silence, as they walked the half-empty,
+Monday-morning street of Woodhouse. People kept nodding to Alvina.
+Some hurried inquisitively across to speak to her and look at
+Ciccio. Ciccio however stood aside and turned his back.
+
+"Oh yes," Alvina said. "I am staying with friends, here and there,
+for a few weeks. No, I don't know when I shall be back. Good-bye!"
+
+"You're looking well, Alvina," people said to her. "I think you're
+looking wonderful. A change does you good."
+
+"It does, doesn't it," said Alvina brightly. And she was pleased she
+was looking well.
+
+"Well, good-bye for a minute," she said, glancing smiling into his
+eyes and nodding to him, as she left him at the gate of the lawyer's
+house, by the ivy-covered wall.
+
+The lawyer was a little man, all grey. Alvina had known him since
+she was a child: but rather as an official than an individual. She
+arrived all smiling in his room. He sat down and scrutinized her
+sharply, officially, before beginning.
+
+"Well, Miss Houghton, and what news have you?"
+
+"I don't think I've any, Mr. Beeby. I came to you for news."
+
+"Ah!" said the lawyer, and he fingered a paper-weight that covered a
+pile of papers. "I'm afraid there is nothing very pleasant,
+unfortunately. And nothing very unpleasant either, for that matter."
+
+
+
+He gave her a shrewd little smile.
+
+"Is the will proved?"
+
+"Not yet. But I expect it will be through in a few days' time."
+
+"And are all the claims in?"
+
+"Yes. I _think_ so. I think so!" And again he laid his hand on the
+pile of papers under the paper-weight, and ran through the edges
+with the tips of his fingers.
+
+"All those?" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes," he said quietly. It sounded ominous.
+
+"Many!" said Alvina.
+
+"A fair amount! A fair amount! Let me show you a statement."
+
+He rose and brought her a paper. She made out, with the lawyer's
+help, that the claims against her father's property exceeded the
+gross estimate of his property by some seven hundred pounds.
+
+"Does it mean we owe seven hundred pounds?" she asked.
+
+"That is only on the _estimate_ of the property. It might, of
+course, realize much more, when sold--or it might realize less."
+
+"How awful!" said Alvina, her courage sinking.
+
+"Unfortunate! Unfortunate! However, I don't think the realization of
+the property would amount to less than the estimate. I don't think
+so."
+
+"But even then," said Alvina. "There is sure to be something
+owing--"
+
+She saw herself saddled with her father's debts.
+
+"I'm afraid so," said the lawyer.
+
+"And then what?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh--the creditors will have to be satisfied with a little less than
+they claim, I suppose. Not a very great deal, you see. I don't
+expect they will complain a great deal. In fact, some of them will
+be less badly off than they feared. No, on that score we need not
+trouble further. Useless if we do, anyhow. But now, about yourself.
+Would you like me to try to compound with the creditors, so that you
+could have some sort of provision? They are mostly people who know
+you, know your condition: and I might try--"
+
+"Try what?" said Alvina.
+
+"To make some sort of compound. Perhaps you might retain a lease of
+Miss Pinnegar's work-rooms. Perhaps even something might be done
+about the cinematograph. What would you like--?"
+
+Alvina sat still in her chair, looking through the window at the ivy
+sprays, and the leaf buds on the lilac. She felt she could not, she
+could not cut off every resource. In her own heart she had
+confidently expected a few hundred pounds: even a thousand or more.
+And that would make her _something_ of a catch, to people who had
+nothing. But now!--nothing!--nothing at the back of her but her
+hundred pounds. When that was gone--!
+
+In her dilemma she looked at the lawyer.
+
+"You didn't expect it would be quite so bad?" he said.
+
+"I think I didn't," she said.
+
+"No. Well--it might have been worse."
+
+Again he waited. And again she looked at him vacantly.
+
+"What do you think?" he said.
+
+For answer, she only looked at him with wide eyes.
+
+"Perhaps you would rather decide later."
+
+"No," she said. "No. It's no use deciding later."
+
+The lawyer watched her with curious eyes, his hand beat a little
+impatiently.
+
+"I will do my best," he said, "to get what I can for you."
+
+"Oh well!" she said. "Better let everything go. I don't _want_ to
+hang on. Don't bother about me at all. I shall go away, anyhow."
+
+"You will go away?" said the lawyer, and he studied his
+finger-nails.
+
+"Yes. I shan't stay here."
+
+"Oh! And may I ask if you have any definite idea, where you will
+go?"
+
+"I've got an engagement as pianist, with a travelling theatrical
+company."
+
+"Oh indeed!" said the lawyer, scrutinizing her sharply. She stared
+away vacantly out of the window. He took to the attentive study of
+his finger-nails once more. "And at a sufficient salary?"
+
+"Quite sufficient, thank you," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh! Well! Well now!--" He fidgetted a little. "You see, we are all
+old neighbours and connected with your father for many years.
+We--that is the persons interested, and myself--would not like to
+think that you were driven out of Woodhouse--er--er--destitute.
+If--er--we could come to some composition--make some arrangement
+that would be agreeable to you, and would, in some measure, secure
+you a means of livelihood--"
+
+He watched Alvina with sharp blue eyes. Alvina looked back at him,
+still vacantly.
+
+"No--thanks awfully!" she said. "But don't bother. I'm going away."
+
+"With the travelling theatrical company?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The lawyer studied his finger-nails intensely.
+
+"Well," he said, feeling with a finger-tip an imaginary roughness of
+one nail-edge. "Well, in that case--In that case--Supposing you have
+made an irrevocable decision--"
+
+He looked up at her sharply. She nodded slowly, like a porcelain
+mandarin.
+
+"In that case," he said, "we must proceed with the valuation and the
+preparation for the sale."
+
+"Yes," she said faintly.
+
+"You realize," he said, "that everything in Manchester House, except
+your private personal property, and that of Miss Pinnegar, belongs
+to the claimants, your father's creditors, and may not be removed
+from the house."
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"And it will be necessary to make an account of everything in the
+house. So if you and Miss Pinnegar will put your possessions
+strictly apart--But I shall see Miss Pinnegar during the course of
+the day. Would you ask her to call about seven--I think she is free
+then--"
+
+Alvina sat trembling.
+
+"I shall pack my things today," she said.
+
+"Of course," said the lawyer, "any little things to which you may be
+attached the claimants would no doubt wish you to regard as your
+own. For anything of greater value--your piano, for example--I
+should have to make a personal request--"
+
+"Oh, I don't want anything--" said Alvina.
+
+"No? Well! You will see. You will be here a few days?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I'm going away today."
+
+"Today! Is that also irrevocable?"
+
+"Yes. I must go this afternoon."
+
+"On account of your engagement? May I ask where your company is
+performing this week? Far away?"
+
+"Mansfield!"
+
+"Oh! Well then, in case I particularly wished to see you, you could
+come over?"
+
+"If necessary," said Alvina. "But I don't want to come to Woodhouse
+unless it _is_ necessary. Can't we write?"
+
+"Yes--certainly! Certainly!--most things! Certainly! And now--"
+
+He went into certain technical matters, and Alvina signed some
+documents. At last she was free to go. She had been almost an hour
+in the room.
+
+"Well, good-morning, Miss Houghton. You will hear from me, and I
+from you. I wish you a pleasant experience in your new occupation.
+You are not leaving Woodhouse for ever."
+
+"Good-bye!" she said. And she hurried to the road.
+
+Try as she might, she felt as if she had had a blow which knocked
+her down. She felt she had had a blow.
+
+At the lawyer's gate she stood a minute. There, across a little
+hollow, rose the cemetery hill. There were her graves: her mother's,
+Miss Frost's, her father's. Looking, she made out the white cross at
+Miss Frost's grave, the grey stone at her parents'. Then she turned
+slowly, under the church wall, back to Manchester House.
+
+She felt humiliated. She felt she did not want to see anybody at all.
+She did not want to see Miss Pinnegar, nor the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: and
+least of all, Ciccio. She felt strange in Woodhouse, almost as if the
+ground had risen from under her feet and hit her over the mouth. The
+fact that Manchester House and its very furniture was under seal to be
+sold on behalf of her father's creditors made her feel as if all her
+Woodhouse life had suddenly gone smash. She loathed the thought of
+Manchester House. She loathed staying another minute in it.
+
+And yet she did not want to go to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras either. The
+church clock above her clanged eleven. She ought to take the
+twelve-forty train to Mansfield. Yet instead of going home she
+turned off down the alley towards the fields and the brook.
+
+How many times had she gone that road! How many times had she seen
+Miss Frost bravely striding home that way, from her music-pupils.
+How many years had she noticed a particular wild cherry-tree come
+into blossom, a particular bit of black-thorn scatter its whiteness
+in among the pleached twigs of a hawthorn hedge. How often, how many
+springs had Miss Frost come home with a bit of this black-thorn in
+her hand!
+
+Alvina did _not_ want to go to Mansfield that afternoon. She felt
+insulted. She knew she would be much cheaper in Madame's eyes. She knew
+her own position with the troupe would be humiliating. It would be
+openly a little humiliating. But it would be much more maddeningly
+humiliating to stay in Woodhouse and experience the full flavour of
+Woodhouse's calculated benevolence. She hardly knew which was worse:
+the cool look of insolent half-contempt, half-satisfaction with which
+Madame would receive the news of her financial downfall, or the
+officious patronage which she would meet from the Woodhouse magnates.
+She knew exactly how Madame's black eyes would shine, how her mouth
+would curl with a sneering, slightly triumphant smile, as she heard the
+news. And she could hear the bullying tone in which Henry Wagstaff
+would dictate the Woodhouse benevolence to her. She wanted to go away
+from them all--from them all--for ever.
+
+Even from Ciccio. For she felt he insulted her too. Subtly, they all
+did it. They had regard for her possibilities as an heiress. Five
+hundred, even two hundred pounds would have made all the difference.
+Useless to deny it. Even to Ciccio. Ciccio would have had a lifelong
+respect for her, if she had come with even so paltry a sum as two
+hundred pounds. Now she had nothing, he would coolly withhold this
+respect. She felt he might jeer at her. And she could not get away
+from this feeling.
+
+Mercifully she had the bit of ready money. And she had a few
+trinkets which might be sold. Nothing else. Mercifully, for the mere
+moment, she was independent.
+
+Whatever else she did, she must go back and pack. She must pack her
+two boxes, and leave them ready. For she felt that once she had
+left, she could never come back to Woodhouse again. If England had
+cliffs all round--why, when there was nowhere else to go and no
+getting beyond, she could walk over one of the cliffs. Meanwhile,
+she had her short run before her. She banked hard on her
+independence.
+
+So she turned back to the town. She would not be able to take the
+twelve-forty train, for it was already mid-day. But she was glad.
+She wanted some time to herself. She would send Ciccio on. Slowly
+she climbed the familiar hill--slowly--and rather bitterly. She felt
+her native place insulted her: and she felt the Natchas insulted
+her. In the midst of the insult she remained isolated upon herself,
+and she wished to be alone.
+
+She found Ciccio waiting at the end of the yard: eternally waiting,
+it seemed. He was impatient.
+
+"You've been a long time," he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+"We shall have to make haste to catch the train."
+
+"I can't go by this train. I shall have to come on later. You can
+just eat a mouthful of lunch, and go now."
+
+They went indoors. Miss Pinnegar had not yet come down. Mrs.
+Rollings was busily peeling potatoes.
+
+"Mr. Marasca is going by the train, he'll have to have a little cold
+meat," said Alvina. "Would you mind putting it ready while I go
+upstairs?"
+
+"Sharpses and Fullbankses sent them bills," said Mrs. Rollings.
+Alvina opened them, and turned pale. It was thirty pounds, the total
+funeral expenses. She had completely forgotten them.
+
+"And Mr. Atterwell wants to know what you'd like put on th'
+headstone for your father--if you'd write it down."
+
+"All right."
+
+Mrs. Rollings popped on the potatoes for Miss Pinnegar's dinner, and
+spread the cloth for Ciccio. When he was eating, Miss Pinnegar came
+in. She inquired for Alvina--and went upstairs.
+
+"Have you had your dinner?" she said. For there was Alvina sitting
+writing a letter.
+
+"I'm going by a later train," said Alvina.
+
+"Both of you?"
+
+"No. He's going now."
+
+Miss Pinnegar came downstairs again, and went through to the
+scullery. When Alvina came down, she returned to the living room.
+
+"Give this letter to Madame," Alvina said to Ciccio. "I shall be at
+the hall by seven tonight. I shall go straight there."
+
+"Why can't you come now?" said Ciccio.
+
+"I can't possibly," said Alvina. "The lawyer has just told me
+father's debts come to much more than everything is worth. Nothing
+is ours--not even the plate you're eating from. Everything is under
+seal to be sold to pay off what is owing. So I've got to get my own
+clothes and boots together, or they'll be sold with the rest. Mr.
+Beeby wants you to go round at seven this evening, Miss
+Pinnegar--before I forget."
+
+"Really!" gasped Miss Pinnegar. "Really! The house and the furniture
+and everything got to be sold up? Then we're on the streets! I can't
+believe it."
+
+"So he told me," said Alvina.
+
+"But how positively awful," said Miss Pinnegar, sinking motionless
+into a chair.
+
+"It's not more than I expected," said Alvina. "I'm putting my things
+into my two trunks, and I shall just ask Mrs. Slaney to store them
+for me. Then I've the bag I shall travel with."
+
+"Really!" gasped Miss Pinnegar. "I can't believe it! And when have
+we got to get out?"
+
+"Oh, I don't think there's a desperate hurry. They'll take an
+inventory of all the things, and we can live on here till they're
+actually ready for the sale."
+
+"And when will that be?"
+
+"I don't know. A week or two."
+
+"And is the cinematograph to be sold the same?"
+
+"Yes--everything! The piano--even mother's portrait--"
+
+"It's impossible to believe it," said Miss Pinnegar. "It's
+impossible. He can never have left things so bad."
+
+"Ciccio," said Alvina. "You'll really have to go if you are to catch
+the train. You'll give Madame my letter, won't you? I should hate
+you to miss the train. I know she can't bear me already, for all the
+fuss and upset I cause."
+
+Ciccio rose slowly, wiping his mouth.
+
+"You'll be there at seven o'clock?" he said.
+
+"At the theatre," she replied.
+
+And without more ado, he left.
+
+Mrs. Rollings came in.
+
+"You've heard?" said Miss Pinnegar dramatically.
+
+"I heard somethink," said Mrs. Rollings.
+
+"Sold up! Everything to be sold up. Every stick and rag! I never
+thought I should live to see the day," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"You might almost have expected it," said Mrs. Rollings. "But you're
+all right, yourself, Miss Pinnegar. Your money isn't with his, is
+it?"
+
+"No," said Miss Pinnegar. "What little I have put by is safe. But
+it's not enough to live on. It's not enough to keep me, even
+supposing I only live another ten years. If I only spend a pound a
+week, it costs fifty-two pounds a year. And for ten years, look at
+it, it's five hundred and twenty pounds. And you couldn't say less.
+And I haven't half that amount. I never had more than a wage, you
+know. Why, Miss Frost earned a good deal more than I do. And _she_
+didn't leave much more than fifty. Where's the money to come
+from--?"
+
+"But if you've enough to start a little business--" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, it's what I shall _have_ to do. It's what I shall have to do.
+And then what about you? What about you?"
+
+"Oh, don't bother about me," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, it's all very well, don't bother. But when you come to my age,
+you know you've _got_ to bother, and bother a great deal, if you're
+not going to find yourself in a position you'd be sorry for. You
+_have_ to bother. And _you'll_ have to bother before you've done."
+
+"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," said Alvina.
+
+"Ha, sufficient for a good many days, it seems to me."
+
+Miss Pinnegar was in a real temper. To Alvina this seemed an odd way
+of taking it. The three women sat down to an uncomfortable dinner of
+cold meat and hot potatoes and warmed-up pudding.
+
+"But whatever you do," pronounced Miss Pinnegar; "whatever you do,
+and however you strive, in this life, you're knocked down in the
+end. You're always knocked down."
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Alvina, "if it's only in the end. It
+doesn't matter if you've had your life."
+
+"You've never had your life, till you're dead," said Miss Pinnegar.
+"And if you work and strive, you've a right to the fruits of your
+work."
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Alvina laconically, "so long as you've
+enjoyed working and striving."
+
+But Miss Pinnegar was too angry to be philosophic. Alvina knew it
+was useless to be either angry or otherwise emotional. None the
+less, she also felt as if she had been knocked down. And she almost
+envied poor Miss Pinnegar the prospect of a little, day-by-day
+haberdashery shop in Tamworth. Her own problem seemed so much more
+menacing. "Answer or die," said the Sphinx of fate. Miss Pinnegar
+could answer her own fate according to its question. She could say
+"haberdashery shop," and her sphinx would recognize this answer as
+true to nature, and would be satisfied. But every individual has his
+own, or her own fate, and her own sphinx. Alvina's sphinx was an
+old, deep thoroughbred, she would take no mongrel answers. And her
+thoroughbred teeth were long and sharp. To Alvina, the last of the
+fantastic but pure-bred race of Houghton, the problem of her fate
+was terribly abstruse.
+
+The only thing to do was not to solve it: to stray on, and answer
+fate with whatever came into one's head. No good striving with fate.
+Trust to a lucky shot, or take the consequences.
+
+"Miss Pinnegar," said Alvina. "Have we any money in hand?"
+
+"There is about twenty pounds in the bank. It's all shown in my
+books," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"We couldn't take it, could we?"
+
+"Every penny shows in the books."
+
+Alvina pondered again.
+
+"Are there more bills to come in?" she asked. "I mean my bills. Do I
+owe anything?"
+
+"I don't think you do," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"I'm going to keep the insurance money, any way. They can say what
+they like. I've got it, and I'm going to keep it."
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar, "it's not my business. But there's
+Sharps and Fullbanks to pay."
+
+"I'll pay those," said Alvina. "You tell Atterwell what to put on
+father's stone. How much does it cost?"
+
+"Five shillings a letter, you remember."
+
+"Well, we'll just put the name and the date. How much will that be?
+James Houghton. Born 17th January--"
+
+"You'll have to put 'Also of,'" said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Also of--" said Alvina. "One--two--three--four--five--six--. Six
+letters--thirty shillings. Seems an awful lot for _Also of_--"
+
+"But you can't leave it out," said Miss Pinnegar. "You can't
+economize over that."
+
+"I begrudge it," said Alvina.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT
+
+
+For days, after joining the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, Alvina was very
+quiet, subdued, and rather remote, sensible of her humiliating
+position as a hanger-on. They none of them took much notice of her.
+They drifted on, rather disjointedly. The cordiality, the _joie de
+vivre_ did not revive. Madame was a little irritable, and very
+exacting, and inclined to be spiteful. Ciccio went his way with
+Geoffrey.
+
+In the second week, Madame found out that a man had been
+surreptitiously inquiring about them at their lodgings, from the
+landlady and the landlady's blowsy daughter. It must have been a
+detective--some shoddy detective. Madame waited. Then she sent Max
+over to Mansfield, on some fictitious errand. Yes, the lousy-looking
+dogs of detectives had been there too, making the most minute
+enquiries as to the behaviour of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, what they
+did, how their sleeping was arranged, how Madame addressed the men,
+what attitude the men took towards Alvina.
+
+Madame waited again. And again, when they moved to Doncaster, the
+same two mongrel-looking fellows were lurking in the street, and
+plying the inmates of their lodging-house with questions. All the
+Natchas caught sight of the men. And Madame cleverly wormed out of
+the righteous and respectable landlady what the men had asked. Once
+more it was about the sleeping accommodation--whether the landlady
+heard anything in the night--whether she noticed anything in the
+bedrooms, in the beds.
+
+No doubt about it, the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were under suspicion. They
+were being followed, and watched. What for? Madame made a shrewd
+guess. "They want to say we are immoral foreigners," she said.
+
+"But what have our personal morals got to do with them?" said Max
+angrily.
+
+"Yes--but the English! They are so pure," said Madame.
+
+"You know," said Louis, "somebody must have put them up to it--"
+
+"Perhaps," said Madame, "somebody on account of Allaye."
+
+Alvina went white.
+
+"Yes," said Geoffrey. "White Slave Traffic! Mr. May said it."
+
+Madame slowly nodded.
+
+"Mr. May!" she said. "Mr. May! It is he. He knows all about
+morals--and immorals. Yes, I know. Yes--yes--yes! He suspects all
+our immoral doings, _mes braves_."
+
+"But there aren't any, except mine," cried Alvina, pale to the lips.
+
+"You! You! There you are!" Madame smiled archly, and rather
+mockingly.
+
+"What are we to do?" said Max, pale on the cheekbones.
+
+"Curse them! Curse them!" Louis was muttering, in his rolling
+accent.
+
+"Wait," said Madame. "Wait. They will not do anything to us. You are
+only dirty foreigners, _mes braves_. At the most they will ask us
+only to leave their pure country."
+
+"We don't interfere with none of them," cried Max.
+
+"Curse them," muttered Louis.
+
+"Never mind, _mon cher_. You are in a pure country. Let us wait."
+
+"If you think it's me," said Alvina, "I can go away."
+
+"Oh, my dear, you are only the excuse," said Madame, smiling
+indulgently at her. "Let us wait, and see."
+
+She took it smilingly. But her cheeks were white as paper, and her
+eyes black as drops of ink, with anger.
+
+"Wait and see!" she chanted ironically. "Wait and see! If we must
+leave the dear country--then _adieu!_" And she gravely bowed to an
+imaginary England.
+
+"I feel it's my fault. I feel I ought to go away," cried Alvina, who
+was terribly distressed, seeing Madame's glitter and pallor, and the
+black brows of the men. Never had Ciccio's brow looked so ominously
+black. And Alvina felt it was all her fault. Never had she
+experienced such a horrible feeling: as if something repulsive were
+creeping on her from behind. Every minute of these weeks was a
+horror to her: the sense of the low-down dogs of detectives hanging
+round, sliding behind them, trying to get hold of some clear proof
+of immorality on their part. And then--the unknown vengeance of the
+authorities. All the repulsive secrecy, and all the absolute power
+of the police authorities. The sense of a great malevolent power
+which had them all the time in its grip, and was watching, feeling,
+waiting to strike the morbid blow: the sense of the utter
+helplessness of individuals who were not even accused, only watched
+and enmeshed! the feeling that they, the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, herself
+included, must be monsters of hideous vice, to have provoked all
+this: and yet the sane knowledge that they, none of them, _were_
+monsters of vice; this was quite killing. The sight of a policeman
+would send up Alvina's heart in a flame of fear, agony; yet she knew
+she had nothing legally to be afraid of. Every knock at the door was
+horrible.
+
+She simply could not understand it. Yet there it was: they were
+watched, followed. Of that there was no question. And all she could
+imagine was that the troupe was secretly accused of White Slave
+Traffic by somebody in Woodhouse. Probably Mr. May had gone the
+round of the benevolent magnates of Woodhouse, concerning himself
+with her virtue, and currying favour with his concern. Of this she
+became convinced, that it was concern for her virtue which had
+started the whole business: and that the first instigator was Mr.
+May, who had got round some vulgar magistrate or County Councillor.
+
+Madame did not consider Alvina's view very seriously. She thought it
+was some personal malevolence against the Tawaras themselves,
+probably put up by some other professionals, with whom Madame was
+not popular.
+
+Be that as it may, for some weeks they went about in the shadow of
+this repulsive finger which was following after them, to touch them
+and destroy them with the black smear of shame. The men were silent
+and inclined to be sulky. They seemed to hold together. They seemed
+to be united into a strong, four-square silence and tension. They
+kept to themselves--and Alvina kept to herself--and Madame kept to
+herself. So they went about.
+
+And slowly the cloud melted. It never broke. Alvina felt that the
+very force of the sullen, silent fearlessness and fury in the
+Tawaras had prevented its bursting. Once there had been a weakening,
+a cringing, they would all have been lost. But their hearts hardened
+with black, indomitable anger. And the cloud melted, it passed away.
+There was no sign.
+
+Early summer was now at hand. Alvina no longer felt at home with the
+Natchas. While the trouble was hanging over, they seemed to ignore
+her altogether. The men hardly spoke to her. They hardly spoke to
+Madame, for that matter. They kept within the four-square enclosure
+of themselves.
+
+But Alvina felt herself particularly excluded, left out. And when
+the trouble of the detectives began to pass off, and the men became
+more cheerful again, wanted her to jest and be familiar with them,
+she responded verbally, but in her heart there was no response.
+
+Madame had been quite generous with her. She allowed her to pay for
+her room, and the expense of travelling. But she had her food with
+the rest. Wherever she was, Madame bought the food for the party,
+and cooked it herself. And Alvina came in with the rest: she paid no
+board.
+
+She waited, however, for Madame to suggest a small salary--or at
+least, that the troupe should pay her living expenses. But Madame
+did not make such a suggestion. So Alvina knew that she was not very
+badly wanted. And she guarded her money, and watched for some other
+opportunity.
+
+It became her habit to go every morning to the public library of the
+town in which she found herself, to look through the advertisements:
+advertisements for maternity nurses, for nursery governesses,
+pianists, travelling companions, even ladies' maids. For some weeks
+she found nothing, though she wrote several letters.
+
+One morning Ciccio, who had begun to hang round her again,
+accompanied her as she set out to the library. But her heart was
+closed against him.
+
+"Why are you going to the library?" he asked her. It was in
+Lancaster.
+
+"To look at the papers and magazines."
+
+"Ha-a! To find a job, eh?"
+
+His cuteness startled her for a moment.
+
+"If I found one I should take it," she said.
+
+"H�! I know that," he said.
+
+It so happened that that very morning she saw on the notice-board of
+the library an announcement that the Borough Council wished to
+engage the services of an experienced maternity nurse, applications
+to be made to the medical board. Alvina wrote down the directions.
+Ciccio watched her.
+
+"What is a maternity nurse?" he said.
+
+"An _accoucheuse_!" she said. "The nurse who attends when babies are
+born."
+
+"Do you know how to do that?" he said, incredulous, and jeering
+slightly.
+
+"I was trained to do it," she said.
+
+He said no more, but walked by her side as she returned to the
+lodgings. As they drew near the lodgings, he said:
+
+"You don't want to stop with us any more?"
+
+"I can't," she said.
+
+He made a slight, mocking gesture.
+
+"'I can't,'" he repeated. "Why do you always say you can't?"
+
+"Because I can't," she said.
+
+"Pff--!" he went, with a whistling sound of contempt.
+
+But she went indoors to her room. Fortunately, when she had finally
+cleared her things from Manchester House, she had brought with her
+her nurse's certificate, and recommendations from doctors. She wrote
+out her application, took the tram to the Town Hall and dropped it
+in the letterbox there. Then she wired home to her doctor for
+another reference. After which she went to the library and got out a
+book on her subject. If summoned, she would have to go before the
+medical board on Monday. She had a week. She read and pondered hard,
+recalling all her previous experience and knowledge.
+
+She wondered if she ought to appear before the board in uniform. Her
+nurse's dresses were packed in her trunk at Mrs. Slaney's, in
+Woodhouse. It was now May. The whole business at Woodhouse was
+finished. Manchester House and all the furniture was sold to some
+boot-and-shoe people: at least the boot-and-shoe people had the
+house. They had given four thousand pounds for it--which was above
+the lawyer's estimate. On the other hand, the theatre was sold for
+almost nothing. It all worked out that some thirty-three pounds,
+which the creditors made up to fifty pounds, remained for Alvina.
+She insisted on Miss Pinnegar's having half of this. And so that was
+all over. Miss Pinnegar was already in Tamworth, and her little shop
+would be opened next week. She wrote happily and excitedly about it.
+
+Sometimes fate acts swiftly and without a hitch. On Thursday Alvina
+received her notice that she was to appear before the Board on the
+following Monday. And yet she could not bring herself to speak of it
+to Madame till the Saturday evening. When they were all at supper,
+she said:
+
+"Madame, I applied for a post of maternity nurse, to the Borough of
+Lancaster."
+
+Madame raised her eyebrows. Ciccio had said nothing.
+
+"Oh really! You never told me."
+
+"I thought it would be no use if it all came to nothing. They want
+me to go and see them on Monday, and then they will decide--"
+
+"Really! Do they! On Monday? And then if you get this work you will
+stay here? Yes?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Of course! Of course! Yes! H'm! And if not?"
+
+The two women looked at each other.
+
+"What?" said Alvina.
+
+"If you _don't_ get it--! You are not _sure_?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I am not a bit sure."
+
+"Well then--! Now! And if you don't get it--?"
+
+"What shall I do, you mean?"
+
+"Yes, what shall you do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How! you don't know! Shall you come back to us, then?"
+
+"I will if you like--"
+
+"If I like! If _I_ like! Come, it is not a question of if _I_ like.
+It is what do you want to do yourself."
+
+"I feel you don't want me very badly," said Alvina.
+
+"Why? Why do you feel? Who makes you? Which of us makes you feel so?
+Tell me."
+
+"Nobody in particular. But I feel it."
+
+"Oh we-ell! If nobody makes you, and yet you feel it, it must be in
+yourself, don't you see? Eh? Isn't it so?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," admitted Alvina.
+
+"We-ell then! We-ell--" So Madame gave her her cong�. "But if you
+like to come back--if you _laike_--then--" Madame shrugged her
+shoulders--"you must come, I suppose."
+
+"Thank you," said Alvina.
+
+The young men were watching. They seemed indifferent. Ciccio turned
+aside, with his faint, stupid smile.
+
+In the morning Madame gave Alvina all her belongings, from the
+little safe she called her bank.
+
+"There is the money--so--and so--and so--that is correct. Please
+count it once more!--" Alvina counted it and kept it clutched in her
+hand. "And there are your rings, and your chain, and your
+locket--see--all--everything--! But not the brooch. Where is the
+brooch? Here! Shall I give it back, hein?"
+
+"I gave it to you," said Alvina, offended. She looked into Madame's
+black eyes. Madame dropped her eyes.
+
+"Yes, you gave it. But I thought, you see, as you have now not much
+mo-oney, perhaps you would like to take it again--"
+
+"No, thank you," said Alvina, and she went away, leaving Madame with
+the red brooch in her plump hand.
+
+"Thank goodness I've given her something valuable," thought Alvina
+to herself, as she went trembling to her room.
+
+She had packed her bag. She had to find new rooms. She bade good-bye
+to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. Her face was cold and distant, but she
+smiled slightly as she bade them good-bye.
+
+"And perhaps," said Madame, "per-haps you will come to Wigan
+tomorrow afternoon--or evening? Yes?"
+
+"Thank you," said Alvina.
+
+She went out and found a little hotel, where she took her room for
+the night, explaining the cause of her visit to Lancaster. Her heart
+was hard and burning. A deep, burning, silent anger against
+everything possessed her, and a profound indifference to mankind.
+
+And therefore, the next day, everything went as if by magic. She had
+decided that at the least sign of indifference from the medical
+board people she would walk away, take her bag, and go to
+Windermere. She had never been to the Lakes. And Windermere was not
+far off. She would not endure one single hint of contumely from any
+one else. She would go straight to Windermere, to see the big lake.
+Why not do as she wished! She could be quite happy by herself among
+the lakes. And she would be absolutely free, absolutely free. She
+rather looked forward to leaving the Town Hall, hurrying to take her
+bag and off to the station and freedom. Hadn't she still got about a
+hundred pounds? Why bother for one moment? To be quite alone in the
+whole world--and quite, quite free, with her hundred pounds--the
+prospect attracted her sincerely.
+
+And therefore, everything went charmingly at the Town Hall. The
+medical board were charming to her--charming. There was no
+hesitation at all. From the first moment she was engaged. And she
+was given a pleasant room in a hospital in a garden, and the matron
+was charming to her, and the doctors most courteous.
+
+When could she undertake to commence her duties? When did they want
+her? The very _moment_ she could come. She could begin tomorrow--but
+she had no uniform. Oh, the matron would lend her uniform and
+aprons, till her box arrived.
+
+So there she was--by afternoon installed in her pleasant little room
+looking on the garden, and dressed in a nurse's uniform. It was all
+sudden like magic. She had wired to Madame, she had wired for her
+box. She was another person.
+
+Needless to say, she was glad. Needless to say that, in the morning,
+when she had thoroughly bathed, and dressed in clean clothes, and
+put on the white dress, the white apron, and the white cap, she felt
+another person. So clean, she felt, so thankful! Her skin seemed
+caressed and live with cleanliness and whiteness, luminous she felt.
+It was so different from being with the Natchas.
+
+In the garden the snowballs, guelder-roses, swayed softly among
+green foliage, there was pink may-blossom, and single scarlet
+may-blossom, and underneath the young green of the trees, irises
+rearing purple and moth-white. A young gardener was working--and a
+convalescent slowly trailed a few paces.
+
+Having ten minutes still, Alvina sat down and wrote to Ciccio: "I am
+glad I have got this post as nurse here. Every one is most kind, and
+I feel at home already. I feel quite happy here. I shall think of my
+days with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, and of you, who were such a
+stranger to me. Good-bye.--A. H."
+
+This she addressed and posted. No doubt Madame would find occasion
+to read it. But let her.
+
+Alvina now settled down to her new work. There was of course a great
+deal to do, for she had work both in the hospital and out in the
+town, though chiefly out in the town. She went rapidly from case to
+case, as she was summoned. And she was summoned at all hours. So
+that it was tiring work, which left her no time to herself, except
+just in snatches.
+
+She had no serious acquaintance with anybody, she was too busy. The
+matron and sisters and doctors and patients were all part of her
+day's work, and she regarded them as such. The men she chiefly
+ignored: she felt much more friendly with the matron. She had many a
+cup of tea and many a chat in the matron's room, in the quiet, sunny
+afternoons when the work was not pressing. Alvina took her quiet
+moments when she could: for she never knew when she would be rung up
+by one or other of the doctors in the town.
+
+And so, from the matron, she learned to crochet. It was work she had
+never taken to. But now she had her ball of cotton and her hook, and
+she worked away as she chatted. She was in good health, and she was
+getting fatter again. With the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, she had improved
+a good deal, her colour and her strength had returned. But
+undoubtedly the nursing life, arduous as it was, suited her best.
+She became a handsome, reposeful woman, jolly with the other nurses,
+really happy with her friend the matron, who was well-bred and wise,
+and never over-intimate.
+
+The doctor with whom Alvina had most to do was a Dr. Mitchell, a
+Scotchman. He had a large practice among the poor, and was an
+energetic man. He was about fifty-four years old, tall,
+largely-built, with a good figure, but with extraordinarily large
+feet and hands. His face was red and clean-shaven, his eyes blue,
+his teeth very good. He laughed and talked rather mouthingly.
+Alvina, who knew what the nurses told her, knew that he had come as
+a poor boy and bottle-washer to Dr. Robertson, a fellow-Scotchman,
+and that he had made his way up gradually till he became a doctor
+himself, and had an independent practice. Now he was quite rich--and
+a bachelor. But the nurses did not set their bonnets at him very
+much, because he was rather mouthy and overbearing.
+
+In the houses of the poor he was a great autocrat.
+
+"What is that stuff you've got there!" he inquired largely, seeing a
+bottle of somebody's Soothing Syrup by a poor woman's bedside. "Take
+it and throw it down the sink, and the next time you want a soothing
+syrup put a little boot-blacking in hot water. It'll do you just as
+much good."
+
+Imagine the slow, pompous, large-mouthed way in which the red-faced,
+handsomely-built man pronounced these words, and you realize why the
+poor set such store by him.
+
+He was eagle-eyed. Wherever he went, there was a scuffle directly
+his foot was heard on the stairs. And he knew they were hiding
+something. He sniffed the air: he glanced round with a sharp eye:
+and during the course of his visit picked up a blue mug which was
+pushed behind the looking-glass. He peered inside--and smelled it.
+
+"Stout?" he said, in a tone of indignant inquiry: God-Almighty would
+presumably take on just such a tone, finding the core of an apple
+flung away among the dead-nettle of paradise: "Stout! Have you been
+drinking stout?" This as he gazed down on the wan mother in the bed.
+
+"They gave me a drop, doctor. I felt that low."
+
+The doctor marched out of the room, still holding the mug in his
+hand. The sick woman watched him with haunted eyes. The attendant
+women threw up their hands and looked at one another. Was he going
+for ever? There came a sudden smash. The doctor had flung the blue
+mug downstairs. He returned with a solemn stride.
+
+"There!" he said. "And the next person that gives you stout will be
+thrown down along with the mug."
+
+"Oh doctor, the bit o' comfort!" wailed the sick woman. "It ud never
+do me no harm."
+
+"Harm! Harm! With a stomach as weak as yours! Harm! Do you know
+better than I do? What have I come here for? To be told by _you_
+what will do you harm and what won't? It appears to me you need no
+doctor here, you know everything already--"
+
+"Oh no, doctor. It's not like that. But when you feel as if you'd
+sink through the bed, an' you don't know what to do with yourself--"
+
+"Take a little beef-tea, or a little rice pudding. Take
+_nourishment_, don't take that muck. Do you hear--" charging upon
+the attendant women, who shrank against the wall--"she's to have
+nothing alcoholic at all, and don't let me catch you giving it her."
+
+"They say there's nobbut fower per cent. i' stout," retorted the
+daring female.
+
+"Fower per cent.," mimicked the doctor brutally. "Why, what does an
+ignorant creature like _you_ know about fower per cent."
+
+The woman muttered a little under her breath.
+
+"What? Speak out. Let me hear what you've got to say, my woman. I've
+no doubt it's something for my benefit--"
+
+But the affronted woman rushed out of the room, and burst into tears
+on the landing. After which Dr. Mitchell, mollified, largely told
+the patient how she was to behave, concluding:
+
+"Nourishment! Nourishment is what you want. Nonsense, don't tell me
+you can't take it. Push it down if it won't go down by itself--"
+
+"Oh doctor--"
+
+"Don't say _oh doctor_ to me. Do as I tell you. That's _your_
+business." After which he marched out, and the rattle of his motor
+car was shortly heard.
+
+Alvina got used to scenes like these. She wondered why the people
+stood it. But soon she realized that they loved it--particularly the
+women.
+
+"Oh, nurse, stop till Dr. Mitchell's been. I'm scared to death of
+him, for fear he's going to shout at me."
+
+"Why does everybody put up with him?" asked innocent Alvina.
+
+"Oh, he's good-hearted, nurse, he _does_ feel for you."
+
+And everywhere it was the same: "Oh, he's got a heart, you know.
+He's rough, but he's got a heart. I'd rather have him than your
+smarmy slormin sort. Oh, you feel safe with Dr. Mitchell, I don't
+care what you say."
+
+But to Alvina this peculiar form of blustering, bullying heart which
+had all the women scurrying like chickens was not particularly
+attractive.
+
+The men did not like Dr. Mitchell, and would not have him if
+possible. Yet since he was club doctor and panel doctor, they had to
+submit. The first thing he said to a sick or injured labourer,
+invariably, was:
+
+"And keep off the beer."
+
+"Oh ay!"
+
+"Keep off the beer, or I shan't set foot in this house again."
+
+"Tha's got a red enough face on thee, tha nedna shout."
+
+"My face is red with exposure to all weathers, attending ignorant
+people like you. I never touch alcohol in any form."
+
+"No, an' I dunna. I drink a drop o' beer, if that's what you ca'
+touchin' alcohol. An' I'm none th' wuss for it, tha sees."
+
+"You've heard what I've told you."
+
+"Ah, I have."
+
+"And if you go on with the beer, you may go on with curing yourself.
+_I_ shan't attend you. You know I mean what I say, Mrs.
+Larrick"--this to the wife.
+
+"I do, doctor. And I know it's true what you say. An' I'm at him
+night an' day about it--"
+
+"Oh well, if he will hear no reason, he must suffer for it. He
+mustn't think _I'm_ going to be running after him, if he disobeys my
+orders." And the doctor stalked off, and the woman began to
+complain.
+
+None the less the women had their complaints against Dr. Mitchell.
+If ever Alvina entered a clean house on a wet day, she was sure to
+hear the housewife chuntering.
+
+"Oh my lawk, come in nurse! What a day! Doctor's not been yet. And
+he's bound to come now I've just cleaned up, trapesin' wi' his gret
+feet. He's got the biggest understandin's of any man i' Lancaster.
+My husband says they're the best pair o' pasties i' th' kingdom. An'
+he does make such a mess, for he never stops to wipe his feet on th'
+mat, marches straight up your clean stairs--"
+
+"Why don't you tell him to wipe his feet?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh my word! Fancy me telling him! He'd jump down my throat with
+both feet afore I'd opened my mouth. He's not to be spoken to, he
+isn't. He's my-lord, he is. You mustn't look, or you're done for."
+
+Alvina laughed. She knew they all liked him for browbeating them,
+and having a heart over and above.
+
+Sometimes he was given a good hit--though nearly always by a man. It
+happened he was in a workman's house when the man was at dinner.
+
+"Canna yer gi'e a man summat better nor this 'ere pap, Missis?" said
+the hairy husband, turning up his nose at the rice pudding.
+
+"Oh go on," cried the wife. "I hadna time for owt else." Dr.
+Mitchell was just stooping his handsome figure in the doorway.
+
+"Rice pudding!" he exclaimed largely. "You couldn't have anything
+more wholesome and nourishing. I have a rice pudding every day of my
+life--every day of my life, I do."
+
+The man was eating his pudding and pearling his big moustache
+copiously with it. He did not answer.
+
+"Do you doctor!" cried the woman. "And never no different."
+
+"Never," said the doctor.
+
+"Fancy that! You're that fond of them?"
+
+"I find they agree with me. They are light and digestible. And my
+stomach is as weak as a baby's."
+
+The labourer wiped his big moustache on his sleeve.
+
+"Mine _isna_, tha sees," he said, "so pap's no use. 'S watter ter
+me. I want ter feel as I've had summat: a bit o' suetty dumplin' an'
+a pint o' hale, summat ter fill th' hole up. An' tha'd be th' same
+if tha did my work."
+
+"If I did your work," sneered the doctor. "Why I do ten times the
+work that any one of you does. It's just the work that has ruined my
+digestion, the never getting a quiet meal, and never a whole night's
+rest. When do you think _I_ can sit at table and digest my dinner? I
+have to be off looking after people like you--"
+
+"Eh, tha can ta'e th' titty-bottle wi' thee," said the labourer.
+
+But Dr. Mitchell was furious for weeks over this. It put him in a
+black rage to have his great manliness insulted. Alvina was quietly
+amused.
+
+The doctor began by being rather lordly and condescending with her.
+But luckily she felt she knew her work at least as well as he knew
+it. She smiled and let him condescend. Certainly she neither feared
+nor even admired him. To tell the truth, she rather disliked him:
+the great, red-faced bachelor of fifty-three, with his bald spot and
+his stomach as weak as a baby's, and his mouthing imperiousness and
+his good heart which was as selfish as it could be. Nothing can be
+more cocksuredly selfish than a good heart which believes in its own
+beneficence. He was a little too much the teetotaller on the one
+hand to be so largely manly on the other. Alvina preferred the
+labourers with their awful long moustaches that got full of food.
+And he was a little too loud-mouthedly lordly to be in human good
+taste.
+
+As a matter of fact, he was conscious of the fact that he had risen
+to be a gentleman. Now if a man is conscious of being a _gentleman_,
+he is bound to be a little less than a _man_. But if he is gnawed
+with anxiety lest he may _not_ be a gentleman, he is only pitiable.
+There is a third case, however. If a man must loftily, by his
+manner, assert that he is _now_ a gentleman, he shows himself a
+clown. For Alvina, poor Dr. Mitchell fell into this third category,
+of clowns. She tolerated him good-humouredly, as women so often
+tolerate ninnies and _poseurs_. She smiled to herself when she saw
+his large and important presence on the board. She smiled when she
+saw him at a sale, buying the grandest pieces of antique furniture.
+She smiled when he talked of going up to Scotland, for grouse
+shooting, or of snatching an hour on Sunday morning, for golf. And
+she talked him over, with quiet, delicate malice, with the matron.
+He was no favourite at the hospital.
+
+Gradually Dr. Mitchell's manner changed towards her. From his
+imperious condescension he took to a tone of uneasy equality. This
+did not suit him. Dr. Mitchell had no equals: he had only the vast
+stratum of inferiors, towards whom he exercised his quite profitable
+beneficence--it brought him in about two thousand a year: and then
+his superiors, people who had been born with money. It was the
+tradesmen and professionals who had started at the bottom and
+clambered to the motor-car footing, who distressed him. And
+therefore, whilst he treated Alvina on this uneasy tradesman
+footing, he felt himself in a false position.
+
+She kept her attitude of quiet amusement, and little by little he
+sank. From being a lofty creature soaring over her head, he was now
+like a big fish poking its nose above water and making eyes at her.
+He treated her with rather presuming deference.
+
+"You look tired this morning," he barked at her one hot day.
+
+"I think it's thunder," she said.
+
+"Thunder! Work, you mean," and he gave a slight smile. "I'm going to
+drive you back."
+
+"Oh no, thanks, don't trouble! I've got to call on the way."
+
+"Where have you got to call?"
+
+She told him.
+
+"Very well. That takes you no more than five minutes. I'll wait for
+you. Now take your cloak."
+
+She was surprised. Yet, like other women, she submitted.
+
+As they drove he saw a man with a barrow of cucumbers. He stopped
+the car and leaned towards the man.
+
+"Take that barrow-load of poison and _bury_ it!" he shouted, in his
+strong voice. The busy street hesitated.
+
+"What's that, mister?" replied the mystified hawker.
+
+Dr. Mitchell pointed to the green pile of cucumbers.
+
+"Take that barrow-load of poison, and bury it," he called, "before
+you do anybody any more harm with it."
+
+"What barrow-load of poison's that?" asked the hawker, approaching.
+A crowd began to gather.
+
+"What barrow-load of poison is that!" repeated the doctor. "Why your
+barrow-load of cucumbers."
+
+"Oh," said the man, scrutinizing his cucumbers carefully. To be
+sure, some were a little yellow at the end. "How's that? Cumbers is
+right enough: fresh from market this morning."
+
+"Fresh or not fresh," said the doctor, mouthing his words
+distinctly, "you might as well put poison into your stomach, as
+those things. Cucumbers are the worst thing you can eat."
+
+"Oh!" said the man, stuttering. "That's 'appen for them as doesn't
+like them. I niver knowed a cumber do _me_ no harm, an' I eat 'em
+like a happle." Whereupon the hawker took a "cumber" from his
+barrow, bit off the end, and chewed it till the sap squirted.
+"What's wrong with that?" he said, holding up the bitten cucumber.
+
+"I'm not talking about what's wrong with that," said the doctor. "My
+business is what's wrong with the stomach it goes into. I'm a
+doctor. And I know that those things cause me half my work. They
+cause half the internal troubles people suffer from in summertime."
+
+"Oh ay! That's no loss to you, is it? Me an' you's partners. More
+cumbers I sell, more graft for you, 'cordin' to that. What's wrong
+then. _Cum-bers! Fine fresh Cum-berrrs! All fresh and juisty, all
+cheap and tasty--!_" yelled the man.
+
+"I am a doctor not only to cure illness, but to prevent it where I
+can. And cucumbers are poison to everybody."
+
+"_Cum-bers! Cum-bers! Fresh cumbers!_" yelled the man,
+
+Dr. Mitchell started his car.
+
+"When will they learn intelligence?" he said to Alvina, smiling and
+showing his white, even teeth.
+
+"I don't care, you know, myself," she said. "I should always let
+people do what they wanted--"
+
+"Even if you knew it would do them harm?" he queried, smiling with
+amiable condescension.
+
+"Yes, why not! It's their own affair. And they'll do themselves harm
+one way or another."
+
+"And you wouldn't try to prevent it?"
+
+"You might as well try to stop the sea with your fingers."
+
+"You think so?" smiled the doctor. "I see, you are a pessimist. You
+are a pessimist with regard to human nature."
+
+"Am I?" smiled Alvina, thinking the rose would smell as sweet. It
+seemed to please the doctor to find that Alvina was a pessimist with
+regard to human nature. It seemed to give her an air of distinction.
+In his eyes, she _seemed_ distinguished. He was in a fair way to
+dote on her.
+
+She, of course, when he began to admire her, liked him much better,
+and even saw graceful, boyish attractions in him. There was really
+something childish about him. And this something childish, since it
+looked up to her as if she were the saving grace, naturally
+flattered her and made her feel gentler towards him.
+
+He got in the habit of picking her up in his car, when he could. And
+he would tap at the matron's door, smiling and showing all his
+beautiful teeth, just about tea-time.
+
+"May I come in?" His voice sounded almost flirty.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"I see you're having tea! Very nice, a cup of tea at this hour!"
+
+"Have one too, doctor."
+
+"I will with pleasure." And he sat down wreathed with smiles. Alvina
+rose to get a cup. "I didn't intend to disturb you, nurse," he said.
+"Men are always intruders," he smiled to the matron.
+
+"Sometimes," said the matron, "women are charmed to be intruded
+upon."
+
+"Oh really!" his eyes sparkled. "Perhaps _you_ wouldn't say so,
+nurse?" he said, turning to Alvina. Alvina was just reaching at the
+cupboard. Very charming she looked, in her fresh dress and cap and
+soft brown hair, very attractive her figure, with its full, soft
+loins. She turned round to him.
+
+"Oh yes," she said. "I quite agree with the matron."
+
+"Oh, you do!" He did not quite know how to take it. "But you mind
+being disturbed at your tea, I am sure."
+
+"No," said Alvina. "We are so used to being disturbed."
+
+"Rather weak, doctor?" said the matron, pouring the tea.
+
+"Very weak, please."
+
+The doctor was a little laboured in his gallantry, but unmistakably
+gallant. When he was gone, the matron looked demure, and Alvina
+confused. Each waited for the other to speak.
+
+"Don't you think Dr. Mitchell is quite coming out?" said Alvina.
+
+"Quite! _Quite_ the ladies' man! I wonder who it is can be
+_bringing_ him out. A very praiseworthy work, I am sure." She looked
+wickedly at Alvina.
+
+"No, don't look at me," laughed Alvina, "_I_ know nothing about it."
+
+"Do you think it may be _me_!" said the matron, mischievous.
+
+"I'm sure of it, matron! He begins to show some taste at last."
+
+"There now!" said the matron. "I shall put my cap straight." And she
+went to the mirror, fluffing her hair and settling her cap.
+
+"There!" she said, bobbing a little curtsey to Alvina.
+
+They both laughed, and went off to work.
+
+But there was no mistake, Dr. Mitchell was beginning to expand. With
+Alvina he quite unbent, and seemed even to sun himself when she was
+near, to attract her attention. He smiled and smirked and became
+oddly self-conscious: rather uncomfortable. He liked to hang over
+her chair, and he made a great event of offering her a cigarette
+whenever they met, although he himself never smoked. He had a gold
+cigarette case.
+
+One day he asked her in to see his garden. He had a pleasant old
+square house with a big walled garden. He showed her his flowers and
+his wall-fruit, and asked her to eat his strawberries. He bade her
+admire his asparagus. And then he gave her tea in the drawing-room,
+with strawberries and cream and cakes, of all of which he ate
+nothing. But he smiled expansively all the time. He was a made man:
+and now he was really letting himself go, luxuriating in everything;
+above all, in Alvina, who poured tea gracefully from the old
+Georgian tea-pot, and smiled so pleasantly above the Queen Anne
+tea-cups.
+
+And she, wicked that she was, admired every detail of his
+drawing-room. It was a pleasant room indeed, with roses outside the
+French door, and a lawn in sunshine beyond, with bright red flowers
+in beds. But indoors, it was insistently antique. Alvina admired the
+Jacobean sideboard and the Jacobean arm-chairs and the Hepplewhite
+wall-chairs and the Sheraton settee and the Chippendale stands and
+the Axminster carpet and the bronze clock with Shakespeare and
+Ariosto reclining on it--yes, she even admired Shakespeare on the
+clock--and the ormolu cabinet and the bead-work foot-stools and the
+dreadful S�vres dish with a cherub in it and--but why enumerate. She
+admired _everything_! And Dr. Mitchell's heart expanded in his bosom
+till he felt it would burst, unless he either fell at her feet or
+did something extraordinary. He had never even imagined what it was
+to be so expanded: what a delicious feeling. He could have kissed
+her feet in an ecstasy of wild expansion. But habit, so far,
+prevented his doing more than beam.
+
+Another day he said to her, when they were talking of age:
+
+"You are as young as you feel. Why, when I was twenty I felt I had
+all the cares and responsibility of the world on my shoulders. And
+now I am middle-aged more or less, I feel as light as if I were just
+beginning life." He beamed down at her.
+
+"Perhaps you _are_ only just beginning your _own_ life," she said.
+"You have lived for your work till now."
+
+"It may be that," he said. "It may be that up till now I have lived
+for others, for my patients. And now perhaps I may be allowed to
+live a little more for myself." He beamed with real luxury, saw the
+real luxury of life begin.
+
+"Why shouldn't you?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh yes, I intend to," he said, with confidence.
+
+He really, by degrees, made up his mind to marry now, and to retire
+in part from his work. That is, he would hire another assistant,
+and give himself a fair amount of leisure. He was inordinately proud
+of his house. And now he looked forward to the treat of his life:
+hanging round the woman he had made his wife, following her about,
+feeling proud of her and his house, talking to her from morning till
+night, really finding himself in her. When he had to go his rounds
+she would go with him in the car: he made up his mind she would be
+willing to accompany him. He would teach her to drive, and they
+would sit side by side, she driving him and waiting for him. And he
+would run out of the houses of his patients, and find her sitting
+there, and he would get in beside her and feel so snug and so sure
+and so happy as she drove him off to the next case, he informing her
+about his work.
+
+And if ever she did not go out with him, she would be there on the
+doorstep waiting for him the moment she heard the car. And they
+would have long, cosy evenings together in the drawing-room, as he
+luxuriated in her very presence. She would sit on his knees and they
+would be snug for hours, before they went warmly and deliciously to
+bed. And in the morning he need not rush off. He would loiter about
+with her, they would loiter down the garden looking at every new
+flower and every new fruit, she would wear fresh flowery dresses and
+no cap on her hair, he would never be able to tear himself away from
+her. Every morning it would be unbearable to have to tear himself
+away from her, and every hour he would be rushing back to her. They
+would be simply everything to one another. And how he would enjoy
+it! Ah!
+
+He pondered as to whether he would have children. A child would take
+her away from him. That was his first thought. But then--! Ah well,
+he would have to leave it till the time. Love's young dream is never
+so delicious as at the virgin age of fifty-three.
+
+But he was quite cautious. He made no definite advances till he had
+put a plain question. It was August Bank Holiday, that for ever
+black day of the declaration of war, when his question was put. For
+this year of our story is the fatal year 1914.
+
+There was quite a stir in the town over the declaration of war. But
+most people felt that the news was only intended to give an extra
+thrill to the all-important event of Bank Holiday. Half the world
+had gone to Blackpool or Southport, the other half had gone to the
+Lakes or into the country. Lancaster was busy with a sort of f�te,
+notwithstanding. And as the weather was decent, everybody was in a
+real holiday mood.
+
+So that Dr. Mitchell, who had contrived to pick up Alvina at the
+Hospital, contrived to bring her to his house at half-past three,
+for tea.
+
+"What do you think of this new war?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh, it will be over in six weeks," said the doctor easily. And
+there they left it. Only, with a fleeting thought, Alvina wondered
+if it would affect the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She had never heard any
+more of them.
+
+"Where would you have liked to go today?" said the doctor, turning
+to smile at her as he drove the car.
+
+"I think to Windermere--into the Lakes," she said.
+
+"We might make a tour of the Lakes before long," he said. She was
+not thinking, so she took no particular notice of the speech.
+
+"How nice!" she said vaguely.
+
+"We could go in the car, and take them as we chose," said the
+doctor.
+
+"Yes," she said, wondering at him now.
+
+When they had had tea, quietly and gallantly t�te-�-t�te in his
+drawing-room, he asked her if she would like to see the other rooms
+of the house. She thanked him, and he showed her the substantial oak
+dining-room, and the little room with medical works and a revolving
+chair, which he called his study: then the kitchen and the pantry,
+the housekeeper looking askance; then upstairs to his bedroom, which
+was very fine with old mahogany tall-boys and silver candle-sticks
+on the dressing-table, and brushes with green ivory backs, and a
+hygienic white bed and straw mats: then the visitors' bedroom
+corresponding, with its old satin-wood furniture and cream-coloured
+chairs with large, pale-blue cushions, and a pale carpet with
+reddish wreaths. Very nice, lovely, awfully nice, I do like that,
+isn't that beautiful, I've never seen anything like that! came the
+gratifying fireworks of admiration from Alvina. And he smiled and
+gloated. But in her mind she was thinking of Manchester House, and
+how dark and horrible it was, how she hated it, but how it had
+impressed Ciccio and Geoffrey, how they would have loved to feel
+themselves masters of it, and how done in the eye they were. She
+smiled to herself rather grimly. For this afternoon she was feeling
+unaccountably uneasy and wistful, yearning into the distance again:
+a trick she thought she had happily lost.
+
+The doctor dragged her up even to the slanting attics. He was a big
+man, and he always wore navy blue suits, well-tailored and
+immaculate. Unconsciously she felt that big men in good navy-blue
+suits, especially if they had reddish faces and rather big feet and
+if their hair was wearing thin, were a special type all to
+themselves, solid and rather namby-pamby and tiresome.
+
+"What very nice attics! I think the many angles which the roof
+makes, the different slants, you know, are so attractive. Oh, and
+the fascinating little window!" She crouched in the hollow of the
+small dormer window. "Fascinating! See the town and the hills! I
+know I should want this room for my own."
+
+"Then have it," he said. "Have it for _one_ of your own."
+
+She crept out of the window recess and looked up at him. He was
+leaning forward to her, smiling, self-conscious, tentative, and
+eager. She thought it best to laugh it off.
+
+"I was only talking like a child, from the imagination," she said.
+
+"I quite understand that," he replied deliberately. "But I am
+speaking what I _mean_--"
+
+She did not answer, but looked at him reproachfully. He was smiling
+and smirking broadly at her.
+
+"Won't you marry me, and come and have this garret for your own?" He
+spoke as if he were offering her a chocolate. He smiled with curious
+uncertainty.
+
+"I don't know," she said vaguely.
+
+His smile broadened.
+
+"Well now," he said, "make up your mind. I'm not good at _talking_
+about love, you know. But I think I'm pretty good at _feeling_ it,
+you know. I want you to come here and be happy: with me." He added
+the two last words as a sort of sly post-scriptum, and as if to
+commit himself finally.
+
+"But I've never thought about it," she said, rapidly cogitating.
+
+"I know you haven't. But think about it now--" He began to be hugely
+pleased with himself. "Think about it now. And tell me if you could
+put up with _me_, as well as the garret." He beamed and put his head
+a little on one side--rather like Mr. May, for one second. But he
+was much more dangerous than Mr. May. He was overbearing, and had
+the devil's own temper if he was thwarted. This she knew. He was a
+big man in a navy blue suit, with very white teeth.
+
+Again she thought she had better laugh it off.
+
+"It's you I _am_ thinking about," she laughed, flirting still. "It's
+you I _am_ wondering about."
+
+"Well," he said, rather pleased with himself, "you wonder about me
+till you've made up your mind--"
+
+"I will--" she said, seizing the opportunity. "I'll wonder about you
+till I've made up my mind--shall I?"
+
+"Yes," he said. "That's what I wish you to do. And the next time I
+ask you, you'll let me know. That's it, isn't it?" He smiled
+indulgently down on her: thought her face young and charming,
+charming.
+
+"Yes," she said. "But don't ask me too soon, will you?"
+
+"How, too soon--?" He smiled delightedly.
+
+"You'll give me time to wonder about you, won't you? You won't ask
+me again this month, will you?"
+
+"This month?" His eyes beamed with pleasure. He enjoyed the
+procrastination as much as she did. "But the month's only just
+begun! However! Yes, you shall have your way. I won't ask you again
+this month."
+
+"And I'll promise to wonder about you all the month," she laughed.
+
+"That's a bargain," he said.
+
+They went downstairs, and Alvina returned to her duties. She was
+very much excited, very much excited indeed. A big, well-to-do man
+in a navy blue suit, of handsome appearance, aged fifty-three, with
+white teeth and a delicate stomach: it _was_ exciting. A sure
+position, a very nice home and lovely things in it, once they were
+dragged about a bit. And of course he'd adore her. That went without
+saying. She was as fussy as if some one had given her a lovely new
+pair of boots. She was really fussy and pleased with herself: and
+_quite_ decided she'd take it all on. That was how it put itself to
+her: she would take it all on.
+
+Of course there was the man himself to consider. But he was quite
+presentable. There was nothing at all against it: nothing at all. If
+he had pressed her during the first half of the month of August, he
+would almost certainly have got her. But he only beamed in
+anticipation.
+
+Meanwhile the stir and restlessness of the war had begun, and was
+making itself felt even in Lancaster. And the excitement and the
+unease began to wear through Alvina's rather glamorous fussiness.
+Some of her old fretfulness came back on her. Her spirit, which had
+been as if asleep these months, now woke rather irritably, and
+chafed against its collar. Who was this elderly man, that she should
+marry him? Who was he, that she should be kissed by him. Actually
+kissed and fondled by him! Repulsive. She avoided him like the
+plague. Fancy reposing against his broad, navy blue waistcoat! She
+started as if she had been stung. Fancy seeing his red, smiling face
+just above hers, coming down to embrace her! She pushed it away with
+her open hand. And she ran away, to avoid the thought.
+
+And yet! And yet! She would be so comfortable, she would be so
+well-off for the rest of her life. The hateful problem of material
+circumstance would be solved for ever. And she knew well how hateful
+material circumstances can make life.
+
+Therefore, she could not decide in a hurry. But she bore poor Dr.
+Mitchell a deep grudge, that he could not grant her all the
+advantages of his offer, and excuse her the acceptance of him
+himself. She dared not decide in a hurry. And this very fear, like a
+yoke on her, made her resent the man who drove her to decision.
+
+Sometimes she rebelled. Sometimes she laughed unpleasantly in the
+man's face: though she dared not go _too_ far: for she was a little
+afraid of him and his rabid temper, also. In her moments of sullen
+rebellion she thought of Natcha-Kee-Tawara. She thought of them
+deeply. She wondered where they were, what they were doing, how the
+war had affected them. Poor Geoffrey was a Frenchman--he would have
+to go to France to fight. Max and Louis were Swiss, it would not
+affect them: nor Ciccio, who was Italian. She wondered if the troupe
+was in England: if they would continue together when Geoffrey was
+gone. She wondered if they thought of her. She felt they did. She
+felt they did not forget her. She felt there was a connection.
+
+In fact, during the latter part of August she wondered a good deal
+more about the Natchas than about Dr. Mitchell. But wondering about
+the Natchas would not help her. She felt, if she knew where they
+were, she would fly to them. But then she knew she wouldn't.
+
+When she was at the station she saw crowds and bustle. People were
+seeing their young men off. Beer was flowing: sailors on the train
+were tipsy: women were holding young men by the lapel of the coat.
+And when the train drew away, the young men waving, the women cried
+aloud and sobbed after them.
+
+A chill ran down Alvina's spine. This was another matter, apart from
+her Dr. Mitchell. It made him feel very unreal, trivial. She did not
+know what she was going to do. She realized she must do
+something--take some part in the wild dislocation of life. She knew
+that she would put off Dr. Mitchell again.
+
+She talked the matter over with the matron. The matron advised her
+to procrastinate. Why not volunteer for war-service? True, she was a
+maternity nurse, and this was hardly the qualification needed for
+the nursing of soldiers. But still, she _was_ a nurse.
+
+Alvina felt this was the thing to do. Everywhere was a stir and a
+seethe of excitement. Men were active, women were needed too. She
+put down her name on the list of volunteers for active service. This
+was on the last day of August.
+
+On the first of September Dr. Mitchell was round at the hospital
+early, when Alvina was just beginning her morning duties there. He
+went into the matron's room, and asked for Nurse Houghton. The
+matron left them together.
+
+The doctor was excited. He smiled broadly, but with a tension of
+nervous excitement. Alvina was troubled. Her heart beat fast.
+
+"Now!" said Dr. Mitchell. "What have you to say to me?"
+
+She looked up at him with confused eyes. He smiled excitedly and
+meaningful at her, and came a little nearer.
+
+"Today is the day when you answer, isn't it?" he said. "Now then,
+let me hear what you have to say."
+
+But she only watched him with large, troubled eyes, and did not
+speak. He came still nearer to her.
+
+"Well then," he said, "I am to take it that silence gives consent."
+And he laughed nervously, with nervous anticipation, as he tried to
+put his arm round her. But she stepped suddenly back.
+
+"No, not yet," she said.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"I haven't given my answer," she said.
+
+"Give it then," he said, testily.
+
+"I've volunteered for active service," she stammered. "I felt I
+ought to do something."
+
+"Why?" he asked. He could put a nasty intonation into that
+monosyllable. "I should have thought you would answer _me_ first."
+
+She did not answer, but watched him. She did not like him.
+
+"I only signed yesterday," she said.
+
+"Why didn't you leave it till tomorrow? It would have looked
+better." He was angry. But he saw a half-frightened, half-guilty
+look on her face, and during the weeks of anticipation he had worked
+himself up.
+
+"But put that aside," he smiled again, a little dangerously. "You
+have still to answer my question. Having volunteered for war service
+doesn't prevent your being engaged to me, does it?"
+
+Alvina watched him with large eyes. And again he came very near to
+her, so that his blue-serge waistcoat seemed, to impinge on her, and
+his purplish red face was above her.
+
+"I'd rather not be engaged, under the circumstances," she said.
+
+"Why?" came the nasty monosyllable. "What have the circumstances got
+to do with it?"
+
+"Everything is so uncertain," she said. "I'd rather wait."
+
+"Wait! Haven't you waited long enough? There's nothing at all to
+prevent your getting engaged to me now. Nothing whatsoever! Come
+now. I'm old enough not to be played with. And I'm much too much in
+love with you to let you go on indefinitely like this. Come now!" He
+smiled imminent, and held out his large hand for her hand. "Let me
+put the ring on your finger. It will be the proudest day of my life
+when I make you my wife. Give me your hand--"
+
+Alvina was wavering. For one thing, mere curiosity made her want to
+see the ring. She half lifted her hand. And but for the knowledge
+that he would kiss her, she would have given it. But he would kiss
+her--and against that she obstinately set her will. She put her hand
+behind her back, and looked obstinately into his eyes.
+
+"Don't play a game with me," he said dangerously.
+
+But she only continued to look mockingly and obstinately into his
+eyes.
+
+"Come," he said, beckoning for her to give her hand.
+
+With a barely perceptible shake of the head, she refused, staring at
+him all the time. His ungovernable temper got the better of him. He
+saw red, and without knowing, seized her by the shoulder, swung her
+back, and thrust her, pressed her against the wall as if he would
+push her through it. His face was blind with anger, like a hot, red
+sun. Suddenly, almost instantaneously, he came to himself again and
+drew back his hands, shaking his right hand as if some rat had
+bitten it.
+
+"I'm sorry!" he shouted, beside himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean
+it. I'm sorry." He dithered before her.
+
+She recovered her equilibrium, and, pale to the lips, looked at him
+with sombre eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry!" he continued loudly, in his strange frenzy like a small
+boy. "Don't remember! Don't remember! Don't think I did it."
+
+His face was a kind of blank, and unconsciously he wrung the hand
+that had gripped her, as if it pained him. She watched him, and
+wondered why on earth all this frenzy. She was left rather cold, she
+did not at all feel the strong feelings he seemed to expect of her.
+There was nothing so very unnatural, after all, in being bumped up
+suddenly against the wall. Certainly her shoulder hurt where he had
+gripped it. But there were plenty of worse hurts in the world. She
+watched him with wide, distant eyes.
+
+And he fell on his knees before her, as she backed against the
+bookcase, and he caught hold of the edge of her dress-bottom,
+drawing it to him. Which made her rather abashed, and much more
+uncomfortable.
+
+"Forgive me!" he said. "Don't remember! Forgive me! Love me! Love
+me! Forgive me and love me! Forgive me and love me!"
+
+As Alvina was looking down dismayed on the great, red-faced, elderly
+man, who in his crying-out showed his white teeth like a child, and
+as she was gently trying to draw her skirt from his clutch, the
+door opened, and there stood the matron, in her big frilled cap.
+Alvina glanced at her, flushed crimson and looked down to the man.
+She touched his face with her hand.
+
+"Never mind," she said. "It's nothing. Don't think about it."
+
+He caught her hand and clung to it.
+
+"Love me! Love me! Love me!" he cried.
+
+The matron softly closed the door again, withdrawing.
+
+"Love me! Love me!"
+
+Alvina was absolutely dumbfounded by this scene. She had no idea men
+did such things. It did not touch her, it dumbfounded her.
+
+The doctor, clinging to her hand, struggled to his feet and flung
+his arms round her, clasping her wildly to him.
+
+"You love me! You love me, don't you?" he said, vibrating and beside
+himself as he pressed her to his breast and hid his face against her
+hair. At such a moment, what was the good of saying she didn't? But
+she didn't. Pity for his shame, however, kept her silent, motionless
+and silent in his arms, smothered against the blue-serge waistcoat
+of his broad breast.
+
+He was beginning to come to himself. He became silent. But he still
+strained her fast, he had no idea of letting her go.
+
+"You will take my ring, won't you?" he said at last, still in the
+strange, lamentable voice. "You will take my ring."
+
+"Yes," she said coldly. Anything for a quiet emergence from this
+scene.
+
+He fumbled feverishly in his pocket with one hand, holding her still
+fast by the other arm. And with one hand he managed to extract the
+ring from its case, letting the case roll away on the floor. It was
+a diamond solitaire.
+
+"Which finger? Which finger is it?" he asked, beginning to smile
+rather weakly. She extricated her hand, and held out her engagement
+finger. Upon it was the mourning-ring Miss Frost had always worn.
+The doctor slipped the diamond solitaire above the mourning ring,
+and folded Alvina to his breast again.
+
+"Now," he said, almost in his normal voice. "Now I know you love
+me." The pleased self-satisfaction in his voice made her angry. She
+managed to extricate herself.
+
+"You will come along with me now?" he said.
+
+"I can't," she answered. "I must get back to my work here."
+
+"Nurse Allen can do that."
+
+"I'd rather not."
+
+"Where are you going today?"
+
+She told him her cases.
+
+"Well, you will come and have tea with me. I shall expect you to
+have tea with me every day."
+
+But Alvina was straightening her crushed cap before the mirror, and
+did not answer.
+
+"We can see as much as we like of each other now we're engaged," he
+said, smiling with satisfaction.
+
+"I wonder where the matron is," said Alvina, suddenly going into the
+cool white corridor. He followed her. And they met the matron just
+coming out of the ward.
+
+"Matron!" said Dr. Mitchell, with a return of his old mouthing
+importance. "You may congratulate Nurse Houghton and me on our
+engagement--" He smiled largely.
+
+"I may congratulate _you_, you mean," said the matron.
+
+"Yes, of course. And both of us, since we are now one," he replied.
+
+"Not quite, yet," said the matron gravely.
+
+And at length she managed to get rid of him.
+
+At once she went to look for Alvina, who had gone to her duties.
+
+"Well, I _suppose_ it is all right," said the matron gravely.
+
+"No it isn't," said Alvina. "I shall _never_ marry him."
+
+"Ah, never is a long while! Did he hear me come in?"
+
+"No, I'm sure he didn't."
+
+"Thank goodness for that."
+
+"Yes indeed! It was perfectly horrible. Following me round on his
+knees and shouting for me to love him! Perfectly horrible!"
+
+"Well," said the matron. "You never know what men will do till
+you've known them. And then you need be surprised at nothing,
+_nothing_. I'm surprised at nothing they do--"
+
+"I must say," said Alvina, "I was surprised. Very unpleasantly."
+
+"But you accepted him--"
+
+"Anything to quieten him--like a hysterical child."
+
+"Yes, but I'm not sure you haven't taken a very risky way of
+quietening him, giving him what he wanted--"
+
+"I think," said Alvina, "I can look after myself. I may be moved any
+day now."
+
+"Well--!" said the matron. "He may prevent your getting moved, you
+know. He's on the board. And if he says you are indispensable--"
+
+This was a new idea for Alvina to cogitate. She had counted on a
+speedy escape. She put his ring in her apron pocket, and there she
+forgot it until he pounced on her in the afternoon, in the house of
+one of her patients. He waited for her, to take her off.
+
+"Where is your ring?" he said.
+
+And she realized that it lay in the pocket of a soiled, discarded
+apron--perhaps lost for ever.
+
+"I shan't wear it on duty," she said. "You know that."
+
+She had to go to tea with him. She avoided his love-making, by
+telling him any sort of spooniness revolted her. And he was too much
+an old bachelor to take easily to a fondling habit--before marriage,
+at least. So he mercifully left her alone: he was on the whole
+devoutly thankful she wanted to be left alone. But he wanted her to
+be there. That was his greatest craving. He wanted her to be always
+there. And so he craved for marriage: to possess her entirely, and
+to have her always there with him, so that he was never alone. Alone
+and apart from all the world: but by her side, always by her side.
+
+"Now when shall we fix the marriage?" he said. "It is no good
+putting it back. We both know what we are doing. And now the
+engagement is announced--"
+
+He looked at her anxiously. She could see the hysterical little boy
+under the great, authoritative man.
+
+"Oh, not till after Christmas!" she said.
+
+"After Christmas!" he started as if he had been bitten. "Nonsense!
+It's nonsense to wait so long. Next month, at the latest."
+
+"Oh no," she said. "I don't think so soon."
+
+"Why not? The sooner the better. You had better send in your
+resignation at once, so that you're free."
+
+"Oh but is there any need? I may be transferred for war service."
+
+"That's not likely. You're our only maternity nurse--"
+
+And so the days went by. She had tea with him practically every
+afternoon, and she got used to him. They discussed the furnishing--she
+could not help suggesting a few alterations, a few arrangements
+according to _her_ idea. And he drew up a plan of a wedding tour in
+Scotland. Yet she was quite certain she would not marry him. The matron
+laughed at her certainty. "You will drift into it," she said. "He is
+tying you down by too many little threads."
+
+"Ah, well, you'll see!" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes," said the matron. "I _shall_ see."
+
+And it was true that Alvina's will was indeterminate, at this time.
+She was _resolved_ not to marry. But her will, like a spring that is
+hitched somehow, did not fly direct against the doctor. She had sent
+in her resignation, as he suggested. But not that she might be free
+to marry him, but that she might be at liberty to flee him. So she
+told herself. Yet she worked into his hands.
+
+One day she sat with the doctor in the car near the station--it was
+towards the end of September--held up by a squad of soldiers in
+khaki, who were marching off with their band wildly playing, to
+embark on the special troop train that was coming down from the
+north. The town was in great excitement. War-fever was spreading
+everywhere. Men were rushing to enlist--and being constantly
+rejected, for it was still the days of regular standards.
+
+As the crowds surged on the pavement, as the soldiers tramped to the
+station, as the traffic waited, there came a certain flow in the
+opposite direction. The 4:15 train had come in. People were
+struggling along with luggage, children were running with spades and
+buckets, cabs were crawling along with families: it was the seaside
+people coming home. Alvina watched the two crowds mingle.
+
+And as she watched she saw two men, one carrying a mandoline case
+and a suit-case which she knew. It was Ciccio. She did not know the
+other man; some theatrical individual. The two men halted almost
+near the car, to watch the band go by. Alvina saw Ciccio quite near
+to her. She would have liked to squirt water down his brown,
+handsome, oblivious neck. She felt she hated him. He stood there,
+watching the music, his lips curling in his faintly-derisive Italian
+manner, as he talked to the other man. His eyelashes were as long
+and dark as ever, his eyes had still the attractive look of being
+set in with a smutty finger. He had got the same brownish suit on,
+which she disliked, the same black hat set slightly, jauntily over
+one eye. He looked common: and yet with that peculiar southern
+aloofness which gave him a certain beauty and distinction in her
+eyes. She felt she hated him, rather. She felt she had been let down
+by him.
+
+The band had passed. A child ran against the wheel of the standing
+car. Alvina suddenly reached forward and made a loud, screeching
+flourish on the hooter. Every one looked round, including the laden,
+tramping soldiers.
+
+"We can't move yet," said Dr. Mitchell.
+
+But Alvina was looking at Ciccio at that moment. He had turned with
+the rest, looking inquiringly at the car. And his quick eyes, the
+whites of which showed so white against his duskiness, the yellow
+pupils so non-human, met hers with a quick flash of recognition. His
+mouth began to curl in a smile of greeting. But she stared at him
+without moving a muscle, just blankly stared, abstracting every
+scrap of feeling, even of animosity or coldness, out of her gaze.
+She saw the smile die on his lips, his eyes glance sideways, and
+again sideways, with that curious animal shyness which characterized
+him. It was as if he did not want to see her looking at him, and ran
+from side to side like a caged weasel, avoiding her blank, glaucous
+look.
+
+She turned pleasantly to Dr. Mitchell.
+
+"What did you say?" she asked sweetly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED
+
+
+Alvina found it pleasant to be respected as she was respected in
+Lancaster. It is not only the prophet who hath honour _save_ in his
+own country: it is every one with individuality. In this northern
+town Alvina found that her individuality really told. Already she
+belonged to the revered caste of medicine-men. And into the bargain
+she was a personality, a person.
+
+Well and good. She was not going to cheapen herself. She felt that
+even in the eyes of the natives--the well-to-do part, at least--she
+lost a _little_ of her distinction when she was engaged to Dr.
+Mitchell. The engagement had been announced in _The Times_, _The
+Morning Post_, _The Manchester Guardian_, and the local _News_. No
+fear about its being known. And it cast a slight slur of vulgar
+familiarity over her. In Woodhouse, she knew, it elevated her in the
+common esteem tremendously. But she was no longer in Woodhouse. She
+was in Lancaster. And in Lancaster her engagement pigeonholed her.
+Apart from Dr. Mitchell she had a magic potentiality. Connected with
+him, she was a known and labelled quantity.
+
+This she gathered from her contact with the local gentry. The matron
+was a woman of family, who somehow managed, in her big, white,
+frilled cap, to be distinguished like an abbess of old. The really
+toney women of the place came to take tea in her room, and these
+little teas in the hospital were like a little elegant female
+conspiracy. There was a slight flavour of art and literature about.
+The matron had known Walter Pater, in the somewhat remote past.
+
+Alvina was admitted to these teas with the few women who formed the
+toney intellectual �lite of this northern town. There was a certain
+freemasonry in the matron's room. The matron, a lady-doctor, a
+clergyman's daughter, and the wives of two industrial magnates of
+the place, these five, and then Alvina, formed the little group.
+They did not meet a great deal outside the hospital. But they always
+met with that curious female freemasonry which can form a law unto
+itself even among most conventional women. They talked as they would
+never talk before men, or before feminine outsiders. They threw
+aside the whole vestment of convention. They discussed plainly the
+things they thought about--even the most secret--and they were quite
+calm about the things they did--even the most impossible. Alvina
+felt that her transgression was a very mild affair, and that her
+engagement was really _infra dig_.
+
+"And are you going to marry him?" asked Mrs. Tuke, with a long, cool
+look.
+
+"I can't _imagine_ myself--" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh, but so many things happen outside one's imagination. That's
+where your body has you. I can't _imagine_ that I'm going to have a
+child--" She lowered her eyelids wearily and sardonically over her
+large eyes.
+
+Mrs. Tuke was the wife of the son of a local manufacturer. She was
+about twenty-eight years old, pale, with great dark-grey eyes and an
+arched nose and black hair, very like a head on one of the lovely
+Syracusan coins. The odd look of a smile which wasn't a smile, at
+the corners of the mouth, the arched nose, and the slowness of the
+big, full, classic eyes gave her the dangerous Greek look of the
+Syracusan women of the past: the dangerous, heavily-civilized women
+of old Sicily: those who laughed about the latomia.
+
+"But do you think you can have a child without wanting it _at all_?"
+asked Alvina.
+
+"Oh, but there isn't _one bit_ of me wants it, not _one bit_. My
+_flesh_ doesn't want it. And my mind doesn't--yet there it is!" She
+spread her fine hands with a flicker of inevitability.
+
+"Something must want it," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Tuke. "The universe is one big machine, and we're
+just part of it." She flicked out her grey silk handkerchief, and
+dabbed her nose, watching with big, black-grey eyes the fresh face
+of Alvina.
+
+"There's not _one bit_ of me concerned in having this child," she
+persisted to Alvina. "My flesh isn't concerned, and my mind isn't.
+And _yet_!--_le voil�!_--I'm just _plant�_. I can't _imagine_ why I
+married Tommy. And yet--I did--!" She shook her head as if it was
+all just beyond her, and the pseudo-smile at the corners of her
+ageless mouth deepened.
+
+Alvina was to nurse Mrs. Tuke. The baby was expected at the end of
+August. But already the middle of September was here, and the baby
+had not arrived.
+
+The Tukes were not very rich--the young ones, that is. Tommy wanted
+to compose music, so he lived on what his father gave him. His
+father gave him a little house outside the town, a house furnished
+with expensive bits of old furniture, in a way that the townspeople
+thought insane. But there you are--Effie would insist on dabbing a
+rare bit of yellow brocade on the wall, instead of a picture, and in
+painting apple-green shelves in the recesses of the whitewashed wall
+of the dining-room. Then she enamelled the hall-furniture yellow,
+and decorated it with curious green and lavender lines and flowers,
+and had unearthly cushions and Sardinian pottery with unspeakable
+peaked griffins.
+
+What were you to make of such a woman! Alvina slept in her house
+these days, instead of at the hospital. For Effie was a very bad
+sleeper. She would sit up in bed, the two glossy black plaits
+hanging beside her white, arch face, wrapping loosely round her her
+dressing-gown of a sort of plumbago-coloured, dark-grey silk lined
+with fine silk of metallic blue, and there, ivory and jet-black and
+grey like black-lead, she would sit in the white bedclothes
+flicking her handkerchief and revealing a flicker of kingfisher-blue
+silk and white silk night dress, complaining of her neuritis nerve
+and her own impossible condition, and begging Alvina to stay with
+her another half-hour, and suddenly studying the big, blood-red
+stone on her finger as if she was reading something in it.
+
+"I believe I shall be like the woman in the _Cent Nouvelles_ and
+carry my child for five years. Do you know that story? She said that
+eating a parsley leaf on which bits of snow were sticking started
+the child in her. It might just as well--"
+
+Alvina would laugh and get tired. There was about her a kind of half
+bitter sanity and nonchalance which the nervous woman liked.
+
+One night as they were sitting thus in the bedroom, at nearly eleven
+o'clock, they started and listened. Dogs in the distance had also
+started to yelp. A mandoline was wailing its vibration in the night
+outside, rapidly, delicately quivering. Alvina went pale. She knew
+it was Ciccio. She had seen him lurking in the streets of the town,
+but had never spoken to him.
+
+"What's this?" cried Mrs. Tuke, cocking her head on one side.
+"Music! A mandoline! How extraordinary! Do you think it's a
+serenade?--" And she lifted her brows archly.
+
+"I should think it is," said Alvina.
+
+"How extraordinary! What a moment to choose to serenade the lady!
+_Isn't_ it like life--! I _must_ look at it--"
+
+She got out of bed with some difficulty, wrapped her dressing-gown
+round her, pushed her feet into slippers, and went to the window.
+She opened the sash. It was a lovely moonlight night of September.
+Below lay the little front garden, with its short drive and its iron
+gates that closed on the high-road. From the shadow of the high-road
+came the noise of the mandoline.
+
+"Hello, Tommy!" called Mrs. Tuke to her husband, whom she saw on the
+drive below her. "How's your musical ear--?"
+
+"All right. Doesn't it disturb you?" came the man's voice from the
+moonlight below.
+
+"Not a bit. I like it. I'm waiting for the voice. '_O Richard, O mon
+roi!_'--"
+
+But the music had stopped.
+
+"There!" cried Mrs. Tuke. "You've frightened him off! And we're
+dying to be serenaded, aren't we, nurse?" She turned to Alvina. "Do
+give me my fur, will you? Thanks so much. Won't you open the other
+window and look out there--?"
+
+Alvina went to the second window. She stood looking out.
+
+"Do play again!" Mrs. Tuke called into the night. "Do sing
+something." And with her white arm she reached for a glory rose that
+hung in the moonlight from the wall, and with a flash of her white
+arm she flung it toward the garden wall--ineffectually, of course.
+
+"Won't you play again?" she called into the night, to the unseen.
+"Tommy, go indoors, the bird won't sing when you're about."
+
+"It's an Italian by the sound of him. Nothing I hate more than
+emotional Italian music. Perfectly nauseating."
+
+"Never mind, dear. I know it sounds as if all their insides were
+coming out of their mouth. But we want to be serenaded, don't we,
+nurse?--"
+
+Alvina stood at her window, but did not answer.
+
+"Ah-h?" came the odd query from Mrs. Tuke. "Don't you like it?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. "Very much."
+
+"And aren't you dying for the song?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"There!" cried Mrs. Tuke, into the moonlight. "Una canzone
+bella-bella--molto bella--"
+
+She pronounced her syllables one by one, calling into the night. It
+sounded comical. There came a rude laugh from the drive below.
+
+"Go indoors, Tommy! He won't sing if you're there. Nothing will sing
+if you're there," called the young woman.
+
+They heard a footstep on the gravel, and then the slam of the hall
+door.
+
+"Now!" cried Mrs. Tuke.
+
+They waited. And sure enough, came the fine tinkle of the mandoline,
+and after a few moments, the song. It was one of the well-known
+Neapolitan songs, and Ciccio sang it as it should be sung.
+
+Mrs. Tuke went across to Alvina.
+
+"Doesn't he put his _bowels_ into it--?" she said, laying her hand
+on her own full figure, and rolling her eyes mockingly. "I'm _sure_
+it's more effective than senna-pods."
+
+Then she returned to her own window, huddled her furs over her
+breast, and rested her white elbows in the moonlight.
+
+
+       "Torn' a Surrientu
+        Fammi campar--"
+
+The song suddenly ended, in a clamorous, animal sort of yearning.
+Mrs. Tuke was quite still, resting her chin on her fingers. Alvina
+also was still. Then Mrs. Tuke slowly reached for the rose-buds on
+the old wall.
+
+"Molto bella!" she cried, half ironically. "Molto bella! Je vous
+envoie une rose--" And she threw the roses out on to the drive. A
+man's figure was seen hovering outside the gate, on the high-road.
+"Entrez!" called Mrs. Tuke. "Entrez! Prenez votre rose. Come in and
+take your rose."
+
+The man's voice called something from the distance.
+
+"What?" cried Mrs. Tuke.
+
+"Je ne peux pas entrer."
+
+"Vous ne pouvez pas entrer? Pourquoi alors! La porte n'est pas
+ferm�e � clef. Entrez donc!"
+
+"Non. On n'entre pas--" called the well-known voice of Ciccio.
+
+"Quoi faire, alors! Alvina, take him the rose to the gate, will you?
+Yes do! Their singing is horrible, I think. I can't go down to him.
+But do take him the roses, and see what he looks like. Yes do!" Mrs.
+Tuke's eyes were arched and excited. Alvina looked at her slowly.
+Alvina also was smiling to herself.
+
+She went slowly down the stairs and out of the front door. From a
+bush at the side she pulled two sweet-smelling roses. Then in the
+drive she picked up Effie's flowers. Ciccio was standing outside the
+gate.
+
+"Allaye!" he said, in a soft, yearning voice.
+
+"Mrs. Tuke sent you these roses," said Alvina, putting the flowers
+through the bars of the gate.
+
+"Allaye!" he said, caressing her hand, kissing it with a soft,
+passionate, yearning mouth. Alvina shivered. Quickly he opened the
+gate and drew her through. He drew her into the shadow of the wall,
+and put his arms round her, lifting her from her feet with
+passionate yearning.
+
+"Allaye!" he said. "I love you, Allaye, my beautiful, Allaye. I love
+you, Allaye!" He held her fast to his breast and began to walk away
+with her. His throbbing, muscular power seemed completely to envelop
+her. He was just walking away with her down the road, clinging fast
+to her, enveloping her.
+
+"Nurse! Nurse! I can't see you! Nurse!--" came the long call of Mrs.
+Tuke through the night. Dogs began to bark.
+
+"Put me down," murmured Alvina. "Put me down, Ciccio."
+
+"Come with me to Italy. Come with me to Italy, Allaye. I can't go to
+Italy by myself, Allaye. Come with me, be married to me--Allaye,
+Allaye--"
+
+His voice was a strange, hoarse whisper just above her face, he
+still held her in his throbbing, heavy embrace.
+
+"Yes--yes!" she whispered. "Yes--yes! But put me down, Ciccio. Put
+me down."
+
+"Come to Italy with me, Allaye. Come with me," he still reiterated,
+in a voice hoarse with pain and yearning.
+
+"Nurse! Nurse! Wherever are you? Nurse! I want you," sang the
+uneasy, querulous voice of Mrs. Tuke.
+
+"Do put me down!" murmured Alvina, stirring in his arms.
+
+He slowly relaxed his clasp, and she slid down like rain to earth.
+But still he clung to her.
+
+"Come with me, Allaye! Come with me to Italy!" he said.
+
+She saw his face, beautiful, non-human in the moonlight, and she
+shuddered slightly.
+
+"Yes!" she said. "I will come. But let me go now. Where is your
+mandoline?"
+
+He turned round and looked up the road.
+
+"Nurse! You absolutely _must_ come. I can't bear it," cried the
+strange voice of Mrs. Tuke.
+
+Alvina slipped from the man, who was a little bewildered, and
+through the gate into the drive.
+
+"You must come!" came the voice in pain from the upper window.
+
+Alvina ran upstairs. She found Mrs. Tuke crouched in a chair, with a
+drawn, horrified, terrified face. As her pains suddenly gripped her,
+she uttered an exclamation, and pressed her clenched fists hard on
+her face.
+
+"The pains have begun," said Alvina, hurrying to her.
+
+"Oh, it's horrible! It's horrible! I don't want it!" cried the woman
+in travail. Alvina comforted her and reassured her as best she
+could. And from outside, once more, came the despairing howl of the
+Neapolitan song, animal and inhuman on the night.
+
+       "E tu dic' Io part', addio!
+        T'alluntare di sta core,
+        Nel paese del amore
+        Tien' o cor' di non turnar'
+        --Ma nun me lasciar'--"
+
+It was almost unendurable. But suddenly Mrs. Tuke became quite
+still, and sat with her fists clenched on her knees, her two
+jet-black plaits dropping on either side of her ivory face, her big
+eyes fixed staring into space. At the line--
+
+        Ma nun me lasciar'--
+
+she began to murmur softly to herself--"Yes, it's dreadful! It's
+horrible! I can't understand it. What does it mean, that noise? It's
+as bad as these pains. What does it mean? What does he say? I can
+understand a little Italian--" She paused. And again came the sudden
+complaint:
+
+        Ma nun me lasciar'--
+
+"Ma nun me lasciar'--!" she murmured, repeating the music. "That
+means--Don't leave me! Don't leave me! But why? Why shouldn't one
+human being go away from another? What does it mean? That _awful_
+noise! Isn't love the most horrible thing! I think it's horrible. It
+just does one in, and turns one into a sort of howling animal. I'm
+howling with one sort of pain, he's howling with another. Two
+hellish animals howling through the night! I'm not myself, he's not
+himself. Oh, I think it's horrible. What does he look like, Nurse?
+Is he beautiful? Is he a great hefty brute?"
+
+She looked with big, slow, enigmatic eyes at Alvina.
+
+"He's a man I knew before," said Alvina.
+
+Mrs. Tuke's face woke from its half-trance.
+
+"Really! Oh! A man you knew before! Where?"
+
+"It's a long story," said Alvina. "In a travelling music-hall
+troupe."
+
+"In a travelling music-hall troupe! How extraordinary! Why, how did
+you come across such an individual--?"
+
+Alvina explained as briefly as possible. Mrs. Tuke watched her.
+
+"Really!" she said. "You've done all those things!" And she
+scrutinized Alvina's face. "You've had some effect on him, that's
+evident," she said. Then she shuddered, and dabbed her nose with her
+handkerchief. "Oh, the flesh is a _beastly_ thing!" she cried. "To
+make a man howl outside there like that, because you're here. And to
+make me howl because I've got a child inside me. It's unbearable!
+What does he look like, really?"
+
+"I don't know," said Alvina. "Not extraordinary. Rather a hefty
+brute--"
+
+Mrs. Tuke glanced at her, to detect the irony.
+
+"I should like to see him," she said. "Do you think I might?"
+
+"I don't know," said Alvina, non-committal.
+
+"Do you think he might come up? Ask him. Do let me see him."
+
+"Do you really want to?" said Alvina.
+
+"Of course--" Mrs. Tuke watched Alvina with big, dark, slow eyes.
+Then she dragged herself to her feet. Alvina helped her into bed.
+
+"Do ask him to come up for a minute," Effie said. "We'll give him a
+glass of Tommy's famous port. Do let me see him. Yes do!" She
+stretched out her long white arm to Alvina, with sudden imploring.
+
+Alvina laughed, and turned doubtfully away.
+
+The night was silent outside. But she found Ciccio leaning against a
+gate-pillar. He started up.
+
+"Allaye!" he said.
+
+"Will you come in for a moment? I can't leave Mrs. Tuke."
+
+Ciccio obediently followed Alvina into the house and up the stairs,
+without a word. He was ushered into the bedroom. He drew back when
+he saw Effie in the bed, sitting with her long plaits and her dark
+eyes, and the subtle-seeming smile at the corners of her mouth.
+
+"Do come in!" she said. "I want to thank you for the music. Nurse
+says it was for her, but I enjoyed it also. Would you tell me the
+words? I think it's a wonderful song."
+
+Ciccio hung back against the door, his head dropped, and the shy,
+suspicious, faintly malicious smile on his face.
+
+"Have a glass of port, do!" said Effie. "Nurse, give us all one. I
+should like one too. And a biscuit." Again she stretched out her
+long white arm from the sudden blue lining of her wrap, suddenly, as
+if taken with the desire. Ciccio shifted on his feet, watching
+Alvina pour out the port.
+
+He swallowed his in one swallow, and put aside his glass.
+
+"Have some more!" said Effie, watching over the top of her glass.
+
+He smiled faintly, stupidly, and shook his head.
+
+"Won't you? Now tell me the words of the song--"
+
+He looked at her from out of the dusky hollows of his brow, and did
+not answer. The faint, stupid half-smile, half-sneer was on his
+lips.
+
+"Won't you tell them me? I understood one line--"
+
+Ciccio smiled more pronouncedly as he watched her, but did not
+speak.
+
+"I understood one line," said Effie, making big eyes at him. "_Ma
+non me lasciare_--_Don't leave me!_ There, isn't that it?"
+
+He smiled, stirred on his feet, and nodded.
+
+"Don't leave me! There, I knew it was that. Why don't you want Nurse
+to leave you? Do you want her to be with you _every minute_?"
+
+He smiled a little contemptuously, awkwardly, and turned aside his
+face, glancing at Alvina. Effie's watchful eyes caught the glance.
+It was swift, and full of the terrible yearning which so horrified
+her.
+
+At the same moment a spasm crossed her face, her expression went
+blank.
+
+"Shall we go down?" said Alvina to Ciccio.
+
+He turned immediately, with his cap in his hand, and followed. In
+the hall he pricked up his ears as he took the mandoline from the
+chest. He could hear the stifled cries and exclamations from Mrs.
+Tuke. At the same moment the door of the study opened, and the
+musician, a burly fellow with troubled hair, came out.
+
+"Is that Mrs. Tuke?" he snapped anxiously.
+
+"Yes. The pains have begun," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh God! And have you left her!" He was quite irascible.
+
+"Only for a minute," said Alvina.
+
+But with a _Pf_! of angry indignation, he was climbing the stairs.
+
+"She is going to have a child," said Alvina to Ciccio. "I shall have
+to go back to her." And she held out her hand.
+
+He did not take her hand, but looked down into her face with the
+same slightly distorted look of overwhelming yearning, yearning
+heavy and unbearable, in which he was carried towards her as on a
+flood.
+
+"Allaye!" he said, with a faint lift of the lip that showed his
+teeth, like a pained animal: a curious sort of smile. He could not
+go away.
+
+"I shall have to go back to her," she said.
+
+"Shall you come with me to Italy, Allaye?"
+
+"Yes. Where is Madame?"
+
+"Gone! Gigi--all gone."
+
+"Gone where?"
+
+"Gone back to France--called up."
+
+"And Madame and Louis and Max?"
+
+"Switzerland."
+
+He stood helplessly looking at her.
+
+"Well, I must go," she said.
+
+He watched her with his yellow eyes, from under his long black
+lashes, like some chained animal, haunted by doom. She turned and
+left him standing.
+
+She found Mrs. Tuke wildly clutching the edge of the sheets, and
+crying: "No, Tommy dear. I'm awfully fond of you, you know I am. But
+go away. Oh God, go away. And put a space between us. Put a space
+between us!" she almost shrieked.
+
+He pushed up his hair. He had been working on a big choral work
+which he was composing, and by this time he was almost demented.
+
+"Can't you stand my presence!" he shouted, and dashed downstairs.
+
+"Nurse!" cried Effie. "It's _no use_ trying to get a grip on life.
+You're just at the mercy of _Forces_," she shrieked angrily.
+
+"Why not?" said Alvina. "There are good life-forces. Even the will
+of God is a life-force."
+
+"You don't understand! I want to be _myself_. And I'm _not_ myself.
+I'm just torn to pieces by _Forces_. It's horrible--"
+
+"Well, it's not my fault. I didn't make the universe," said Alvina.
+"If you have to be torn to pieces by forces, well, you have. Other
+forces will put you together again."
+
+"I don't want them to. I want to be myself. I don't want to be
+nailed together like a chair, with a hammer. I want to be myself."
+
+"You won't be nailed together like a chair. You should have faith in
+life."
+
+"But I hate life. It's nothing but a mass of forces. _I_ am
+intelligent. Life isn't intelligent. Look at it at this moment. Do
+you call this intelligent? Oh--Oh! It's horrible! Oh--!" She was
+wild and sweating with her pains. Tommy flounced out downstairs,
+beside himself. He was heard talking to some one in the moonlight
+outside. To Ciccio. He had already telephoned wildly for the doctor.
+But the doctor had replied that Nurse would ring him up.
+
+The moment Mrs. Tuke recovered her breath she began again.
+
+"I hate life, and faith, and such things. Faith is only fear. And
+life is a mass of unintelligent forces to which intelligent beings
+are submitted. Prostituted. Oh--oh!!--prostituted--"
+
+"Perhaps life itself is something bigger than intelligence," said
+Alvina.
+
+"Bigger than intelligence!" shrieked Effie. "_Nothing_ is bigger
+than intelligence. Your man is a hefty brute. His yellow eyes
+_aren't_ intelligent. They're _animal_--"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "Something else. I wish he didn't attract me--"
+
+"There! Because you're not content to be at the mercy of _Forces_!"
+cried Effie. "I'm not. I'm not. I want to be myself. And so forces
+tear me to pieces! Tear me to pie--eee--Oh-h-h! No!--"
+
+Downstairs Tommy had walked Ciccio back into the house again, and
+the two men were drinking port in the study, discussing Italy, for
+which Tommy had a great sentimental affection, though he hated all
+Italian music after the younger Scarlatti. They drank port all
+through the night, Tommy being strictly forbidden to interfere
+upstairs, or even to fetch the doctor. They drank three and a half
+bottles of port, and were discovered in the morning by Alvina fast
+asleep in the study, with the electric light still burning. Tommy
+slept with his fair and ruffled head hanging over the edge of the
+couch like some great loose fruit, Ciccio was on the floor, face
+downwards, his face in his folded arms.
+
+Alvina had a great difficulty in waking the inert Ciccio. In the
+end, she had to leave him and rouse Tommy first: who in rousing fell
+off the sofa with a crash which woke him disagreeably. So that he
+turned on Alvina in a fury, and asked her what the hell she thought
+she was doing. In answer to which Alvina held up a finger warningly,
+and Tommy, suddenly remembering, fell back as if he had been struck.
+
+"She is sleeping now," said Alvina.
+
+"Is it a boy or a girl?" he cried.
+
+"It isn't born yet," she said.
+
+"Oh God, it's an accursed fugue!" cried the bemused Tommy. After
+which they proceeded to wake Ciccio, who was like the dead doll in
+Petrushka, all loose and floppy. When he was awake, however, he
+smiled at Alvina, and said: "Allaye!"
+
+The dark, waking smile upset her badly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE WEDDED WIFE
+
+
+The upshot of it all was that Alvina ran away to Scarborough without
+telling anybody. It was in the first week in October. She asked for
+a week-end, to make some arrangements for her marriage. The marriage
+was presumably with Dr. Mitchell--though she had given him no
+definite word. However, her month's notice was up, so she was
+legally free. And therefore she packed a rather large bag with all
+her ordinary things, and set off in her everyday dress, leaving the
+nursing paraphernalia behind.
+
+She knew Scarborough quite well: and quite quickly found rooms which
+she had occupied before, in a boarding-house where she had stayed
+with Miss Frost long ago. Having recovered from her journey, she
+went out on to the cliffs on the north side. It was evening, and the
+sea was before her. What was she to do?
+
+She had run away from both men--from Ciccio as well as from
+Mitchell. She had spent the last fortnight more or less avoiding the
+pair of them. Now she had a moment to herself. She was even free
+from Mrs. Tuke, who in her own way was more exacting than the men.
+Mrs. Tuke had a baby daughter, and was getting well. Ciccio was
+living with the Tukes. Tommy had taken a fancy to him, and had half
+engaged him as a sort of personal attendant: the sort of thing Tommy
+would do, not having paid his butcher's bills.
+
+So Alvina sat on the cliffs in a mood of exasperation. She was sick
+of being badgered about. She didn't really want to marry anybody.
+Why should she? She was thankful beyond measure to be by herself.
+How sick she was of other people and their importunities! What was
+she to do? She decided to offer herself again, in a little while,
+for war service--in a new town this time. Meanwhile she wanted to be
+by herself.
+
+She made excursions, she walked on the moors, in the brief but
+lovely days of early October. For three days it was all so sweet and
+lovely--perfect liberty, pure, almost paradisal.
+
+The fourth day it rained: simply rained all day long, and was cold,
+dismal, disheartening beyond words. There she sat, stranded in the
+dismalness, and knew no way out. She went to bed at nine o'clock,
+having decided in a jerk to go to London and find work in the
+war-hospitals at once: not to leave off until she had found it.
+
+But in the night she dreamed that Alexander, her first fianc�, was
+with her on the quay of some harbour, and was reproaching her
+bitterly, even reviling her, for having come too late, so that they
+had missed their ship. They were there to catch the boat--and she,
+for dilatoriness, was an hour late, and she could see the broad
+stern of the steamer not far off. Just an hour late. She showed
+Alexander her watch--exactly ten o'clock, instead of nine. And he
+was more angry than ever, because her watch was slow. He pointed to
+the harbour clock--it was ten minutes past ten.
+
+When she woke up she was thinking of Alexander. It was such a long
+time since she had thought of him. She wondered if he had a right to
+be angry with her.
+
+The day was still grey, with sweepy rain-clouds on the
+sea--gruesome, objectionable. It was a prolongation of yesterday.
+Well, despair was no good, and being miserable was no good either.
+She got no satisfaction out of either mood. The only thing to do was
+to act: seize hold of life and wring its neck.
+
+She took the time-table that hung in the hall: the time-table, that
+magic carpet of today. When in doubt, _move_. This was the maxim.
+Move. Where to?
+
+Another click of a resolution. She would wire to Ciccio and meet
+him--where? York--Leeds--Halifax--? She looked up the places in the
+time-table, and decided on Leeds. She wrote out a telegram, that she
+would be at Leeds that evening. Would he get it in time? Chance it.
+
+She hurried off and sent the telegram. Then she took a little
+luggage, told the people of her house she would be back next day,
+and set off. She did not like whirling in the direction of
+Lancaster. But no matter.
+
+She waited a long time for the train from the north to come in. The
+first person she saw was Tommy. He waved to her and jumped from the
+moving train.
+
+"I say!" he said. "So glad to see you! Ciccio is with me. Effie
+insisted on my coming to see you."
+
+There was Ciccio climbing down with the bag. A sort of servant! This
+was too much for her.
+
+"So you came with your valet?" she said, as Ciccio stood with the
+bag.
+
+"Not a bit," said Tommy, laying his hand on the other man's
+shoulder. "We're the best of friends. I don't carry bags because my
+heart is rather groggy. I say, nurse, excuse me, but I like you
+better in uniform. Black doesn't suit you. You don't _mind_--"
+
+"Yes, I do. But I've only got black clothes, except uniforms."
+
+"Well look here now--! You're not going on anywhere tonight, are
+you?"
+
+"It is too late."
+
+"Well now, let's turn into the hotel and have a talk. I'm acting
+under Effie's orders, as you may gather--"
+
+At the hotel Tommy gave her a letter from his wife: to the tune
+of--don't marry this Italian, you'll put yourself in a wretched
+hole, and one wants to avoid getting into holes. _I know_--concluded
+Effie, on a sinister note.
+
+Tommy sang another tune. Ciccio was a lovely chap, a rare chap, a
+treat. He, Tommy, could quite understand any woman's wanting to
+marry him--didn't agree a bit with Effie. But marriage, you know,
+was so final. And then with this war on: you never knew how things
+might turn out: a foreigner and all that. And then--you won't mind
+what I say--? We won't talk about class and that rot. If the man's
+good enough, he's good enough by himself. But is he your
+intellectual equal, nurse? After all, it's a big point. You don't
+want to marry a man you can't talk to. Ciccio's a treat to be with,
+because he's so natural. But it isn't a _mental_ treat--
+
+Alvina thought of Mrs. Tuke, who complained that Tommy talked music
+and pseudo-philosophy _by the hour_ when he was wound up. She saw
+Effie's long, outstretched arm of repudiation and weariness.
+
+"Of course!"--another of Mrs. Tuke's exclamations. "Why not _be_
+atavistic if you _can_ be, and follow at a man's heel just because
+he's a man. Be like barbarous women, a slave."
+
+During all this, Ciccio stayed out of the room, as bidden. It was
+not till Alvina sat before her mirror that he opened her door
+softly, and entered.
+
+"I come in," he said, and he closed the door.
+
+Alvina remained with her hair-brush suspended, watching him. He came
+to her, smiling softly, to take her in his arms. But she put the
+chair between them.
+
+"Why did you bring Mr. Tuke?" she said.
+
+He lifted his shoulders.
+
+"I haven't brought him," he said, watching her.
+
+"Why did you show him the telegram?"
+
+"It was Mrs. Tuke took it."
+
+"Why did you give it her?"
+
+"It was she who gave it me, in her room. She kept it in her room
+till I came and took it."
+
+"All right," said Alvina. "Go back to the Tukes." And she began
+again to brush her hair.
+
+Ciccio watched her with narrowing eyes.
+
+"What you mean?" he said. "I shan't go, Allaye. You come with me."
+
+"Ha!" she sniffed scornfully. "I shall go where I like."
+
+But slowly he shook his head.
+
+"You'll come, Allaye," he said. "You come with me, with Ciccio."
+
+She shuddered at the soft, plaintive entreaty.
+
+"How can I go with you? How can I depend on you at all?"
+
+Again he shook his head. His eyes had a curious yellow fire,
+beseeching, plaintive, with a demon quality of yearning compulsion.
+
+"Yes, you come with me, Allaye. You come with me, to Italy. You
+don't go to that other man. He is too old, not healthy. You come
+with me to Italy. Why do you send a telegram?"
+
+Alvina sat down and covered her face, trembling.
+
+"I can't! I can't! I can't!" she moaned. "I can't do it."
+
+"Yes, you come with me. I have money. You come with me, to my place
+in the mountains, to my uncle's house. Fine house, you like it. Come
+with me, Allaye."
+
+She could not look at him.
+
+"Why do you want me?" she said.
+
+"Why I want you?" He gave a curious laugh, almost of ridicule. "I
+don't know that. You ask me another, eh?"
+
+She was silent, sitting looking downwards.
+
+"I can't, I think," she said abstractedly, looking up at him.
+
+He smiled, a fine, subtle smile, like a demon's, but inexpressibly
+gentle. He made her shiver as if she was mesmerized. And he was
+reaching forward to her as a snake reaches, nor could she recoil.
+
+"You come, Allaye," he said softly, with his foreign intonation.
+"You come. You come to Italy with me. Yes?" He put his hand on her,
+and she started as if she had been struck. But his hands, with the
+soft, powerful clasp, only closed her faster.
+
+"Yes?" he said. "Yes? All right, eh? All right!"--he had a strange
+mesmeric power over her, as if he possessed the sensual secrets, and
+she was to be subjected.
+
+"I can't," she moaned, trying to struggle. But she was powerless.
+
+Dark and insidious he was: he had no regard for her. How could a
+man's movements be so soft and gentle, and yet so inhumanly
+regardless! He had no regard for her. Why didn't she revolt? Why
+couldn't she? She was as if bewitched. She couldn't fight against
+her bewitchment. Why? Because he seemed to her beautiful, so
+beautiful. And this left her numb, submissive. Why must she see him
+beautiful? Why was she will-less? She felt herself like one of the
+old sacred prostitutes: a sacred prostitute.
+
+In the morning, very early, they left for Scarborough, leaving a
+letter for the sleeping Tommy. In Scarborough they went to the
+registrar's office: they could be married in a fortnight's time. And
+so the fortnight passed, and she was under his spell. Only she knew
+it. She felt extinguished. Ciccio talked to her: but only ordinary
+things. There was no wonderful intimacy of speech, such as she had
+always imagined, and always craved for. No. He loved her--but it was
+in a dark, mesmeric way, which did not let her be herself. His love
+did not stimulate her or excite her. It extinguished her. She had to
+be the quiescent, obscure woman: she felt as if she were veiled. Her
+thoughts were dim, in the dim back regions of consciousness--yet,
+somewhere, she almost exulted. Atavism! Mrs. Tuke's word would play
+in her mind. Was it atavism, this sinking into extinction under the
+spell of Ciccio? Was it atavism, this strange, sleep-like submission
+to his being? Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was. But it was also heavy
+and sweet and rich. Somewhere, she was content. Somewhere even she
+was vastly proud of the dark veiled eternal loneliness she felt,
+under his shadow.
+
+And so it had to be. She shuddered when she touched him, because he
+was so beautiful, and she was so submitted. She quivered when he
+moved as if she were his shadow. Yet her mind remained distantly
+clear. She would criticize him, find fault with him, the things he
+did. But _ultimately_ she could find no fault with him. She had lost
+the power. She didn't care. She had lost the power to care about his
+faults. Strange, sweet, poisonous indifference! She was drugged. And
+she knew it. Would she ever wake out of her dark, warm coma? She
+shuddered, and hoped not. Mrs. Tuke would say atavism. Atavism! The
+word recurred curiously.
+
+But under all her questionings she felt well; a nonchalance deep as
+sleep, a passivity and indifference so dark and sweet she felt it
+must be evil. Evil! She was evil. And yet she had no power to be
+otherwise. They were legally married. And she was glad. She was
+relieved by knowing she could not escape. She was Mrs. Marasca. What
+was the good of trying to be Miss Houghton any longer? Marasca, the
+bitter cherry. Some dark poison fruit she had eaten. How glad she
+was she had eaten it! How beautiful he was! And no one saw it but
+herself. For her it was so potent it made her tremble when she
+noticed him. His beauty, his dark shadow. Ciccio really was much
+handsomer since his marriage. He seemed to emerge. Before, he had
+seemed to make himself invisible in the streets, in England,
+altogether. But now something unfolded in him, he was a potent,
+glamorous presence, people turned to watch him. There was a certain
+dark, leopard-like pride in the air about him, something that the
+English people watched.
+
+He wanted to go to Italy. And now it was _his_ will which counted.
+Alvina, as his wife, must submit. He took her to London the day
+after the marriage. He wanted to get away to Italy. He did not like
+being in England, a foreigner, amid the beginnings of the spy craze.
+
+In London they stayed at his cousin's house. His cousin kept a
+restaurant in Battersea, and was a flourishing London Italian, a
+real London product with all the good English virtues of cleanliness
+and honesty added to an Italian shrewdness. His name was Giuseppe
+Califano, and he was pale, and he had four children of whom he was
+very proud. He received Alvina with an affable respect, as if she
+were an asset in the family, but as if he were a little uneasy and
+disapproving. She had _come down_, in marrying Ciccio. She had lost
+caste. He rather seemed to exult over her degradation. For he was a
+northernized Italian, he had accepted English standards. His
+children were English brats. He almost patronized Alvina.
+
+But then a long, slow look from her remote blue eyes brought him up
+sharp, and he envied Ciccio suddenly, he was almost in love with her
+himself. She disturbed him. She disturbed him in his new English
+aplomb of a London _restaurateur_, and she disturbed in him the old
+Italian dark soul, to which he was renegade. He tried treating her
+as an English lady. But the slow, remote look in her eyes made this
+fall flat. He had to be Italian.
+
+And he was jealous of Ciccio. In Ciccio's face was a lurking smile,
+and round his fine nose there seemed a subtle, semi-defiant triumph.
+After all, he had triumphed over his well-to-do, Anglicized cousin.
+With a stealthy, leopard-like pride Ciccio went through the streets
+of London in those wild early days of war. He was the one victor,
+arching stealthily over the vanquished north.
+
+Alvina saw nothing of all these complexities. For the time being,
+she was all dark and potent. Things were curious to her. It was
+curious to be in Battersea, in this English-Italian household, where
+the children spoke English more readily than Italian. It was strange
+to be high over the restaurant, to see the trees of the park, to
+hear the clang of trams. It was strange to walk out and come to the
+river. It was strange to feel the seethe of war and dread in the
+air. But she did not question. She seemed steeped in the passional
+influence of the man, as in some narcotic. She even forgot Mrs.
+Tuke's atavism. Vague and unquestioning she went through the days,
+she accompanied Ciccio into town, she went with him to make
+purchases, or she sat by his side in the music hall, or she stayed
+in her room and sewed, or she sat at meals with the Califanos, a
+vague brightness on her face. And Mrs. Califano was very nice to
+her, very gentle, though with a suspicion of malicious triumph,
+mockery, beneath her gentleness. Still, she was nice and womanly,
+hovering as she was between her English emancipation and her Italian
+subordination. She half pitied Alvina, and was more than half
+jealous of her.
+
+Alvina was aware of nothing--only of the presence of Ciccio. It was
+his physical presence which cast a spell over her. She lived within
+his aura. And she submitted to him as if he had extended his dark
+nature over her. She knew nothing about him. She lived mindlessly
+within his presence, quivering within his influence, as if his blood
+beat in her. She _knew_ she was subjected. One tiny corner of her
+knew, and watched.
+
+He was very happy, and his face had a real beauty. His eyes glowed with
+lustrous secrecy, like the eyes of some victorious, happy wild creature
+seen remote under a bush. And he was very good to her. His tenderness
+made her quiver into a swoon of complete self-forgetfulness, as if the
+flood-gates of her depths opened. The depth of his warm, mindless,
+enveloping love was immeasurable. She felt she could sink forever into
+his warm, pulsating embrace.
+
+Afterwards, later on, when she was inclined to criticize him, she
+would remember the moment when she saw his face at the Italian
+Consulate in London. There were many people at the Consulate,
+clamouring for passports--a wild and ill-regulated crowd. They had
+waited their turn and got inside--Ciccio was not good at pushing his
+way. And inside a courteous tall old man with a white beard had
+lifted the flap for Alvina to go inside the office and sit down to
+fill in the form. She thanked the old man, who bowed as if he had a
+reputation to keep up.
+
+Ciccio followed, and it was he who had to sit down and fill up the
+form, because she did not understand the Italian questions. She
+stood at his side, watching the excited, laughing, noisy, east-end
+Italians at the desk. The whole place had a certain free-and-easy
+confusion, a human, unofficial, muddling liveliness which was not
+quite like England, even though it was in the middle of London.
+
+"What was your mother's name?" Ciccio was asking her. She turned to
+him. He sat with the pen perched flourishingly at the end of his
+fingers, suspended in the serious and artistic business of filling in a
+form. And his face had a dark luminousness, like a dark transparence
+which was shut and has now expanded. She quivered, as if it was more
+than she could bear. For his face was open like a flower right to
+the depths of his soul, a dark, lovely translucency, vulnerable to
+the deep quick of his soul. The lovely, rich darkness of his southern
+nature, so different from her own, exposing itself now in its passional
+vulnerability, made her go white with a kind of fear. For an instant,
+her face seemed drawn and old as she looked down at him, answering his
+questions. Then her eyes became sightless with tears, she stooped as if
+to look at his writing, and quickly kissed his fingers that held the
+pen, there in the midst of the crowded, vulgar Consulate.
+
+He stayed suspended, again looking up at her with the bright,
+unfolded eyes of a wild creature which plays and is not seen. A
+faint smile, very beautiful to her, was on his face. What did he see
+when he looked at her? She did not know, she did not know. And she
+would never know. For an instant, she swore inside herself that God
+Himself should not take her away from this man. She would commit
+herself to him through every eternity. And then the vagueness came
+over her again, she turned aside, photographically seeing the crowd
+in the Consulate, but really unconscious. His movement as he rose
+seemed to move her in her sleep, she turned to him at once.
+
+It was early in November before they could leave for Italy, and her
+dim, lustrous state lasted all the time. She found herself at
+Charing Cross in the early morning, in all the bustle of catching
+the Continental train. Giuseppe was there, and Gemma his wife, and
+two of the children, besides three other Italian friends of Ciccio.
+They all crowded up the platform. Giuseppe had insisted that Ciccio
+should take second-class tickets. They were very early. Alvina and
+Ciccio were installed in a second-class compartment, with all their
+packages, Ciccio was pale, yellowish under his tawny skin, and
+nervous. He stood excitedly on the platform talking in Italian--or
+rather, in his own dialect--whilst Alvina sat quite still in her
+corner. Sometimes one of the women or one of the children came to
+say a few words to her, or Giuseppe hurried to her with illustrated
+papers. They treated her as if she were some sort of invalid or
+angel, now she was leaving. But most of their attention they gave to
+Ciccio, talking at him rapidly all at once, whilst he answered, and
+glanced in this way and that, under his fine lashes, and smiled his
+old, nervous, meaningless smile. He was curiously upset.
+
+Time came to shut the doors. The women and children kissed Alvina,
+saying:
+
+"You'll be all right, eh? Going to Italy--!" And then profound and
+meaningful nods, which she could not interpret, but which were
+fraught surely with good-fellowship.
+
+Then they all kissed Ciccio. The men took him in their arms and
+kissed him on either cheek, the children lifted their faces in eager
+anticipation of the double kiss. Strange, how eager they were for
+this embrace--how they all kept taking Ciccio's hand, one after the
+other, whilst he smiled constrainedly and nervously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE JOURNEY ACROSS
+
+
+The train began to move. Giuseppe ran alongside, holding Ciccio's
+hand still; the women and children were crying and waving their
+handkerchiefs, the other men were shouting messages, making strange,
+eager gestures. And Alvina sat quite still, wonderingly. And so the
+big, heavy train drew out, leaving the others small and dim on the
+platform. It was foggy, the river was a sea of yellow beneath the
+ponderous iron bridge. The morning was dim and dank.
+
+The train was very full. Next to Alvina sat a trim Frenchwoman
+reading _L'Aiglon_. There was a terrible encumbrance of packages and
+luggage everywhere. Opposite her sat Ciccio, his black overcoat open
+over his pale-grey suit, his black hat a little over his left eye.
+He glanced at her from time to time, smiling constrainedly. She
+remained very still. They ran through Bromley and out into the open
+country. It was grey, with shivers of grey sunshine. On the downs
+there was thin snow. The air in the train was hot, heavy with the
+crowd and tense with excitement and uneasiness. The train seemed to
+rush ponderously, massively, across the Weald.
+
+And so, through Folkestone to the sea. There was sun in the sky now,
+and white clouds, in the sort of hollow sky-dome above the grey
+earth with its horizon walls of fog. The air was still. The sea
+heaved with a sucking noise inside the dock. Alvina and Ciccio sat
+aft on the second-class deck, their bags near them. He put a white
+muffler round himself, Alvina hugged herself in her beaver scarf and
+muff. She looked tender and beautiful in her still vagueness, and
+Ciccio, hovering about her, was beautiful too, his estrangement gave
+him a certain wistful nobility which for the moment put him beyond
+all class inferiority. The passengers glanced at them across the
+magic of estrangement.
+
+The sea was very still. The sun was fairly high in the open sky,
+where white cloud-tops showed against the pale, wintry blue. Across
+the sea came a silver sun-track. And Alvina and Ciccio looked at the
+sun, which stood a little to the right of the ship's course.
+
+"The sun!" said Ciccio, nodding towards the orb and smiling to her.
+
+"I love it," she said.
+
+He smiled again, silently. He was strangely moved: she did not know
+why.
+
+The wind was cold over the wintry sea, though the sun's beams were
+warm. They rose, walked round the cabins. Other ships were at
+sea--destroyers and battleships, grey, low, and sinister on the
+water. Then a tall bright schooner glimmered far down the channel.
+Some brown fishing smacks kept together. All was very still in the
+wintry sunshine of the Channel.
+
+So they turned to walk to the stern of the boat. And Alvina's heart
+suddenly contracted. She caught Ciccio's arm, as the boat rolled
+gently. For there behind, behind all the sunshine, was England.
+England, beyond the water, rising with ash-grey, corpse-grey cliffs,
+and streaks of snow on the downs above. England, like a long,
+ash-grey coffin slowly submerging. She watched it, fascinated and
+terrified. It seemed to repudiate the sunshine, to remain
+unilluminated, long and ash-grey and dead, with streaks of snow like
+cerements. That was England! Her thoughts flew to Woodhouse, the
+grey centre of it all. Home!
+
+Her heart died within her. Never had she felt so utterly strange and
+far-off. Ciccio at her side was as nothing, as spell-bound she
+watched, away off, behind all the sunshine and the sea, the grey,
+snow-streaked substance of England slowly receding and sinking,
+submerging. She felt she could not believe it. It was like looking
+at something else. What? It was like a long, ash-grey coffin,
+winter, slowly submerging in the sea. England?
+
+She turned again to the sun. But clouds and veils were already
+weaving in the sky. The cold was beginning to soak in, moreover. She
+sat very still for a long time, almost an eternity. And when she
+looked round again there was only a bank of mist behind, beyond the
+sea: a bank of mist, and a few grey, stalking ships. She must watch
+for the coast of France.
+
+And there it was already, looming up grey and amorphous, patched
+with snow. It had a grey, heaped, sordid look in the November light.
+She had imagined Boulogne gay and brilliant. Whereas it was more
+grey and dismal than England. But not that magical, mystic, phantom
+look.
+
+The ship slowly put about, and backed into the harbour. She watched
+the quay approach. Ciccio was gathering up the luggage. Then came
+the first cry one ever hears: "_Porteur! Porteur!_ Want a
+_porteur_?" A porter in a blouse strung the luggage on his strap,
+and Ciccio and Alvina entered the crush for the exit and the
+passport inspection. There was a tense, eager, frightened crowd, and
+officials shouting directions in French and English. Alvina found
+herself at last before a table where bearded men in uniforms were
+splashing open the big pink sheets of the English passports: she
+felt strange and uneasy, that her passport was unimpressive and
+Italian. The official scrutinized her, and asked questions of
+Ciccio. Nobody asked her anything--she might have been Ciccio's
+shadow. So they went through to the vast, crowded cavern of a
+Customs house, where they found their porter waving to them in the
+mob. Ciccio fought in the mob while the porter whisked off Alvina to
+get seats in the big train. And at last she was planted once more in
+a seat, with Ciccio's place reserved beside her. And there she sat,
+looking across the railway lines at the harbour, in the last burst
+of grey sunshine. Men looked at her, officials stared at her,
+soldiers made remarks about her. And at last, after an eternity,
+Ciccio came along the platform, the porter trotting behind.
+
+They sat and ate the food they had brought, and drank wine and tea.
+And after weary hours the train set off through snow-patched country
+to Paris. Everywhere was crowded, the train was stuffy without being
+warm. Next to Alvina sat a large, fat, youngish Frenchman who
+overflowed over her in a hot fashion. Darkness began to fall. The
+train was very late. There were strange and frightening delays.
+Strange lights appeared in the sky, everybody seemed to be listening
+for strange noises. It was all such a whirl and confusion that
+Alvina lost count, relapsed into a sort of stupidity. Gleams,
+flashes, noises and then at last the frenzy of Paris.
+
+It was night, a black city, and snow falling, and no train that
+night across to the Gare de Lyon. In a state of semi-stupefaction
+after all the questionings and examinings and blusterings, they
+were finally allowed to go straight across Paris. But this meant
+another wild tussle with a Paris taxi-driver, in the filtering snow.
+So they were deposited in the Gare de Lyon.
+
+And the first person who rushed upon them was Geoffrey, in a rather
+grimy private's uniform. He had already seen some hard service, and
+had a wild, bewildered look. He kissed Ciccio and burst into tears
+on his shoulder, there in the great turmoil of the entrance hall of
+the Gare de Lyon. People looked, but nobody seemed surprised.
+Geoffrey sobbed, and the tears came silently down Ciccio's cheeks.
+
+"I've waited for you since five o'clock, and I've got to go back
+now. Ciccio! Ciccio! I wanted so badly to see you. I shall never see
+thee again, brother, my brother!" cried Gigi, and a sob shook him.
+
+"Gigi! Mon Gigi. Tu as done regu ma lettre?"
+
+"Yesterday. O Ciccio, Ciccio, I shall die without thee!"
+
+"But no, Gigi, fr�re. You won't die."
+
+"Yes, Ciccio, I shall. I know I shall."
+
+"I say _no_, brother," said Ciccio. But a spasm suddenly took him,
+he pulled off his hat and put it over his face and sobbed into it.
+
+"Adieu, ami! Adieu!" cried Gigi, clutching the other man's arm.
+Ciccio took his hat from his tear-stained face and put it on his
+head. Then the two men embraced.
+
+"_Toujours � toi!_" said Geoffrey, with a strange, solemn salute in
+front of Ciccio and Alvina. Then he turned on his heel and marched
+rapidly out of the station, his soiled soldier's overcoat flapping
+in the wind at the door. Ciccio watched him go. Then he turned and
+looked with haunted eyes into the eyes of Alvina. And then they
+hurried down the desolate platform in the darkness. Many people,
+Italians, largely, were camped waiting there, while bits of snow
+wavered down. Ciccio bought food and hired cushions. The train
+backed in. There was a horrible fight for seats, men scrambling
+through windows. Alvina got a place--but Ciccio had to stay in the
+corridor.
+
+Then the long night journey through France, slow and blind. The
+train was now so hot that the iron plate on the floor burnt Alvina's
+feet. Outside she saw glimpses of snow. A fat Italian hotel-keeper
+put on a smoking cap, covered the light, and spread himself before
+Alvina. In the next carriage a child was screaming. It screamed all
+the night--all the way from Paris to Chamb�ry it screamed. The train
+came to sudden halts, and stood still in the snow. The hotel-keeper
+snored. Alvina became almost comatose, in the burning heat of the
+carriage. And again the train rumbled on. And again she saw glimpses
+of stations, glimpses of snow, through the chinks in the curtained
+windows. And again there was a jerk and a sudden halt, a drowsy
+mutter from the sleepers, somebody uncovering the light, and
+somebody covering it again, somebody looking out, somebody tramping
+down the corridor, the child screaming.
+
+The child belonged to two poor Italians--Milanese--a shred of a thin
+little man, and a rather loose woman. They had five tiny children,
+all boys: and the four who could stand on their feet all wore
+scarlet caps. The fifth was a baby. Alvina had seen a French
+official yelling at the poor shred of a young father on the
+platform.
+
+When morning came, and the bleary people pulled the curtains, it was
+a clear dawn, and they were in the south of France. There was no
+sign of snow. The landscape was half southern, half Alpine. White
+houses with brownish tiles stood among almond trees and cactus. It
+was beautiful, and Alvina felt she had known it all before, in a
+happier life. The morning was graceful almost as spring. She went
+out in the corridor to talk to Ciccio.
+
+He was on his feet with his back to the inner window, rolling
+slightly to the motion of the train. His face was pale, he had that
+sombre, haunted, unhappy look. Alvina, thrilled by the southern
+country, was smiling excitedly.
+
+"This is my first morning abroad," she said.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"I love it here," she said. "Isn't this like Italy?"
+
+He looked darkly out of the window, and shook his head.
+
+But the sombre look remained on his face. She watched him. And her
+heart sank as she had never known it sink before.
+
+"Are you thinking of Gigi?" she said.
+
+He looked at her, with a faint, unhappy, bitter smile, but he said
+nothing. He seemed far off from her. A wild unhappiness beat inside
+her breast. She went down the corridor, away from him, to avoid this
+new agony, which after all was not her agony. She listened to the
+chatter of French and Italian in the corridor. She felt the
+excitement and terror of France, inside the railway carriage: and
+outside she saw white oxen slowly ploughing, beneath the lingering
+yellow poplars of the sub-Alps, she saw peasants looking up, she saw
+a woman holding a baby to her breast, watching the train, she saw
+the excited, yeasty crowds at the station. And they passed a river,
+and a great lake. And it all seemed bigger, nobler than England. She
+felt vaster influences spreading around, the Past was greater, more
+magnificent in these regions. For the first time the nostalgia of
+the vast Roman and classic world took possession of her. And she
+found it splendid. For the first time she opened her eyes on a
+continent, the Alpine core of a continent. And for the first time
+she realized what it was to escape from the smallish perfection of
+England, into the grander imperfection of a great continent.
+
+Near Chamb�ry they went down for breakfast to the restaurant car.
+And secretly, she was very happy. Ciccio's distress made her uneasy.
+But underneath she was extraordinarily relieved and glad. Ciccio did
+not trouble her very much. The sense of the bigness of the lands
+about her, the excitement of travelling with Continental people, the
+pleasantness of her coffee and rolls and honey, the feeling that
+vast events were taking place--all this stimulated her. She had
+brushed, as it were, the fringe of the terror of the war and the
+invasion. Fear was seething around her. And yet she was excited and
+glad. The vast world was in one of its convulsions, and she was
+moving amongst it. Somewhere, she believed in the convulsion, the
+event elated her.
+
+The train began to climb up to Modane. How wonderful the Alps
+were!--what a bigness, an unbreakable power was in the mountains! Up
+and up the train crept, and she looked at the rocky slopes, the
+glistening peaks of snow in the blue heaven, the hollow valleys with
+fir trees and low-roofed houses. There were quarries near the
+railway, and men working. There was a strange mountain town,
+dirty-looking. And still the train climbed up and up, in the hot
+morning sunshine, creeping slowly round the mountain loops, so that
+a little brown dog from one of the cottages ran alongside the train
+for a long way, barking at Alvina, even running ahead of the
+creeping, snorting train, and barking at the people ahead. Alvina,
+looking out, saw the two unfamiliar engines snorting out their
+smoke round the bend ahead. And the morning wore away to mid-day.
+
+Ciccio became excited as they neared Modane, the frontier station.
+His eye lit up again, he pulled himself together for the entrance
+into Italy. Slowly the train rolled in to the dismal station. And
+then a confusion indescribable, of porters and masses of luggage,
+the unspeakable crush and crowd at the customs barriers, the more
+intense crowd through the passport office, all like a madness.
+
+They were out on the platform again, they had secured their places.
+Ciccio wanted to have luncheon in the station restaurant. They went
+through the passages. And there in the dirty station gang-ways and
+big corridors dozens of Italians were lying on the ground, men,
+women, children, camping with their bundles and packages in heaps.
+They were either emigrants or refugees. Alvina had never seen people
+herd about like cattle, dumb, brute cattle. It impressed her. She
+could not grasp that an Italian labourer would lie down just where
+he was tired, in the street, on a station, in any corner, like a
+dog.
+
+In the afternoon they were slipping down the Alps towards Turin. And
+everywhere was snow--deep, white, wonderful snow, beautiful and
+fresh, glistening in the afternoon light all down the mountain
+slopes, on the railway track, almost seeming to touch the train. And
+twilight was falling. And at the stations people crowded in once
+more.
+
+It had been dark a long time when they reached Turin. Many people
+alighted from the train, many surged to get in. But Ciccio and
+Alvina had seats side by side. They were becoming tired now. But
+they were in Italy. Once more they went down for a meal. And then
+the train set off again in the night for Alessandria and Genoa, Pisa
+and Rome.
+
+It was night, the train ran better, there was a more easy sense in
+Italy. Ciccio talked a little with other travelling companions. And
+Alvina settled her cushion, and slept more or less till Genoa. After
+the long wait at Genoa she dozed off again. She woke to see the sea
+in the moonlight beneath her--a lovely silvery sea, coming right to
+the carriage. The train seemed to be tripping on the edge of the
+Mediterranean, round bays, and between dark rocks and under castles,
+a night-time fairy-land, for hours. She watched spell-bound:
+spell-bound by the magic of the world itself. And she thought to
+herself: "Whatever life may be, and whatever horror men have made
+of it, the world is a lovely place, a magic place, something to
+marvel over. The world is an amazing place."
+
+This thought dozed her off again. Yet she had a consciousness of
+tunnels and hills and of broad marshes pallid under a moon and a
+coming dawn. And in the dawn there was Pisa. She watched the word
+hanging in the station in the dimness: "Pisa." Ciccio told her
+people were changing for Florence. It all seemed wonderful to
+her--wonderful. She sat and watched the black station--then she
+heard the sound of the child's trumpet. And it did not occur to her
+to connect the train's moving on with the sound of the trumpet.
+
+But she saw the golden dawn, a golden sun coming out of level
+country. She loved it. She loved being in Italy. She loved the
+lounging carelessness of the train, she liked having Italian money,
+hearing the Italians round her--though they were neither as
+beautiful nor as melodious as she expected. She loved watching the
+glowing antique landscape. She read and read again: "E pericoloso
+sporgersi," and "E vietato fumare," and the other little magical
+notices on the carriages. Ciccio told her what they meant, and how
+to say them. And sympathetic Italians opposite at once asked him if
+they were married and who and what his bride was, and they gazed at
+her with bright, approving eyes, though she felt terribly bedraggled
+and travel-worn.
+
+"You come from England? Yes! Nice contry!" said a man in a corner,
+leaning forward to make this display of his linguistic capacity.
+
+"Not so nice as this," said Alvina.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+Alvina repeated herself.
+
+"Not so nice? Oh? No! Fog, eh!" The fat man whisked his fingers in
+the air, to indicate fog in the atmosphere. "But nice contry!
+Very--_convenient_."
+
+He sat up in triumph, having achieved this word. And the
+conversation once more became a spatter of Italian. The women were
+very interested. They looked at Alvina, at every atom of her. And
+she divined that they were wondering if she was already with child.
+Sure enough, they were asking Ciccio in Italian if she was "making
+him a baby." But he shook his head and did not know, just a bit
+constrained. So they ate slices of sausages and bread and fried
+rice-balls, with wonderfully greasy fingers, and they drank red
+wine in big throatfuls out of bottles, and they offered their fare
+to Ciccio and Alvina, and were charmed when she said to Ciccio she
+_would_ have some bread and sausage. He picked the strips off the
+sausage for her with his fingers, and made her a sandwich with a
+roll. The women watched her bite it, and bright-eyed and pleased
+they said, nodding their heads--
+
+"Buono? Buono?"
+
+And she, who knew this word, understood, and replied:
+
+"Yes, good! Buono!" nodding her head likewise. Which caused immense
+satisfaction. The women showed the whole paper of sausage slices,
+and nodded and beamed and said:
+
+"Se vuole ancora--!"
+
+And Alvina bit her wide sandwich, and smiled, and said:
+
+"Yes, awfully nice!"
+
+And the women looked at each other and said something, and Ciccio
+interposed, shaking his head. But one woman ostentatiously wiped a
+bottle mouth with a clean handkerchief, and offered the bottle to
+Alvina, saying:
+
+"Vino buono. Vecchio! Vecchio!" nodding violently and indicating
+that she should drink. She looked at Ciccio, and he looked back at
+her, doubtingly.
+
+"Shall I drink some?" she said.
+
+"If you like," he replied, making an Italian gesture of
+indifference.
+
+So she drank some of the wine, and it dribbled on to her chin. She
+was not good at managing a bottle. But she liked the feeling of
+warmth it gave her. She was very tired.
+
+"Si piace? Piace?"
+
+"Do you like it," interpreted Ciccio.
+
+"Yes, very much. What is very much?" she asked of Ciccio.
+
+"Molto."
+
+"Si, molto. Of course, I knew molto, from, music," she added.
+
+The women made noises, and smiled and nodded, and so the train
+pulsed on till they came to Rome. There was again, the wild scramble
+with luggage, a general leave taking, and then the masses of people
+on the station at Rome. _Roma! Roma!_ What was it to Alvina but a
+name, and a crowded, excited station, and Ciccio running after the
+luggage, and the pair of them eating in a station restaurant?
+
+Almost immediately after eating, they were in the train once more,
+with new fellow travellers, running south this time towards Naples.
+In a daze of increasing weariness Alvina watched the dreary, to her
+sordid-seeming Campagna that skirts the railway, the broken aqueduct
+trailing in the near distance over the stricken plain. She saw a
+tram-car, far out from everywhere, running up to cross the railway.
+She saw it was going to Frascati.
+
+And slowly the hills approached--they passed the vines of the
+foothills, the reeds, and were among the mountains. Wonderful little
+towns perched fortified on rocks and peaks, mountains rose straight
+up off the level plain, like old topographical prints, rivers
+wandered in the wild, rocky places, it all seemed ancient and
+shaggy, savage still, under all its remote civilization, this region
+of the Alban Mountains south of Rome. So the train clambered up and
+down, and went round corners.
+
+They had not far to go now. Alvina was almost too tired to care what
+it would be like. They were going to Ciccio's native village. They
+were to stay in the house of his uncle, his mother's brother. This
+uncle had been a model in London. He had built a house on the land
+left by Ciccio's grandfather. He lived alone now, for his wife was
+dead and his children were abroad. Giuseppe was his son: Giuseppe of
+Battersea, in whose house Alvina had stayed.
+
+This much Alvina knew. She knew that a portion of the land down at
+Pescocalascio belonged to Ciccio: a bit of half-savage, ancient
+earth that had been left to his mother by old Francesco Califano,
+her hard-grinding peasant father. This land remained integral in the
+property, and was worked by Ciccio's two uncles, Pancrazio and
+Giovanni. Pancrazio was the well-to-do uncle, who had been a model
+and had built a "villa." Giovanni was not much good. That was how
+Ciccio put it.
+
+They expected Pancrazio to meet them at the station. Ciccio
+collected his bundles and put his hat straight and peered out of the
+window into the steep mountains of the afternoon. There was a town
+in the opening between steep hills, a town on a flat plain that ran
+into the mountains like a gulf. The train drew up. They had arrived.
+
+Alvina was so tired she could hardly climb down to the platform. It
+was about four o'clock. Ciccio looked up and down for Pancrazio, but
+could not see him. So he put his luggage into a pile on the
+platform, told Alvina to stand by it, whilst he went off for the
+registered boxes. A porter came and asked her questions, of which
+she understood nothing. Then at last came Ciccio, shouldering one
+small trunk, whilst a porter followed, shouldering another. Out they
+trotted, leaving Alvina abandoned with the pile of hand luggage. She
+waited. The train drew out. Ciccio and the porter came bustling
+back. They took her out through the little gate, to where, in the
+flat desert space behind the railway, stood two great drab
+motor-omnibuses, and a rank of open carriages. Ciccio was handing up
+the handbags to the roof of one of the big post-omnibuses. When it
+was finished the man on the roof came down, and Ciccio gave him and
+the station porter each sixpence. The station-porter immediately
+threw his coin on the ground with a gesture of indignant contempt,
+spread his arms wide and expostulated violently. Ciccio expostulated
+back again, and they pecked at each other, verbally, like two birds.
+It ended by the rolling up of the burly, black moustached driver of
+the omnibus. Whereupon Ciccio quite amicably gave the porter two
+nickel twopences in addition to the sixpence, whereupon the porter
+quite lovingly wished him "buon' viaggio."
+
+So Alvina was stowed into the body of the omnibus, with Ciccio at
+her side. They were no sooner seated than a voice was heard, in
+beautifully-modulated English:
+
+"You are here! Why how have I missed you?"
+
+It was Pancrazio, a smallish, rather battered-looking, shabby
+Italian of sixty or more, with a big moustache and reddish-rimmed
+eyes and a deeply-lined face. He was presented to Alvina.
+
+"How have I missed you?" he said. "I was on the station when the
+train came, and I did not see you."
+
+But it was evident he had taken wine. He had no further opportunity
+to talk. The compartment was full of large, mountain-peasants with
+black hats and big cloaks and overcoats. They found Pancrazio a seat
+at the far end, and there he sat, with his deeply-lined, impassive
+face and slightly glazed eyes. He had yellow-brown eyes like Ciccio.
+But in the uncle the eyelids dropped in a curious, heavy way, the
+eyes looked dull like those of some old, rakish tom-cat, they were
+slightly rimmed with red. A curious person! And his English, though
+slow, was beautifully pronounced. He glanced at Alvina with slow,
+impersonal glances, not at all a stare. And he sat for the most part
+impassive and abstract as a Red Indian.
+
+At the last moment a large black priest was crammed in, and the door
+shut behind him. Every available seat was let down and occupied. The
+second great post-omnibus rolled away, and then the one for Mola
+followed, rolling Alvina and Ciccio over the next stage of their
+journey.
+
+The sun was already slanting to the mountain tops, shadows were
+falling on the gulf of the plain. The omnibus charged at a great
+speed along a straight white road, which cut through the cultivated
+level straight towards the core of the mountain. By the road-side,
+peasant men in cloaks, peasant women in full-gathered dresses with
+white bodices or blouses having great full sleeves, tramped in the
+ridge of grass, driving cows or goats, or leading heavily-laden
+asses. The women had coloured kerchiefs on their heads, like the
+women Alvina remembered at the Sunday-School treats, who used to
+tell fortunes with green little love-birds. And they all tramped
+along towards the blue shadow of the closing-in mountains, leaving
+the peaks of the town behind on the left.
+
+At a branch-road the 'bus suddenly stopped, and there it sat calmly
+in the road beside an icy brook, in the falling twilight. Great
+moth-white oxen waved past, drawing a long, low load of wood; the
+peasants left behind began to come up again, in picturesque groups.
+The icy brook tinkled, goats, pigs and cows wandered and shook their
+bells along the grassy borders of the road and the flat, unbroken
+fields, being driven slowly home. Peasants jumped out of the omnibus
+on to the road, to chat--and a sharp air came in. High overhead, as
+the sun went down, was the curious icy radiance of snow mountains,
+and a pinkness, while shadow deepened in the valley.
+
+At last, after about half an hour, the youth who was conductor of
+the omnibus came running down the wild side-road, everybody
+clambered in, and away the vehicle charged, into the neck of the
+plain. With a growl and a rush it swooped up the first loop of the
+ascent. Great precipices rose on the right, the ruddiness of sunset
+above them. The road wound and swirled, trying to get up the pass.
+The omnibus pegged slowly up, then charged round a corner, swirled
+into another loop, and pegged heavily once more. It seemed dark
+between the closing-in mountains. The rocks rose very high, the
+road looped and swerved from one side of the wide defile to the
+other, the vehicle pulsed and persisted. Sometimes there was a
+house, sometimes a wood of oak-trees, sometimes the glimpse of a
+ravine, then the tall white glisten of snow above the earthly
+blackness. And still they went on and on, up the darkness.
+
+Peering ahead, Alvina thought she saw the hollow between the peaks,
+which was the top of the pass. And every time the omnibus took a new
+turn, she thought it was coming out on the top of this hollow
+between the heights. But no--the road coiled right away again.
+
+A wild little village came in sight. This was the destination. Again
+no. Only the tall, handsome mountain youth who had sat across from
+her, descended grumbling because the 'bus had brought him past his
+road, the driver having refused to pull up. Everybody expostulated
+with him, and he dropped into the shadow. The big priest squeezed
+into his place. The 'bus wound on and on, and always towards that
+hollow sky-line between the high peaks.
+
+At last they ran up between buildings nipped between high
+rock-faces, and out into a little market-place, the crown of the
+pass. The luggage was got out and lifted down. Alvina descended.
+There she was, in a wild centre of an old, unfinished little
+mountain town. The fa�ade of a church rose from a small eminence. A
+white road ran to the right, where a great open valley showed
+faintly beyond and beneath. Low, squalid sort of buildings stood
+around--with some high buildings. And there were bare little trees.
+The stars were in the sky, the air was icy. People stood darkly,
+excitedly about, women with an odd, shell-pattern head-dress of
+gofered linen, something like a parlour-maid's cap, came and stared
+hard. They were hard-faced mountain women.
+
+Pancrazio was talking to Ciccio in dialect.
+
+"I couldn't get a cart to come down," he said in English. "But I
+shall find one here. Now what will you do? Put the luggage in
+Grazia's place while you wait?--"
+
+They went across the open place to a sort of shop called the Post
+Restaurant. It was a little hole with an earthen floor and a smell
+of cats. Three crones were sitting over a low brass brazier, in
+which charcoal and ashes smouldered. Men were drinking. Ciccio
+ordered coffee with rum--and the hard-faced Grazia, in her unfresh
+head-dress, dabbled the little dirty coffee-cups in dirty water,
+took the coffee-pot out of the ashes, poured in the old black
+boiling coffee three parts full, and slopped the cup over with rum.
+Then she dashed in a spoonful of sugar, to add to the pool in the
+saucer, and her customers were served.
+
+However, Ciccio drank up, so Alvina did likewise, burning her lips
+smartly. Ciccio paid and ducked his way out.
+
+"Now what will you buy?" asked Pancrazio.
+
+"Buy?" said Ciccio.
+
+"Food," said Pancrazio. "Have you brought food?"
+
+"No," said Ciccio.
+
+So they trailed up stony dark ways to a butcher, and got a big red
+slice of meat; to a baker, and got enormous flat loaves. Sugar and
+coffee they bought. And Pancrazio lamented in his elegant English
+that no butter was to be obtained. Everywhere the hard-faced women
+came and stared into Alvina's face, asking questions. And both
+Ciccio and Pancrazio answered rather coldly, with some _hauteur_.
+There was evidently not too much intimacy between the people of
+Pescocalascio and these semi-townfolk of Ossona. Alvina felt as if
+she were in a strange, hostile country, in the darkness of the
+savage little mountain town.
+
+At last they were ready. They mounted into a two-wheeled cart,
+Alvina and Ciccio behind, Pancrazio and the driver in front, the
+luggage promiscuous. The bigger things were left for the morrow. It
+was icy cold, with a flashing darkness. The moon would not rise till
+later.
+
+And so, without any light but that of the stars, the cart went
+spanking and rattling downhill, down the pale road which wound down
+the head of the valley to the gulf of darkness below. Down in the
+darkness into the darkness they rattled, wildly, and without heed,
+the young driver making strange noises to his dim horse, cracking a
+whip and asking endless questions of Pancrazio.
+
+Alvina sat close to Ciccio. He remained almost impassive. The wind
+was cold, the stars flashed. And they rattled down the rough, broad
+road under the rocks, down and down in the darkness. Ciccio sat
+crouching forwards, staring ahead. Alvina was aware of mountains,
+rocks, and stars.
+
+"I didn't know it was so _wild_!" she said.
+
+"It is not much," he said. There was a sad, plangent note in his
+voice. He put his hand upon her.
+
+"You don't like it?" he said.
+
+"I think it's lovely--wonderful," she said, dazed.
+
+He held her passionately. But she did not feel she needed
+protecting. It was all wonderful and amazing to her. She could not
+understand why he seemed upset and in a sort of despair. To her
+there was magnificence in the lustrous stars and the steepnesses,
+magic, rather terrible and grand.
+
+They came down to the level valley bed, and went rolling along.
+There was a house, and a lurid red fire burning outside against the
+wall, and dark figures about it.
+
+"What is that?" she said. "What are they doing?"
+
+"I don't know," said Ciccio. "Cosa fanno li--eh?"
+
+"Ka--? Fanno il buga'--" said the driver.
+
+"They are doing some washing," said Pancrazio, explanatory.
+
+"Washing!" said Alvina.
+
+"Boiling the clothes," said Ciccio.
+
+On the cart rattled and bumped, in the cold night, down the high-way
+in the valley. Alvina could make out the darkness of the slopes.
+Overhead she saw the brilliance of Orion. She felt she was quite,
+quite lost. She had gone out of the world, over the border, into
+some place of mystery. She was lost to Woodhouse, to Lancaster, to
+England--all lost.
+
+They passed through a darkness of woods, with a swift sound of cold
+water. And then suddenly the cart pulled up. Some one came out of a
+lighted doorway in the darkness.
+
+"We must get down here--the cart doesn't go any further," said
+Pancrazio.
+
+"Are we there?" said Alvina.
+
+"No, it is about a mile. But we must leave the cart."
+
+Ciccio asked questions in Italian. Alvina climbed down.
+
+"Good-evening! Are you cold?" came a loud, raucous, American-Italian
+female voice. It was another relation of Ciccio's. Alvina stared and
+looked at the handsome, sinister, raucous-voiced young woman who
+stood in the light of the doorway.
+
+"Rather cold," she said.
+
+"Come in, and warm yourself," said the young woman.
+
+"My sister's husband lives here," explained Pancrazio.
+
+Alvina went through the doorway into the room. It was a sort of
+inn. On the earthen floor glowed a great round pan of charcoal,
+which looked like a flat pool of fire. Men in hats and cloaks sat at
+a table playing cards by the light of a small lamp, a man was
+pouring wine. The room seemed like a cave.
+
+"Warm yourself," said the young woman, pointing to the flat disc of
+fire on the floor. She put a chair up to it, and Alvina sat down.
+The men in the room stared, but went on noisily with their cards.
+Ciccio came in with luggage. Men got up and greeted him effusively,
+watching Alvina between whiles as if she were some alien creature.
+Words of American sounded among the Italian dialect.
+
+There seemed to be a confab of some sort, aside. Ciccio came and
+said to her:
+
+"They want to know if we will stay the night here."
+
+"I would rather go on home," she said.
+
+He averted his face at the word home.
+
+"You see," said Pancrazio, "I think you might be more comfortable
+here, than in my poor house. You see I have no woman to care for
+it--"
+
+Alvina glanced round the cave of a room, at the rough fellows in
+their black hats. She was thinking how she would be "more
+comfortable" here.
+
+"I would rather go on," she said.
+
+"Then we will get the donkey," said Pancrazio stoically. And Alvina
+followed him out on to the high-road.
+
+From a shed issued a smallish, brigand-looking fellow carrying a
+lantern. He had his cloak over his nose and his hat over his eyes.
+His legs were bundled with white rag, crossed and crossed with hide
+straps, and he was shod in silent skin sandals.
+
+"This is my brother Giovanni," said Pancrazio. "He is not quite
+sensible." Then he broke into a loud flood of dialect.
+
+Giovanni touched his hat to Alvina, and gave the lantern to
+Pancrazio. Then he disappeared, returning in a few moments with the
+ass. Ciccio came out with the baggage, and by the light of the
+lantern the things were slung on either side of the ass, in a rather
+precarious heap. Pancrazio tested the rope again.
+
+"There! Go on, and I shall come in a minute."
+
+"Ay-er-er!" cried Giovanni at the ass, striking the flank of the
+beast. Then he took the leading rope and led up on the dark high-way,
+stalking with his dingy white legs under his muffled cloak, leading
+the ass. Alvina noticed the shuffle of his skin-sandalled feet, the
+quiet step of the ass.
+
+She walked with Ciccio near the side of the road. He carried the
+lantern. The ass with its load plodded a few steps ahead. There were
+trees on the road-side, and a small channel of invisible but noisy
+water. Big rocks jutted sometimes. It was freezing, the mountain
+high-road was congealed. High stars flashed overhead.
+
+"How strange it is!" said Alvina to Ciccio. "Are you glad you have
+come home?"
+
+"It isn't my home," he replied, as if the word fretted him. "Yes, I
+like to see it again. But it isn't the place for young people to
+live in. You will see how you like it."
+
+She wondered at his uneasiness. It was the same in Pancrazio. The
+latter now came running to catch them up.
+
+"I think you will be tired," he said. "You ought to have stayed at
+my relation's house down there."
+
+"No, I am not tired," said Alvina. "But I'm hungry."
+
+"Well, we shall eat something when we come to my house."
+
+They plodded in the darkness of the valley high-road. Pancrazio took
+the lantern and went to examine the load, hitching the ropes. A
+great flat loaf fell out, and rolled away, and smack came a little
+valise. Pancrazio broke into a flood of dialect to Giovanni, handing
+him the lantern. Ciccio picked up the bread and put it under his
+arm.
+
+"Break me a little piece," said Alvina.
+
+And in the darkness they both chewed bread.
+
+After a while, Pancrazio halted with the ass just ahead, and took
+the lantern from Giovanni.
+
+"We must leave the road here," he said.
+
+And with the lantern he carefully, courteously showed Alvina a small
+track descending in the side of the bank, between bushes. Alvina
+ventured down the steep descent, Pancrazio following showing a light.
+In the rear was Giovanni, making noises at the ass. They all picked
+their way down into the great white-bouldered bed of a mountain river.
+It was a wide, strange bed of dry boulders, pallid under the stars.
+There was a sound of a rushing river, glacial-sounding. The place
+seemed wild and desolate. In the distance was a darkness of bushes,
+along the far shore.
+
+Pancrazio swinging the lantern, they threaded their way through the
+uneven boulders till they came to the river itself--not very wide,
+but rushing fast. A long, slender, drooping plank crossed over.
+Alvina crossed rather tremulous, followed by Pancrazio with the
+light, and Ciccio with the bread and the valise. They could hear the
+click of the ass and the ejaculations of Giovanni.
+
+Pancrazio went back over the stream with the light. Alvina saw the
+dim ass come up, wander uneasily to the stream, plant his fore legs,
+and sniff the water, his nose right down.
+
+"Er! Err!" cried Pancrazio, striking the beast on the flank.
+
+But it only lifted its nose and turned aside. It would not take the
+stream. Pancrazio seized the leading rope angrily and turned
+upstream.
+
+"Why were donkeys made! They are beasts without sense," his voice
+floated angrily across the chill darkness.
+
+Ciccio laughed. He and Alvina stood in the wide, stony river-bed, in
+the strong starlight, watching the dim figures of the ass and the
+men crawl upstream with the lantern.
+
+Again the same performance, the white muzzle of the ass stooping
+down to sniff the water suspiciously, his hind-quarters tilted up
+with the load. Again the angry yells and blows from Pancrazio. And
+the ass seemed to be taking the water. But no! After a long
+deliberation he drew back. Angry language sounded through the
+crystal air. The group with the lantern moved again upstream,
+becoming smaller.
+
+Alvina and Ciccio stood and watched. The lantern looked small up the
+distance. But there--a clocking, shouting, splashing sound.
+
+"He is going over," said Ciccio.
+
+Pancrazio came hurrying back to the plank with the lantern.
+
+"Oh the stupid beast! I could kill him!" cried he.
+
+"Isn't he used to the water?" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, he is. But he won't go except where he thinks he will go. You
+might kill him before he should go."
+
+They picked their way across the river bed, to the wild scrub and
+bushes of the farther side. There they waited for the ass, which
+came up clicking over the boulders, led by the patient Giovanni. And
+then they took a difficult, rocky track ascending between banks.
+Alvina felt the uneven scramble a great effort. But she got up.
+Again they waited for the ass. And then again they struck off to
+the right, under some trees.
+
+A house appeared dimly.
+
+"Is that it?" said Alvina.
+
+"No. It belongs to me. But that is not my house. A few steps
+further. Now we are on my land."
+
+They were treading a rough sort of grass-land--and still climbing.
+It ended in a sudden little scramble between big stones, and
+suddenly they were on the threshold of a quite important-looking
+house: but it was all dark.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Pancrazio, "they have done nothing that I told
+them." He made queer noises of exasperation.
+
+"What?" said Alvina.
+
+"Neither made a fire nor anything. Wait a minute--"
+
+The ass came up. Ciccio, Alvina, Giovanni and the ass waited in the
+frosty starlight under the wild house. Pancrazio disappeared round
+the back. Ciccio talked to Giovanni. He seemed uneasy, as if he felt
+depressed.
+
+Pancrazio returned with the lantern, and opened the big door. Alvina
+followed him into a stone-floored, wide passage, where stood farm
+implements, where a little of straw and beans lay in a corner, and
+whence rose bare wooden stairs. So much she saw in the glimpse of
+lantern-light, as Pancrazio pulled the string and entered the
+kitchen: a dim-walled room with a vaulted roof and a great dark,
+open hearth, fireless: a bare room, with a little rough dark
+furniture: an unswept stone floor: iron-barred windows, rather
+small, in the deep-thickness of the wall, one-half shut with a drab
+shutter. It was rather like a room on the stage, gloomy, not meant
+to be lived in.
+
+"I will make a light," said Pancrazio, taking a lamp from the
+mantel-piece, and proceeding to wind it up.
+
+Ciccio stood behind Alvina, silent. He had put down the bread and
+valise on a wooden chest. She turned to him.
+
+"It's a beautiful room," she said.
+
+Which, with its high, vaulted roof, its dirty whitewash, its great
+black chimney, it really was. But Ciccio did not understand. He
+smiled gloomily.
+
+The lamp was lighted. Alvina looked round in wonder.
+
+"Now I will make a fire. You, Ciccio, will help Giovanni with the
+donkey," said Pancrazio, scuttling with the lantern.
+
+Alvina looked at the room. There was a wooden settle in front of the
+hearth, stretching its back to the room. There was a little table
+under a square, recessed window, on whose sloping ledge were
+newspapers, scattered letters, nails and a hammer. On the table were
+dried beans and two maize cobs. In a corner were shelves, with two
+chipped enamel plates, and a small table underneath, on which stood
+a bucket of water with a dipper. Then there was a wooden chest, two
+little chairs, and a litter of faggots, cane, vine-twigs, bare
+maize-hubs, oak-twigs filling the corner by the hearth.
+
+Pancrazio came scrambling in with fresh faggots.
+
+"They have not done what I told them, the tiresome people!" he said.
+"I told them to make a fire and prepare the house. You will be
+uncomfortable in my poor home. I have no woman, nothing, everything
+is wrong--"
+
+He broke the pieces of cane and kindled them in the hearth. Soon
+there was a good blaze. Ciccio came in with the bags and the food.
+
+"I had better go upstairs and take my things off," said Alvina. "I
+am so hungry."
+
+"You had better keep your coat on," said Pancrazio. "The room is
+cold." Which it was, ice-cold. She shuddered a little. She took off
+her hat and fur.
+
+"Shall we fry some meat?" said Pancrazio.
+
+He took a frying-pan, found lard in the wooden chest--it was the
+food-chest--and proceeded to fry pieces of meat in a frying-pan over
+the fire. Alvina wanted to lay the table. But there was no cloth.
+
+"We will sit here, as I do, to eat," said Pancrazio. He produced two
+enamel plates and one soup-plate, three penny iron forks and two old
+knives, and a little grey, coarse salt in a wooden bowl. These he
+placed on the seat of the settle in front of the fire. Ciccio was
+silent.
+
+The settle was dark and greasy. Alvina feared for her clothes. But
+she sat with her enamel plate and her impossible fork, a piece of
+meat and a chunk of bread, and ate. It was difficult--but the food
+was good, and the fire blazed. Only there was a film of wood-smoke
+in the room, rather smarting. Ciccio sat on the settle beside her,
+and ate in large mouthfuls.
+
+"I think it's fun," said Alvina.
+
+He looked at her with dark, haunted, gloomy eyes. She wondered what
+was the matter with him.
+
+"Don't you think it's fun?" she said, smiling.
+
+He smiled slowly.
+
+"You won't like it," he said.
+
+"Why not?" she cried, in panic lest he prophesied truly.
+
+Pancrazio scuttled in and out with the lantern. He brought wrinkled
+pears, and green, round grapes, and walnuts, on a white cloth, and
+presented them.
+
+"I think my pears are still good," he said. "You must eat them, and
+excuse my uncomfortable house."
+
+Giovanni came in with a big bowl of soup and a bottle of milk. There
+was room only for three on the settle before the hearth. He pushed
+his chair among the litter of fire-kindling, and sat down. He had
+bright, bluish eyes, and a fattish face--was a man of about fifty,
+but had a simple, kindly, slightly imbecile face. All the men kept
+their hats on.
+
+The soup was from Giovanni's cottage. It was for Pancrazio and him.
+But there was only one spoon. So Pancrazio ate a dozen spoonfuls,
+and handed the bowl to Giovanni--who protested and tried to
+refuse--but accepted, and ate ten spoonfuls, then handed the bowl
+back to his brother, with the spoon. So they finished the bowl
+between them. Then Pancrazio found wine--a whitish wine, not very
+good, for which he apologized. And he invited Alvina to coffee.
+Which she accepted gladly.
+
+For though the fire was warm in front, behind was very cold.
+Pancrazio stuck a long pointed stick down the handle of a saucepan,
+and gave this utensil to Ciccio, to hold over the fire and scald the
+milk, whilst he put the tin coffee-pot in the ashes. He took a long
+iron tube or blow-pipe, which rested on two little feet at the far
+end. This he gave to Giovanni to blow the fire.
+
+Giovanni was a fire-worshipper. His eyes sparkled as he took the
+blowing tube. He put fresh faggots behind the fire--though Pancrazio
+forbade him. He arranged the burning faggots. And then softly he
+blew a red-hot fire for the coffee.
+
+"Basta! Basta!" said Ciccio. But Giovanni blew on, his eyes
+sparkling, looking to Alvina. He was making the fire beautiful for
+her.
+
+There was one cup, one enamelled mug, one little bowl. This was the
+coffee-service. Pancrazio noisily ground the coffee. He seemed to do
+everything, old, stooping as he was.
+
+At last Giovanni took his leave--the kettle which hung on the hook
+over the fire was boiling over. Ciccio burnt his hand lifting it
+off. And at last, at last Alvina could go to bed.
+
+Pancrazio went first with the candle--then Ciccio with the black
+kettle--then Alvina. The men still had their hats on. Their boots
+tramped noisily on the bare stairs.
+
+The bedroom was very cold. It was a fair-sized room with a concrete
+floor and white walls, and window-door opening on a little balcony.
+There were two high white beds on opposite sides of the room. The
+wash-stand was a little tripod thing.
+
+The air was very cold, freezing, the stone floor was dead cold to
+the feet. Ciccio sat down on a chair and began to take off his
+boots. She went to the window. The moon had risen. There was a flood
+of light on dazzling white snow tops, glimmering and marvellous in
+the evanescent night. She went out for a moment on to the balcony.
+It was a wonder-world: the moon over the snow heights, the pallid
+valley-bed away below; the river hoarse, and round about her,
+scrubby, blue-dark foothills with twiggy trees. Magical it all
+was--but so cold.
+
+"You had better shut the door," said Ciccio.
+
+She came indoors. She was dead tired, and stunned with cold, and
+hopelessly dirty after that journey. Ciccio had gone to bed without
+washing.
+
+"Why does the bed rustle?" she asked him.
+
+It was stuffed with dry maize-leaves, the dry sheathes from the
+cobs--stuffed enormously high. He rustled like a snake among dead
+foliage.
+
+Alvina washed her hands. There was nothing to do with the water but
+throw it out of the door. Then she washed her face, thoroughly, in
+good hot water. What a blessed relief! She sighed as she dried
+herself.
+
+"It does one good!" she sighed.
+
+Ciccio watched her as she quickly brushed her hair. She was almost
+stupefied with weariness and the cold, bruising air. Blindly she
+crept into the high, rustling bed. But it was made high in the
+middle. And it was icy cold. It shocked her almost as if she had
+fallen into water. She shuddered, and became semi-conscious with
+fatigue. The blankets were heavy, heavy. She was dazed with
+excitement and wonder. She felt vaguely that Ciccio was miserable,
+and wondered why.
+
+She woke with a start an hour or so later. The moon was in the room.
+She did not know where she was. And she was frightened. And she was
+cold. A real terror took hold of her. Ciccio in his bed was quite
+still. Everything seemed electric with horror. She felt she would
+die instantly, everything was so terrible around her. She could not
+move. She felt that everything around her was horrific,
+extinguishing her, putting her out. Her very being was threatened.
+In another instant she would be transfixed.
+
+Making a violent effort she sat up. The silence of Ciccio in his bed
+was as horrible as the rest of the night. She had a horror of him
+also. What would she do, where should she flee? She was
+lost--lost--lost utterly.
+
+The knowledge sank into her like ice. Then deliberately she got out
+of bed and went across to him. He was horrible and frightening, but
+he was warm. She felt his power and his warmth invade her and
+extinguish her. The mad and desperate passion that was in him sent
+her completely unconscious again, completely unconscious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO
+
+
+There is no mistake about it, Alvina was a lost girl. She was cut
+off from everything she belonged to. Ovid isolated in Thrace might
+well lament. The soul itself needs its own mysterious nourishment.
+This nourishment lacking, nothing is well.
+
+At Pescocalascio it was the mysterious influence of the mountains
+and valleys themselves which seemed always to be annihilating the
+Englishwoman: nay, not only her, but the very natives themselves.
+Ciccio and Pancrazio clung to her, essentially, as if she saved them
+also from extinction. It needed all her courage. Truly, she had to
+support the souls of the two men.
+
+At first she did not realize. She was only stunned with the
+strangeness of it all: startled, half-enraptured with the terrific
+beauty of the place, half-horrified by its savage annihilation of
+her. But she was stunned. The days went by.
+
+It seems there are places which resist us, which have the power to
+overthrow our psychic being. It seems as if every country has its
+potent negative centres, localities which savagely and triumphantly
+refuse our living culture. And Alvina had struck one of them, here
+on the edge of the Abruzzi.
+
+She was not in the village of Pescocalascio itself. That was a long
+hour's walk away. Pancrazio's house was the chief of a tiny hamlet
+of three houses, called Califano because the Califanos had made it.
+There was the ancient, savage hole of a house, quite windowless,
+where Pancrazio and Ciccio's mother had been born: the family home.
+Then there was Pancrazio's villa. And then, a little below, another
+newish, modern house in a sort of wild meadow, inhabited by the
+peasants who worked the land. Ten minutes' walk away was another
+cluster of seven or eight houses, where Giovanni lived. But there
+was no shop, no post nearer than Pescocalascio, an hour's heavy
+road up deep and rocky, wearying tracks.
+
+And yet, what could be more lovely than the sunny days: pure, hot,
+blue days among the mountain foothills: irregular, steep little
+hills half wild with twiggy brown oak-trees and marshes and broom
+heaths, half cultivated, in a wild, scattered fashion. Lovely, in
+the lost hollows beyond a marsh, to see Ciccio slowly ploughing with
+two great white oxen: lovely to go with Pancrazio down to the wild
+scrub that bordered the river-bed, then over the white-bouldered,
+massive desert and across stream to the other scrubby savage shore,
+and so up to the high-road. Pancrazio was very happy if Alvina would
+accompany him. He liked it that she was not afraid. And her sense of
+the beauty of the place was an infinite relief to him.
+
+Nothing could have been more marvellous than the winter twilight.
+Sometimes Alvina and Pancrazio were late returning with the ass. And
+then gingerly the ass would step down the steep banks, already
+beginning to freeze when the sun went down. And again and again he
+would balk the stream, while a violet-blue dusk descended on the
+white, wide stream-bed, and the scrub and lower hills became dark,
+and in heaven, oh, almost unbearably lovely, the snow of the near
+mountains was burning rose, against the dark-blue heavens. How
+unspeakably lovely it was, no one could ever tell, the grand, pagan
+twilight of the valleys, savage, cold, with a sense of ancient gods
+who knew the right for human sacrifice. It stole away the soul of
+Alvina. She felt transfigured in it, clairvoyant in another mystery
+of life. A savage hardness came in her heart. The gods who had
+demanded human sacrifice were quite right, immutably right. The
+fierce, savage gods who dipped their lips in blood, these were the
+true gods.
+
+The terror, the agony, the nostalgia of the heathen past was a
+constant torture to her mediumistic soul. She did not know what it
+was. But it was a kind of neuralgia in the very soul, never to be
+located in the human body, and yet physical. Coming over the brow of
+a heathy, rocky hillock, and seeing Ciccio beyond leaning deep over
+the plough, in his white shirt-sleeves following the slow, waving,
+moth-pale oxen across a small track of land turned up in the heathen
+hollow, her soul would go all faint, she would almost swoon with
+realization of the world that had gone before. And Ciccio was so
+silent, there seemed so much dumb magic and anguish in him, as if he
+were for ever afraid of himself and the thing he was. He seemed, in
+his silence, to _concentrate_ upon her so terribly. She believed she
+would not live.
+
+Sometimes she would go gathering acorns, large, fine acorns, a
+precious crop in that land where the fat pig was almost an object of
+veneration. Silently she would crouch filling the pannier. And far
+off she would hear the sound of Giovanni chopping wood, of Ciccio
+calling to the oxen or Pancrazio making noises to the ass, or the
+sound of a peasant's mattock. Over all the constant speech of the
+passing river, and the real breathing presence of the upper snows.
+And a wild, terrible happiness would take hold of her, beyond
+despair, but very like despair. No one would ever find her. She had
+gone beyond the world into the pre-world, she had reopened on the
+old eternity.
+
+And then Maria, the little elvish old wife of Giovanni, would come
+up with the cows. One cow she held by a rope round its horns, and
+she hauled it from the patches of young corn into the rough grass,
+from the little plantation of trees in among the heath. Maria wore
+the full-pleated white-sleeved dress of the peasants, and a red
+kerchief on her head. But her dress was dirty, and her face was
+dirty, and the big gold rings of her ears hung from ears which
+perhaps had never been washed. She was rather smoke-dried too, from
+perpetual wood-smoke.
+
+Maria in her red kerchief hauling the white cow, and screaming at
+it, would come laughing towards Alvina, who was rather afraid of
+cows. And then, screaming high in dialect, Maria would talk to her.
+Alvina smiled and tried to understand. Impossible. It was not
+strictly a human speech. It was rather like the crying of
+half-articulate animals. It certainly was not Italian. And yet
+Alvina by dint of constant hearing began to pick up the coagulated
+phrases.
+
+She liked Maria. She liked them all. They were all very kind to her,
+as far as they knew. But they did not know. And they were kind with
+each other. For they all seemed lost, like lost, forlorn aborigines,
+and they treated Alvina as if she were a higher being. They loved
+her that she would strip maize-cobs or pick acorns. But they were
+all anxious to serve her. And it seemed as if they needed some one
+to serve. It seemed as if Alvina, the Englishwoman, had a certain
+magic glamour for them, and so long as she was happy, it was a
+supreme joy and relief to them to have her there. But it seemed to
+her she would not live.
+
+And when she was unhappy! Ah, the dreadful days of cold rain mingled
+with sleet, when the world outside was more than impossible, and the
+house inside was a horror. The natives kept themselves alive by
+going about constantly working, dumb and elemental. But what was
+Alvina to do?
+
+For the house was unspeakable. The only two habitable rooms were the
+kitchen and Alvina's bedroom: and the kitchen, with its little
+grated windows high up in the wall, one of which had a broken pane
+and must keep one-half of its shutters closed, was like a dark
+cavern vaulted and bitter with wood-smoke. Seated on the settle
+before the fire, the hard, greasy settle, Alvina could indeed keep
+the fire going, with faggots of green oak. But the smoke hurt her
+chest, she was not clean for one moment, and she could do nothing
+else. The bedroom again was just impossibly cold. And there was no
+other place. And from far away came the wild braying of an ass,
+primeval and desperate in the snow.
+
+The house was quite large; but uninhabitable. Downstairs, on the
+left of the wide passage where the ass occasionally stood out of the
+weather, and where the chickens wandered in search of treasure, was
+a big, long apartment where Pancrazio kept implements and tools and
+potatoes and pumpkins, and where four or five rabbits hopped
+unexpectedly out of the shadows. Opposite this, on the right, was
+the cantina, a dark place with wine-barrels and more agricultural
+stores. This was the whole of the downstairs.
+
+Going upstairs, half way up, at the turn of the stairs was the
+opening of a sort of barn, a great wire-netting behind which showed
+a glow of orange maize-cobs and some wheat. Upstairs were four
+rooms. But Alvina's room alone was furnished. Pancrazio slept in the
+unfurnished bedroom opposite, on a pile of old clothes. Beyond was a
+room with litter in it, a chest of drawers, and rubbish of old books
+and photographs Pancrazio had brought from England. There was a
+battered photograph of Lord Leighton, among others. The fourth room,
+approached through the corn-chamber, was always locked.
+
+Outside was just as hopeless. There had been a little garden within
+the stone enclosure. But fowls, geese, and the ass had made an end
+of this. Fowl-droppings were everywhere, indoors and out, the ass
+left his pile of droppings to steam in the winter air on the
+threshold, while his heartrending bray rent the air. Roads there
+were none: only deep tracks, like profound ruts with rocks in them,
+in the hollows, and rocky, grooved tracks over the brows. The hollow
+grooves were full of mud and water, and one struggled slipperily
+from rock to rock, or along narrow grass-ledges.
+
+What was to be done, then, on mornings that were dark with sleet?
+Pancrazio would bring a kettle of hot water at about half-past
+eight. For had he not travelled Europe with English gentlemen, as a
+sort of model-valet! Had he not _loved_ his English gentlemen? Even
+now, he was infinitely happier performing these little attentions
+for Alvina than attending to his wretched domains.
+
+Ciccio rose early, and went about in the hap-hazard, useless way of
+Italians all day long, getting nothing done. Alvina came out of the
+icy bedroom to the black kitchen. Pancrazio would be gallantly
+heating milk for her, at the end of a long stick. So she would sit
+on the settle and drink her coffee and milk, into which she dipped
+her dry bread. Then the day was before her.
+
+She washed her cup and her enamelled plate, and she tried to clean
+the kitchen. But Pancrazio had on the fire a great black pot,
+dangling from the chain. He was boiling food for the eternal
+pig--the only creature for which any cooking was done. Ciccio was
+tramping in with faggots. Pancrazio went in and out, back and forth
+from his pot.
+
+Alvina stroked her brow and decided on a method. Once she was rid of
+Pancrazio, she would wash every cup and plate and utensil in boiling
+water. Well, at last Pancrazio went off with his great black pan,
+and she set to. But there were not six pieces of crockery in the
+house, and not more than six cooking utensils. These were soon
+scrubbed. Then she scrubbed the two little tables and the shelves.
+She lined the food-chest with clean paper. She washed the high
+window-ledges and the narrow mantel-piece, that had large mounds of
+dusty candle-wax, in deposits. Then she tackled the settle. She
+scrubbed it also. Then she looked at the floor. And even she,
+English housewife as she was, realized the futility of trying to
+wash it. As well try to wash the earth itself outside. It was just a
+piece of stone-laid earth. She swept it as well as she could, and
+made a little order in the faggot-heap in the corner. Then she
+washed the little, high-up windows, to try and let in light.
+
+And what was the difference? A dank wet soapy smell, and not much
+more. Maria had kept scuffling admiringly in and out, crying her
+wonderment and approval. She had most ostentatiously chased out an
+obtrusive hen, from this temple of cleanliness. And that was all.
+
+It was hopeless. The same black walls, the same floor, the same cold
+from behind, the same green-oak wood-smoke, the same bucket of water
+from the well--the same come-and-go of aimless busy men, the same
+cackle of wet hens, the same hopeless nothingness.
+
+Alvina stood up against it for a time. And then she caught a bad
+cold, and was wretched. Probably it was the wood-smoke. But her
+chest was raw, she felt weak and miserable. She could not sit in her
+bedroom, for it was too cold. If she sat in the darkness of the
+kitchen she was hurt with smoke, and perpetually cold behind her
+neck. And Pancrazio rather resented the amount of faggots consumed
+for nothing. The only hope would have been in work. But there was
+nothing in that house to be done. How could she even sew?
+
+She was to prepare the mid-day and evening meals. But with no pots,
+and over a smoking wood fire, what could she prepare? Black and
+greasy, she boiled potatoes and fried meat in lard, in a
+long-handled frying pan. Then Pancrazio decreed that Maria should
+prepare macaroni with the tomato sauce, and thick vegetable soup,
+and sometimes polenta. This coarse, heavy food was wearying beyond
+words.
+
+Alvina began to feel she would die, in the awful comfortless
+meaninglessness of it all. True, sunny days returned and some magic.
+But she was weak and feverish with her cold, which would not get
+better. So that even in the sunshine the crude comfortlessness and
+inferior savagery of the place only repelled her.
+
+The others were depressed when she was unhappy.
+
+"Do you wish you were back in England?" Ciccio asked her, with a
+little sardonic bitterness in his voice. She looked at him without
+answering. He ducked and went away.
+
+"We will make a fire-place in the other bedroom," said Pancrazio.
+
+No sooner said than done. Ciccio persuaded Alvina to stay in bed a
+few days. She was thankful to take refuge. Then she heard a rare
+come-and-go. Pancrazio, Ciccio, Giovanni, Maria and a mason all set
+about the fire-place. Up and down stairs they went, Maria carrying
+stone and lime on her head, and swerving in Alvina's doorway, with
+her burden perched aloft, to shout a few unintelligible words. In
+the intervals of lime-carrying she brought the invalid her soup or
+her coffee or her hot milk.
+
+It turned out quite a good job--a pleasant room with two windows,
+that would have all the sun in the afternoon, and would see the
+mountains on one hand, the far-off village perched up on the other.
+When she was well enough they set off one early Monday morning to
+the market in Ossona. They left the house by starlight, but dawn
+was coming by the time they reached the river. At the high-road,
+Pancrazio harnessed the ass, and after endless delay they jogged off
+to Ossona. The dawning mountains were wonderful, dim-green and mauve
+and rose, the ground rang with frost. Along the roads many peasants
+were trooping to market, women in their best dresses, some of thick
+heavy silk with the white, full-sleeved bodices, dresses green,
+lavender, dark-red, with gay kerchiefs on the head: men muffled in
+cloaks, treading silently in their pointed skin sandals: asses with
+loads, carts full of peasants, a belated cow.
+
+The market was lovely, there in the crown of the pass, in the old
+town, on the frosty sunny morning. Bulls, cows, sheep, pigs, goats
+stood and lay about under the bare little trees on the platform high
+over the valley: some one had kindled a great fire of brush-wood,
+and men crowded round, out of the blue frost. From laden asses
+vegetables were unloaded, from little carts all kinds of things,
+boots, pots, tin-ware, hats, sweet-things, and heaps of corn and
+beans and seeds. By eight o'clock in the December morning the market
+was in full swing: a great crowd of handsome mountain people, all
+peasants, nearly all in costume, with different head-dresses.
+
+Ciccio and Pancrazio and Alvina went quietly about. They bought pots
+and pans and vegetables and sweet-things and thick rush matting and
+two wooden arm-chairs and one old soft arm-chair, going quietly and
+bargaining modestly among the crowd, as Anglicized Italians do.
+
+The sun came on to the market at about nine o'clock, and then, from
+the terrace of the town gate, Alvina looked down on the wonderful
+sight of all the coloured dresses of the peasant women, the black
+hats of the men, the heaps of goods, the squealing pigs, the pale
+lovely cattle, the many tethered asses--and she wondered if she
+would die before she became one with it altogether. It was
+impossible for her to become one with it altogether. Ciccio would
+have to take her to England again, or to America. He was always
+hinting at America.
+
+But then, Italy might enter the war. Even here it was the great
+theme of conversation. She looked down on the seethe of the market.
+The sun was warm on her. Ciccio and Pancrazio were bargaining for
+two cowskin rugs: she saw Ciccio standing with his head rather
+forward. Her husband! She felt her heart die away within her.
+
+All those other peasant women, did they feel as she did?--the same
+sort of acquiescent passion, the same lapse of life? She believed
+they did. The same helpless passion for the man, the same remoteness
+from the world's actuality? Probably, under all their tension of
+money and money-grubbing and vindictive mountain morality and rather
+horrible religion, probably they felt the same. She was one with
+them. But she could never endure it for a life-time. It was only a
+test on her. Ciccio must take her to America, or England--to America
+preferably.
+
+And even as he turned to look for her, she felt a strange thrilling
+in her bowels: a sort of trill strangely within her, yet extraneous
+to her. She caught her hand to her flank. And Ciccio was looking up
+for her from the market beneath, searching with that quick, hasty
+look. He caught sight of her. She seemed to glow with a delicate
+light for him, there beyond all the women. He came straight towards
+her, smiling his slow, enigmatic smile. He could not bear it if he
+lost her. She knew how he loved her--almost inhumanly, elementally,
+without communication. And she stood with her hand to her side, her
+face frightened. She hardly noticed him. It seemed to her she was
+with child. And yet in the whole market-place she was aware of
+nothing but him.
+
+"We have bought the skins," he said. "Twenty-seven lire each."
+
+She looked at him, his dark skin, his golden eyes--so near to her,
+so unified with her, yet so incommunicably remote. How far off was
+his being from hers!
+
+"I believe I'm going to have a child," she said.
+
+"Eh?" he ejaculated quickly. But he had understood. His eyes shone
+weirdly on her. She felt the strange terror and loveliness of his
+passion. And she wished she could lie down there by that town gate,
+in the sun, and swoon for ever unconscious. Living was almost too
+great a demand on her. His yellow, luminous eyes watched her and
+enveloped her. There was nothing for her but to yield, yield, yield.
+And yet she could not sink to earth.
+
+She saw Pancrazio carrying the skins to the little cart, which was
+tilted up under a small, pale-stemmed tree on the platform above the
+valley. Then she saw him making his way quickly back through the
+crowd, to rejoin them.
+
+"Did you feel something?" said Ciccio.
+
+"Yes--here--!" she said, pressing her hand on her side as the
+sensation trilled once more upon her consciousness. She looked at
+him with remote, frightened eyes.
+
+"That's good--" he said, his eyes full of a triumphant,
+incommunicable meaning.
+
+"Well!--And now," said Pancrazio, coming up, "shall we go and eat
+something?"
+
+They jogged home in the little flat cart in the wintry afternoon. It
+was almost night before they had got the ass untackled from the
+shafts, at the wild lonely house where Pancrazio left the cart.
+Giovanni was there with the lantern. Ciccio went on ahead with
+Alvina, whilst the others stood to load up the ass by the high-way.
+
+Ciccio watched Alvina carefully. When they were over the river, and
+among the dark scrub, he took her in his arms and kissed her with
+long, terrible passion. She saw the snow-ridges flare with evening,
+beyond his cheek. They had glowed dawn as she crossed the river
+outwards, they were white-fiery now in the dusk sky as she returned.
+What strange valley of shadow was she threading? What was the
+terrible man's passion that haunted her like a dark angel? Why was
+she so much beyond herself?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+SUSPENSE
+
+
+Christmas was at hand. There was a heap of maize cobs still
+unstripped. Alvina sat with Ciccio stripping them, in the
+corn-place.
+
+"Will you be able to stop here till the baby is born?" he asked her.
+
+She watched the films of the leaves come off from the burning gold
+maize cob under his fingers, the long, ruddy cone of fruition. The
+heap of maize on one side burned like hot sunshine, she felt it
+really gave off warmth, it glowed, it burned. On the other side the
+filmy, crackly, sere sheaths were also faintly sunny. Again and
+again the long, red-gold, full ear of corn came clear in his hands,
+and was put gently aside. He looked up at her, with his yellow eyes.
+
+"Yes, I think so," she said. "Will you?"
+
+"Yes, if they let me. I should like it to be born here."
+
+"Would you like to bring up a child here?" she asked.
+
+"You wouldn't be happy here, so long," he said, sadly.
+
+"Would you?"
+
+He slowly shook his head: indefinite.
+
+She was settling down. She had her room upstairs, her cups and
+plates and spoons, her own things. Pancrazio had gone back to his
+old habit, he went across and ate with Giovanni and Maria, Ciccio
+and Alvina had their meals in their pleasant room upstairs. They
+were happy alone. Only sometimes the terrible influence of the place
+preyed on her.
+
+However, she had a clean room of her own, where she could sew and
+read. She had written to the matron and Mrs. Tuke, and Mrs. Tuke had
+sent books. Also she helped Ciccio when she could, and Maria was
+teaching her to spin the white sheep's wool into coarse thread.
+
+This morning Pancrazio and Giovanni had gone off somewhere, Alvina
+and Ciccio were alone on the place, stripping the last maize.
+Suddenly, in the grey morning air, a wild music burst out: the
+drone of a bagpipe, and a man's high voice half singing, half
+yelling a brief verse, at the end of which a wild flourish on some
+other reedy wood instrument. Alvina sat still in surprise. It was a
+strange, high, rapid, yelling music, the very voice of the
+mountains. Beautiful, in our musical sense of the word, it was not.
+But oh, the magic, the nostalgia of the untamed, heathen past which
+it evoked.
+
+"It is for Christmas," said Ciccio. "They will come every day now."
+
+Alvina rose and went round to the little balcony. Two men stood
+below, amid the crumbling of finely falling snow. One, the elder,
+had a bagpipe whose bag was patched with shirting: the younger was
+dressed in greenish clothes, he had his face lifted, and was yelling
+the verses of the unintelligible Christmas ballad: short, rapid
+verses, followed by a brilliant flourish on a short wooden pipe he
+held ready in his hand. Alvina felt he was going to be out of
+breath. But no, rapid and high came the next verse, verse after
+verse, with the wild scream on the little new pipe in between, over
+the roar of the bagpipe. And the crumbs of snow were like a speckled
+veil, faintly drifting the atmosphere and powdering the littered
+threshold where they stood--a threshold littered with faggots,
+leaves, straw, fowls and geese and ass droppings, and rag thrown out
+from the house, and pieces of paper.
+
+The carol suddenly ended, the young man snatched off his hat to
+Alvina who stood above, and in the same breath he was gone, followed
+by the bagpipe. Alvina saw them dropping hurriedly down the incline
+between the twiggy wild oaks.
+
+"They will come every day now, till Christmas," said Ciccio. "They
+go to every house."
+
+And sure enough, when Alvina went down, in the cold, silent house,
+and out to the well in the still crumbling snow, she heard the sound
+far off, strange, yelling, wonderful: and the same ache for she knew
+not what overcame her, so that she felt one might go mad, there in
+the veiled silence of these mountains, in the great hilly valley cut
+off from the world.
+
+Ciccio worked all day on the land or round about. He was building a
+little earth closet also: the obvious and unscreened place outside
+was impossible. It was curious how little he went to Pescocalascio,
+how little he mixed with the natives. He seemed always to withhold
+something from them. Only with his relatives, of whom he had many,
+he was more free, in a kind of family intimacy.
+
+Yet even here he was guarded. His uncle at the mill, an unwashed,
+fat man with a wife who tinkled with gold and grime, and who shouted
+a few lost words of American, insisted on giving Alvina wine and a
+sort of cake made with cheese and rice. Ciccio too was feasted, in
+the dark hole of a room. And the two natives seemed to press their
+cheer on Alvina and Ciccio whole-heartedly.
+
+"How nice they are!" said Alvina when she had left. "They give so
+freely."
+
+But Ciccio smiled a wry smile, silent.
+
+"Why do you make a face?" she said.
+
+"It's because you are a foreigner, and they think you will go away
+again," he said.
+
+"But I should have thought that would make them less generous," she
+said.
+
+"No. They like to give to foreigners. They don't like to give to the
+people here. Giocomo puts water in the wine which he sells to the
+people who go by. And if I leave the donkey in her shed, I give
+Marta Maria something, or the next time she won't let me have it.
+Ha, they are--they are sly ones, the people here."
+
+"They are like that everywhere," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes. But nowhere they say so many bad things about people as
+here--nowhere where I have ever been."
+
+It was strange to Alvina to feel the deep-bed-rock distrust which
+all the hill-peasants seemed to have of one another. They were
+watchful, venomous, dangerous.
+
+"Ah," said Pancrazio, "I am glad there is a woman in my house once
+more."
+
+"But did _nobody_ come in and do for you before?" asked Alvina. "Why
+didn't you pay somebody?"
+
+"Nobody will come," said Pancrazio, in his slow, aristocratic
+English. "Nobody will come, because I am a man, and if somebody
+should see her at my house, they will all talk."
+
+"Talk!" Alvina looked at the deeply-lined man of sixty-six, "But
+what will they say?"
+
+"Many bad things. Many bad things indeed. They are not good people
+here. All saying bad things, and all jealous. They don't like me
+because I have a house--they think I am too much a _signore_. They
+say to me 'Why do you think you are a signore?' Oh, they are bad
+people, envious, you cannot have anything to do with them."
+
+"They are nice to me," said Alvina.
+
+"They think you will go away. But if you stay, they will say bad
+things. You must wait. Oh, they are evil people, evil against one
+another, against everybody but strangers who don't know them--"
+
+Alvina felt the curious passion in Pancrazio's voice, the passion of a
+man who has lived for many years in England and known the social
+confidence of England, and who, coming back, is deeply injured by the
+ancient malevolence of the remote, somewhat gloomy hill-peasantry. She
+understood also why he was so glad to have her in his house, so proud,
+why he loved serving her. She seemed to see a fairness, a luminousness
+in the northern soul, something free, touched with divinity such as
+"these people here" lacked entirely.
+
+When she went to Ossona with him, she knew everybody questioned him
+about her and Ciccio. She began to get the drift of the
+questions--which Pancrazio answered with reserve.
+
+"And how long are they staying?"
+
+This was an invariable, envious question. And invariably Pancrazio
+answered with a reserved--
+
+"Some months. As long as _they_ like."
+
+And Alvina could feel waves of black envy go out against Pancrazio,
+because she was domiciled with him, and because she sat with him in
+the flat cart, driving to Ossona.
+
+Yet Pancrazio himself was a study. He was thin, and very shabby, and
+rather out of shape. Only in his yellow eyes lurked a strange
+sardonic fire, and a leer which puzzled her. When Ciccio happened to
+be out in the evening he would sit with her and tell her stories of
+Lord Leighton and Millais and Alma Tadema and other academicians
+dead and living. There would sometimes be a strange passivity on his
+worn face, an impassive, almost Red Indian look. And then again he
+would stir into a curious, arch, malevolent laugh, for all the world
+like a debauched old tom-cat. His narration was like this: either
+simple, bare, stoical, with a touch of nobility; or else satiric,
+malicious, with a strange, rather repellent jeering.
+
+"Leighton--he wasn't Lord Leighton then--he wouldn't have me to sit
+for him, because my figure was too poor, he didn't like it. He liked
+fair young men, with plenty of flesh. But once, when he was doing a
+picture--I don't know if you know it? It is a crucifixion, with a
+man on a cross, and--" He described the picture. "No! Well, the
+model had to be tied hanging on to a wooden cross. And it made you
+suffer! Ah!" Here the odd, arch, diabolic yellow flare lit up
+through the stoicism of Pancrazio's eyes. "Because Leighton, he was
+cruel to his model. He wouldn't let you rest. 'Damn you, you've got
+to keep still till I've finished with you, you devil,' so he said.
+Well, for this man on the cross, he couldn't get a model who would
+do it for him. They all tried it once, but they would not go again.
+So they said to him, he must try Califano, because Califano was the
+only man who would stand it. At last then he sent for me. 'I don't
+like your damned figure, Califano,' he said to me, 'but nobody will
+do this if you won't. Now will you do it? 'Yes!' I said, 'I will.'
+So he tied me up on the cross. And he paid me well, so I stood it.
+Well, he kept me tied up, hanging you know forwards naked on this
+cross, for four hours. And then it was luncheon. And after luncheon
+he would tie me again. Well, I suffered. I suffered so much, that I
+must lean against the wall to support me to walk home. And in the
+night I could not sleep, I could cry with the pains in my arms and
+my ribs, I had no sleep. 'You've said you'd do it, so now you must,'
+he said to me. 'And I will do it,' I said. And so he tied me up.
+This cross, you know, was on a little raised place--I don't know
+what you call it--"
+
+"A platform," suggested Alvina.
+
+"A platform. Now one day when he came to do something to me, when I
+was tied up, he slipped back over this platform, and he pulled me,
+who was tied on the cross, with him. So we all fell down, he with
+the naked man on top of him, and the heavy cross on top of us both.
+I could not move, because I was tied. And it was so, with me on top
+of him, and the heavy cross, that he could not get out. So he had to
+lie shouting underneath me until some one came to the studio to
+untie me. No, we were not hurt, because the top of the cross fell so
+that it did not crush us. 'Now you have had a taste of the cross,' I
+said to him. 'Yes, you devil, but I shan't let you off,' he said to
+me.
+
+"To make the time go he would ask me questions. Once he said, 'Now,
+Califano, what time is it? I give you three guesses, and if you
+guess right once I give you sixpence.' So I guessed three o'clock.
+'That's one. Now then, what time is it? 'Again, three o'clock.
+'That's two guesses gone, you silly devil. Now then, what time is
+it? 'So now I was obstinate, and I said _Three o'clock_. He took out
+his watch. 'Why damn you, how did you know? I give you a shilling--'
+It was three o'clock, as I said, so he gave me a shilling instead of
+sixpence as he had said--"
+
+It was strange, in the silent winter afternoon, downstairs in the
+black kitchen, to sit drinking a cup of tea with Pancrazio and
+hearing these stories of English painters. It was strange to look at
+the battered figure of Pancrazio, and think how much he had been
+crucified through the long years in London, for the sake of late
+Victorian art. It was strangest of all to see through his yellow,
+often dull, red-rimmed eyes these blithe and well-conditioned
+painters. Pancrazio looked on them admiringly and contemptuously, as
+an old, rakish tom-cat might look on such frivolous well-groomed
+young gentlemen.
+
+As a matter of fact Pancrazio had never been rakish or debauched,
+but mountain-moral, timid. So that the queer, half-sinister drop of
+his eyelids was curious, and the strange, wicked yellow flare that
+came into his eyes was almost frightening. There was in the man a
+sort of sulphur-yellow flame of passion which would light up in his
+battered body and give him an almost diabolic look. Alvina felt that
+if she were left much alone with him she would need all her English
+ascendancy not to be afraid of him.
+
+It was a Sunday morning just before Christmas when Alvina and Ciccio
+and Pancrazio set off for Pescocalascio for the first time. Snow had
+fallen--not much round the house, but deep between the banks as they
+climbed. And the sun was very bright. So that the mountains were
+dazzling. The snow was wet on the roads. They wound between
+oak-trees and under the broom-scrub, climbing over the jumbled hills
+that lay between the mountains, until the village came near. They
+got on to a broader track, where the path from a distant village
+joined theirs. They were all talking, in the bright clear air of the
+morning.
+
+A little man came down an upper path. As he joined them near the
+village he hailed them in English:
+
+"Good morning. Nice morning."
+
+"Does everybody speak English here?" asked Alvina.
+
+"I have been eighteen years in Glasgow. I am only here for a trip."
+
+He was a little Italian shop-keeper from Glasgow. He was most
+friendly, insisted on paying for drinks, and coffee and almond
+biscuits for Alvina. Evidently he also was grateful to Britain.
+
+The village was wonderful. It occupied the crown of an eminence in
+the midst of the wide valley. From the terrace of the high-road the
+valley spread below, with all its jumble of hills, and two rivers,
+set in the walls of the mountains, a wide space, but imprisoned. It
+glistened with snow under the blue sky. But the lowest hollows were
+brown. In the distance, Ossona hung at the edge of a platform. Many
+villages clung like pale swarms of birds to the far slopes, or
+perched on the hills beneath. It was a world within a world, a
+valley of many hills and townlets and streams shut in beyond access.
+
+Pescocalascio itself was crowded. The roads were sloppy with snow.
+But none the less, peasants in full dress, their feet soaked in the
+skin sandals, were trooping in the sun, purchasing, selling,
+bargaining for cloth, talking all the time. In the shop, which was
+also a sort of inn, an ancient woman was making coffee over a
+charcoal brazier, while a crowd of peasants sat at the tables at the
+back, eating the food they had brought.
+
+Post was due at mid-day. Ciccio went to fetch it, whilst Pancrazio
+took Alvina to the summit, to the castle. There, in the level
+region, boys were snowballing and shouting. The ancient castle,
+badly cracked by the last earthquake, looked wonderfully down on the
+valley of many hills beneath, Califano a speck down the left, Ossona
+a blot to the right, suspended, its towers and its castle clear in
+the light. Behind the castle of Pescocalascio was a deep, steep
+valley, almost a gorge, at the bottom of which a river ran, and
+where Pancrazio pointed out the electricity works of the village,
+deep in the gloom. Above this gorge, at the end, rose the long
+slopes of the mountains, up to the vivid snow--and across again was
+the wall of the Abruzzi.
+
+They went down, past the ruined houses broken by the earthquake.
+Ciccio still had not come with the post. A crowd surged at the
+post-office door, in a steep, black, wet side-street. Alvina's feet
+were sodden. Pancrazio took her to the place where she could drink
+coffee and a strega, to make her warm. On the platform of the
+high-way, above the valley, people were parading in the hot sun.
+Alvina noticed some ultra-smart young men. They came up to
+Pancrazio, speaking English. Alvina hated their Cockney accent and
+florid showy vulgar presence. They were more models. Pancrazio was
+cool with them.
+
+Alvina sat apart from the crowd of peasants, on a chair the old
+crone had ostentatiously dusted for her. Pancrazio ordered beer for
+himself. Ciccio came with letters--long-delayed letters, that had
+been censored. Alvina's heart went down.
+
+The first she opened was from Miss Pinnegar--all war and fear and
+anxiety. The second was a letter, a real insulting letter from Dr.
+Mitchell. "I little thought, at the time when I was hoping to make
+you my wife, that you were carrying on with a dirty Italian
+organ-grinder. So your fair-seeming face covered the schemes and
+vice of your true nature. Well, I can only thank Providence which
+spared me the disgust and shame of marrying you, and I hope that,
+when I meet you on the streets of Leicester Square, I shall have
+forgiven you sufficiently to be able to throw you a coin--"
+
+Here was a pretty little epistle! In spite of herself, she went pale
+and trembled. She glanced at Ciccio. Fortunately he was turning
+round talking to another man. She rose and went to the ruddy
+brazier, as if to warm her hands. She threw on the screwed-up
+letter. The old crone said something unintelligible to her. She
+watched the letter catch fire--glanced at the peasants at the
+table--and out at the wide, wild valley. The world beyond could not
+help, but it still had the power to injure one here. She felt she
+had received a bitter blow. A black hatred for the Mitchells of this
+world filled her.
+
+She could hardly bear to open the third letter. It was from Mrs.
+Tuke, and again, all war. Would Italy join the Allies? She ought to,
+her every interest lay that way. Could Alvina bear to be so far off,
+when such terrible events were happening near home? Could she
+possibly be happy? Nurses were so valuable now. She, Mrs. Tuke, had
+volunteered. She would do whatever she could. She had had to leave
+off nursing Jenifer, who had an _excellent_ Scotch nurse, much
+better than a mother. Well, Alvina and Mrs. Tuke might yet meet in
+some hospital in France. So the letter ended.
+
+Alvina sat down, pale and trembling. Pancrazio was watching her
+curiously.
+
+"Have you bad news?" he asked.
+
+"Only the war."
+
+"Ha!" and the Italian gesture of half-bitter "what can one do?"
+
+They were talking war--all talking war. The dandy young models had
+left England because of the war, expecting Italy to come in. And
+everybody talked, talked, talked. Alvina looked round her. It all
+seemed alien to her, bruising upon the spirit.
+
+"Do you think I shall ever be able to come here alone and do my
+shopping by myself?" she asked.
+
+"You must never come alone," said Pancrazio, in his curious,
+benevolent courtesy. "Either Ciccio or I will come with you. You
+must never come so far alone."
+
+"Why not?" she said.
+
+"You are a stranger here. You are not a contadina--" Alvina could
+feel the oriental idea of women, which still leaves its mark on the
+Mediterranean, threatening her with surveillance and subjection. She
+sat in her chair, with cold wet feet, looking at the sunshine
+outside, the wet snow, the moving figures in the strong light, the
+men drinking at the counter, the cluster of peasant women bargaining
+for dress-material. Ciccio was still turning talking in the rapid
+way to his neighbour. She knew it was war. She noticed the movement
+of his finely-modelled cheek, a little sallow this morning.
+
+And she rose hastily.
+
+"I want to go into the sun," she said.
+
+When she stood above the valley in the strong, tiring light, she
+glanced round. Ciccio inside the shop had risen, but he was still
+turning to his neighbour and was talking with all his hands and all
+his body. He did not talk with his mind and lips alone. His whole
+physique, his whole living body spoke and uttered and emphasized
+itself.
+
+A certain weariness possessed her. She was beginning to realize
+something about him: how he had no sense of home and domestic life,
+as an Englishman has. Ciccio's home would never be his castle. His
+castle was the piazza of Pescocalascio. His home was nothing to him
+but a possession, and a hole to sleep in. He didn't _live_ in it. He
+lived in the open air, and in the community. When the true Italian
+came out in him, his veriest home was the piazza of Pescocalascio,
+the little sort of market-place where the roads met in the village,
+under the castle, and where the men stood in groups and talked,
+talked, talked. This was where Ciccio belonged: his active, mindful
+self. His active, mindful self was none of hers. She only had his
+passive self, and his family passion. His masculine mind and
+intelligence had its home in the little public square of his
+village. She knew this as she watched him now, with all his body
+talking politics. He could not break off till he had finished. And
+then, with a swift, intimate handshake to the group with whom he had
+been engaged, he came away, putting all his interest off from
+himself.
+
+She tried to make him talk and discuss with her. But he wouldn't. An
+obstinate spirit made him darkly refuse masculine conversation with
+her.
+
+"If Italy goes to war, you will have to join up?" she asked him.
+
+"Yes," he said, with a smile at the futility of the question.
+
+"And I shall have to stay here?"
+
+He nodded, rather gloomily.
+
+"Do you want to go?" she persisted.
+
+"No, I don't want to go."
+
+"But you think Italy ought to join in?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Then you _do_ want to go--"
+
+"I want to go if Italy goes in--and she ought to go in--"
+
+Curious, he was somewhat afraid of her, he half venerated her, and
+half despised her. When she tried to make him discuss, in the
+masculine way, he shut obstinately against her, something like a
+child, and the slow, fine smile of dislike came on his face.
+Instinctively he shut off all masculine communication from her,
+particularly politics and religion. He would discuss both,
+violently, with other men. In politics he was something of a
+Socialist, in religion a freethinker. But all this had nothing to do
+with Alvina. He would not enter on a discussion in English.
+
+Somewhere in her soul, she knew the finality of his refusal to hold
+discussion with a woman. So, though at times her heart hardened with
+indignant anger, she let herself remain outside. The more so, as
+she felt that in matters intellectual he was rather stupid. Let him
+go to the piazza or to the wine-shop, and talk.
+
+To do him justice, he went little. Pescocalascio was only half his
+own village. The nostalgia, the campanilismo from which Italians
+suffer, the craving to be in sight of the native church-tower, to
+stand and talk in the native market place or piazza, this was only
+half formed in Ciccio, taken away as he had been from Pescocalascio
+when so small a boy. He spent most of his time working in the fields
+and woods, most of his evenings at home, often weaving a special
+kind of fishnet or net-basket from fine, frail strips of cane. It
+was a work he had learned at Naples long ago. Alvina meanwhile would
+sew for the child, or spin wool. She became quite clever at drawing
+the strands of wool from her distaff, rolling them fine and even
+between her fingers, and keeping her bobbin rapidly spinning away
+below, dangling at the end of the thread. To tell the truth, she was
+happy in the quietness with Ciccio, now they had their own pleasant
+room. She loved his presence. She loved the quality of his silence,
+so rich and physical. She felt he was never very far away: that he
+was a good deal a stranger in Califano, as she was: that he clung to
+her presence as she to his. Then Pancrazio also contrived to serve
+her and shelter her, he too, loved her for being there. They both
+revered her because she was with child. So that she lived more and
+more in a little, isolate, illusory, wonderful world then, content,
+moreover, because the living cost so little. She had sixty pounds of
+her own money, always intact in the little case. And after all, the
+high-way beyond the river led to Ossona, and Ossona gave access to
+the railway, and the railway would take her anywhere.
+
+So the month of January passed, with its short days and its bits of
+snow and bursts of sunshine. On sunny days Alvina walked down to the
+desolate river-bed, which fascinated her. When Pancrazio was
+carrying up stone or lime on the ass, she accompanied him. And
+Pancrazio was always carrying up something, for he loved the
+extraneous jobs like building a fire-place much more than the heavy
+work of the land. Then she would find little tufts of wild narcissus
+among the rocks, gold-centred pale little things, many on one stem.
+And their scent was powerful and magical, like the sound of the men
+who came all those days and sang before Christmas. She loved them.
+There was green hellebore too, a fascinating plant--and one or two
+little treasures, the last of the rose-coloured Alpine cyclamens,
+near the earth, with snake-skin leaves, and so rose, so rose, like
+violets for shadowiness. She sat and cried over the first she found:
+heaven knows why.
+
+In February, as the days opened, the first almond trees flowered
+among grey olives, in warm, level corners between the hills. But it
+was March before the real flowering began. And then she had
+continual bowl-fuls of white and blue violets, she had sprays of
+almond blossom, silver-warm and lustrous, then sprays of peach and
+apricot, pink and fluttering. It was a great joy to wander looking
+for flowers. She came upon a bankside all wide with lavender
+crocuses. The sun was on them for the moment, and they were opened
+flat, great five-pointed, seven-pointed lilac stars, with burning
+centres, burning with a strange lavender flame, as she had seen some
+metal burn lilac-flamed in the laboratory of the hospital at
+Islington. All down the oak-dry bankside they burned their great
+exposed stars. And she felt like going down on her knees and bending
+her forehead to the earth in an oriental submission, they were so
+royal, so lovely, so supreme. She came again to them in the morning,
+when the sky was grey, and they were closed, sharp clubs,
+wonderfully fragile on their stems of sap, among leaves and old
+grass and wild periwinkle. They had wonderful dark stripes running
+up their cheeks, the crocuses, like the clear proud stripes on a
+badger's face, or on some proud cat. She took a handful of the
+sappy, shut, striped flames. In her room they opened into a grand
+bowl of lilac fire.
+
+March was a lovely month. The men were busy in the hills. She
+wandered, extending her range. Sometimes with a strange fear. But it
+was a fear of the elements rather than of man. One day she went
+along the high-road with her letters, towards the village of Casa
+Latina. The high-road was depressing, wherever there were houses.
+For the houses had that sordid, ramshackle, slummy look almost
+invariable on an Italian high-road. They were patched with a
+hideous, greenish mould-colour, blotched, as if with leprosy. It
+frightened her, till Pancrazio told her it was only the copper
+sulphate that had sprayed the vines hitched on to the walls. But
+none the less the houses were sordid, unkempt, slummy. One house by
+itself could make a complete slum.
+
+Casa Latina was across the valley, in the shadow. Approaching it
+were rows of low cabins--fairly new. They were the one-storey
+dwellings commanded after the earthquake. And hideous they were. The
+village itself was old, dark, in perpetual shadow of the mountain.
+Streams of cold water ran round it. The piazza was gloomy, forsaken.
+But there was a great, twin-towered church, wonderful from outside.
+
+She went inside, and was almost sick with repulsion. The place was
+large, whitewashed, and crowded with figures in glass cases and ex
+voto offerings. The lousy-looking, dressed-up dolls, life size and
+tinselly, that stood in the glass cases; the blood-streaked Jesus on
+the crucifix; the mouldering, mumbling, filthy peasant women on
+their knees; all the sense of trashy, repulsive, degraded
+fetish-worship was too much for her. She hurried out, shrinking from
+the contamination of the dirty leather door-curtain.
+
+Enough of Casa Latina. She would never go _there_ again. She was
+beginning to feel that, if she lived in this part of the world at
+all, she must avoid the _inside_ of it. She must never, if she could
+help it, enter into any interior but her own--neither into house nor
+church nor even shop or post-office, if she could help it. The
+moment she went through a door the sense of dark repulsiveness came
+over her. If she was to save her sanity she must keep to the open
+air, and avoid any contact with human interiors. When she thought of
+the insides of the native people she shuddered with repulsion, as in
+the great, degraded church of Casa Latina. They were horrible.
+
+Yet the outside world was so fair. Corn and maize were growing green
+and silken, vines were in the small bud. Everywhere little grape
+hyacinths hung their blue bells. It was a pity they reminded her of
+the many-breasted Artemis, a picture of whom, or of whose statue,
+she had seen somewhere. Artemis with her clusters of breasts was
+horrible to her, now she had come south: nauseating beyond words.
+And the milky grape hyacinths reminded her.
+
+She turned with thankfulness to the magenta anemones that were so
+gay. Some one told her that wherever Venus had shed a tear for
+Adonis, one of these flowers had sprung. They were not tear-like.
+And yet their red-purple silkiness had something pre-world about it,
+at last. The more she wandered, the more the shadow of the by-gone
+pagan world seemed to come over her. Sometimes she felt she would
+shriek and go mad, so strong was the influence on her, something
+pre-world and, it seemed to her now, vindictive. She seemed to feel
+in the air strange Furies, Lemures, things that had haunted her with
+their tomb-frenzied vindictiveness since she was a child and had
+pored over the illustrated Classical Dictionary. Black and cruel
+presences were in the under-air. They were furtive and slinking.
+They bewitched you with loveliness, and lurked with fangs to hurt
+you afterwards. There it was: the fangs sheathed in beauty: the
+beauty first, and then, horribly, inevitably, the fangs.
+
+Being a great deal alone, in the strange place, fancies possessed
+her, people took on strange shapes. Even Ciccio and Pancrazio. And
+it came that she never wandered far from the house, from her room,
+after the first months. She seemed to hide herself in her room.
+There she sewed and spun wool and read, and learnt Italian. Her men
+were not at all anxious to teach her Italian. Indeed her chief
+teacher, at first, was a young fellow called Bussolo. He was a model
+from London, and he came down to Califano sometimes, hanging about,
+anxious to speak English.
+
+Alvina did not care for him. He was a dandy with pale grey eyes and
+a heavy figure. Yet he had a certain penetrating intelligence.
+
+"No, this country is a country for old men. It is only for old men,"
+he said, talking of Pescocalascio. "You won't stop here. Nobody
+young can stop here."
+
+The odd plangent certitude in his voice penetrated her. And all the
+young people said the same thing. They were all waiting to go away.
+But for the moment the war held them up.
+
+Ciccio and Pancrazio were busy with the vines. As she watched them
+hoeing, crouching, tying, tending, grafting, mindless and utterly
+absorbed, hour after hour, day after day, thinking vines, living
+vines, she wondered they didn't begin to sprout vine-buds and vine
+stems from their own elbows and neck-joints. There was something to
+her unnatural in the quality of the attention the men gave to the
+wine. It was a sort of worship, almost a degradation again. And
+heaven knows, Pancrazio's wine was poor enough, his grapes almost
+invariably bruised with hail-stones, and half-rotten instead of
+ripe.
+
+The loveliness of April came, with hot sunshine. Astonishing the
+ferocity of the sun, when he really took upon himself to blaze.
+Alvina was amazed. The burning day quite carried her away. She loved
+it: it made her quite careless about everything, she was just swept
+along in the powerful flood of the sunshine. In the end, she felt
+that intense sunlight had on her the effect of night: a sort of
+darkness, and a suspension of life. She had to hide in her room till
+the cold wind blew again.
+
+Meanwhile the declaration of war drew nearer, and became inevitable.
+She knew Ciccio would go. And with him went the chance of her
+escape. She steeled herself to bear the agony of the knowledge that
+he would go, and she would be left alone in this place, which
+sometimes she hated with a hatred unspeakable. After a spell of hot,
+intensely dry weather she felt she would die in this valley, wither
+and go to powder as some exposed April roses withered and dried into
+dust against a hot wall. Then the cool wind came in a storm, the
+next day there was grey sky and soft air. The rose-coloured wild
+gladioli among the young green corn were a dream of beauty, the
+morning of the world. The lovely, pristine morning of the world,
+before our epoch began. Rose-red gladioli among corn, in among the
+rocks, and small irises, black-purple and yellow blotched with
+brown, like a wasp, standing low in little desert places, that would
+seem forlorn but for this weird, dark-lustrous magnificence. Then
+there were the tiny irises, only one finger tall, growing in dry
+places, frail as crocuses, and much tinier, and blue, blue as the
+eye of the morning heaven, which was a morning earlier, more
+pristine than ours. The lovely translucent pale irises, tiny and
+morning-blue, they lasted only a few hours. But nothing could be
+more exquisite, like gods on earth. It was the flowers that brought
+back to Alvina the passionate nostalgia for the place. The human
+influence was a bit horrible to her. But the flowers that came out
+and uttered the earth in magical expression, they cast a spell on
+her, bewitched her and stole her own soul away from her.
+
+She went down to Ciccio where he was weeding armfuls of rose-red
+gladioli from the half-grown wheat, and cutting the lushness of the
+first weedy herbage. He threw down his sheaves of gladioli, and with
+his sickle began to cut the forest of bright yellow corn-marigolds.
+He looked intent, he seemed to work feverishly.
+
+"Must they all be cut?" she said, as she went to him.
+
+He threw aside the great armful of yellow flowers, took off his cap,
+and wiped the sweat from his brow. The sickle dangled loose in his
+hand.
+
+"We have declared war," he said.
+
+In an instant she realized that she had seen the figure of the old
+post-carrier dodging between the rocks. Rose-red and gold-yellow of
+the flowers swam in her eyes. Ciccio's dusk-yellow eyes were
+watching her. She sank on her knees on a sheaf of corn-marigolds.
+Her eyes, watching him, were vulnerable as if stricken to death.
+Indeed she felt she would die.
+
+"You will have to go?" she said.
+
+"Yes, we shall all have to go." There seemed a certain sound of
+triumph in his voice. Cruel!
+
+She sank lower on the flowers, and her head dropped. But she would
+not be beaten. She lifted her face.
+
+"If you are very long," she said, "I shall go to England. I can't
+stay here very long without you."
+
+"You will have Pancrazio--and the child," he said.
+
+"Yes. But I shall still be myself. I can't stay here very long
+without you. I shall go to England."
+
+He watched her narrowly.
+
+"I don't think they'll let you," he said.
+
+"Yes they will."
+
+At moments she hated him. He seemed to want to crush her altogether.
+She was always making little plans in her mind--how she could get
+out of that great cruel valley and escape to Rome, to English
+people. She would find the English Consul and he would help her. She
+would do anything rather than be really crushed. She knew how easy
+it would be, once her spirit broke, for her to die and be buried in
+the cemetery at Pescocalascio.
+
+And they would all be so sentimental about her--just as Pancrazio
+was. She felt that in some way Pancrazio had killed his wife--not
+consciously, but unconsciously, as Ciccio might kill _her_.
+Pancrazio would tell Alvina about his wife and her ailments. And he
+seemed always anxious to prove that he had been so good to her. No
+doubt he had been good to her, also. But there was something
+underneath--malevolent in his spirit, some caged-in sort of cruelty,
+malignant beyond his control. It crept out in his stories. And it
+revealed itself in his fear of his dead wife. Alvina knew that in
+the night the elderly man was afraid of his dead wife, and of her
+ghost or her avenging spirit. He would huddle over the fire in fear.
+In the same way the cemetery had a fascination of horror for
+him--as, she noticed, for most of the natives. It was an ugly,
+square place, all stone slabs and wall-cupboards, enclosed in
+four-square stone walls, and lying away beneath Pescocalascio
+village obvious as if it were on a plate.
+
+"That is our cemetery," Pancrazio said, pointing it out to her,
+"where we shall all be carried some day."
+
+And there was fear, horror in his voice. He told her how the men had
+carried his wife there--a long journey over the hill-tracks, almost
+two hours.
+
+These were days of waiting--horrible days of waiting for Ciccio to
+be called up. One batch of young men left the village--and there was
+a lugubrious sort of saturnalia, men and women alike got rather
+drunk, the young men left amid howls of lamentation and shrieks of
+distress. Crowds accompanied them to Ossona, whence they were
+marched towards the railway. It was a horrible event.
+
+A shiver of horror and death went through the valley. In a
+lugubrious way, they seemed to enjoy it.
+
+"You'll never be satisfied till you've gone," she said to Ciccio.
+"Why don't they be quick and call you?"
+
+"It will be next week," he said, looking at her darkly. In the
+twilight he came to her, when she could hardly see him.
+
+"Are you sorry you came here with me, Allaye?" he asked. There was
+malice in the very question.
+
+She put down the spoon and looked up from the fire. He stood
+shadowy, his head ducked forward, the firelight faint on his
+enigmatic, timeless, half-smiling face.
+
+"I'm not sorry," she answered slowly, using all her courage.
+"Because I love you--"
+
+She crouched quite still on the hearth. He turned aside his face.
+After a moment or two he went out. She stirred her pot slowly and
+sadly. She had to go downstairs for something.
+
+And there on the landing she saw him standing in the darkness with
+his arm over his face, as if fending a blow.
+
+"What is it?" she said, laying her hand on him. He uncovered his
+face.
+
+"I would take you away if I could," he said.
+
+"I can wait for you," she answered.
+
+He threw himself in a chair that stood at a table there on the broad
+landing, and buried his head in his arms.
+
+"Don't wait for me! Don't wait for me!" he cried, his voice muffled.
+
+"Why not?" she said, filled with terror. He made no sign. "Why not?"
+she insisted. And she laid her fingers on his head.
+
+He got up and turned to her.
+
+"I love you, even if it kills me," she said.
+
+But he only turned aside again, leaned his arm against the wall, and
+hid his face, utterly noiseless.
+
+"What is it?" she said. "What is it? I don't understand." He wiped
+his sleeve across his face, and turned to her.
+
+"I haven't any hope," he said, in a dull, dogged voice.
+
+She felt her heart and the child die within her.
+
+"Why?" she said.
+
+Was she to bear a hopeless child?
+
+"You _have_ hope. Don't make a scene," she snapped. And she went
+downstairs, as she had intended.
+
+And when she got into the kitchen, she forgot what she had come for.
+She sat in the darkness on the seat, with all life gone dark and
+still, death and eternity settled down on her. Death and eternity
+were settled down on her as she sat alone. And she seemed to hear
+him moaning upstairs--"I can't come back. I can't come back." She
+heard it. She heard it so distinctly, that she never knew whether it
+had been an actual utterance, or whether it was her inner ear which
+had heard the inner, unutterable sound. She wanted to answer, to
+call to him. But she could not. Heavy, mute, powerless, there she
+sat like a lump of darkness, in that doomed Italian kitchen. "I
+can't come back." She heard it so fatally.
+
+She was interrupted by the entrance of Pancrazio.
+
+"Oh!" he cried, startled when, having come near the fire, he caught
+sight of her. And he said something, frightened, in Italian.
+
+"Is it you? Why are you in the darkness?" he said.
+
+"I am just going upstairs again."
+
+"You frightened me."
+
+She went up to finish the preparing of the meal. Ciccio came down to
+Pancrazio. The latter had brought a newspaper. The two men sat on
+the settle, with the lamp between them, reading and talking the
+news.
+
+Ciccio's group was called up for the following week, as he had said.
+The departure hung over them like a doom. Those were perhaps the
+worst days of all: the days of the impending departure. Neither of
+them spoke about it.
+
+But the night before he left she could bear the silence no more.
+
+"You will come back, won't you?" she said, as he sat motionless in
+his chair in the bedroom. It was a hot, luminous night. There was
+still a late scent of orange blossom from the garden, the
+nightingale was shaking the air with his sound. At times other,
+honey scents wafted from the hills.
+
+"You will come back?" she insisted.
+
+"Who knows?" he replied.
+
+"If you make up your mind to come back, you will come back. We have
+our fate in our hands," she said.
+
+He smiled slowly.
+
+"You think so?" he said.
+
+"I know it. If you don't come back it will be because you don't want
+to--no other reason. It won't be because you can't. It will be
+because you don't want to."
+
+"Who told you so?" he asked, with the same cruel smile.
+
+"I know it," she said.
+
+"All right," he answered.
+
+But he still sat with his hands abandoned between his knees.
+
+"So make up your mind," she said.
+
+He sat motionless for a long while: while she undressed and brushed
+her hair and went to bed. And still he sat there unmoving, like a
+corpse. It was like having some unnatural, doomed, unbearable
+presence in the room. She blew out the light, that she need not see
+him. But in the darkness it was worse.
+
+At last he stirred--he rose. He came hesitating across to her.
+
+"I'll come back, Allaye," he said quietly. "Be damned to them all."
+She heard unspeakable pain in his voice.
+
+"To whom?" she said, sitting up.
+
+He did not answer, but put his arms round her.
+
+"I'll come back, and we'll go to America," he said.
+
+"You'll come back to me," she whispered, in an ecstasy of pain and
+relief. It was not her affair, where they should go, so long as he
+really returned to her.
+
+"I'll come back," he said.
+
+"Sure?" she whispered, straining him to her.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST GIRL***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lost Girl, by D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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+
+
+
+
+Title: The Lost Girl
+
+
+Author: D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 3, 2007  [eBook #23727]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST GIRL***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Roger Frank, Roberta Staehlin, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE LOST GIRL
+
+by
+
+D. H. LAWRENCE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Thomas Seltzer
+1921
+
+Copyright, 1921,
+by Thomas Seltzer, Inc.
+All rights reserved
+
+First Printing, February, 1921
+Second Printing, February, 1921
+Third Printing, September, 1921
+
+Printed in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+
+   I THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE           7
+
+  II THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON              27
+
+ III THE MATERNITY NURSE                      36
+
+  IV TWO WOMEN DIE                            49
+
+   V THE BEAU                                 64
+
+  VI HOUGHTON'S LAST ENDEAVOUR                95
+
+ VII NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA                       130
+
+VIII CICCIO                                  164
+
+  IX ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE                   191
+
+   X THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE            235
+
+  XI HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT                   273
+
+ XII ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED                  304
+
+XIII THE WEDDED WIFE                         317
+
+ XIV THE JOURNEY ACROSS                      327
+
+  XV THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO               350
+
+ XVI SUSPENSE                                359
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
+
+
+Take a mining townlet like Woodhouse, with a population of ten
+thousand people, and three generations behind it. This space of
+three generations argues a certain well-established society. The old
+"County" has fled from the sight of so much disembowelled coal, to
+flourish on mineral rights in regions still idyllic. Remains one
+great and inaccessible magnate, the local coal owner: three
+generations old, and clambering on the bottom step of the "County,"
+kicking off the mass below. Rule him out.
+
+A well established society in Woodhouse, full of fine shades,
+ranging from the dark of coal-dust to grit of stone-mason and
+sawdust of timber-merchant, through the lustre of lard and butter
+and meat, to the perfume of the chemist and the disinfectant of the
+doctor, on to the serene gold-tarnish of bank-managers, cashiers for
+the firm, clergymen and such-like, as far as the automobile
+refulgence of the general-manager of all the collieries. Here the
+_ne plus ultra_. The general manager lives in the shrubberied
+seclusion of the so-called Manor. The genuine Hall, abandoned by the
+"County," has been taken over as offices by the firm.
+
+Here we are then: a vast substratum of colliers; a thick sprinkling
+of tradespeople intermingled with small employers of labour and
+diversified by elementary schoolmasters and nonconformist clergy; a
+higher layer of bank-managers, rich millers and well-to-do
+ironmasters, episcopal clergy and the managers of collieries, then
+the rich and sticky cherry of the local coal-owner glistening over
+all.
+
+Such the complicated social system of a small industrial town in the
+Midlands of England, in this year of grace 1920. But let us go back
+a little. Such it was in the last calm year of plenty, 1913.
+
+A calm year of plenty. But one chronic and dreary malady: that of
+the odd women. Why, in the name of all prosperity, should every
+class but the lowest in such a society hang overburdened with Dead
+Sea fruit of odd women, unmarried, unmarriageable women, called old
+maids? Why is it that every tradesman, every school-master, every
+bank-manager, and every clergyman produces one, two, three or more
+old maids? Do the middle-classes, particularly the lower
+middle-classes, give birth to more girls than boys? Or do the lower
+middle-class men assiduously climb up or down, in marriage, thus
+leaving their true partners stranded? Or are middle-class women very
+squeamish in their choice of husbands?
+
+However it be, it is a tragedy. Or perhaps it is not.
+
+Perhaps these unmarried women of the middle-classes are the famous
+sexless-workers of our ant-industrial society, of which we hear so
+much. Perhaps all they lack is an occupation: in short, a job. But
+perhaps we might hear their own opinion, before we lay the law down.
+
+In Woodhouse, there was a terrible crop of old maids among the
+"nobs," the tradespeople and the clergy. The whole town of women,
+colliers' wives and all, held its breath as it saw a chance of one
+of these daughters of comfort and woe getting off. They flocked to
+the well-to-do weddings with an intoxication of relief. For let
+class-jealousy be what it may, a woman hates to see another woman
+left stalely on the shelf, without a chance. They all _wanted_ the
+middle-class girls to find husbands. Every one wanted it, including
+the girls themselves. Hence the dismalness.
+
+Now James Houghton had only one child: his daughter Alvina. Surely
+Alvina Houghton--
+
+But let us retreat to the early eighties, when Alvina was a baby: or
+even further back, to the palmy days of James Houghton. In his palmy
+days, James Houghton was _creme de la creme_ of Woodhouse society.
+The house of Houghton had always been well-to-do: tradespeople, we
+must admit; but after a few generations of affluence, tradespeople
+acquire a distinct _cachet_. Now James Houghton, at the age of
+twenty-eight, inherited a splendid business in Manchester goods, in
+Woodhouse. He was a tall, thin, elegant young man with side-whiskers,
+genuinely refined, somewhat in the Bulwer style. He had a taste for
+elegant conversation and elegant literature and elegant Christianity:
+a tall, thin, brittle young man, rather fluttering in his manner, full
+of facile ideas, and with a beautiful speaking voice: most beautiful.
+Withal, of course, a tradesman. He courted a small, dark woman, older
+than himself, daughter of a Derbyshire squire. He expected to get at
+least ten thousand pounds with her. In which he was disappointed, for
+he got only eight hundred. Being of a romantic-commercial nature, he
+never forgave her, but always treated her with the most elegant
+courtesy. To seehim peel and prepare an apple for her was an exquisite
+sight. But that peeled and quartered apple was her portion. This
+elegant Adam of commerce gave Eve her own back, nicely cored, and had
+no more to do with her. Meanwhile Alvina was born.
+
+Before all this, however, before his marriage, James Houghton had
+built Manchester House. It was a vast square building--vast, that
+is, for Woodhouse--standing on the main street and high-road of the
+small but growing town. The lower front consisted of two fine shops,
+one for Manchester goods, one for silk and woollens. This was James
+Houghton's commercial poem.
+
+For James Houghton was a dreamer, and something of a poet: commercial,
+be it understood. He liked the novels of George Macdonald, and the
+fantasies of that author, extremely. He wove one continual fantasy for
+himself, a fantasy of commerce. He dreamed of silks and poplins,
+luscious in texture and of unforeseen exquisiteness: he dreamed of
+carriages of the "County" arrested before his windows, of exquisite
+women ruffling charmed, entranced to his counter. And charming,
+entrancing, he served them his lovely fabrics, which only he and they
+could sufficiently appreciate. His fame spread, until Alexandra,
+Princess of Wales, and Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, the two
+best-dressed women in Europe, floated down from heaven to the shop in
+Woodhouse, and sallied forth to show what could be done by purchasing
+from James Houghton.
+
+We cannot say why James Houghton failed to become the Liberty or the
+Snelgrove of his day. Perhaps he had too much imagination. Be that as
+it may, in those early days when he brought his wife to her new home,
+his window on the Manchester side was a foam and a may-blossom of
+muslins and prints, his window on the London side was an autumn evening
+of silks and rich fabrics. What wife could fail to be dazzled! But she,
+poor darling, from her stone hall in stony Derbyshire, was a little bit
+repulsed by the man's dancing in front of his stock, like David before
+the ark.
+
+The home to which he brought her was a monument. In the great bedroom
+over the shop he had his furniture _built_: built of solid mahogany: oh
+too, too solid. No doubt he hopped or skipped himself with satisfaction
+into the monstrous matrimonial bed: it could only be mounted by means
+of a stool and chair. But the poor, secluded little woman, older than
+he, must have climbed up with a heavy heart, to lie and face the gloomy
+Bastille of mahogany, the great cupboard opposite, or to turn wearily
+sideways to the great cheval mirror, which performed a perpetual and
+hideous bow before her grace. Such furniture! It could never be removed
+from the room.
+
+The little child was born in the second year. And then James Houghton
+decamped to a small, half-furnished bedroom at the other end of the
+house, where he slept on a rough board and played the anchorite for the
+rest of his days. His wife was left alone with her baby and the
+built-in furniture. She developed heart disease, as a result of nervous
+repressions.
+
+But like a butterfly James fluttered over his fabrics. He was a tyrant
+to his shop-girls. No French marquis in a Dickens' novel could have
+been more elegant and _raffine_ and heartless. The girls detested him.
+And yet, his curious refinement and enthusiasm bore them away. They
+submitted to him. The shop attracted much curiosity. But the
+poor-spirited Woodhouse people were weak buyers. They wearied James
+Houghton with their demand for common zephyrs, for red flannel which
+they would scallop with black worsted, for black alpacas and bombazines
+and merinos. He fluffed out his silk-striped muslins, his India
+cotton-prints. But the natives shied off as if he had offered them the
+poisoned robes of Herakles.
+
+There was a sale. These sales contributed a good deal to Mrs.
+Houghton's nervous heart-disease. They brought the first signs of wear
+and tear into the face of James Houghton. At first, of course, he
+merely marked down, with discretion, his less-expensive stock of prints
+and muslins, nuns-veilings and muslin delaines, with a few fancy
+braidings and trimmings in guimp or bronze to enliven the affair. And
+Woodhouse bought cautiously.
+
+After the sale, however, James Houghton felt himself at liberty to
+plunge into an orgy of new stock. He flitted, with a tense look on his
+face, to Manchester. After which huge bundles, bales and boxes arrived
+in Woodhouse, and were dumped on the pavement of the shop. Friday
+evening came, and with it a revelation in Houghton's window: the first
+piques, the first strangely-woven and honey-combed toilet covers and
+bed quilts, the first frill-caps and aprons for maid-servants: a wonder
+in white. That was how James advertised it. "A Wonder in White." Who
+knows but that he had been reading Wilkie Collins' famous novel!
+
+As the nine days of the wonder-in-white passed and receded, James
+disappeared in the direction of London. A few Fridays later he came out
+with his Winter Touch. Weird and wonderful winter coats, for
+ladies--everything James handled was for ladies, he scorned the coarser
+sex--: weird and wonderful winter coats for ladies, of thick, black,
+pockmarked cloth, stood and flourished their bear-fur cuffs in the
+background, while tippets, boas, muffs and winter-fancies coquetted in
+front of the window-space. Friday-night crowds gathered outside: the
+gas-lamps shone their brightest: James Houghton hovered in the
+background like an author on his first night in the theatre. The
+result was a sensation. Ten villages stared and crushed round the plate
+glass. It was a sensation: but what sensation! In the breasts of the
+crowd, wonder, admiration, _fear_, and ridicule. Let us stress the word
+fear. The inhabitants of Woodhouse were afraid lest James Houghton
+should impose his standards upon them. His goods were in excellent
+taste: but his customers were in as bad taste as possible. They stood
+outside and pointed, giggled, and jeered. Poor James, like an author on
+his first night, saw his work fall more than flat.
+
+But still he believed in his own excellence: and quite justly. What
+he failed to perceive was that the crowd hated excellence. Woodhouse
+wanted a gently graduated progress in mediocrity, a mediocrity so
+stale and flat that it fell outside the imagination of any sensitive
+mortal. Woodhouse wanted a series of vulgar little thrills, as one
+tawdry mediocrity was imported from Nottingham or Birmingham to take
+the place of some tawdry mediocrity which Nottingham and Birmingham
+had already discarded. That Woodhouse, as a very condition of its
+own being, hated any approach to originality or real taste, this
+James Houghton could never learn. He thought he had not been clever
+enough, when he had been far, far too clever already. He always
+thought that Dame Fortune was a capricious and fastidious dame, a
+sort of Elizabeth of Austria or Alexandra, Princess of Wales,
+elegant beyond his grasp. Whereas Dame Fortune, even in London or
+Vienna, let alone in Woodhouse, was a vulgar woman of the middle and
+lower middle-class, ready to put her heavy foot on anything that was
+not vulgar, machine-made, and appropriate to the herd. When he saw
+his delicate originalities, as well as his faint flourishes of
+draper's fantasy, squashed flat under the calm and solid foot of
+vulgar Dame Fortune, he fell into fits of depression bordering on
+mysticism, and talked to his wife in a vague way of higher
+influences and the angel Israfel. She, poor lady, was thoroughly
+scared by Israfel, and completely unhooked by the vagaries of James.
+
+At last--we hurry down the slope of James' misfortunes--the real
+days of Houghton's Great Sales began. Houghton's Great Bargain
+Events were really events. After some years of hanging on, he let go
+splendidly. He marked down his prints, his chintzes, his dimities
+and his veilings with a grand and lavish hand. Bang went his blue
+pencil through 3/11, and nobly he subscribed 1/0-3/4. Prices fell
+like nuts. A lofty one-and-eleven rolled down to six-three, 1/6
+magically shrank into 4-3/4d, whilst good solid prints exposed
+themselves at 3-3/4d per yard.
+
+Now this was really an opportunity. Moreover the goods, having
+become a little stale during their years of ineffectuality, were
+beginning to approximate to the public taste. And besides, good
+sound stuff it was, no matter what the pattern. And so the little
+Woodhouse girls went to school in petties and drawers made of
+material which James had destined for fair summer dresses: petties
+and drawers of which the little Woodhouse girls were ashamed, for
+all that. For if they should chance to turn up their little skirts,
+be sure they would raise a chorus among their companions: "Yah-h-h,
+yer've got Houghton's threp'ny draws on!"
+
+All this time James Houghton walked on air. He still saw the Fata
+Morgana snatching his fabrics round her lovely form, and pointing
+him to wealth untold. True, he became also Superintendent of the
+Sunday School. But whether this was an act of vanity, or whether it
+was an attempt to establish an Entente Cordiale with higher powers,
+who shall judge.
+
+Meanwhile his wife became more and more an invalid; the little
+Alvina was a pretty, growing child. Woodhouse was really impressed
+by the sight of Mrs. Houghton, small, pale and withheld, taking a
+walk with her dainty little girl, so fresh in an ermine tippet and a
+muff. Mrs. Houghton in shiny black bear's-fur, the child in the
+white and spotted ermine, passing silent and shadowy down the
+street, made an impression which the people did not forget.
+
+But Mrs. Houghton had pains at her heart. If, during her walk, she
+saw two little boys having a scrimmage, she had to run to them with
+pence and entreaty, leaving them dumfounded, whilst she leaned blue
+at the lips against a wall. If she saw a carter crack his whip over
+the ears of the horse, as the horse laboured uphill, she had to
+cover her eyes and avert her face, and all her strength left her.
+
+So she stayed more and more in her room, and the child was given to
+the charge of a governess. Miss Frost was a handsome, vigorous young
+woman of about thirty years of age, with grey-white hair and
+gold-rimmed spectacles. The white hair was not at all tragical: it
+was a family _trait_.
+
+Miss Frost mattered more than any one else to Alvina Houghton,
+during the first long twenty-five years of the girl's life. The
+governess was a strong, generous woman, a musician by nature. She
+had a sweet voice, and sang in the choir of the chapel, and took the
+first class of girls in the Sunday-School of which James Houghton
+was Superintendent. She disliked and rather despised James Houghton,
+saw in him elements of a hypocrite, detested his airy and gracious
+selfishness, his lack of human feeling, and most of all, his fairy
+fantasy. As James went further into life, he became a dreamer. Sad
+indeed that he died before the days of Freud. He enjoyed the most
+wonderful and fairy-like dreams, which he could describe perfectly,
+in charming, delicate language. At such times his beautifully
+modulated voice all but sang, his grey eyes gleamed fiercely under
+his bushy, hairy eyebrows, his pale face with its side-whiskers had
+a strange _lueur_, his long thin hands fluttered occasionally. He
+had become meagre in figure, his skimpy but genteel coat would be
+buttoned over his breast, as he recounted his dream-adventures,
+adventures that were half Edgar Allan Poe, half Andersen, with
+touches of Vathek and Lord Byron and George Macdonald: perhaps more
+than a touch of the last. Ladies were always struck by these
+accounts. But Miss Frost never felt so strongly moved to impatience
+as when she was within hearing.
+
+For twenty years, she and James Houghton treated each other with a
+courteous distance. Sometimes she broke into open impatience with
+him, sometimes he answered her tartly: "Indeed, indeed! Oh, indeed!
+Well, well, I'm sorry you find it so--" as if the injury consisted
+in her finding it so. Then he would flit away to the Conservative
+Club, with a fleet, light, hurried step, as if pressed by fate. At
+the club he played chess--at which he was excellent--and conversed.
+Then he flitted back at half-past twelve, to dinner.
+
+The whole morale of the house rested immediately on Miss Frost. She
+saw her line in the first year. She must defend the little Alvina,
+whom she loved as her own, and the nervous, petulant, heart-stricken
+woman, the mother, from the vagaries of James. Not that James had
+any vices. He did not drink or smoke, was abstemious and clean as an
+anchorite, and never lowered his fine tone. But still, the two
+unprotected ones must be sheltered from him. Miss Frost
+imperceptibly took into her hands the reins of the domestic
+government. Her rule was quiet, strong, and generous. She was not
+seeking her own way. She was steering the poor domestic ship of
+Manchester House, illuminating its dark rooms with her own sure,
+radiant presence: her silver-white hair, and her pale, heavy,
+reposeful face seemed to give off a certain radiance. She seemed to
+give weight, ballast, and repose to the staggering and bewildered
+home. She controlled the maid, and suggested the meals--meals which
+James ate without knowing what he ate. She brought in flowers and
+books, and, very rarely, a visitor. Visitors were out of place in
+the dark sombreness of Manchester House. Her flowers charmed the
+petulant invalid, her books she sometimes discussed with the airy
+James: after which discussions she was invariably filled with
+exasperation and impatience, whilst James invariably retired to the
+shop, and was heard raising his musical voice, which the work-girls
+hated, to one or other of the work-girls.
+
+James certainly had an irritating way of speaking of a book. He
+talked of incidents, and effects, and suggestions, as if the whole
+thing had just been a sensational-aesthetic attribute to himself. Not
+a grain of human feeling in the man, said Miss Frost, flushing pink
+with exasperation. She herself invariably took the human line.
+
+Meanwhile the shops began to take on a hopeless and frowsy look.
+After ten years' sales, spring sales, summer sales, autumn sales,
+winter sales, James began to give up the drapery dream. He himself
+could not bear any more to put the heavy, pock-holed black cloth
+coat, with wild bear cuffs and collar, on to the stand. He had
+marked it down from five guineas to one guinea, and then, oh ignoble
+day, to ten-and-six. He nearly kissed the gipsy woman with a basket
+of tin saucepan-lids, when at last she bought it for five shillings,
+at the end of one of his winter sales. But even she, in spite of the
+bitter sleety day, would not put the coat on in the shop. She
+carried it over her arm down to the Miners' Arms. And later, with a
+shock that really hurt him, James, peeping bird-like out of his shop
+door, saw her sitting driving a dirty rag-and-bone cart with a
+green-white, mouldy pony, and flourishing her arms like some wild
+and hairy-decorated squaw. For the long bear-fur, wet with sleet,
+seemed like a _chevaux de frise_ of long porcupine quills round her
+fore-arms and her neck. Yet such good, such wonderful material! James
+eyed it for one moment, and then fled like a rabbit to the stove in
+his back regions.
+
+The higher powers did not seem to fulfil the terms of treaty which
+James hoped for. He began to back out from the Entente. The Sunday
+School was a great trial to him. Instead of being carried away by
+his grace and eloquence, the nasty louts of colliery boys and girls
+openly banged their feet and made deafening noises when he tried to
+speak. He said many acid and withering things, as he stood there on
+the rostrum. But what is the good of saying acid things to those
+little fiends and gall-bladders, the colliery children. The
+situation was saved by Miss Frost's sweeping together all the big
+girls, under her surveillance, and by her organizing that the tall
+and handsome blacksmith who taught the lower boys should extend his
+influence over the upper boys. His influence was more than
+effectual. It consisted in gripping any recalcitrant boy just above
+the knee, and jesting with him in a jocular manner, in the dialect.
+The blacksmith's hand was all a blacksmith's hand need be, and his
+dialect was as broad as could be wished. Between the grip and the
+homely idiom no boy could endure without squealing. So the Sunday
+School paid more attention to James, whose prayers were beautiful.
+But then one of the boys, a protege of Miss Frost, having been left
+for half an hour in the obscure room with Mrs. Houghton, gave away
+the secret of the blacksmith's grip, which secret so haunted the
+poor lady that it marked a stage in the increase of her malady, and
+made Sunday afternoon a nightmare to her. And then James Houghton
+resented something in the coarse Scotch manner of the minister of
+that day. So that the superintendency of the Sunday School came to
+an end.
+
+At the same time, Solomon had to divide his baby. That is, he let
+the London side of his shop to W. H. Johnson, the tailor and
+haberdasher, a parvenu little fellow whose English would not bear
+analysis. Bitter as it was, it had to be. Carpenters and joiners
+appeared, and the premises were completely severed. From her room in
+the shadows at the back the invalid heard the hammering and sawing,
+and suffered. W. H. Johnson came out with a spick-and-span window,
+and had his wife, a shrewd, quiet woman, and his daughter, a
+handsome, loud girl, to help him on Friday evenings. Men flocked
+in--even women, buying their husbands a sixpence-halfpenny tie. They
+could have bought a tie for four-three from James Houghton. But no,
+they would rather give sixpence-halfpenny for W.H. Johnson's fresh
+but rubbishy stuff. And James, who had tried to rise to another
+successful sale, saw the streams pass into the other doorway, and
+heard the heavy feet on the hollow boards of the other shop: his
+shop no more.
+
+After this cut at his pride and integrity he lay in retirement for a
+while, mystically inclined. Probably he would have come to
+Swedenborg, had not his clipt wings spread for a new flight. He hit
+upon the brilliant idea of working up his derelict fabrics into
+ready-mades: not men's clothes, oh no: women's, or rather, ladies'.
+Ladies' Tailoring, said the new announcement.
+
+James Houghton was happy once more. A zig-zag wooden stair-way was
+rigged up the high back of Manchester House. In the great lofts
+sewing-machines of various patterns and movements were installed. A
+manageress was advertised for, and work-girls were hired. So a new
+phase of life started. At half-past six in the morning there was a
+clatter of feet and of girls' excited tongues along the back-yard
+and up the wooden stair-way outside the back wall. The poor invalid
+heard every clack and every vibration. She could never get over her
+nervous apprehension of an invasion. Every morning alike, she felt
+an invasion of some enemy was breaking in on her. And all day long
+the low, steady rumble of sewing-machines overhead seemed like the
+low drumming of a bombardment upon her weak heart. To make matters
+worse, James Houghton decided that he must have his sewing-machines
+driven by some extra-human force. He installed another plant of
+machinery--acetylene or some such contrivance--which was intended to
+drive all the little machines from one big belt. Hence a further
+throbbing and shaking in the upper regions, truly terrible to
+endure. But, fortunately or unfortunately, the acetylene plant was
+not a success. Girls got their thumbs pierced, and sewing machines
+absolutely refused to stop sewing, once they had started, and
+absolutely refused to start, once they had stopped. So that after a
+while, one loft was reserved for disused and rusty, but expensive
+engines.
+
+Dame Fortune, who had refused to be taken by fine fabrics and fancy
+trimmings, was just as reluctant to be captured by ready-mades.
+Again the good dame was thoroughly lower middle-class. James
+Houghton designed "robes." Now Robes were the mode. Perhaps it was
+Alexandra, Princess of Wales, who gave glory to the slim,
+glove-fitting Princess Robe. Be that as it may, James Houghton
+designed robes. His work-girls, a race even more callous than
+shop-girls, proclaimed the fact that James tried on his own
+inventions upon his own elegant thin person, before the privacy of
+his own cheval mirror. And even if he did, why not? Miss Frost,
+hearing this legend, looked sideways at the enthusiast.
+
+Let us remark in time that Miss Frost had already ceased to draw any
+maintenance from James Houghton. Far from it, she herself
+contributed to the upkeep of the domestic hearth and board. She had
+fully decided never to leave her two charges. She knew that a
+governess was an impossible item in Manchester House, as things
+went. And so she trudged the country, giving music lessons to the
+daughters of tradesmen and of colliers who boasted pianofortes. She
+even taught heavy-handed but dauntless colliers, who were seized
+with a passion to "play." Miles she trudged, on her round from
+village to village: a white-haired woman with a long, quick stride,
+a strong figure, and a quick, handsome smile when once her face
+awoke behind her gold-rimmed glasses. Like many short-sighted
+people, she had a certain intent look of one who goes her own way.
+
+The miners knew her, and entertained the highest respect and
+admiration for her. As they streamed in a grimy stream home from
+pit, they diverged like some magic dark river from off the pavement
+into the horse-way, to give her room as she approached. And the men
+who knew her well enough to salute her, by calling her name "Miss
+Frost!" giving it the proper intonation of salute, were fussy men
+indeed. "She's a lady if ever there was one," they said. And they
+meant it. Hearing her name, poor Miss Frost would flash a smile and
+a nod from behind her spectacles, but whose black face she smiled to
+she never, or rarely knew. If she did chance to get an inkling, then
+gladly she called in reply "Mr. Lamb," or "Mr. Calladine." In her
+way she was a proud woman, for she was regarded with cordial
+respect, touched with veneration, by at least a thousand colliers,
+and by perhaps as many colliers' wives. That is something, for any
+woman.
+
+Miss Frost charged fifteen shillings for thirteen weeks' lessons,
+two lessons a week. And at that she was considered rather dear. She
+was supposed to be making money. What money she made went chiefly to
+support the Houghton household. In the meanwhile she drilled Alvina
+thoroughly in theory and pianoforte practice, for Alvina was
+naturally musical, and besides this she imparted to the girl the
+elements of a young lady's education, including the drawing of
+flowers in water-colour, and the translation of a Lamartine poem.
+
+Now incredible as it may seem, fate threw another prop to the
+falling house of Houghton, in the person of the manageress of the
+work-girls, Miss Pinnegar. James Houghton complained of Fortune, yet
+to what other man would Fortune have sent two such women as Miss
+Frost and Miss Pinnegar, _gratis_? Yet there they were. And doubtful
+if James was ever grateful for their presence.
+
+If Miss Frost saved him from heaven knows what domestic debacle and
+horror, Miss Pinnegar saved him from the workhouse. Let us not mince
+matters. For a dozen years Miss Frost supported the heart-stricken,
+nervous invalid, Clariss Houghton: for more than twenty years she
+cherished, tended and protected the young Alvina, shielding the
+child alike from a neurotic mother and a father such as James. For
+nearly twenty years she saw that food was set on the table, and
+clean sheets were spread on the beds: and all the time remained
+virtually in the position of an outsider, without one grain of
+established authority.
+
+And then to find Miss Pinnegar! In her way, Miss Pinnegar was very
+different from Miss Frost. She was a rather short, stout,
+mouse-coloured, creepy kind of woman with a high colour in her
+cheeks, and dun, close hair like a cap. It was evident she was not a
+lady: her grammar was not without reproach. She had pale grey eyes,
+and a padding step, and a soft voice, and almost purplish cheeks.
+Mrs. Houghton, Miss Frost, and Alvina did not like her. They
+suffered her unwillingly.
+
+But from the first she had a curious ascendancy over James Houghton.
+One would have expected his aesthetic eye to be offended. But no
+doubt it was her voice: her soft, near, sure voice, which seemed
+almost like a secret touch upon her hearer. Now many of her hearers
+disliked being secretly touched, as it were beneath their clothing.
+Miss Frost abhorred it: so did Mrs. Houghton. Miss Frost's voice was
+clear and straight as a bell-note, open as the day. Yet Alvina,
+though in loyalty she adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, did not
+really mind the quiet suggestive power of Miss Pinnegar. For Miss
+Pinnegar was not vulgarly insinuating. On the contrary, the things
+she said were rather clumsy and downright. It was only that she
+seemed to weigh what she said, secretly, before she said it, and
+then she approached as if she would slip it into her hearer's
+consciousness without his being aware of it. She seemed to slide her
+speeches unnoticed into one's ears, so that one accepted them
+without the slightest challenge. That was just her manner of
+approach. In her own way, she was as loyal and unselfish as Miss
+Frost. There are such poles of opposition between honesties and
+loyalties.
+
+Miss Pinnegar had the _second_ class of girls in the Sunday School,
+and she took second, subservient place in Manchester House. By force
+of nature, Miss Frost took first place. Only when Miss Pinnegar
+spoke to Mr. Houghton--nay, the very way she addressed herself to
+him--"What do _you_ think, Mr. Houghton?"--then there seemed to be
+assumed an immediacy of correspondence between the two, and an
+unquestioned priority in their unison, his and hers, which was a
+cruel thorn in Miss Frost's outspoken breast. This sort of secret
+intimacy and secret exulting in having, _really_, the chief power,
+was most repugnant to the white-haired woman. Not that there was, in
+fact, any secrecy, or any form of unwarranted correspondence between
+James Houghton and Miss Pinnegar. Far from it. Each of them would
+have found any suggestion of such a possibility repulsive in the
+extreme. It was simply an implicit correspondence between their two
+psyches, an immediacy of understanding which preceded all
+expression, tacit, wireless.
+
+Miss Pinnegar lived in: so that the household consisted of the
+invalid, who mostly sat, in her black dress with a white lace collar
+fastened by a twisted gold brooch, in her own dim room, doing
+nothing, nervous and heart-suffering; then James, and the thin young
+Alvina, who adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, and then these two
+strange women. Miss Pinnegar never lifted up her voice in household
+affairs: she seemed, by her silence, to admit her own inadequacy in
+culture and intellect, when topics of interest were being discussed,
+only coming out now and then with defiant platitudes and
+truisms--for almost defiantly she took the commonplace, vulgarian
+point of view; yet after everything she would turn with her quiet,
+triumphant assurance to James Houghton, and start on some point of
+business, soft, assured, ascendant. The others shut their ears.
+
+Now Miss Pinnegar had to get her footing slowly. She had to let
+James run the gamut of his creations. Each Friday night new wonders,
+robes and ladies' "suits"--the phrase was very new--garnished the
+window of Houghton's shop. It was one of the sights of the place,
+Houghton's window on Friday night. Young or old, no individual,
+certainly no female left Woodhouse without spending an excited and
+usually hilarious ten minutes on the pavement under the window.
+Muffled shrieks of young damsels who had just got their first view,
+guffaws of sympathetic youths, continued giggling and expostulation
+and "Eh, but what price the umbrella skirt, my girl!" and "You'd
+like to marry me in _that_, my boy--what? not half!"--or else "Eh,
+now, if you'd seen me in _that_ you'd have fallen in love with me at
+first sight, shouldn't you?"--with a probable answer "I should have
+fallen over myself making haste to get away"--loud guffaws:--all
+this was the regular Friday night's entertainment in Woodhouse.
+James Houghton's shop was regarded as a weekly comic issue. His
+pique costumes with glass buttons and sort of steel-trimming collars
+and cuffs were immortal.
+
+But why, once more, drag it out. Miss Pinnegar served in the shop on
+Friday nights. She stood by her man. Sometimes when the shrieks grew
+loudest she came to the shop door and looked with her pale grey eyes
+at the ridiculous mob of lasses in tam-o-shanters and youths half
+buried in caps. And she imposed a silence. They edged away.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Pinnegar pursued the sober and even tenor of her own
+way. Whilst James lashed out, to use the local phrase, in robes and
+"suits," Miss Pinnegar steadily ground away, producing strong,
+indestructible shirts and singlets for the colliers, sound,
+serviceable aprons for the colliers' wives, good print dresses for
+servants, and so on. She executed no flights of fancy. She had her
+goods made to suit her people. And so, underneath the foam and froth
+of James' creative adventure flowed a slow but steady stream of
+output and income. The women of Woodhouse came at last to _depend_
+on Miss Pinnegar. Growing lads in the pit reduce their garments to
+shreds with amazing expedition. "I'll go to Miss Pinnegar for thy
+shirts this time, my lad," said the harassed mothers, "and see if
+_they'll_ stand thee." It was almost like a threat. But it served
+Manchester House.
+
+James bought very little stock in these days: just remnants and
+pieces for his immortal robes. It was Miss Pinnegar who saw the
+travellers and ordered the unions and calicoes and grey flannel.
+James hovered round and said the last word, of course. But what was
+his last word but an echo of Miss Pinnegar's penultimate! He was not
+interested in unions and twills.
+
+His own stock remained on hand. Time, like a slow whirlpool
+churned it over into sight and out of sight, like a mass of dead
+sea-weed in a backwash. There was a regular series of sales
+fortnightly. The display of "creations" fell off. The new
+entertainment was the Friday-night's sale. James would attack some
+portion of his stock, make a wild jumble of it, spend a delirious
+Wednesday and Thursday marking down, and then open on Friday
+afternoon. In the evening there was a crush. A good moire underskirt
+for one-and-eleven-three was not to be neglected, and a handsome
+string-lace collarette for six-three would iron out and be worth at
+least three-and-six. That was how it went: it would nearly all of
+it iron out into something really nice, poor James' crumpled stock.
+His fine, semi-transparent face flushed pink, his eyes flashed as he
+took in the sixpences and handed back knots of tape or packets of
+pins for the notorious farthings. What matter if the farthing change
+had originally cost him a halfpenny! His shop was crowded with women
+peeping and pawing and turning things over and commenting in loud,
+unfeeling tones. For there were still many comic items. Once, for
+example, he suddenly heaped up piles of hats, trimmed and untrimmed,
+the weirdest, sauciest, most screaming shapes. Woodhouse enjoyed
+itself that night.
+
+And all the time, in her quiet, polite, think-the-more fashion Miss
+Pinnegar waited on the people, showing them considerable forbearance
+and just a tinge of contempt. She became very tired those
+evenings--her hair under its invisible hairnet became flatter, her
+cheeks hung down purplish and mottled. But while James stood she
+stood. The people did not like her, yet she influenced them. And the
+stock slowly wilted, withered. Some was scrapped. The shop seemed to
+have digested some of its indigestible contents.
+
+James accumulated sixpences in a miserly fashion. Luckily for her
+work-girls, Miss Pinnegar took her own orders, and received payments
+for her own productions. Some of her regular customers paid her a
+shilling a week--or less. But it made a small, steady income. She
+reserved her own modest share, paid the expenses of her department,
+and left the residue to James.
+
+James had accumulated sixpences, and made a little space in his
+shop. He had desisted from "creations." Time now for a new flight.
+He decided it was better to be a manufacturer than a tradesman. His
+shop, already only half its original size, was again too big. It
+might be split once more. Rents had risen in Woodhouse. Why not cut
+off another shop from his premises?
+
+No sooner said than done. In came the architect, with whom he had
+played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one
+good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left
+a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present
+space. But as we age we dwindle.
+
+More hammering and alterations, and James found himself cooped in a
+long, long narrow shop, very dark at the back, with a high oblong
+window and a door that came in at a pinched corner. Next door to him
+was a cheerful new grocer of the cheap and florid type. The new
+grocer whistled "Just Like the Ivy," and shouted boisterously to his
+shop-boy. In his doorway, protruding on James' sensitive vision, was
+a pyramid of sixpence-halfpenny tins of salmon, red, shiny tins with
+pink halved salmons depicted, and another yellow pyramid of
+four-pence-halfpenny tins of pineapple. Bacon dangled in pale rolls
+_almost_ over James' doorway, whilst straw and paper, redolent of
+cheese, lard, and stale eggs filtered through the threshold.
+
+This was coming down in the world, with a vengeance. But what James
+lost downstairs he tried to recover upstairs. Heaven knows what he
+would have done, but for Miss Pinnegar. She kept her own work-rooms
+against him, with a soft, heavy, silent tenacity that would have
+beaten stronger men than James. But his strength lay in his
+pliability. He rummaged in the empty lofts, and among the discarded
+machinery. He rigged up the engines afresh, bought two new machines,
+and started an elastic department, making elastic for garters and
+for hat-chins.
+
+He was immensely proud of his first cards of elastic, and saw Dame
+Fortune this time fast in his yielding hands. But, becoming used to
+disillusionment, he almost welcomed it. Within six months he
+realized that every inch of elastic cost him exactly sixty per cent.
+more than he could sell it for, and so he scrapped his new
+department. Luckily, he sold one machine and even gained two pounds
+on it.
+
+After this, he made one last effort. This was hosiery webbing, which
+could be cut up and made into as-yet-unheard-of garments. Miss
+Pinnegar kept her thumb on this enterprise, so that it was not much
+more than abortive. And then James left her alone.
+
+Meanwhile the shop slowly churned its oddments. Every Thursday
+afternoon James sorted out tangles of bits and bobs, antique
+garments and occasional finds. With these he trimmed his window, so
+that it looked like a historical museum, rather soiled and scrappy.
+Indoors he made baskets of assortments: threepenny, sixpenny,
+ninepenny and shilling baskets, rather like a bran pie in which
+everything was a plum. And then, on Friday evening, thin and alert
+he hovered behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his
+narrow chest, his face agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers,
+so that they only grew becomingly as low as his ears. His rather
+large, grey moustache was brushed off his mouth. His hair, gone very
+thin, was brushed frail and floating over his baldness. But still a
+gentleman, still courteous, with a charming voice he suggested the
+possibilities of a pad of green parrots' tail-feathers, or of a few
+yards of pink-pearl trimming or of old chenille fringe. The women
+would pinch the thick, exquisite old chenille fringe, delicate and
+faded, curious to feel its softness. But they wouldn't give
+threepence for it. Tapes, ribbons, braids, buttons, feathers,
+jabots, bussels, appliques, fringes, jet-trimmings, bugle-trimmings,
+bundles of old coloured machine-lace, many bundles of strange cord,
+in all colours, for old-fashioned braid-patterning, ribbons with
+H.M.S. Birkenhead, for boys' sailor caps--everything that nobody
+wanted, did the women turn over and over, till they chanced on a
+find. And James' quick eyes watched the slow surge of his flotsam,
+as the pot boiled but did not boil away. Wonderful that he did not
+think of the days when these bits and bobs were new treasures. But
+he did not.
+
+And at his side Miss Pinnegar quietly took orders for shirts,
+discussed and agreed, made measurements and received instalments.
+
+The shop was now only opened on Friday afternoons and evenings, so
+every day, twice a day, James was seen dithering bare-headed and
+hastily down the street, as if pressed by fate, to the Conservative
+Club, and twice a day he was seen as hastily returning, to his
+meals. He was becoming an old man: his daughter was a young woman:
+but in his own mind he was just the same, and his daughter was a
+little child, his wife a young invalid whom he must charm by some
+few delicate attentions--such as the peeled apple.
+
+At the club he got into more mischief. He met men who wanted to
+extend a brickfield down by the railway. The brickfield was called
+Klondyke. James had now a new direction to run in: down hill towards
+Bagthorpe, to Klondyke. Big penny-daisies grew in tufts on the brink
+of the yellow clay at Klondyke, yellow eggs-and-bacon spread their
+midsummer mats of flower. James came home with clay smeared all over
+him, discoursing brilliantly on grit and paste and presses and kilns
+and stamps. He carried home a rough and pinkish brick, and gloated
+over it. It was a _hard_ brick, it was a non-porous brick. It was an
+ugly brick, painfully heavy and parched-looking.
+
+This time he was sure: Dame Fortune would rise like Persephone out
+of the earth. He was all the more sure, because other men of the
+town were in with him at this venture: sound, moneyed grocers and
+plumbers. They were all going to become rich.
+
+Klondyke lasted a year and a half, and was not so bad, for in the
+end, all things considered, James had lost not more than five per
+cent. of his money. In fact, all things considered, he was about
+square. And yet he felt Klondyke as the greatest blow of all. Miss
+Pinnegar would have aided and abetted him in another scheme, if it
+would but have cheered him. Even Miss Frost was nice with him. But
+to no purpose. In the year after Klondyke he became an old man, he
+seemed to have lost all his feathers, he acquired a plucked,
+tottering look.
+
+Yet he roused up, after a coal-strike. Throttle-Ha'penny put new
+life into him. During a coal-strike the miners themselves began
+digging in the fields, just near the houses, for the surface coal.
+They found a plentiful seam of drossy, yellowish coal behind the
+Methodist New Connection Chapel. The seam was opened in the side of
+a bank, and approached by a footrill, a sloping shaft down which the
+men walked. When the strike was over, two or three miners still
+remained working the soft, drossy coal, which they sold for
+eight-and-sixpence a ton--or sixpence a hundredweight. But a mining
+population scorned such dirt, as they called it.
+
+James Houghton, however, was seized with a desire to work the
+Connection Meadow seam, as he called it. He gathered two miner
+partners--he trotted endlessly up to the field, he talked, as he had
+never talked before, with inumerable colliers. Everybody he met he
+stopped, to talk Connection Meadow.
+
+And so at last he sank a shaft, sixty feet deep, rigged up a
+corrugated-iron engine-house with a winding-engine, and lowered his
+men one at a time down the shaft, in a big bucket. The whole affair
+was ricketty, amateurish, and twopenny. The name Connection Meadow
+was forgotten within three months. Everybody knew the place as
+Throttle-Ha'penny. "What!" said a collier to his wife: "have we got
+no coal? You'd better get a bit from Throttle-Ha'penny." "Nay,"
+replied the wife, "I'm sure I shan't. I'm sure I shan't burn that
+muck, and smother myself with white ash."
+
+It was in the early Throttle-Ha'penny days that Mrs. Houghton died.
+James Houghton cried, and put a black band on his Sunday silk hat.
+But he was too feverishly busy at Throttle-Ha'penny, selling his
+hundredweights of ash-pit fodder, as the natives called it, to
+realize anything else.
+
+He had three men and two boys working his pit, besides a
+superannuated old man driving the winding engine. And in spite of
+all jeering, he flourished. Shabby old coal-carts rambled up behind
+the New Connection, and filled from the pit-bank. The coal improved
+a little in quality: it was cheap and it was handy. James could sell
+at last fifty or sixty tons a week: for the stuff was easy getting.
+And now at last he was actually handling money. He saw millions
+ahead.
+
+This went on for more than a year. A year after the death of Mrs.
+Houghton, Miss Frost became ill and suddenly died. Again James
+Houghton cried and trembled. But it was Throttle-Ha'penny that made
+him tremble. He trembled in all his limbs, at the touch of success.
+He saw himself making noble provision for his only daughter.
+
+But alas--it is wearying to repeat the same thing over and over.
+First the Board of Trade began to make difficulties. Then there was
+a fault in the seam. Then the roof of Throttle-Ha'penny was so loose
+and soft, James could not afford timber to hold it up. In short,
+when his daughter Alvina was about twenty-seven years old,
+Throttle-Ha'penny closed down. There was a sale of poor machinery,
+and James Houghton came home to the dark, gloomy house--to Miss
+Pinnegar and Alvina.
+
+It was a pinched, dreary house. James seemed down for the last time.
+But Miss Pinnegar persuaded him to take the shop again on Friday
+evening. For the rest, faded and peaked, he hurried shadowily down
+to the club.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON
+
+
+The heroine of this story is Alvina Houghton. If we leave her out of
+the first chapter of her own story it is because, during the first
+twenty-five years of her life, she really was left out of count, or
+so overshadowed as to be negligible. She and her mother were the
+phantom passengers in the ship of James Houghton's fortunes.
+
+In Manchester House, every voice lowered its tone. And so from the
+first Alvina spoke with a quiet, refined, almost convent voice. She
+was a thin child with delicate limbs and face, and wide, grey-blue,
+ironic eyes. Even as a small girl she had that odd ironic tilt of
+the eyelids which gave her a look as if she were hanging back in
+mockery. If she were, she was quite unaware of it, for under Miss
+Frost's care she received no education in irony or mockery. Miss
+Frost was straightforward, good-humoured, and a little earnest.
+Consequently Alvina, or Vina as she was called, understood only the
+explicit mode of good-humoured straightforwardness.
+
+It was doubtful which shadow was greater over the child: that of
+Manchester House, gloomy and a little sinister, or that of Miss
+Frost, benevolent and protective. Sufficient that the girl herself
+worshipped Miss Frost: or believed she did.
+
+Alvina never went to school. She had her lessons from her beloved
+governess, she worked at the piano, she took her walks, and for
+social life she went to the Congregational Chapel, and to the
+functions connected with the chapel. While she was little, she went
+to Sunday School twice and to Chapel once on Sundays. Then
+occasionally there was a magic lantern or a penny reading, to which
+Miss Frost accompanied her. As she grew older she entered the choir
+at chapel, she attended Christian Endeavour and P.S.A., and the
+Literary Society on Monday evenings. Chapel provided her with a
+whole social activity, in the course of which she met certain groups
+of people, made certain friends, found opportunity for strolls into
+the country and jaunts to the local entertainments. Over and above
+this, every Thursday evening she went to the subscription library to
+change the week's supply of books, and there again she met friends
+and acquaintances. It is hard to overestimate the value of church or
+chapel--but particularly chapel--as a social institution, in places
+like Woodhouse. The Congregational Chapel provided Alvina with a
+whole outer life, lacking which she would have been poor indeed. She
+was not particularly religious by inclination. Perhaps her father's
+beautiful prayers put her off. So she neither questioned nor
+accepted, but just let be.
+
+She grew up a slim girl, rather distinguished in appearance, with a
+slender face, a fine, slightly arched nose, and beautiful grey-blue
+eyes over which the lids tilted with a very odd, sardonic tilt. The
+sardonic quality was, however, quite in abeyance. She was ladylike,
+not vehement at all. In the street her walk had a delicate,
+lingering motion, her face looked still. In conversation she had
+rather a quick, hurried manner, with intervals of well-bred repose
+and attention. Her voice was like her father's, flexible and
+curiously attractive.
+
+Sometimes, however, she would have fits of boisterous hilarity, not
+quite natural, with a strange note half pathetic, half jeering. Her
+father tended to a supercilious, sneering tone. In Vina it came out
+in mad bursts of hilarious jeering. This made Miss Frost uneasy. She
+would watch the girl's strange face, that could take on a gargoyle
+look. She would see the eyes rolling strangely under sardonic
+eyelids, and then Miss Frost would feel that never, never had she
+known anything so utterly alien and incomprehensible and
+unsympathetic as her own beloved Vina. For twenty years the strong,
+protective governess reared and tended her lamb, her dove, only to
+see the lamb open a wolf's mouth, to hear the dove utter the wild
+cackle of a daw or a magpie, a strange sound of derision. At such
+times Miss Frost's heart went cold within her. She dared not
+realize. And she chid and checked her ward, restored her to the
+usual impulsive, affectionate demureness. Then she dismissed the
+whole matter. It was just an accidental aberration on the girl's
+part from her own true nature. Miss Frost taught Alvina thoroughly
+the qualities of her own true nature, and Alvina believed what she
+was taught. She remained for twenty years the demure, refined
+creature of her governess' desire. But there was an odd, derisive
+look at the back of her eyes, a look of old knowledge and
+deliberate derision. She herself was unconscious of it. But it was
+there. And this it was, perhaps, that scared away the young men.
+
+Alvina reached the age of twenty-three, and it looked as if she were
+destined to join the ranks of the old maids, so many of whom found
+cold comfort in the Chapel. For she had no suitors. True there were
+extraordinarily few young men of her class--for whatever her
+condition, she had certain breeding and inherent culture--in
+Woodhouse. The young men of the same social standing as herself were
+in some curious way outsiders to her. Knowing nothing, yet her
+ancient sapience went deep, deeper than Woodhouse could fathom. The
+young men did not like her for it. They did not like the tilt of her
+eyelids.
+
+Miss Frost, with anxious foreseeing, persuaded the girl to take over
+some pupils, to teach them the piano. The work was distasteful to
+Alvina. She was not a good teacher. She persevered in an off-hand
+way, somewhat indifferent, albeit dutiful.
+
+When she was twenty-three years old, Alvina met a man called Graham.
+He was an Australian, who had been in Edinburgh taking his medical
+degree. Before going back to Australia, he came to spend some months
+practising with old Dr. Fordham in Woodhouse--Dr. Fordham being in
+some way connected with his mother.
+
+Alexander Graham called to see Mrs. Houghton. Mrs. Houghton did not
+like him. She said he was creepy. He was a man of medium height,
+dark in colouring, with very dark eyes, and a body which seemed to
+move inside his clothing. He was amiable and polite, laughed often,
+showing his teeth. It was his teeth which Miss Frost could not
+stand. She seemed to see a strong mouthful of cruel, compact teeth.
+She declared he had dark blood in his veins, that he was not a man
+to be trusted, and that never, never would he make any woman's life
+happy.
+
+Yet in spite of all, Alvina was attracted by him. The two would stay
+together in the parlour, laughing and talking by the hour. What they
+could find to talk about was a mystery. Yet there they were,
+laughing and chatting, with a running insinuating sound through it
+all which made Miss Frost pace up and down unable to bear herself.
+
+The man was always running in when Miss Frost was out. He contrived
+to meet Alvina in the evening, to take a walk with her. He went a
+long walk with her one night, and wanted to make love to her. But
+her upbringing was too strong for her.
+
+"Oh no," she said. "We are only friends."
+
+He knew her upbringing was too strong for him also.
+
+"We're more than friends," he said. "We're more than friends."
+
+"I don't think so," she said.
+
+"Yes we are," he insisted, trying to put his arm round her waist.
+
+"Oh, don't!" she cried. "Let us go home."
+
+And then he burst out with wild and thick protestations of love,
+which thrilled her and repelled her slightly.
+
+"Anyhow I must tell Miss Frost," she said.
+
+"Yes, yes," he answered. "Yes, yes. Let us be engaged at once."
+
+As they passed under the lamps he saw her face lifted, the eyes
+shining, the delicate nostrils dilated, as of one who scents battle
+and laughs to herself. She seemed to laugh with a certain proud,
+sinister recklessness. His hands trembled with desire.
+
+So they were engaged. He bought her a ring, an emerald set in tiny
+diamonds. Miss Frost looked grave and silent, but would not openly
+deny her approval.
+
+"You like him, don't you? You don't dislike him?" Alvina insisted.
+
+"I don't dislike him," replied Miss Frost. "How can I? He is a
+perfect stranger to me."
+
+And with this Alvina subtly contented herself. Her father treated
+the young man with suave attention, punctuated by fits of jerky
+hostility and jealousy. Her mother merely sighed, and took sal
+volatile.
+
+To tell the truth, Alvina herself was a little repelled by the man's
+love-making. She found him fascinating, but a trifle repulsive. And
+she was not sure whether she hated the repulsive element, or whether
+she rather gloried in it. She kept her look of arch, half-derisive
+recklessness, which was so unbearably painful to Miss Frost, and so
+exciting to the dark little man. It was a strange look in a refined,
+really virgin girl--oddly sinister. And her voice had a curious
+bronze-like resonance that acted straight on the nerves of her
+hearers: unpleasantly on most English nerves, but like fire on the
+different susceptibilities of the young man--the darkie, as people
+called him.
+
+But after all, he had only six weeks in England, before sailing to
+Sydney. He suggested that he and Alvina should marry before he
+sailed. Miss Frost would not hear of it. He must see his people
+first, she said.
+
+So the time passed, and he sailed. Alvina missed him, missed the
+extreme excitement of him rather than the human being he was. Miss
+Frost set to work to regain her influence over her ward, to remove
+that arch, reckless, almost lewd look from the girl's face. It was a
+question of heart against sensuality. Miss Frost tried and tried to
+wake again the girl's loving heart--which loving heart was certainly
+not occupied by _that man_. It was a hard task, an anxious, bitter
+task Miss Frost had set herself.
+
+But at last she succeeded. Alvina seemed to thaw. The hard shining
+of her eyes softened again to a sort of demureness and tenderness.
+The influence of the man was revoked, the girl was left uninhabited,
+empty and uneasy.
+
+She was due to follow her Alexander in three months' time, to
+Sydney. Came letters from him, en route--and then a cablegram from
+Australia. He had arrived. Alvina should have been preparing her
+trousseau, to follow. But owing to her change of heart, she lingered
+indecisive.
+
+"_Do_ you love him, dear?" said Miss Frost with emphasis, knitting
+her thick, passionate, earnest eyebrows. "Do you love him
+sufficiently? _That's_ the point."
+
+The way Miss Frost put the question implied that Alvina did not and
+could not love him--because Miss Frost could not. Alvina lifted her
+large, blue eyes, confused, half-tender towards her governess, half
+shining with unconscious derision.
+
+"I don't really know," she said, laughing hurriedly. "I don't
+really."
+
+Miss Frost scrutinized her, and replied with a meaningful:
+
+"Well--!"
+
+To Miss Frost it was clear as daylight. To Alvina not so. In her
+periods of lucidity, when she saw as clear as daylight also, she
+certainly did not love the little man. She felt him a terrible
+outsider, an inferior, to tell the truth. She wondered how he could
+have the slightest attraction for her. In fact she could not
+understand it at all. She was as free of him as if he had never
+existed. The square green emerald on her finger was almost
+non-sensical. She was quite, quite sure of herself.
+
+And then, most irritating, a complete _volte face_ in her feelings.
+The clear-as-daylight mood disappeared as daylight is bound to
+disappear. She found herself in a night where the little man loomed
+large, terribly large, potent and magical, while Miss Frost had
+dwindled to nothingness. At such times she wished with all her force
+that she could travel like a cablegram to Australia. She felt it was
+the only way. She felt the dark, passionate receptivity of Alexander
+overwhelmed her, enveloped her even from the Antipodes. She felt
+herself going distracted--she felt she was going out of her mind.
+For she could not act.
+
+Her mother and Miss Frost were fixed in one line. Her father said:
+
+"Well, of course, you'll do as you think best. There's a great risk
+in going so far--a great risk. You would be entirely unprotected."
+
+"I don't mind being unprotected," said Alvina perversely.
+
+"Because you don't understand what it means," said her father.
+
+He looked at her quickly. Perhaps he understood her better than the
+others.
+
+"Personally," said Miss Pinnegar, speaking of Alexander, "I don't
+care for him. But every one has their own taste."
+
+Alvina felt she was being overborne, and that she was letting
+herself be overborne. She was half relieved. She seemed to nestle
+into the well-known surety of Woodhouse. The other unknown had
+frightened her.
+
+Miss Frost now took a definite line.
+
+"I feel you don't love him, dear. I'm almost sure you don't. So now
+you have to choose. Your mother dreads your going--she dreads it. I
+am certain you would never see her again. She says she can't bear
+it--she can't bear the thought of you out there with Alexander. It
+makes her shudder. She suffers dreadfully, you know. So you will
+have to choose, dear. You will have to choose for the best."
+
+Alvina was made stubborn by pressure. She herself had come fully to
+believe that she did not love him. She was quite sure she did not
+love him. But out of a certain perversity, she wanted to go.
+
+Came his letter from Sydney, and one from his parents to her and one
+to her parents. All seemed straightforward--not _very_ cordial, but
+sufficiently. Over Alexander's letter Miss Frost shed bitter tears.
+To her it seemed so shallow and heartless, with terms of endearment
+stuck in like exclamation marks. He semed to have no thought, no
+feeling for the girl herself. All he wanted was to hurry her out
+there. He did not even mention the grief of her parting from her
+English parents and friends: not a word. Just a rush to get her out
+there, winding up with "And now, dear, I shall not be myself till I
+see you here in Sydney--Your ever-loving Alexander." A selfish,
+sensual creature, who would forget the dear little Vina in three
+months, if she did not turn up, and who would neglect her in six
+months, if she did. Probably Miss Frost was right.
+
+Alvina knew the tears she was costing all round. She went upstairs
+and looked at his photograph--his dark and impertinent muzzle. Who
+was _he_, after all? She did not know him. With cold eyes she looked
+at him, and found him repugnant.
+
+She went across to her governess's room, and found Miss Frost in a
+strange mood of trepidation.
+
+"Don't trust me, dear, don't trust what I say," poor Miss Frost
+ejaculated hurriedly, even wildly. "Don't notice what I have said.
+Act for yourself, dear. Act for yourself entirely. I am sure I am
+wrong in trying to influence you. I know I am wrong. It is wrong and
+foolish of me. Act just for yourself, dear--the rest doesn't matter.
+The rest doesn't matter. Don't take _any_ notice of what I have
+said. I know I am wrong."
+
+For the first time in her life Alvina saw her beloved governess
+flustered, the beautiful white hair looking a little draggled, the
+grey, near-sighted eyes, so deep and kind behind the gold-rimmed
+glasses, now distracted and scared. Alvina immediately burst into
+tears and flung herself into the arms of Miss Frost. Miss Frost also
+cried as if her heart would break, catching her indrawn breath with
+a strange sound of anguish, forlornness, the terrible crying of a
+woman with a loving heart, whose heart has never been able to relax.
+Alvina was hushed. In a second, she became the elder of the two. The
+terrible poignancy of the woman of fifty-two, who now at last had
+broken down, silenced the girl of twenty-three, and roused all her
+passionate tenderness. The terrible sound of "Never now, never
+now--it is too late," which seemed to ring in the curious, indrawn
+cries of the elder woman, filled the girl with a deep wisdom. She
+knew the same would ring in her mother's dying cry. Married or
+unmarried, it was the same--the same anguish, realized in all its
+pain after the age of fifty--the loss in never having been able to
+relax, to submit.
+
+Alvina felt very strong and rich in the fact of her youth. For her
+it was not too late. For Miss Frost it was for ever too late.
+
+"I don't want to go, dear," said Alvina to the elder woman. "I know
+I don't care for him. He is nothing to me."
+
+Miss Frost became gradually silent, and turned aside her face. After
+this there was a hush in the house. Alvina announced her intention
+of breaking off her engagement. Her mother kissed her, and cried,
+and said, with the selfishness of an invalid:
+
+"I couldn't have parted with you, I couldn't." Whilst the father
+said:
+
+"I think you are wise, Vina. I have thought a lot about it."
+
+So Alvina packed up his ring and his letters and little presents,
+and posted them over the seas. She was relieved, really: as if she
+had escaped some very trying ordeal. For some days she went about
+happily, in pure relief. She loved everybody. She was charming and
+sunny and gentle with everybody, particularly with Miss Frost, whom
+she loved with a deep, tender, rather sore love. Poor Miss Frost
+seemed to have lost a part of her confidence, to have taken on a new
+wistfulness, a new silence and remoteness. It was as if she found
+her busy contact with life a strain now. Perhaps she was getting
+old. Perhaps her proud heart had given way.
+
+Alvina had kept a little photograph of the man. She would often go
+and look at it. Love?--no, it was not love! It was something more
+primitive still. It was curiosity, deep, radical, burning curiosity.
+How she looked and looked at his dark, impertinent-seeming face. A
+flicker of derision came into her eyes. Yet still she looked.
+
+In the same manner she would look into the faces of the young men of
+Woodhouse. But she never found there what she found in her
+photograph. They all seemed like blank sheets of paper in
+comparison. There was a curious pale surface-look in the faces of
+the young men of Woodhouse: or, if there was some underneath
+suggestive power, it was a little abject or humiliating, inferior,
+common. They were all either blank or common.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MATERNITY NURSE
+
+
+Of course Alvina made everybody pay for her mood of submission and
+sweetness. In a month's time she was quite intolerable.
+
+"I can't stay here all my life," she declared, stretching her eyes
+in a way that irritated the other inmates of Manchester House
+extremely. "I know I can't. I can't bear it. I simply can't bear it,
+and there's an end of it. I can't, I tell you. I can't bear it. I'm
+buried alive--simply buried alive. And it's more than I can stand.
+It is, really."
+
+There was an odd clang, like a taunt, in her voice. She was trying
+them all.
+
+"But what do you want, dear?" asked Miss Frost, knitting her dark
+brows in agitation.
+
+"I want to go away," said Alvina bluntly.
+
+Miss Frost gave a slight gesture with her right hand, of helpless
+impatience. It was so characteristic, that Alvina almost laughed.
+
+"But where do you want to go?" asked Miss Frost.
+
+"I don't know. I don't care," said Alvina. "Anywhere, if I can get
+out of Woodhouse."
+
+"Do you wish you had gone to Australia?" put in Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"No, I don't wish I had gone to Australia," retorted Alvina with a
+rude laugh. "Australia isn't the only other place besides
+Woodhouse."
+
+Miss Pinnegar was naturally offended. But the curious insolence
+which sometimes came out in the girl was inherited direct from her
+father.
+
+"You see, dear," said Miss Frost, agitated: "if you knew what you
+wanted, it would be easier to see the way."
+
+"I want to be a nurse," rapped out Alvina.
+
+Miss Frost stood still, with the stillness of a middle-aged
+disapproving woman, and looked at her charge. She believed that
+Alvina was just speaking at random. Yet she dared not check her, in
+her present mood.
+
+Alvina was indeed speaking at random. She had never thought of being
+a nurse--the idea had never entered her head. If it had she would
+certainly never have entertained it. But she had heard Alexander
+speak of Nurse This and Sister That. And so she had rapped out her
+declaration. And having rapped it out, she prepared herself to stick
+to it. Nothing like leaping before you look.
+
+"A nurse!" repeated Miss Frost. "But do you feel yourself fitted to
+be a nurse? Do you think you could bear it?"
+
+"Yes, I'm sure I could," retorted Alvina. "I want to be a maternity
+nurse--" She looked strangely, even outrageously, at her governess.
+"I want to be a maternity nurse. Then I shouldn't have to attend
+operations." And she laughed quickly.
+
+Miss Frost's right hand beat like a wounded bird. It was reminiscent
+of the way she beat time, insistently, when she was giving music
+lessons, sitting close beside her pupils at the piano. Now it beat
+without time or reason. Alvina smiled brightly and cruelly.
+
+"Whatever put such an idea into your head, Vina?" asked poor Miss
+Frost.
+
+"I don't know," said Alvina, still more archly and brightly.
+
+"Of course you don't mean it, dear," said Miss Frost, quailing.
+
+"Yes, I do. Why should I say it if I don't."
+
+Miss Frost would have done anything to escape the arch, bright,
+cruel eyes of her charge.
+
+"Then we must think about it," she said, numbly. And she went away.
+
+Alvina floated off to her room, and sat by the window looking down
+on the street. The bright, arch look was still on her face. But her
+heart was sore. She wanted to cry, and fling herself on the breast
+of her darling. But she couldn't. No, for her life she couldn't.
+Some little devil sat in her breast and kept her smiling archly.
+
+Somewhat to her amazement, he sat steadily on for days and days.
+Every minute she expected him to go. Every minute she expected to
+break down, to burst into tears and tenderness and reconciliation.
+But no--she did not break down. She persisted. They all waited for
+the old loving Vina to be herself again. But the new and
+recalcitrant Vina still shone hard. She found a copy of _The
+Lancet_, and saw an advertisement of a home in Islington where
+maternity nurses would be fully trained and equipped in six months'
+time. The fee was sixty guineas. Alvina declared her intention of
+departing to this training home. She had two hundred pounds of her
+own, bequeathed by her grandfather.
+
+In Manchester House they were all horrified--not moved with grief,
+this time, but shocked. It seemed such a repulsive and indelicate
+step to take. Which it was. And which, in her curious perverseness,
+Alvina must have intended it to be. Mrs. Houghton assumed a remote
+air of silence, as if she did not hear any more, did not belong. She
+lapsed far away. She was really very weak. Miss Pinnegar said: "Well
+really, if she wants to do it, why, she might as well try." And, as
+often with Miss Pinnegar, this speech seemed to contain a veiled
+threat.
+
+"A maternity nurse!" said James Houghton. "A maternity nurse! What
+exactly do you mean by a maternity nurse?"
+
+"A trained mid-wife," said Miss Pinnegar curtly. "That's it, isn't
+it? It is as far as I can see. A trained mid-wife."
+
+"Yes, of course," said Alvina brightly.
+
+"But--!" stammered James Houghton, pushing his spectacles up on to
+his forehead, and making his long fleece of painfully thin hair
+uncover his baldness. "I can't understand that any young girl of
+any--any upbringing, any upbringing whatever, should want to choose
+such a--such an--occupation. I can't understand it."
+
+"Can't you?" said Alvina brightly.
+
+"Oh well, if she _does_--" said Miss Pinnegar cryptically.
+
+Miss Frost said very little. But she had serious confidential talks
+with Dr. Fordham. Dr. Fordham didn't approve, certainly he
+didn't--but neither did he see any great harm in it. At that time it
+was rather the thing for young ladies to enter the nursing
+profession, if their hopes had been blighted or checked in another
+direction! And so, enquiries were made. Enquiries were made.
+
+The upshot was, that Alvina was to go to Islington for her six
+months' training. There was a great bustle, preparing her nursing
+outfit. Instead of a trousseau, nurse's uniforms in fine
+blue-and-white stripe, with great white aprons. Instead of a wreath
+of orange blossom, a rather chic nurse's bonnet of blue silk, and
+for a trailing veil, a blue silk fall.
+
+Well and good! Alvina expected to become frightened, as the time
+drew near. But no, she wasn't a bit frightened. Miss Frost watched
+her narrowly. Would there not be a return of the old, tender,
+sensitive, shrinking Vina--the exquisitely sensitive and nervous,
+loving girl? No, astounding as it may seem, there was no return of
+such a creature. Alvina remained bright and ready, the half-hilarious
+clang remained in her voice, taunting. She kissed them all good-bye,
+brightly and sprightlily, and off she set. She wasn't nervous.
+
+She came to St. Pancras, she got her cab, she drove off to her
+destination--and as she drove, she looked out of the window. Horrid,
+vast, stony, dilapidated, crumbly-stuccoed streets and squares of
+Islington, grey, grey, greyer by far than Woodhouse, and
+interminable. How exceedingly sordid and disgusting! But instead of
+being repelled and heartbroken, Alvina enjoyed it. She felt her
+trunk rumble on the top of the cab, and still she looked out on the
+ghastly dilapidated flat facades of Islington, and still she smiled
+brightly, as if there were some charm in it all. Perhaps for her
+there was a charm in it all. Perhaps it acted like a tonic on the
+little devil in her breast. Perhaps if she had seen tufts of
+snowdrops--it was February--and yew-hedges and cottage windows, she
+would have broken down. As it was, she just enjoyed it. She enjoyed
+glimpsing in through uncurtained windows, into sordid rooms where
+human beings moved as if sordidly unaware. She enjoyed the smell of
+a toasted bloater, rather burnt. So common! so indescribably common!
+And she detested bloaters, because of the hairy feel of the spines
+in her mouth. But to smell them like this, to know that she was in
+the region of "penny beef-steaks," gave her a perverse pleasure.
+
+The cab stopped at a yellow house at the corner of a square where
+some shabby bare trees were flecked with bits of blown paper, bits
+of paper and refuse cluttered inside the round railings of each
+tree. She went up some dirty-yellowish steps, and rang the
+"Patients'" bell, because she knew she ought not to ring the
+"Tradesmen's." A servant, not exactly dirty, but unattractive, let
+her into a hall painted a dull drab, and floored with cocoa-matting,
+otherwise bare. Then up bare stairs to a room where a stout, pale,
+common woman with two warts on her face, was drinking tea. It was
+three o'clock. This was the matron. The matron soon deposited her in
+a bedroom, not very small, but bare and hard and dusty-seeming, and
+there left her. Alvina sat down on her chair, looked at her box
+opposite her, looked round the uninviting room, and smiled to
+herself. Then she rose and went to the window: a very dirty window,
+looking down into a sort of well of an area, with other wells
+ranging along, and straight opposite like a reflection another solid
+range of back-premises, with iron stair-ways and horrid little doors
+and washing and little W. C.'s and people creeping up and down like
+vermin. Alvina shivered a little, but still smiled. Then slowly she
+began to take off her hat. She put it down on the drab-painted chest
+of drawers.
+
+Presently the servant came in with a tray, set it down, lit a naked
+gas-jet, which roared faintly, and drew down a crackly dark-green
+blind, which showed a tendency to fly back again alertly to the
+ceiling.
+
+"Thank you," said Alvina, and the girl departed.
+
+Then Miss Houghton drank her black tea and ate her bread and
+margarine.
+
+Surely enough books have been written about heroines in similar
+circumstances. There is no need to go into the details of Alvina's
+six months in Islington.
+
+The food was objectionable--yet Alvina got fat on it. The air was
+filthy--and yet never had her colour been so warm and fresh, her
+skin so soft. Her companions were almost without exception vulgar
+and coarse--yet never had she got on so well with women of her own
+age--or older than herself. She was ready with a laugh and a word,
+and though she was unable to venture on indecencies herself, yet she
+had an amazing faculty for _looking_ knowing and indecent beyond
+words, rolling her eyes and pitching her eyebrows in a certain
+way--oh, it was quite sufficient for her companions! And yet, if
+they had ever actually demanded a dirty story or a really open
+indecency from her, she would have been floored.
+
+But she enjoyed it. Amazing how she enjoyed it. She did not care
+_how_ revolting and indecent these nurses were--she put on a look as
+if she were in with it all, and it all passed off as easy as
+winking. She swung her haunches and arched her eyes with the best
+of them. And they behaved as if she were exactly one of themselves.
+And yet, with the curious cold tact of women, they left her alone,
+one and all, in private: just ignored her.
+
+It is truly incredible how Alvina became blooming and bouncing at
+this time. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was always
+ready with her hard, nurse's laugh and her nurse's quips. No one was
+better than she at _double-entendres._ No one could better give the
+nurse's leer. She had it all in a fortnight. And never once did she
+feel anything but exhilarated and in full swing. It seemed to her
+she had not a moment's time to brood or reflect about things--she
+was too much in the swing. Every moment, in the swing, living, or
+active in full swing. When she got into bed she went to sleep. When
+she awoke, it was morning, and she got up. As soon as she was up and
+dressed she had somebody to answer, something to say, something to
+do. Time passed like an express train--and she seemed to have known
+no other life than this.
+
+Not far away was a lying-in hospital. A dreadful place it was. There
+she had to go, right off, and help with cases. There she had to
+attend lectures and demonstrations. There she met the doctors and
+students. Well, a pretty lot they were, one way and another. When
+she had put on flesh and become pink and bouncing she was just their
+sort: just their very ticket. Her voice had the right twang, her
+eyes the right roll, her haunches the right swing. She seemed
+altogether just the ticket. And yet she wasn't.
+
+It would be useless to say she was not shocked. She was profoundly
+and awfully shocked. Her whole state was perhaps largely the result
+of shock: a sort of play-acting based on hysteria. But the dreadful
+things she saw in the lying-in hospital, and afterwards, went deep,
+and finished her youth and her tutelage for ever. How many infernos
+deeper than Miss Frost could ever know, did she not travel? the
+inferno of the human animal, the human organism in its convulsions,
+the human social beast in its abjection and its degradation.
+
+For in her latter half she had to visit the slum cases. And such
+cases! A woman lying on a bare, filthy floor, a few old coats thrown
+over her, and vermin crawling everywhere, in spite of sanitary
+inspectors. But what did the woman, the sufferer, herself care! She
+ground her teeth and screamed and yelled with pains. In her calm
+periods she lay stupid and indifferent--or she cursed a little. But
+abject, stupid indifference was the bottom of it all: abject, brutal
+indifference to everything--yes, everything. Just a piece of female
+functioning, no more.
+
+Alvina was supposed to receive a certain fee for these cases she
+attended in their homes. A small proportion of her fee she kept for
+herself, the rest she handed over to the Home. That was the
+agreement. She received her grudged fee callously, threatened and
+exacted it when it was not forthcoming. Ha!--if they didn't have to
+pay you at all, these slum-people, they would treat you with more
+contempt than if you were one of themselves. It was one of the
+hardest lessons Alvina had to learn--to bully these people, in their
+own hovels, into some sort of obedience to her commands, and some
+sort of respect for her presence. She had to fight tooth and nail
+for this end. And in a week she was as hard and callous to them as
+they to her. And so her work was well done. She did not hate them.
+There they were. They had a certain life, and you had to take them
+at their own worth in their own way. What else! If one should be
+gentle, one was gentle. The difficulty did not lie there. The
+difficulty lay in being sufficiently rough and hard: that was the
+trouble. It cost a great struggle to be hard and callous enough.
+Glad she would have been to be allowed to treat them quietly and
+gently, with consideration. But pah--it was not their line. They
+wanted to be callous, and if you were not callous to match, they
+made a fool of you and prevented your doing your work.
+
+Was Alvina her own real self all this time? The mighty question
+arises upon us, what is one's own real self? It certainly is not
+what we think we are and ought to be. Alvina had been bred to think
+of herself as a delicate, tender, chaste creature with unselfish
+inclinations and a pure, "high" mind. Well, so she was, in the
+more-or-less exhausted part of herself. But high-mindedness had
+really come to an end with James Houghton, had really reached the
+point, not only of pathetic, but of dry and anti-human, repulsive
+quixotry. In Alvina high-mindedness was already stretched beyond the
+breaking point. Being a woman of some flexibility of temper,
+wrought through generations to a fine, pliant hardness, she flew
+back. She went right back on high-mindedness. Did she thereby betray
+it?
+
+We think not. If we turn over the head of the penny and look at the
+tail, we don't thereby deny or betray the head. We do but adjust it
+to its own complement. And so with high-mindedness. It is but one
+side of the medal--the crowned reverse. On the obverse the three
+legs still go kicking the soft-footed spin of the universe, the
+dolphin flirts and the crab leers.
+
+So Alvina spun her medal, and her medal came down tails. Heads or
+tails? Heads for generations. Then tails. See the poetic justice.
+
+Now Alvina decided to accept the decision of her fate. Or rather,
+being sufficiently a woman, she didn't decide anything. She _was_
+her own fate. She went through her training experiences like another
+being. She was not herself, said Everybody. When she came home to
+Woodhouse at Easter, in her bonnet and cloak, everybody was simply
+knocked out. Imagine that this frail, pallid, diffident girl, so
+ladylike, was now a rather fat, warm-coloured young woman, strapping
+and strong-looking, and with a certain bounce. Imagine her mother's
+startled, almost expiring:
+
+"Why, Vina dear!"
+
+Vina laughed. She knew how they were all feeling.
+
+"At least it agrees with your _health_," said her father,
+sarcastically, to which Miss Pinnegar answered:
+
+"Well, that's a good deal."
+
+But Miss Frost said nothing the first day. Only the second day, at
+breakfast, as Alvina ate rather rapidly and rather well, the
+white-haired woman said quietly, with a tinge of cold contempt:
+
+"How changed you are, dear!"
+
+"Am I?" laughed Alvina. "Oh, not really." And she gave the arch look
+with her eyes, which made Miss Frost shudder.
+
+Inwardly, Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from questioning.
+Alvina was always speaking of the doctors: Doctor Young and Doctor
+Headley and Doctor James. She spoke of theatres and music-halls with
+these young men, and the jolly good time she had with them. And her
+blue-grey eyes seemed to have become harder and greyer, lighter
+somehow. In her wistfulness and her tender pathos, Alvina's eyes
+would deepen their blue, so beautiful. And now, in her floridity,
+they were bright and arch and light-grey. The deep, tender, flowery
+blue was gone for ever. They were luminous and crystalline, like the
+eyes of a changeling.
+
+Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from question. She wanted, she
+_needed_ to ask of her charge: "Alvina, have you betrayed yourself
+with any of these young men?" But coldly her heart abstained from
+asking--or even from seriously thinking. She left the matter
+untouched for the moment. She was already too much shocked.
+
+Certainly Alvina represented the young doctors as very nice, but
+rather fast young fellows. "My word, you have to have your wits
+about you with them!" Imagine such a speech from a girl tenderly
+nurtured: a speech uttered in her own home, and accompanied by a
+florid laugh, which would lead a chaste, generous woman like Miss
+Frost to imagine--well, she merely abstained from imagining
+anything. She had that strength of mind. She never for one moment
+attempted to answer the question to herself, as to whether Alvina
+had betrayed herself with any of these young doctors, or not. The
+question remained stated, but completely unanswered--coldly awaiting
+its answer. Only when Miss Frost kissed Alvina good-bye at the
+station, tears came to her eyes, and she said hurriedly, in a low
+voice:
+
+"Remember we are all praying for you, dear!"
+
+"No, don't do that!" cried Alvina involuntarily, without knowing
+what she said.
+
+And then the train moved out, and she saw her darling standing there
+on the station, the pale, well-modelled face looking out from behind
+the gold-rimmed spectacles, wistfully, the strong, rather stout
+figure standing very still and unchangeable, under its coat and
+skirt of dark purple, the white hair glistening under the folded
+dark hat. Alvina threw herself down on the seat of her carriage. She
+loved her darling. She would love her through eternity. She knew she
+was right--amply and beautifully right, her darling, her beloved
+Miss Frost. Eternally and gloriously right.
+
+And yet--and yet--it was a right which was fulfilled. There were
+other rights. There was another side to the medal. Purity and
+high-mindedness--the beautiful, but unbearable tyranny. The
+beautiful, unbearable tyranny of Miss Frost! It was time now for
+Miss Frost to die. It was time for that perfected flower to be
+gathered to immortality. A lovely _immortel_. But an obstruction to
+other, purple and carmine blossoms which were in bud on the stem. A
+lovely edelweiss--but time it was gathered into eternity.
+Black-purple and red anemones were due, real Adonis blood, and
+strange individual orchids, spotted and fantastic. Time for Miss
+Frost to die. She, Alvina, who loved her as no one else would ever
+love her, with that love which goes to the core of the universe,
+knew that it was time for her darling to be folded, oh, so gently
+and softly, into immortality. Mortality was busy with the day after
+her day. It was time for Miss Frost to die. As Alvina sat motionless
+in the train, running from Woodhouse to Tibshelf, it decided itself
+in her.
+
+She was glad to be back in Islington, among all the horrors of her
+confinement cases. The doctors she knew hailed her. On the whole,
+these young men had not any too deep respect for the nurses as a
+whole. Why drag in respect? Human functions were too obviously
+established to make any great fuss about. And so the doctors put
+their arms round Alvina's waist, because she was plump, and they
+kissed her face, because the skin was soft. And she laughed and
+squirmed a little, so that they felt all the more her warmth and
+softness under their arm's pressure.
+
+"It's no use, you know," she said, laughing rather breathless, but
+looking into their eyes with a curious definite look of unchangeable
+resistance. This only piqued them.
+
+"What's no use?" they asked.
+
+She shook her head slightly.
+
+"It isn't any use your behaving like that with me," she said, with
+the same challenging definiteness, finality: a flat negative.
+
+"Who're you telling?" they said.
+
+For she did not at all forbid them to "behave like that." Not in the
+least. She almost encouraged them. She laughed and arched her eyes
+and flirted. But her backbone became only the stronger and firmer.
+Soft and supple as she was, her backbone never yielded for an
+instant. It could not. She had to confess that she liked the young
+doctors. They were alert, their faces were clean and bright-looking.
+She liked the sort of intimacy with them, when they kissed her and
+wrestled with her in the empty laboratories or corridors--often in
+the intervals of most critical and appalling cases. She liked their
+arm round her waist, the kisses as she reached back her face,
+straining away, the sometimes desperate struggles. They took
+unpardonable liberties. They pinched her haunches and attacked her
+in unheard-of ways. Sometimes her blood really came up in the fight,
+and she felt as if, with her hands, she could tear any man, any male
+creature, limb from limb. A super-human, voltaic force filled her.
+For a moment she surged in massive, inhuman, female strength. The
+men always wilted. And invariably, when they wilted, she touched
+them with a sudden gentle touch, pitying. So that she always
+remained friends with them. When her curious Amazonic power left her
+again, and she was just a mere woman, she made shy eyes at them once
+more, and treated them with the inevitable female-to-male homage.
+
+The men liked her. They cocked their eyes at her, when she was not
+looking, and wondered at her. They wondered over her. They had been
+beaten by her, every one of them. But they did not openly know it.
+They looked at her, as if she were Woman itself, some creature not
+quite personal. What they noticed, all of them, was the way her
+brown hair looped over her ears. There was something chaste, and
+noble, and war-like about it. The remote quality which hung about
+her in the midst of her intimacies and her frequencies, nothing high
+or lofty, but something given to the struggle and as yet invincible
+in the struggle, made them seek her out.
+
+They felt safe with her. They knew she would not let them down. She
+would not intrigue into marriage, or try and make use of them in any
+way. She didn't care about them. And so, because of her isolate
+self-sufficiency in the fray, her wild, overweening backbone, they
+were ready to attend on her and serve her. Headley in particular
+hoped he might overcome her. He was a well-built fellow with sandy
+hair and a pugnacious face. The battle-spirit was really roused in
+him, and he heartily liked the woman. If he could have overcome her
+he would have been mad to marry her.
+
+With him, she summoned up all her mettle. She had never to be off
+her guard for a single minute. The treacherous suddenness of his
+attack--for he was treachery itself--had to be met by the voltaic
+suddenness of her resistance and counter-attack. It was nothing less
+than magical the way the soft, slumbering body of the woman could
+leap in one jet into terrible, overwhelming voltaic force, something
+strange and massive, at the first treacherous touch of the man's
+determined hand. His strength was so different from hers--quick,
+muscular, lambent. But hers was deep and heaving, like the strange
+heaving of an earthquake, or the heave of a bull as it rises from
+earth. And by sheer non-human power, electric and paralysing, she
+could overcome the brawny red-headed fellow.
+
+He was nearly a match for her. But she did not like him. The two
+were enemies--and good acquaintances. They were more or less
+matched. But as he found himself continually foiled, he became
+sulky, like a bear with a sore head. And then she avoided him.
+
+She really liked Young and James much better. James was a quick,
+slender, dark-haired fellow, a gentleman, who was always trying to
+catch her out with his quickness. She liked his fine, slim limbs,
+and his exaggerated generosity. He would ask her out to ridiculously
+expensive suppers, and send her sweets and flowers, fabulously
+recherche. He was always immaculately well-dressed.
+
+"Of course, as a lady _and_ a nurse," he said to her, "you are two
+sorts of women in one."
+
+But she was not impressed by his wisdom.
+
+She was most strongly inclined to Young. He was a plump young man of
+middle height, with those blue eyes of a little boy which are so
+knowing: particularly of a woman's secrets. It is a strange thing
+that these childish men have such a deep, half-perverse knowledge of
+the other sex. Young was certainly innocent as far as acts went. Yet
+his hair was going thin at the crown already.
+
+He also played with her--being a doctor, and she a nurse who
+encouraged it. He too touched her and kissed her: and did _not_
+rouse her to contest. For his touch and his kiss had that nearness
+of a little boy's, which nearly melted her. She could almost have
+succumbed to him. If it had not been that with him there was no
+question of succumbing. She would have had to take him between her
+hands and caress and cajole him like a cherub, into a fall. And
+though she would have like to do so, yet that inflexible stiffness
+of her backbone prevented her. She could not do as she liked. There
+was an inflexible fate within her, which shaped her ends.
+
+Sometimes she wondered to herself, over her own virginity. Was it
+worth much, after all, behaving as she did? Did she care about it,
+anyhow? Didn't she rather despise it? To sin in thought was as bad
+as to sin in act. If the thought was the same as the act, how much
+more was her behaviour equivalent to a whole committal? She wished
+she were wholly committed. She wished she had gone the whole length.
+
+But sophistry and wishing did her no good. There she was, still
+isolate. And still there was that in her which would preserve her
+intact, sophistry and deliberate intention notwithstanding. Her time
+was up. She was returning to Woodhouse virgin as she had left it. In
+a measure she felt herself beaten. Why? Who knows. But so it was,
+she felt herself beaten, condemned to go back to what she was
+before. Fate had been too strong for her and her desires: fate which
+was not an external association of forces, but which was integral in
+her own nature. Her own inscrutable nature was her fate: sore
+against her will.
+
+It was August when she came home, in her nurse's uniform. She was
+beaten by fate, as far as chastity and virginity went. But she came
+home with high material hopes. Here was James Houghton's own
+daughter. She had an affluent future ahead of her. A fully-qualified
+maternity nurse, she was going to bring all the babies of the
+district easily and triumphantly into the world. She was going to
+charge the regulation fee of two guineas a case: and even on a
+modest estimate of ten babies a month, she would have twenty
+guineas. For well-to-do mothers she would charge from three to five
+guineas. At this calculation she would make an easy three hundred a
+year, without slaving either. She would be independent, she could
+laugh every one in the face.
+
+She bounced back into Woodhouse to make her fortune.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TWO WOMEN DIE
+
+
+It goes without saying that Alvina Houghton did not make her fortune
+as a maternity nurse. Being her father's daughter, we might almost
+expect that she did not make a penny. But she did--just a few pence.
+She had exactly four cases--and then no more.
+
+The reason is obvious. Who in Woodhouse was going to afford a
+two-guinea nurse, for a confinement? And who who was going to engage
+Alvina Houghton, even if they were ready to stretch their
+purse-strings? After all, they all knew her as _Miss_ Houghton, with
+a stress on the _Miss_, and they could not conceive of her as Nurse
+Houghton. Besides, there seemed something positively indecent in
+technically engaging one who was so much part of themselves. They
+all preferred either a simple mid-wife, or a nurse procured out of
+the unknown by the doctor.
+
+If Alvina wanted to make her fortune--or even her living--she should
+have gone to a strange town. She was so advised by every one she
+knew. But she never for one moment reflected on the advice. She had
+become a maternity nurse in order to practise in Woodhouse, just as
+James Houghton had purchased his elegancies to sell in Woodhouse.
+And father and daughter alike calmly expected Woodhouse demand to
+rise to their supply. So both alike were defeated in their
+expectations.
+
+For a little while Alvina flaunted about in her nurse's uniform.
+Then she left it off. And as she left it off she lost her bounce,
+her colour, and her flesh. Gradually she shrank back to the old,
+slim, reticent pallor, with eyes a little too large for her face.
+And now it seemed her face was a little too long, a little gaunt.
+And in her civilian clothes she seemed a little dowdy, shabby. And
+altogether, she looked older: she looked more than her age, which
+was only twenty-four years. Here was the old Alvina come back, rather
+battered and deteriorated, apparently. There was even a tiny touch of
+the trollops in her dowdiness--so the shrewd-eyed collier-wives
+decided. But she was a lady still, and unbeaten. Undeniably she was a
+lady. And that was rather irritating to the well-to-do and florid
+daughter of W.H. Johnson, next door but one. Undeniably a lady, and
+undeniably unmastered. This last was irritating to the good-natured
+but easy-coming young men in the Chapel Choir, where she resumed her
+seat. These young men had the good nature of dogs that wag their tails
+and expect to be patted. And Alvina did not pat them. To be sure, a
+pat from such a shabbily-black-kid-gloved hand would not have been so
+flattering--she need not imagine it! The way she hung back and looked
+at them, the young men, as knowing as if she were a prostitute, and
+yet with the well-bred indifference of a lady--well, it was almost
+offensive.
+
+As a matter of fact, Alvina was detached for the time being from her
+interest in young men. Manchester House had settled down on her like
+a doom. There was the quartered shop, through which one had to worm
+one's encumbered way in the gloom--unless one liked to go miles
+round a back street, to the yard entry. There was James Houghton,
+faintly powdered with coal-dust, flitting back and forth in a fever
+of nervous frenzy, to Throttle-Ha'penny--so carried away that he
+never saw his daughter at all the first time he came in, after her
+return. And when she reminded him of her presence, with her--"Hello,
+father!"--he merely glancied hurriedly at her, as if vexed with her
+interruption, and said:
+
+"Well, Alvina, you're back. You're back to find us busy." And he
+went off into his ecstasy again.
+
+Mrs. Houghton was now very weak, and so nervous in her weakness that
+she could not bear the slightest sound. Her greatest horror was lest
+her husband should come into the room. On his entry she became blue
+at the lips immediately, so he had to hurry out again. At last he
+stayed away, only hurriedly asking, each time he came into the
+house, "How is Mrs. Houghton? Ha!" Then off into uninterrupted
+Throttle-Ha'penny ecstasy once more.
+
+When Alvina went up to her mother's room, on her return, all the
+poor invalid could do was to tremble into tears, and cry faintly:
+
+"Child, you look dreadful. It isn't you."
+
+This from the pathetic little figure in the bed had struck Alvina
+like a blow.
+
+"Why not, mother?" she asked.
+
+But for her mother she had to remove her nurse's uniform. And at the
+same time, she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a
+woman who came in, and the servant had been nursing the invalid
+between them. Miss Frost was worn and rather heavy: her old buoyancy
+and brightness was gone. She had become irritable also. She was very
+glad that Alvina had returned to take this responsibility of nursing
+off her shoulders. For her wonderful energy had ebbed and oozed
+away.
+
+Alvina said nothing, but settled down to her task. She was quiet and
+technical with her mother. The two loved one another, with a curious
+impersonal love which had not a single word to exchange: an almost
+after-death love. In these days Mrs. Houghton never talked--unless
+to fret a little. So Alvina sat for many hours in the lofty, sombre
+bedroom, looking out silently on the street, or hurriedly rising to
+attend the sick woman. For continually came the fretful murmur:
+
+"Vina!"
+
+To sit still--who knows the long discipline of it, nowadays, as our
+mothers and grandmothers knew. To sit still, for days, months, and
+years--perforce to sit still, with some dignity of tranquil bearing.
+Alvina was old-fashioned. She had the old, womanly faculty for
+sitting quiet and collected--not indeed for a life-time, but for
+long spells together. And so it was during these months nursing her
+mother. She attended constantly on the invalid: she did a good deal
+of work about the house: she took her walks and occupied her place
+in the choir on Sunday mornings. And yet, from August to January,
+she seemed to be seated in her chair in the bedroom, sometimes
+reading, but mostly quite still, her hands quietly in her lap, her
+mind subdued by musing. She did not even think, not even remember.
+Even such activity would have made her presence too disturbing in
+the room. She sat quite still, with all her activities in
+abeyance--except that strange will-to-passivity which was by no
+means a relaxation, but a severe, deep, soul-discipline.
+
+For the moment there was a sense of prosperity--or probable
+prosperity, in the house. And there was an abundance of
+Throttle-Ha'penny coal. It was dirty ashy stuff. The lower bars of
+the grate were constantly blanked in with white powdery ash, which
+it was fatal to try to poke away. For if you poked and poked, you
+raised white cumulus clouds of ash, and you were left at last with a
+few darkening and sulphurous embers. But even so, by continuous
+application, you could keep the room moderately warm, without
+feeling you were consuming the house's meat and drink in the grate.
+Which was one blessing.
+
+The days, the months darkened past, and Alvina returned to her old
+thinness and pallor. Her fore-arms were thin, they rested very still
+in her lap, there was a ladylike stillness about them as she took
+her walk, in her lingering, yet watchful fashion. She saw
+everything. Yet she passed without attracting any attention.
+
+Early in the year her mother died. Her father came and wept
+self-conscious tears, Miss Frost cried a little, painfully. And
+Alvina cried also: she did not quite know why or wherefore. Her poor
+mother! Alvina had the old-fashioned wisdom to let be, and not to
+think. After all, it was not for her to reconstruct her parents'
+lives. She came after them. Her day was not their day, their life
+was not hers. Returning up-channel to re-discover their course was
+quite another matter from flowing down-stream into the unknown, as
+they had done thirty years before. This supercilious and impertinent
+exploration of the generation gone by, by the present generation, is
+nothing to our credit. As a matter of fact, no generation repeats
+the mistakes of the generation ahead, any more than any river
+repeats its course. So the young need not be so proud of their
+superiority over the old. The young generation glibly makes its own
+mistakes: and _how_ detestable these new mistakes are, why, only the
+future will be able to tell us. But be sure they are quite as
+detestable, quite as full of lies and hypocrisy, as any of the
+mistakes of our parents. There is no such thing as _absolute_
+wisdom.
+
+Wisdom has reference only to the past. The future remains for ever
+an infinite field for mistakes. You can't know beforehand.
+
+So Alvina refrained from pondering on her mother's life and fate.
+Whatever the fate of the mother, the fate of the daughter will be
+otherwise. That is organically inevitable. The business of the
+daughter is with her own fate, not with her mother's.
+
+Miss Frost however meditated bitterly on the fate of the poor dead
+woman. Bitterly she brooded on the lot of woman. Here was Clariss
+Houghton, married, and a mother--and dead. What a life! Who was
+responsible? James Houghton. What ought James Houghton to have done
+differently? Everything. In short, he should have been somebody
+else, and not himself. Which is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of
+idealism. The universe should be something else, and not what it is:
+so the nonsense of idealistic conclusion. The cat should not catch
+the mouse, the mouse should not nibble holes in the table-cloth, and
+so on and so on, in the House that Jack Built.
+
+But Miss Frost sat by the dead in grief and despair. This was the
+end of another woman's life: such an end! Poor Clariss: guilty
+James.
+
+Yet why? Why was James more guilty than Clariss? Is the only aim and
+end of a man's life, to make some woman, or parcel of women, happy?
+Why? Why should anybody expect to be _made happy_, and develop
+heart-disease if she isn't? Surely Clariss' heart-disease was a more
+emphatic sign of obstinate self-importance than ever James'
+shop-windows were. She expected to be _made happy_. Every woman in
+Europe and America expects it. On her own head then if she is made
+unhappy: for her expectation is arrogant and impertinent. The be-all
+and end-all of life doesn't lie in feminine happiness--or in any
+happiness. Happiness is a sort of soap-tablet--he won't be happy
+till he gets it, and when he's got it, the precious baby, it'll cost
+him his eyes and his stomach. Could anything be more puerile than a
+mankind howling because it isn't happy: like a baby in the bath!
+
+Poor Clariss, however, was dead--and if she had developed
+heart-disease because she wasn't happy, well, she had died of her
+own heart-disease, poor thing. Wherein lies every moral that mankind
+can wish to draw.
+
+Miss Frost wept in anguish, and saw nothing but another woman
+betrayed to sorrow and a slow death. Sorrow and a slow death,
+because a man had married her. Miss Frost wept also for herself, for
+her own sorrow and slow death. Sorrow and slow death, because a man
+had _not_ married her. Wretched man, what is he to do with these
+exigeant and never-to-be-satisfied women? Our mothers pined because
+our fathers drank and were rakes. Our wives pine because we are
+virtuous but inadequate. Who is this sphinx, this woman? Where is
+the Oedipus that will solve her riddle of happiness, and then
+strangle her?--only to marry his own mother!
+
+In the months that followed her mother's death, Alvina went on the
+same, in abeyance. She took over the housekeeping, and received one
+or two overflow pupils from Miss Frost, young girls to whom she gave
+lessons in the dark drawing-room of Manchester House. She was
+busy--chiefly with housekeeping. There seemed a great deal to put in
+order after her mother's death.
+
+She sorted all her mother's clothes--expensive, old-fashioned
+clothes, hardly worn. What was to be done with them? She gave them
+away, without consulting anybody. She kept a few private things, she
+inherited a few pieces of jewellery. Remarkable how little trace her
+mother left--hardly a trace.
+
+She decided to move into the big, monumental bedroom in front of the
+house. She liked space, she liked the windows. She was strictly
+mistress, too. So she took her place. Her mother's little
+sitting-room was cold and disused.
+
+Then Alvina went through all the linen. There was still abundance,
+and it was all sound. James had had such large ideas of setting up
+house, in the beginning. And now he begrudged the household
+expenses, begrudged the very soap and candles, and even would have
+liked to introduce margarine instead of butter. This last
+degradation the women refused. But James was above food.
+
+The old Alvina seemed completely herself again. She was quiet,
+dutiful, affectionate. She appealed in her old, childish way to Miss
+Frost, and Miss Frost called her "Dear!" with all the old protective
+gentleness. But there was a difference. Underneath her appearance of
+appeal, Alvina was almost coldly independent. She did what she
+thought she would. The old manner of intimacy persisted between her
+and her darling. And perhaps neither of them knew that the intimacy
+itself had gone. But it had. There was no spontaneous interchange
+between them. It was a kind of deadlock. Each knew the great love
+she felt for the other. But now it was a love static, inoperative.
+The warm flow did not run any more. Yet each would have died for the
+other, would have done anything to spare the other hurt.
+
+Miss Frost was becoming tired, dragged looking. She would sink into
+a chair as if she wished never to rise again--never to make the
+effort. And Alvina quickly would attend on her, bring her tea and
+take away her music, try to make everything smooth. And continually
+the young woman exhorted the elder to work less, to give up her
+pupils. But Miss Frost answered quickly, nervously:
+
+"When I don't work I shan't live."
+
+"But why--?" came the long query from Alvina. And in her
+expostulation there was a touch of mockery for such a creed.
+
+Miss Frost did not answer. Her face took on a greyish tinge.
+
+In these days Alvina struck up an odd friendship with Miss Pinnegar,
+after so many years of opposition. She felt herself more in sympathy
+with Miss Pinnegar--it was so easy to get on with her, she left so
+much unsaid. What was left unsaid mattered more to Alvina now than
+anything that was expressed. She began to hate outspokenness and
+direct speaking-forth of the whole mind. It nauseated her. She
+wanted tacit admission of difference, not open, wholehearted
+communication. And Miss Pinnegar made this admission all along. She
+never made you feel for an instant that she was one with you. She
+was never even near. She kept quietly on her own ground, and left
+you on yours. And across the space came her quiet commonplaces--but
+fraught with space.
+
+With Miss Frost all was openness, explicit and downright. Not that
+Miss Frost trespassed. She was far more well-bred than Miss
+Pinnegar. But her very breeding had that Protestant, northern
+quality which assumes that we have all the same high standards,
+really, and all the same divine nature, intrinsically. It is a fine
+assumption. But willy-nilly, it sickened Alvina at this time.
+
+She preferred Miss Pinnegar, and admired Miss Pinnegar's humble
+wisdom with a new admiration. The two were talking of Dr. Headley,
+who, they read in the newspaper, had disgraced himself finally.
+
+"I suppose," said Miss Pinnegar, "it takes his sort to make all
+sorts."
+
+Such bits of homely wisdom were like relief from cramp and pain, to
+Alvina. "It takes his sort to make all sorts." It took her sort too.
+And it took her father's sort--as well as her mother's and Miss
+Frost's. It took every sort to make all sorts. Why have standards
+and a regulation pattern? Why have a human criterion? There's the
+point! Why, in the name of all the free heavens, have human
+criteria? Why? Simply for bullying and narrowness.
+
+Alvina felt at her ease with Miss Pinnegar. The two women talked
+away to one another, in their quiet moments: and slipped apart like
+conspirators when Miss Frost came in: as if there was something to
+be ashamed of. If there was, heaven knows what it might have been,
+for their talk was ordinary enough. But Alvina liked to be with Miss
+Pinnegar in the kitchen. Miss Pinnegar wasn't competent and
+masterful like Miss Frost: she was ordinary and uninspired, with
+quiet, unobserved movements. But she was deep, and there was some
+secret satisfaction in her very quality of secrecy.
+
+So the days and weeks and months slipped by, and Alvina was hidden
+like a mole in the dark chambers of Manchester House, busy with
+cooking and cleaning and arranging, getting the house in her own
+order, and attending to her pupils. She took her walk in the
+afternoon. Once and only once she went to Throttle-Ha'penny, and,
+seized with sudden curiosity, insisted on being wound down in the
+iron bucket to the little workings underneath. Everything was quite
+tidy in the short gang-ways down below, timbered and in sound order.
+The miners were competent enough. But water dripped dismally in
+places, and there was a stale feeling in the air.
+
+Her father accompanied her, pointed her to the seam of
+yellow-flecked coal, the shale and the bind, the direction of the
+trend. He had already an airy-fairy kind of knowledge of the whole
+affair, and seemed like some not quite trustworthy conjuror who had
+conjured it all up by sleight of hand. In the background the miners
+stood grey and ghostly, in the candle-light, and seemed to listen
+sardonically. One of them, facile in his subordinate way as James in
+his authoritative, kept chiming in:
+
+"Ay, that's the road it goes, Miss Huffen--yis, yo'll see th' roof
+theer bellies down a bit--s' loose. No, you dunna get th' puddin'
+stones i' this pit--s' not deep enough. Eh, they come down on you
+plumb, as if th' roof had laid its egg on you. Ay, it runs a bit
+thin down here--six inches. You see th' bed's soft, it's a sort o'
+clay-bind, it's not clunch such as you get deeper. Oh, it's easy
+workin'--you don't have to knock your guts out. There's no need for
+shots, Miss Huffen--we bring it down--you see here--" And he
+stooped, pointing to a shallow, shelving excavation which he was
+making under the coal. The working was low, you must stoop all the
+time. The roof and the timbered sides of the way seemed to press on
+you. It was as if she were in her tomb for ever, like the dead and
+everlasting Egyptians. She was frightened, but fascinated. The
+collier kept on talking to her, stretching his bare, grey-black
+hairy arm across her vision, and pointing with his knotted hand. The
+thick-wicked tallow candles guttered and smelled. There was a
+thickness in the air, a sense of dark, fluid presence in the thick
+atmosphere, the dark, fluid, viscous voice of the collier making a
+broad-vowelled, clapping sound in her ear. He seemed to linger near
+her as if he knew--as if he knew--what? Something for ever
+unknowable and inadmissible, something that belonged purely to the
+underground: to the slaves who work underground: knowledge
+humiliated, subjected, but ponderous and inevitable. And still his
+voice went on clapping in her ear, and still his presence edged near
+her, and seemed to impinge on her--a smallish, semi-grotesque,
+grey-obscure figure with a naked brandished forearm: not human: a
+creature of the subterranean world, melted out like a bat, fluid.
+She felt herself melting out also, to become a mere vocal ghost, a
+presence in the thick atmosphere. Her lungs felt thick and slow, her
+mind dissolved, she felt she could cling like a bat in the long
+swoon of the crannied, underworld darkness. Cling like a bat and
+sway for ever swooning in the draughts of the darkness--
+
+When she was up on the earth again she blinked and peered at the
+world in amazement. What a pretty, luminous place it was, carved in
+substantial luminosity. What a strange and lovely place, bubbling
+iridescent-golden on the surface of the underworld. Iridescent
+golden--could anything be more fascinating! Like lovely glancing
+surface on fluid pitch. But a velvet surface. A velvet surface of
+golden light, velvet-pile of gold and pale luminosity, and strange
+beautiful elevations of houses and trees, and depressions of fields
+and roads, all golden and floating like atmospheric majolica. Never
+had the common ugliness of Woodhouse seemed so entrancing. She
+thought she had never seen such beauty--a lovely luminous majolica,
+living and palpitating, the glossy, svelte world-surface, the
+exquisite face of all the darkness. It was like a vision. Perhaps
+gnomes and subterranean workers, enslaved in the era of light, see
+with such eyes. Perhaps that is why they are absolutely blind to
+conventional ugliness. For truly nothing could be more hideous than
+Woodhouse, as the miners had built it and disposed it. And yet, the
+very cabbage-stumps and rotten fences of the gardens, the very
+back-yards were instinct with magic, molten as they seemed with the
+bubbling-up of the under-darkness, bubbling up of majolica weight
+and luminosity, quite ignorant of the sky, heavy and satisfying.
+
+Slaves of the underworld! She watched the swing of the grey colliers
+along the pavement with a new fascination, hypnotized by a new
+vision. Slaves--the underground trolls and iron-workers, magic,
+mischievous, and enslaved, of the ancient stories. But tall--the
+miners seemed to her to loom tall and grey, in their enslaved magic.
+Slaves who would cause the superimposed day-order to fall. Not
+because, individually, they wanted to. But because, collectively,
+something bubbled up in them, the force of darkness which had no
+master and no control. It would bubble and stir in them as
+earthquakes stir the earth. It would be simply disastrous, because
+it had no master. There was no dark master in the world. The puerile
+world went on crying out for a new Jesus, another Saviour from the
+sky, another heavenly superman. When what was wanted was a Dark
+Master from the underworld.
+
+So they streamed past her, home from work--grey from head to foot,
+distorted in shape, cramped, with curious faces that came out pallid
+from under their dirt. Their walk was heavy-footed and slurring,
+their bearing stiff and grotesque. A stream they were--yet they
+seemed to her to loom like strange, valid figures of fairy-lore,
+unrealized and as yet unexperienced. The miners, the iron-workers,
+those who fashion the stuff of the underworld.
+
+As it always comes to its children, the nostalgia of the repulsive,
+heavy-footed Midlands came over her again, even whilst she was
+there in the midst. The curious, dark, inexplicable and yet
+insatiable craving--as if for an earthquake. To feel the earth heave
+and shudder and shatter the world from beneath. To go down in the
+debacle.
+
+And so, in spite of everything, poverty, dowdiness, obscurity, and
+nothingness, she was content to stay in abeyance at home for the
+time. True, she was filled with the same old, slow, dreadful craving
+of the Midlands: a craving insatiable and inexplicable. But the very
+craving kept her still. For at this time she did not translate it
+into a desire, or need, for love. At the back of her mind somewhere
+was the fixed idea, the fixed intention of finding love, a man. But
+as yet, at this period, the idea was in abeyance, it did not act.
+The craving that possessed her as it possesses everybody, in a
+greater or less degree, in those parts, sustained her darkly and
+unconsciously.
+
+A hot summer waned into autumn, the long, bewildering days drew in,
+the transient nights, only a few breaths of shadow between noon and
+noon, deepened and strengthened. A restlessness came over everybody.
+There was another short strike among the miners. James Houghton,
+like an excited beetle, scurried to and fro, feeling he was making
+his fortune. Never had Woodhouse been so thronged on Fridays with
+purchasers and money-spenders. The place seemed surcharged with
+life.
+
+Autumn lasted beautiful till end of October. And then suddenly, cold
+rain, endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through
+the wind and rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had
+seemed almost to blossom again in the long hot days, regaining a
+free cheerfulness that amounted almost to liveliness, and who even
+caused a sort of scandal by her intimacy with a rather handsome but
+common stranger, an insurance agent who had come into the place with
+a good, unused tenor voice--now she wilted again. She had given the
+rather florid young man tea in her room, and had laboured away at
+his fine, metallic voice, correcting him and teaching him and
+laughing with him and spending really a remarkable number of hours
+alone with him in her room in Woodhouse--for she had given up
+tramping the country, and had hired a music-room in a quiet street,
+where she gave her lessons. And the young man had hung round, and
+had never wanted to go away. They would prolong their tete-a-tete
+and their singing on till ten o'clock at night, and Miss Frost would
+return to Manchester House flushed and handsome and a little shy,
+while the young man, who was common, took on a new boldness in the
+streets. He had auburn hair, high colouring, and a rather
+challenging bearing. He took on a new boldness, his own estimate of
+himself rose considerably, with Miss Frost and his trained voice to
+justify him. He was a little insolent and condescending to the
+natives, who disliked him. For their lives they could not imagine
+what Miss Frost could find in him. They began even to dislike her,
+and a pretty scandal was started about the pair, in the pleasant
+room where Miss Frost had her piano, her books, and her flowers. The
+scandal was as unjust as most scandals are. Yet truly, all that
+summer and autumn Miss Frost had a new and slightly aggressive
+cheerfulness and humour. And Manchester House saw little of her,
+comparatively.
+
+And then, at the end of September, the young man was removed by his
+Insurance Company to another district. And at the end of October set
+in the most abominable and unbearable weather, deluges of rain and
+north winds, cutting the tender, summer-unfolded people to pieces.
+Miss Frost wilted at once. A silence came over her. She shuddered
+when she had to leave the fire. She went in the morning to her room,
+and stayed there all the day, in a hot, close atmosphere, shuddering
+when her pupils brought the outside weather with them to her.
+
+She was always subject to bronchitis. In November she had a bad
+bronchitis cold. Then suddenly one morning she could not get up.
+Alvina went in and found her semi-conscious.
+
+The girl was almost mad. She flew to the rescue. She despatched her
+father instantly for the doctor, she heaped the sticks in the
+bedroom grate and made a bright fire, she brough hot milk and
+brandy.
+
+"Thank you, dear, thank you. It's a bronchial cold," whispered Miss
+Frost hurriedly, trying to sip the milk. She could not. She didn't
+want it.
+
+"I've sent for the doctor," said Alvina, in her cool voice, wherein
+none the less there rang the old hesitancy of sheer love.
+
+Miss Frost lifted her eyes:
+
+"There's no need," she said, and she smiled winsomely at Alvina.
+
+It was pneumonia. Useless to talk of the distracted anguish of
+Alvina during the next two days. She was so swift and sensitive in
+her nursing, she seemed to have second sight. She talked to nobody.
+In her silence her soul was alone with the soul of her darling. The
+long semi-consciousness and the tearing pain of pneumonia, the
+anguished sickness.
+
+But sometimes the grey eyes would open and smile with delicate
+winsomeness at Alvina, and Alvina smiled back, with a cheery,
+answering winsomeness. But that costs something.
+
+On the evening of the second day, Miss Frost got her hand from under
+the bedclothes, and laid it on Alvina's hand. Alvina leaned down to
+her.
+
+"Everything is for you, my love," whispered Miss Frost, looking with
+strange eyes on Alvina's face.
+
+"Don't talk, Miss Frost," moaned Alvina.
+
+"Everything is for you," murmured the sick woman--"except--" and she
+enumerated some tiny legacies which showed her generous, thoughtful
+nature.
+
+"Yes, I shall remember," said Alvina, beyond tears now.
+
+Miss Frost smiled with her old bright, wonderful look, that had a
+touch of queenliness in it.
+
+"Kiss me, dear," she whispered.
+
+Alvina kissed her, and could not suppress the whimpering of her
+too-much grief.
+
+The night passed slowly. Sometimes the grey eyes of the sick woman
+rested dark, dilated, haggard on Alvina's face, with a heavy, almost
+accusing look, sinister. Then they closed again. And sometimes they
+looked pathetic, with a mute, stricken appeal. Then again they
+closed--only to open again tense with pain. Alvina wiped her
+blood-phlegmed lips.
+
+In the morning she died--lay there haggard, death-smeared, with her
+lovely white hair smeared also, and disorderly: she who had been so
+beautiful and clean always.
+
+Alvina knew death--which is untellable. She knew that her darling
+carried away a portion of her own soul into death.
+
+But she was alone. And the agony of being alone, the agony of grief,
+passionate, passionate grief for her darling who was torn into
+death--the agony of self-reproach, regret; the agony of remembrance;
+the agony of the looks of the dying woman, winsome, and sinisterly
+accusing, and pathetically, despairingly appealing--probe after
+probe of mortal agony, which throughout eternity would never lose
+its power to pierce to the quick!
+
+Alvina seemed to keep strangely calm and aloof all the days after
+the death. Only when she was alone she suffered till she felt her
+heart really broke.
+
+"I shall never feel anything any more," she said in her abrupt way
+to Miss Frost's friend, another woman of over fifty.
+
+"Nonsense, child!" expostulated Mrs. Lawson gently.
+
+"I shan't! I shall never have a heart to feel anything any more,"
+said Alvina, with a strange, distraught roll of the eyes.
+
+"Not like this, child. But you'll feel other things--"
+
+"I haven't the heart," persisted Alvina.
+
+"Not yet," said Mrs. Lawson gently. "You can't expect--But
+time--time brings back--"
+
+"Oh well--but I don't believe it," said Alvina.
+
+People thought her rather hard. To one of her gossips Miss Pinnegar
+confessed:
+
+"I thought she'd have felt it more. She cared more for her than she
+did for her own mother--and her mother knew it. Mrs. Houghton
+complained bitterly, sometimes, that _she_ had _no_ love. They were
+everything to one another, Miss Frost and Alvina. I should have
+thought she'd have felt it more. But you never know. A good thing if
+she doesn't, really."
+
+Miss Pinnegar herself did not care one little bit that Miss Frost
+was dead. She did not feel herself implicated.
+
+The nearest relatives came down, and everything was settled. The
+will was found, just a brief line on a piece of notepaper expressing
+a wish that Alvina should have everything. Alvina herself told the
+verbal requests. All was quietly fulfilled.
+
+As it might well be. For there was nothing to leave. Just
+sixty-three pounds in the bank--no more: then the clothes, piano,
+books and music. Miss Frost's brother had these latter, at his own
+request: the books and music, and the piano. Alvina inherited the
+few simple trinkets, and about forty-five pounds in money.
+
+"Poor Miss Frost," cried Mrs. Lawson, weeping rather bitterly--"she
+saved nothing for herself. You can see why she never wanted to grow
+old, so that she couldn't work. You can see. It's a shame, it's a
+shame, one of the best women that ever trod earth."
+
+Manchester House settled down to its deeper silence, its darker
+gloom. Miss Frost was irreparably gone. With her, the reality went
+out of the house. It seemed to be silently waiting to disappear. And
+Alvina and Miss Pinnegar might move about and talk in vain. They
+could never remove the sense of waiting to finish: it was all just
+waiting to finish. And the three, James and Alvina and Miss
+Pinnegar, waited lingering through the months, for the house to come
+to an end. With Miss Frost its spirit passed away: it was no more.
+Dark, empty-feeling, it seemed all the time like a house just before
+a sale.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BEAU
+
+
+Throttle-Ha'penny worked fitfully through the winter, and in the
+spring broke down. By this time James Houghton had a pathetic,
+childish look which touched the hearts of Alvina and Miss Pinnegar.
+They began to treat him with a certain feminine indulgence, as he
+fluttered round, agitated and bewildered. He was like a bird that
+has flown into a room and is exhausted, enfeebled by its attempts to
+fly through the false freedom of the window-glass. Sometimes he
+would sit moping in a corner, with his head under his wing. But Miss
+Pinnegar chased him forth, like the stealthy cat she was, chased him
+up to the work-room to consider some detail of work, chased him into
+the shop to turn over the old debris of the stock. At one time he
+showed the alarming symptom of brooding over his wife's death. Miss
+Pinnegar was thoroughly scared. But she was not inventive. It was
+left to Alvina to suggest: "Why doesn't father let the shop, and
+some of the house?"
+
+Let the shop! Let the last inch of frontage on the street! James
+thought of it. Let the shop! Permit the name of Houghton to
+disappear from the list of tradesmen? Withdraw? Disappear? Become a
+nameless nobody, occupying obscure premises?
+
+He thought about it. And thinking about it, became so indignant at the
+thought that he pulled his scattered energies together within his frail
+frame. And then he came out with the most original of all his schemes.
+Manchester House was to be fitted up as a boarding-house for the better
+classes, and was to make a fortune catering for the needs of these
+gentry, who had now nowhere to go. Yes, Manchester House should be
+fitted up as a sort of quiet family hotel for the better classes. The
+shop should be turned into an elegant hall-entrance, carpeted, with a
+hall-porter and a wide plate-glass door, round-arched, in the round
+arch of which the words: "Manchester House" should appear large and
+distinguished, making an arch also, whilst underneath, more refined and
+smaller, should show the words: "Private Hotel." James was to be
+proprietor and secretary, keeping the books and attending to
+correspondence: Miss Pinnegar was to be manageress, superintending the
+servants and directing the house, whilst Alvina was to occupy the
+equivocal position of "hostess." She was to shake hands with the
+guests: she was to play the piano, and she was to nurse the sick. For
+in the prospectus James would include: "Trained nurse always on the
+premises."
+
+"Why!" cried Miss Pinnegar, for once brutally and angrily hostile to
+him: "You'll make it sound like a private lunatic asylum."
+
+"Will you explain why?" answered James tartly.
+
+For himself, he was enraptured with the scheme. He began to tot up
+ideas and expenses. There would be the handsome entrance and hall:
+there would be an extension of the kitchen and scullery: there would
+be an installing of new hot-water and sanitary arrangements: there
+would be a light lift-arrangment from the kitchen: there would be a
+handsome glazed balcony or loggia or terrace on the first floor at
+the back, over the whole length of the back-yard. This loggia would
+give a wonderful outlook to the south-west and the west. In the
+immediate foreground, to be sure, would be the yard of the
+livery-stables and the rather slummy dwellings of the colliers,
+sloping downhill. But these could be easily overlooked, for the eye
+would instinctively wander across the green and shallow valley, to
+the long upslope opposite, showing the Manor set in its clump of
+trees, and farms and haystacks pleasantly dotted, and moderately far
+off coal-mines with twinkling headstocks and narrow railwaylines
+crossing the arable fields, and heaps of burning slag. The balcony
+or covered terrace--James settled down at last to the word
+_terrace_--was to be one of the features of the house: _the_
+feature. It was to be fitted up as a sort of elegant lounging
+restaurant. Elegant teas, at two-and-six per head, and elegant
+suppers, at five shillings without wine, were to be served here.
+
+As a teetotaller and a man of ascetic views, James, in his first
+shallow moments, before he thought about it, assumed that his house
+should be entirely non-alcoholic. A temperance house! Already he
+winced. We all know what a provincial Temperance Hotel is. Besides,
+there is magic in the sound of wine. _Wines Served_. The legend
+attracted him immensely--as a teetotaller, it had a mysterious,
+hypnotic influence. He must have wines. He knew nothing about them.
+But Alfred Swayn, from the Liquor Vaults, would put him in the
+running in five minutes.
+
+It was most curious to see Miss Pinnegar turtle up at the mention of
+this scheme. When first it was disclosed to her, her colour came up
+like a turkey's in a flush of indignant anger.
+
+"It's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous!" she blurted, bridling and
+ducking her head and turning aside, like an indignant turkey.
+
+"Ridiculous! Why? Will you explain why!" retorted James, turtling
+also.
+
+"It's absolutely ridiculous!" she repeated, unable to do more than
+splutter.
+
+"Well, we'll see," said James, rising to superiority.
+
+And again he began to dart absorbedly about, like a bird building a
+nest. Miss Pinnegar watched him with a sort of sullen fury. She went
+to the shop door to peep out after him. She saw him slip into the
+Liquor Vaults, and she came back to announce to Alvina:
+
+"He's taken to drink!"
+
+"Drink?" said Alvina.
+
+"That's what it is," said Miss Pinnegar vindictively. "Drink!"
+
+Alvina sank down and laughed till she was weak. It all seemed really
+too funny to her--too funny.
+
+"I can't see what it is to laugh at," said Miss Pinnegar.
+"Disgraceful--it's disgraceful! But I'm not going to stop to be made
+a fool of. I shall be no manageress, I tell you. It's absolutely
+ridiculous. Who does he think will come to the place? He's out of
+his mind--and it's drink; that's what it is! Going into the Liquor
+Vaults at ten o'clock in the morning! That's where he gets his
+ideas--out of whiskey--or brandy! But he's not going to make a fool
+of me--"
+
+"Oh dear!" sighed Alvina, laughing herself into composure and a
+little weariness. "I know it's _perfectly_ ridiculous. We shall have
+to stop him."
+
+"I've said all I can say," blurted Miss Pinnegar.
+
+As soon as James came in to a meal, the two women attacked him.
+
+"But father," said Alvina, "there'll be nobody to come."
+
+"Plenty of people--plenty of people," said her father. "Look at The
+Shakespeare's Head, in Knarborough."
+
+"Knarborough! Is this Knarborough!" blurted Miss Pinnegar. "Where
+are the business men here? Where are the foreigners coming here for
+business, where's our lace-trade and our stocking-trade?"
+
+"There _are_ business men," said James. "And there are ladies."
+
+"Who," retorted Miss Pinnegar, "is going to give half-a-crown for a
+tea? They expect tea and bread-and-butter for fourpence, and cake
+for sixpence, and apricots or pineapple for ninepence, and
+ham-and-tongue for a shilling, and fried ham and eggs and jam and
+cake as much as they can eat for one-and-two. If they expect a
+knife-and-fork tea for a shilling, what are you going to give them
+for half-a-crown?"
+
+"I know what I shall offer," said James. "And we may make it two
+shillings." Through his mind flitted the idea of 1/11-1/2--but he
+rejected it. "You don't realize that I'm catering for a higher class
+of custom--"
+
+"But there _isn't_ any higher class in Woodhouse, father," said
+Alvina, unable to restrain a laugh.
+
+"If you create a supply you create a demand," he retorted.
+
+"But how can you create a supply of better class people?" asked
+Alvina mockingly.
+
+James took on his refined, abstracted look, as if he were
+preoccupied on higher planes. It was the look of an obstinate little
+boy who poses on the side of the angels--or so the women saw it.
+
+Miss Pinnegar was prepared to combat him now by sheer weight of
+opposition. She would pitch her dead negative will obstinately
+against him. She would not speak to him, she would not observe his
+presence, she was stone deaf and stone blind: there _was_ no James.
+This nettled him. And she miscalculated him. He merely took another
+circuit, and rose another flight higher on the spiral of his
+spiritual egotism. He believed himself finely and sacredly in the
+right, that he was frustrated by lower beings, above whom it was his
+duty to rise, to soar. So he soared to serene heights, and his
+Private Hotel seemed a celestial injunction, an erection on a higher
+plane.
+
+He saw the architect: and then, with his plans and schemes, he saw
+the builder and contractor. The builder gave an estimate of six or
+seven hundred--but James had better see the plumber and fitter who
+was going to instal the new hot water and sanitary system. James was
+a little dashed. He had calculated much less. Having only a few
+hundred pounds in possession after Throttle-Ha'penny, he was
+prepared to mortgage Manchester House if he could keep in hand a
+sufficent sum of money for the running of his establishment for a
+year. He knew he would have to sacrifice Miss Pinnegar's work-room.
+He knew, and he feared Miss Pinnegar's violent and unmitigated
+hostility. Still--his obstinate spirit rose--he was quite prepared
+to risk everything on this last throw.
+
+Miss Allsop, daughter of the builder, called to see Alvina. The
+Allsops were great Chapel people, and Cassie Allsop was one of the
+old maids. She was thin and nipped and wistful looking, about
+forty-two years old. In private, she was tyrannously exacting with
+the servants, and spiteful, rather mean with her motherless nieces.
+But in public she had this nipped, wistful look.
+
+Alvina was surprised by this visit. When she found Miss Allsop at
+the back door, all her inherent hostility awoke.
+
+"Oh, is it you, Miss Allsop! Will you come in."
+
+They sat in the middle room, the common living room of the house.
+
+"I called," said Miss Allsop, coming to the point at once, and
+speaking in her Sunday-school-teacher voice, "to ask you if you know
+about this Private Hotel scheme of your father's?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh, you do! Well, we wondered. Mr. Houghton came to father about
+the building alterations yesterday. They'll be awfully expensive."
+
+"Will they?" said Alvina, making big, mocking eyes.
+
+"Yes, very. What do _you_ think of the scheme?"
+
+"I?--well--!" Alvina hesitated, then broke into a laugh. "To tell
+the truth I haven't thought much about it at all."
+
+"Well I think you should," said Miss Allsop severely. "Father's sure
+it won't pay--and it will cost I don't know how much. It is bound
+to be a dead loss. And your father's getting on. You'll be left
+stranded in the world without a penny to bless yourself with. I
+think it's an awful outlook for you."
+
+"Do you?" said Alvina.
+
+Here she was, with a bang, planked upon the shelf among the old
+maids.
+
+"Oh, I do. Sincerely! I should do all I could to prevent him, if I
+were you."
+
+Miss Allsop took her departure. Alvina felt herself jolted in her
+mood. An old maid along with Cassie Allsop!--and James Houghton
+fooling about with the last bit of money, mortgaging Manchester
+House up to the hilt. Alvina sank in a kind of weary mortification,
+in which _her_ peculiar obstinacy persisted devilishly and
+spitefully. "Oh well, so be it," said her spirit vindictively. "Let
+the meagre, mean, despicable fate fulfil itself." Her old anger
+against her father arose again.
+
+Arthur Witham, the plumber, came in with James Houghton to examine
+the house. Arthur Witham was also one of the Chapel men--as had been
+his common, interfering, uneducated father before him. The father
+had left each of his sons a fair little sum of money, which Arthur,
+the eldest, had already increased ten-fold. He was sly and slow and
+uneducated also, and spoke with a broad accent. But he was not
+bad-looking, a tight fellow with big blue eyes, who aspired to keep
+his "h's" in the right place, and would have been a gentleman if he
+could.
+
+Against her usual habit, Alvina joined the plumber and her father in
+the scullery. Arthur Witham saluted her with some respect. She liked
+his blue eyes and tight figure. He was keen and sly in business,
+very watchful, and slow to commit himself. Now he poked and peered
+and crept under the sink. Alvina watched him half disappear--she
+handed him a candle--and she laughed to herself seeing his tight,
+well-shaped hind-quarters protruding from under the sink like the
+wrong end of a dog from a kennel. He was keen after money, was
+Arthur--and bossy, creeping slyly after his own self-importance and
+power. He wanted power--and he would creep quietly after it till he
+got it: as much as he was capable of. His "h's" were a barbed-wire
+fence and entanglement, preventing his unlimited progress.
+
+He emerged from under the sink, and they went to the kitchen and
+afterwards upstairs. Alvina followed them persistently, but a little
+aloof, and silent. When the tour of inspection was almost over, she
+said innocently:
+
+"Won't it cost a great deal?"
+
+Arthur Witham slowly shook his head. Then he looked at her. She
+smiled rather archly into his eyes.
+
+"It won't be done for nothing," he said, looking at her again.
+
+"We can go into that later," said James, leading off the plumber.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Houghton," said Arthur Witham.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Witham," replied Alvina brightly.
+
+But she lingered in the background, and as Arthur Witham was going
+she heard him say: "Well, I'll work it out, Mr. Houghton. I'll work
+it out, and let you know tonight. I'll get the figures by tonight."
+
+The younger man's tone was a little off-hand, just a little
+supercilious with her father, she thought. James's star was setting.
+
+In the afternoon, directly after dinner, Alvina went out. She
+entered the shop, where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty
+stood about, varied by sheets of glass and fancy paper. Lottie
+Witham, Arthur's wife, appeared. She was a woman of thirty-five, a
+bit of a shrew, with social ambitions and no children.
+
+"Is Mr. Witham in?" said Alvina.
+
+Mrs. Witham eyed her.
+
+"I'll see," she answered, and she left the shop.
+
+Presently Arthur entered, in his shirt-sleeves: rather
+attractive-looking.
+
+"I don't know what you'll think of me, and what I've come for," said
+Alvina, with hurried amiability. Arthur lifted his blue eyes to her,
+and Mrs. Witham appeared in the background, in the inner doorway.
+
+"Why, what is it?" said Arthur stolidly.
+
+"Make it as dear as you can, for father," said Alvina, laughing
+nervously.
+
+Arthur's blue eyes rested on her face. Mrs. Witham advanced into the
+shop.
+
+"Why? What's that for?" asked Lottie Witham shrewdly.
+
+Alvina turned to the woman.
+
+"Don't say anything," she said. "But we don't want father to go on
+with this scheme. It's bound to fail. And Miss Pinnegar and I can't
+have anything to do with it anyway. I shall go away."
+
+"It's bound to fail," said Arthur Witham stolidly.
+
+"And father has no money, I'm sure," said Alvina.
+
+Lottie Witham eyed the thin, nervous face of Alvina. For some
+reason, she liked her. And of course, Alvina was considered a lady
+in Woodhouse. That was what it had come to, with James's declining
+fortunes: she was merely _considered_ a lady. The consideration was
+no longer indisputable.
+
+"Shall you come in a minute?" said Lottie Witham, lifting the flap
+of the counter. It was a rare and bold stroke on Mrs. Witham's part.
+Alvina's immediate instinct was to refuse. But she liked Arthur
+Witham, in his shirt sleeves.
+
+"Well--I must be back in a minute," she said, as she entered the
+embrasure of the counter. She felt as if she were really venturing
+on new ground. She was led into the new drawing-room, done in new
+peacock-and-bronze brocade furniture, with gilt and brass and white
+walls. This was the Withams' new house, and Lottie was proud of it.
+The two women had a short confidential chat. Arthur lingered in the
+doorway a while, then went away.
+
+Alvina did not really like Lottie Witham. Yet the other woman was
+sharp and shrewd in the uptake, and for some reason she fancied
+Alvina. So she was invited to tea at Manchester House.
+
+After this, so many difficulties rose up in James Houghton's way
+that he was worried almost out of his life. His two women left him
+alone. Outside difficulties multiplied on him till he abandoned his
+scheme--he was simply driven out of it by untoward circumstances.
+
+Lottie Witham came to tea, and was shown over Manchester House. She
+had no opinion at all of Manchester House--wouldn't hang a cat in
+such a gloomy hole. _Still_, she was rather impressed by the sense
+of superiority.
+
+"Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed as she stood in Alvina's bedroom,
+and looked at the enormous furniture, the lofty tableland of the
+bed.
+
+"Oh my goodness! I wouldn't sleep in _that_ for a trifle, by myself!
+Aren't you frightened out of your life? Even if I had Arthur at one
+side of me, I should be that frightened on the other side I
+shouldn't know what to do. Do you sleep here by yourself?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina laughing. "I haven't got an Arthur, even for one
+side."
+
+"Oh, my word, you'd want a husband on both sides, in that bed," said
+Lottie Witham.
+
+Alvina was asked back to tea--on Wednesday afternoon, closing day.
+Arthur was there to tea--very ill at ease and feeling as if his
+hands were swollen. Alvina got on better with his wife, who watched
+closely to learn from her guest the secret of repose. The
+indefinable repose and inevitability of a lady--even of a lady who
+is nervous and agitated--this was the problem which occupied
+Lottie's shrewd and active, but lower-class mind. She even did not
+resent Alvina's laughing attempts to draw out the clumsy Arthur:
+because Alvina was a lady, and her tactics must be studied.
+
+Alvina really liked Arthur, and thought a good deal about
+him--heaven knows why. He and Lottie were quite happy together, and
+he was absorbed in his petty ambitions. In his limited way, he was
+invincibly ambitious. He would end by making a sufficient fortune,
+and by being a town councillor and a J.P. But beyond Woodhouse he
+did not exist. Why then should Alvina be attracted by him? Perhaps
+because of his "closeness," and his secret determinedness.
+
+When she met him in the street she would stop him--though he was
+always busy--and make him exchange a few words with her. And when
+she had tea at his house, she would try to rouse his attention. But
+though he looked at her, steadily, with his blue eyes, from under
+his long lashes, still, she knew, he looked at her objectively. He
+never conceived any connection with her whatsoever.
+
+It was Lottie who had a scheming mind. In the family of three
+brothers there was one--not black sheep, but white. There was one
+who was climbing out, to be a gentleman. This was Albert, the second
+brother. He had been a school-teacher in Woodhouse: had gone out to
+South Africa and occupied a post in a sort of Grammar School in one
+of the cities of Cape Colony. He had accumulated some money, to add
+to his patrimony. Now he was in England, at Oxford, where he would
+take his belated degree. When he had got his degree, he would return
+to South Africa to become head of his school, at seven hundred a
+year.
+
+Albert was thirty-two years old, and unmarried. Lottie was
+determined he should take back to the Cape a suitable wife:
+presumably Alvina. He spent his vacations in Woodhouse--and he was
+only in his first year at Oxford. Well now, what could be more
+suitable--a young man at Oxford, a young lady in Woodhouse. Lottie
+told Alvina all about him, and Alvina was quite excited to meet him.
+She imagined him a taller, more fascinating, educated Arthur.
+
+For the fear of being an old maid, the fear of her own virginity was
+really gaining on Alvina. There was a terrible sombre futility,
+nothingness, in Manchester House. She was twenty-six years old. Her
+life was utterly barren now Miss Frost had gone. She was shabby and
+penniless, a mere household drudge: for James begrudged even a girl
+to help in the kitchen. She was looking faded and worn. Panic, the
+terrible and deadly panic which overcomes so many unmarried women at
+about the age of thirty, was beginning to overcome her. She would
+not care about marriage, if even she had a lover. But some sort of
+_terror_ hunted her to the search of a lover. She would become
+loose, she would become a prostitute, she said to herself, rather
+than die off like Cassie Allsop and the rest, wither slowly and
+ignominiously and hideously on the tree. She would rather kill
+herself.
+
+But it needs a certain natural gift to become a loose woman or a
+prostitute. If you haven't got the qualities which attract loose
+men, what are you to do? Supposing it isn't in your nature to
+attract loose and promiscuous men! Why, then you can't be a
+prostitute, if you try your head off: nor even a loose woman. Since
+_willing_ won't do it. It requires a second party to come to an
+agreement.
+
+Therefore all Alvina's desperate and profligate schemes and ideas
+fell to nought before the inexorable in her nature. And the
+inexorable in her nature was highly exclusive and selective, an
+inevitable negation of looseness or prostitution. Hence men were
+afraid of her--of her power, once they had committed themselves. She
+would involve and lead a man on, she would destroy him rather than
+not get of him what she wanted. And what she wanted was something
+serious and risky. Not mere marriage--oh dear no! But a profound and
+dangerous inter-relationship. As well ask the paddlers in the small
+surf of passion to plunge themselves into the heaving gulf of
+mid-ocean. Bah, with their trousers turned up to their knees it was
+enough for them to wet their toes in the dangerous sea. They were
+having nothing to do with such desperate nereids as Alvina.
+
+She had cast her mind on Arthur. Truly ridiculous. But there was
+something compact and energetic and wilful about him that she
+magnified ten-fold and so obtained, imaginatively, an attractive
+lover. She brooded her days shabbily away in Manchester House, busy
+with housework drudgery. Since the collapse of Throttle-Ha'penny,
+James Houghton had become so stingy that it was like an inflammation
+in him. A silver sixpence had a pale and celestial radiance which he
+could not forego, a nebulous whiteness which made him feel he had
+heaven in his hold. How then could he let it go. Even a brown penny
+seemed alive and pulsing with mysterious blood, potent, magical. He
+loved the flock of his busy pennies, in the shop, as if they had
+been divine bees bringing him sustenance from the infinite. But the
+pennies he saw dribbling away in household expenses troubled him
+acutely, as if they were live things leaving his fold. It was a
+constant struggle to get from him enough money for necessities.
+
+And so the household diet became meagre in the extreme, the coal was
+eked out inch by inch, and when Alvina must have her boots mended
+she must draw on her own little stock of money. For James Houghton
+had the impudence to make her an allowance of two shillings a week.
+She was very angry. Yet her anger was of that dangerous,
+half-ironical sort which wears away its subject and has no outward
+effect. A feeling of half-bitter mockery kept her going. In the
+ponderous, rather sordid nullity of Manchester House she became
+shadowy and absorbed, absorbed in nothing in particular, yet
+absorbed. She was always more or less busy: and certainly there was
+always something to be done, whether she did it or not.
+
+The shop was opened once a week, on Friday evenings. James Houghton
+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.
+
+Alvina looked at Arthur. Arthur was short and dark-haired and nicely
+coloured. But, now his brother was there, he too seemed to have a
+dumb, aqueous silence, fish-like and aloof, about him. He seemed to
+swim like a fish in his own little element. Strange it all was,
+like Alice in Wonderland. Alvina understood now Lottie's strained
+sort of thinness, a haggard, sinewy, sea-weedy look. The poor thing
+was all the time swimming for her life.
+
+For Alvina it was a most curious tea-party. She listened and smiled
+and made vague answers to Albert, who leaned his broad, thin,
+brittle shoulders towards her. Lottie seemed rather shadowily to
+preside. But it was Arthur who came out into communication. And now,
+uttering his rather broad-mouthed speeches, she seemed to hear in
+him a quieter, subtler edition of his father. His father had been a
+little, terrifically loud-voiced, hard-skinned man, amazingly
+uneducated and amazingly bullying, who had tyrannized for many years
+over the Sunday School children during morning service. He had been
+an odd-looking creature with round grey whiskers: to Alvina, always
+a creature, never a man: an atrocious leprechaun from under the
+Chapel floor. And how he used to dig the children in the back with
+his horrible iron thumb, if the poor things happened to whisper or
+nod in chapel!
+
+These were his children--most curious chips of the old block. Who
+ever would have believed she would have been taking tea with them.
+
+"Why don't you have a bicycle, and go out on it?" Arthur was saying.
+
+"But I can't ride," said Alvina.
+
+"You'd learn in a couple of lessons. There's nothing in riding a
+bicycle."
+
+"I don't believe I ever should," laughed Alvina.
+
+"You don't mean to say you're nervous?" said Arthur rudely and
+sneeringly.
+
+"I _am_," she persisted.
+
+"You needn't be nervous with me," smiled Albert broadly, with his
+odd, genuine gallantry. "I'll hold you on."
+
+"But I haven't got a bicycle," said Alvina, feeling she was slowly
+colouring to a deep, uneasy blush.
+
+"You can have mine to learn on," said Lottie. "Albert will look
+after it."
+
+"There's your chance," said Arthur rudely. "Take it while you've got
+it."
+
+Now Alvina did not want to learn to ride a bicycle. The two Miss
+Carlins, two more old maids, had made themselves ridiculous for
+ever by becoming twin cycle fiends. And the horrible energetic
+strain of peddling a bicycle over miles and miles of high-way did
+not attract Alvina at all. She was completely indifferent to
+sight-seeing and scouring about. She liked taking a walk, in her
+lingering indifferent fashion. But rushing about in any way was
+hateful to her. And then, to be taught to ride a bicycle by Albert
+Witham! Her very soul stood still.
+
+"Yes," said Albert, beaming down at her from his strange pale eyes.
+"Come on. When will you have your first lesson?"
+
+"Oh," cried Alvina in confusion. "I can't promise. I haven't time,
+really."
+
+"Time!" exclaimed Arthur rudely. "But what do you do wi' yourself
+all day?"
+
+"I have to keep house," she said, looking at him archly.
+
+"House! You can put a chain round its neck, and tie it up," he
+retorted.
+
+Albert laughed, showing all his teeth.
+
+"I'm sure you find plenty to do, with everything on your hands,"
+said Lottie to Alvina.
+
+"I do!" said Alvina. "By evening I'm quite tired--though you mayn't
+believe it, since you say I do nothing," she added, laughing
+confusedly to Arthur.
+
+But he, hard-headed little fortune-maker, replied:
+
+"You have a girl to help you, don't you!"
+
+Albert, however, was beaming at her sympathetically.
+
+"You have too much to do indoors," he said. "It would do you good to
+get a bit of exercise out of doors. Come down to the Coach Road
+tomorrow afternoon, and let me give you a lesson. Go on--"
+
+Now the coach-road was a level drive between beautiful park-like
+grass-stretches, down in the valley. It was a delightful place for
+learning to ride a bicycle, but open in full view of all the world.
+Alvina would have died of shame. She began to laugh nervously and
+hurriedly at the very thought.
+
+"No, I can't. I really can't. Thanks, awfully," she said.
+
+"Can't you really!" said Albert. "Oh well, we'll say another day,
+shall we?"
+
+"When I feel I can," she said.
+
+"Yes, when you feel like it," replied Albert.
+
+"That's more it," said Arthur. "It's not the time. It's the
+nervousness." Again Albert beamed at her sympathetically, and said:
+
+"Oh, I'll hold you. You needn't be afraid."
+
+"But I'm not afraid," she said.
+
+"You won't _say_ you are," interposed Arthur. "Women's faults
+mustn't be owned up to."
+
+Alvina was beginning to feel quite dazed. Their mechanical,
+overbearing way was something she was unaccustomed to. It was like
+the jaws of a pair of insentient iron pincers. She rose, saying she
+must go.
+
+Albert rose also, and reached for his straw hat, with its coloured
+band.
+
+"I'll stroll up with you, if you don't mind," he said. And he took
+his place at her side along the Knarborough Road, where everybody
+turned to look. For, of course, he had a sort of fame in Woodhouse.
+She went with him laughing and chatting. But she did not feel at all
+comfortable. He seemed so pleased. Only he was not pleased with
+_her_. He was pleased with himself on her account: inordinately
+pleased with himself. In his world, as in a fish's, there was but
+his own swimming self: and if he chanced to have something swimming
+alongside and doing him credit, why, so much the more complacently
+he smiled.
+
+He walked stiff and erect, with his head pressed rather back, so
+that he always seemed to be advancing from the head and shoulders,
+in a flat kind of advance, horizontal. He did not seem to be walking
+with his whole body. His manner was oddly gallant, with a gallantry
+that completely missed the individual in the woman, circled round
+her and flew home gratified to his own hive. The way he raised his
+hat, the way he inclined and smiled flatly, even rather excitedly,
+as he talked, was all a little discomforting and comical.
+
+He left her at the shop door, saying:
+
+"I shall see you again, I hope."
+
+"Oh, yes," she replied, rattling the door anxiously, for it was
+locked. She heard her father's step at last tripping down the shop.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr. Houghton," said Albert suavely and with a certain
+confidence, as James peered out.
+
+"Oh, good-evening!" said James, letting Alvina pass, and shutting
+the door in Albert's face.
+
+"Who was that?" he asked her sharply.
+
+"Albert Witham," she replied.
+
+"What has _he_ got to do with you?" said James shrewishly.
+
+"Nothing, I hope."
+
+She fled into the obscurity of Manchester House, out of the grey
+summer evening. The Withams threw her off her pivot, and made her
+feel she was not herself. She felt she didn't know, she couldn't
+feel, she was just scattered and decentralized. And she was rather
+afraid of the Witham brothers. She might be their victim. She
+intended to avoid them.
+
+The following days she saw Albert, in his Norfolk jacket and flannel
+trousers and his straw hat, strolling past several times and looking
+in through the shop door and up at the upper windows. But she hid
+herself thoroughly. When she went out, it was by the back way. So
+she avoided him.
+
+But on Sunday evening, there he sat, rather stiff and brittle in the
+old Withams' pew, his head pressed a little back, so that his face
+and neck seemed slightly flattened. He wore very low, turn-down
+starched collars that showed all his neck. And he kept looking up at
+her during the service--she sat in the choir-loft--gazing up at her
+with apparently love-lorn eyes and a faint, intimate smile--the sort
+of _je-sais-tout_ look of a private swain. Arthur also occasionally
+cast a judicious eye on her, as if she were a chimney that needed
+repairing, and he must estimate the cost, and whether it was worth
+it.
+
+Sure enough, as she came out through the narrow choir gate into
+Knarborough Road, there was Albert stepping forward like a
+policeman, and saluting her and smiling down on her.
+
+"I don't know if I'm presuming--" he said, in a mock deferential
+way that showed he didn't imagine he _could_ presume.
+
+"Oh, not at all," said Alvina airily. He smiled with assurance.
+
+"You haven't got any engagement, then, for this evening?" he said.
+
+"No," she replied simply.
+
+"We might take a walk. What do you think?" he said, glancing down
+the road in either direction.
+
+What, after all, was she to think? All the girls were pairing off
+with the boys for the after-chapel stroll and spoon.
+
+"I don't mind," she said. "But I can't go far. I've got to be in at
+nine."
+
+"Which way shall we go?" he said.
+
+He steered off, turned downhill through the common gardens, and
+proposed to take her the not-very-original walk up Flint's Lane, and
+along the railway line--the colliery railway, that is--then back up
+the Marlpool Road: a sort of circle. She agreed.
+
+They did not find a great deal to talk about. She questioned him
+about his plans, and about the Cape. But save for bare outlines,
+which he gave readily enough, he was rather close.
+
+"What do you do on Sunday nights as a rule?" he asked her.
+
+"Oh, I have a walk with Lucy Grainger--or I go down to Hallam's--or
+go home," she answered.
+
+"You don't go walks with the fellows, then?"
+
+"Father would never have it," she replied.
+
+"What will he say now?" he asked, with self-satisfaction.
+
+"Goodness knows!" she laughed.
+
+"Goodness usually does," he answered archly.
+
+When they came to the rather stumbly railway, he said:
+
+"Won't you take my arm?"--offering her the said member.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," she said. "Thanks."
+
+"Go on," he said, pressing a little nearer to her, and offering his
+arm. "There's nothing against it, is there?"
+
+"Oh, it's not that," she said.
+
+And feeling in a false position, she took his arm, rather
+unwillingly. He drew a little nearer to her, and walked with a
+slight prance.
+
+"We get on better, don't we?" he said, giving her hand the tiniest
+squeeze with his arm against his side.
+
+"Much!" she replied, with a laugh.
+
+Then he lowered his voice oddly.
+
+"It's many a day since I was on this railroad," he said.
+
+"Is this one of your old walks?" she asked, malicious.
+
+"Yes, I've been it once or twice--with girls that are all married
+now."
+
+"Didn't you want to marry?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I may have done. But it never came off, somehow.
+I've sometimes thought it never would come off."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know, exactly. It didn't seem to, you know. Perhaps neither
+of us was properly inclined."
+
+"I should think so," she said.
+
+"And yet," he admitted slyly, "I should _like_ to marry--" To this
+she did not answer.
+
+"Shouldn't you?" he continued.
+
+"When I meet the right man," she laughed.
+
+"That's it," he said. "There, that's just it! And you _haven't_ met
+him?" His voice seemed smiling with a sort of triumph, as if he had
+caught her out.
+
+"Well--once I thought I had--when I was engaged to Alexander."
+
+"But you found you were mistaken?" he insisted.
+
+"No. Mother was so ill at the time--"
+
+"There's always something to consider," he said.
+
+She kept on wondering what she should do if he wanted to kiss her.
+The mere incongruity of such a desire on his part formed a problem.
+Luckily, for this evening he formulated no desire, but left her in
+the shop-door soon after nine, with the request:
+
+"I shall see you in the week, shan't I?"
+
+"I'm not sure. I can't promise now," she said hurriedly.
+"Good-night."
+
+What she felt chiefly about him was a decentralized perplexity, very
+much akin to no feeling at all.
+
+"Who do you think took me for a walk, Miss Pinnegar?" she said,
+laughing, to her confidante.
+
+"I can't imagine," replied Miss Pinnegar, eyeing her.
+
+"You never would imagine," said Alvina. "Albert Witham."
+
+"Albert Witham!" exclaimed Miss Pinnegar, standing quite motionless.
+
+"It may well take your breath away," said Alvina.
+
+"No, it's not that!" hurriedly expostulated Miss Pinnegar. "Well--!
+Well, I declare!--" and then, on a new note: "Well, he's very
+eligible, I think."
+
+"Most eligible!" replied Alvina.
+
+"Yes, he is," insisted Miss Pinnegar. "I think it's very good."
+
+"What's very good?" asked Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar hesitated. She looked at Alvina. She reconsidered.
+
+"Of course he's not the man I should have imagined for you, but--"
+
+"You think he'll do?" said Alvina.
+
+"Why not?" said Miss Pinnegar. "Why shouldn't he do--if you like
+him."
+
+"Ah--!" cried Alvina, sinking on the sofa with a laugh. "That's it."
+
+"Of course you couldn't have anything to do with him if you don't
+care for him," pronounced Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Albert continued to hang around. He did not make any direct attack
+for a few days. Suddenly one evening he appeared at the back door
+with a bunch of white stocks in his hand. His face lit up with a
+sudden, odd smile when she opened the door--a broad, pale-gleaming,
+remarkable smile.
+
+"Lottie wanted to know if you'd come to tea tomorrow," he said
+straight out, looking at her with the pale light in his eyes, that
+smiled palely right into her eyes, but did not see her at all. He
+was waiting on the doorstep to come in.
+
+"Will you come in?" said Alvina. "Father is in."
+
+"Yes, I don't mind," he said, pleased. He mounted the steps, still
+holding his bunch of white stocks.
+
+James Houghton screwed round in his chair and peered over his
+spectacles to see who was coming.
+
+"Father," said Alvina, "you know Mr. Witham, don't you?"
+
+James Houghton half rose. He still peered over his glasses at the
+intruder.
+
+"Well--I do by sight. How do you do?"
+
+He held out his frail hand.
+
+Albert held back, with the flowers in his own hand, and giving his
+broad, pleased, pale-gleaming smile from father to daughter, he
+said:
+
+"What am I to do with these? Will you accept them, Miss Houghton?"
+He stared at her with shining, pallid smiling eyes.
+
+"Are they for me?" she said, with false brightness. "Thank you."
+
+James Houghton looked over the top of his spectacles, searchingly,
+at the flowers, as if they had been a bunch of white and
+sharp-toothed ferrets. Then he looked as suspiciously at the hand
+which Albert at last extended to him. He shook it slightly, and
+said:
+
+"Take a seat."
+
+"I'm afraid I'm disturbing you in your reading," said Albert, still
+having the drawn, excited smile on his face.
+
+"Well--" said James Houghton. "The light is fading."
+
+Alvina came in with the flowers in a jar. She set them on the table.
+
+"Haven't they a lovely scent?" she said.
+
+"Do you think so?" he replied, again with the excited smile. There
+was a pause. Albert, rather embarrassed, reached forward, saying:
+
+"May I see what you're reading!" And he turned over the book.
+"'Tommy and Grizel!' Oh yes! What do you think of it?"
+
+"Well," said James, "I am only in the beginning."
+
+"I think it's interesting, myself," said Albert, "as a study of a
+man who can't get away from himself. You meet a lot of people like
+that. What I wonder is why they find it such a drawback."
+
+"Find what a drawback?" asked James.
+
+"Not being able to get away from themselves. That
+self-consciousness. It hampers them, and interferes with their power
+of action. Now I wonder why self-consciousness should hinder a man
+in his action? Why does it cause misgiving? I think I'm
+self-conscious, but I don't think I have so many misgivings. I don't
+see that they're necessary."
+
+"Certainly I think Tommy is a weak character. I believe he's a
+despicable character," said James.
+
+"No, I don't know so much about that," said Albert. "I shouldn't say
+weak, exactly. He's only weak in one direction. No, what I wonder is
+why he feels guilty. If you feel self-conscious, there's no need to
+feel guilty about it, is there?"
+
+He stared with his strange, smiling stare at James.
+
+"I shouldn't say so," replied James. "But if a man never knows his
+own mind, he certainly can't be much of a man."
+
+"I don't see it," replied Albert. "What's the matter is that he
+feels guilty for not knowing his own mind. That's the unnecessary
+part. The guilty feeling--"
+
+Albert seemed insistent on this point, which had no particular
+interest for James.
+
+"Where we've got to make a change," said Albert, "is in the feeling
+that other people have a right to tell us what we ought to feel and
+do. Nobody knows what another man ought to feel. Every man has his
+own special feelings, and his own right to them. That's where it is
+with education. You ought not to want all your children to feel
+alike. Their natures are all different, and so they should all feel
+different, about practically everything."
+
+"There would be no end to the confusion," said James.
+
+"There needn't be any confusion to speak of. You agree to a number
+of rules and conventions and laws, for social purposes. But in
+private you feel just as you do feel, without occasion for trying to
+feel something else."
+
+"I don't know," said James. "There are certain feelings common to
+humanity, such as love, and honour, and truth."
+
+"Would you call them feelings?" said Albert. "I should say what is
+common is the idea. The idea is common to humanity, once you've put
+it into words. But the feeling varies with every man. The same idea
+represents a different kind of feeling in every different
+individual. It seems to me that's what we've got to recognize if
+we're going to do anything with education. We don't want to produce
+mass feelings. Don't you agree?"
+
+Poor James was too bewildered to know whether to agree or not to
+agree.
+
+"Shall we have a light, Alvina?" he said to his daughter.
+
+Alvina lit the incandescent gas-jet that hung in the middle of the
+room. The hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as
+she reached up to it. But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly.
+It seemed as if his words came off him without affecting him at all.
+He did not think about what he was feeling, and he did not feel what
+he was thinking about. And therefore she hardly heard what he said.
+Yet she believed he was clever.
+
+It was evident Albert was quite blissfully happy, in his own way,
+sitting there at the end of the sofa not far from the fire, and
+talking animatedly. The uncomfortable thing was that though he
+talked in the direction of his interlocutor, he did not speak _to_
+him: merely said his words towards him. James, however, was such an
+airy feather himself he did not remark this, but only felt a little
+self-important at sustaining such a subtle conversation with a man
+from Oxford. Alvina, who never expected to be interested in clever
+conversations, after a long experience of her father, found her
+expectation justified again. She was not interested.
+
+The man was quite nicely dressed, in the regulation tweed jacket and
+flannel trousers and brown shoes. He was even rather smart, judging
+from his yellow socks and yellow-and-brown tie. Miss Pinnegar eyed
+him with approval when she came in.
+
+"Good-evening!" she said, just a trifle condescendingly, as she
+shook hands. "How do you find Woodhouse, after being away so long?"
+Her way of speaking was so quiet, as if she hardly spoke aloud.
+
+"Well," he answered. "I find it the same in many ways."
+
+"You wouldn't like to settle here again?"
+
+"I don't think I should. It feels a little cramped, you know, after
+a new country. But it has its attractions." Here he smiled
+meaningful.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar. "I suppose the old connections count for
+something."
+
+"They do. Oh decidedly they do. There's no associations like the old
+ones." He smiled flatly as he looked towards Alvina.
+
+"You find it so, do you!" returned Miss Pinnegar. "You don't find
+that the new connections make up for the old?"
+
+"Not altogether, they don't. There's something missing--" Again he
+looked towards Alvina. But she did not answer his look.
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar. "I'm glad we still count for something,
+in spite of the greater attractions. How long have you in England?"
+
+"Another year. Just a year. This time next year I expect I shall be
+sailing back to the Cape." He smiled as if in anticipation. Yet it
+was hard to believe that it mattered to him--or that anything
+mattered.
+
+"And is Oxford agreeable to you?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, yes. I keep myself busy."
+
+"What are your subjects?" asked James.
+
+"English and History. But I do mental science for my own interest."
+
+Alvina had taken up a piece of sewing. She sat under the light,
+brooding a little. What _had_ all this to do with her. The man
+talked on, and beamed in her direction. And she felt a little
+important. But moved or touched?--not the least in the world.
+
+She wondered if any one would ask him to supper--bread and cheese
+and currant-loaf, and water, was all that offered. No one asked him,
+and at last he rose.
+
+"Show Mr. Witham out through the shop, Alvina," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Alvina piloted the man through the long, dark, encumbered way of the
+shop. At the door he said:
+
+"You've never said whether you're coming to tea on Thursday."
+
+"I don't think I can," said Alvina.
+
+He seemed rather taken aback.
+
+"Why?" he said. "What stops you?"
+
+"I've so much to do."
+
+He smiled slowly and satirically.
+
+"Won't it keep?" he said.
+
+"No, really. I can't come on Thursday--thank you so much.
+Good-night!" She gave him her hand and turned quickly into the shop,
+closing the door. He remained standing in the porch, staring at the
+closed door. Then, lifting his lip, he turned away.
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar decidedly, as Alvina re-entered. "You can
+say what you like--but I think he's _very pleasant_, _very_
+pleasant."
+
+"Extremely intelligent," said James Houghton, shifting in his chair.
+
+"I was awfully bored," said Alvina.
+
+They both looked at her, irritated.
+
+After this she really did what she could to avoid him. When she saw
+him sauntering down the street in all his leisure, a sort of anger
+possessed her. On Sunday, she slipped down from the choir into the
+Chapel, and out through the main entrance, whilst he awaited her at
+the small exit. And by good luck, when he called one evening in the
+week, she was out. She returned down the yard. And there, through
+the uncurtained window, she saw him sitting awaiting her. Without a
+thought, she turned on her heel and fled away. She did not come in
+till he had gone.
+
+"How late you are!" said Miss Pinnegar. "Mr. Witham was here till
+ten minutes ago."
+
+"Yes," laughed Alvina. "I came down the yard and saw him. So I went
+back till he'd gone."
+
+Miss Pinnegar looked at her in displeasure:
+
+"I suppose you know your own mind," she said.
+
+"How do you explain such behaviour?" said her father pettishly.
+
+"I didn't want to meet him," she said.
+
+The next evening was Saturday. Alvina had inherited Miss Frost's
+task of attending to the Chapel flowers once a quarter. She had been
+round the gardens of her friends, and gathered the scarlet and hot
+yellow and purple flowers of August, asters, red stocks, tall
+Japanese sunflowers, coreopsis, geraniums. With these in her basket
+she slipped out towards evening, to the Chapel. She knew Mr.
+Calladine, the caretaker would not lock up till she had been.
+
+The moment she got inside the Chapel--it was a big, airy, pleasant
+building--she heard hammering from the organ-loft, and saw the
+flicker of a candle. Some workman busy before Sunday. She shut the
+baize door behind her, and hurried across to the vestry, for vases,
+then out to the tap, for water. All was warm and still.
+
+It was full early evening. The yellow light streamed through the
+side windows, the big stained-glass window at the end was deep and
+full of glowing colour, in which the yellows and reds were richest.
+Above in the organ-loft the hammering continued. She arranged her
+flowers in many vases, till the communion table was like the window,
+a tangle of strong yellow, and crimson, and purple, and
+bronze-green. She tried to keep the effect light and kaleidoscopic,
+an interplay of tossed pieces of strong, hot colour, vibrating and
+lightly intermingled. It was very gorgeous, for a communion table.
+But the day of white lilies was over.
+
+Suddenly there was a terrific crash and bang and tumble, up in the
+organ-loft, followed by a cursing.
+
+"Are you hurt?" called Alvina, looking up into space. The candle had
+disappeared.
+
+But there was no reply. Feeling curious, she went out of the Chapel
+to the stairs in the side porch, and ran up to the organ. She went
+round the side--and there she saw a man in his shirt-sleeves sitting
+crouched in the obscurity on the floor between the organ and the
+wall of the back, while a collapsed pair of steps lay between her
+and him. It was too dark to see who it was.
+
+"That rotten pair of steps came down with me," said the infuriated
+voice of Arthur Witham, "and about broke my leg."
+
+Alvina advanced towards him, picking her way over the steps. He was
+sitting nursing his leg.
+
+"Is it bad?" she asked, stooping towards him.
+
+In the shadow he lifted up his face. It was pale, and his eyes were
+savage with anger. Her face was near his.
+
+"It is bad," he said furious because of the shock. The shock had
+thrown him off his balance.
+
+"Let me see," she said.
+
+He removed his hands from clasping his shin, some distance above the
+ankle. She put her fingers over the bone, over his stocking, to feel
+if there was any fracture. Immediately her fingers were wet with
+blood. Then he did a curious thing. With both his hands he pressed
+her hand down over his wounded leg, pressed it with all his might,
+as if her hand were a plaster. For some moments he sat pressing her
+hand over his broken shin, completely oblivious, as some people are
+when they have had a shock and a hurt, intense on one point of
+consciousness only, and for the rest unconscious.
+
+Then he began to come to himself. The pain modified itself. He could
+not bear the sudden acute hurt to his shin. That was one of his
+sensitive, unbearable parts.
+
+"The bone isn't broken," she said professionally. "But you'd better
+get the stocking out of it."
+
+Without a thought, he pulled his trouser-leg higher and rolled down
+his stocking, extremely gingerly, and sick with pain.
+
+"Can you show a light?" he said.
+
+She found the candle. And she knew where matches always rested, on a
+little ledge of the organ. So she brought him a light, whilst he
+examined his broken shin. The blood was flowing, but not so much. It
+was a nasty cut bruise, swelling and looking very painful. He sat
+looking at it absorbedly, bent over it in the candle-light.
+
+"It's not so very bad, when the pain goes off," she said, noticing
+the black hairs of his shin. "We'd better tie it up. Have you got a
+handkerchief?"
+
+"It's in my jacket," he said.
+
+She looked round for his jacket. He annoyed her a little, by being
+completely oblivious of her. She got his handkerchief and wiped her
+fingers on it. Then of her own kerchief she made a pad for the
+wound.
+
+"Shall I tie it up, then?" she said.
+
+But he did not answer. He sat still nursing his leg, looking at his
+hurt, while the blood slowly trickled down the wet hairs towards his
+ankle. There was nothing to do but wait for him.
+
+"Shall I tie it up, then?" she repeated at length, a little
+impatient. So he put his leg a little forward.
+
+She looked at the wound, and wiped it a little. Then she folded the
+pad of her own handkerchief, and laid it over the hurt. And again he
+did the same thing, he took her hand as if it were a plaster, and
+applied it to his wound, pressing it cautiously but firmly down. She
+was rather angry. He took no notice of her at all. And she, waiting,
+seemed to go into a dream, a sleep, her arm trembled a little,
+stretched out and fixed. She seemed to lose count, under the firm
+compression he imposed on her. It was as if the pressure on her hand
+pressed her into oblivion.
+
+"Tie it up," he said briskly.
+
+And she, obedient, began to tie the bandage with numb fingers. He
+seemed to have taken the use out of her.
+
+When she had finished, he scrambled to his feet, looked at the organ
+which he was repairing, and looked at the collapsed pair of steps.
+
+"A rotten pair of things to have, to put a man's life in danger," he
+said, towards the steps. Then stubbornly, he rigged them up again,
+and stared again at his interrupted job.
+
+"You won't go on, will you?" she asked.
+
+"It's got to be done, Sunday tomorrow," he said. "If you'd hold them
+steps a minute! There isn't more than a minute's fixing to do. It's
+all done, but fixing."
+
+"Hadn't you better leave it," she said.
+
+"Would you mind holding the steps, so that they don't let me down
+again," he said. Then he took the candle, and hobbled stubbornly and
+angrily up again, with spanner and hammer. For some minutes he
+worked, tapping and readjusting, whilst she held the ricketty steps
+and stared at him from below, the shapeless bulk of his trousers.
+Strange the difference--she could not help thinking it--between the
+vulnerable hairy, and somehow childish leg of the real man, and the
+shapeless form of these workmen's trousers. The kernel, the man
+himself--seemed so tender--the covering so stiff and insentient.
+
+And was he not going to speak to her--not one human word of
+recognition? Men are the most curious and unreal creatures. After
+all he had made use of her. Think how he had pressed her hand gently
+but firmly down, down over his bruise, how he had taken the virtue
+out of her, till she felt all weak and dim. And after that was he
+going to relapse into his tough and ugly workman's hide, and treat
+her as if _she_ were a pair of steps, which might let him down or
+hold him up, as might be.
+
+As she stood clinging to the steps she felt weak and a little
+hysterical. She wanted to summon her strength, to have her own back
+from him. After all he had taken the virtue from her, he might have
+the grace to say thank you, and treat her as if she were a human
+being.
+
+At last he left off tinkering, and looked round.
+
+"Have you finished?" she said.
+
+"Yes," he answered crossly.
+
+And taking the candle he began to clamber down. When he got to the
+bottom he crouched over his leg and felt the bandage.
+
+"That gives you what for," he said, as if it were her fault.
+
+"Is the bandage holding?" she said.
+
+"I think so," he answered churlishly.
+
+"Aren't you going to make sure?" she said.
+
+"Oh, it's all right," he said, turning aside and taking up his
+tools. "I'll make my way home."
+
+"So will I," she answered.
+
+She took the candle and went a little in front. He hurried into his
+coat and gathered his tools, anxious to get away. She faced him,
+holding the candle.
+
+"Look at my hand," she said, holding it out. It was smeared with
+blood, as was the cuff of her dress--a black-and-white striped
+cotton dress.
+
+"Is it hurt?" he said.
+
+"No, but look at it. Look here!" She showed the bloodstains on her
+dress.
+
+"It'll wash out," he said, frightened of her.
+
+"Yes, so it will. But for the present it's there. Don't you think
+you ought to thank me?"
+
+He recoiled a little.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I'm very much obliged."
+
+"You ought to be more than that," she said.
+
+He did not answer, but looked her up and down.
+
+"We'll be going down," he said. "We s'll have folks talking."
+
+Suddenly she began to laugh. It seemed so comical. What a position!
+The candle shook as she laughed. What a man, answering her like a
+little automaton! Seriously, quite seriously he said it to her--"We
+s'll have folks talking!" She laughed in a breathless, hurried way,
+as they tramped downstairs.
+
+At the bottom of the stairs Calladine, the caretaker, met them. He
+was a tall thin man with a black moustache--about fifty years old.
+
+"Have you done for tonight, all of you?" he said, grinning in echo
+to Alvina's still fluttering laughter.
+
+"That's a nice rotten pair of steps you've got up there for a
+death-trap," said Arthur angrily. "Come down on top of me, and I'm
+lucky I haven't got my leg broken. It _is_ near enough."
+
+"Come down with you, did they?" said Calladine good-humouredly. "I
+never knowed 'em come down wi' me."
+
+"You ought to, then. My leg's as near broke as it can be."
+
+"What, have you hurt yourself?"
+
+"I should think I have. Look here--" And he began to pull up his
+trouser leg. But Alvina had given the candle to Calladine, and fled.
+She had a last view of Arthur stooping over his precious leg, while
+Calladine stooped his length and held down the candle.
+
+When she got home she took off her dress and washed herself hard and
+washed the stained sleeve, thoroughly, thoroughly, and threw away
+the wash water and rinsed the wash-bowls with fresh water,
+scrupulously. Then she dressed herself in her black dress once
+more, did her hair, and went downstairs.
+
+But she could not sew--and she could not settle down. It was
+Saturday evening, and her father had opened the shop, Miss Pinnegar
+had gone to Knarborough. She would be back at nine o'clock. Alvina
+set about to make a mock woodcock, or a mock something or other,
+with cheese and an egg and bits of toast. Her eyes were dilated and
+as if amused, mocking, her face quivered a little with irony that
+was not all enjoyable.
+
+"I'm glad you've come," said Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar entered. "The
+supper's just done. I'll ask father if he'll close the shop."
+
+Of course James would not close the shop, though he was merely
+wasting light. He nipped in to eat his supper, and started out again
+with a mouthful the moment he heard the ping of the bell. He kept
+his customers chatting as long as he could. His love for
+conversation had degenerated into a spasmodic passion for chatter.
+
+Alvina looked across at Miss Pinnegar, as the two sat at the meagre
+supper-table. Her eyes were dilated and arched with a mocking,
+almost satanic look.
+
+"I've made up my mind about Albert Witham," said Alvina. Miss
+Pinnegar looked at her.
+
+"Which way?" she asked, demurely, but a little sharp.
+
+"It's all off," said Alvina, breaking into a nervous laugh.
+
+"Why? What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing has happened. I can't stand him."
+
+"Why?--suddenly--" said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"It's not sudden," laughed Alvina. "Not at all. I can't stand him. I
+never could. And I won't try. There! Isn't that plain?" And she went
+off into her hurried laugh, partly at herself, partly at Arthur,
+partly at Albert, partly at Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Oh, well, if you're so sure--" said Miss Pinnegar rather bitingly.
+
+"I _am_ quite sure--" said Alvina. "I'm quite certain."
+
+"Cock-sure people are often most mistaken," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"I'd rather have my own mistakes than somebody else's rights," said
+Alvina.
+
+"Then don't expect anybody to pay for your mistakes," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"It would be all the same if I did," said Alvina.
+
+When she lay in bed, she stared at the light of the street-lamp on
+the wall. She was thinking busily: but heaven knows what she was
+thinking. She had sharpened the edge of her temper. She was waiting
+till tomorrow. She was waiting till she saw Albert Witham. She
+wanted to finish off with him. She was keen to cut clean through any
+correspondence with him. She stared for many hours at the light of
+the street-lamp, and there was a narrowed look in her eyes.
+
+The next day she did not go to Morning Service, but stayed at home
+to cook the dinner. In the evening she sat in her place in the
+choir. In the Withams' pew sat Lottie and Albert--no Arthur. Albert
+kept glancing up. Alvina could not bear the sight of him--she simply
+could not bear the sight of him. Yet in her low, sweet voice she
+sang the alto to the hymns, right to the vesper:
+
+    "Lord keep us safe this night
+    Secure from all our fears,
+    May angels guard us while we sleep
+    Till morning light appears--"
+
+As she sang her alto, and as the soft and emotional harmony of the
+vesper swelled luxuriously through the chapel, she was peeping over
+her folded hands at Lottie's hat. She could not bear Lottie's hats.
+There was something aggressive and vulgar about them. And she simply
+detested the look of the back of Albert's head, as he too stooped to
+the vesper prayer. It looked mean and rather common. She remembered
+Arthur had the same look, bending to prayer. There!--why had she not
+seen it before! That petty, vulgar little look! How could she have
+thought twice of Arthur. She had made a fool of herself, as usual.
+Him and his little leg. She grimaced round the chapel, waiting for
+people to bob up their heads and take their departure.
+
+At the gate Albert was waiting for her. He came forward lifting his
+hat with a smiling and familiar "Good evening!"
+
+"Good evening," she murmured.
+
+"It's ages since I've seen you," he said. "And I've looked out for
+you everywhere."
+
+It was raining a little. She put up her umbrella.
+
+"You'll take a little stroll. The rain isn't much," he said.
+
+"No, thank you," she said. "I must go home."
+
+"Why, what's your hurry! Walk as far as Beeby Bridge. Go on."
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"How's that? What makes you refuse?"
+
+"I don't want to."
+
+He paused and looked down at her. The cold and supercilious look of
+anger, a little spiteful, came into his face.
+
+"Do you mean because of the rain?" he said.
+
+"No. I hope you don't mind. But I don't want to take any more walks.
+I don't mean anything by them."
+
+"Oh, as for that," he said, taking the words out of her mouth. "Why
+should you mean anything by them!" He smiled down on her.
+
+She looked him straight in the face.
+
+"But I'd rather not take any more walks, thank you--none at all,"
+she said, looking him full in the eyes.
+
+"You wouldn't!" he replied, stiffening.
+
+"Yes. I'm quite sure," she said.
+
+"As sure as all that, are you!" he said, with a sneering grimace. He
+stood eyeing her insolently up and down.
+
+"Good-night," she said. His sneering made her furious. Putting her
+umbrella between him and her, she walked off.
+
+"Good-night then," he replied, unseen by her. But his voice was
+sneering and impotent.
+
+She went home quivering. But her soul was burning with satisfaction.
+She had shaken them off.
+
+Later she wondered if she had been unkind to him. But it was
+done--and done for ever. _Vogue la galere._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HOUGHTON'S LAST ENDEAVOUR
+
+
+The trouble with her ship was that it would _not_ sail. It rode
+water-logged in the rotting port of home. All very well to have
+wild, reckless moods of irony and independence, if you have to pay
+for them by withering dustily on the shelf.
+
+Alvina fell again into humility and fear: she began to show symptoms
+of her mother's heart trouble. For day followed day, month followed
+month, season after season went by, and she grubbed away like a
+housemaid in Manchester House, she hurried round doing the shopping,
+she sang in the choir on Sundays, she attended the various chapel
+events, she went out to visit friends, and laughed and talked and
+played games. But all the time, what was there actually in her life?
+Not much. She was withering towards old-maiddom. Already in her
+twenty-eighth year, she spent her days grubbing in the house, whilst
+her father became an elderly, frail man still too lively in mind and
+spirit. Miss Pinnegar began to grow grey and elderly too, money
+became scarcer and scarcer, there was a black day ahead when her
+father would die and the home be broken up, and she would have to
+tackle life as a worker.
+
+There lay the only alternative: in work. She might slave her days
+away teaching the piano, as Miss Frost had done: she might find a
+subordinate post as nurse: she might sit in the cash-desk of some
+shop. Some work of some sort would be found for her. And she would
+sink into the routine of her job, as did so many women, and grow old
+and die, chattering and fluttering. She would have what is called
+her independence. But, seriously faced with that treasure, and
+without the option of refusing it, strange how hideous she found it.
+
+Work!--a job! More even than she rebelled against the Withams did
+she rebel against a job. Albert Witham was distasteful to her--or
+rather, he was not exactly distasteful, he was chiefly incongruous.
+She could never get over the feeling that he was mouthing and
+smiling at her through the glass wall of an aquarium, he being on
+the watery side. Whether she would ever be able to take to his
+strange and dishuman element, who knows? Anyway it would be some
+sort of an adventure: better than a job. She rebelled with all her
+backbone against the word _job_. Even the substitutes, _employment_
+or _work_, were detestable, unbearable. Emphatically, she did not
+want to work for a wage. It was too humiliating. Could anything be
+more _infra dig_ than the performing of a set of special actions day
+in day out, for a life-time, in order to receive some shillings
+every seventh day. Shameful! A condition of shame. The most vulgar,
+sordid and humiliating of all forms of slavery: so mechanical. Far
+better be a slave outright, in contact with all the whims and
+impulses of a human being, than serve some mechanical routine of
+modern work.
+
+She trembled with anger, impotence, and fear. For months, the
+thought of Albert was a torment to her. She might have married him.
+He would have been strange, a strange fish. But were it not better
+to take the strange leap, over into his element, than to condemn
+oneself to the routine of a job? He would have been curious and
+dishuman. But after all, it would have been an experience. In a way,
+she liked him. There was something odd and integral about him, which
+she liked. He was not a liar. In his own line, he was honest and
+direct. Then he would take her to South Africa: a whole new
+_milieu_. And perhaps she would have children. She shivered a
+little. No, not his children! He seemed so curiously cold-blooded.
+And yet, why not? Why not his curious, pale, half cold-blooded
+children, like little fishes of her own? Why not? Everything was
+possible: and even desirable, once one could see the strangeness of
+it. Once she could plunge through the wall of the aquarium! Once she
+could kiss him!
+
+Therefore Miss Pinnegar's quiet harping on the string was
+unbearable.
+
+"I can't understand that you disliked Mr. Witham so much?" said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"We never can understand those things," said Alvina. "I can't
+understand why I dislike tapioca and arrowroot--but I do."
+
+"That's different," said Miss Pinnegar shortly.
+
+"It's no more easy to understand," said Alvina.
+
+"Because there's no need to understand it," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"And is there need to understand the other?"
+
+"Certainly. I can see nothing wrong with him," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Alvina went away in silence. This was in the first months after she
+had given Albert his dismissal. He was at Oxford again--would not
+return to Woodhouse till Christmas. Between her and the Woodhouse
+Withams there was a decided coldness. They never looked at her
+now--nor she at them.
+
+None the less, as Christmas drew near Alvina worked up her feelings.
+Perhaps she would be reconciled to him. She would slip across and
+smile to him. She would take the plunge, once and for all--and kiss
+him and marry him and bear the little half-fishes, his children. She
+worked herself into quite a fever of anticipation.
+
+But when she saw him, the first evening, sitting stiff and staring
+flatly in front of him in Chapel, staring away from everything in
+the world, at heaven knows what--just as fishes stare--then his
+dishumanness came over her again like an arrest, and arrested all
+her flights of fancy. He stared flatly in front of him, and flatly
+set a wall of oblivion between him and her. She trembled and let be.
+
+After Christmas, however, she had nothing at all to think forward
+to. And it was then she seemed to shrink: she seemed positively to
+shrink.
+
+"You never spoke to Mr. Witham?" Miss Pinnegar asked.
+
+"He never spoke to me," replied Alvina.
+
+"He raised his hat to me."
+
+"_You_ ought to have married him, Miss Pinnegar," said Alvina. "He
+would have been right for you." And she laughed rather mockingly.
+
+"There is no need to make provision for me," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+And after this, she was a long time before she forgave Alvina, and
+was really friendly again. Perhaps she would never have forgiven her
+if she had not found her weeping rather bitterly in her mother's
+abandoned sitting-room.
+
+Now so far, the story of Alvina is commonplace enough. It is more or
+less the story of thousands of girls. They all find work. It is the
+ordinary solution of everything. And if we were dealing with an
+ordinary girl we should have to carry on mildly and dully down the
+long years of employment; or, at the best, marriage with some dull
+school-teacher or office-clerk.
+
+But we protest that Alvina is not ordinary. Ordinary people,
+ordinary fates. But extraordinary people, extraordinary fates. Or
+else no fate at all. The all-to-one-pattern modern system is too
+much for most extraordinary individuals. It just kills them off or
+throws them disused aside.
+
+There have been enough stories about ordinary people. I should think
+the Duke of Clarence must even have found malmsey nauseating, when
+he choked and went purple and was really asphyxiated in a butt of
+it. And ordinary people are no malmsey. Just ordinary tap-water. And
+we have been drenched and deluged and so nearly drowned in perpetual
+floods of ordinariness, that tap-water tends to become a really
+hateful fluid to us. We loathe its out-of-the-tap tastelessness. We
+detest ordinary people. We are in peril of our lives from them: and
+in peril of our souls too, for they would damn us one and all to the
+ordinary. Every individual should, by nature, have his extraordinary
+points. But nowadays you may look for them with a microscope, they
+are so worn-down by the regular machine-friction of our average and
+mechanical days.
+
+There was no hope for Alvina in the ordinary. If help came, it would
+have to come from the extraordinary. Hence the extreme peril of her
+case. Hence the bitter fear and humiliation she felt as she drudged
+shabbily on in Manchester House, hiding herself as much as possible
+from public view. Men can suck the heady juice of exalted
+self-importance from the bitter weed of failure--failures are
+usually the most conceited of men: even as was James Houghton. But
+to a woman, failure is another matter. For her it means failure to
+live, failure to establish her own life on the face of the earth.
+And this is humiliating, the ultimate humiliation.
+
+And so the slow years crept round, and the completed coil of each
+one was a further heavy, strangling noose. Alvina had passed her
+twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and even her
+twenty-ninth year. She was in her thirtieth. It ought to be a
+laughing matter. But it isn't.
+
+          Ach, schon zwanzig
+          Ach, schon zwanzig
+       Immer noch durch's Leben tanz' ich
+
+       Jeder, Jeder will mich kuessen
+       Mir das Leben zu versuessen.
+
+          Ach, schon dreissig
+          Ach, schon dreissig
+       Immer Maedchen, Maedchen heiss' ich.
+       In dem Zopf schon graue Haerchen
+       Ach, wie schnell vergehn die Jaehrchen.
+
+          Ach, schon vierzig
+          Ach, schon vierzig
+       Und noch immer Keiner find 'sich.
+       Im gesicht schon graue Flecken
+       Ach, das muss im Spiegel stecken.
+
+          Ach, schon fuenfzig
+          Ach, schon fuenfzig
+       Und noch immer Keiner will 'mich;
+       Soll ich mich mit Baenden zieren
+       Soll ich einen Schleier fuehren?
+          Dann heisst's, die Alte putzt sich,
+          Sie ist fu'fzig, sie ist fu'fzig.
+
+True enough, in Alvina's pig-tail of soft brown the grey hairs were
+already showing. True enough, she still preferred to be thought of
+as a girl. And the slow-footed years, so heavy in passing, were so
+imperceptibly numerous in their accumulation.
+
+But we are not going to follow our song to its fatal and dreary
+conclusion. Presumably, the _ordinary_ old-maid heroine nowadays is
+destined to die in her fifties, she is not allowed to be the
+long-liver of the by-gone novels. Let the song suffice her.
+
+James Houghton had still another kick in him. He had one last scheme
+up his sleeve. Looking out on a changing world, it was the popular
+novelties which had the last fascination for him. The Skating Rink,
+like another Charybdis, had all but entangled him in its swirl as he
+pushed painfully off from the rocks of Throttle-Ha'penny. But he had
+escaped, and for almost three years had lain obscurely in port, like
+a frail and finished bark, selling the last of his bits and bobs,
+and making little splashes in warehouse-oddments. Miss Pinnegar
+thought he had really gone quiet.
+
+But alas, at that degenerated and shabby, down-at-heel club he met
+another tempter: a plump man who had been in the music-hall line as
+a sort of agent. This man had catered for the little shows of
+little towns. He had been in America, out West, doing shows there.
+He had trailed his way back to England, where he had left his wife
+and daughter. But he did not resume his family life. Wherever he
+was, his wife was a hundred miles away. Now he found himself more or
+less stranded in Woodhouse. He had _nearly_ fixed himself up with a
+music-hall in the Potteries--as manager: he had all-but got such
+another place at Ickley, in Derbyshire: he had forced his way
+through the industrial and mining townlets, prospecting for any sort
+of music-hall or show from which he could get a picking. And now, in
+very low water, he found himself at Woodhouse.
+
+Woodhouse had a cinema already: a famous Empire run-up by Jordan,
+the sly builder and decorator who had got on so surprisingly. In
+James's younger days, Jordan was an obscure and illiterate nobody.
+And now he had a motor car, and looked at the tottering James with
+sardonic contempt, from under his heavy, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He
+was rather stout, frail in health, but silent and insuperable, was
+A. W. Jordan.
+
+"I missed a chance there," said James, fluttering. "I missed a rare
+chance there. I ought to have been first with a cinema."
+
+He admitted as much to Mr. May, the stranger who was looking for
+some sort of "managing" job. Mr. May, who also was plump and who
+could hold his tongue, but whose pink, fat face and light-blue eyes
+had a loud look, for all that, put the speech in his pipe and smoked
+it. Not that he smoked a pipe: always cigarettes. But he seized on
+James's admission, as something to be made the most of.
+
+Now Mr. May's mind, though quick, was pedestrian, not winged. He had
+come to Woodhouse not to look at Jordan's "Empire," but at the
+temporary wooden structure that stood in the old Cattle
+Market--"Wright's Cinematograph and Variety Theatre." Wright's was
+not a superior show, like the Woodhouse Empire. Yet it was always
+packed with colliers and work-lasses. But unfortunately there was no
+chance of Mr. May's getting a finger in the Cattle Market pie.
+Wright's was a family affair. Mr. and Mrs. Wright and a son and two
+daughters with their husbands: a tight old lock-up family concern.
+Yet it was the kind of show that appealed to Mr. May: pictures
+between the turns. The cinematograph was but an item in the program,
+amidst the more thrilling incidents--to Mr. May--of conjurors,
+popular songs, five-minute farces, performing birds, and comics. Mr.
+May was too human to believe that a show should consist entirely of
+the dithering eye-ache of a film.
+
+He was becoming really depressed by his failure to find any opening.
+He had his family to keep--and though his honesty was of the variety
+sort, he had a heavy conscience in the direction of his wife and
+daughter. Having been so long in America, he had acquired American
+qualities, one of which was this heavy sort of private innocence,
+coupled with complacent and natural unscrupulousness in "matters of
+business." A man of some odd sensitiveness in material things, he
+liked to have his clothes neat and spick, his linen immaculate, his
+face clean-shaved like a cherub. But alas, his clothes were now
+old-fashioned, so that their rather expensive smartness was
+detrimental to his chances, in spite of their scrupulous look of
+having come almost new out of the bandbox that morning. His rather
+small felt hats still curved jauntily over his full pink face. But
+his eyes looked lugubrious, as if he felt he had not deserved so
+much bad luck, and there were bilious lines beneath them.
+
+So Mr. May, in his room in the Moon and Stars, which was the best inn
+in Woodhouse--he must have a good hotel--lugubriously considered his
+position. Woodhouse offered little or nothing. He must go to Alfreton.
+And would he find anything there? Ah, where, where in this hateful
+world was there refuge for a man saddled with responsibilities, who
+wanted to do his best and was given no opportunity? Mr. May had
+travelled in his Pullman car and gone straight to the best hotel in the
+town, like any other American with money--in America. He had done it
+smart, too. And now, in this grubby penny-picking England, he saw his
+boots being worn-down at the heel, and was afraid of being stranded
+without cash even for a railway ticket. If he had to clear out without
+paying his hotel bill--well, that was the world's fault. He had to
+live. But he must perforce keep enough in hand for a ticket to
+Birmingham. He always said his wife was in London. And he always walked
+down to Lumley to post his letters. He was full of evasions.
+
+So again he walked down to Lumley to post his letters. And he looked
+at Lumley. And he found it a damn god-forsaken hell of a hole. It
+was a long straggle of a dusty road down in the valley, with a
+pale-grey dust and spatter from the pottery, and big chimneys
+bellying forth black smoke right by the road. Then there was a short
+cross-way, up which one saw the iron foundry, a black and rusty
+place. A little further on was the railway junction, and beyond
+that, more houses stretching to Hathersedge, where the stocking
+factories were busy. Compared with Lumley, Woodhouse, whose church
+could be seen sticking up proudly and vulgarly on an eminence, above
+trees and meadow-slopes, was an idyllic heaven.
+
+Mr. May turned in to the Derby Hotel to have a small whiskey. And of
+course he entered into conversation.
+
+"You seem somewhat quiet at Lumley," he said, in his odd,
+refined-showman's voice. "Have you _nothing at all_ in the way of
+amusement?"
+
+"They all go up to Woodhouse, else to Hathersedge."
+
+"But couldn't you support some place of your own--some _rival_ to
+Wright's Variety?"
+
+"Ay--'appen--if somebody started it."
+
+And so it was that James was inoculated with the idea of starting a
+cinema on the virgin soil of Lumley. To the women he said not a
+word. But on the very first morning that Mr. May broached the
+subject, he became a new man. He fluttered like a boy, he fluttered
+as if he had just grown wings.
+
+"Let us go down," said Mr. May, "and look at a site. You pledge
+yourself to nothing--you don't compromise yourself. You merely have
+a site in your mind."
+
+And so it came to pass that, next morning, this oddly assorted
+couple went down to Lumley together. James was very shabby, in his
+black coat and dark grey trousers, and his cheap grey cap. He bent
+forward as he walked, and still nipped along hurriedly, as if
+pursued by fate. His face was thin and still handsome. Odd that his
+cheap cap, by incongruity, made him look more a gentleman. But it
+did. As he walked he glanced alertly hither and thither, and saluted
+everybody.
+
+By his side, somewhat tight and tubby, with his chest out and his
+head back, went the prim figure of Mr. May, reminding one of a
+consequential bird of the smaller species. His plumbago-grey suit
+fitted exactly--save that it was perhaps a little tight. The jacket
+and waistcoat were bound with silk braid of exactly the same shade
+as the cloth. His soft collar, immaculately fresh, had a dark stripe
+like his shirt. His boots were black, with grey suede uppers: but a
+_little_ down at heel. His dark-grey hat was jaunty. Altogether he
+looked very spruce, though a _little_ behind the fashions: very pink
+faced, though his blue eyes were bilious beneath: very much on the
+spot, although the spot was the wrong one.
+
+They discoursed amiably as they went, James bending forward, Mr. May
+bending back. Mr. May took the refined man-of-the-world tone.
+
+"Of course," he said--he used the two words very often, and
+pronounced the second, rather mincingly, to rhyme with _sauce_: "Of
+course," said Mr. May, "it's a disgusting place--_disgusting_! I
+never was in a worse, in all the _cauce_ of my travels. But
+_then_--that isn't the point--"
+
+He spread his plump hands from his immaculate shirt-cuffs.
+
+"No, it isn't. Decidedly it isn't. That's beside the point
+altogether. What we want--" began James.
+
+"Is an audience--of _cauce_--! And we have it--! Virgin soil--!
+
+"Yes, decidedly. Untouched! An unspoiled market."
+
+"An unspoiled market!" reiterated Mr. May, in full confirmation,
+though with a faint flicker of a smile. "How very _fortunate_ for
+us."
+
+"Properly handled," said James. "Properly handled."
+
+"Why yes--of _cauce_! Why _shouldn't_ we handle it properly!"
+
+"Oh, we shall manage that, we shall manage that," came the quick,
+slightly husky voice of James.
+
+"Of _cauce_ we shall! Why bless my life, if we can't manage an
+audience in Lumley, what _can_ we do."
+
+"We have a guide in the matter of their taste," said James. "We can
+see what Wright's are doing--and Jordan's--and we can go to
+Hathersedge and Knarborough and Alfreton--beforehand, that is--"
+
+"Why certainly--if you think it's _necessary_. I'll do all that for
+you. _And_ I'll interview the managers and the performers
+themselves--as if I were a journalist, don't you see. I've done a
+fair amount of journalism, and nothing easier than to get cards from
+various newspapers."
+
+"Yes, that's a good suggestion," said James. "As if you were going
+to write an account in the newspapers--excellent."
+
+"And so simple! You pick up just _all_ the information you require."
+
+"Decidedly--decidedly!" said James.
+
+And so behold our two heroes sniffing round the sordid backs and
+wasted meadows and marshy places of Lumley. They found one barren
+patch where two caravans were standing. A woman was peeling
+potatoes, sitting on the bottom step of her caravan. A half-caste
+girl came up with a large pale-blue enamelled jug of water. In the
+background were two booths covered up with coloured canvas.
+Hammering was heard inside.
+
+"Good-morning!" said Mr. May, stopping before the woman. "'Tisn't
+fair time, is it?"
+
+"No, it's no fair," said the woman.
+
+"I see. You're just on your own. Getting on all right?"
+
+"Fair," said the woman.
+
+"Only fair! Sorry. Good-morning."
+
+Mr. May's quick eye, roving round, had seen a negro stoop from under
+the canvas that covered one booth. The negro was thin, and looked
+young but rather frail, and limped. His face was very like that of
+the young negro in Watteau's drawing--pathetic, wistful,
+north-bitten. In an instant Mr. May had taken all in: the man was
+the woman's husband--they were acclimatized in these regions: the
+booth where he had been hammering was a Hoop-La. The other would be
+a cocoanut-shy. Feeling the instant American dislike for the
+presence of a negro, Mr. May moved off with James.
+
+They found out that the woman was a Lumley woman, that she had two
+children, that the negro was a most quiet and respectable chap, but
+that the family kept to itself, and didn't mix up with Lumley.
+
+"I should think so," said Mr. May, a little disgusted even at the
+suggestion.
+
+Then he proceeded to find out how long they had stood on this
+ground--three months--how long they would remain--only another week,
+then they were moving off to Alfreton fair--who was the owner of the
+pitch--Mr. Bows, the butcher. Ah! And what was the ground used for?
+Oh, it was building land. But the foundation wasn't very good.
+
+"The very thing! Aren't we _fortunate_!" cried Mr. May, perking up
+the moment they were in the street. But this cheerfulness and brisk
+perkiness was a great strain on him. He missed his eleven o'clock
+whiskey terribly--terribly--his pick-me-up! And he daren't confess
+it to James, who, he knew, was T-T. So he dragged his weary and
+hollow way up to Woodhouse, and sank with a long "Oh!" of nervous
+exhaustion in the private bar of the Moon and Stars. He wrinkled his
+short nose. The smell of the place was distasteful to him. The
+_disgusting_ beer that the colliers drank. Oh!--he _was_ so tired.
+He sank back with his whiskey and stared blankly, dismally in front
+of him. Beneath his eyes he looked more bilious still. He felt
+thoroughly out of luck, and petulant.
+
+None the less he sallied out with all his old bright perkiness, the
+next time he had to meet James. He hadn't yet broached the question
+of costs. When would he be able to get an advance from James? He
+_must_ hurry the matter forward. He brushed his crisp, curly brown
+hair carefully before the mirror. How grey he was at the temples! No
+wonder, dear me, with such a life! He was in his shirt-sleeves. His
+waistcoat, with its grey satin back, fitted him tightly. He had
+filled out--but he hadn't developed a corporation. Not at all. He
+looked at himself sideways, and feared dismally he was thinner. He
+was one of those men who carry themselves in a birdie fashion, so
+that their tail sticks out a little behind, jauntily. How
+wonderfully the satin of his waistcoat had worn! He looked at his
+shirt-cuffs. They were going. Luckily, when he had had the shirts
+made he had secured enough material for the renewing of cuffs and
+neckbands. He put on his coat, from which he had flicked the
+faintest suspicion of dust, and again settled himself to go out and
+meet James on the question of an advance. He simply must have an
+advance.
+
+He didn't get it that day, none the less. The next morning he was
+ringing for his tea at six o'clock. And before ten he had already
+flitted to Lumley and back, he had already had a word with Mr. Bows,
+about that pitch, and, overcoming all his repugnance, a word with
+the quiet, frail, sad negro, about Alfreton fair, and the chance of
+buying some sort of collapsible building, for his cinematograph.
+
+With all this news he met James--not at the shabby club, but in the
+deserted reading-room of the so-called Artizans Hall--where never an
+artizan entered, but only men of James's class. Here they took the
+chessboard and pretended to start a game. But their conversation
+was rapid and secretive.
+
+Mr. May disclosed all his discoveries. And then he said,
+tentatively:
+
+"Hadn't we better think about the financial part now? If we're going
+to look round for an erection"--curious that he always called it an
+erection--"we shall have to know what we are going to spend."
+
+"Yes--yes. Well--" said James vaguely, nervously, giving a glance at
+Mr. May. Whilst Mr. May abstractedly fingered his black knight.
+
+"You see at the moment," said Mr. May, "I have no funds that I can
+represent in cash. I have no doubt a little _later_--if we need
+it--I can find a few hundreds. Many things are _due_--numbers of
+things. But it is so difficult to _collect_ one's dues, particularly
+from America." He lifted his blue eyes to James Houghton. "Of course
+we can _delay_ for some time, until I get my supplies. Or I can act
+just as your manager--you can _employ_ me--"
+
+He watched James's face. James looked down at the chessboard. He was
+fluttering with excitement. He did not want a partner. He wanted to
+be in this all by himself. He hated partners.
+
+"You will agree to be manager, at a fixed salary?" said James
+hurriedly and huskily, his fine fingers slowly rubbing each other,
+along the sides.
+
+"Why yes, willingly, if you'll give me the option of becoming your
+partner upon terms of mutual agreement, later on."
+
+James did not quite like this.
+
+"What terms are you thinking of?" he asked.
+
+"Well, it doesn't matter for the moment. Suppose for the moment I
+enter an engagement as your manager, at a salary, let us say, of--of
+what, do you think?"
+
+"So much a week?" said James pointedly.
+
+"Hadn't we better make it monthly?"
+
+The two men looked at one another.
+
+"With a month's notice on either hand?" continued Mr. May.
+
+"How much?" said James, avaricious.
+
+Mr. May studied his own nicely kept hands.
+
+"Well, I don't see how I can do it under twenty pounds a month. Of
+course it's ridiculously low. In America I _never_ accepted less
+than three hundred dollars a month, and that was my poorest and
+lowest. But of _cauce_, England's not America--more's the pity."
+
+But James was shaking his head in a vibrating movement.
+
+"Impossible!" he replied shrewdly. "Impossible! Twenty pounds a
+month? Impossible. I couldn't do it. I couldn't think of it."
+
+"Then name a figure. Say what you _can_ think of," retorted Mr. May,
+rather annoyed by this shrewd, shaking head of a doddering
+provincial, and by his own sudden collapse into mean subordination.
+
+"I can't make it more than ten pounds a month," said James sharply.
+
+"What!" screamed Mr. May. "What am I to live on? What is my wife to
+live on?"
+
+"I've got to make it pay," said James. "If I've got to make it pay,
+I must keep down expenses at the beginning."
+
+"No,--on the contrary. You must be prepared to spend something at
+the beginning. If you go in a pinch-and-scrape fashion in the
+beginning, you will get nowhere at all. Ten pounds a month! Why it's
+impossible! Ten pounds a month! But how am I to _live_?"
+
+James's head still vibrated in a negative fashion. And the two men
+came to no agreement _that_ morning. Mr. May went home more sick and
+weary than ever, and took his whiskey more biliously. But James was
+lit with the light of battle.
+
+Poor Mr. May had to gather together his wits and his sprightliness
+for his next meeting. He had decided he must make a percentage in
+other ways. He schemed in all known ways. He would accept the ten
+pounds--but really, did ever you hear of anything so ridiculous in
+your life, _ten pounds!_--dirty old screw, dirty, screwing old
+woman! He would accept the ten pounds; but he would get his own
+back.
+
+He flitted down once more to the negro, to ask him of a certain
+wooden show-house, with section sides and roof, an old travelling
+theatre which stood closed on Selverhay Common, and might probably
+be sold. He pressed across once more to Mr. Bows. He wrote various
+letters and drew up certain notes. And the next morning, by eight
+o'clock, he was on his way to Selverhay: walking, poor man, the long
+and uninteresting seven miles on his small and rather tight-shod
+feet, through country that had been once beautiful but was now
+scrubbled all over with mining villages, on and on up heavy hills
+and down others, asking his way from uncouth clowns, till at last he
+came to the Common, which wasn't a Common at all, but a sort of
+village more depressing than usual: naked, high, exposed to heaven
+and to full barren view.
+
+There he saw the theatre-booth. It was old and sordid-looking, painted
+dark-red and dishevelled with narrow, tattered announcements. The
+grass was growing high up the wooden sides. If only it wasn't rotten?
+He crouched and probed and pierced with his pen-knife, till a
+country-policeman in a high helmet like a jug saw him, got off his
+bicycle and came stealthily across the grass wheeling the same bicycle,
+and startled poor Mr. May almost into apoplexy by demanding behind him,
+in a loud voice:
+
+"What're you after?"
+
+Mr. May rose up with flushed face and swollen neck-veins, holding
+his pen-knife in his hand.
+
+"Oh," he said, "good-morning." He settled his waistcoat and glanced
+over the tall, lanky constable and the glittering bicycle. "I was
+taking a look at this old erection, with a view to buying it. I'm
+afraid it's going rotten from the bottom."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," said the policeman suspiciously, watching Mr.
+May shut the pocket knife.
+
+"I'm afraid that makes it useless for my purpose," said Mr. May.
+
+The policeman did not deign to answer.
+
+"Could you tell me where I can find out about it, anyway?" Mr. May
+used his most affable, man of the world manner. But the policeman
+continued to stare him up and down, as if he were some marvellous
+specimen unknown on the normal, honest earth.
+
+"What, find out?" said the constable.
+
+"About being able to buy it," said Mr. May, a little testily. It was
+with great difficulty he preserved his man-to-man openness and
+brightness.
+
+"They aren't here," said the constable.
+
+"Oh indeed! Where _are_ they? And _who_ are they?"
+
+The policeman eyed him more suspiciously than ever.
+
+"Cowlard's their name. An' they live in Offerton when they aren't
+travelling."
+
+"Cowlard--thank you." Mr. May took out his pocket-book.
+"C-o-w-l-a-r-d--is that right? And the address, please?"
+
+"I dunno th' street. But you can find out from the Three Bells.
+That's Missis' sister."
+
+"The Three Bells--thank you. Offerton did you say?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Offerton!--where's that?"
+
+"About eight mile."
+
+"Really--and how do you get there?"
+
+"You can walk--or go by train."
+
+"Oh, there is a station?"
+
+"Station!" The policeman looked at him as if he were either a
+criminal or a fool.
+
+"Yes. There _is_ a station there?"
+
+"Ay--biggest next to Chesterfield--"
+
+Suddenly it dawned on Mr. May.
+
+"Oh-h!" he said. "You mean _Alfreton_--"
+
+"Alfreton, yes." The policeman was now convinced the man was a
+wrong-'un. But fortunately he was not a pushing constable, he did
+not want to rise in the police-scale: thought himself safest at the
+bottom.
+
+"And which is the way to the station here?" asked Mr. May.
+
+"Do yer want Pinxon or Bull'ill?"
+
+"Pinxon or Bull'ill?"
+
+"There's two," said the policeman.
+
+"For Selverhay?" asked Mr. May.
+
+"Yes, them's the two."
+
+"And which is the best?"
+
+"Depends what trains is runnin'. Sometimes yer have to wait an hour
+or two--"
+
+"You don't know the trains, do you--?"
+
+"There's one in th' afternoon--but I don't know if it'd be gone by
+the time you get down."
+
+"To where?"
+
+"Bull'ill."
+
+"Oh Bull'ill! Well, perhaps I'll try. Could you tell me the way?"
+
+When, after an hour's painful walk, Mr. May came to Bullwell Station
+and found there was no train till six in the evening, he felt he
+was earning every penny he would ever get from Mr. Houghton.
+
+The first intelligence which Miss Pinnegar and Alvina gathered of
+the coming adventure was given them when James announced that he had
+let the shop to Marsden, the grocer next door. Marsden had agreed to
+take over James's premises at the same rent as that of the premises
+he already occupied, and moreover to do all alterations and put in
+all fixtures himself. This was a grand scoop for James: not a penny
+was it going to cost him, and the rent was clear profit.
+
+"But when?" cried Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"He takes possession on the first of October."
+
+"Well--it's a good idea. The shop isn't worth while," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"Certainly it isn't," said James, rubbing his hands: a sign that he
+was rarely excited and pleased.
+
+"And you'll just retire, and live quietly," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"I shall see," said James. And with those fatal words he wafted away
+to find Mr. May.
+
+James was now nearly seventy years old. Yet he nipped about like a
+leaf in the wind. Only, it was a frail leaf.
+
+"Father's got something going," said Alvina, in a warning voice.
+
+"I believe he has," said Miss Pinnegar pensively. "I wonder what it
+is, now."
+
+"I can't imagine," laughed Alvina. "But I'll bet it's something
+awful--else he'd have told us."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar slowly. "Most likely he would. I wonder
+what it can be."
+
+"I haven't an idea," said Alvina.
+
+Both women were so retired, they had heard nothing of James's little
+trips down to Lumley. So they watched like cats for their man's
+return, at dinner-time.
+
+Miss Pinnegar saw him coming along talking excitedly to Mr. May,
+who, all in grey, with his chest perkily stuck out like a robin, was
+looking rather pinker than usual. Having come to an agreement, he
+had ventured on whiskey and soda in honour, and James had actually
+taken a glass of port.
+
+"Alvina!" Miss Pinnegar called discreetly down the shop. "Alvina!
+Quick!"
+
+Alvina flew down to peep round the corner of the shop window. There
+stood the two men, Mr. May like a perky, pink-faced grey bird
+standing cocking his head in attention to James Houghton, and
+occasionally catching James by the lapel of his coat, in a vain
+desire to get a word in, whilst James's head nodded and his face
+simply wagged with excited speech, as he skipped from foot to foot,
+and shifted round his listener.
+
+"Who _ever_ can that common-looking man be?" said Miss Pinnegar, her
+heart going down to her boots.
+
+"I can't imagine," said Alvina, laughing at the comic sight.
+
+"Don't you think he's dreadful?" said the poor elderly woman.
+
+"Perfectly impossible. Did ever you see such a pink face?"
+
+"_And_ the braid binding!" said Miss Pinnegar in indignation.
+
+"Father might almost have sold him the suit," said Alvina.
+
+"Let us hope he hasn't sold your father, that's all," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+The two men had moved a few steps further towards home, and the
+women prepared to flee indoors. Of course it was frightfully wrong
+to be standing peeping in the high street at all. But who could
+consider the proprieties now?
+
+"They've stopped again," said Miss Pinnegar, recalling Alvina.
+
+The two men were having a few more excited words, their voices just
+audible.
+
+"I do wonder who he can be," murmured Miss Pinnegar miserably.
+
+"In the theatrical line, I'm sure," declared Alvina.
+
+"Do you think so?" said Miss Pinnegar. "Can't be! Can't be!"
+
+"He couldn't be anything else, don't you think?"
+
+"Oh I _can't_ believe it, I can't."
+
+But now Mr. May had laid his detaining hand on James's arm. And now
+he was shaking his employer by the hand. And now James, in his cheap
+little cap, was smiling a formal farewell. And Mr. May, with a
+graceful wave of his grey-suede-gloved hand, was turning back to the
+Moon and Stars, strutting, whilst James was running home on
+tip-toe, in his natural hurry.
+
+Alvina hastily retreated, but Miss Pinnegar stood it out. James
+started as he nipped into the shop entrance, and found her
+confronting him.
+
+"Oh--Miss Pinnegar!" he said, and made to slip by her.
+
+"Who was that man?" she asked sharply, as if James were a child whom
+she could endure no more.
+
+"Eh? I beg your pardon?" said James, starting back.
+
+"Who was that man?"
+
+"Eh? Which man?"
+
+James was a little deaf, and a little husky.
+
+"The man--" Miss Pinnegar turned to the door. "There! That man!"
+
+James also came to the door, and peered out as if he expected to see
+a sight. The sight of Mr. May's tight and perky back, the jaunty
+little hat and the grey suede hands retreating quite surprised him.
+He was angry at being introduced to the sight.
+
+"Oh," he said. "That's my manager." And he turned hastily down the
+shop, asking for his dinner.
+
+Miss Pinnegar stood for some moments in pure oblivion in the shop
+entrance. Her consciousness left her. When she recovered, she felt
+she was on the brink of hysteria and collapse. But she hardened
+herself once more, though the effort cost her a year of her life.
+She had never collapsed, she had never fallen into hysteria.
+
+She gathered herself together, though bent a little as from a blow,
+and, closing the shop door, followed James to the living room, like
+the inevitable. He was eating his dinner, and seemed oblivious of
+her entry. There was a smell of Irish stew.
+
+"What manager?" said Miss Pinnegar, short, silent, and inevitable in
+the doorway.
+
+But James was in one of his abstractions, his trances.
+
+"What manager?" persisted Miss Pinnegar.
+
+But he still bent unknowing over his plate and gobbled his Irish
+stew.
+
+"Mr. Houghton!" said Miss Pinnegar, in a sudden changed voice. She
+had gone a livid yellow colour. And she gave a queer, sharp little
+rap on the table with her hand.
+
+James started. He looked up bewildered, as one startled out of
+sleep.
+
+"Eh?" he said, gaping. "Eh?"
+
+"Answer me," said Miss Pinnegar. "What manager?"
+
+"Manager? Eh? Manager? What manager?"
+
+She advanced a little nearer, menacing in her black dress. James
+shrank.
+
+"What manager?" he re-echoed. "My manager. The manager of my
+cinema."
+
+Miss Pinnegar looked at him, and looked at him, and did not speak.
+In that moment all the anger which was due to him from all womanhood
+was silently discharged at him, like a black bolt of silent
+electricity. But Miss Pinnegar, the engine of wrath, felt she would
+burst.
+
+"Cinema! Cinema! Do you mean to tell me--" but she was really
+suffocated, the vessels of her heart and breast were bursting. She
+had to lean her hand on the table.
+
+It was a terrible moment. She looked ghastly and terrible, with her
+mask-like face and her stony eyes and her bluish lips. Some fearful
+thunderbolt seemed to fall. James withered, and was still. There was
+silence for minutes, a suspension.
+
+And in those minutes, she finished with him. She finished with him
+for ever. When she had sufficiently recovered, she went to her
+chair, and sat down before her plate. And in a while she began to
+eat, as if she were alone.
+
+Poor Alvina, for whom this had been a dreadful and uncalled-for
+moment, had looked from one to another, and had also dropped her
+head to her plate. James too, with bent head, had forgotten to eat.
+Miss Pinnegar ate very slowly, alone.
+
+"Don't you want your dinner, Alvina?" she said at length.
+
+"Not as much as I did," said Alvina.
+
+"Why not?" said Miss Pinnegar. She sounded short, almost like Miss
+Frost. Oddly like Miss Frost.
+
+Alvina took up her fork and began to eat automatically.
+
+"I always think," said Miss Pinnegar, "Irish stew is more tasty with
+a bit of Swede in it."
+
+"So do I, really," said Alvina. "But Swedes aren't come yet."
+
+"Oh! Didn't we have some on Tuesday?"
+
+"No, they were yellow turnips--but they weren't Swedes."
+
+"Well then, yellow turnip. I like a little yellow turnip," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"I might have put some in, if I'd known," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes. We will another time," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Not another word about the cinema: not another breath. As soon as
+James had eaten his plum tart, he ran away.
+
+"What can he have been doing?" said Alvina when he had gone.
+
+"Buying a cinema show--and that man we saw is his manager. It's
+quite simple."
+
+"But what are we going to do with a cinema show?" said Alvina.
+
+"It's what is _he_ going to do. It doesn't concern me. It's no
+concern of mine. I shall not lend him anything, I shall not think
+about it, it will be the same to me as if there _were_ no cinema.
+Which is all I have to say," announced Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"But he's gone and done it," said Alvina.
+
+"Then let him go through with it. It's no affair of mine. After all,
+your father's affairs don't concern me. It would be impertinent of
+me to introduce myself into them."
+
+"They don't concern _me_ very much," said Alvina.
+
+"You're different. You're his daughter. He's no connection of mine,
+I'm glad to say. I pity your mother."
+
+"Oh, but he was always alike," said Alvina.
+
+"That's where it is," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+There was something fatal about her feelings. Once they had gone
+cold, they would never warm up again. As well try to warm up a
+frozen mouse. It only putrifies.
+
+But poor Miss Pinnegar after this looked older, and seemed to get a
+little round-backed. And the things she said reminded Alvina so
+often of Miss Frost.
+
+James fluttered into conversation with his daughter the next
+evening, after Miss Pinnegar had retired.
+
+"I told you I had bought a cinematograph building," said James. "We
+are negotiating for the machinery now: the dynamo and so on."
+
+"But where is it to be?" asked Alvina.
+
+"Down at Lumley. I'll take you and show you the site tomorrow. The
+building--it is a frame-section travelling theatre--will arrive on
+Thursday--next Thursday."
+
+"But who is in with you, father?"
+
+"I am quite alone--quite alone," said James Houghton. "I have found
+an excellent manager, who knows the whole business thoroughly--a Mr.
+May. Very nice man. Very nice man."
+
+"Rather short and dressed in grey?"
+
+"Yes. And I have been thinking--if Miss Pinnegar will take the cash
+and issue tickets: if she will take over the ticket-office: and you
+will play the piano: and if Mr. May learns the control of the
+machine--he is having lessons now--: and if I am the indoors
+attendant, we shan't need any more staff."
+
+"Miss Pinnegar won't take the cash, father."
+
+"Why not? Why not?"
+
+"I can't say why not. But she won't do anything--and if I were you I
+wouldn't ask her."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Oh, well," said James, huffy. "She isn't indispensable."
+
+And Alvina was to play the piano! Here was a blow for her! She
+hurried off to her bedroom to laugh and cry at once. She just saw
+herself at that piano, banging off the _Merry Widow Waltz_, and, in
+tender moments, _The Rosary_. Time after time, _The Rosary_. While
+the pictures flickered and the audience gave shouts and some grubby
+boy called "Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let,
+penny a bar!" away she banged at another tune.
+
+What a sight for the gods! She burst out laughing. And at the same
+time, she thought of her mother and Miss Frost, and she cried as if
+her heart would break. And then all kinds of comic and incongruous
+tunes came into her head. She imagined herself dressing up with most
+priceless variations. _Linger Longer Lucy_, for example. She began
+to spin imaginary harmonies and variations in her head, upon the
+theme of _Linger Longer Lucy_.
+
+       "Linger longer Lucy, linger longer Loo.
+        How I love to linger longer linger long o' you.
+        Listen while I sing, love, promise you'll be true,
+        And linger longer longer linger linger longer Loo."
+
+All the tunes that used to make Miss Frost so angry. All the Dream
+Waltzes and Maiden's Prayers, and the awful songs.
+
+          "For in Spooney-ooney Island
+           Is there any one cares for me?
+           In Spooney-ooney Island
+           Why surely there ought to be--"
+
+Poor Miss Frost! Alvina imagined herself leading a chorus of
+collier louts, in a bad atmosphere of "Woodbines" and oranges,
+during the intervals when the pictures had collapsed.
+
+       "How'd you like to spoon with me?
+        How'd you like to spoon with me?
+                                       (_Why ra-ther!_)
+
+        Underneath the oak-tree nice and shady
+        Calling me your tootsey-wootsey lady?
+        How'd you like to hug and squeeze,
+                                       (_Just try me!_)
+
+        Dandle me upon your knee,
+        Calling me your little lovey-dovey--
+        How'd you like to spoon with me?
+                                       (_Oh-h--Go on!_)"
+
+Alvina worked herself into quite a fever, with her imaginings.
+
+In the morning she told Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar, "you see me issuing tickets, don't you?
+Yes--well. I'm afraid he will have to do that part himself. And
+you're going to play the piano. It's a disgrace! It's a disgrace!
+It's a disgrace! It's a mercy Miss Frost and your mother are dead.
+He's lost every bit of shame--every bit--if he ever had any--which I
+doubt very much. Well, all I can say, I'm glad I am not concerned.
+And I'm sorry for you, for being his daughter. I'm heart sorry for
+you, I am. Well, well--no sense of shame--no sense of shame--"
+
+And Miss Pinnegar padded out of the room.
+
+Alvina walked down to Lumley and was shown the site and was
+introduced to Mr. May. He bowed to her in his best American fashion,
+and treated her with admirable American deference.
+
+"Don't you think," he said to her, "it's an admirable scheme?"
+
+"Wonderful," she replied.
+
+"Of cauce," he said, "the erection will be a merely temporary one.
+Of cauce it won't be anything to _look_ at: just an old wooden
+travelling theatre. But _then_--all we need is to make a start."
+
+"And you are going to work the film?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he said with pride, "I spend every evening with the operator
+at Marsh's in Knarborough. Very interesting I find it--very
+interesting indeed. And _you_ are going to play the piano?" he said,
+perking his head on one side and looking at her archly.
+
+"So father says," she answered.
+
+"But what do _you_ say?" queried Mr. May.
+
+"I suppose I don't have any say."
+
+"Oh but _surely_. Surely you won't do it if you don't wish to. That
+would never do. Can't we hire some young fellow--?" And he turned to
+Mr. Houghton with a note of query.
+
+"Alvina can play as well as anybody in Woodhouse," said James. "We
+mustn't add to our expenses. And wages in particular--"
+
+"But surely Miss Houghton will have her wage. The labourer is worthy
+of his hire. Surely! Even of _her_ hire, to put it in the feminine.
+And for the same wage you could get some unimportant fellow with
+strong wrists. I'm afraid it will tire Miss Houghton to death--"
+
+"I don't think so," said James. "I don't think so. Many of the turns
+she will not need to accompany--"
+
+"Well, if it comes to that," said Mr. May, "I can accompany some of
+them myself, when I'm not operating the film. I'm not an expert
+pianist--but I can play a little, you know--" And he trilled his
+fingers up and down an imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina,
+cocking his eye at her smiling a little archly.
+
+"I'm sure," he continued, "I can accompany anything except a man
+juggling dinner-plates--and then I'd be afraid of making him drop
+the plates. But songs--oh, songs! _Con molto espressione!_"
+
+And again he trilled the imaginary keyboard, and smiled his rather
+fat cheeks at Alvina.
+
+She began to like him. There was something a little dainty about
+him, when you knew him better--really rather fastidious. A showman,
+true enough! Blatant too. But fastidiously so.
+
+He came fairly frequently to Manchester House after this. Miss
+Pinnegar was rather stiff with him and he did not like her. But he
+was very happy sitting chatting tete-a-tete with Alvina.
+
+"Where is your wife?" said Alvina to him.
+
+"My wife! Oh, don't speak of _her_," he said comically. "She's in
+London."
+
+"Why not speak of her?" asked Alvina.
+
+"Oh, every reason for not speaking of her. We don't get on at _all_
+well, she and I."
+
+"What a pity," said Alvina.
+
+"Dreadful pity! But what are you to do?" He laughed comically. Then
+he became grave. "No," he said. "She's an impossible person."
+
+"I see," said Alvina.
+
+"I'm sure you _don't_ see," said Mr. May. "Don't--" and here he laid
+his hand on Alvina's arm--"don't run away with the idea that she's
+_immoral_! You'd never make a greater mistake. Oh dear me, no.
+Morality's her strongest point. Live on three lettuce leaves, and
+give the rest to the char. That's her. Oh, dreadful times we had in
+those first years. We only lived together for three years. But dear
+_me_! how awful it was!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"There was no pleasing the woman. She wouldn't eat. If I said to her
+'What shall we have for supper, Grace?' as sure as anything she'd
+answer 'Oh, I shall take a bath when I go to bed--that will be my
+supper.' She was one of these advanced vegetarian women, don't you
+know."
+
+"How extraordinary!" said Alvina.
+
+"Extraordinary! I should think so. Extraordinary hard lines on _me_.
+And she wouldn't let _me_ eat either. She followed me to the kitchen in
+a _fury_ while I cooked for myself. Why imagine! I prepared a dish of
+champignons: oh, most _beautiful_ champignons, beautiful--and I put
+them on the stove to fry in butter: beautiful young champignons. I'm
+hanged if she didn't go into the kitchen while my back was turned, and
+pour a pint of old carrot-water into the pan. I was _furious_.
+Imagine!--beautiful fresh young champignons--"
+
+"Fresh mushrooms," said Alvina.
+
+"Mushrooms--most beautiful things in the world. Oh! don't you think
+so?" And he rolled his eyes oddly to heaven.
+
+"They _are_ good," said Alvina.
+
+"I should say so. And swamped--_swamped_ with her dirty old carrot
+water. Oh I was so angry. And all she could say was, 'Well, I
+didn't want to waste it!' Didn't want to waste her old carrot water,
+and so _ruined_ my champignons. _Can_ you imagine such a person?"
+
+"It must have been trying."
+
+"I should think it was. I lost weight. I lost I don't know how many
+pounds, the first year I was married to that woman. She hated me to
+eat. Why, one of her great accusations against me, at the last, was
+when she said: 'I've looked round the larder,' she said to me, 'and
+seen it was quite empty, and I thought to myself: _Now_ he _can't_
+cook a supper! And _then_ you did!' There! What do you think of
+that? The spite of it! 'And _then_ you did!'"
+
+"What did she expect you to live on?" asked Alvina.
+
+"Nibble a lettuce leaf with her, and drink water from the tap--and
+then elevate myself with a Bernard Shaw pamphlet. That was the sort
+of woman she was. All it gave _me_ was gas in the stomach."
+
+"So overbearing!" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh!" he turned his eyes to heaven, and spread his hands. "I didn't
+believe my senses. I didn't know such people existed. And her
+friends! Oh the dreadful friends she had--these Fabians! Oh, their
+eugenics. They wanted to examine my private morals, for eugenic
+reasons. Oh, you can't imagine such a state. Worse than the Spanish
+Inquisition. And I stood it for three years. _How_ I stood it, I
+don't know--"
+
+"Now don't you see her?"
+
+"Never! I never let her know where I am! But I _support_ her, of
+cauce."
+
+"And your daughter?"
+
+"Oh, she's the dearest child in the world. I saw her at a friend's
+when I came back from America. Dearest little thing in the world.
+But of _cauce_ suspicious of me. Treats me as if she didn't _know_
+me--"
+
+"What a pity!"
+
+"Oh--unbearable!" He spread his plump, manicured hands, on one
+finger of which was a green intaglio ring.
+
+"How old is your daughter?"
+
+"Fourteen."
+
+"What is her name?"
+
+"Gemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud
+Callum, the _danseuse_."
+
+Curious the intimacy Mr. May established with Alvina at once. But
+it was all purely verbal, descriptive. He made no physical advances.
+On the contrary, he was like a dove-grey, disconsolate bird pecking
+the crumbs of Alvina's sympathy, and cocking his eye all the time to
+watch that she did not advance one step towards him. If he had seen
+the least sign of coming-on-ness in her, he would have fluttered off
+in a great dither. Nothing _horrified_ him more than a woman who was
+coming-on towards him. It horrified him, it exasperated him, it made
+him hate the whole tribe of women: horrific two-legged cats without
+whiskers. If he had been a bird, his innate horror of a cat would
+have been such. He liked the _angel_, and particularly the
+angel-mother in woman. Oh!--that he worshipped. But coming-on-ness!
+
+So he never wanted to be seen out-of-doors with Alvina; if he met
+her in the street he bowed and passed on: bowed very deep and
+reverential, indeed, but passed on, with his little back a little
+more strutty and assertive than ever. Decidedly he turned his back
+on her in public.
+
+But Miss Pinnegar, a regular old, grey, dangerous she-puss, eyed him
+from the corner of her pale eye, as he turned tail.
+
+"So unmanly!" she murmured. "In his dress, in his way, in
+everything--so unmanly."
+
+"If I was you, Alvina," she said, "I shouldn't see so much of Mr.
+May, in the drawing-room. People will talk."
+
+"I should almost feel flattered," laughed Alvina.
+
+"What do you mean?" snapped Miss Pinnegar.
+
+None the less, Mr. May was dependable in matters of business. He was
+up at half-past five in the morning, and by seven was well on his
+way. He sailed like a stiff little ship before a steady breeze,
+hither and thither, out of Woodhouse and back again, and across from
+side to side. Sharp and snappy, he was, on the spot. He trussed
+himself up, when he was angry or displeased, and sharp, snip-snap
+came his words, rather like scissors.
+
+"But how is it--" he attacked Arthur Witham--"that the gas isn't
+connected with the main yet? It was to be ready yesterday."
+
+"We've had to wait for the fixings for them brackets," said Arthur.
+
+"_Had_ to _wait_ for _fixings_! But didn't you know a fortnight ago
+that you'd want the fixings?"
+
+"I thought we should have some as would do."
+
+"Oh! you thought so! Really! Kind of you to think so. And have you
+just thought about those that are coming, or have you made sure?"
+
+Arthur looked at him sullenly. He hated him. But Mr. May's sharp
+touch was not to be foiled.
+
+"I hope you'll go further than _thinking_," said Mr. May. "Thinking
+seems such a slow process. And when do you expect the fittings--?"
+
+"Tomorrow."
+
+"What! Another day! Another day _still!_ But you're strangely
+indifferent to time, in your line of business. Oh! _Tomorrow!_
+Imagine it! Two days late already, and then _tomorrow!_ Well I hope
+by tomorrow you mean _Wednesday_, and not tomorrow's tomorrow, or
+some other absurd and fanciful date that you've just _thought
+about_. But now, _do_ have the thing finished by tomorrow--" here he
+laid his hand cajoling on Arthur's arm. "You promise me it will all
+be ready by tomorrow, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, I'll do it if anybody could do it."
+
+"Don't say 'if anybody could do it.' Say it shall be done."
+
+"It shall if I can possibly manage it--"
+
+"Oh--very well then. Mind you manage it--and thank you _very_ much.
+I shall be _most_ obliged, if it _is_ done."
+
+Arthur was annoyed, but he was kept to the scratch. And so, early in
+October the place was ready, and Woodhouse was plastered with
+placards announcing "Houghton's Pleasure Palace." Poor Mr. May could
+not but see an irony in the Palace part of the phrase. "We can
+guarantee the _pleasure_," he said. "But personally, I feel I can't
+take the responsibility for the palace."
+
+But James, to use the vulgar expression, was in his eye-holes.
+
+"Oh, father's in his eye-holes," said Alvina to Mr. May.
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. May, puzzled and concerned.
+
+But it merely meant that James was having the time of his life. He
+was drawing out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion
+strips, with the mystic script, in big black letters: Houghton's
+Picture Palace, underneath which, quite small: Opens at Lumley on
+October 7th, at 6:30 P.M. Everywhere you went, these vermilion and
+black bars sprang from the wall at you. Then there were other
+notices, in delicate pale-blue and pale red, like a genuine theatre
+notice, giving full programs. And beneath these a broad-letter
+notice announced, in green letters on a yellow ground: "Final and
+Ultimate Clearance Sale at Houghton's, Knarborough Road, on Friday,
+September 30th. Come and Buy Without Price."
+
+James was in his eye-holes. He collected all his odds and ends from
+every corner of Manchester House. He sorted them in heaps, and
+marked the heaps in his own mind. And then he let go. He pasted up
+notices all over the window and all over the shop: "Take what you
+want and Pay what you Like."
+
+He and Miss Pinnegar kept shop. The women flocked in. They turned
+things over. It nearly killed James to take the prices they offered.
+But take them he did. But he exacted that they should buy one
+article at a time. "One piece at a time, if you don't mind," he
+said, when they came up with their three-a-penny handfuls. It was
+not till later in the evening that he relaxed this rule.
+
+Well, by eleven o'clock he had cleared out a good deal--really, a
+very great deal--and many women had bought what they didn't want, at
+their own figure. Feverish but content, James shut the shop for the
+last time. Next day, by eleven, he had removed all his belongings,
+the door that connected the house with the shop was screwed up fast,
+the grocer strolled in and looked round his bare extension, took the
+key from James, and immediately set his boy to paste a new notice in
+the window, tearing down all James's announcements. Poor James had
+to run round, down Knarborough Road, and down Wellington Street as
+far as the Livery Stable, then down long narrow passages, before he
+could get into his own house, from his own shop.
+
+But he did not mind. Every hour brought the first performance of his
+Pleasure Palace nearer. He was satisfied with Mr. May: he had to
+admit that he was satisfied with Mr. May. The Palace stood firm at
+last--oh, it was so ricketty when it arrived!--and it glowed with a
+new coat, all over, of dark-red paint, like ox-blood. It was
+tittivated up with a touch of lavender and yellow round the door and
+round the decorated wooden eaving. It had a new wooden slope up to
+the doors--and inside, a new wooden floor, with red-velvet seats in
+front, before the curtain, and old chapel-pews behind. The collier
+youths recognized the pews.
+
+"Hey! These 'ere's the pews out of the old Primitive Chapel."
+
+"Sorry ah! We'n come ter hear t' parson."
+
+Theme for endless jokes. And the Pleasure Palace was christened, in
+some lucky stroke, Houghton's Endeavour, a reference to that
+particular Chapel effort called the Christian Endeavour, where
+Alvina and Miss Pinnegar both figured.
+
+"Wheer art off, Sorry?"
+
+"Lumley."
+
+"Houghton's Endeavour?"
+
+"Ah."
+
+"Rotten."
+
+So, when one laconic young collier accosted another. But we
+anticipate.
+
+Mr. May had worked hard to get a program for the first week. His
+pictures were: "The Human Bird," which turned out to be a ski-ing
+film from Norway, purely descriptive; "The Pancake," a humorous
+film: and then his grand serial: "The Silent Grip." And then, for
+Turns, his first item was Miss Poppy Traherne, a lady in innumerable
+petticoats, who could whirl herself into anything you like, from an
+arum lily in green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and
+a cup-and-saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne. The next turn
+was The Baxter Brothers, who ran up and down each other's backs and
+up and down each other's front, and stood on each other's heads and
+on their own heads, and perched for a moment on each other's
+shoulders, as if each of them was a flight of stairs with a landing,
+and the three of them were three flights, three storeys up, the top
+flight continually running down and becoming the bottom flight,
+while the middle flight collapsed and became a horizontal corridor.
+
+Alvina had to open the performance by playing an overture called
+"Welcome All": a ridiculous piece. She was excited and unhappy. On
+the Monday morning there was a rehearsal, Mr. May conducting. She
+played "Welcome All," and then took the thumbed sheets which Miss
+Poppy Traherne carried with her. Miss Poppy was rather exacting. As
+she whirled her skirts she kept saying: "A little faster,
+please"--"A little slower"--in a rather haughty, official voice that
+was somewhat muffled by the swim of her drapery. "Can you give it
+_expression_?" she cried, as she got the arum lily in full blow, and
+there was a sound of real ecstasy in her tones. But why she should
+have called "Stronger! Stronger!" as she came into being as a cup
+and saucer, Alvina could not imagine: unless Miss Poppy was fancying
+herself a strong cup of tea.
+
+However, she subsided into her mere self, panted frantically, and
+then, in a hoarse voice, demanded if she was in the bare front of
+the show. She scorned to count "Welcome All." Mr. May said Yes. She
+was the first item. Whereupon she began to raise a dust. Mr.
+Houghton said, hurriedly interposing, that he meant to make a little
+opening speech. Miss Poppy eyed him as if he were a cuckoo-clock,
+and she had to wait till he'd finished cuckooing. Then she said:
+
+"That's not every night. There's six nights to a week." James was
+properly snubbed. It ended by Mr. May metamorphizing himself into a
+pug dog: he said he had got the "costoom" in his bag: and doing a
+lump-of-sugar scene with one of the Baxter Brothers, as a brief
+first item. Miss Poppy's professional virginity was thus saved from
+outrage.
+
+At the back of the stage there was half-a-yard of curtain screening
+the two dressing-rooms, ladies and gents. In her spare time Alvina
+sat in the ladies' dressing room, or in its lower doorway, for there
+was not room right inside. She watched the ladies making up--she
+gave some slight assistance. She saw the men's feet, in their shabby
+pumps, on the other side of the curtain, and she heard the men's
+gruff voices. Often a slangy conversation was carried on through the
+curtain--for most of the turns were acquainted with each other: very
+affable before each other's faces, very sniffy behind each other's
+backs.
+
+Poor Alvina was in a state of bewilderment. She was extremely
+nice--oh, much too nice with the female turns. They treated her with
+a sort of off-hand friendliness, and they snubbed and patronized her
+and were a little spiteful with her because Mr. May treated her with
+attention and deference. She felt bewildered, a little excited, and
+as if she was not herself.
+
+The first evening actually came. Her father had produced a pink
+crepe de Chine blouse and a back-comb massed with brilliants--both
+of which she refused to wear. She stuck to her black blouse and
+black shirt, and her simple hair-dressing. Mr. May said "Of cauce!
+She wasn't intended to attract attention to herself." Miss Pinnegar
+actually walked down the hill with her, and began to cry when she
+saw the ox-blood red erection, with its gas-flares in front. It was
+the first time she had seen it. She went on with Alvina to the
+little stage door at the back, and up the steps into the scrap of
+dressing-room. But she fled out again from the sight of Miss Poppy
+in her yellow hair and green knickers with green-lace frills. Poor
+Miss Pinnegar! She stood outside on the trodden grass behind the
+Band of Hope, and really cried. Luckily she had put a veil on.
+
+She went valiantly round to the front entrance, and climbed the
+steps. The crowd was just coming. There was James's face peeping
+inside the little ticket-window.
+
+"One!" he said officially, pushing out the ticket. And then he
+recognized her. "Oh," he said, "_You're_ not going to pay."
+
+"Yes I am," she said, and she left her fourpence, and James's
+coppery, grimy fingers scooped it in, as the youth behind Miss
+Pinnegar shoved her forward.
+
+"Arf way down, fourpenny," said the man at the door, poking her in
+the direction of Mr. May, who wanted to put her in the red velvet.
+But she marched down one of the pews, and took her seat.
+
+The place was crowded with a whooping, whistling, excited audience.
+The curtain was down. James had let it out to his fellow tradesmen,
+and it represented a patchwork of local adverts. There was a fat
+porker and a fat pork-pie, and the pig was saying: "You all know
+where to find me. Inside the crust at Frank Churchill's, Knarborough
+Road, Woodhouse." Round about the name of W. H. Johnson floated a
+bowler hat, a collar-and-necktie, a pair of braces and an umbrella.
+And so on and so on. It all made you feel very homely. But Miss
+Pinnegar was sadly hot and squeezed in her pew.
+
+Time came, and the colliers began to drum their feet. It was exactly
+the excited, crowded audience Mr. May wanted. He darted out to drive
+James round in front of the curtain. But James, fascinated by raking
+in the money so fast, could not be shifted from the pay-box, and the
+two men nearly had a fight. At last Mr. May was seen shooing James,
+like a scuffled chicken, down the side gangway and on to the stage.
+
+James before the illuminated curtain of local adverts, bowing and
+beginning and not making a single word audible! The crowd quieted
+itself, the eloquence flowed on. The crowd was sick of James, and
+began to shuffle. "Come down, come down!" hissed Mr. May frantically
+from in front. But James did not move. He would flow on all night.
+Mr. May waved excitedly at Alvina, who sat obscurely at the piano,
+and darted on to the stage. He raised his voice and drowned James.
+James ceased to wave his penny-blackened hands, Alvina struck up
+"Welcome All" as loudly and emphatically as she could.
+
+And all the time Miss Pinnegar sat like a sphinx--like a sphinx.
+What she thought she did not know herself. But stolidly she stared
+at James, and anxiously she glanced sideways at the pounding Alvina.
+She knew Alvina had to pound until she received the cue that Mr. May
+was fitted in his pug-dog "Costoom."
+
+A twitch of the curtain. Alvina wound up her final flourish, the
+curtain rose, and:
+
+"Well really!" said Miss Pinnegar, out loud.
+
+There was Mr. May as a pug dog begging, too lifelike and too
+impossible. The audience shouted. Alvina sat with her hands in her
+lap. The Pug was a great success.
+
+Curtain! A few bars of Toreador--and then Miss Poppy's sheets of
+music. Soft music. Miss Poppy was on the ground under a green scarf.
+And so the accumulating dilation, on to the whirling climax of the
+perfect arum lily. Sudden curtain, and a yell of ecstasy from the
+colliers. Of all blossoms, the arum, the arum lily is most mystical
+and portentous.
+
+Now a crash and rumble from Alvina's piano. This is the storm from
+whence the rainbow emerges. Up goes the curtain--Miss Poppy twirling
+till her skirts lift as in a breeze, rise up and become a rainbow
+above her now darkened legs. The footlights are all but
+extinguished. Miss Poppy is all but extinguished also.
+
+The rainbow is not so moving as the arum lily. But the Catherine
+wheel, done at the last moment on one leg and then an amazing leap
+into the air backwards, again brings down the house.
+
+Miss Poppy herself sets all store on her cup and saucer. But the
+audience, vulgar as ever, cannot quite see it.
+
+And so, Alvina slips away with Miss Poppy's music-sheets, while Mr.
+May sits down like a professional at the piano and makes things fly
+for the up-and-down-stairs Baxter Bros. Meanwhile, Alvina's pale
+face hovering like a ghost in the side darkness, as it were under
+the stage.
+
+The lamps go out: gurglings and kissings--and then the dither on the
+screen: "The Human Bird," in awful shivery letters. It's not a very
+good machine, and Mr. May is not a very good operator. Audience
+distinctly critical. Lights up--an "Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let,
+penny a bar!" even as in Alvina's dream--and then "The Pancake"--so
+the first half over. Lights up for the interval.
+
+Miss Pinnegar sighed and folded her hands. She looked neither to
+right nor to left. In spite of herself, in spite of outraged shame
+and decency, she was excited. But she felt such excitement was not
+wholesome. In vain the boy most pertinently yelled "Chot-let" at
+her. She looked neither to right nor left. But when she saw Alvina
+nodding to her with a quick smile from the side gangway under the
+stage, she almost burst into tears. It was too much for her, all at
+once. And Alvina looked almost indecently excited. As she slipped
+across in front of the audience, to the piano, to play the seductive
+"Dream Waltz!" she looked almost fussy, like her father. James,
+needless to say, flittered and hurried hither and thither around the
+audience and the stage, like a wagtail on the brink of a pool.
+
+The second half consisted of a comic drama acted by two Baxter
+Bros., disguised as women, and Miss Poppy disguised as a man--with a
+couple of locals thrown in to do the guardsman and the Count. This
+went very well. The winding up was the first instalment of "The
+Silent Grip."
+
+When lights went up and Alvina solemnly struck "God Save Our
+Gracious King," the audience was on its feet and not very quiet,
+evidently hissing with excitement like doughnuts in the pan even
+when the pan is taken off the fire. Mr. Houghton thanked them for
+their courtesy and attention, and hoped--And nobody took the
+slightest notice.
+
+Miss Pinnegar stayed last, waiting for Alvina. And Alvina, in her
+excitement, waited for Mr. May and her father.
+
+Mr. May fairly pranced into the empty hall.
+
+"Well!" he said, shutting both his fists and flourishing them in
+Miss Pinnegar's face. "How did it go?"
+
+"I think it went very well," she said.
+
+"Very well! I should think so, indeed. It went like a house on fire.
+What? Didn't it?" And he laughed a high, excited little laugh.
+
+James was counting pennies for his life, in the cash-place, and
+dropping them into a Gladstone bag. The others had to wait for him.
+At last he locked his bag.
+
+"Well," said Mr. May, "done well?"
+
+"Fairly well," said James, huskily excited. "Fairly well."
+
+"Only fairly? Oh-h!" And Mr. May suddenly picked up the bag. James
+turned as if he would snatch it from him. "Well! Feel that, for
+fairly well!" said Mr. May, handing the bag to Alvina.
+
+"Goodness!" she cried, handing it to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Would you believe it?" said Miss Pinnegar, relinquishing it to
+James. But she spoke coldly, aloof.
+
+Mr. May turned off the gas at the meter, came talking through the
+darkness of the empty theatre, picking his way with a flash-light.
+
+"C'est le premier pas qui coute," he said, in a sort of American
+French, as he locked the doors and put the key in his pocket. James
+tripped silently alongside, bowed under the weight of his Gladstone
+bag of pennies.
+
+"How much have we taken, father?" asked Alvina gaily.
+
+"I haven't counted," he snapped.
+
+When he got home he hurried upstairs to his bare chamber. He swept
+his table clear, and then, in an expert fashion, he seized handfuls
+of coin and piled them in little columns on his board. There was an
+army of fat pennies, a dozen to a column, along the back, rows and
+rows of fat brown rank-and-file. In front of these, rows of slim
+halfpence, like an advance-guard. And commanding all, a stout column
+of half-crowns, a few stoutish and important florin-figures, like
+general and colonels, then quite a file of shillings, like so many
+captains, and a little cloud of silvery lieutenant sixpences. Right
+at the end, like a frail drummer boy, a thin stick of threepenny
+pieces.
+
+There they all were: burly dragoons of stout pennies, heavy and
+holding their ground, with a screen of halfpenny light infantry,
+officered by the immovable half-crown general, who in his turn was
+flanked by all his staff of florin colonels and shilling captains,
+from whom lightly moved the nimble sixpenny lieutenants all
+ignoring the wan, frail Joey of the threepenny-bits.
+
+Time after time James ran his almighty eye over his army. He loved
+them. He loved to feel that his table was pressed down, that it
+groaned under their weight. He loved to see the pence, like
+innumerable pillars of cloud, standing waiting to lead on into
+wildernesses of unopened resource, while the silver, as pillars of
+light, should guide the way down the long night of fortune. Their
+weight sank sensually into his muscle, and gave him gratification.
+The dark redness of bronze, like full-blooded fleas, seemed alive
+and pulsing, the silver was magic as if winged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA
+
+
+Mr. May and Alvina became almost inseparable, and Woodhouse buzzed
+with scandal. Woodhouse could not believe that Mr. May was
+absolutely final in his horror of any sort of coming-on-ness in a
+woman. It could not believe that he was only _so_ fond of Alvina
+because she was like a sister to him, poor, lonely, harassed soul
+that he was: a pure sister who really hadn't any body. For although
+Mr. May was rather fond, in an epicurean way, of his own body, yet
+other people's bodies rather made him shudder. So that his grand
+utterance on Alvina was: "She's not physical, she's mental."
+
+He even explained to her one day how it was, in his naive fashion.
+
+"There are two kinds of friendships," he said, "physical and mental.
+The physical is a thing of the moment. Of cauce you quite _like_ the
+individual, you remain quite nice with them, and so on,--to keep the
+thing as decent as possible. It _is_ quite decent, so long as you
+keep it so. But it is a thing of the moment. Which you know. It may
+last a week or two, or a month or two. But you know from the
+beginning it is going to end--quite finally--quite soon. You take it
+for what it is. But it's so different with the mental friendships.
+_They_ are lasting. They are eternal--if anything human (he said
+yuman) ever is eternal, ever _can_ be eternal." He pressed his hands
+together in an odd cherubic manner. He was quite sincere: if man
+ever _can_ be quite sincere.
+
+Alvina was quite content to be one of his mental and eternal
+friends, or rather _friendships_--since she existed _in abstractu_
+as far as he was concerned. For she did not find him at all
+physically moving. Physically he was not there: he was oddly an
+absentee. But his naivete roused the serpent's tooth of her bitter
+irony.
+
+"And your wife?" she said to him.
+
+"Oh, my wife! Dreadful thought! _There_ I made the great mistake of
+trying to find the two in one person! And _didn't_ I fall between
+two stools! Oh dear, _didn't_ I? Oh, I fell between the two stools
+beautifully, beautifully! And _then_--she nearly set the stools on
+top of me. I thought I should never get up again. When I was
+physical, she was mental--Bernard Shaw and cold baths for
+supper!--and when I was mental she was physical, and threw her arms
+round my neck. In the morning, mark you. Always in the morning, when
+I was on the alert for business. Yes, invariably. What do you think
+of it? Could the devil himself have invented anything more trying?
+Oh dear me, don't mention it. Oh, what a time I had! Wonder I'm
+alive. Yes, really! Although you smile."
+
+Alvina did more than smile. She laughed outright. And yet she
+remained good friends with the odd little man.
+
+He bought himself a new, smart overcoat, that fitted his figure, and
+a new velour hat. And she even noticed, one day when he was curling
+himself up cosily on the sofa, that he had pale blue silk underwear,
+and purple silk suspenders. She wondered where he got them, and how
+he afforded them. But there they were.
+
+James seemed for the time being wrapt in his
+undertaking--particularly in the takings part of it. He seemed for
+the time being contented--or nearly so, nearly so. Certainly there
+was money coming in. But then he had to pay off all he had borrowed
+to buy his erection and its furnishings, and a bulk of pennies
+sublimated into a very small L.s.d. account, at the bank.
+
+The Endeavour was successful--yes, it was successful. But not
+overwhelmingly so. On wet nights Woodhouse did not care to trail
+down to Lumley. And then Lumley was one of those depressed, negative
+spots on the face of the earth which have no pull at all. In that
+region of sharp hills with fine hill-brows, and shallow, rather
+dreary canal-valleys, it was the places on the hill-brows, like
+Woodhouse and Hathersedge and Rapton which flourished, while the
+dreary places down along the canals existed only for work-places,
+not for life and pleasure. It was just like James to have planted
+his endeavour down in the stagnant dust and rust of potteries and
+foundries, where no illusion could bloom.
+
+He had dreamed of crowded houses every night, and of raised prices.
+But there was no probability of his being able to raise his prices.
+He had to figure lower than the Woodhouse Empire. He was second-rate
+from the start. His hope now lay in the tramway which was being
+built from Knarborough away through the country--a black country
+indeed--through Woodhouse and Lumley and Hathersedge, to Rapton.
+When once this tramway-system was working, he would have a supply of
+youths and lasses always on tap, as it were. So he spread his
+rainbow wings towards the future, and began to say:
+
+"When we've got the trams, I shall buy a new machine and finer
+lenses, and I shall extend my premises."
+
+Mr. May did not talk business to Alvina. He was terribly secretive
+with respect to business. But he said to her once, in the early year
+following their opening:
+
+"Well, how do you think we're doing, Miss Houghton?"
+
+"We're not doing any better than we did at first, I think," she
+said.
+
+"No," he answered. "No! That's true. That's perfectly true. But why?
+They seem to like the programs."
+
+"I think they do," said Alvina. "I think they like them when they're
+there. But isn't it funny, they don't seem to want to come to them.
+I know they always talk as if we were second-rate. And they only
+come because they can't get to the Empire, or up to Hathersedge.
+We're a stop-gap. I know we are."
+
+Mr. May looked down in the mouth. He cocked his blue eyes at her,
+miserable and frightened. Failure began to frighten him abjectly.
+
+"Why do you think that is?" he said.
+
+"I don't believe they like the turns," she said.
+
+"But _look_ how they applaud them! _Look_ how pleased they are!"
+
+"I know. I know they like them once they're there, and they see
+them. But they don't come again. They crowd the Empire--and the
+Empire is only pictures now; and it's much cheaper to run."
+
+He watched her dismally.
+
+"I can't believe they want nothing but pictures. I can't believe
+they want everything in the flat," he said, coaxing and miserable.
+He himself was not interested in the film. His interest was still
+the human interest in living performers and their living feats.
+"Why," he continued, "they are ever so much more excited after a
+good turn, than after any film."
+
+"I know they are," said Alvina. "But I don't believe they want to be
+excited in that way."
+
+"In what way?" asked Mr. May plaintively.
+
+"By the things which the artistes do. I believe they're jealous."
+
+"Oh nonsense!" exploded Mr. May, starting as if he had been shot.
+Then he laid his hand on her arm. "But forgive my rudeness! I don't
+mean it, of _cauce_! But do you mean to say that these collier louts
+and factory girls are jealous of the things the artistes do, because
+they could never do them themselves?"
+
+"I'm sure they are," said Alvina.
+
+"But I _can't_ believe it," said Mr. May, pouting up his mouth and
+smiling at her as if she were a whimsical child. "What a low opinion
+you have of human nature!"
+
+"Have I?" laughed Alvina. "I've never reckoned it up. But I'm sure
+that these common people here are jealous if anybody does anything
+or has anything they can't have themselves."
+
+"I can't believe it," protested Mr. May. "Could they be so _silly_!
+And then why aren't they jealous of the extraordinary things which
+are done on the film?"
+
+"Because they don't see the flesh-and-blood people. I'm sure that's
+it. The film is only pictures, like pictures in the _Daily Mirror_.
+And pictures don't have any feelings apart from their own feelings.
+I mean the feelings of the people who watch them. Pictures don't
+have any life except in the people who watch them. And that's why
+they like them. Because they make them feel that they are
+everything."
+
+"The pictures make the colliers and lasses feel that they themselves
+are everything? But how? They identify themselves with the heroes
+and heroines on the screen?"
+
+"Yes--they take it all to themselves--and there isn't anything
+except themselves. I know it's like that. It's because they can
+spread themselves over a film, and they _can't_ over a living
+performer. They're up against the performer himself. And they hate
+it."
+
+Mr. May watched her long and dismally.
+
+"I _can't_ believe people are like that!--sane people!" he said.
+"Why, to me the whole joy is in the living personality, the curious
+_personality_ of the artiste. That's what I enjoy so much."
+
+"I know. But that's where you're different from them."
+
+"But _am_ I?"
+
+"Yes. You're not as up to the mark as they are."
+
+"Not up to the mark? What do you mean? Do you mean they are more
+intelligent?"
+
+"No, but they're more modern. You like things which aren't yourself.
+But they don't. They hate to admire anything that they can't take to
+themselves. They hate anything that isn't themselves. And that's why
+they like pictures. It's all themselves to them, all the time."
+
+He still puzzled.
+
+"You know I don't follow you," he said, a little mocking, as if she
+were making a fool of herself.
+
+"Because you don't know them. You don't know the common people. You
+don't know how conceited they are."
+
+He watched her a long time.
+
+"And you think we ought to cut out the variety, and give nothing but
+pictures, like the Empire?" he said.
+
+"I believe it takes best," she said.
+
+"And costs less," he answered. "But _then_! It's so dull. Oh my
+_word_, it's so dull. I don't think I could bear it."
+
+"And our pictures aren't good enough," she said. "We should have to
+get a new machine, and pay for the expensive films. Our pictures do
+shake, and our films are rather ragged."
+
+"But then, _surely_ they're good enough!" he said.
+
+That was how matters stood. The Endeavour paid its way, and made
+just a margin of profit--no more. Spring went on to summer, and then
+there was a very shadowy margin of profit. But James was not at all
+daunted. He was waiting now for the trams, and building up hopes
+since he could not build in bricks and mortar.
+
+The navvies were busy in troops along the Knarborough Road, and down
+Lumley Hill. Alvina became quite used to them. As she went down the
+hill soon after six o'clock in the evening, she met them trooping
+home. And some of them she liked. There was an outlawed look about
+them as they swung along the pavement--some of them; and there was a
+certain lurking set of the head which rather frightened her because
+it fascinated her. There was one tall young fellow with a red face
+and fair hair, who looked as if he had fronted the seas and the
+arctic sun. He looked at her. They knew each other quite well, in
+passing. And he would glance at perky Mr. May. Alvina tried to
+fathom what the young fellow's look meant. She wondered what he
+thought of Mr. May.
+
+She was surprised to hear Mr. May's opinion of the navvy.
+
+"_He's_ a handsome young man, now!" exclaimed her companion one
+evening as the navvies passed. And all three turned round, to find
+all three turning round. Alvina laughed, and made eyes. At that
+moment she would cheerfully have gone along with the navvy. She was
+getting so tired of Mr. May's quiet prance.
+
+On the whole, Alvina enjoyed the cinema and the life it brought her.
+She accepted it. And she became somewhat vulgarized in her bearing.
+She was _declassee_: she had lost her class altogether. The other
+daughters of respectable tradesmen avoided her now, or spoke to her
+only from a distance. She was supposed to be "carrying on" with Mr.
+May.
+
+Alvina did not care. She rather liked it. She liked being
+_declassee_. She liked feeling an outsider. At last she seemed to
+stand on her own ground. She laughed to herself as she went back and
+forth from Woodhouse to Lumley, between Manchester House and the
+Pleasure Palace. She laughed when she saw her father's theatre-notices
+plastered about. She laughed when she saw his thrilling announcements
+in the _Woodhouse Weekly_. She laughed when she knew that all the
+Woodhouse youths recognized her, and looked on her as one of their
+ inferior entertainers. She was off the map: and she liked it.
+
+For after all, she got a good deal of fun out of it. There was not
+only the continual activity. There were the artistes. Every week she
+met a new set of stars--three or four as a rule. She rehearsed with
+them on Monday afternoons, and she saw them every evening, and twice
+a week at matinees. James now gave two performances each
+evening--and he always had _some_ audience. So that Alvina had
+opportunity to come into contact with all the odd people of the
+inferior stage. She found they were very much of a type: a little
+frowsy, a little flea-bitten as a rule, indifferent to ordinary
+morality, and philosophical even if irritable. They were often very
+irritable. And they had always a certain fund of callous
+philosophy. Alvina did not _like_ them--you were not supposed,
+really, to get deeply emotional over them. But she found it amusing
+to see them all and know them all. It was so different from
+Woodhouse, where everything was priced and ticketed. These people
+were nomads. They didn't care a straw who you were or who you
+weren't. They had a most irritable professional vanity, and that was
+all. It was most odd to watch them. They weren't very squeamish. If
+the young gentlemen liked to peep round the curtain when the young
+lady was in her knickers: oh, well, she rather roundly told them
+off, perhaps, but nobody minded. The fact that ladies wore knickers
+and black silk stockings thrilled nobody, any more than grease-paint
+or false moustaches thrilled. It was all part of the stock-in-trade.
+As for immorality--well, what did it amount to? Not a great deal.
+Most of the men cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about
+any more carnal vice, and most of the girls were good pals with each
+other, men were only there to act with: even if the act was a
+private love-farce of an improper description. What's the odds? You
+couldn't get excited about it: not as a rule.
+
+Mr. May usually took rooms for the artistes in a house down in
+Lumley. When any one particular was coming, he would go to a rather
+better-class widow in Woodhouse. He never let Alvina take any part
+in the making of these arrangements, except with the widow in
+Woodhouse, who had long ago been a servant at Manchester House, and
+even now came in to do cleaning.
+
+Odd, eccentric people they were, these entertainers. Most of them
+had a streak of imagination, and most of them drank. Most of them
+were middle-aged. Most of them had an abstracted manner; in ordinary
+life, they seemed left aside, somehow. Odd, extraneous creatures,
+often a little depressed, feeling life slip away from them. The
+cinema was killing them.
+
+Alvina had quite a serious flirtation with a man who played a flute
+and piccolo. He was about fifty years old, still handsome, and
+growing stout. When sober, he was completely reserved. When rather
+drunk, he talked charmingly and amusingly--oh, most charmingly.
+Alvina quite loved him. But alas, _how_ he drank! But what a charm
+he had! He went, and she saw him no more.
+
+The usual rather American-looking, clean-shaven, slightly pasty
+young man left Alvina quite cold, though he had an amiable and truly
+chivalrous _galanterie_. He was quite likeable. But so unattractive.
+Alvina was more fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did
+marvellous things with six ferrets, or the Jap who was tattooed all
+over, and had the most amazing strong wrists, so that he could throw
+down any collier, with one turn of the hand. Queer cuts these!--but
+just a little bit beyond her. She watched them rather from a
+distance. She wished she could jump across the distance.
+Particularly with the Jap, who was almost quite naked, but clothed
+with the most exquisite tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle
+that flew with terrible spread wings between his shoulders, or the
+strange mazy pattern that netted the roundness of his buttocks. He
+was not very large, but nicely shaped, and with no hair on his
+smooth, tattooed body. He was almost blue in colour--that is, his
+tattooing was blue, with pickings of brilliant vermilion: as for
+instance round the nipples, and in a strange red serpent's-jaws over
+the navel. A serpent went round his loins and haunches. He told her
+how many times he had had blood-poisoning, during the process of his
+tattooing. He was a queer, black-eyed creature, with a look of
+silence and toad-like lewdness. He frightened her. But when he was
+dressed in common clothes, and was just a cheap, shoddy-looking
+European Jap, he was more frightening still. For his face--he was
+not tattooed above a certain ring low on his neck--was yellow and
+flat and basking with one eye open, like some age-old serpent. She
+felt he was smiling horribly all the time: lewd, unthinkable. A
+strange sight he was in Woodhouse, on a sunny morning; a
+shabby-looking bit of riff-raff of the East, rather down at the
+heel. Who could have imagined the terrible eagle of his shoulders,
+the serpent of his loins, his supple, magic skin?
+
+The summer passed again, and autumn. Winter was a better time for
+James Houghton. The trams, moreover, would begin to run in January.
+
+He wanted to arrange a good program for the week when the trams
+started. A long time ahead, Mr. May prepared it. The one item was
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe. The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe consisted
+of five persons, Madame Rochard and four young men. They were a
+strictly Red Indian troupe. But one of the young men, the German
+Swiss, was a famous yodeller, and another, the French Swiss, was a
+good comic with a French accent, whilst Madame and the German did a
+screaming two-person farce. Their great turn, of course, was the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara Red Indian scene.
+
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were due in the third week in January,
+arriving from the Potteries on the Sunday evening. When Alvina came
+in from Chapel that Sunday evening, she found her widow, Mrs.
+Rollings, seated in the living room talking with James, who had an
+anxious look. Since opening the Pleasure Palace James was less
+regular at Chapel. And moreover, he was getting old and shaky, and
+Sunday was the one evening he might spend in peace. Add that on this
+particular black Sunday night it was sleeting dismally outside, and
+James had already a bit of a cough, and we shall see that he did
+right to stay at home.
+
+Mrs. Rollings sat nursing a bottle. She was to go to the chemist for
+some cough-cure, because Madame had got a bad cold. The chemist was
+gone to Chapel--he wouldn't open till eight.
+
+Madame and the four young men had arrived at about six. Madame, said
+Mrs. Rollings, was a little fat woman, and she was complaining all
+the time that she had got a cold on her chest, laying her hand on
+her chest and trying her breathing and going "He-e-e-er! Herr!" to
+see if she could breathe properly. She, Mrs. Rollings, had suggested
+that Madame should put her feet in hot mustard and water, but Madame
+said she must have something to clear her chest. The four young men
+were four nice civil young fellows. They evidently liked Madame.
+Madame had insisted on cooking the chops for the young men. She
+herself had eaten one, but she laid her hand on her chest when she
+swallowed. One of the young men had gone out to get her some brandy,
+and he had come back with half-a-dozen large bottles of Bass as
+well.
+
+Mr. Houghton was very much concerned over Madame's cold. He asked
+the same questions again and again, to try and make sure how bad it
+was. But Mrs. Rollings didn't seem quite to know. James wrinkled his
+brow. Supposing Madame could not take her part! He was most anxious.
+
+"Do you think you might go across with Mrs. Rollings and see how
+this woman is, Alvina?" he said to his daughter.
+
+"I should think you'll never turn Alvina out on such a night," said
+Miss Pinnegar. "And besides, it isn't right. Where is Mr. May? It's
+his business to go."
+
+"Oh!" returned Alvina. "_I_ don't mind going. Wait a minute, I'll
+see if we haven't got some of those pastilles for burning. If it's
+very bad, I can make one of those plasters mother used."
+
+And she ran upstairs. She was curious to see what Madame and her
+four young men were like.
+
+With Mrs. Rollings she called at the chemist's back door, and then
+they hurried through the sleet to the widow's dwelling. It was not
+far. As they went up the entry they heard the sound of voices. But
+in the kitchen all was quiet. The voices came from the front room.
+
+Mrs. Rollings tapped.
+
+"Come in!" said a rather sharp voice. Alvina entered on the widow's
+heels.
+
+"I've brought you the cough stuff," said the widow. "And Miss
+Huff'n's come as well, to see how you was."
+
+Four young men were sitting round the table in their shirt-sleeves,
+with bottles of Bass. There was much cigarette smoke. By the fire,
+which was burning brightly, sat a plump, pale woman with dark bright
+eyes and finely-drawn eyebrows: she might be any age between forty
+and fifty. There were grey threads in her tidy black hair. She was
+neatly dressed in a well-made black dress with a small lace collar.
+There was a slight look of self-commiseration on her face. She had a
+cigarette between her drooped fingers.
+
+She rose as if with difficulty, and held out her plump hand, on
+which four or five rings showed. She had dropped the cigarette
+unnoticed into the hearth.
+
+"How do you do," she said. "I didn't catch your name." Madame's
+voice was a little plaintive and plangent now, like a bronze reed
+mournfully vibrating.
+
+"Alvina Houghton," said Alvina.
+
+"Daughter of him as owns the thee-etter where you're goin' to act,"
+interposed the widow.
+
+"Oh yes! Yes! I see. Miss Houghton. I didn't know how it was said.
+Huff-ton--yes? Miss Houghton. I've got a bad cold on my chest--"
+laying her plump hand with the rings on her plump bosom. "But let me
+introduce you to my young men--" A wave of the plump hand, whose
+forefinger was very slightly cigarette-stained, towards the table.
+
+The four young men had risen, and stood looking at Alvina and
+Madame. The room was small, rather bare, with horse-hair and
+white-crochet antimacassars and a linoleum floor. The table also was
+covered with a brightly-patterned American oil-cloth, shiny but
+clean. A naked gas-jet hung over it. For furniture, there were just
+chairs, arm-chairs, table, and a horse-hair antimacassar-ed sofa.
+Yet the little room seemed very full--full of people, young men with
+smart waistcoats and ties, but without coats.
+
+"That is Max," said Madame. "I shall tell you only their names, and
+not their family names, because that is easier for you--"
+
+In the meantime Max had bowed. He was a tall Swiss with almond eyes
+and a flattish face and a rather stiff, ramrod figure.
+
+"And that is Louis--" Louis bowed gracefully. He was a Swiss
+Frenchman, moderately tall, with prominent cheekbones and a wing
+of glossy black hair falling on his temple.
+
+"And that is Geoffroi--Geoffrey--" Geoffrey made his bow--a
+broad-shouldered, watchful, taciturn man from Alpine France.
+
+"And that is Francesco--Frank--" Francesco gave a faint curl of his
+lip, half smile, as he saluted her involuntarily in a military
+fashion. He was dark, rather tall and loose, with yellow-tawny eyes.
+He was an Italian from the south. Madame gave another look at him.
+"He doesn't like his English name of Frank. You will see, he pulls a
+face. No, he doesn't like it. We call him Ciccio also--" But Ciccio
+was dropping his head sheepishly, with the same faint smile on his
+face, half grimace, and stooping to his chair, wanting to sit down.
+
+"These are my family of young men," said Madame. "We are drawn from
+three races, though only Ciccio is not of our mountains. Will you
+please to sit down."
+
+They all took their chairs. There was a pause.
+
+"My young men drink a little beer, after their horrible journey. As
+a rule, I do not like them to drink. But tonight they have a little
+beer. I do not take any myself, because I am afraid of inflaming
+myself." She laid her hand on her breast, and took long, uneasy
+breaths. "I feel it. I feel it _here_." She patted her breast. "It
+makes me afraid for tomorrow. Will you perhaps take a glass of beer?
+Ciccio, ask for another glass--" Ciccio, at the end of the table,
+did not rise, but looked round at Alvina as if he presumed there
+would be no need for him to move. The odd, supercilious curl of the
+lip persisted. Madame glared at him. But he turned the handsome side
+of his cheek towards her, with the faintest flicker of a sneer.
+
+"No, thank you. I never take beer," said Alvina hurriedly.
+
+"No? Never? Oh!" Madame folded her hands, but her black eyes still
+darted venom at Ciccio. The rest of the young men fingered their
+glasses and put their cigarettes to their lips and blew the smoke
+down their noses, uncomfortably.
+
+Madame closed her eyes and leaned back a moment. Then her face
+looked transparent and pallid, there were dark rings under her eyes,
+the beautifully-brushed hair shone dark like black glass above her
+ears. She was obviously unwell. The young men looked at her, and
+muttered to one another.
+
+"I'm afraid your cold is rather bad," said Alvina. "Will you let me
+take your temperature?"
+
+Madame started and looked frightened.
+
+"Oh, I don't think you should trouble to do that," she said.
+
+Max, the tall, highly-coloured Swiss, turned to her, saying:
+
+"Yes, you must have your temperature taken, and then we s'll know,
+shan't we. I had a hundred and five when we were in Redruth."
+
+Alvina had taken the thermometer from her pocket. Ciccio meanwhile
+muttered something in French--evidently something rude--meant for
+Max.
+
+"What shall I do if I can't work tomorrow!" moaned Madame, seeing
+Alvina hold up the thermometer towards the light. "Max, what shall
+we do?"
+
+"You will stay in bed, and we must do the White Prisoner scene,"
+said Max, rather staccato and official.
+
+Ciccio curled his lip and put his head aside. Alvina went across to
+Madame with the thermometer. Madame lifted her plump hand and fended
+off Alvina, while she made her last declaration:
+
+"Never--never have I missed my work, for a single day, for ten
+years. Never. If I am going to lie abandoned, I had better die at
+once."
+
+"Lie abandoned!" said Max. "You know you won't do no such thing.
+What are you talking about?"
+
+"Take the thermometer," said Geoffrey roughly, but with feeling.
+
+"Tomorrow, see, you will be well. Quite certain!" said Louis. Madame
+mournfully shook her head, opened her mouth, and sat back with
+closed eyes and the stump of the thermometer comically protruding
+from a corner of her lips. Meanwhile Alvina took her plump white
+wrist and felt her pulse.
+
+"We can practise--" began Geoffrey.
+
+"Sh!" said Max, holding up his finger and looking anxiously at
+Alvina and Madame, who still leaned back with the stump of the
+thermometer jauntily perking up from her pursed mouth, while her
+face was rather ghastly.
+
+Max and Louis watched anxiously. Geoffrey sat blowing the smoke down
+his nose, while Ciccio callously lit another cigarette, striking a
+match on his boot-heel and puffing from under the tip of his rather
+long nose. Then he took the cigarette from his mouth, turned his
+head, slowly spat on the floor, and rubbed his foot on his spit. Max
+flapped his eyelids and looked all disdain, murmuring something
+about "ein schmutziges italienisches Volk," whilst Louis, refusing
+either to see or to hear, framed the word "chien" on his lips.
+
+Then quick as lightning both turned their attention again to Madame.
+
+Her temperature was a hundred and two.
+
+"You'd better go to bed," said Alvina. "Have you eaten anything?"
+
+"One little mouthful," said Madame plaintively.
+
+Max sat looking pale and stricken, Louis had hurried forward to take
+Madame's hand. He kissed it quickly, then turned aside his head
+because of the tears in his eyes. Geoffrey gulped beer in large
+throatfuls, and Ciccio, with his head bent, was watching from under
+his eyebrows.
+
+"I'll run round for the doctor--" said Alvina.
+
+"Don't! Don't do that, my dear! Don't you go and do that! I'm likely
+to a temperature--"
+
+"Liable to a temperature," murmured Louis pathetically.
+
+"I'll go to bed," said Madame, obediently rising.
+
+"Wait a bit. I'll see if there's a fire in the bedroom," said
+Alvina.
+
+"Oh, my dear, you are too good. Open the door for her, Ciccio--"
+
+Ciccio reached across at the door, but was too late. Max had
+hastened to usher Alvina out. Madame sank back in her chair.
+
+"Never for ten years," she was wailing. "Quoi faire, ah, quoi
+faire! Que ferez-vous, mes pauvres, sans votre Kishwegin. Que
+vais-je faire, mourir dans un tel pays! La bonne demoiselle--la
+bonne demoiselle--elle a du coeur. Elle pourrait aussi etre belle,
+s'il y avait un peu plus de chair. Max, liebster, schau ich sehr
+elend aus? Ach, oh jeh, oh jeh!"
+
+"Ach nein, Madame, ach nein. Nicht so furchtbar elend," said Max.
+
+"Manca il cuore solamente al Ciccio," moaned Madame. "Che natura
+povera, senza sentimento--niente di bello. Ahime, che amico, che
+ragazzo duro, aspero--"
+
+"Trova?" said Ciccio, with a curl of the lip. He looked, as he
+dropped his long, beautiful lashes, as if he might weep for all
+that, if he were not bound to be misbehaving just now.
+
+So Madame moaned in four languages as she posed pallid in her
+arm-chair. Usually she spoke in French only, with her young men. But
+this was an extra occasion.
+
+"La pauvre Kishwegin!" murmured Madame. "Elle va finir au monde.
+Elle passe--la pauvre Kishwegin."
+
+Kishwegin was Madame's Red Indian name, the name under which she
+danced her Squaw's fire-dance.
+
+Now that she knew she was ill, Madame seemed to become more ill. Her
+breath came in little pants. She had a pain in her side. A feverish
+flush seemed to mount her cheek. The young men were all extremely
+uncomfortable. Louis did not conceal his tears. Only Ciccio kept the
+thin smile on his lips, and added to Madame's annoyance and pain.
+
+Alvina came down to take her to bed. The young men all rose, and
+kissed Madame's hand as she went out: her poor jewelled hand, that
+was faintly perfumed with eau de Cologne. She spoke an appropriate
+good-night, to each of them.
+
+"Good-night, my faithful Max, I trust myself to you. Good-night,
+Louis, the tender heart. Good-night valiant Geoffrey. Ah Ciccio, do
+not add to the weight of my heart. Be good _braves_, all, be
+brothers in one accord. One little prayer for poor Kishwegin.
+Good-night!"
+
+After which valediction she slowly climbed the stairs, putting her
+hand on her knee at each step, with the effort.
+
+"No--no," she said to Max, who would have followed to her
+assistance. "Do not come up. No--no!"
+
+Her bedroom was tidy and proper.
+
+"Tonight," she moaned, "I shan't be able to see that the boys'
+rooms are well in order. They are not to be trusted, no. They need
+an overseeing eye: especially Ciccio; especially Ciccio!"
+
+She sank down by the fire and began to undo her dress.
+
+"You must let me help you," said Alvina. "You know I have been a
+nurse."
+
+"Ah, you are too kind, too kind, dear young lady. I am a lonely old
+woman. I am not used to attentions. Best leave me."
+
+"Let me help you," said Alvina.
+
+"Alas, ahime! Who would have thought Kishwegin would need help. I
+danced last night with the boys in the theatre in Leek: and tonight
+I am put to bed in--what is the name of this place, dear?--It seems
+I don't remember it."
+
+"Woodhouse," said Alvina.
+
+"Woodhouse! Woodhouse! Is there not something called Woodlouse? I
+believe. Ugh, horrible! Why is it horrible?"
+
+Alvina quickly undressed the plump, trim little woman. She seemed so
+soft. Alvina could not imagine how she could be a dancer on the
+stage, strenuous. But Madame's softness could flash into wild
+energy, sudden convulsive power, like a cuttle-fish. Alvina brushed
+out the long black hair, and plaited it lightly. Then she got Madame
+into bed.
+
+"Ah," sighed Madame, "the good bed! The good bed! But cold--it is so
+cold. Would you hang up my dress, dear, and fold my stockings?"
+
+Alvina quickly folded and put aside the dainty underclothing. Queer,
+dainty woman, was Madame, even to her wonderful threaded
+black-and-gold garters.
+
+"My poor boys--no Kishwegin tomorrow! You don't think I need see a
+priest, dear? A priest!" said Madame, her teeth chattering.
+
+"Priest! Oh no! You'll be better when we can get you warm. I think
+it's only a chill. Mrs. Rollings is warming a blanket--"
+
+Alvina ran downstairs. Max opened the sitting-room door and stood
+watching at the sound of footsteps. His rather bony fists were
+clenched beneath his loose shirt-cuffs, his eyebrows tragically
+lifted.
+
+"Is she much ill?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. But I don't think so. Do you mind heating the
+blanket while Mrs. Rollings makes thin gruel?"
+
+Max and Louis stood heating blankets. Louis' trousers were cut
+rather tight at the waist, and gave him a female look. Max was
+straight and stiff. Mrs. Rollings asked Geoffrey to fill the
+coal-scuttles and carry one upstairs. Geoffrey obediently went out
+with a lantern to the coal-shed. Afterwards he was to carry up the
+horse-hair arm-chair.
+
+"I must go home for some things," said Alvina to Ciccio. "Will you
+come and carry them for me?"
+
+He started up, and with one movement threw away his cigarette. He
+did not look at Alvina. His beautiful lashes seemed to screen his
+eyes. He was fairly tall, but loosely built for an Italian, with
+slightly sloping shoulders. Alvina noticed the brown, slender
+Mediterranean hand, as he put his fingers to his lips. It was a hand
+such as she did not know, prehensile and tender and dusky. With an
+odd graceful slouch he went into the passage and reached for his
+coat.
+
+He did not say a word, but held aloof as he walked with Alvina.
+
+"I'm sorry for Madame," said Alvina, as she hurried rather
+breathless through the night. "She does think for you men."
+
+But Ciccio vouchsafed no answer, and walked with his hands in the
+pockets of his water-proof, wincing from the weather.
+
+"I'm afraid she will never be able to dance tomorrow," said Alvina.
+
+"You think she won't be able?" he said.
+
+"I'm almost sure she won't."
+
+After which he said nothing, and Alvina also kept silence till they
+came to the black dark passage and encumbered yard at the back of
+the house.
+
+"I don't think you can see at all," she said. "It's this way." She
+groped for him in the dark, and met his groping hand.
+
+"This way," she said.
+
+It was curious how light his fingers were in their clasp--almost
+like a child's touch. So they came under the light from the window
+of the sitting-room.
+
+Alvina hurried indoors, and the young man followed.
+
+"I shall have to stay with Madame tonight," she explained hurriedly.
+"She's feverish, but she may throw it off if we can get her into a
+sweat." And Alvina ran upstairs collecting things necessary. Ciccio
+stood back near the door, and answered all Miss Pinnegar's
+entreaties to come to the fire with a shake of the head and a slight
+smile of the lips, bashful and stupid.
+
+"But do come and warm yourself before you go out again," said Miss
+Pinnegar, looking at the man as he drooped his head in the distance.
+He still shook dissent, but opened his mouth at last.
+
+"It makes it colder after," he said, showing his teeth in a slight,
+stupid smile.
+
+"Oh well, if you think so," said Miss Pinnegar, nettled. She
+couldn't make heads or tails of him, and didn't try.
+
+When they got back, Madame was light-headed, and talking excitedly
+of her dance, her young men. The three young men were terrified.
+They had got the blankets scorching hot. Alvina smeared the plasters
+and applied them to Madame's side, where the pain was. What a
+white-skinned, soft, plump child she seemed! Her pain meant a touch
+of pleurisy, for sure. The men hovered outside the door. Alvina
+wrapped the poor patient in the hot blankets, got a few spoonfuls of
+hot gruel and whiskey down her throat, fastened her down in bed,
+lowered the light and banished the men from the stairs. Then she sat
+down to watch. Madame chafed, moaned, murmured feverishly. Alvina
+soothed her, and put her hands in bed. And at last the poor dear
+became quiet. Her brow was faintly moist. She fell into a quiet
+sleep, perspiring freely. Alvina watched her still, soothed her when
+she suddenly started and began to break out of the bedclothes,
+quieted her, pressed her gently, firmly down, folded her tight and
+made her submit to the perspiration against which, in convulsive
+starts, she fought and strove, crying that she was suffocating, she
+was too hot, too hot.
+
+"Lie still, lie still," said Alvina. "You must keep warm."
+
+Poor Madame moaned. How she hated seething in the bath of her own
+perspiration. Her wilful nature rebelled strongly. She would have
+thrown aside her coverings and gasped into the cold air, if Alvina
+had not pressed her down with that soft, inevitable pressure.
+
+So the hours passed, till about one o'clock, when the perspiration
+became less profuse, and the patient was really better, really
+quieter. Then Alvina went downstairs for a moment. She saw the light
+still burning in the front room. Tapping, she entered. There sat Max
+by the fire, a picture of misery, with Louis opposite him, nodding
+asleep after his tears. On the sofa Geoffrey snored lightly, while
+Ciccio sat with his head on the table, his arms spread out, dead
+asleep. Again she noticed the tender, dusky Mediterranean hands, the
+slender wrists, slender for a man naturally loose and muscular.
+
+"Haven't you gone to bed?" whispered Alvina. "Why?"
+
+Louis started awake. Max, the only stubborn watcher, shook his head
+lugubriously.
+
+"But she's better," whispered Alvina. "She's perspired. She's
+better. She's sleeping naturally."
+
+Max stared with round, sleep-whitened, owlish eyes, pessimistic and
+sceptical:
+
+"Yes," persisted Alvina. "Come and look at her. But don't wake her,
+whatever you do."
+
+Max took off his slippers and rose to his tall height. Louis, like a
+scared chicken, followed. Each man held his slippers in his hand.
+They noiselessly entered and peeped stealthily over the heaped
+bedclothes. Madame was lying, looking a little flushed and very
+girlish, sleeping lightly, with a strand of black hair stuck to her
+cheek, and her lips lightly parted.
+
+Max watched her for some moments. Then suddenly he straightened
+himself, pushed back his brown hair that was brushed up in the
+German fashion, and crossed himself, dropping his knee as before an
+altar; crossed himself and dropped his knee once more; and then a
+third time crossed himself and inclined before the altar. Then he
+straightened himself again, and turned aside.
+
+Louis also crossed himself. His tears burst out. He bowed and took
+the edge of a blanket to his lips, kissing it reverently. Then he
+covered his face with his hand.
+
+Meanwhile Madame slept lightly and innocently on.
+
+Alvina turned to go. Max silently followed, leading Louis by the
+arm. When they got downstairs, Max and Louis threw themselves in
+each other's arms, and kissed each other on either cheek, gravely,
+in Continental fashion.
+
+"She is better," said Max gravely, in French.
+
+"Thanks to God," replied Louis.
+
+Alvina witnessed all this with some amazement. The men did not heed
+her. Max went over and shook Geoffrey, Louis put his hand on
+Ciccio's shoulder. The sleepers were difficult to wake. The wakers
+shook the sleeping, but in vain. At last Geoffrey began to stir.
+But in vain Louis lifted Ciccio's shoulders from the table. The head
+and the hands dropped inert. The long black lashes lay motionless,
+the rather long, fine Greek nose drew the same light breaths, the
+mouth remained shut. Strange fine black hair, he had, close as fur,
+animal, and naked, frail-seeming, tawny hands. There was a silver
+ring on one hand.
+
+Alvina suddenly seized one of the inert hands that slid on the
+table-cloth as Louis shook the young man's shoulders. Tight she
+pressed the hand. Ciccio opened his tawny-yellowish eyes, that
+seemed to have been put in with a dirty finger, as the saying goes,
+owing to the sootiness of the lashes and brows. He was quite drunk
+with his first sleep, and saw nothing.
+
+"Wake up," said Alvina, laughing, pressing his hand again.
+
+He lifted his head once more, suddenly clasped her hand, his eyes
+came to consciousness, his hand relaxed, he recognized her, and he
+sat back in his chair, turning his face aside and lowering his
+lashes.
+
+"Get up, great beast," Louis was saying softly in French, pushing
+him as ox-drivers sometimes push their oxen. Ciccio staggered to his
+feet.
+
+"She is better," they told him. "We are going to bed."
+
+They took their candles and trooped off upstairs, each one bowing to
+Alvina as he passed. Max solemnly, Louis gallant, the other two dumb
+and sleepy. They occupied the two attic chambers.
+
+Alvina carried up the loose bed from the sofa, and slept on the
+floor before the fire in Madame's room.
+
+Madame slept well and long, rousing and stirring and settling off
+again. It was eight o'clock before she asked her first question.
+Alvina was already up.
+
+"Oh--alors--Then I am better, I am quite well. I can dance today."
+
+"I don't think today," said Alvina. "But perhaps tomorrow."
+
+"No, today," said Madame. "I can dance today, because I am quite
+well. I am Kishwegin."
+
+"You are better. But you must lie still today. Yes, really--you will
+find you are weak when you try to stand."
+
+Madame watched Alvina's thin face with sullen eyes.
+
+"You are an Englishwoman, severe and materialist," she said.
+
+Alvina started and looked round at her with wide blue eyes.
+
+"Why?" she said. There was a wan, pathetic look about her, a sort of
+heroism which Madame detested, but which now she found touching.
+
+"Come!" said Madame, stretching out her plump jewelled hand. "Come,
+I am an ungrateful woman. Come, they are not good for you, the
+people, I see it. Come to me."
+
+Alvina went slowly to Madame, and took the outstretched hand. Madame
+kissed her hand, then drew her down and kissed her on either cheek,
+gravely, as the young men had kissed each other.
+
+"You have been good to Kishwegin, and Kishwegin has a heart that
+remembers. There, Miss Houghton, I shall do what you tell me.
+Kishwegin obeys you." And Madame patted Alvina's hand and nodded her
+head sagely.
+
+"Shall I take your temperature?" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, my dear, you shall. You shall bid me, and I shall obey."
+
+So Madame lay back on her pillow, submissively pursing the
+thermometer between her lips and watching Alvina with black eyes.
+
+"It's all right," said Alvina, as she looked at the thermometer.
+"Normal."
+
+"Normal!" re-echoed Madame's rather guttural voice. "Good! Well,
+then when shall I dance?"
+
+Alvina turned and looked at her.
+
+"I think, truly," said Alvina, "it shouldn't be before Thursday or
+Friday."
+
+"Thursday!" repeated Madame. "You say Thursday?" There was a note of
+strong rebellion in her voice.
+
+"You'll be so weak. You've only just escaped pleurisy. I can only
+say what I truly think, can't I?"
+
+"Ah, you Englishwomen," said Madame, watching with black eyes. "I
+think you like to have your own way. In all things, to have your own
+way. And over all people. You are so good, to have your own way.
+Yes, you good Englishwomen. Thursday. Very well, it shall be
+Thursday. Till Thursday, then, Kishwegin does not exist."
+
+And she subsided, already rather weak, upon her pillow again. When
+she had taken her tea and was washed and her room was tidied, she
+summoned the young men. Alvina had warned Max that she wanted
+Madame to be kept as quiet as possible this day.
+
+As soon as the first of the four appeared, in his shirt-sleeves and
+his slippers, in the doorway, Madame said:
+
+"Ah, there you are, my young men! Come in! Come in! It is not
+Kishwegin addresses you. Kishwegin does not exist till Thursday, as
+the English demoiselle makes it." She held out her hand, faintly
+perfumed with eau de Cologne--the whole room smelled of eau de
+Cologne--and Max stooped his brittle spine and kissed it. She
+touched his cheek gently with her other hand.
+
+"My faithful Max, my support."
+
+Louis came smiling with a bunch of violets and pinky anemones. He
+laid them down on the bed before her, and took her hand, bowing and
+kissing it reverently.
+
+"You are better, dear Madame?" he said, smiling long at her.
+
+"Better, yes, gentle Louis. And better for thy flowers, chivalric
+heart." She put the violets and anemones to her face with both
+hands, and then gently laid them aside to extend her hand to
+Geoffrey.
+
+"The good Geoffrey will do his best, while there is no Kishwegin?"
+she said as he stooped to her salute.
+
+"Bien sur, Madame."
+
+"Ciccio, a button off thy shirt-cuff. Where is my needle?" She
+looked round the room as Ciccio kissed her hand.
+
+"Did you want anything?" said Alvina, who had not followed the
+French.
+
+"My needle, to sew on this button. It is there, in the silk bag."
+
+"I will do it," said Alvina.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+While Alvina sewed on the button, Madame spoke to her young men,
+principally to Max. They were to obey Max, she said, for he was
+their eldest brother. This afternoon they would practise well the
+scene of the White Prisoner. Very carefully they must practise, and
+they must find some one who would play the young squaw--for in this
+scene she had practically nothing to do, the young squaw, but just
+sit and stand. Miss Houghton--but ah, Miss Houghton must play the
+piano, she could not take the part of the young squaw. Some other
+then.
+
+While the interview was going on, Mr. May arrived, full of concern.
+
+"Shan't we have the procession!" he cried.
+
+"Ah, the procession!" cried Madame.
+
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe upon request would signalize its entry
+into any town by a procession. The young men were dressed as Indian
+_braves_, and headed by Kishwegin they rode on horseback through the
+main streets. Ciccio, who was the crack horseman, having served a
+very well-known horsey Marchese in an Italian cavalry regiment, did
+a bit of show riding.
+
+Mr. May was very keen on the procession. He had the horses in
+readiness. The morning was faintly sunny, after the sleet and bad
+weather. And now he arrived to find Madame in bed and the young men
+holding council with her.
+
+"How _very_ unfortunate!" cried Mr. May. "How _very_ unfortunate!"
+
+"Dreadful! Dreadful!" wailed Madame from the bed.
+
+"But can't we do _anything_?"
+
+"Yes--you can do the White Prisoner scene--the young men can do
+that, if you find a dummy squaw. Ah, I think I must get up after
+all."
+
+Alvina saw the look of fret and exhaustion in Madame's face.
+
+"Won't you all go downstairs now?" said Alvina. "Mr. Max knows what
+you must do."
+
+And she shooed the five men out of the bedroom.
+
+"I _must_ get up. I won't dance. I will be a dummy. But I must be
+there. It is too dre-eadful, too dre-eadful!" wailed Madame.
+
+"Don't take any notice of them. They can manage by themselves. Men
+are such babies. Let them carry it through by themselves."
+
+"Children--they are all children!" wailed Madame. "All children! And
+so, what will they do without their old _gouvernante_? My poor
+_braves_, what will they do without Kishwegin? It is too dreadful,
+too dre-eadful, yes. The poor Mr. May--so _disappointed_."
+
+"Then let him _be_ disappointed," cried Alvina, as she forcibly
+tucked up Madame and made her lie still.
+
+"You are hard! You are a hard Englishwoman. All alike. All alike!"
+Madame subsided fretfully and weakly. Alvina moved softly about.
+And in a few minutes Madame was sleeping again.
+
+Alvina went downstairs. Mr. May was listening to Max, who was
+telling in German all about the White Prisoner scene. Mr. May had
+spent his boyhood in a German school. He cocked his head on one
+side, and, laying his hand on Max's arm, entertained him in odd
+German. The others were silent. Ciccio made no pretence of
+listening, but smoked and stared at his own feet. Louis and Geoffrey
+half understood, so Louis nodded with a look of deep comprehension,
+whilst Geoffrey uttered short, snappy "Ja!--Ja!--Doch!--Eben!"
+rather irrelevant.
+
+"I'll be the squaw," cried Mr. May in English, breaking off and
+turning round to the company. He perked up his head in an odd,
+parrot-like fashion. "_I'll_ be the squaw! What's her name?
+Kishwegin? I'll be Kishwegin." And he bridled and beamed
+self-consciously.
+
+The two tall Swiss looked down on him, faintly smiling. Ciccio,
+sitting with his arms on his knees on the sofa, screwed round his
+head and watched the phenomenon of Mr. May with inscrutable,
+expressionless attention.
+
+"Let us go," said Mr. May, bubbling with new importance. "Let us go
+and rehearse _this morning_, and let us do the procession this
+afternoon, when the colliers are just coming home. There! What?
+Isn't that exactly the idea? Well! Will you be ready at once,
+_now_?"
+
+He looked excitedly at the young men. They nodded with slow gravity,
+as if they were already _braves_. And they turned to put on their
+boots. Soon they were all trooping down to Lumley, Mr. May prancing
+like a little circus-pony beside Alvina, the four young men rolling
+ahead.
+
+"What do you think of it?" cried Mr. May. "We've saved the
+situation--what? Don't you think so? Don't you think we can
+congratulate ourselves."
+
+They found Mr. Houghton fussing about in the theatre. He was on
+tenterhooks of agitation, knowing Madame was ill.
+
+Max gave a brilliant display of yodelling.
+
+"But I must _explain_ to them," cried Mr. May. "I must _explain_ to
+them what yodel means."
+
+And turning to the empty theatre, he began, stretching forth his
+hand.
+
+"In the high Alps of Switzerland, where eternal snows and glaciers
+reign over luscious meadows full of flowers, if you should chance to
+awaken, as I have done, in some lonely wooden farm amid the mountain
+pastures, you--er--you--let me see--if you--no--if you should chance
+to _spend the night_ in some lonely wooden farm, amid the upland
+pastures, dawn will awake you with a wild, inhuman song, you will
+open your eyes to the first gleam of icy, eternal sunbeams, your
+ears will be ringing with weird singing, that has no words and no
+meaning, but sounds as if some wild and icy god were warbling to
+himself as he wandered among the peaks of dawn. You look forth
+across the flowers to the blue snow, and you see, far off, a small
+figure of a man moving among the grass. It is a peasant singing his
+mountain song, warbling like some creature that lifted up its voice
+on the edge of the eternal snows, before the human race began--"
+
+During this oration James Houghton sat with his chin in his hand,
+devoured with bitter jealousy, measuring Mr. May's eloquence. And
+then he started, as Max, tall and handsome now in Tyrolese costume,
+white shirt and green, square braces, short trousers of chamois
+leather stitched with green and red, firm-planted naked knees, naked
+ankles and heavy shoes, warbled his native Yodel strains, a piercing
+and disturbing sound. He was flushed, erect, keen tempered and
+fierce and mountainous. There was a fierce, icy passion in the man.
+Alvina began to understand Madame's subjection to him.
+
+Louis and Geoffrey did a farce dialogue, two foreigners at the same
+moment spying a purse in the street, struggling with each other and
+protesting they wanted to take it to the policeman, Ciccio, who
+stood solid and ridiculous. Mr. Houghton nodded slowly and gravely,
+as if to give his measured approval.
+
+Then all retired to dress for the great scene. Alvina practised the
+music Madame carried with her. If Madame found a good pianist, she
+welcomed the accompaniment: if not, she dispensed with it.
+
+"Am I all right?" said a smirking voice.
+
+And there was Kishwegin, dusky, coy, with long black hair and a
+short chamois dress, gaiters and moccasins and bare arms: _so_ coy,
+and _so_ smirking. Alvina burst out laughing.
+
+"But shan't I do?" protested Mr. May, hurt.
+
+"Yes, you're wonderful," said Alvina, choking. "But I _must_ laugh."
+
+"But why? Tell me why?" asked Mr. May anxiously. "Is it my
+_appearance_ you laugh at, or is it only _me_? If it's me I don't
+mind. But if it's my appearance, tell me so."
+
+Here an appalling figure of Ciccio in war-paint strolled on to the
+stage. He was naked to the waist, wore scalp-fringed trousers, was
+dusky-red-skinned, had long black hair and eagle's feathers--only
+two feathers--and a face wonderfully and terribly painted with
+white, red, yellow, and black lines. He was evidently pleased with
+himself. His curious soft slouch, and curious way of lifting his lip
+from his white teeth, in a sort of smile, was very convincing.
+
+"You haven't got the girdle," he said, touching Mr. May's plump
+waist--"and some flowers in your hair."
+
+Mr. May here gave a sharp cry and a jump. A bear on its hind legs,
+slow, shambling, rolling its loose shoulders, was stretching a paw
+towards him. The bear dropped heavily on four paws again, and a
+laugh came from its muzzle.
+
+"You won't have to dance," said Geoffrey out of the bear.
+
+"Come and put in the flowers," said Mr. May anxiously, to Alvina.
+
+In the dressing-room, the dividing-curtain was drawn. Max, in
+deerskin trousers but with unpainted torso looked very white and
+strange as he put the last touches of war-paint on Louis' face. He
+glanced round at Alvina, then went on with his work. There was a
+sort of nobility about his erect white form and stiffly-carried
+head, the semi-luminous brown hair. He seemed curiously superior.
+
+Alvina adjusted the maidenly Mr. May. Louis arose, a _brave_ like
+Ciccio, in war-paint even more hideous. Max slipped on a tattered
+hunting-shirt and cartridge belt. His face was a little darkened. He
+was the white prisoner.
+
+They arranged the scenery, while Alvina watched. It was soon done. A
+back cloth of tree-trunks and dark forest: a wigwam, a fire, and a
+cradle hanging from a pole. As they worked, Alvina tried in vain to
+dissociate the two _braves_ from their war-paint. The lines were
+drawn so cleverly that the grimace of ferocity was fixed and
+horrible, so that even in the quiet work of scene-shifting Louis'
+stiffish, female grace seemed full of latent cruelty, whilst
+Ciccio's more muscular slouch made her feel she would not trust him
+for one single moment. Awful things men were, savage, cruel,
+underneath their civilization.
+
+The scene had its beauty. It began with Kishwegin alone at the door
+of the wigwam, cooking, listening, giving an occasional push to the
+hanging cradle, and, if only Madame were taking the part, crooning
+an Indian cradle-song. Enter the _brave_ Louis with his white
+prisoner, Max, who has his hands bound to his side. Kishwegin
+gravely salutes her husband--the bound prisoner is seated by the
+fire--Kishwegin serves food, and asks permission to feed the
+prisoner. The _brave_ Louis, hearing a sound, starts up with his bow
+and arrow. There is a dumb scene of sympathy between Kishwegin and
+the prisoner--the prisoner wants his bonds cut. Re-enter the _brave_
+Louis--he is angry with Kishwegin--enter the _brave_ Ciccio hauling
+a bear, apparently dead. Kishwegin examines the bear, Ciccio
+examines the prisoner. Ciccio tortures the prisoner, makes him
+stand, makes him caper unwillingly. Kishwegin swings the cradle. The
+prisoner is tripped up--falls, and cannot rise. He lies near the
+fallen bear. Kishwegin carries food to Ciccio. The two _braves_
+converse in dumb show, Kishwegin swings the cradle and croons. The
+men rise once more and bend over the prisoner. As they do so, there
+is a muffled roar. The bear is sitting up. Louis swings round, and
+at the same moment the bear strikes him down. Ciccio springs forward
+and stabs the bear, then closes with it. Kishwegin runs and cuts the
+prisoner's bonds. He rises, and stands trying to lift his numbed and
+powerless arms, while the bear slowly crushes Ciccio, and Kishwegin
+kneels over her husband. The bear drops Ciccio lifeless, and turns
+to Kishwegin. At that moment Max manages to kill the bear--he takes
+Kishwegin by the hand and kneels with her beside the dead Louis.
+
+It was wonderful how well the men played their different parts. But
+Mr. May was a little too frisky as Kishwegin. However, it would do.
+
+Ciccio got dressed as soon as possible, to go and look at the horses
+hired for the afternoon procession. Alvina accompanied him, Mr. May
+and the others were busy.
+
+"You know I think it's quite wonderful, your scene," she said to
+Ciccio.
+
+He turned and looked down at her. His yellow, dusky-set eyes rested
+on her good-naturedly, without seeing her, his lip curled in a
+self-conscious, contemptuous sort of smile.
+
+"Not without Madame," he said, with the slow, half-sneering, stupid
+smile. "Without Madame--" he lifted his shoulders and spread his
+hands and tilted his brows--"fool's play, you know."
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I think Mr. May is good, considering. What does
+Madame _do_?" she asked a little jealously.
+
+"Do?" He looked down at her with the same long, half-sardonic look
+of his yellow eyes, like a cat looking casually at a bird which
+flutters past. And again he made his shrugging motion. "She does it
+all, really. The others--they are nothing--what they are Madame has
+made them. And now they think they've done it all, you see. You see,
+that's it."
+
+"But how has Madame made it all? Thought it out, you mean?"
+
+"Thought it out, yes. And then _done_ it. You should see her
+dance--ah! You should see her dance round the bear, when I bring him
+in! Ah, a beautiful thing, you know. She claps her hand--" And
+Ciccio stood still in the street, with his hat cocked a little on
+one side, rather common-looking, and he smiled along his fine nose
+at Alvina, and he clapped his hands lightly, and he tilted his
+eyebrows and his eyelids as if facially he were imitating a dance,
+and all the time his lips smiled stupidly. As he gave a little
+assertive shake of his head, finishing, there came a great yell of
+laughter from the opposite pavement, where a gang of pottery lasses,
+in aprons all spattered with grey clay, and hair and boots and skin
+spattered with pallid spots, had stood to watch. The girls opposite
+shrieked again, for all the world like a gang of grey baboons.
+Ciccio turned round and looked at them with a sneer along his nose.
+They yelled the louder. And he was horribly uncomfortable, walking
+there beside Alvina with his rather small and effeminately-shod
+feet.
+
+"How stupid they are," said Alvina. "I've got used to them."
+
+"They should be--" he lifted his hand with a sharp, vicious
+movement--"_smacked_," he concluded, lowering his hand again.
+
+"Who is going to do it?" said Alvina.
+
+He gave a Neapolitan grimace, and twiddled the fingers of one hand
+outspread in the air, as if to say: "There you are! You've got to
+thank the fools who've failed to do it."
+
+"Why do you all love Madame so much?" Alvina asked.
+
+"How, love?" he said, making a little grimace. "We like her--we love
+her--as if she were a mother. You say _love_--" He raised his
+shoulders slightly, with a shrug. And all the time he looked down at
+Alvina from under his dusky eyelashes, as if watching her sideways,
+and his mouth had the peculiar, stupid, self-conscious, half-jeering
+smile. Alvina was a little bit annoyed. But she felt that a great
+instinctive good-naturedness came out of him, he was self-conscious
+and constrained, knowing she did not follow his language of gesture.
+For him, it was not yet quite natural to express himself in speech.
+Gesture and grimace were instantaneous, and spoke worlds of things,
+if you would but accept them.
+
+But certainly he was stupid, in her sense of the word. She could
+hear Mr. May's verdict of him: "Like a child, you know, just as
+charming and just as tiresome and just as stupid."
+
+"Where is your home?" she asked him.
+
+"In Italy." She felt a fool.
+
+"Which part?" she insisted.
+
+"Naples," he said, looking down at her sideways, searchingly.
+
+"It must be lovely," she said.
+
+"Ha--!" He threw his head on one side and spread out his hands, as
+if to say--"What do you want, if you don't find Naples lovely."
+
+"I should like to see it. But I shouldn't like to die," she said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"They say 'See Naples and die,'" she laughed.
+
+He opened his mouth, and understood. Then he smiled at her directly.
+
+"You know what that means?" he said cutely. "It means see Naples and
+die afterwards. Don't die _before_ you've seen it." He smiled with a
+knowing smile.
+
+"I see! I see!" she cried. "I never thought of that."
+
+He was pleased with her surprise and amusement.
+
+"Ah Naples!" he said. "She is lovely--" He spread his hand across
+the air in front of him--"The sea--and Posilippo--and Sorrento--and
+Capri--Ah-h! You've never been out of England?"
+
+"No," she said. "I should love to go."
+
+He looked down into her eyes. It was his instinct to say at once he
+would take her.
+
+"You've seen nothing--nothing," he said to her.
+
+"But if Naples is so lovely, how could you leave it?" she asked.
+
+"What?"
+
+She repeated her question. For answer, he looked at her, held out
+his hand, and rubbing the ball of his thumb across the tips of his
+fingers, said, with a fine, handsome smile:
+
+"Pennies! Money! You can't earn money in Naples. Ah, Naples is
+beautiful, but she is poor. You live in the sun, and you earn
+fourteen, fifteen pence a day--"
+
+"Not enough," she said.
+
+He put his head on one side and tilted his brows, as if to say "What
+are you to do?" And the smile on his mouth was sad, fine, and
+charming. There was an indefinable air of sadness or wistfulness
+about him, something so robust and fragile at the same time, that
+she was drawn in a strange way.
+
+"But you'll go back?" she said.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To Italy. To Naples."
+
+"Yes, I shall go back to Italy," he said, as if unwilling to commit
+himself. "But perhaps I shan't go back to Naples."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"Ah, never! I don't say never. I shall go to Naples, to see my
+mother's sister. But I shan't go to live--"
+
+"Have you a mother and father?"
+
+"I? No! I have a brother and two sisters--in America. Parents, none.
+They are dead."
+
+"And you wander about the world--" she said.
+
+He looked at her, and made a slight, sad gesture, indifferent also.
+
+"But you have Madame for a mother," she said.
+
+He made another gesture this time: pressed down the corners of his
+mouth as if he didn't like it. Then he turned with the slow, fine
+smile.
+
+"Does a man want two mothers? Eh?" he said, as if he posed a
+conundrum.
+
+"I shouldn't think so," laughed Alvina.
+
+He glanced at her to see what she meant, what she understood.
+
+"My mother is dead, see!" he said. "Frenchwomen--Frenchwomen--they
+have their babies till they are a hundred--"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Alvina, laughing.
+
+"A Frenchman is a little man when he's seven years old--and if his
+mother comes, he is a little baby boy when he's seventy. Do you know
+that?"
+
+"I _didn't_ know it," said Alvina.
+
+"But now--you do," he said, lurching round a corner with her.
+
+They had come to the stables. Three of the horses were there,
+including the thoroughbred Ciccio was going to ride. He stood and
+examined the beasts critically. Then he spoke to them with strange
+sounds, patted them, stroked them down, felt them, slid his hand
+down them, over them, under them, and felt their legs.
+
+Then, he looked up from stooping there under the horses, with a
+long, slow look of his yellow eyes, at Alvina. She felt
+unconsciously flattered. His long, yellow look lingered, holding her
+eyes. She wondered what he was thinking. Yet he never spoke. He
+turned again to the horses. They seemed to understand him, to prick
+up alert.
+
+"This is mine," he said, with his hand on the neck of the old
+thoroughbred. It was a bay with a white blaze.
+
+"I think he's nice," she said. "He seems so sensitive."
+
+"In England," he answered suddenly, "horses live a long time,
+because they _don't_ live--never alive--see? In England
+railway-engines are alive, and horses go on wheels." He smiled into
+her eyes as if she understood. She was a trifle nervous as he smiled
+at her from out of the stable, so yellow-eyed and half-mysterious,
+derisive. Her impulse was to turn and go away from the stable. But a
+deeper impulse made her smile into his face, as she said to him:
+
+"They like you to touch them."
+
+"Who?" His eyes kept hers. Curious how _dark_ they seemed, with only
+a yellow ring of pupil. He was looking right into her, beyond her
+usual self, impersonal.
+
+"The horses," she said. She was afraid of his long, cat-like look.
+Yet she felt convinced of his ultimate good-nature. He seemed to her
+to be the only passionately good-natured man she had ever seen. She
+watched him vaguely, with strange vague trust, implicit belief in
+him. In him--in what?
+
+That afternoon the colliers trooping home in the winter afternoon
+were rejoiced with a spectacle: Kishwegin, in her deerskin, fringed
+gaiters and fringed frock of deerskin, her long hair down her back,
+and with marvellous cloths and trappings on her steed, riding
+astride on a tall white horse, followed by Max in chieftain's robes
+and chieftain's long head-dress of dyed feathers, then by the others
+in war-paint and feathers and brilliant Navajo blankets. They
+carried bows and spears. Ciccio was without his blanket, naked to
+the waist, in war-paint, and brandishing a long spear. He dashed up
+from the rear, saluted the chieftain with his arm and his spear on
+high as he swept past, suddenly drew up his rearing steed, and
+trotted slowly back again, making his horse perform its paces. He
+was extraordinarily velvety and alive on horseback.
+
+Crowds of excited, shouting children ran chattering along the
+pavements. The colliers, as they tramped grey and heavy, in an
+intermittent stream uphill from the low grey west, stood on the
+pavement in wonder as the cavalcade approached and passed, jingling
+the silver bells of its trappings, vibrating the wonderful colours
+of the barred blankets and saddle cloths, the scarlet wool of the
+accoutrements, the bright tips of feathers. Women shrieked as
+Ciccio, in his war-paint, wheeled near the pavement. Children
+screamed and ran. The colliers shouted. Ciccio smiled in his
+terrifying war-paint, brandished his spear and trotted softly, like
+a flower on its stem, round to the procession.
+
+Miss Pinnegar and Alvina and James Houghton had come round into
+Knarborough Road to watch. It was a great moment. Looking along the
+road they saw all the shopkeepers at their doors, the pavements
+eager. And then, in the distance, the white horse jingling its
+trappings of scarlet hair and bells, with the dusky Kishwegin
+sitting on the saddle-blanket of brilliant, lurid stripes, sitting
+impassive and all dusky above that intermittent flashing of colour:
+then the chieftain, dark-faced, erect, easy, swathed in a white
+blanket, with scarlet and black stripes, and all his strange crest
+of white, tip-dyed feathers swaying down his back: as he came nearer
+one saw the wolfskin and the brilliant moccasins against the black
+sides of his horse; Louis and Goeffrey followed, lurid, horrid in
+the face, wearing blankets with stroke after stroke of blazing
+colour upon their duskiness, and sitting stern, holding their
+spears: lastly, Ciccio, on his bay horse with a green seat,
+flickering hither and thither in the rear, his feathers swaying, his
+horse sweating, his face ghastlily smiling in its war-paint. So they
+advanced down the grey pallor of Knarborough Road, in the late
+wintry afternoon. Somewhere the sun was setting, and far overhead
+was a flush of orange.
+
+"Well I never!" murmured Miss Pinnegar. "Well I never!"
+
+The strange savageness of the striped Navajo blankets seemed to her
+unsettling, advancing down Knarborough Road: she examined Kishwegin
+curiously.
+
+"Can you _believe_ that that's Mr. May--he's exactly like a girl.
+Well, well--it makes you wonder what is and what isn't. But _aren't_
+they good? What? Most striking. Exactly like Indians. You can't
+believe your eyes. My word what a terrifying race they--" Here she
+uttered a scream and ran back clutching the wall as Ciccio swept
+past, brushing her with his horse's tail, and actually swinging his
+spear so as to touch Alvina and James Houghton lightly with the butt
+of it. James too started with a cry, the mob at the corner screamed.
+But Alvina caught the slow, mischievous smile as the painted horror
+showed his teeth in passing; she was able to flash back an excited
+laugh. She felt his yellow-tawny eyes linger on her, in that one
+second, as if negligently.
+
+"I call that too much!" Miss Pinnegar was crying, thoroughly upset.
+"Now that was unnecessary! Why it was enough to scare one to death.
+Besides, it's dangerous. It ought to be put a stop to. I don't
+believe in letting these show-people have liberties."
+
+The cavalcade was slowly passing, with its uneasy horses and its
+flare of striped colour and its silent riders. Ciccio was trotting
+softly back, on his green saddle-cloth, suave as velvet, his dusky,
+naked torso beautiful.
+
+"Eh, you'd think he'd get his death," the women in the crowd were
+saying.
+
+"A proper savage one, that. Makes your blood run cold--"
+
+"Ay, an' a man for all that, take's painted face for what's worth. A
+tidy man, _I_ say."
+
+He did not look at Alvina. The faint, mischievous smile uncovered
+his teeth. He fell in suddenly behind Geoffrey, with a jerk of his
+steed, calling out to Geoffrey in Italian.
+
+It was becoming cold. The cavalcade fell into a trot, Mr. May
+shaking rather badly. Ciccio halted, rested his lance against a
+lamp-post, switched his green blanket from beneath him, flung it
+round him as he sat, and darted off. They had all disappeared over
+the brow of Lumley Hill, descending. He was gone too. In the wintry
+twilight the crowd began, lingeringly, to turn away. And in some
+strange way, it manifested its disapproval of the spectacle: as
+grown-up men and women, they were a little bit insulted by such a
+show. It was an anachronism. They wanted a direct appeal to the
+mind. Miss Pinnegar expressed it.
+
+"Well," she said, when she was safely back in Manchester House, with
+the gas lighted, and as she was pouring the boiling water into the
+tea-pot, "You may say what you like. It's interesting in a way, just
+to show what savage Red-Indians were like. But it's childish. It's
+only childishness. I can't understand, myself, how people can go on
+liking shows. Nothing happens. It's not like the cinema, where you
+see it all and take it all in at once; you _know_ everything at a
+glance. You don't know anything by looking at these people. You know
+they're only men dressed up, for money. I can't see why you should
+encourage it. I don't hold with idle show-people, parading round, I
+don't, myself. I like to go to the cinema once a week. It's
+instruction, you take it all in at a glance, all you need to know,
+and it lasts you for a week. You can get to know everything about
+people's actual lives from the cinema. I don't see why you want
+people dressing up and showing off."
+
+They sat down to their tea and toast and marmalade, during this
+harangue. Miss Pinnegar was always like a douche of cold water to
+Alvina, bringing her back to consciousness after a delicious
+excitement. In a minute Madame and Ciccio and all seemed to become
+unreal--the actual unrealities: while the ragged dithering pictures
+of the film were actual, real as the day. And Alvina was always put
+out when this happened. She really hated Miss Pinnegar. Yet she had
+nothing to answer. They _were_ unreal, Madame and Ciccio and the
+rest. Ciccio was just a fantasy blown in on the wind, to blow away
+again. The real, permanent thing was Woodhouse, the _semper idem_
+Knarborough Road, and the unchangeable grubby gloom of Manchester
+House, with the stuffy, padding Miss Pinnegar, and her father, whose
+fingers, whose very soul seemed dirty with pennies. These were the
+solid, permanent fact. These were life itself. And Ciccio, splashing
+up on his bay horse and green cloth, he was a mountebank and an
+extraneous nonentity, a coloured old rag blown down the Knarborough
+Road into Limbo. Into Limbo. Whilst Miss Pinnegar and her father sat
+frowsily on for ever, eating their toast and cutting off the crust,
+and sipping their third cup of tea. They would never blow
+away--never, never. Woodhouse was there to eternity. And the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe was blowing like a rag of old paper into
+Limbo. Nothingness! Poor Madame! Poor gallant histrionic Madame! The
+frowsy Miss Pinnegar could crumple her up and throw her down the
+utilitarian drain, and have done with her. Whilst Miss Pinnegar
+lived on for ever.
+
+This put Alvina into a sharp temper.
+
+"Miss Pinnegar," she said. "I do think you go on in the most
+unattractive way sometimes. You're a regular spoil-sport."
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar tartly. "I don't approve of your way of
+sport, I'm afraid."
+
+"You can't disapprove of it as much as I hate your spoil-sport
+existence," said Alvina in a flare.
+
+"Alvina, are you mad!" said her father.
+
+"Wonder I'm not," said Alvina, "considering what my life is."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CICCIO
+
+
+Madame did not pick up her spirits, after her cold. For two days she
+lay in bed, attended by Mrs. Rollings and Alvina and the young men.
+But she was most careful never to give any room for scandal. The
+young men might not approach her save in the presence of some third
+party. And then it was strictly a visit of ceremony or business.
+
+"Oh, your Woodhouse, how glad I shall be when I have left it," she
+said to Alvina. "I feel it is unlucky for me."
+
+"Do you?" said Alvina. "But if you'd had this bad cold in some
+places, you might have been much worse, don't you think."
+
+"Oh my dear!" cried Madame. "Do you think I could confuse you in my
+dislike of this Woodhouse? Oh no! You are not Woodhouse. On the
+contrary, I think it is unkind for you also, this place. You
+look--also--what shall I say--thin, not very happy."
+
+It was a note of interrogation.
+
+"I'm sure I dislike Woodhouse much more than you can," replied
+Alvina.
+
+"I am sure. Yes! I am sure. I see it. Why don't you go away? Why
+don't you marry?"
+
+"Nobody wants to marry me," said Alvina.
+
+Madame looked at her searchingly, with shrewd black eyes under her
+arched eyebrows.
+
+"How!" she exclaimed. "How don't they? You are not bad looking, only
+a little too thin--too haggard--"
+
+She watched Alvina. Alvina laughed uncomfortably.
+
+"Is there _nobody_?" persisted Madame.
+
+"Not now," said Alvina. "Absolutely nobody." She looked with a
+confused laugh into Madame's strict black eyes. "You see I didn't
+care for the Woodhouse young men, either. I _couldn't_."
+
+Madame nodded slowly up and down. A secret satisfaction came over
+her pallid, waxy countenance, in which her black eyes were like twin
+swift extraneous creatures: oddly like two bright little dark
+animals in the snow.
+
+"Sure!" she said, sapient. "Sure! How could you? But there are other
+men besides these here--" She waved her hand to the window.
+
+"I don't meet them, do I?" said Alvina.
+
+"No, not often. But sometimes! sometimes!"
+
+There was a silence between the two women, very pregnant.
+
+"Englishwomen," said Madame, "are so practical. Why are they?"
+
+"I suppose they can't help it," said Alvina. "But they're not half
+so practical and clever as _you_, Madame."
+
+"Oh la--la! I am practical differently. I am practical
+impractically--" she stumbled over the words. "But your Sue now, in
+Jude the Obscure--is it not an interesting book? And is she not
+always too practically practical. If she had been impractically
+practical she could have been quite happy. Do you know what I
+mean?--no. But she is ridiculous. Sue: so Anna Karenine. Ridiculous
+both. Don't you think?"
+
+"Why?" said Alvina.
+
+"Why did they both make everybody unhappy, when they had the man
+they wanted, and enough money? I think they are both so silly. If
+they had been beaten, they would have lost all their practical ideas
+and troubles, merely forgot them, and been happy enough. I am a
+woman who says it. Such ideas they have are not tragical. No, not at
+all. They are nonsense, you see, nonsense. That is all. Nonsense.
+Sue and Anna, they are--non-sensical. That is all. No tragedy
+whatsoever. Nonsense. I am a woman. I know men also. And I know
+nonsense when I see it. Englishwomen are all nonsense: the worst
+women in the world for nonsense."
+
+"Well, I am English," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, my dear, you are English. But you are not necessarily so
+non-sensical. Why are you at all?"
+
+"Nonsensical?" laughed Alvina. "But I don't know what you call my
+nonsense."
+
+"Ah," said Madame wearily. "They never understand. But I like you,
+my dear. I am an old woman--"
+
+"Younger than I," said Alvina.
+
+"Younger than you, because I am practical from the heart, and not
+only from the head. You are not practical from the heart. And yet
+you have a heart."
+
+"But all Englishwomen have good hearts," protested Alvina.
+
+"No! No!" objected Madame. "They are all ve-ry kind, and ve-ry
+practical with their kindness. But they have no heart in all their
+kindness. It is all head, all head: the kindness of the head."
+
+"I can't agree with you," said Alvina.
+
+"No. No. I don't expect it. But I don't mind. You are very kind to
+me, and I thank you. But it is from the head, you see. And so I
+thank you from the head. From the heart--no."
+
+Madame plucked her white fingers together and laid them on her
+breast with a gesture of repudiation. Her black eyes stared
+spitefully.
+
+"But Madame," said Alvina, nettled, "I should never be half such a
+good business woman as you. Isn't that from the head?"
+
+"Ha! of course! Of course you wouldn't be a good business woman.
+Because you are kind from the head. I--" she tapped her forehead and
+shook her head--"I am not kind from the head. From the head I am
+business-woman, good business-woman. Of course I am a good
+business-woman--of course! But--" here she changed her expression,
+widened her eyes, and laid her hand on her breast--"when the heart
+speaks--then I listen with the heart. I do not listen with the head.
+The heart hears the heart. The head--that is another thing. But you
+have blue eyes, you cannot understand. Only dark eyes--" She paused
+and mused.
+
+"And what about yellow eyes?" asked Alvina, laughing.
+
+Madame darted a look at her, her lips curling with a very faint,
+fine smile of derision. Yet for the first time her black eyes
+dilated and became warm.
+
+"Yellow eyes like Ciccio's?" she said, with her great watchful eyes
+and her smiling, subtle mouth. "They are the darkest of all." And
+she shook her head roguishly.
+
+"Are they!" said Alvina confusedly, feeling a blush burning up her
+throat into her face.
+
+"Ha--ha!" laughed Madame. "Ha-ha! I am an old woman, you see. My
+heart is old enough to be kind, and my head is old enough to be
+clever. My heart is kind to few people--very few--especially in this
+England. My young men know that. But perhaps to you it is kind."
+
+"Thank you," said Alvina.
+
+"There! From the head _Thank you_. It is not well done, you see. You
+see!"
+
+But Alvina ran away in confusion. She felt Madame was having her on
+a string.
+
+Mr. May enjoyed himself hugely playing Kishwegin. When Madame came
+downstairs Louis, who was a good satirical mimic, imitated him.
+Alvina happened to come into their sitting-room in the midst of
+their bursts of laughter. They all stopped and looked at her
+cautiously.
+
+"Continuez! Continuez!" said Madame to Louis. And to Alvina: "Sit
+down, my dear, and see what a good actor we have in our Louis."
+
+Louis glanced round, laid his head a little on one side and drew in
+his chin, with Mr. May's smirk exactly, and wagging his tail
+slightly, he commenced to play the false Kishwegin. He sidled and
+bridled and ejaculated with raised hands, and in the dumb show the
+tall Frenchman made such a ludicrous caricature of Mr. Houghton's
+manager that Madame wept again with laughter, whilst Max leaned back
+against the wall and giggled continuously like some pot
+involuntarily boiling. Geoffrey spread his shut fists across the
+table and shouted with laughter, Ciccio threw back his head and
+showed all his teeth in a loud laugh of delighted derision. Alvina
+laughed also. But she flushed. There was a certain biting,
+annihilating quality in Louis' derision of the absentee. And the
+others enjoyed it so much. At moments Alvina caught her lip between
+her teeth, it was so screamingly funny, and so annihilating. She
+laughed in spite of herself. In spite of herself she was shaken into
+a convulsion of laughter. Louis was masterful--he mastered her
+psyche. She laughed till her head lay helpless on the chair, she
+could not move. Helpless, inert she lay, in her orgasm of laughter.
+The end of Mr. May. Yet she was hurt.
+
+And then Madame wiped her own shrewd black eyes, and nodded slow
+approval. Suddenly Louis started and held up a warning finger. They
+all at once covered their smiles and pulled themselves together.
+Only Alvina lay silently laughing.
+
+"Oh, good morning, Mrs. Rollings!" they heard Mr. May's voice. "Your
+company is lively. Is Miss Houghton here? May I go through?"
+
+They heard his quick little step and his quick little tap.
+
+"Come in," called Madame.
+
+The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras all sat with straight faces. Only poor Alvina
+lay back in her chair in a new weak convulsion. Mr. May glanced
+quickly round, and advanced to Madame.
+
+"Oh, good-morning, Madame, so glad to see you downstairs," he said,
+taking her hand and bowing ceremoniously. "Excuse my intruding on
+your mirth!" He looked archly round. Alvina was still incompetent.
+She lay leaning sideways in her chair, and could not even speak to
+him.
+
+"It was evidently a good joke," he said. "May I hear it too?"
+
+"Oh," said Madame, drawling. "It was no joke. It was only Louis
+making a fool of himself, doing a turn."
+
+"Must have been a good one," said Mr. May. "Can't we put it on?"
+
+"No," drawled Madame, "it was nothing--just a non-sensical mood of
+the moment. Won't you sit down? You would like a little
+whiskey?--yes?"
+
+Max poured out whiskey and water for Mr. May.
+
+Alvina sat with her face averted, quiet, but unable to speak to Mr.
+May. Max and Louis had become polite. Geoffrey stared with his big,
+dark-blue eyes stolidly at the newcomer. Ciccio leaned with his arms
+on his knees, looking sideways under his long lashes at the inert
+Alvina.
+
+"Well," said Madame, "and are you satisfied with your houses?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Mr. May. "Quite! The two nights have been excellent.
+Excellent!"
+
+"Ah--I am glad. And Miss Houghton tells me I should not dance
+tomorrow, it is too soon."
+
+"Miss Houghton _knows_," said Mr. May archly.
+
+"Of course!" said Madame. "I must do as she tells me."
+
+"Why yes, since it is for your good, and not hers."
+
+"Of course! Of course! It is very kind of her."
+
+"Miss Houghton is _most_ kind--to _every one_," said Mr. May.
+
+"I am sure," said Madame. "And I am very glad you have been such a
+good Kishwegin. That is very nice also."
+
+"Yes," replied Mr. May. "I begin to wonder if I have mistaken my
+vocation. I should have been _on_ the boards, instead of behind
+them."
+
+"No doubt," said Madame. "But it is a little late--"
+
+The eyes of the foreigners, watching him, flattered Mr. May.
+
+"I'm afraid it is," he said. "Yes. Popular taste is a mysterious
+thing. How do you feel, now? Do you feel they appreciate your work
+as much as they did?"
+
+Madame watched him with her black eyes.
+
+"No," she replied. "They don't. The pictures are driving us away.
+Perhaps we shall last for ten years more. And after that, we are
+finished."
+
+"You think so," said Mr. May, looking serious.
+
+"I am sure," she said, nodding sagely.
+
+"But why is it?" said Mr. May, angry and petulant.
+
+"Why is it? I don't know. I don't know. The pictures are cheap, and
+they are easy, and they cost the audience nothing, no feeling of the
+heart, no appreciation of the spirit, cost them nothing of these.
+And so they like them, and they don't like us, because they must
+_feel_ the things we do, from the heart, and appreciate them from
+the spirit. There!"
+
+"And they don't want to appreciate and to feel?" said Mr. May.
+
+"No. They don't want. They want it all through the eye, and
+finished--so! Just curiosity, impertinent curiosity. That's all. In
+all countries, the same. And so--in ten years' time--no more
+Kishwegin at all."
+
+"No. Then what future have you?" said Mr. May gloomily.
+
+"I may be dead--who knows. If not, I shall have my little apartment
+in Lausanne, or in Bellizona, and I shall be a bourgeoise once more,
+and the good Catholic which I am."
+
+"Which I am also," said Mr. May.
+
+"So! Are you? An American Catholic?"
+
+"Well--English--Irish--American."
+
+"So!"
+
+Mr. May never felt more gloomy in his life than he did that day.
+Where, finally, was he to rest his troubled head?
+
+There was not all peace in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara group either. For
+Thursday, there was to be a change of program--"Kishwegin's
+Wedding--" (with the white prisoner, be if said)--was to take the
+place of the previous scene. Max of course was the director of the
+rehearsal. Madame would not come near the theatre when she herself
+was not to be acting.
+
+Though very quiet and unobtrusive as a rule, Max could suddenly
+assume an air of _hauteur_ and overbearing which was really very
+annoying. Geoffrey always fumed under it. But Ciccio it put into
+unholy, ungovernable tempers. For Max, suddenly, would reveal his
+contempt of the Eyetalian, as he called Ciccio, using the Cockney
+word.
+
+"Bah! quelle tete de veau," said Max, suddenly contemptuous and
+angry because Ciccio, who really was slow at taking in the things
+said to him, had once more failed to understand.
+
+"Comment?" queried Ciccio, in his slow, derisive way.
+
+"_Comment_!" sneered Max, in echo. "_What?_ _What?_ Why what _did_ I
+say? Calf's-head I said. Pig's-head, if that seems more suitable to
+you."
+
+"To whom? To me or to you?" said Ciccio, sidling up.
+
+"To you, lout of an Italian."
+
+Max's colour was up, he held himself erect, his brown hair seemed to
+rise erect from his forehead, his blue eyes glared fierce.
+
+"That is to say, to me, from an uncivilized German pig, ah? ah?"
+
+All this in French. Alvina, as she sat at the piano, saw Max tall
+and blanched with anger; Ciccio with his neck stuck out, oblivious
+and convulsed with rage, stretching his neck at Max. All were in
+ordinary dress, but without coats, acting in their shirt-sleeves.
+Ciccio was clutching a property knife.
+
+"Now! None of that! None of that!" said Mr. May, peremptory. But
+Ciccio, stretching forward taut and immobile with rage, was quite
+unconscious. His hand was fast on his stage knife.
+
+"A dirty Eyetalian," said Max, in English, turning to Mr. May. "They
+understand nothing."
+
+But the last word was smothered in Ciccio's spring and stab. Max
+half started on to his guard, received the blow on his collar-bone,
+near the pommel of the shoulder, reeled round on top of Mr. May,
+whilst Ciccio sprang like a cat down from the stage and bounded
+across the theatre and out of the door, leaving the knife rattling
+on the boards behind him. Max recovered and sprang like a demon,
+white with rage, straight out into the theatre after him.
+
+"Stop--stop--!" cried Mr. May.
+
+"Halte, Max! Max, Max, attends!" cried Louis and Geoffrey, as Louis
+sprang down after his friend. Thud went the boards again, with the
+spring of a man.
+
+Alvina, who had been seated waiting at the piano below, started up
+and overturned her chair as Ciccio rushed past her. Now Max, white,
+with set blue eyes, was upon her.
+
+"Don't--!" she cried, lifting her hand to stop his progress. He saw
+her, swerved, and hesitated, turned to leap over the seats and avoid
+her, when Louis caught him and flung his arms round him.
+
+"Max--attends, ami! Laisse le partir. Max, tu sais que je t'aime. Tu
+le sais, ami. Tu le sais. Laisse le partir."
+
+Max and Louis wrestled together in the gangway, Max looking down
+with hate on his friend. But Louis was determined also, he wrestled
+as fiercely as Max, and at last the latter began to yield. He was
+panting and beside himself. Louis still held him by the hand and by
+the arm.
+
+"Let him go, brother, he isn't worth it. What does he understand,
+Max, dear brother, what does he understand? These fellows from the
+south, they are half children, half animal. They don't know what
+they are doing. Has he hurt you, dear friend? Has he hurt you? It
+was a dummy knife, but it was a heavy blow--the dog of an Italian.
+Let us see."
+
+So gradually Max was brought to stand still. From under the edge of
+his waistcoat, on the shoulder, the blood was already staining the
+shirt.
+
+"Are you cut, brother, brother?" said Louis. "Let us see."
+
+Max now moved his arm with pain. They took off his waistcoat and
+pushed back his shirt. A nasty blackening wound, with the skin
+broken.
+
+"If the bone isn't broken!" said Louis anxiously. "If the bone isn't
+broken! Lift thy arm, frere--lift. It hurts you--so--. No--no--it is
+not broken--no--the bone is not broken."
+
+"There is no bone broken, I know," said Max.
+
+"The animal. He hasn't done _that_, at least."
+
+"Where do you imagine he's gone?" asked Mr. May.
+
+The foreigners shrugged their shoulders, and paid no heed. There was
+no more rehearsal.
+
+"We had best go home and speak to Madame," said Mr. May, who was
+very frightened for his evening performance.
+
+They locked up the Endeavour. Alvina was thinking of Ciccio. He was
+gone in his shirt sleeves. She had taken his jacket and hat from the
+dressing-room at the back, and carried them under her rain-coat,
+which she had on her arm.
+
+Madame was in a state of perturbation. She had heard some one come
+in at the back, and go upstairs, and go out again. Mrs. Rollings had
+told her it was the Italian, who had come in in his shirt-sleeves
+and gone out in his black coat and black hat, taking his bicycle,
+without saying a word. Poor Madame! She was struggling into her
+shoes, she had her hat on, when the others arrived.
+
+"What is it?" she cried.
+
+She heard a hurried explanation from Louis.
+
+"Ah, the animal, the animal, he wasn't worth all my pains!" cried poor
+Madame, sitting with one shoe off and one shoe on. "Why, Max, why didst
+thou not remain man enough to control that insulting mountain temper of
+thine. Have I not said, and said, and said that in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara
+there was but one nation, the Red Indian, and but one tribe, the tribe
+of Kishwe? And now thou hast called him a dirty Italian, or a dog of an
+Italian, and he has behaved like an animal. Too much, too much of an
+animal, too little _esprit_. But thou, Max, art almost as bad. Thy
+temper is a devil's, which maybe is worse than an animal's. Ah, this
+Woodhouse, a curse is on it, I know it is. Would we were away from it.
+Will the week never pass? We shall have to find Ciccio. Without him the
+company is ruined--until I get a substitute. I must get a substitute.
+And how?--and where?--in this country?--tell me that. I am tired of
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. There is no true tribe of Kishwe--no, never. I have
+had enough of Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Let us break up, let us part, _mes
+braves_, let us say adieu here in this _funeste_ Woodhouse."
+
+"Oh, Madame, dear Madame," said Louis, "let us hope. Let us swear a
+closer fidelity, dear Madame, our Kishwegin. Let us never part.
+Max, thou dost not want to part, brother, well-loved? Thou dost not
+want to part, brother whom I love? And thou, Geoffrey, thou--"
+
+Madame burst into tears, Louis wept too, even Max turned aside his
+face, with tears. Alvina stole out of the room, followed by Mr. May.
+
+In a while Madame came out to them.
+
+"Oh," she said. "You have not gone away! We are wondering which way
+Ciccio will have gone, on to Knarborough or to Marchay. Geoffrey
+will go on his bicycle to find him. But shall it be to Knarborough
+or to Marchay?"
+
+"Ask the policeman in the market-place," said Alvina. "He's sure to
+have noticed him, because Ciccio's yellow bicycle is so uncommon."
+
+Mr. May tripped out on this errand, while the others discussed among
+themselves where Ciccio might be.
+
+Mr. May returned, and said that Ciccio had ridden off down the
+Knarborough Road. It was raining slightly.
+
+"Ah!" said Madame. "And now how to find him, in that great town. I
+am afraid he will leave us without pity."
+
+"Surely he will want to speak to Geoffrey before he goes," said
+Louis. "They were always good friends."
+
+They all looked at Geoffrey. He shrugged his broad shoulders.
+
+"Always good friends," he said. "Yes. He will perhaps wait for me at
+his cousin's in Battersea. In Knarborough, I don't know."
+
+"How much money had he?" asked Mr. May.
+
+Madame spread her hands and lifted her shoulders.
+
+"Who knows?" she said.
+
+"These Italians," said Louis, turning to Mr. May. "They have always
+money. In another country, they will not spend one sou if they can
+help. They are like this--" And he made the Neapolitan gesture
+drawing in the air with his fingers.
+
+"But would he abandon you all without a word?" cried Mr. May.
+
+"Yes! Yes!" said Madame, with a sort of stoic pathos. "_He_ would.
+He alone would do such a thing. But he would do it."
+
+"And what point would he make for?"
+
+"What point? You mean where would he go? To Battersea, no doubt, to
+his cousin--and then to Italy, if he thinks he has saved enough
+money to buy land, or whatever it is."
+
+"And so good-bye to him," said Mr. May bitterly.
+
+"Geoffrey ought to know," said Madame, looking at Geoffrey.
+
+Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, and would not give his comrade
+away.
+
+"No," he said. "I don't know. He will leave a message at Battersea,
+I know. But I don't know if he will go to Italy."
+
+"And you don't know where to find him in Knarborough?" asked Mr.
+May, sharply, very much on the spot.
+
+"No--I don't. Perhaps at the station he will go by train to London."
+It was evident Geoffrey was not going to help Mr. May.
+
+"Alors!" said Madame, cutting through this futility. "Go thou to
+Knarborough, Geoffrey, and see--and be back at the theatre for work.
+Go now. And if thou can'st find him, bring him again to us. Tell him
+to come out of kindness to me. Tell him."
+
+And she waved the young man away. He departed on his nine mile ride
+through the rain to Knarborough.
+
+"They know," said Madame. "They know each other's places. It is a
+little more than a year since we came to Knarborough. But they will
+remember."
+
+Geoffrey rode swiftly as possible through the mud. He did not care
+very much whether he found his friend or not. He liked the Italian,
+but he never looked on him as a permanency. He knew Ciccio was
+dissatisfied, and wanted a change. He knew that Italy was pulling
+him away from the troupe, with which he had been associated now for
+three years or more. And the Swiss from Martigny knew that the
+Neapolitan would go, breaking all ties, one day suddenly back to
+Italy. It was so, and Geoffrey was philosophical about it.
+
+He rode into town, and the first thing he did was to seek out the
+music-hall artistes at their lodgings. He knew a good many of them.
+They gave him a welcome and a whiskey--but none of them had seen
+Ciccio. They sent him off to other artistes, other lodging-houses.
+He went the round of associates known and unknown, of lodgings
+strange and familiar, of third-rate possible public houses. Then he
+went to the Italians down in the Marsh--he knew these people always
+ask for one another. And then, hurrying, he dashed to the Midland
+Station, and then to the Great Central Station, asking the porters
+on the London departure platform if they had seen his pal, a man
+with a yellow bicycle, and a black bicycle cape. All to no purpose.
+
+Geoffrey hurriedly lit his lamp and swung off in the dark back to
+Woodhouse. He was a powerfully built, imperturbable fellow. He
+pressed slowly uphill through the streets, then ran downhill into
+the darkness of the industrial country. He had continually to cross
+the new tram-lines, which were awkward, and he had occasionally to
+dodge the brilliantly-illuminated tram-cars which threaded their way
+across-country through so much darkness. All the time it rained, and
+his back wheel slipped under him, in the mud and on the new
+tram-track.
+
+As he pressed in the long darkness that lay between Slaters Mill and
+Durbeyhouses, he saw a light ahead--another cyclist. He moved to his
+side of the road. The light approached very fast. It was a strong
+acetylene flare. He watched it. A flash and a splash and he saw the
+humped back of what was probably Ciccio going by at a great pace on
+the low racing machine.
+
+"Hi Cic'--! Ciccio!" he yelled, dropping off his own bicycle.
+
+"Ha-er-er!" he heard the answering shout, unmistakably Italian, way
+down the darkness.
+
+He turned--saw the other cyclist had stopped. The flare swung round,
+and Ciccio softly rode up. He dropped off beside Geoffrey.
+
+"Toi!" said Ciccio.
+
+"He! Ou vas-tu?"
+
+"He!" ejaculated Ciccio.
+
+Their conversation consisted a good deal in noises variously
+ejaculated.
+
+"Coming back?" asked Geoffrey.
+
+"Where've you been?" retorted Ciccio.
+
+"Knarborough--looking for thee. Where have you--?"
+
+"Buckled my front wheel at Durbeyhouses."
+
+"Come off?"
+
+"He!"
+
+"Hurt?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Max is all right."
+
+"Merde!"
+
+"Come on, come back with me."
+
+"Nay." Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"Madame's crying. Wants thee to come back."
+
+Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"Come on, Cic'--" said Geoffrey.
+
+Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"Never?" said Geoffrey.
+
+"Basta--had enough," said Ciccio, with an invisible grimace.
+
+"Come for a bit, and we'll clear together."
+
+Ciccio again shook his head.
+
+"What, is it adieu?"
+
+Ciccio did not speak.
+
+"Don't go, comrade," said Geoffrey.
+
+"Faut," said Ciccio, slightly derisive.
+
+"Eh alors! I'd like to come with thee. What?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Doesn't matter. Thou'rt going to Italy?"
+
+"Who knows!--seems so."
+
+"I'd like to go back."
+
+"Eh alors!" Ciccio half veered round.
+
+"Wait for me a few days," said Geoffrey.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"See you tomorrow in Knarborough. Go to Mrs. Pym's, 6 Hampden
+Street. Gittiventi is there. Right, eh?"
+
+"I'll think about it."
+
+"Eleven o'clock, eh?"
+
+"I'll think about it."
+
+"Friends ever--Ciccio--eh?" Geoffrey held out his hand.
+
+Ciccio slowly took it. The two men leaned to each other and kissed
+farewell, on either cheek.
+
+"Tomorrow, Cic'--"
+
+"Au revoir, Gigi."
+
+Ciccio dropped on to his bicycle and was gone in a breath. Geoffrey
+waited a moment for a tram which was rushing brilliantly up to him
+in the rain. Then he mounted and rode in the opposite direction. He
+went straight down to Lumley, and Madame had to remain on
+tenterhooks till ten o'clock.
+
+She heard the news, and said:
+
+"Tomorrow I go to fetch him." And with this she went to bed.
+
+In the morning she was up betimes, sending a note to Alvina. Alvina
+appeared at nine o'clock.
+
+"You will come with me?" said Madame. "Come. Together we will go to
+Knarborough and bring back the naughty Ciccio. Come with me, because
+I haven't all my strength. Yes, you will? Good! Good! Let us tell
+the young men, and we will go now, on the tram-car."
+
+"But I am not properly dressed," said Alvina.
+
+"Who will see?" said Madame. "Come, let us go."
+
+They told Geoffrey they would meet him at the corner of Hampden
+Street at five minutes to eleven.
+
+"You see," said Madame to Alvina, "they are very funny, these young
+men, particularly Italians. You must never let them think you have
+caught them. Perhaps he will not let us see him--who knows? Perhaps
+he will go off to Italy all the same."
+
+They sat in the bumping tram-car, a long and wearying journey. And
+then they tramped the dreary, hideous streets of the manufacturing
+town. At the corner of the street they waited for Geoffrey, who rode
+up muddily on his bicycle.
+
+"Ask Ciccio to come out to us, and we will go and drink coffee at
+the Geisha Restaurant--or tea or something," said Madame.
+
+Again the two women waited wearily at the street-end. At last
+Geoffrey returned, shaking his head.
+
+"He won't come?" cried Madame.
+
+"No."
+
+"He says he is going back to Italy?"
+
+"To London."
+
+"It is the same. You can never trust them. Is he quite obstinate?"
+
+Geoffrey lifted his shoulders. Madame could see the beginnings of
+defection in him too. And she was tired and dispirited.
+
+"We shall have to finish the Natcha-Kee-Tawara, that is all," she
+said fretfully.
+
+Geoffrey watched her stolidly, impassively.
+
+"Dost thou want to go with him?" she asked suddenly.
+
+Geoffrey smiled sheepishly, and his colour deepened. But he did not
+speak.
+
+"Go then--" she said. "Go then! Go with him! But for the sake of my
+honour, finish this week at Woodhouse. Can I make Miss Houghton's
+father lose these two nights? Where is your shame? Finish this week
+and then go, go--But finish this week. Tell Francesco that. I have
+finished with him. But let him finish this engagement. Don't put me
+to shame, don't destroy my honour, and the honour of the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Tell him that."
+
+Geoffrey turned again into the house. Madame, in her chic little
+black hat and spotted veil, and her trim black coat-and-skirt, stood
+there at the street-corner staring before her, shivering a little
+with cold, but saying no word of any sort.
+
+Again Geoffrey appeared out of the doorway. His face was impassive.
+
+"He says he doesn't want," he said.
+
+"Ah!" she cried suddenly in French, "the ungrateful, the animal! He
+shall suffer. See if he shall not suffer. The low canaille, without
+faith or feeling. My Max, thou wert right. Ah, such canaille should
+be beaten, as dogs are beaten, till they follow at heel. Will no one
+beat him for me, no one? Yes. Go back. Tell him before he leaves
+England he shall feel the hand of Kishwegin, and it shall be heavier
+than the Black Hand. Tell him that, the coward, that causes a
+woman's word to be broken against her will. Ah, canaille, canaille!
+Neither faith nor feeling, neither faith nor feeling. Trust them
+not, dogs of the south." She took a few agitated steps down the
+pavement. Then she raised her veil to wipe away her tears of anger
+and bitter disappointment.
+
+"Wait a bit," said Alvina. "I'll go." She was touched.
+
+"No. Don't you!" cried Madame.
+
+"Yes I will," she said. The light of battle was in her eyes. "You'll
+come with me to the door," she said to Geoffrey.
+
+Geoffrey started obediently, and led the way up a long narrow stair,
+covered with yellow-and-brown oil-cloth, rather worn, on to the top
+of the house.
+
+"Ciccio," he said, outside the door.
+
+"Oui!" came the curly voice of Ciccio.
+
+Geoffrey opened the door. Ciccio was sitting on a narrow bed, in a
+rather poor attic, under the steep slope of the roof.
+
+"Don't come in," said Alvina to Geoffrey, looking over her shoulder
+at him as she entered. Then she closed the door behind her, and
+stood with her back to it, facing the Italian. He sat loose on the
+bed, a cigarette between his fingers, dropping ash on the bare
+boards between his feet. He looked up curiously at Alvina. She stood
+watching him with wide, bright blue eyes, smiling slightly, and
+saying nothing. He looked up at her steadily, on his guard, from
+under his long black lashes.
+
+"Won't you come?" she said, smiling and looking into his eyes. He
+flicked off the ash of his cigarette with his little finger. She
+wondered why he wore the nail of his little finger so long, so very
+long. Still she smiled at him, and still he gave no sign.
+
+"Do come!" she urged, never taking her eyes from him.
+
+He made not the slightest movement, but sat with his hands dropped
+between his knees, watching her, the cigarette wavering up its blue
+thread of smoke.
+
+"Won't you?" she said, as she stood with her back to the door.
+"Won't you come?" She smiled strangely and vividly.
+
+Suddenly she took a pace forward, stooped, watching his face as if
+timidly, caught his brown hand in her own and lifted it towards
+herself. His hand started, dropped the cigarette, but was not
+withdrawn.
+
+"You will come, won't you?" she said, smiling gently into his
+strange, watchful yellow eyes, that looked fixedly into hers, the
+dark pupil opening round and softening. She smiled into his
+softening round eyes, the eyes of some animal which stares in one of
+its silent, gentler moments. And suddenly she kissed his hand,
+kissed it twice, quickly, on the fingers and the back. He wore a
+silver ring. Even as she kissed his fingers with her lips, the
+silver ring seemed to her a symbol of his subjection, inferiority.
+She drew his hand slightly. And he rose to his feet.
+
+She turned round and took the door-handle, still holding his fingers
+in her left hand.
+
+"You are coming, aren't you?" she said, looking over her shoulder
+into his eyes. And taking consent from his unchanging eyes, she let
+go his hand and slightly opened the door. He turned slowly, and
+taking his coat from a nail, slung it over his shoulders and drew it
+on. Then he picked up his hat, and put his foot on his half-smoked
+cigarette, which lay smoking still. He followed her out of the room,
+walking with his head rather forward, in the half loutish,
+sensual-subjected way of the Italians.
+
+As they entered the street, they saw the trim, French figure of
+Madame standing alone, as if abandoned. Her face was very white
+under her spotted veil, her eyes very black. She watched Ciccio
+following behind Alvina in his dark, hangdog fashion, and she did
+not move a muscle until he came to a standstill in front of her. She
+was watching his face.
+
+"Te voila donc!" she said, without expression. "Allons boire un
+cafe, he? Let us go and drink some coffee." She had now put an
+inflection of tenderness into her voice. But her eyes were black
+with anger. Ciccio smiled slowly, the slow, fine, stupid smile, and
+turned to walk alongside.
+
+Madame said nothing as they went. Geoffrey passed on his bicycle,
+calling out that he would go straight to Woodhouse.
+
+When the three sat with their cups of coffee, Madame pushed up her
+veil just above her eyes, so that it was a black band above her
+brows. Her face was pale and full like a child's, but almost stonily
+expressionless, her eyes were black and inscrutable. She watched
+both Ciccio and Alvina with her black, inscrutable looks.
+
+"Would you like also biscuits with your coffee, the two of you?" she
+said, with an amiable intonation which her strange black looks
+belied.
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. She was a little flushed, as if defiant, while
+Ciccio sat sheepishly, turning aside his ducked head, the slow,
+stupid, yet fine smile on his lips.
+
+"And no more trouble with Max, hein?--you Ciccio?" said Madame,
+still with the amiable intonation and the same black, watching eyes.
+"No more of these stupid scenes, hein? What? Do you answer me."
+
+"No more from me," he said, looking up at her with a narrow,
+cat-like look in his derisive eyes.
+
+"Ho? No? No more? Good then! It is good! We are glad, aren't we,
+Miss Houghton, that Ciccio has come back and there are to be no
+more rows?--hein?--aren't we?"
+
+"_I'm_ awfully glad," said Alvina.
+
+"Awfully glad--yes--awfully glad! You hear, you Ciccio. And you
+remember another time. What? Don't you? He?"
+
+He looked up at her, the slow, derisive smile curling his lips.
+
+"Sure," he said slowly, with subtle intonation.
+
+"Yes. Good! Well then! Well then! We are all friends. We are all
+friends, aren't we, all the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? He? What you think?
+What you say?"
+
+"Yes," said Ciccio, again looking up at her with his yellow,
+glinting eyes.
+
+"All right! All right then! It is all right--forgotten--" Madame
+sounded quite frank and restored. But the sullen watchfulness in her
+eyes, and the narrowed look in Ciccio's, as he glanced at her,
+showed another state behind the obviousness of the words. "And Miss
+Houghton is one of us! Yes? She has united us once more, and so she
+has become one of us." Madame smiled strangely from her blank, round
+white face.
+
+"I should love to be one of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes--well--why not? Why not become one? Why not? What you say,
+Ciccio? You can play the piano, perhaps do other things. Perhaps
+better than Kishwegin. What you say, Ciccio, should she not join us?
+Is she not one of us?"
+
+He smiled and showed his teeth but did not answer.
+
+"Well, what is it? Say then? Shall she not?"
+
+"Yes," said Ciccio, unwilling to commit himself.
+
+"Yes, so I say! So I say. Quite a good idea! We will think of it,
+and speak perhaps to your father, and you shall come! Yes."
+
+So the two women returned to Woodhouse by the tram-car, while Ciccio
+rode home on his bicycle. It was surprising how little Madame and
+Alvina found to say to one another.
+
+Madame effected the reunion of her troupe, and all seemed pretty
+much as before. She had decided to dance the next night, the
+Saturday night. On Sunday the party would leave for Warsall, about
+thirty miles away, to fulfil their next engagement.
+
+That evening Ciccio, whenever he had a moment to spare, watched
+Alvina. She knew it. But she could not make out what his watching
+meant. In the same way he might have watched a serpent, had he found
+one gliding in the theatre. He looked at her sideways, furtively,
+but persistently. And yet he did not want to meet her glance. He
+avoided her, and watched her. As she saw him standing, in his
+negligent, muscular, slouching fashion, with his head dropped
+forward, and his eyes sideways, sometimes she disliked him. But
+there was a sort of _finesse_ about his face. His skin was
+delicately tawny, and slightly lustrous. The eyes were set in so
+dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one
+met the yellow pupils, sulphureous and remote. It was like meeting a
+lion. His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling
+lips seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture. He was
+waiting: silent there, with something muscular and remote about his
+very droop, he was waiting. What for? Alvina could not guess. She
+wanted to meet his eye, to have an open understanding with him. But
+he would not. When she went up to talk to him, he answered in his
+stupid fashion, with a smile of the mouth and no change of the eyes,
+saying nothing at all. Obstinately he held away from her. When he
+was in his war-paint, for one moment she hated his muscular,
+handsome, downward-drooping torso: so stupid and full. The fine
+sharp uprightness of Max seemed much finer, clearer, more manly.
+Ciccio's velvety, suave heaviness, the very heave of his muscles, so
+full and softly powerful, sickened her.
+
+She flashed away angrily on her piano. Madame, who was dancing
+Kishwegin on the last evening, cast sharp glances at her. Alvina had
+avoided Madame as Ciccio had avoided Alvina--elusive and yet
+conscious, a distance, and yet a connection.
+
+Madame danced beautifully. No denying it, she was an artist. She
+became something quite different: fresh, virginal, pristine, a magic
+creature flickering there. She was infinitely delicate and
+attractive. Her _braves_ became glamorous and heroic at once, and
+magically she cast her spell over them. It was all very well for
+Alvina to bang the piano crossly. She could not put out the glow
+which surrounded Kishwegin and her troupe. Ciccio was handsome now:
+without war-paint, and roused, fearless and at the same time
+suggestive, a dark, mysterious glamour on his face, passionate and
+remote. A stranger--and so beautiful. Alvina flashed at the piano,
+almost in tears. She hated his beauty. It shut her apart. She had
+nothing to do with it.
+
+Madame, with her long dark hair hanging in finely-brushed tresses,
+her cheek burning under its dusky stain, was another creature. How
+soft she was on her feet. How humble and remote she seemed, as
+across a chasm from the men. How submissive she was, with an
+eternity of inaccessible submission. Her hovering dance round the
+dead bear was exquisite: her dark, secretive curiosity, her
+admiration of the massive, male strength of the creature, her
+quivers of triumph over the dead beast, her cruel exultation, and
+her fear that he was not really dead. It was a lovely sight,
+suggesting the world's morning, before Eve had bitten any
+white-fleshed apple, whilst she was still dusky, dark-eyed, and
+still. And then her stealthy sympathy with the white prisoner! Now
+indeed she was the dusky Eve tempted into knowledge. Her fascination
+was ruthless. She kneeled by the dead _brave_, her husband, as she
+had knelt by the bear: in fear and admiration and doubt and
+exultation. She gave him the least little push with her foot. Dead
+meat like the bear! And a flash of delight went over her, that
+changed into a sob of mortal anguish. And then, flickering, wicked,
+doubtful, she watched Ciccio wrestling with the bear.
+
+She was the clue to all the action, was Kishwegin. And her dark
+_braves_ seemed to become darker, more secret, malevolent, burning
+with a cruel fire, and at the same time wistful, knowing their end.
+Ciccio laughed in a strange way, as he wrestled with the bear, as he
+had never laughed on the previous evenings. The sound went out into
+the audience, a soft, malevolent, derisive sound. And when the bear
+was supposed to have crushed him, and he was to have fallen, he
+reeled out of the bear's arms and said to Madame, in his derisive
+voice:
+
+"Vivo sempre, Madame." And then he fell.
+
+Madame stopped as if shot, hearing his words: "I am still alive,
+Madame." She remained suspended motionless, suddenly wilted. Then
+all at once her hand went to her mouth with a scream:
+
+"The Bear!"
+
+So the scene concluded itself. But instead of the tender,
+half-wistful triumph of Kishwegin, a triumph electric as it should
+have been when she took the white man's hand and kissed it, there
+was a doubt, a hesitancy, a nullity, and Max did not quite know what
+to do.
+
+After the performance, neither Madame nor Max dared say anything to
+Ciccio about his innovation into the play. Louis felt he had to
+speak--it was left to him.
+
+"I say, Cic'--" he said, "why did you change the scene? It might
+have spoiled everything if Madame wasn't such a genius. Why did you
+say that?"
+
+"Why," said Ciccio, answering Louis' French in Italian, "I am tired
+of being dead, you see."
+
+Madame and Max heard in silence.
+
+When Alvina had played _God Save the King_ she went round behind the
+stage. But Ciccio and Geoffrey had already packed up the property,
+and left. Madame was talking to James Houghton. Louis and Max were
+busy together. Mr. May came to Alvina.
+
+"Well," he said. "That closes another week. I think we've done very
+well, in face of difficulties, don't you?"
+
+"Wonderfully," she said.
+
+But poor Mr. May spoke and looked pathetically. He seemed to feel
+forlorn. Alvina was not attending to him. Her eye was roving. She
+took no notice of him.
+
+Madame came up.
+
+"Well, Miss Houghton," she said, "time to say good-bye, I suppose."
+
+"How do you feel after dancing?" asked Alvina.
+
+"Well--not so strong as usual--but not so bad, you know. I shall be
+all right--thanks to you. I think your father is more ill than I. To
+me he looks very ill."
+
+"Father wears himself away," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, and when we are no longer young, there is not so much to wear.
+Well, I must thank you once more--"
+
+"What time do you leave in the morning?"
+
+"By the train at half-past ten. If it doesn't rain, the young men
+will cycle--perhaps all of them. Then they will go when they like--"
+
+"I will come round to say good-bye--" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh no--don't disturb yourself--"
+
+"Yes, I want to take home the things--the kettle for the bronchitis,
+and those things--"
+
+"Oh thank you very much--but don't trouble yourself. I will send
+Ciccio with them--or one of the others--"
+
+"I should like to say good-bye to you all," persisted Alvina.
+
+Madame glanced round at Max and Louis.
+
+"Are we not all here? No. The two have gone. No! Well! Well what
+time will you come?"
+
+"About nine?"
+
+"Very well, and I leave at ten. Very well. Then _au revoir_ till the
+morning. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," said Alvina. Her colour was rather flushed.
+
+She walked up with Mr. May, and hardly noticed he was there. After
+supper, when James Houghton had gone up to count his pennies, Alvina
+said to Miss Pinnegar:
+
+"Don't you think father looks rather seedy, Miss Pinnegar?"
+
+"I've been thinking so a long time," said Miss Pinnegar tartly.
+
+"What do you think he ought to do?"
+
+"He's killing himself down there, in all weathers and freezing in
+that box-office, and then the bad atmosphere. He's killing himself,
+that's all."
+
+"What can we do?"
+
+"Nothing so long as there's that place down there. Nothing at all."
+
+Alvina thought so too. So she went to bed.
+
+She was up in time, and watching the clock. It was a grey morning,
+but not raining. At five minutes to nine, she hurried off to Mrs.
+Rollings. In the back yard the bicycles were out, glittering and
+muddy according to their owners. Ciccio was crouching mending a
+tire, crouching balanced on his toes, near the earth. He turned like
+a quick-eared animal glancing up as she approached, but did not
+rise.
+
+"Are you getting ready to go?" she said, looking down at him. He
+screwed his head round to her unwillingly, upside down, his chin
+tilted up at her. She did not know him thus inverted. Her eyes
+rested on his face, puzzled. His chin seemed so large, aggressive.
+He was a little bit repellent and brutal, inverted. Yet she
+continued:
+
+"Would you help me to carry back the things we brought for Madame?"
+
+He rose to his feet, but did not look at her. He was wearing broken
+cycling shoes. He stood looking at his bicycle tube.
+
+"Not just yet," she said. "I want to say good-bye to Madame. Will
+you come in half an hour?"
+
+"Yes, I will come," he said, still watching his bicycle tube, which
+sprawled nakedly on the floor. The forward drop of his head was
+curiously beautiful to her, the straight, powerful nape of the neck,
+the delicate shape of the back of the head, the black hair. The way
+the neck sprang from the strong, loose shoulders was beautiful.
+There was something mindless but _intent_ about the forward reach of
+his head. His face seemed colourless, neutral-tinted and
+expressionless.
+
+She went indoors. The young men were moving about making
+preparations.
+
+"Come upstairs, Miss Houghton!" called Madame's voice from above.
+Alvina mounted, to find Madame packing.
+
+"It is an uneasy moment, when we are busy to move," said Madame,
+looking up at Alvina as if she were a stranger.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm in the way. But I won't stay a minute."
+
+"Oh, it is all right. Here are the things you brought--" Madame
+indicated a little pile--"and thank you _very_ much, _very_ much. I
+feel you saved my life. And now let me give you one little token of
+my gratitude. It is not much, because we are not millionaires in the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Just a little remembrance of our troublesome
+visit to Woodhouse."
+
+She presented Alvina with a pair of exquisite bead moccasins, woven
+in a weird, lovely pattern, with soft deerskin soles and sides.
+
+"They belong to Kishwegin, so it is Kishwegin who gives them to you,
+because she is grateful to you for saving her life, or at least from
+a long illness."
+
+"Oh--but I don't want to take them--" said Alvina.
+
+"You don't like them? Why?"
+
+"I think they're lovely, lovely! But I don't want to take them from
+you--"
+
+"If I give them, you do not take them from me. You receive them.
+He?" And Madame pressed back the slippers, opening her plump
+jewelled hands in a gesture of finality.
+
+"But I don't like to take _these_," said Alvina. "I feel they belong
+to Natcha-Kee-Tawara. And I don't want to rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara, do
+I? Do take them back."
+
+"No, I have given them. You cannot rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara in taking a
+pair of shoes--impossible!"
+
+"And I'm sure they are much too small for me."
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed Madame. "It is that! Try."
+
+"I know they are," said Alvina, laughing confusedly.
+
+She sat down and took off her own shoe. The moccasin was a little
+too short--just a little. But it was charming on the foot, charming.
+
+"Yes," said Madame. "It is too short. Very well. I must find you
+something else."
+
+"Please don't," said Alvina. "Please don't find me anything. I don't
+want anything. Please!"
+
+"What?" said Madame, eyeing her closely. "You don't want? Why? You
+don't want anything from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, or from Kishwegin? He?
+From which?"
+
+"Don't give me anything, please," said Alvina.
+
+"All right! All right then. I won't. I won't give you anything. I
+can't give you anything you want from Natcha-Kee-Tawara."
+
+And Madame busied herself again with the packing.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry you are going," said Alvina.
+
+"Sorry? Why? Yes, so am I sorry we shan't see you any more. Yes, so
+I am. But perhaps we shall see you another time--he? I shall send
+you a post-card. Perhaps I shall send one of the young men on his
+bicycle, to bring you something which I shall buy for you. Yes?
+Shall I?"
+
+"Oh! I should be awfully glad--but don't buy--" Alvina checked
+herself in time. "Don't buy anything. Send me a little thing from
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. I _love_ the slippers--"
+
+"But they are too small," said Madame, who had been watching her
+with black eyes that read every motive. Madame too had her
+avaricious side, and was glad to get back the slippers. "Very
+well--very well, I will do that. I will send you some small thing
+from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, and one of the young men shall bring it.
+Perhaps Ciccio? He?"
+
+"Thank you _so_ much," said Alvina, holding out her hand. "Good-bye.
+I'm so sorry you're going."
+
+"Well--well! We are not going so very far. Not so very far. Perhaps
+we shall see each other another day. It may be. Good-bye!"
+
+Madame took Alvina's hand, and smiled at her winsomely all at once,
+kindly, from her inscrutable black eyes. A sudden unusual kindness.
+Alvina flushed with surprise and a desire to cry.
+
+"Yes. I am sorry you are not with Natcha-Kee-Tawara. But we shall
+see. Good-bye. I shall do my packing."
+
+Alvina carried down the things she had to remove. Then she went to
+say good-bye to the young men, who were in various stages of their
+toilet. Max alone was quite presentable.
+
+Ciccio was just putting on the outer cover of his front tire. She
+watched his brown thumbs press it into place. He was quick and sure,
+much more capable, and even masterful, than you would have supposed,
+seeing his tawny Mediterranean hands. He spun the wheel round,
+patting it lightly.
+
+"Is it finished?"
+
+"Yes, I think." He reached his pump and blew up the tire. She
+watched his softly-applied force. What physical, muscular force
+there was in him. Then he swung round the bicycle, and stood it
+again on its wheels. After which he quickly folded his tools.
+
+"Will you come now?" she said.
+
+He turned, rubbing his hands together, and drying them on an old
+cloth. He went into the house, pulled on his coat and his cap, and
+picked up the things from the table.
+
+"Where are you going?" Max asked.
+
+Ciccio jerked his head towards Alvina.
+
+"Oh, allow me to carry them, Miss Houghton. He is not fit--" said
+Max.
+
+True, Ciccio had no collar on, and his shoes were burst.
+
+"I don't mind," said Alvina hastily. "He knows where they go. He
+brought them before."
+
+"But I will carry them. I am dressed. Allow me--" and he began to
+take the things. "You get dressed, Ciccio."
+
+Ciccio looked at Alvina.
+
+"Do you want?" he said, as if waiting for orders.
+
+"Do let Ciccio take them," said Alvina to Max. "Thank you _ever_ so
+much. But let him take them."
+
+So Alvina marched off through the Sunday morning streets, with the
+Italian, who was down at heel and encumbered with an armful of
+sick-room apparatus. She did not know what to say, and he said
+nothing.
+
+"We will go in this way," she said, suddenly opening the hall door.
+She had unlocked it before she went out, for that entrance was
+hardly ever used. So she showed the Italian into the sombre
+drawing-room, with its high black bookshelves with rows and rows of
+calf-bound volumes, its old red and flowered carpet, its grand piano
+littered with music. Ciccio put down the things as she directed, and
+stood with his cap in his hands, looking aside.
+
+"Thank you so much," she said, lingering.
+
+He curled his lips in a faint deprecatory smile.
+
+"Nothing," he murmured.
+
+His eye had wandered uncomfortably up to a portrait on the wall.
+
+"That was my mother," said Alvina.
+
+He glanced down at her, but did not answer.
+
+"I am so sorry you're going away," she said nervously. She stood
+looking up at him with wide blue eyes.
+
+The faint smile grew on the lower part of his face, which he kept
+averted. Then he looked at her.
+
+"We have to move," he said, with his eyes watching her reservedly,
+his mouth twisting with a half-bashful smile.
+
+"Do you like continually going away?" she said, her wide blue eyes
+fixed on his face.
+
+He nodded slightly.
+
+"We have to do it. I like it."
+
+What he said meant nothing to him. He now watched her fixedly, with
+a slightly mocking look, and a reserve he would not relinquish.
+
+"Do you think I shall ever see you again?" she said.
+
+"Should you like--?" he answered, with a sly smile and a faint
+shrug.
+
+"I should like awfully--" a flush grew on her cheek. She heard Miss
+Pinnegar's scarcely audible step approaching.
+
+He nodded at her slightly, watching her fixedly, turning up the
+corners of his eyes slyly, his nose seeming slyly to sharpen.
+
+"All right. Next week, eh? In the morning?"
+
+"Do!" cried Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar came through the door. He
+glanced quickly over his shoulder.
+
+"Oh!" cried Miss Pinnegar. "I couldn't imagine who it was." She eyed
+the young fellow sharply.
+
+"Couldn't you?" said Alvina. "We brought back these things."
+
+"Oh yes. Well--you'd better come into the other room, to the fire,"
+said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"I shall go along. Good-bye!" said Ciccio, and with a slight bow to
+Alvina, and a still slighter to Miss Pinnegar, he was out of the
+room and out of the front door, as if turning tail.
+
+"I suppose they're going this morning," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE
+
+
+Alvina wept when the Natchas had gone. She loved them so much, she
+wanted to be with them. Even Ciccio she regarded as only one of the
+Natchas. She looked forward to his coming as to a visit from the
+troupe.
+
+How dull the theatre was without them! She was tired of the
+Endeavour. She wished it did not exist. The rehearsal on the Monday
+morning bored her terribly. Her father was nervous and irritable.
+The previous week had tried him sorely. He had worked himself into a
+state of nervous apprehension such as nothing would have justified,
+unless perhaps, if the wooden walls of the Endeavour had burnt to
+the ground, with James inside victimized like another Samson. He had
+developed a nervous horror of all artistes. He did not feel safe for
+one single moment whilst he depended on a single one of them.
+
+"We shall have to convert into all pictures," he said in a nervous
+fever to Mr. May. "Don't make any more engagements after the end of
+next month."
+
+"Really!" said Mr. May. "Really! Have you quite decided?"
+
+"Yes quite! Yes quite!" James fluttered. "I have written about a new
+machine, and the supply of films from Chanticlers."
+
+"Really!" said Mr. May. "Oh well then, in that case--" But he was
+filled with dismay and chagrin.
+
+"Of cauce," he said later to Alvina, "I can't _possibly_ stop on if
+we are nothing but a picture show!" And he arched his blanched and
+dismal eyelids with ghastly finality.
+
+"Why?" cried Alvina.
+
+"Oh--why!" He was rather ironic. "Well, it's not my line at _all_.
+I'm not a _film-operator_!" And he put his head on one side with a
+grimace of contempt and superiority.
+
+"But you are, as well," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, _as well_. But not _only_! You _may_ wash the dishes in the
+scullery. But you're not only the _char_, are you?"
+
+"But is it the same?" cried Alvina.
+
+"Of cauce!" cried Mr. May. "Of _cauce_ it's the same."
+
+Alvina laughed, a little heartlessly, into his pallid, stricken
+eyes.
+
+"But what will you do?" she asked.
+
+"I shall have to look for something else," said the injured but
+dauntless little man. "There's nothing _else_, is there?"
+
+"Wouldn't you stay on?" she asked.
+
+"I wouldn't think of it. I wouldn't think of it." He turtled like an
+injured pigeon.
+
+"Well," she said, looking laconically into his face: "It's between
+you and father--"
+
+"Of _cauce_!" he said. "Naturally! Where else--!" But his tone was a
+little spiteful, as if he had rested his last hopes on Alvina.
+
+Alvina went away. She mentioned the coming change to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar, judicious but aloof, "it's a move in the
+right direction. But I doubt if it'll do any good."
+
+"Do you?" said Alvina. "Why?"
+
+"I don't believe in the place, and I never did," declared Miss
+Pinnegar. "I don't believe any good will come of it."
+
+"But why?" persisted Alvina. "What makes you feel so sure about it?"
+
+"I don't know. But that's how I feel. And I have from the first. It
+was wrong from the first. It was wrong to begin it."
+
+"But why?" insisted Alvina, laughing.
+
+"Your father had no business to be led into it. He'd no business to
+touch this show business. It isn't like him. It doesn't belong to
+him. He's gone against his own nature and his own life."
+
+"Oh but," said Alvina, "father was a showman even in the shop. He
+always was. Mother said he was like a showman in a booth."
+
+Miss Pinnegar was taken aback.
+
+"Well!" she said sharply. "If _that's_ what you've seen in
+him!"--there was a pause. "And in that case," she continued tartly,
+"I think some of the showman has come out in his daughter! or
+show-woman!--which doesn't improve it, to my idea."
+
+"Why is it any worse?" said Alvina. "I enjoy it--and so does
+father."
+
+"No," cried Miss Pinnegar. "There you're wrong! There you make a
+mistake. It's all against his better nature."
+
+"Really!" said Alvina, in surprise. "What a new idea! But which is
+father's better nature?"
+
+"You may not know it," said Miss Pinnegar coldly, "and if so, I can
+never tell you. But that doesn't alter it." She lapsed into dead
+silence for a moment. Then suddenly she broke out, vicious and cold:
+"He'll go on till he's killed himself, and _then_ he'll know."
+
+The little adverb _then_ came whistling across the space like a
+bullet. It made Alvina pause. Was her father going to die? She
+reflected. Well, all men must die.
+
+She forgot the question in others that occupied her. First, could
+she bear it, when the Endeavour was turned into another cheap and
+nasty film-shop? The strange figures of the artistes passing under
+her observation had really entertained her, week by week. Some weeks
+they had bored her, some weeks she had detested them, but there was
+always a chance in the coming week. Think of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras!
+
+She thought too much of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She knew it. And she
+tried to force her mind to the contemplation of the new state of
+things, when she banged at the piano to a set of dithering and
+boring pictures. There would be her father, herself, and Mr. May--or
+a new operator, a new manager. The new manager!--she thought of him
+for a moment--and thought of the mechanical factory-faced persons
+who _managed_ Wright's and the Woodhouse Empire.
+
+But her mind fell away from this barren study. She was obsessed by
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. They seemed to have fascinated her. Which of
+them it was, or what it was that had cast the spell over her, she
+did not know. But she was as if hypnotized. She longed to be with
+them. Her soul gravitated towards them all the time.
+
+Monday passed, and Ciccio did not come: Tuesday passed: and
+Wednesday. In her soul she was sceptical of their keeping their
+promise--either Madame or Ciccio. Why should they keep their
+promise? She knew what these nomadic artistes were. And her soul was
+stubborn within her.
+
+On Wednesday night there was another sensation at the Endeavour. Mr.
+May found James Houghton fainting in the box-office after the
+performance had begun. What to do? He could not interrupt Alvina,
+nor the performance. He sent the chocolate-and-orange boy across to
+the Pear Tree for brandy.
+
+James revived. "I'm all right," he said, in a brittle fashion. "I'm
+all right. Don't bother." So he sat with his head on his hand in the
+box-office, and Mr. May had to leave him to operate the film.
+
+When the interval arrived, Mr. May hurried to the box-office, a
+narrow hole that James could just sit in, and there he found the
+invalid in the same posture, semi-conscious. He gave him more
+brandy.
+
+"I'm all right, I tell you," said James, his eyes flaring. "Leave me
+alone." But he looked anything but all right.
+
+Mr. May hurried for Alvina. When the daughter entered the ticket
+place, her father was again in a state of torpor.
+
+"Father," she said, shaking his shoulder gently. "What's the
+matter."
+
+He murmured something, but was incoherent. She looked at his face.
+It was grey and blank.
+
+"We shall have to get him home," she said. "We shall have to get a
+cab."
+
+"Give him a little brandy," said Mr. May.
+
+The boy was sent for the cab, James swallowed a spoonful of brandy.
+He came to himself irritably.
+
+"What? What," he said. "I won't have all this fuss. Go on with the
+performance, there's no need to bother about me." His eye was wild.
+
+"You must go home, father," said Alvina.
+
+"Leave me alone! Will you leave me alone! Hectored by women all my
+life--hectored by women--first one, then another. I won't stand
+it--I won't stand it--" He looked at Alvina with a look of frenzy as
+he lapsed again, fell with his head on his hands on his
+ticket-board. Alvina looked at Mr. May.
+
+"We must get him home," she said. She covered him up with a coat,
+and sat by him. The performance went on without music. At last the
+cab came. James, unconscious, was driven up to Woodhouse. He had to
+be carried indoors. Alvina hurried ahead to make a light in the dark
+passage.
+
+"Father's ill!" she announced to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Didn't I say so!" said Miss Pinnegar, starting from her chair.
+
+The two women went out to meet the cab-man, who had James in his
+arms.
+
+"Can you manage?" cried Alvina, showing a light.
+
+"He doesn't weigh much," said the man.
+
+"Tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu!" went Miss Pinnegar's tongue, in a rapid
+tut-tut of distress. "What have I said, now," she exclaimed. "What
+have I said all along?"
+
+James was laid on the sofa. His eyes were half-shut. They made him
+drink brandy, the boy was sent for the doctor, Alvina's bed was
+warmed. The sick man was got to bed. And then started another vigil.
+Alvina sat up in the sick room. James started and muttered, but did
+not regain consciousness. Dawn came, and he was the same. Pneumonia
+and pleurisy and a touch of meningitis. Alvina drank her tea, took a
+little breakfast, and went to bed at about nine o'clock in the
+morning, leaving James in charge of Miss Pinnegar. Time was all
+deranged.
+
+Miss Pinnegar was a nervous nurse. She sat in horror and
+apprehension, her eyebrows raised, starting and looking at James in
+terror whenever he made a noise. She hurried to him and did what she
+could. But one would have said she was repulsed, she found her task
+unconsciously repugnant.
+
+During the course of the morning Mrs. Rollings came up and said that
+the Italian from last week had come, and could he speak to Miss
+Houghton.
+
+"Tell him she's resting, and Mr. Houghton is seriously ill," said
+Miss Pinnegar sharply.
+
+When Alvina came downstairs at about four in the afternoon she found
+a package: a comb of carved bone, and a message from Madame: "To
+Miss Houghton, with kindest greetings and most sincere thanks from
+Kishwegin."
+
+The comb with its carved, beast-faced serpent was her portion.
+Alvina asked if there had been any other message. None.
+
+Mr. May came in, and stayed for a dismal half-hour. Then Alvina went
+back to her nursing. The patient was no better, still unconscious.
+Miss Pinnegar came down, red eyed and sullen looking. The condition
+of James gave little room for hope.
+
+In the early morning he died. Alvina called Mrs. Rollings, and they
+composed the body. It was still only five o'clock, and not light.
+Alvina went to lie down in her father's little, rather chilly
+chamber at the end of the corridor. She tried to sleep, but could
+not. At half-past seven she arose, and started the business of the
+new day. The doctor came--she went to the registrar--and so on.
+
+Mr. May came. It was decided to keep open the theatre. He would find
+some one else for the piano, some one else to issue the tickets.
+
+In the afternoon arrived Frederick Houghton, James's cousin and
+nearest relative. He was a middle-aged, blond, florid, church-going
+draper from Knarborough, well-to-do and very _bourgeois_. He tried
+to talk to Alvina in a fatherly fashion, or a friendly, or a helpful
+fashion. But Alvina could not listen to him. He got on her nerves.
+
+Hearing the gate bang, she rose and hurried to the window. She was
+in the drawing-room with her cousin, to give the interview its
+proper air of solemnity. She saw Ciccio rearing his yellow bicycle
+against the wall, and going with his head forward along the narrow,
+dark way of the back yard, to the scullery door.
+
+"Excuse me a minute," she said to her cousin, who looked up
+irritably as she left the room.
+
+She was just in time to open the door as Ciccio tapped. She stood on
+the doorstep above him. He looked up, with a faint smile, from under
+his black lashes.
+
+"How nice of you to come," she said. But her face was blanched and
+tired, without expression. Only her large eyes looked blue in their
+tiredness, as she glanced down at Ciccio. He seemed to her far away.
+
+"Madame asks how is Mr. Houghton," he said.
+
+"Father! He died this morning," she said quietly.
+
+"He died!" exclaimed the Italian, a flash of fear and dismay going
+over his face.
+
+"Yes--this morning." She had neither tears nor emotion, but just
+looked down on him abstractedly, from her height on the kitchen
+step. He dropped his eyes and looked at his feet. Then he lifted his
+eyes again, and looked at her. She looked back at him, as from
+across a distance. So they watched each other, as strangers across a
+wide, abstract distance.
+
+He turned and looked down the dark yard, towards the gate where he
+could just see the pale grey tire of his bicycle, and the yellow
+mud-guard. He seemed to be reflecting. If he went now, he went for
+ever. Involuntarily he turned and lifted his face again towards Alvina,
+as if studying her curiously. She remained there on the doorstep,
+neutral, blanched, with wide, still, neutral eyes. She did not seem to
+see him. He studied her with alert, yellow-dusky, inscrutable eyes,
+until she met his look. And then he gave the faintest gesture with his
+head, as of summons towards him. Her soul started, and died in her. And
+again he gave the slight, almost imperceptible jerk of the head,
+backwards and sideways, as if summoning her towards him. His face too
+was closed and expressionless. But in his eyes, which kept hers, there
+was a dark flicker of ascendancy. He was going to triumph over her. She
+knew it. And her soul sank as if it sank out of her body. It sank away
+out of her body, left her there powerless, soulless.
+
+And yet as he turned, with his head stretched forward, to move away:
+as he glanced slightly over his shoulder: she stepped down from the
+step, down to his level, to follow him. He went ducking along the
+dark yard, nearly to the gate. Near the gate, near his bicycle, was
+a corner made by a shed. Here he turned, lingeringly, to her, and
+she lingered in front of him.
+
+Her eyes were wide and neutral and submissive, with a new, awful
+submission as if she had lost her soul. So she looked up at him,
+like a victim. There was a faint smile in his eyes. He stretched
+forward over her.
+
+"You love me? Yes?--Yes?" he said, in a voice that seemed like a
+palpable contact on her.
+
+"Yes," she whispered involuntarily, soulless, like a victim. He put
+his arm round her, subtly, and lifted her.
+
+"Yes," he re-echoed, almost mocking in his triumph. "Yes. Yes!" And
+smiling, he kissed her, delicately, with a certain finesse of
+knowledge. She moaned in spirit, in his arms, felt herself dead,
+dead. And he kissed her with a finesse, a passionate finesse which
+seemed like coals of fire on her head.
+
+They heard footsteps. Miss Pinnegar was coming to look for her.
+Ciccio set her down, looked long into her eyes, inscrutably,
+smiling, and said:
+
+"I come tomorrow."
+
+With which he ducked and ran out of the yard, picking up his bicycle
+like a feather, and, taking no notice of Miss Pinnegar, letting the
+yard-door bang to behind him.
+
+"Alvina!" said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+But Alvina did not answer. She turned, slipped past, ran indoors and
+upstairs to the little bare bedroom she had made her own. She locked
+the door and kneeled down on the floor, bowing down her head to her
+knees in a paroxysm on the floor. In a paroxysm--because she loved
+him. She doubled herself up in a paroxysm on her knees on the
+floor--because she loved him. It was far more like pain, like agony,
+than like joy. She swayed herself to and fro in a paroxysm of
+unbearable sensation, because she loved him.
+
+Miss Pinnegar came and knocked at the door.
+
+"Alvina! Alvina! Oh, you are there! Whatever are you doing? Aren't
+you coming down to speak to your cousin?"
+
+"Soon," said Alvina.
+
+And taking a pillow from the bed, she crushed it against herself and
+swayed herself unconsciously, in her orgasm of unbearable feeling.
+Right in her bowels she felt it--the terrible, unbearable feeling.
+How could she bear it.
+
+She crouched over until she became still. A moment of stillness
+seemed to cover her like sleep: an eternity of sleep in that one
+second. Then she roused and got up. She went to the mirror, still,
+evanescent, and tidied her hair, smoothed her face. She was so
+still, so remote, she felt that nothing, nothing could ever touch
+her.
+
+And so she went downstairs, to that horrible cousin of her father's.
+She seemed so intangible, remote and virginal, that her cousin and
+Miss Pinnegar both failed to make anything of her. She answered
+their questions simply, but did not talk. They talked to each other.
+And at last the cousin went away, with a profound dislike of Miss
+Alvina.
+
+She did not notice. She was only glad he was gone. And she went
+about for the rest of the day elusive and vague. She slept deeply
+that night, without dreams.
+
+The next day was Saturday. It came with a great storm of wind and
+rain and hail: a fury. Alvina looked out in dismay. She knew Ciccio
+would not be able to come--he could not cycle, and it was impossible
+to get by train and return the same day. She was almost relieved.
+She was relieved by the intermission of fate, she was thankful for
+the day of neutrality.
+
+In the early afternoon came a telegram: Coming both tomorrow morning
+deepest sympathy Madame. Tomorrow was Sunday: and the funeral was in
+the afternoon. Alvina felt a burning inside her, thinking of Ciccio.
+She winced--and yet she wanted him to come. Terribly she wanted him
+to come.
+
+She showed the telegram to Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Good gracious!" said the weary Miss Pinnegar. "Fancy those people.
+And I warrant they'll want to be at the funeral. As if he was
+anything to _them_--"
+
+"I think it's very nice of her," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh well," said Miss Pinnegar. "If you think so. I don't fancy he
+would have wanted such people following, myself. And what does she
+mean by _both_. Who's the other?" Miss Pinnegar looked sharply at
+Alvina.
+
+"Ciccio," said Alvina.
+
+"The Italian! Why goodness me! What's _he_ coming for? I can't make
+you out, Alvina. Is that his name, Chicho? I never heard such a
+name. Doesn't sound like a name at all to me. There won't be room
+for them in the cabs."
+
+"We'll order another."
+
+"More expense. I never knew such impertinent people--"
+
+But Alvina did not hear her. On the next morning she dressed herself
+carefully in her new dress. It was black voile. Carefully she did
+her hair. Ciccio and Madame were coming. The thought of Ciccio made
+her shudder. She hung about, waiting. Luckily none of the funeral
+guests would arrive till after one o'clock. Alvina sat listless,
+musing, by the fire in the drawing-room. She left everything now to
+Miss Pinnegar and Mrs. Rollings. Miss Pinnegar, red-eyed and
+yellow-skinned, was irritable beyond words.
+
+It was nearly mid-day when Alvina heard the gate. She hurried to
+open the front door. Madame was in her little black hat and her
+black spotted veil, Ciccio in a black overcoat was closing the yard
+door behind her.
+
+"Oh, my dear girl!" Madame cried, trotting forward with outstretched
+black-kid hands, one of which held an umbrella: "I am so shocked--I
+am so shocked to hear of your poor father. Am I to believe it?--am I
+really? No, I can't."
+
+She lifted her veil, kissed Alvina, and dabbed her eyes. Ciccio came
+up the steps. He took off his hat to Alvina, smiled slightly as he
+passed her. He looked rather pale, constrained. She closed the door
+and ushered them into the drawing-room.
+
+Madame looked round like a bird, examining the room and the
+furniture. She was evidently a little impressed. But all the time
+she was uttering her condolences.
+
+"Tell me, poor girl, how it happened?"
+
+"There isn't much to tell," said Alvina, and she gave the brief
+account of James's illness and death.
+
+"Worn out! Worn out!" Madame said, nodding slowly up and down. Her
+black veil, pushed up, sagged over her brows like a mourning band.
+"You cannot afford to waste the stamina. And will you keep on the
+theatre--with Mr. May--?"
+
+Ciccio was sitting looking towards the fire. His presence made
+Alvina tremble. She noticed how the fine black hair of his head
+showed no parting at all--it just grew like a close cap, and was
+pushed aside at the forehead. Sometimes he looked at her, as Madame
+talked, and again looked at her, and looked away.
+
+At last Madame came to a halt. There was a long pause.
+
+"You will stay to the funeral?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh my dear, we shall be too much--"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I have arranged for you--"
+
+"There! You think of everything. But I will come, not Ciccio. He
+will not trouble you."
+
+Ciccio looked up at Alvina.
+
+"I should like him to come," said Alvina simply. But a deep flush
+began to mount her face. She did not know where it came from, she
+felt so cold. And she wanted to cry.
+
+Madame watched her closely.
+
+"Siamo di accordo," came the voice of Ciccio.
+
+Alvina and Madame both looked at him. He sat constrained, with his
+face averted, his eyes dropped, but smiling.
+
+Madame looked closely at Alvina.
+
+"Is it true what he says?" she asked.
+
+"I don't understand him," said Alvina. "I don't understand what he
+said."
+
+"That you have agreed with him--"
+
+Madame and Ciccio both watched Alvina as she sat in her new black
+dress. Her eyes involuntarily turned to his.
+
+"I don't know," she said vaguely. "Have I--?" and she looked at him.
+
+Madame kept silence for some moments. Then she said gravely:
+
+"Well!--yes!--well!" She looked from one to another. "Well, there is
+a lot to consider. But if you have decided--"
+
+Neither of them answered. Madame suddenly rose and went to Alvina.
+She kissed her on either cheek.
+
+"I shall protect you," she said.
+
+Then she returned to her seat.
+
+"What have you said to Miss Houghton?" she said suddenly to Ciccio,
+tackling him direct, and speaking coldly.
+
+He looked at Madame with a faint derisive smile. Then he turned to
+Alvina. She bent her head and blushed.
+
+"Speak then," said Madame, "you have a reason." She seemed
+mistrustful of him.
+
+But he turned aside his face, and refused to speak, sitting as if he
+were unaware of Madame's presence.
+
+"Oh well," said Madame. "I shall be there, Signorino."
+
+She spoke with a half-playful threat. Ciccio curled his lip.
+
+"You do not know him yet," she said, turning to Alvina.
+
+"I know that," said Alvina, offended. Then she added: "Wouldn't you
+like to take off your hat?"
+
+"If you truly wish me to stay," said Madame.
+
+"Yes, please do. And will you hang your coat in the hall?" she said
+to Ciccio.
+
+"Oh!" said Madame roughly. "He will not stay to eat. He will go out
+to somewhere."
+
+Alvina looked at him.
+
+"Would you rather?" she said.
+
+He looked at her with sardonic yellow eyes.
+
+"If you want," he said, the awkward, derisive smile curling his lips
+and showing his teeth.
+
+She had a moment of sheer panic. Was he just stupid and bestial? The
+thought went clean through her. His yellow eyes watched her
+sardonically. It was the clean modelling of his dark, other-world
+face that decided her--for it sent the deep spasm across her.
+
+"I'd like you to stay," she said.
+
+A smile of triumph went over his face. Madame watched him stonily as
+she stood beside her chair, one hand lightly balanced on her hip.
+Alvina was reminded of Kishwegin. But even in Madame's stony
+mistrust there was an element of attraction towards him. He had
+taken his cigarette case from his pocket.
+
+"On ne fume pas dans le salon," said Madame brutally.
+
+"Will you put your coat in the passage?--and do smoke if you wish,"
+said Alvina.
+
+He rose to his feet and took off his overcoat. His face was
+obstinate and mocking. He was rather floridly dressed, though in
+black, and wore boots of black patent leather with tan uppers.
+Handsome he was--but undeniably in bad taste. The silver ring was
+still on his finger--and his close, fine, unparted hair went badly
+with smart English clothes. He looked common--Alvina confessed it.
+And her heart sank. But what was she to do? He evidently was not
+happy. Obstinacy made him stick out the situation.
+
+Alvina and Madame went upstairs. Madame wanted to see the dead
+James. She looked at his frail, handsome, ethereal face, and crossed
+herself as she wept.
+
+"Un bel homme, cependant," she whispered. "Mort en un jour. C'est
+trop fort, voyez!" And she sniggered with fear and sobs.
+
+They went down to Alvina's bare room. Madame glanced round, as she
+did in every room she entered.
+
+"This was father's bedroom," said Alvina. "The other was mine. He
+wouldn't have it anything but like this--bare."
+
+"Nature of a monk, a hermit," whispered Madame. "Who would have
+thought it! Ah, the men, the men!"
+
+And she unpinned her hat and patted her hair before the small
+mirror, into which she had to peep to see herself. Alvina stood
+waiting.
+
+"And now--" whispered Madame, suddenly turning: "What about this
+Ciccio, hein?" It was ridiculous that she would not raise her voice
+above a whisper, upstairs there. But so it was.
+
+She scrutinized Alvina with her eyes of bright black glass. Alvina
+looked back at her, but did not know what to say.
+
+"What about him, hein? Will you marry him? Why will you?"
+
+"I suppose because I like him," said Alvina, flushing.
+
+Madame made a little grimace.
+
+"Oh yes!" she whispered, with a contemptuous mouth. "Oh
+yes!--because you like him! But you know nothing _of_ him--nothing.
+How can you like him, not knowing him? He may be a real bad
+character. How would you like him then?"
+
+"He isn't, is he?" said Alvina.
+
+"I don't know. I don't know. He may be. Even I, I don't know
+him--no, though he has been with me for three years. What is he? He
+is a man of the people, a boatman, a labourer, an artist's model. He
+sticks to nothing--"
+
+"How old is he?" asked Alvina.
+
+"He is twenty-five--a boy only. And you? You are older."
+
+"Thirty," confessed Alvina.
+
+"Thirty! Well now--so much difference! How can you trust him? How
+can you? Why does he want to marry you--why?"
+
+"I don't know--" said Alvina.
+
+"No, and I don't know. But I know something of these Italian men,
+who are labourers in every country, just labourers and under-men
+always, always down, down, down--" And Madame pressed her spread
+palms downwards. "And so--when they have a chance to come up--" she
+raised her hand with a spring--"they are very conceited, and they
+take their chance. He will want to rise, by you, and you will go
+down, with him. That is how it is. I have seen it before--yes--more
+than one time--"
+
+"But," said Alvina, laughing ruefully. "He can't rise much because
+of me, can he?"
+
+"How not? How not? In the first place, you are English, and he
+thinks to rise by that. Then you are not of the lower class, you are
+of the higher class, the class of the masters, such as employ Ciccio
+and men like him. How will he not rise in the world by you? Yes, he
+will rise very much. Or he will draw you down, down--Yes, one or
+another. And then he thinks that now you have money--now your father
+is dead--" here Madame glanced apprehensively at the closed
+door--"and they all like money, yes, very much, all Italians--"
+
+"Do they?" said Alvina, scared. "I'm sure there won't _be_ any
+money. I'm sure father is in debt."
+
+"What? You think? Do you? Really? Oh poor Miss Houghton! Well--and
+will you tell Ciccio that? Eh? Hein?"
+
+"Yes--certainly--if it matters," said poor Alvina.
+
+"Of course it matters. Of course it matters very much. It matters to
+him. Because he will not have much. He saves, saves, saves, as they
+all do, to go back to Italy and buy a piece of land. And if he has
+you, it will cost him much more, he cannot continue with
+Natcha-Kee-Tawara. All will be much more difficult--"
+
+"Oh, I will tell him in time," said Alvina, pale at the lips.
+
+"You will tell him! Yes. That is better. And then you will see. But
+he is obstinate--as a mule. And if he will still have you, then you
+must think. Can you live in England as the wife of a labouring man,
+a dirty Eyetalian, as they all say? It is serious. It is not
+pleasant for you, who have not known it. I also have not known it.
+But I have seen--" Alvina watched with wide, troubled eyes, while
+Madame darted looks, as from bright, deep black glass.
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. "I should hate being a labourer's wife in a
+nasty little house in a street--"
+
+"In a house?" cried Madame. "It would not be in a house. They live
+many together in one house. It would be two rooms, or even one room,
+in another house with many people not quite clean, you see--"
+
+Alvina shook her head.
+
+"I couldn't stand that," she said finally.
+
+"No!" Madame nodded approval. "No! you could not. They live in a bad
+way, the Italians. They do not know the English home--never. They
+don't like it. Nor do they know the Swiss clean and proper house.
+No. They don't understand. They run into their holes to sleep or to
+shelter, and that is all."
+
+"The same in Italy?" said Alvina.
+
+"Even more--because there it is sunny very often--"
+
+"And you don't need a house," said Alvina. "I should like that."
+
+"Yes, it is nice--but you don't know the life. And you would be
+alone with people like animals. And if you go to Italy he will beat
+you--he will beat you--"
+
+"If I let him," said Alvina.
+
+"But you can't help it, away there from everybody. Nobody will help
+you. If you are a wife in Italy, nobody will help you. You are his
+property, when you marry by Italian law. It is not like England.
+There is no divorce in Italy. And if he beats you, you are
+helpless--"
+
+"But why should he beat me?" said Alvina. "Why should he want to?"
+
+"They do. They are so jealous. And then they go into their
+ungovernable tempers, horrible tempers--"
+
+"Only when they are provoked," said Alvina, thinking of Max.
+
+"Yes, but you will not know what provokes him. Who can _say_ when he
+will be provoked? And then he beats you--"
+
+There seemed to be a gathering triumph in Madame's bright black
+eyes. Alvina looked at her, and turned to the door.
+
+"At any rate I know now," she said, in rather a flat voice.
+
+"And it is _true_. It is all of it true," whispered Madame
+vindictively. Alvina wanted to run from her.
+
+"I _must_ go to the kitchen," she said. "Shall we go down?"
+
+Alvina did not go into the drawing-room with Madame. She was too
+much upset, and she had almost a horror of seeing Ciccio at that
+moment.
+
+Miss Pinnegar, her face stained carmine by the fire, was helping
+Mrs. Rollings with the dinner.
+
+"Are they both staying, or only one?" she said tartly.
+
+"Both," said Alvina, busying herself with the gravy, to hide her
+distress and confusion.
+
+"The man as well," said Miss Pinnegar. "What does the woman want to
+bring _him_ for? I'm sure I don't know what your father would say--a
+common show-fellow, _looks_ what he is--and staying to dinner."
+
+Miss Pinnegar was thoroughly out of temper as she tried the
+potatoes. Alvina set the table. Then she went to the drawing-room.
+
+"Will you come to dinner?" she said to her two guests.
+
+Ciccio rose, threw his cigarette into the fire, and looked round.
+Outside was a faint, watery sunshine: but at least it was out of
+doors. He felt himself imprisoned and out of his element. He had an
+irresistible impulse to go.
+
+When he got into the hall he laid his hand on his hat. The stupid,
+constrained smile was on his face.
+
+"I'll go now," he said.
+
+"We have set the table for you," said Alvina.
+
+"Stop now, since you have stopped for so long," said Madame, darting
+her black looks at him.
+
+But he hurried on his coat, looking stupid. Madame lifted her
+eyebrows disdainfully.
+
+"This is polite behaviour!" she said sarcastically.
+
+Alvina stood at a loss.
+
+"You return to the funeral?" said Madame coldly.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"When you are ready to go," he said.
+
+"At four o'clock," said Madame, "when the funeral has come home.
+Then we shall be in time for the train."
+
+He nodded, smiled stupidly, opened the door, and went.
+
+"This is just like him, to be so--so--" Madame could not express
+herself as she walked down to the kitchen.
+
+"Miss Pinnegar, this is Madame," said Alvina.
+
+"How do you do?" said Miss Pinnegar, a little distant and
+condescending. Madame eyed her keenly.
+
+"Where is the man? I don't know his name," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"He wouldn't stay," said Alvina. "What _is_ his name, Madame?"
+
+"Marasca--Francesco. Francesco Marasca--Neapolitan."
+
+"Marasca!" echoed Alvina.
+
+"It has a bad sound--a sound of a bad augury, bad sign," said
+Madame. "Ma-ra-sca!" She shook her head at the taste of the
+syllables.
+
+"Why do you think so?" said Alvina. "Do you think there is a meaning
+in sounds? goodness and badness?"
+
+"Yes," said Madame. "Certainly. Some sounds are good, they are for
+life, for creating, and some sounds are bad, they are for
+destroying. Ma-ra-sca!--that is bad, like swearing."
+
+"But what sort of badness? What does it do?" said Alvina.
+
+"What does it do? It sends life down--down--instead of lifting it
+up."
+
+"Why should things always go up? Why should life always go up?" said
+Alvina.
+
+"I don't know," said Madame, cutting her meat quickly. There was a
+pause.
+
+"And what about other names," interrupted Miss Pinnegar, a little
+lofty. "What about Houghton, for example?"
+
+Madame put down her fork, but kept her knife in her hand. She looked
+across the room, not at Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Houghton--! Huff-ton!" she said. "When it is said, it has a sound
+_against_: that is, against the neighbour, against humanity. But
+when it is written _Hough-ton!_ then it is different, it is _for_."
+
+"It is always pronounced _Huff-ton_," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"By us," said Alvina.
+
+"We ought to know," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Madame turned to look at the unhappy, elderly woman.
+
+"You are a relative of the family?" she said.
+
+"No, not a relative. But I've been here many years," said Miss
+Pinnegar.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Madame. Miss Pinnegar was frightfully affronted. The
+meal, with the three women at table, passed painfully.
+
+Miss Pinnegar rose to go upstairs and weep. She felt very forlorn.
+Alvina rose to wipe the dishes, hastily, because the funeral guests
+would all be coming. Madame went into the drawing-room to smoke her
+sly cigarette.
+
+Mr. May was the first to turn up for the lugubrious affair: very
+tight and tailored, but a little extinguished, all in black. He
+never wore black, and was very unhappy in it, being almost morbidly
+sensitive to the impression the colour made on him. He was set to
+entertain Madame.
+
+She did not pretend distress, but sat black-eyed and watchful, very
+much her business self.
+
+"What about the theatre?--will it go on?" she asked.
+
+"Well I don't know. I don't know Miss Houghton's intentions," said
+Mr. May. He was a little stilted today.
+
+"It's hers?" said Madame.
+
+"Why, as far as I understand--"
+
+"And if she wants to sell out--?"
+
+Mr. May spread his hands, and looked dismal, but distant.
+
+"You should form a company, and carry on--" said Madame.
+
+Mr. May looked even more distant, drawing himself up in an odd
+fashion, so that he looked as if he were trussed. But Madame's
+shrewd black eyes and busy mind did not let him off.
+
+"Buy Miss Houghton out--" said Madame shrewdly.
+
+"Of cauce," said Mr. May. "Miss Houghton herself must decide."
+
+"Oh sure--! You--are you married?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Your wife here?"
+
+"My wife is in London."
+
+"And children--?"
+
+"A daughter."
+
+Madame slowly nodded her head up and down, as if she put thousands
+of two-and-two's together.
+
+"You think there will be much to come to Miss Houghton?" she said.
+
+"Do you mean property? I really can't say. I haven't enquired."
+
+"No, but you have a good idea, eh?"
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't.
+
+"No! Well! It won't be much, then?"
+
+"Really, I don't know. I should say, not a _large_ fortune--!"
+
+"No--eh?" Madame kept him fixed with her black eyes. "Do you think
+the other one will get anything?"
+
+"The _other one_--?" queried Mr. May, with an uprising cadence.
+Madame nodded slightly towards the kitchen.
+
+"The old one--the Miss--Miss Pin--Pinny--what you call her."
+
+"Miss Pinnegar! The manageress of the work-girls? Really, I don't
+know at all--" Mr. May was most freezing.
+
+"Ha--ha! Ha--ha!" mused Madame quietly. Then she asked: "Which
+work-girls do you say?"
+
+And she listened astutely to Mr. May's forced account of the
+work-room upstairs, extorting all the details she desired to gather.
+Then there was a pause. Madame glanced round the room.
+
+"Nice house!" she said. "Is it their own?"
+
+"So I _believe_--"
+
+Again Madame nodded sagely. "Debts perhaps--eh? Mortgage--" and she
+looked slyly sardonic.
+
+"Really!" said Mr. May, bouncing to his feet. "Do you mind if I go
+to speak to Mrs. Rollings--"
+
+"Oh no--go along," said Madame, and Mr. May skipped out in a temper.
+
+
+
+Madame was left alone in her comfortable chair, studying details of
+the room and making accounts in her own mind, until the actual
+funeral guests began to arrive. And then she had the satisfaction of
+sizing them up. Several arrived with wreaths. The coffin had been
+carried down and laid in the small sitting-room--Mrs. Houghton's
+sitting-room. It was covered with white wreaths and streamers of
+purple ribbon. There was a crush and a confusion.
+
+And then at last the hearse and the cabs had arrived--the coffin was
+carried out--Alvina followed, on the arm of her father's cousin,
+whom she disliked. Miss Pinnegar marshalled the other mourners. It
+was a wretched business.
+
+But it was a great funeral. There were nine cabs, besides the
+hearse--Woodhouse had revived its ancient respect for the house of
+Houghton. A posse of minor tradesmen followed the cabs--all in black
+and with black gloves. The richer tradesmen sat in the cabs.
+
+Poor Alvina, this was the only day in all her life when she was the
+centre of public attention. For once, every eye was upon her, every
+mind was thinking about her. Poor Alvina! said every member of the
+Woodhouse "middle class": Poor Alvina Houghton, said every collier's
+wife. Poor thing, left alone--and hardly a penny to bless herself
+with. Lucky if she's not left with a pile of debts. James Houghton
+ran through some money in his day. Ay, if she had her rights she'd
+be a rich woman. Why, her mother brought three or four thousands
+with her. Ay, but James sank it all in Throttle-Ha'penny and
+Klondyke and the Endeavour. Well, he was his own worst enemy. He
+paid his way. I'm not so sure about that. Look how he served his
+wife, and now Alvina. I'm not so sure he was his own worst enemy. He
+was bad enough enemy to his own flesh and blood. Ah well, he'll
+spend no more money, anyhow. No, he went sudden, didn't he? But he
+was getting very frail, if you noticed. Oh yes, why he fair seemed
+to totter down to Lumley. Do you reckon as that place pays its way?
+What, the Endeavour?--they say it does. They say it makes a nice
+bit. Well, it's mostly pretty full. Ay, it is. Perhaps it won't be
+now Mr. Houghton's gone. Perhaps not. I wonder if he _will_ leave
+much. I'm sure he won't. Everything he's got's mortgaged up to the
+hilt. He'll leave debts, you see if he doesn't. What is she going to
+do then? She'll have to go out of Manchester House--her and Miss
+Pinnegar. Wonder what she'll do. Perhaps she'll take up that
+nursing. She never made much of that, did she--and spent a sight of
+money on her training, they say. She's a bit like her father in the
+business line--all flukes. Pity some nice young man doesn't turn up
+and marry her. I don't know, she doesn't seem to hook on, does she?
+Why she's never had a proper boy. They make out she was engaged
+once. Ay, but nobody ever saw him, and it was off as soon as it was
+on. Can you remember she went with Albert Witham for a bit. Did she?
+No, I never knew. When was that? Why, when he was at Oxford, you
+know, learning for his head master's place. Why didn't she marry him
+then? Perhaps he never asked her. Ay, there's that to it. She'd have
+looked down her nose at him, times gone by. Ay, but that's all over,
+my boy. She'd snap at anybody now. Look how she carries on with that
+manager. Why, _that's_ something awful. Haven't you ever watched her
+in the Cinema? She never lets him alone. And it's anybody alike. Oh,
+she doesn't respect herself. I don't consider. No girl who respected
+herself would go on as she does, throwing herself at every feller's
+head. Does she, though? Ay, any performer or anybody. She's a tidy
+age, though. She's not much chance of getting off. How old do you
+reckon she is? Must be well over thirty. You never say. Well, she
+_looks_ it. She does beguy--a dragged old maid. Oh but she
+sprightles up a bit sometimes. Ay, when she thinks she's hooked on
+to somebody. I wonder why she never did take? It's funny. Oh, she
+was too high and mighty before, and now it's too late. Nobody wants
+her. And she's got no relations to go to either, has she? No, that's
+her father's cousin who she's walking with. Look, they're coming.
+He's a fine-looking man, isn't he? You'd have thought they'd have
+buried Miss Frost beside Mrs. Houghton. You would, wouldn't you? I
+should think Alvina will lie by Miss Frost. They say the grave was
+made for both of them. Ay, she was a lot more of a mother to her
+than her own mother. She _was_ good to them, Miss Frost was. Alvina
+thought the world of her. That's her stone--look, down there. Not a
+very grand one, considering. No, it isn't. Look, there's room for
+Alvina's name underneath. Sh!--
+
+Alvina had sat back in the cab and watched from her obscurity the
+many faces on the street: so familiar, so familiar, familiar as her
+own face. And now she seemed to see them from a great distance, out
+of her darkness. Her big cousin sat opposite her--how she disliked
+his presence.
+
+In chapel she cried, thinking of her mother, and Miss Frost, and her
+father. She felt so desolate--it all seemed so empty. Bitterly she
+cried, when she bent down during the prayer. And her crying started
+Miss Pinnegar, who cried almost as bitterly. It was all rather
+horrible. The afterwards--the horrible afterwards.
+
+There was the slow progress to the cemetery. It was a dull, cold
+day. Alvina shivered as she stood on the bleak hillside, by the open
+grave. Her coat did not seem warm enough, her old black seal-skin
+furs were not much protection. The minister stood on the plank by
+the grave, and she stood near, watching the white flowers blowing in
+the cold wind. She had watched them for her mother--and for Miss
+Frost. She felt a sudden clinging to Miss Pinnegar. Yet they would
+have to part. Miss Pinnegar had been so fond of her father, in a
+quaint, reserved way. Poor Miss Pinnegar, that was all life had
+offered her. Well, after all, it had been a home and a home life. To
+which home and home life Alvina now clung with a desperate yearning,
+knowing inevitably she was going to lose it, now her father was
+gone. Strange, that he was gone. But he was weary, worn very thin
+and weary. He had lived his day. How different it all was, now, at
+his death, from the time when Alvina knew him as a little child and
+thought him such a fine gentleman. You live and learn and lose.
+
+For one moment she looked at Madame, who was shuddering with cold,
+her face hidden behind her black spotted veil. But Madame seemed
+immensely remote: so unreal. And Ciccio--what was his name? She
+could not think of it. What was it? She tried to think of Madame's
+slow enunciation. Marasca--maraschino. Marasca! Maraschino! What was
+maraschino? Where had she heard it. Cudgelling her brains, she
+remembered the doctors, and the suppers after the theatre. And
+maraschino--why, that was the favourite white liqueur of the
+innocent Dr. Young. She could remember even now the way he seemed to
+smack his lips, saying the word _maraschino_. Yet she didn't think
+much of it. Hot, bitterish stuff--nothing: not like green
+Chartreuse, which Dr. James gave her. Maraschino! Yes, that was it.
+Made from cherries. Well, Ciccio's name was nearly the same.
+Ridiculous! But she supposed Italian words were a good deal alike.
+
+Ciccio, the marasca, the bitter cherry, was standing on the edge of
+the crowd, looking on. He had no connection whatever with the
+proceedings--stood outside, self-conscious, uncomfortable, bitten by
+the wind, and hating the people who stared at him. He saw the trim,
+plump figure of Madame, like some trim plump partridge among a flock
+of barn-yard fowls. And he depended on her presence. Without her, he
+would have felt too horribly uncomfortable on that raw hillside. She
+and he were in some way allied. But these others, how alien and
+uncouth he felt them. Impressed by their fine clothes, the English
+working-classes were none the less barbarians to him, uncivilized:
+just as he was to them an uncivilized animal. Uncouth, they seemed
+to him, all raw angles and harshness, like their own weather. Not
+that he thought about them. But he felt it in his flesh, the
+harshness and discomfort of them. And Alvina was one of them. As she
+stood there by the grave, pale and pinched and reserved looking, she
+was of a piece with the hideous cold grey discomfort of the whole
+scene. Never had anything been more uncongenial to him. He was dying
+to get away--to clear out. That was all he wanted. Only some
+southern obstinacy made him watch, from the duskiness of his face,
+the pale, reserved girl at the grave. Perhaps he even disliked her,
+at that time. But he watched in his dislike.
+
+When the ceremony was over, and the mourners turned away to go back
+to the cabs, Madame pressed forward to Alvina.
+
+"I shall say good-bye now, Miss Houghton. We must go to the station
+for the train. And thank you, thank you. Good-bye."
+
+"But--" Alvina looked round.
+
+"Ciccio is there. I see him. We must catch the train."
+
+"Oh but--won't you drive? Won't you ask Ciccio to drive with you in
+the cab? Where is he?"
+
+Madame pointed him out as he hung back among the graves, his black
+hat cocked a little on one side. He was watching. Alvina broke away
+from her cousin, and went to him.
+
+"Madame is going to drive to the station," she said. "She wants you
+to get in with her."
+
+He looked round at the cabs.
+
+"All right," he said, and he picked his way across the graves to
+Madame, following Alvina.
+
+"So, we go together in the cab," said Madame to him. Then:
+"Good-bye, my dear Miss Houghton. Perhaps we shall meet once more.
+Who knows? My heart is with you, my dear." She put her arms round
+Alvina and kissed her, a little theatrically. The cousin looked on,
+very much aloof. Ciccio stood by.
+
+"Come then, Ciccio," said Madame.
+
+"Good-bye," said Alvina to him. "You'll come again, won't you?" She
+looked at him from her strained, pale face.
+
+"All right," he said, shaking her hand loosely. It sounded
+hopelessly indefinite.
+
+"You will come, won't you?" she repeated, staring at him with
+strained, unseeing blue eyes.
+
+"All right," he said, ducking and turning away.
+
+She stood quite still for a moment, quite lost. Then she went on
+with her cousin to her cab, home to the funeral tea.
+
+"Good-bye!" Madame fluttered a black-edged handkerchief. But Ciccio,
+most uncomfortable in his four-wheeler, kept hidden.
+
+The funeral tea, with its baked meats and sweets, was a terrible
+affair. But it came to an end, as everything comes to an end, and
+Miss Pinnegar and Alvina were left alone in the emptiness of
+Manchester House.
+
+"If you weren't here, Miss Pinnegar, I should be quite by myself,"
+said Alvina, blanched and strained.
+
+"Yes. And so should I without you," said Miss Pinnegar doggedly.
+They looked at each other. And that night both slept in Miss
+Pinnegar's bed, out of sheer terror of the empty house.
+
+During the days following the funeral, no one could have been more
+tiresome than Alvina. James had left everything to his daughter,
+excepting some rights in the work-shop, which were Miss Pinnegar's.
+But the question was, how much did "everything" amount to? There
+was something less than a hundred pounds in the bank. There was a
+mortgage on Manchester House. There were substantial bills owing on
+account of the Endeavour. Alvina had about a hundred pounds left
+from the insurance money, when all funeral expenses were paid. Of
+that she was sure, and of nothing else.
+
+For the rest, she was almost driven mad by people coming to talk to
+her. The lawyer came, the clergyman came, her cousin came, the old,
+stout, prosperous tradesmen of Woodhouse came, Mr. May came, Miss
+Pinnegar came. And they all had schemes, and they all had advice.
+The chief plan was that the theatre should be sold up: and that
+Manchester House should be sold, reserving a lease on the top floor,
+where Miss Pinnegar's work-rooms were: that Miss Pinnegar and Alvina
+should move into a small house, Miss Pinnegar keeping the work-room,
+Alvina giving music-lessons: that the two women should be partners
+in the work-shop.
+
+There were other plans, of course. There was a faction against the
+chapel faction, which favoured the plan sketched out above. The
+theatre faction, including Mr. May and some of the more florid
+tradesmen, favoured the risking of everything in the Endeavour.
+Alvina was to be the proprietress of the Endeavour, she was to run
+it on some sort of successful lines, and abandon all other
+enterprise. Minor plans included the election of Alvina to the post
+of parish nurse, at six pounds a month: a small private school; a
+small haberdashery shop; and a position in the office of her
+cousin's Knarborough business. To one and all Alvina answered with a
+tantalizing: "I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know. I
+can't say yet. I shall see. I shall see." Till one and all became
+angry with her. They were all so benevolent, and all so sure that
+they were proposing the very best thing she could do. And they were
+all nettled, even indignant that she did not jump at their
+proposals. She listened to them all. She even invited their advice.
+Continually she said: "Well, what do _you_ think of it?" And she
+repeated the chapel plan to the theatre group, the theatre plan to
+the chapel party, the nursing to the pianoforte proposers, the
+haberdashery shop to the private school advocates. "Tell me what
+_you_ think," she said repeatedly. And they all told her they
+thought _their_ plan was best. And bit by bit she told every
+advocate the proposal of every other advocate "Well, Lawyer Beeby
+thinks--" and "Well now, Mr. Clay, the minister, advises--" and so
+on and so on, till it was all buzzing through thirty benevolent and
+officious heads. And thirty benevolently-officious wills were
+striving to plant each one its own particular scheme of benevolence.
+And Alvina, naive and pathetic, egged them all on in their strife,
+without even knowing what she was doing. One thing only was certain.
+Some obstinate will in her own self absolutely refused to have her
+mind made up. She would _not_ have her mind made up for her, and she
+would not make it up for herself. And so everybody began to say "I'm
+getting tired of her. You talk to her, and you get no forrarder. She
+slips off to something else. I'm not going to bother with her any
+more." In truth, Woodhouse was in a fever, for three weeks or more,
+arranging Alvina's unarrangeable future for her. Offers of charity
+were innumerable--for three weeks.
+
+Meanwhile, the lawyer went on with the proving of the will and the
+drawing up of a final account of James's property; Mr. May went on
+with the Endeavour, though Alvina did not go down to play; Miss
+Pinnegar went on with the work-girls: and Alvina went on unmaking
+her mind.
+
+Ciccio did not come during the first week. Alvina had a post-card
+from Madame, from Cheshire: rather far off. But such was the buzz
+and excitement over her material future, such a fever was worked up
+round about her that Alvina, the petty-propertied heroine of the
+moment, was quite carried away in a storm of schemes and benevolent
+suggestions. She answered Madame's post-card, but did not give much
+thought to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. As a matter of fact, she was
+enjoying a real moment of importance, there at the centre of
+Woodhouse's rather domineering benevolence: a benevolence which she
+unconsciously, but systematically frustrated. All this scheming for
+selling out and making reservations and hanging on and fixing prices
+and getting private bids for Manchester House and for the Endeavour,
+the excitement of forming a Limited Company to run the Endeavour, of
+seeing a lawyer about the sale of Manchester House and the
+auctioneer about the sale of the furniture, of receiving men who
+wanted to pick up the machines upstairs cheap, and of keeping
+everything dangling, deciding nothing, putting everything off till
+she had seen somebody else, this for the moment fascinated her, went
+to her head. It was not until the second week had passed that her
+excitement began to merge into irritation, and not until the third
+week had gone by that she began to feel herself entangled in an
+asphyxiating web of indecision, and her heart began to sing because
+Ciccio had never turned up. Now she would have given anything to see
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras again. But she did not know where they were.
+Now she began to loathe the excitement of her property: doubtfully
+hers, every stick of it. Now she would give anything to get away
+from Woodhouse, from the horrible buzz and entanglement of her
+sordid affairs. Now again her wild recklessness came over her.
+
+She suddenly said she was going away somewhere: she would not say
+where. She cashed all the money she could: a hundred-and-twenty-five
+pounds. She took the train to Cheshire, to the last address of the
+Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: she followed them to Stockport: and back to
+Chinley: and there she was stuck for the night. Next day she dashed
+back almost to Woodhouse, and swerved round to Sheffield. There, in
+that black town, thank heaven, she saw their announcement on the
+wall. She took a taxi to their theatre, and then on to their
+lodgings. The first thing she saw was Louis, in his shirt sleeves,
+on the landing above.
+
+She laughed with excitement and pleasure. She seemed another woman.
+Madame looked up, almost annoyed, when she entered.
+
+"I couldn't keep away from you, Madame," she cried.
+
+"Evidently," said Madame.
+
+Madame was darning socks for the young men. She was a wonderful
+mother for them, sewed for them, cooked for them, looked after them
+most carefully. Not many minutes was Madame idle.
+
+"Do you mind?" said Alvina.
+
+Madame darned for some moments without answering.
+
+"And how is everything at Woodhouse?" she asked.
+
+"I couldn't bear it any longer. I couldn't bear it. So I collected
+all the money I could, and ran away. Nobody knows where I am."
+
+Madame looked up with bright, black, censorious eyes, at the flushed
+girl opposite. Alvina had a certain strangeness and brightness,
+which Madame did not know, and a frankness which the Frenchwoman
+mistrusted, but found disarming.
+
+"And all the business, the will and all?" said Madame.
+
+"They're still fussing about it."
+
+"And there is some money?"
+
+"I have got a hundred pounds here," laughed Alvina. "What there will
+be when everything is settled, I don't know. But not very much, I'm
+sure of that."
+
+"How much do you think? A thousand pounds?"
+
+"Oh, it's just possible, you know. But it's just as likely there
+won't be another penny--"
+
+Madame nodded slowly, as always when she did her calculations.
+
+"And if there is nothing, what do you intend?" said Madame.
+
+"I don't know," said Alvina brightly.
+
+"And if there is something?"
+
+"I don't know either. But I thought, if you would let me play for
+you, I could keep myself for some time with my own money. You said
+perhaps I might be with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. I wish you would let
+me."
+
+Madame bent her head so that nothing showed but the bright black
+folds of her hair. Then she looked up, with a slow, subtle, rather
+jeering smile.
+
+"Ciccio didn't come to see you, hein?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "Yet he promised."
+
+Again Madame smiled sardonically.
+
+"Do you call it a promise?" she said. "You are easy to be satisfied
+with a word. A hundred pounds? No more?"
+
+"A hundred and twenty--"
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"In my bag at the station--in notes. And I've got a little here--"
+Alvina opened her purse, and took out some little gold and silver.
+
+"At the station!" exclaimed Madame, smiling grimly. "Then perhaps
+you have nothing."
+
+"Oh, I think it's quite safe, don't you--?"
+
+"Yes--maybe--since it is England. And you think a hundred and twenty
+pounds is enough?"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To satisfy Ciccio."
+
+"I wasn't thinking of him," cried Alvina.
+
+"No?" said Madame ironically. "I can propose it to him. Wait one
+moment." She went to the door and called Ciccio.
+
+He entered, looking not very good-tempered.
+
+"Be so good, my dear," said Madame to him, "to go to the station and
+fetch Miss Houghton's little bag. You have got the ticket, have
+you?" Alvina handed the luggage ticket to Madame. "Midland Railway,"
+said Madame. "And, Ciccio, you are listening--? Mind! There is a
+hundred and twenty pounds of Miss Houghton's money in the bag. You
+hear? Mind it is not lost."
+
+"It's all I have," said Alvina.
+
+"For the time, for the time--till the will is proved, it is all the
+cash she has. So mind doubly. You hear?"
+
+"All right," said Ciccio.
+
+"Tell him what sort of a bag, Miss Houghton," said Madame.
+
+Alvina told him. He ducked and went. Madame listened for his final
+departure. Then she nodded sagely at Alvina.
+
+"Take off your hat and coat, my dear. Soon we will have tea--when
+Cic' returns. Let him think, let him think what he likes. So much
+money is certain, perhaps there will be more. Let him think. It will
+make all the difference that there is so much cash--yes, so much--"
+
+"But would it _really_ make a difference to him?" cried Alvina.
+
+"Oh my dear!" exclaimed Madame. "Why should it not? We are on earth,
+where we must eat. We are not in Paradise. If it were a thousand
+pounds, then he would want very badly to marry you. But a hundred
+and twenty is better than a blow to the eye, eh? Why sure!"
+
+"It's dreadful, though--!" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh la-la! Dreadful! If it was Max, who is sentimental, then no, the
+money is nothing. But all the others--why, you see, they are men,
+and they know which side to butter their bread. Men are like cats,
+my dear, they don't like their bread without butter. Why should
+they? Nor do I, nor do I."
+
+"Can I help with the darning?" said Alvina.
+
+"Hein? I shall give you Ciccio's socks, yes? He pushes holes in the
+toes--you see?" Madame poked two fingers through the hole in the
+toe of a red-and-black sock, and smiled a little maliciously at
+Alvina.
+
+"I don't mind which sock I darn," she said.
+
+"No? You don't? Well then, I give you another. But if you like I
+will speak to him--"
+
+"What to say?" asked Alvina.
+
+"To say that you have so much money, and hope to have more. And that
+you like him--Yes? Am I right? You like him very much?--hein? Is it
+so?"
+
+"And then what?" said Alvina.
+
+"That he should tell me if he should like to marry you also--quite
+simply. What? Yes?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "Don't say anything--not yet."
+
+"He? Not yet? Not yet. All right, not yet then. You will see--"
+
+Alvina sat darning the sock and smiling at her own shamelessness.
+The point that amused her most of all was the fact that she was not
+by any means sure she wanted to marry him. There was Madame spinning
+her web like a plump prolific black spider. There was Ciccio, the
+unrestful fly. And there was herself, who didn't know in the least
+what she was doing. There sat two of them, Madame and herself,
+darning socks in a stuffy little bedroom with a gas fire, as if they
+had been born to it. And after all, Woodhouse wasn't fifty miles
+away.
+
+Madame went downstairs to get tea ready. Wherever she was, she
+superintended the cooking and the preparation of meals for her young
+men, scrupulous and quick. She called Alvina downstairs. Ciccio came
+in with the bag.
+
+"See, my dear, that your money is safe," said Madame.
+
+Alvina unfastened her bag and counted the crisp white notes.
+
+"And now," said Madame, "I shall lock it in my little bank, yes,
+where it will be safe. And I shall give you a receipt, which the
+young men will witness."
+
+The party sat down to tea, in the stuffy sitting-room.
+
+"Now, boys," said Madame, "what do you say? Shall Miss Houghton join
+the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Shall she be our pianist?"
+
+The eyes of the four young men rested on Alvina. Max, as being the
+responsible party, looked business-like. Louis was tender, Geoffrey
+round-eyed and inquisitive, Ciccio furtive.
+
+"With great pleasure," said Max. "But can the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras
+afford to pay a pianist for themselves?"
+
+"No," said Madame. "No. I think not. Miss Houghton will come for one
+month, to prove, and in that time she shall pay for herself. Yes? So
+she fancies it."
+
+"Can we pay her expenses?" said Max.
+
+"No," said Alvina. "Let me pay everything for myself, for a month. I
+should like to be with you, awfully--"
+
+She looked across with a look half mischievous, half beseeching at
+the erect Max. He bowed as he sat at table.
+
+"I think we shall all be honoured," he said.
+
+"Certainly," said Louis, bowing also over his tea-cup.
+
+Geoffrey inclined his head, and Ciccio lowered his eyelashes in
+indication of agreement.
+
+"Now then," said Madame briskly, "we are all agreed. Tonight we will
+have a bottle of wine on it. Yes, gentlemen? What d'you say?
+Chianti--hein?"
+
+They all bowed above the table.
+
+"And Miss Houghton shall have her professional name, eh? Because we
+cannot say Miss Houghton--what?"
+
+"Do call me Alvina," said Alvina.
+
+"Alvina--Al-vy-na! No, excuse me, my dear, I don't like it. I don't
+like this 'vy' sound. Tonight we shall find a name."
+
+After tea they inquired for a room for Alvina. There was none in the
+house. But two doors away was another decent lodging-house, where a
+bedroom on the top floor was found for her.
+
+"I think you are very well here," said Madame.
+
+"Quite nice," said Alvina, looking round the hideous little room,
+and remembering her other term of probation, as a maternity nurse.
+
+She dressed as attractively as possible, in her new dress of black
+voile, and imitating Madame, she put four jewelled rings on her
+fingers. As a rule she only wore the mourning-ring of black enamel
+and diamond, which had been always on Miss Frost's finger. Now she
+left off this, and took four diamond rings, and one good sapphire.
+She looked at herself in her mirror as she had never done before,
+really interested in the effect she made. And in her dress she
+pinned a valuable old ruby brooch.
+
+Then she went down to Madame's house. Madame eyed her shrewdly, with
+just a touch of jealousy: the eternal jealousy that must exist
+between the plump, pale partridge of a Frenchwoman, whose black hair
+is so glossy and tidy, whose black eyes are so acute, whose black
+dress is so neat and _chic_, and the rather thin Englishwoman in
+soft voile, with soft, rather loose brown hair and demure, blue-grey
+eyes.
+
+"Oh--a difference--what a difference! When you have a little more
+flesh--then--" Madame made a slight click with her tongue. "What a
+good brooch, eh?" Madame fingered the brooch. "Old paste--old
+paste--antique--"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "They are real rubies. It was my
+great-grandmother's."
+
+"Do you mean it? Real? Are you sure--"
+
+"I think I'm quite sure."
+
+Madame scrutinized the jewels with a fine eye.
+
+"Hm!" she said. And Alvina did not know whether she was sceptical,
+or jealous, or admiring, or really impressed.
+
+"And the diamonds are real?" said Madame, making Alvina hold up her
+hands.
+
+"I've always understood so," said Alvina.
+
+Madame scrutinized, and slowly nodded her head. Then she looked into
+Alvina's eyes, really a little jealous.
+
+"Another four thousand francs there," she said, nodding sagely.
+
+"Really!" said Alvina.
+
+"For sure. It's enough--it's enough--"
+
+And there was a silence between the two women.
+
+The young men had been out shopping for the supper. Louis, who knew
+where to find French and German stuff, came in with bundles, Ciccio
+returned with a couple of flasks, Geoffrey with sundry moist papers
+of edibles. Alvina helped Madame to put the anchovies and sardines
+and tunny and ham and salami on various plates, she broke off a bit
+of fern from one of the flower-pots, to stick in the pork-pie, she
+set the table with its ugly knives and forks and glasses. All the
+time her rings sparkled, her red brooch sent out beams, she laughed
+and was gay, she was quick, and she flattered Madame by being very
+deferential to her. Whether she was herself or not, in the hideous,
+common, stuffy sitting-room of the lodging-house she did not know or
+care. But she felt excited and gay. She knew the young men were
+watching her. Max gave his assistance wherever possible. Geoffrey
+watched her rings, half spell-bound. But Alvina was concerned only
+to flatter the plump, white, soft vanity of Madame. She carefully
+chose for Madame the finest plate, the clearest glass, the
+whitest-hafted knife, the most delicate fork. All of which Madame
+saw, with acute eyes.
+
+At the theatre the same: Alvina played for Kishwegin, only for
+Kishwegin. And Madame had the time of her life.
+
+"You know, my dear," she said afterward to Alvina, "I understand
+sympathy in music. Music goes straight to the heart." And she kissed
+Alvina on both cheeks, throwing her arms round her neck
+dramatically.
+
+"I'm _so_ glad," said the wily Alvina.
+
+And the young men stirred uneasily, and smiled furtively.
+
+They hurried home to the famous supper. Madame sat at one end of the
+table, Alvina at the other. Madame had Max and Louis by her side,
+Alvina had Ciccio and Geoffrey. Ciccio was on Alvina's right hand: a
+delicate hint.
+
+They began with hors d'oeuvres and tumblers three parts full of
+Chianti. Alvina wanted to water her wine, but was not allowed to
+insult the sacred liquid. There was a spirit of great liveliness and
+conviviality. Madame became paler, her eyes blacker, with the wine
+she drank, her voice became a little raucous.
+
+"Tonight," she said, "the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras make their feast of
+affiliation. The white daughter has entered the tribe of the
+Hirondelles, swallows that pass from land to land, and build their
+nests between roof and wall. A new swallow, a new Huron from the
+tents of the pale-face, from the lodges of the north, from the tribe
+of the Yenghees." Madame's black eyes glared with a kind of wild
+triumph down the table at Alvina. "Nameless, without having a name,
+comes the maiden with the red jewels, dark-hearted, with the red
+beams. Wine from the pale-face shadows, drunken wine for Kishwegin,
+strange wine for the _braves_ in their nostrils, Vaali, _a vous_."
+
+Madame lifted her glass.
+
+"Vaali, drink to her--Boire a elle--" She thrust her glass forwards
+in the air. The young men thrust their glasses up towards Alvina, in
+a cluster. She could see their mouths all smiling, their teeth white
+as they cried in their throats: "Vaali! Vaali! Boire a vous."
+
+Ciccio was near to her. Under the table he laid his hand on her
+knee. Quickly she put forward her hand to protect herself. He took
+her hand, and looked at her along the glass as he drank. She saw his
+throat move as the wine went down it. He put down his glass, still
+watching her.
+
+"Vaali!" he said, in his throat. Then across the table "He,
+Gigi--Viale! Le Petit Chemin! Comment? Me prends-tu? L'allee--"
+
+There came a great burst of laughter from Louis.
+
+"It is good, it is good!" he cried. "Oh Madame! Viale, it is Italian
+for the little way, the alley. That is too rich."
+
+Max went off into a high and ribald laugh.
+
+"L'allee italienne!" he said, and shouted with laughter.
+
+"Alley or avenue, what does it matter," cried Madame in French, "so
+long as it is a good journey."
+
+Here Geoffrey at last saw the joke. With a strange determined
+flourish he filled his glass, cocking up his elbow.
+
+"A toi, Cic'--et bon voyage!" he said, and then he tilted up his
+chin and swallowed in great throatfuls.
+
+"Certainly! Certainly!" cried Madame. "To thy good journey, my
+Ciccio, for thou art not a great traveller--"
+
+"Na, pour _ca_, y'a plus d'une voie," said Geoffrey.
+
+During this passage in French Alvina sat with very bright eyes
+looking from one to another, and not understanding. But she knew it
+was something improper, on her account. Her eyes had a bright,
+slightly-bewildered look as she turned from one face to another.
+Ciccio had let go her hand, and was wiping his lips with his
+fingers. He too was a little self-conscious.
+
+"Assez de cette eternelle voix italienne," said Madame. "Courage,
+courage au chemin d'Angleterre."
+
+"Assez de cette eternelle voix rauque," said Ciccio, looking round.
+Madame suddenly pulled herself together.
+
+"They will not have my name. They will call you Allay!" she said to
+Alvina. "Is it good? Will it do?"
+
+"Quite," said Alvina.
+
+And she could not understand why Gigi, and then the others after
+him, went off into a shout of laughter. She kept looking round with
+bright, puzzled eyes. Her face was slightly flushed and tender
+looking, she looked naive, young.
+
+"Then you will become one of the tribe of Natcha-Kee-Tawara, of the
+name Allaye? Yes?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina.
+
+"And obey the strict rules of the tribe. Do you agree?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then listen." Madame primmed and preened herself like a black
+pigeon, and darted glances out of her black eyes.
+
+"We are one tribe, one nation--say it."
+
+"We are one tribe, one nation," repeated Alvina.
+
+"Say all," cried Madame.
+
+"We are one tribe, one nation--" they shouted, with varying accent.
+
+"Good!" said Madame. "And no nation do we know but the nation of the
+Hirondelles--"
+
+"No nation do we know but the nation of the Hirondelles," came the
+ragged chant of strong male voices, resonant and gay with mockery.
+
+"Hurons--Hirondelles, means _swallows_," said Madame.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Alvina.
+
+"So! you know! Well, then! We know no nation but the Hirondelles. WE
+HAVE NO LAW BUT HURON LAW!"
+
+"We have no law but Huron law!" sang the response, in a deep,
+sardonic chant.
+
+"WE HAVE NO LAWGIVER EXCEPT KISHWEGIN."
+
+"We have no lawgiver except Kishwegin," they sang sonorous.
+
+"WE HAVE NO HOME BUT THE TENT OF KISHWEGIN."
+
+"We have no home but the tent of Kishwegin."
+
+"THERE IS NO GOOD BUT THE GOOD OF NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA."
+
+"There is no good but the good of Natcha-Kee-Tawara."
+
+"WE ARE THE HIRONDELLES."
+
+"We are the Hirondelles."
+
+"WE ARE KISHWEGIN."
+
+"We are Kishwegin."
+
+"WE ARE MONDAGUA."
+
+"We are Mondagua--"
+
+"WE ARE ATONQUOIS--"
+
+"We are Atonquois--"
+
+"WE ARE PACOHUILA--"
+
+"We are Pacohuila--"
+
+"WE ARE WALGATCHKA--"
+
+"We are Walgatchka--"
+
+"WE ARE ALLAYE--"
+
+"We are Allaye--"
+
+"La musica! Pacohuila, la musica!" cried Madame, starting to her
+feet and sounding frenzied.
+
+Ciccio got up quickly and took his mandoline from its case.
+
+"A--A--Ai--Aii--eee--ya--" began Madame, with a long, faint wail.
+And on the wailing mandoline the music started. She began to dance a
+slight but intense dance. Then she waved for a partner, and set up a
+tarantella wail. Louis threw off his coat and sprang to tarantella
+attention, Ciccio rang out the peculiar tarantella, and Madame and
+Louis danced in the tight space.
+
+"Brava--Brava!" cried the others, when Madame sank into her place.
+And they crowded forward to kiss her hand. One after the other, they
+kissed her fingers, whilst she laid her left hand languidly on the
+head of one man after another, as she sat slightly panting. Ciccio
+however did not come up, but sat faintly twanging the mandoline. Nor
+did Alvina leave her place.
+
+"Pacohuila!" cried Madame, with an imperious gesture. "Allaye!
+Come--"
+
+Ciccio laid down his mandoline and went to kiss the fingers of
+Kishwegin. Alvina also went forward. Madame held out her hand.
+Alvina kissed it. Madame laid her hand on the head of Alvina.
+
+"This is the squaw Allaye, this is the daughter of Kishwegin," she
+said, in her Tawara manner.
+
+"And where is the _brave_ of Allaye, where is the arm that upholds
+the daughter of Kishwegin, which of the Swallows spreads his wings
+over the gentle head of the new one!"
+
+"Pacohuila!" said Louis.
+
+"Pacohuila! Pacohuila! Pacohuila!" said the others.
+
+"Spread soft wings, spread dark-roofed wings, Pacohuila," said
+Kishwegin, and Ciccio, in his shirt-sleeves solemnly spread his
+arms.
+
+"Stoop, stoop, Allaye, beneath the wings of Pacohuila," said
+Kishwegin, faintly pressing Alvina on the shoulder.
+
+Alvina stooped and crouched under the right arm of Pacohuila.
+
+"Has the bird flown home?" chanted Kishwegin, to one of the strains
+of their music.
+
+"The bird is home--" chanted the men.
+
+"Is the nest warm?" chanted Kishwegin.
+
+"The nest is warm."
+
+"Does the he-bird stoop--?"
+
+"He stoops."
+
+"Who takes Allaye?"
+
+"Pacohuila."
+
+Ciccio gently stooped and raised Alvina to her feet.
+
+"C'est ca!" said Madame, kissing her. "And now, children, unless the
+Sheffield policeman will knock at our door, we must retire to our
+wigwams all--"
+
+Ciccio was watching Alvina. Madame made him a secret, imperative
+gesture that he should accompany the young woman.
+
+"You have your key, Allaye?" she said.
+
+"Did I have a key?" said Alvina.
+
+Madame smiled subtly as she produced a latch-key.
+
+"Kishwegin must open your doors for you all," she said. Then, with a
+slight flourish, she presented the key to Ciccio. "I give it to him?
+Yes?" she added, with her subtle, malicious smile.
+
+Ciccio, smiling slightly, and keeping his head ducked, took the key.
+Alvina looked brightly, as if bewildered, from one to another.
+
+"Also the light!" said Madame, producing a pocket flash-light, which
+she triumphantly handed to Ciccio. Alvina watched him. She noticed
+how he dropped his head forward from his straight, strong shoulders,
+how beautiful that was, the strong, forward-inclining nape and back
+of the head. It produced a kind of dazed submission in her, the
+drugged sense of unknown beauty.
+
+"And so good-night, Allaye--bonne nuit, fille des Tawara." Madame
+kissed her, and darted black, unaccountable looks at her.
+
+Each _brave_ also kissed her hand, with a profound salute. Then the
+men shook hands warmly with Ciccio, murmuring to him.
+
+He did not put on his hat nor his coat, but ran round as he was to
+the neighbouring house with her, and opened the door. She entered,
+and he followed, flashing on the light. So she climbed weakly up the
+dusty, drab stairs, he following. When she came to her door, she
+turned and looked at him. His face was scarcely visible, it seemed,
+and yet so strange and beautiful. It was the unknown beauty which
+almost killed her.
+
+"You aren't coming?" she quavered.
+
+He gave an odd, half-gay, half-mocking twitch of his thick dark
+brows, and began to laugh silently. Then he nodded again, laughing
+at her boldly, carelessly, triumphantly, like the dark Southerner he
+was. Her instinct was to defend herself. When suddenly she found
+herself in the dark.
+
+She gasped. And as she gasped, he quite gently put her inside her
+room, and closed the door, keeping one arm round her all the time.
+She felt his heavy muscular predominance. So he took her in both
+arms, powerful, mysterious, horrible in the pitch dark. Yet the
+sense of the unknown beauty of him weighed her down like some force.
+If for one moment she could have escaped from that black spell of
+his beauty, she would have been free. But she could not. He was
+awful to her, shameless so that she died under his shamelessness,
+his smiling, progressive shamelessness. Yet she could not see him
+ugly. If only she could, for one second, have seen him ugly, he
+would not have killed her and made her his slave as he did. But the
+spell was on her, of his darkness and unfathomed handsomeness. And
+he killed her. He simply took her and assassinated her. How she
+suffered no one can tell. Yet all the time, his lustrous dark
+beauty, unbearable.
+
+When later she pressed her face on his chest and cried, he held her
+gently as if she was a child, but took no notice, and she felt in
+the darkness that he smiled. It was utterly dark, and she knew he
+smiled, and she began to get hysterical. But he only kissed her, his
+smiling deepening to a heavy laughter, silent and invisible, but
+sensible, as he carried her away once more. He intended her to be
+his slave, she knew. And he seemed to throw her down and suffocate
+her like a wave. And she could have fought, if only the sense of his
+dark, rich handsomeness had not numbed her like a venom. So she was
+suffocated in his passion.
+
+In the morning when it was light he turned and looked at her from
+under his long black lashes, a long, steady, cruel, faintly-smiling
+look from his tawny eyes, searching her as if to see whether she
+were still alive. And she looked back at him, heavy-eyed and half
+subjected. He smiled slightly at her, rose, and left her. And she
+turned her face to the wall, feeling beaten. Yet not quite beaten
+to death. Save for the fatal numbness of her love for him, she could
+still have escaped him. But she lay inert, as if envenomed. He
+wanted to make her his slave.
+
+When she went down to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras for breakfast she found
+them waiting for her. She was rather frail and tender-looking, with
+wondering eyes that showed she had been crying.
+
+"Come, daughter of the Tawaras," said Madame brightly to her. "We
+have been waiting for you. Good-morning, and all happiness, eh?
+Look, it is a gift-day for you--"
+
+Madame smilingly led Alvina to her place. Beside her plate was a
+bunch of violets, a bunch of carnations, a pair of exquisite bead
+moccasins, and a pair of fine doeskin gloves delicately decorated
+with feather-work on the cuffs. The slippers were from Kishwegin,
+the gloves from Mondagua, the carnations from Atonquois, the violets
+from Walgatchka--all _To the Daughter of the Tawaras, Allaye_, as it
+said on the little cards.
+
+"The gift of Pacohuila you know," said Madame, smiling. "The
+brothers of Pacohuila are your brothers."
+
+One by one they went to her and each one laid the back of her
+fingers against his forehead, saying in turn:
+
+"I am your brother Mondagua, Allaye!"
+
+"I am your brother Atonquois, Allaye!"
+
+"I am your brother Walgatchka, Allaye, best brother, you know--" So
+spoke Geoffrey, looking at her with large, almost solemn eyes of
+affection. Alvina smiled a little wanly, wondering where she was. It
+was all so solemn. Was it all mockery, play-acting? She felt
+bitterly inclined to cry.
+
+Meanwhile Madame came in with the coffee, which she always made
+herself, and the party sat down to breakfast. Ciccio sat on Alvina's
+right, but he seemed to avoid looking at her or speaking to her. All
+the time he looked across the table, with the half-asserted, knowing
+look in his eyes, at Gigi: and all the time he addressed himself to
+Gigi, with the throaty, rich, plangent quality in his voice, that
+Alvina could not bear, it seemed terrible to her: and he spoke in
+French: and the two men seemed to be exchanging unspeakable
+communications. So that Alvina, for all her wistfulness and
+subjectedness, was at last seriously offended. She rose as soon as
+possible from table. In her own heart she wanted attention and
+public recognition from Ciccio--none of which she got. She returned
+to her own house, to her own room, anxious to tidy everything, not
+wishing to have her landlady in the room. And she half expected
+Ciccio to come to speak to her.
+
+As she was busy washing a garment in the bowl, her landlady knocked
+and entered. She was a rough and rather beery-looking Yorkshire
+woman, not attractive.
+
+"Oh, yo'n made yer bed then, han' yer!"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. "I've done everything."
+
+"I see yer han. Yo'n bin sharp."
+
+Alvina did not answer.
+
+"Seems yer doin' yersen a bit o' weshin'."
+
+Still Alvina didn't answer.
+
+"Yo' can 'ing it i' th' back yard."
+
+"I think it'll dry here," said Alvina.
+
+"Isna much dryin' up here. Send us howd when 't's ready. Yo'll
+'appen be wantin' it. I can dry it off for yer i' t' kitchen. You
+don't take a drop o' nothink, do yer?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I don't like it."
+
+"Summat a bit stronger 'n 't bottle, my sakes alive! Well, yo mun
+ha'e yer fling, like t' rest. But coom na, which on 'em is it? I
+catched sight on 'im goin' out, but I didna ma'e out then which on
+'em it wor. He--eh, it's a pity you don't take a drop of nothink,
+it's a world's pity. Is it the fairest on 'em, the tallest."
+
+"No," said Alvina. "The darkest one."
+
+"Oh ay! Well, 's a strappin' anuff feller, for them as goes that
+road. I thought Madame was partikler. I s'll charge yer a bit more,
+yer know. I s'll 'ave to make a bit out of it. _I'm_ partikler as a
+rule. I don't like 'em comin' in an' goin' out, you know. Things get
+said. You look so quiet, you do. Come now, it's worth a hextra quart
+to me, else I shan't have it, I shan't. You can't make as free as
+all that with the house, you know, be it what it may--"
+
+She stood red-faced and dour in the doorway. Alvina quietly gave her
+half-a-sovereign.
+
+"Nay, lass," said the woman, "if you share niver a drop o' th'
+lashins, you mun split it. Five shillin's is oceans, ma wench. I'm
+not down on you--not me. On'y we've got to keep up appearances a
+bit, you know. Dash my rags, it's a caution!"
+
+"I haven't got five shillings--" said Alvina.
+
+"Yer've not? All right, gi'e 's ha 'efcrown today, an' t'other
+termorrer. It'll keep, it'll keep. God bless you for a good wench.
+A' open 'eart 's worth all your bum-righteousness. It is for me. An'
+a sight more. You're all right, ma wench, you're all right--"
+
+And the rather bleary woman went nodding away.
+
+Alvina ought to have minded. But she didn't. She even laughed into
+her ricketty mirror. At the back of her thoughts, all she minded was
+that Ciccio did not pay her some attention. She really expected him
+now to come to speak to her. If she could have imagined how far he
+was from any such intention.
+
+So she loitered unwillingly at her window high over the grey, hard,
+cobbled street, and saw her landlady hastening along the black
+asphalt pavement, her dirty apron thrown discreetly over what was
+most obviously a quart jug. She followed the squat, intent figure
+with her eye, to the public-house at the corner. And then she saw
+Ciccio humped over his yellow bicycle, going for a steep and
+perilous ride with Gigi.
+
+Still she lingered in her sordid room. She could feel Madame was
+expecting her. But she felt inert, weak, incommunicative. Only a
+real fear of offending Madame drove her down at last.
+
+Max opened the door to let her in.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "You've come. We were wondering about you."
+
+"Thank you," she said, as she passed into the dirty hall where still
+two bicycles stood.
+
+"Madame is in the kitchen," he said.
+
+Alvina found Madame trussed in a large white apron, busy rubbing a
+yellow-fleshed hen with lemon, previous to boiling.
+
+"Ah!" said Madame. "So there you are! I have been out and done my
+shopping, and already begun to prepare the dinner. Yes, you may help
+me. Can you wash leeks? Yes? Every grain of sand? Shall I trust you
+then--?"
+
+Madame usually had a kitchen to herself, in the morning. She either
+ousted her landlady, or used her as second cook. For Madame was a
+gourmet, if not gourmand. If she inclined towards self-indulgence in
+any direction, it was in the direction of food. She _loved_ a good
+table. And hence the Tawaras saved less money than they might. She
+was an exacting, tormenting, bullying cook. Alvina, who knew well
+enough how to prepare a simple dinner, was offended by Madame's
+exactions. Madame turning back the green leaves of a leek, and
+hunting a speck of earth down into the white, like a flea in a bed,
+was too much for Alvina.
+
+"I'm afraid I shall never be particular enough," she said. "Can't I
+do anything else for you?"
+
+"For me? I need nothing to be done for me. But for the young
+men--yes, I will show you in one minute--"
+
+And she took Alvina upstairs to her room, and gave her a pair of the
+thin leather trousers fringed with hair, belonging to one of the
+_braves_. A seam had ripped. Madame gave Alvina a fine awl and some
+waxed thread.
+
+"The leather is not good in these things of Gigi's," she said. "It
+is badly prepared. See, like this." And she showed Alvina another
+place where the garment was repaired. "Keep on your apron. At the
+week-end you must fetch more clothes, not spoil this beautiful gown
+of voile. Where have you left your diamonds? What? In your room? Are
+they locked? Oh my dear--!" Madame turned pale and darted looks of
+fire at Alvina. "If they are stolen--!" she cried. "Oh! I have
+become quite weak, hearing you!" She panted and shook her head. "If
+they are not stolen, you have the Holy Saints alone to be thankful
+for keeping them. But run, run!"
+
+And Madame really stamped her foot.
+
+"Bring me everything you've got--every _thing_ that is valuable. I
+shall lock it up. How _can_ you--"
+
+Alvina was hustled off to her lodging. Fortunately nothing was gone.
+She brought all to Madame, and Madame fingered the treasures
+lovingly.
+
+"Now what you want you must ask me for," she said.
+
+With what close curiosity Madame examined the ruby brooch.
+
+"You can have that if you like, Madame," said Alvina.
+
+"You mean--what?"
+
+"I will give you that brooch if you like to take it--"
+
+"Give me this--!" cried Madame, and a flash went over her face. Then
+she changed into a sort of wheedling. "No--no. I shan't take it! I
+shan't take it. You don't want to give away such a thing."
+
+"I don't mind," said Alvina. "Do take it if you like it."
+
+"Oh no! Oh no! I can't take it. A beautiful thing it is, really. It
+would be worth over a thousand francs, because I believe it is quite
+genuine."
+
+"I'm sure it's genuine," said Alvina. "Do have it since you like
+it."
+
+"Oh, I can't! I can't!--"
+
+"Yes do--"
+
+"The beautiful red stones!--antique gems, antique gems--! And do you
+really give it to me?"
+
+"Yes, I should like to."
+
+"You are a girl with a noble heart--" Madame threw her arms round
+Alvina's neck, and kissed her. Alvina felt very cool about it.
+Madame locked up the jewels quickly, after one last look.
+
+"My fowl," she said, "which must not boil too fast."
+
+At length Alvina was called down to dinner. The young men were at
+table, talking as young men do, not very interestingly. After the
+meal, Ciccio sat and twanged his mandoline, making its crying noise
+vibrate through the house.
+
+"I shall go and look at the town," said Alvina.
+
+"And who shall go with you?" asked Madame.
+
+"I will go alone," said Alvina, "unless you will come, Madame."
+
+"Alas no, I can't. I can't come. Will you really go alone?"
+
+"Yes, I want to go to the women's shops," said Alvina.
+
+"You want to! All right then! And you will come home at tea-time,
+yes?"
+
+As soon as Alvina had gone out Ciccio put away his mandoline and lit
+a cigarette. Then after a while he hailed Geoffrey, and the two
+young men sallied forth. Alvina, emerging from a draper's shop in
+Rotherhampton Broadway, found them loitering on the pavement
+outside. And they strolled along with her. So she went into a shop
+that sold ladies' underwear, leaving them on the pavement. She
+stayed as long as she could. But there they were when she came out.
+They had endless lounging patience.
+
+"I thought you would be gone on," she said.
+
+"No hurry," said Ciccio, and he took away her parcels from her, as
+if he had a right. She wished he wouldn't tilt the flap of his black
+hat over one eye, and she wished there wasn't quite so much
+waist-line in the cut of his coat, and that he didn't smoke
+cigarettes against the end of his nose in the street. But wishing
+wouldn't alter him. He strayed alongside as if he half belonged, and
+half didn't--most irritating.
+
+She wasted as much time as possible in the shops, then they took the
+tram home again. Ciccio paid the three fares, laying his hand
+restrainingly on Gigi's hand, when Gigi's hand sought pence in his
+trouser pocket, and throwing his arm over his friend's shoulder, in
+affectionate but vulgar triumph, when the fares were paid. Alvina
+was on her high horse.
+
+They tried to talk to her, they tried to ingratiate themselves--but
+she wasn't having any. She talked with icy pleasantness. And so the
+tea-time passed, and the time after tea. The performance went rather
+mechanically, at the theatre, and the supper at home, with bottled
+beer and boiled ham, was a conventionally cheerful affair. Even
+Madame was a little afraid of Alvina this evening.
+
+"I am tired, I shall go early to my room," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, I think we are all tired," said Madame.
+
+"Why is it?" said Max metaphysically--"why is it that two merry
+evenings never follow one behind the other."
+
+"Max, beer makes thee a _farceur_ of a fine quality," said Madame.
+Alvina rose.
+
+"Please don't get up," she said to the others. "I have my key and
+can see quite well," she said. "Good-night all."
+
+They rose and bowed their good-nights. But Ciccio, with an obstinate
+and ugly little smile on his face, followed her.
+
+"Please don't come," she said, turning at the street door. But
+obstinately he lounged into the street with her. He followed her to
+her door.
+
+"Did you bring the flash-light?" she said. "The stair is so dark."
+
+He looked at her, and turned as if to get the light. Quickly she
+opened the house-door and slipped inside, shutting it sharply in his
+face. He stood for some moments looking at the door, and an ugly
+little look mounted his straight nose. He too turned indoors.
+
+Alvina hurried to bed and slept well. And the next day the same, she
+was all icy pleasantness. The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were a little bit
+put out by her. She was a spoke in their wheel, a scotch to their
+facility. She made them irritable. And that evening--it was
+Friday--Ciccio did not rise to accompany her to her house. And she
+knew they were relieved that she had gone.
+
+That did not please her. The next day, which was Saturday, the last
+and greatest day of the week, she found herself again somewhat of an
+outsider in the troupe. The tribe had assembled in its old unison.
+She was the intruder, the interloper. And Ciccio never looked at
+her, only showed her the half-averted side of his cheek, on which
+was a slightly jeering, ugly look.
+
+"Will you go to Woodhouse tomorrow?" Madame asked her, rather
+coolly. They none of them called her Allaye any more.
+
+"I'd better fetch some things, hadn't I?" said Alvina.
+
+"Certainly, if you think you will stay with us."
+
+This was a nasty slap in the face for her. But:
+
+"I want to," she said.
+
+"Yes! Then you will go to Woodhouse tomorrow, and come to Mansfield
+on Monday morning? Like that shall it be? You will stay one night at
+Woodhouse?"
+
+Through Alvina's mind flitted the rapid thought--"They want an
+evening without me." Her pride mounted obstinately. She very nearly
+said--"I may stay in Woodhouse altogether." But she held her tongue.
+
+After all, they were very common people. They ought to be glad to
+have her. Look how Madame snapped up that brooch! And look what an
+uncouth lout Ciccio was! After all, she was demeaning herself
+shamefully staying with them in common, sordid lodgings. After all,
+she had been bred up differently from that. They had horribly low
+standards--such low standards--not only of morality, but of life
+altogether. Really, she had come down in the world, conforming to
+such standards of life. She evoked the images of her mother and Miss
+Frost: ladies, and noble women both. Whatever could she be thinking
+of herself!
+
+However, there was time for her to retrace her steps. She had not
+given herself away. Except to Ciccio. And her heart burned when she
+thought of him, partly with anger and mortification, partly, alas,
+with undeniable and unsatisfied love. Let her bridle as she might,
+her heart burned, and she wanted to look at him, she wanted him to
+notice her. And instinct told her that he might ignore her for ever.
+She went to her room an unhappy woman, and wept and fretted till
+morning, chafing between humiliation and yearning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
+
+
+Alvina rose chastened and wistful. As she was doing her hair, she
+heard the plaintive nasal sound of Ciccio's mandoline. She looked
+down the mixed vista of back-yards and little gardens, and was able
+to catch sight of a portion of Ciccio, who was sitting on a box in
+the blue-brick yard of his house, bare-headed and in his
+shirt-sleeves, twitching away at the wailing mandoline. It was not a
+warm morning, but there was a streak of sunshine. Alvina had noticed
+that Ciccio did not seem to feel the cold, unless it were a wind or
+a driving rain. He was playing the wildly-yearning Neapolitan songs,
+of which Alvina knew nothing. But, although she only saw a section
+of him, the glimpse of his head was enough to rouse in her that
+overwhelming fascination, which came and went in spells. His
+remoteness, his southernness, something velvety and dark. So easily
+she might miss him altogether! Within a hair's-breadth she had let
+him disappear.
+
+She hurried down. Geoffrey opened the door to her. She smiled at him
+in a quick, luminous smile, a magic change in her.
+
+"I could hear Ciccio playing," she said.
+
+Geoffrey spread his rather thick lips in a smile, and jerked his
+head in the direction of the back door, with a deep, intimate look
+into Alvina's eyes, as if to say his friend was lovesick.
+
+"Shall I go through?" said Alvina.
+
+Geoffrey laid his large hand on her shoulder for a moment, looked
+into her eyes, and nodded. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, with a
+rather flat, handsome face, well-coloured, and with the look of the
+Alpine ox about him, slow, eternal, even a little mysterious. Alvina
+was startled by the deep, mysterious look in his dark-fringed
+ox-eyes. The odd arch of his eyebrows made him suddenly seem not
+quite human to her. She smiled to him again, startled. But he only
+inclined his head, and with his heavy hand on her shoulder gently
+impelled her towards Ciccio.
+
+When she came out at the back she smiled straight into Ciccio's
+face, with her sudden, luminous smile. His hand on the mandoline
+trembled into silence. He sat looking at her with an instant
+re-establishment of knowledge. And yet she shrank from the long,
+inscrutable gaze of his black-set, tawny eyes. She resented him a
+little. And yet she went forward to him and stood so that her dress
+touched him. And still he gazed up at her, with the heavy,
+unspeaking look, that seemed to bear her down: he seemed like some
+creature that was watching her for his purposes. She looked aside at
+the black garden, which had a wiry goose-berry bush.
+
+"You will come with me to Woodhouse?" she said.
+
+He did not answer till she turned to him again. Then, as she met his
+eyes,
+
+"To Woodhouse?" he said, watching her, to fix her.
+
+"Yes," she said, a little pale at the lips.
+
+And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his
+mouth. She wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred
+his tawny eyes with their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched
+her as a cat watches a bird, but without the white gleam of
+ferocity. In his eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth, something
+fathomless, deepening black and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.
+
+"Will you?" she repeated.
+
+But his eyes had already begun to glimmer their consent. He turned
+aside his face, as if unwilling to give a straight answer.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Play something to me," she cried.
+
+He lifted his face to her, and shook his head slightly.
+
+"Yes do," she said, looking down on him.
+
+And he bent his head to the mandoline, and suddenly began to sing a
+Neapolitan song, in a faint, compressed head-voice, looking up at
+her again as his lips moved, looking straight into her face with a
+curious mocking caress as the muted _voix blanche_ came through his
+lips at her, amid the louder quavering of the mandoline. The sound
+penetrated her like a thread of fire, hurting, but delicious, the
+high thread of his voice. She could see the Adam's apple move in his
+throat, his brows tilted as he looked along his lashes at her all the
+time. Here was the strange sphinx singing again, and herself between
+its paws! She seemed almost to melt into his power.
+
+Madame intervened to save her.
+
+"What, serenade before breakfast! You have strong stomachs, I say.
+Eggs and ham are more the question, hein? Come, you smell them,
+don't you?"
+
+A flicker of contempt and derision went over Ciccio's face as he
+broke off and looked aside.
+
+"I prefer the serenade," said Alvina. "I've had ham and eggs
+before."
+
+"You do, hein? Well--always, you won't. And now you must eat the ham
+and eggs, however. Yes? Isn't it so?"
+
+Ciccio rose to his feet, and looked at Alvina: as he would have
+looked at Gigi, had Gigi been there. His eyes said unspeakable
+things about Madame. Alvina flashed a laugh, suddenly. And a
+good-humoured, half-mocking smile came over his face too.
+
+They turned to follow Madame into the house. And as Alvina went
+before him, she felt his fingers stroke the nape of her neck, and
+pass in a soft touch right down her back. She started as if some
+unseen creature had stroked her with its paw, and she glanced
+swiftly round, to see the face of Ciccio mischievous behind her
+shoulder.
+
+"Now I think," said Madame, "that today we all take the same train.
+We go by the Great Central as far as the junction, together. Then
+you, Allaye, go on to Knarborough, and we leave you until tomorrow.
+And now there is not much time."
+
+"I am going to Woodhouse," said Ciccio in French.
+
+"You also! By the train, or the bicycle?"
+
+"Train," said Ciccio.
+
+"Waste so much money?"
+
+Ciccio raised his shoulders slightly.
+
+When breakfast was over, and Alvina had gone to her room, Geoffrey
+went out into the back yard, where the bicycles stood.
+
+"Cic'," he said. "I should like to go with thee to Woodhouse. Come
+on bicycle with me."
+
+Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"I'm going in train with _her_," he said.
+
+Geoffrey darkened with his heavy anger.
+
+"I would like to see how it is, there, _chez elle_," he said.
+
+"Ask _her_," said Ciccio.
+
+Geoffrey watched him suddenly.
+
+"Thou forsakest me," he said. "I would like to see it, there."
+
+"Ask _her_," repeated Ciccio. "Then come on bicycle."
+
+"You're content to leave me," muttered Geoffrey.
+
+Ciccio touched his friend on his broad cheek, and smiled at him with
+affection.
+
+"I don't leave thee, Gigi. I asked thy advice. You said, Go. But
+come. Go and ask her, and then come. Come on bicycle, eh? Ask her!
+Go on! Go and ask her."
+
+Alvina was surprised to hear a tap at her door, and Gigi's voice, in
+his strong foreign accent:
+
+"Mees Houghton, I carry your bag."
+
+She opened her door in surprise. She was all ready.
+
+"There it is," she said, smiling at him.
+
+But he confronted her like a powerful ox, full of dangerous force.
+Her smile had reassured him.
+
+"Na, Allaye," he said, "tell me something."
+
+"What?" laughed Alvina.
+
+"Can I come to Woodhouse?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"Today. Can I come on bicycle, to tea, eh? At your house with you
+and Ciccio? Eh?"
+
+He was smiling with a thick, doubtful, half sullen smile.
+
+"Do!" said Alvina.
+
+He looked at her with his large, dark-blue eyes.
+
+"Really, eh?" he said, holding out his large hand.
+
+She shook hands with him warmly.
+
+"Yes, really!" she said. "I wish you would."
+
+"Good," he said, a broad smile on his thick mouth. And all the time
+he watched her curiously, from his large eyes.
+
+"Ciccio--a good chap, eh?" he said.
+
+"Is he?" laughed Alvina.
+
+"Ha-a--!" Gigi shook his head solemnly. "The best!" He made such
+solemn eyes, Alvina laughed. He laughed too, and picked up her bag
+as if it were a bubble.
+
+"Na Cic'--" he said, as he saw Ciccio in the street. "Sommes
+d'accord."
+
+"Ben!" said Ciccio, holding out his hand for the bag. "Donne."
+
+"Ne-ne," said Gigi, shrugging.
+
+Alvina found herself on the new and busy station that Sunday morning,
+one of the little theatrical company. It was an odd experience. They
+were so obviously a theatrical company--people apart from the world.
+Madame was darting her black eyes here and there, behind her spotted
+veil, and standing with the ostensible self-possession of her
+profession. Max was circling round with large strides, round a big
+black box on which the red words Natcha-Kee-Tawara showed mystic, and
+round the small bunch of stage fittings at the end of the platform.
+Louis was waiting to get the tickets, Gigi and Ciccio were bringing up
+the bicycles. They were a whole train of departure in themselves, busy,
+bustling, cheerful--and curiously apart, vagrants.
+
+Alvina strolled away towards the half-open bookstall. Geoffrey was
+standing monumental between her and the company. She returned to
+him.
+
+"What time shall we expect you?" she said.
+
+He smiled at her in his broad, friendly fashion.
+
+"Expect me to be there? Why--" he rolled his eyes and proceeded to
+calculate. "At four o'clock."
+
+"Just about the time when we get there," she said.
+
+He looked at her sagely, and nodded.
+
+They were a good-humoured company in the railway carriage. The men
+smoked cigarettes and tapped off the ash on the heels of their
+boots, Madame watched every traveller with professional curiosity.
+Max scrutinized the newspaper, Lloyds, and pointed out items to
+Louis, who read them over Max's shoulder, Ciccio suddenly smacked
+Geoffrey on the thigh, and looked laughing into his face. So till
+they arrived at the junction. And then there was a kissing and a
+taking of farewells, as if the company were separating for ever.
+Louis darted into the refreshment bar and returned with little pies
+and oranges, which he deposited in the carriage, Madame presented
+Alvina with a packet of chocolate. And it was "Good-bye, good-bye,
+Allaye! Good-bye, Ciccio! Bon voyage. Have a good time, both."
+
+So Alvina sped on in the fast train to Knarborough with Ciccio.
+
+"I _do_ like them all," she said.
+
+He opened his mouth slightly and lifted his head up and down. She
+saw in the movement how affectionate he was, and in his own way, how
+emotional. He loved them all. She put her hand to his. He gave her
+hand one sudden squeeze, of physical understanding, then left it as
+if nothing had happened. There were other people in the carriage
+with them. She could not help feeling how sudden and lovely that
+moment's grasp of his hand was: so warm, so whole.
+
+And thus they watched the Sunday morning landscape slip by, as they
+ran into Knarborough. They went out to a little restaurant to eat.
+It was one o'clock.
+
+"Isn't it strange, that we are travelling together like this?" she
+said, as she sat opposite him.
+
+He smiled, looking into her eyes.
+
+"You think it's strange?" he said, showing his teeth slightly.
+
+"Don't you?" she cried.
+
+He gave a slight, laconic laugh.
+
+"And I can hardly bear it that I love you so much," she said,
+quavering, across the potatoes.
+
+He glanced furtively round, to see if any one was listening, if any
+one might hear. He would have hated it. But no one was near. Beneath
+the tiny table, he took her two knees between his knees, and pressed
+them with a slow, immensely powerful pressure. Helplessly she put
+her hand across the table to him. He covered it for one moment with
+his hand, then ignored it. But her knees were still between the
+powerful, living vice of his knees.
+
+"Eat!" he said to her, smiling, motioning to her plate. And he
+relaxed her.
+
+They decided to go out to Woodhouse on the tram-car, a long hour's
+ride. Sitting on the top of the covered car, in the atmosphere of
+strong tobacco smoke, he seemed self-conscious, withdrawn into his
+own cover, so obviously a dark-skinned foreigner. And Alvina, as she
+sat beside him, was reminded of the woman with the negro husband,
+down in Lumley. She understood the woman's reserve. She herself
+felt, in the same way, something of an outcast, because of the man
+at her side. An outcast! And glad to be an outcast. She clung to
+Ciccio's dark, despised foreign nature. She loved it, she
+worshipped it, she defied all the other world. Dark, he sat beside
+her, drawn in to himself, overcast by his presumed inferiority among
+these northern industrial people. And she was with him, on his side,
+outside the pale of her own people.
+
+There were already acquaintances on the tram. She nodded in answer
+to their salutation, but so obviously from a distance, that they
+kept turning round to eye her and Ciccio. But they left her alone.
+The breach between her and them was established for ever--and it was
+her will which established it.
+
+So up and down the weary hills of the hilly, industrial countryside,
+till at last they drew near to Woodhouse. They passed the ruins of
+Throttle-Ha'penny, and Alvina glanced at it indifferent. They ran
+along the Knarborough Road. A fair number of Woodhouse young people
+were strolling along the pavements in their Sunday clothes. She knew
+them all. She knew Lizzie Bates's fox furs, and Fanny Clough's lilac
+costume, and Mrs. Smitham's winged hat. She knew them all. And
+almost inevitably the old Woodhouse feeling began to steal over her,
+she was glad they could not see her, she was a little ashamed of
+Ciccio. She wished, for the moment, Ciccio were not there. And as
+the time came to get down, she looked anxiously back and forth to
+see at which halt she had better descend--where fewer people would
+notice her. But then she threw her scruples to the wind, and
+descended into the staring, Sunday afternoon street, attended by
+Ciccio, who carried her bag. She knew she was a marked figure.
+
+They slipped round to Manchester House. Miss Pinnegar expected
+Alvina, but by the train, which came later. So she had to be knocked
+up, for she was lying down. She opened the door looking a little
+patched in her cheeks, because of her curious colouring, and a
+little forlorn, and a little dumpy, and a little irritable.
+
+"I didn't know there'd be two of you," was her greeting.
+
+"Didn't you," said Alvina, kissing her. "Ciccio came to carry my
+bag."
+
+"Oh," said Miss Pinnegar. "How do you do?" and she thrust out her
+hand to him. He shook it loosely.
+
+"I had your wire," said Miss Pinnegar. "You said the train. Mrs.
+Rollings is coming in at four again--"
+
+"Oh all right--" said Alvina.
+
+The house was silent and afternoon-like. Ciccio took off his coat
+and sat down in Mr. Houghton's chair. Alvina told him to smoke. He
+kept silent and reserved. Miss Pinnegar, a poor, patch-cheeked,
+rather round-backed figure with grey-brown fringe, stood as if she
+did not quite know what to say or do.
+
+She followed Alvina upstairs to her room.
+
+"I can't think why you bring _him_ here," snapped Miss Pinnegar. "I
+don't know what you're thinking about. The whole place is talking
+already."
+
+"I don't care," said Alvina. "I like him."
+
+"Oh--for shame!" cried Miss Pinnegar, lifting her hand with Miss
+Frost's helpless, involuntary movement. "What do you think of
+yourself? And your father a month dead."
+
+"It doesn't matter. Father _is_ dead. And I'm sure the dead don't
+mind."
+
+"I never _knew_ such things as you say."
+
+"Why? I mean them."
+
+Miss Pinnegar stood blank and helpless.
+
+"You're not asking him to stay the night," she blurted.
+
+"Yes. And I'm going back with him to Madame tomorrow. You know I'm
+part of the company now, as pianist."
+
+"And are you going to marry him?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How _can_ you say you don't know! Why, it's awful. You make me feel
+I shall go out of my mind."
+
+"But I _don't_ know," said Alvina.
+
+"It's incredible! Simply incredible! I believe you're out of your
+senses. I used to think sometimes there was something wrong with
+your mother. And that's what it is with you. You're not quite right
+in your mind. You need to be looked after."
+
+"Do I, Miss Pinnegar! Ah, well, don't you trouble to look after me,
+will you?"
+
+"No one will if I don't."
+
+"I hope no one will."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I'm ashamed to live another day in Woodhouse," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"_I'm_ leaving it for ever," said Alvina.
+
+"I should think so," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+Suddenly she sank into a chair, and burst into tears, wailing:
+
+"Your poor father! Your poor father!"
+
+"I'm sure the dead are all right. Why must you pity him?"
+
+"You're a lost girl!" cried Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Am I really?" laughed Alvina. It sounded funny.
+
+"Yes, you're a lost girl," sobbed Miss Pinnegar, on a final note of
+despair.
+
+"I like being lost," said Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar wept herself into silence. She looked huddled and
+forlorn. Alvina went to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.
+
+"Don't fret, Miss Pinnegar," she said. "Don't be silly. I love to be
+with Ciccio and Madame. Perhaps in the end I shall marry him. But if
+I don't--" her hand suddenly gripped Miss Pinnegar's heavy arm till
+it hurt--"I wouldn't lose a minute of him, no, not for anything
+would I."
+
+Poor Miss Pinnegar dwindled, convinced.
+
+"You make it hard for _me_, in Woodhouse," she said, hopeless.
+
+"Never mind," said Alvina, kissing her. "Woodhouse isn't heaven and
+earth."
+
+"It's been my home for forty years."
+
+"It's been mine for thirty. That's why I'm glad to leave it." There
+was a pause.
+
+"I've been thinking," said Miss Pinnegar, "about opening a little
+business in Tamworth. You know the Watsons are there."
+
+"I believe you'd be happy," said Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar pulled herself together. She had energy and courage
+still.
+
+"I don't want to stay here, anyhow," she said. "Woodhouse has
+nothing for me any more."
+
+"Of course it hasn't," said Alvina. "I think you'd be happier away
+from it."
+
+"Yes--probably I should--now!"
+
+None the less, poor Miss Pinnegar was grey-haired, she was almost a
+dumpy, odd old woman.
+
+They went downstairs. Miss Pinnegar put on the kettle.
+
+"Would you like to see the house?" said Alvina to Ciccio.
+
+He nodded. And she took him from room to room. His eyes looked
+quickly and curiously over everything, noticing things, but without
+criticism.
+
+"This was my mother's little sitting-room," she said. "She sat here
+for years, in this chair."
+
+"Always here?" he said, looking into Alvina's face.
+
+"Yes. She was ill with her heart. This is another photograph of her.
+I'm not like her."
+
+"Who is _that_?" he asked, pointing to a photograph of the handsome,
+white-haired Miss Frost.
+
+"That was Miss Frost, my governess. She lived here till she died. I
+loved her--she meant everything to me."
+
+"She also dead--?"
+
+"Yes, five years ago."
+
+They went to the drawing-room. He laid his hand on the keys of the
+piano, sounding a chord.
+
+"Play," she said.
+
+He shook his head, smiling slightly. But he wished her to play. She
+sat and played one of Kishwegin's pieces. He listened, faintly
+smiling.
+
+"Fine piano--eh?" he said, looking into her face.
+
+"I like the tone," she said.
+
+"Is it yours?"
+
+"The piano? Yes. I suppose everything is mine--in name at least. I
+don't know how father's affairs are really."
+
+He looked at her, and again his eye wandered over the room. He saw a
+little coloured portrait of a child with a fleece of brownish-gold
+hair and surprised eyes, in a pale-blue stiff frock with a broad
+dark-blue sash.
+
+"You?" he said.
+
+"Do you recognize me?" she said. "Aren't I comical?"
+
+She took him upstairs--first to the monumental bedroom.
+
+"This was mother's room," she said. "Now it is mine."
+
+He looked at her, then at the things in the room, then out of the
+window, then at her again. She flushed, and hurried to show him his
+room, and the bath-room. Then she went downstairs.
+
+He kept glancing up at the height of the ceilings, the size of the
+rooms, taking in the size and proportion of the house, and the
+quality of the fittings.
+
+"It is a big house," he said. "Yours?"
+
+"Mine in name," said Alvina. "Father left all to me--and his debts
+as well, you see."
+
+"Much debts?"
+
+"Oh yes! I don't quite know how much. But perhaps more debts than
+there is property. I shall go and see the lawyer in the morning.
+Perhaps there will be nothing at all left for me, when everything is
+paid."
+
+She had stopped on the stairs, telling him this, turning round to
+him, who was on the steps above. He looked down on her, calculating.
+Then he smiled sourly.
+
+"Bad job, eh, if it is all gone--!" he said.
+
+"I don't mind, really, if I can live," she said.
+
+He spread his hands, deprecating, not understanding. Then he glanced
+up the stairs and along the corridor again, and downstairs into the
+hall.
+
+"A fine big house. Grand if it was yours," he said.
+
+"I wish it were," she said rather pathetically, "if you like it so
+much."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"He!" he said. "How not like it!"
+
+"I don't like it," she said. "I think it's a gloomy miserable hole.
+I hate it. I've lived here all my life and seen everything bad
+happen here. I hate it."
+
+"Why?" he said, with a curious, sarcastic intonation.
+
+"It's a bad job it isn't yours, for certain," he said, as they
+entered the living-room, where Miss Pinnegar sat cutting bread and
+butter.
+
+"What?" said Miss Pinnegar sharply.
+
+"The house," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh well, we don't know. We'll hope for the best," replied Miss
+Pinnegar, arranging the bread and butter on the plate. Then, rather
+tart, she added: "It is a bad job. And a good many things are a bad
+job, besides that. If Miss Houghton had what she _ought_ to have,
+things would be very different, I assure you."
+
+"Oh yes," said Ciccio, to whom this address was directed.
+
+"Very different indeed. If all the money hadn't been--lost--in the
+way it has, Miss Houghton wouldn't be playing the piano, for one
+thing, in a cinematograph show."
+
+"No, perhaps not," said Ciccio.
+
+"Certainly not. It's not the right thing for her to be doing, _at
+all_!"
+
+"You think not?" said Ciccio.
+
+"Do you imagine it is?" said Miss Pinnegar, turning point blank on
+him as he sat by the fire.
+
+He looked curiously at Miss Pinnegar, grinning slightly.
+
+"He!" he said. "How do I know!"
+
+"I should have thought it was obvious," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"He!" he ejaculated, not fully understanding.
+
+"But of course those that are used to nothing better can't see
+anything but what they're used to," she said, rising and shaking the
+crumbs from her black silk apron, into the fire. He watched her.
+
+Miss Pinnegar went away into the scullery. Alvina was laying a fire
+in the drawing-room. She came with a dustpan to take some coal from
+the fire of the living-room.
+
+"What do you want?" said Ciccio, rising. And he took the shovel from
+her hand.
+
+"Big, hot fires, aren't they?" he said, as he lifted the burning
+coals from the glowing mass of the grate.
+
+"Enough," said Alvina. "Enough! We'll put it in the drawing-room."
+He carried the shovel of flaming, smoking coals to the other room,
+and threw them in the grate on the sticks, watching Alvina put on
+more pieces of coal.
+
+"Fine, a fire! Quick work, eh? A beautiful thing, a fire! You know
+what they say in my place: You can live without food, but you can't
+live without fire."
+
+"But I thought it was always hot in Naples," said Alvina.
+
+"No, it isn't. And my village, you know, when I was small boy, that
+was in the mountains, an hour quick train from Naples. Cold in the
+winter, hot in the summer--"
+
+"As cold as England?" said Alvina.
+
+"He--and colder. The wolves come down. You could hear them crying in
+the night, in the frost--"
+
+"How terrifying--!" said Alvina.
+
+"And they will kill the dogs! Always they kill the dogs. You know,
+they hate dogs, wolves do." He made a queer noise, to show how
+wolves hate dogs. Alvina understood, and laughed.
+
+"So should I, if I was a wolf," she said.
+
+"Yes--eh?" His eyes gleamed on her for a moment.
+
+"Ah but, the poor dogs! You find them bitten--carried away among the
+trees or the stones, hard to find them, poor things, the next day."
+
+"How frightened they must be--!" said Alvina.
+
+"Frightened--hu!" he made sudden gesticulations and ejaculations,
+which added volumes to his few words.
+
+"And did you like it, your village?" she said.
+
+He put his head on one side in deprecation.
+
+"No," he said, "because, you see--he, there is nothing to do--no
+money--work--work--work--no life--you see nothing. When I was a
+small boy my father, he died, and my mother comes with me to Naples.
+Then I go with the little boats on the sea--fishing, carrying
+people--" He flourished his hand as if to make her understand all
+the things that must be wordless. He smiled at her--but there was a
+faint, poignant sadness and remoteness in him, a beauty of old
+fatality, and ultimate indifference to fate.
+
+"And were you very poor?"
+
+"Poor?--why yes! Nothing. Rags--no shoes--bread, little fish from
+the sea--shell-fish--"
+
+His hands flickered, his eyes rested on her with a profound look of
+knowledge. And it seemed, in spite of all, one state was very much
+the same to him as another, poverty was as much life as affluence.
+Only he had a sort of jealous idea that it was humiliating to be
+poor, and so, for vanity's sake, he would have possessions. The
+countless generations of civilization behind him had left him an
+instinct of the world's meaninglessness. Only his little modern
+education made money and independence an _idee fixe_. Old instinct
+told him the world was nothing. But modern education, so shallow,
+was much more efficacious than instinct. It drove him to make a show
+of himself to the world. Alvina watching him, as if hypnotized, saw
+his old beauty, formed through civilization after civilization; and
+at the same time she saw his modern vulgarianism, and decadence.
+
+"And when you go back, you will go back to your old village?" she
+said.
+
+He made a gesture with his head and shoulders, evasive,
+non-committal.
+
+"I don't know, you see," he said.
+
+"What is the name of it?"
+
+"Pescocalascio." He said the word subduedly, unwillingly.
+
+"Tell me again," said Alvina.
+
+"Pescocalascio."
+
+She repeated it.
+
+"And tell me how you spell it," she said.
+
+He fumbled in his pocket for a pencil and a piece of paper. She rose
+and brought him an old sketch-book. He wrote, slowly, but with the
+beautiful Italian hand, the name of his village.
+
+"And write your name," she said.
+
+"Marasca Francesco," he wrote.
+
+"And write the name of your father and mother," she said. He looked
+at her enquiringly.
+
+"I want to see them," she said.
+
+"Marasca Giovanni," he wrote, and under that "Califano Maria."
+
+She looked at the four names, in the graceful Italian script. And
+one after the other she read them out. He corrected her, smiling
+gravely. When she said them properly, he nodded.
+
+"Yes," he said. "That's it. You say it well."
+
+At that moment Miss Pinnegar came in to say Mrs. Rollings had seen
+another of the young men riding down the street.
+
+"That's Gigi! He doesn't know how to come here," said Ciccio,
+quickly taking his hat and going out to find his friend.
+
+Geoffrey arrived, his broad face hot and perspiring.
+
+"Couldn't you find it?" said Alvina.
+
+"I find the house, but I couldn't find no door," said Geoffrey.
+
+They all laughed, and sat down to tea. Geoffrey and Ciccio talked to
+each other in French, and kept each other in countenance.
+Fortunately for them, Madame had seen to their table-manners. But
+still they were far too free and easy to suit Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Do you know," said Ciccio in French to Geoffrey, "what a fine house
+this is?"
+
+"No," said Geoffrey, rolling his large eyes round the room, and
+speaking with his cheek stuffed out with food. "Is it?"
+
+"Ah--if it was _hers_, you know--"
+
+And so, after tea, Ciccio said to Alvina:
+
+"Shall you let Geoffrey see the house?"
+
+The tour commenced again. Geoffrey, with his thick legs planted
+apart, gazed round the rooms, and made his comments in French to
+Ciccio. When they climbed the stairs, he fingered the big, smooth
+mahogany bannister-rail. In the bedroom he stared almost dismayed
+at the colossal bed and cupboard. In the bath-room he turned on the
+old-fashioned, silver taps.
+
+"Here is my room--" said Ciccio in French.
+
+"Assez eloigne!" replied Gigi. Ciccio also glanced along the
+corridor.
+
+"Yes," he said. "But an open course--"
+
+"Look, my boy--if you could marry _this_--" meaning the house.
+
+"Ha, she doesn't know if it hers any more! Perhaps the debts cover
+every bit of it."
+
+"Don't say so! Na, that's a pity, that's a pity! La pauvre
+fille--pauvre demoiselle!" lamented Geoffrey.
+
+"Isn't it a pity! What dost say?"
+
+"A thousand pities! A thousand pities! Look, my boy, love needs no
+havings, but marriage does. Love is for all, even the grasshoppers.
+But marriage means a kitchen. That's how it is. La pauvre
+demoiselle; c'est malheur pour elle."
+
+"That's true," said Ciccio. "Et aussi pour moi. For me as well."
+
+"For thee as well, cher! Perhaps--" said Geoffrey, laying his arm on
+Ciccio's shoulder, and giving him a sudden hug. They smiled to each
+other.
+
+"Who knows!" said Ciccio.
+
+"Who knows, truly, my Cic'."
+
+As they went downstairs to rejoin Alvina, whom they heard playing on
+the piano in the drawing-room, Geoffrey peeped once more into the
+big bedroom.
+
+"Tu n'es jamais monte si haut, mon beau. Pour moi, ca serait
+difficile de m'elever. J'aurais bien peur, moi. Tu te trouves aussi
+un peu ebahi, hein? n'est-ce pas?"
+
+"Y'a place pour trois," said Ciccio.
+
+"Non, je creverais, la haut. Pas pour moi!"
+
+And they went laughing downstairs.
+
+Miss Pinnegar was sitting with Alvina, determined not to go to
+Chapel this evening. She sat, rather hulked, reading a novel. Alvina
+flirted with the two men, played the piano to them, and suggested a
+game of cards.
+
+"Oh, Alvina, you will never bring out the cards tonight!"
+expostulated poor Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"But, Miss Pinnegar, it can't possibly hurt anybody."
+
+"You know what I think--and what your father thought--and your
+mother and Miss Frost--"
+
+"You see I think it's only prejudice," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh very well!" said Miss Pinnegar angrily.
+
+And closing her book, she rose and went to the other room.
+
+Alvina brought out the cards, and a little box of pence which
+remained from Endeavour harvests. At that moment there was a knock.
+It was Mr. May. Miss Pinnegar brought him in, in triumph.
+
+"Oh!" he said. "Company! I heard you'd come, Miss Houghton, so I
+_hastened_ to pay my compliments. I didn't know you had _company_.
+How do you do, Francesco! How do you do, Geoffrey. Comment
+allez-vous, alors?"
+
+"Bien!" said Geoffrey. "You are going to take a hand?"
+
+"Cards on Sunday evening! Dear me, what a revolution! Of course, I'm
+not _bigoted_. If Miss Houghton asks me--"
+
+Miss Pinnegar looked solemnly at Alvina.
+
+"Yes, do take a hand, Mr. May," said Alvina.
+
+"Thank you, I will then, if I may. Especially as I see those
+tempting piles of pennies and ha'pennies. Who is bank, may I ask? Is
+Miss Pinnegar going to play too?"
+
+But Miss Pinnegar had turned her poor, bowed back, and departed.
+
+"I'm afraid she's offended," said Alvina.
+
+"But why? We don't put _her_ soul in danger, do we now? I'm a good
+Catholic, you know, I _can't_ do with these provincial little
+creeds. Who deals? Do you, Miss Houghton? But I'm afraid we shall
+have a rather _dry_ game? What? Isn't that your opinion?"
+
+The other men laughed.
+
+"If Miss Houghton would just _allow_ me to run round and bring
+something in. Yes? May I? That would be _so_ much more cheerful.
+What is your choice, gentlemen?"
+
+"Beer," said Ciccio, and Geoffrey nodded.
+
+"Beer! Oh really! Extraor'nary! I always take a little whiskey
+myself. What kind of beer? Ale?--or bitter? I'm afraid I'd better
+bring bottles. Now how can I secrete them? You haven't a small
+travelling case, Miss Houghton? Then I shall look as if I'd just
+been taking a _journey_. Which I have--to the Sun and back: and if
+_that_ isn't far enough, even for Miss Pinnegar and John Wesley,
+why, I'm sorry."
+
+Alvina produced the travelling case.
+
+"Excellent!" he said. "Excellent! It will hold half-a-dozen
+beautifully. Now--" he fell into a whisper--"hadn't I better sneak
+out at the front door, and so escape the clutches of the watch-dog?"
+
+Out he went, on tip-toe, the other two men grinning at him.
+Fortunately there were glasses, the best old glasses, in the side
+cupboard in the drawing room. But unfortunately, when Mr. May
+returned, a corkscrew was in request. So Alvina stole to the
+kitchen. Miss Pinnegar sat dumped by the fire, with her spectacles
+and her book. She watched like a lynx as Alvina returned. And she
+saw the tell-tale corkscrew. So she dumped a little deeper in her
+chair.
+
+"There was a sound of revelry by night!" For Mr. May, after a long
+depression, was in high feather. They shouted, positively shouted
+over their cards, they roared with excitement, expostulation, and
+laughter. Miss Pinnegar sat through it all. But at one point she
+could bear it no longer.
+
+The drawing-room door opened, and the dumpy, hulked, faded woman in
+a black serge dress stood like a rather squat avenging angel in the
+doorway.
+
+"What would your _father_ say to this?" she said sternly.
+
+The company suspended their laughter and their cards, and looked
+around. Miss Pinnegar wilted and felt strange under so many eyes.
+
+"Father!" said Alvina. "But why father?"
+
+"You lost girl!" said Miss Pinnegar, backing out and closing the
+door.
+
+Mr. May laughed so much that he knocked his whiskey over.
+
+"There," he cried, helpless, "look what she's cost me!" And he went
+off into another paroxysm, swelling like a turkey.
+
+Ciccio opened his mouth, laughing silently.
+
+"Lost girl! Lost girl! How lost, when you are at home?" said
+Geoffrey, making large eyes and looking hither and thither as if
+_he_ had lost something.
+
+They all went off again in a muffled burst.
+
+"No but, really," said Mr. May, "drinking and card-playing with
+strange men in the drawing-room on Sunday evening, of _cauce_ it's
+scandalous. It's _terrible_! I don't know how ever you'll be saved,
+after such a sin. And in Manchester House, too--!" He went off into
+another silent, turkey-scarlet burst of mirth, wriggling in his
+chair and squealing faintly: "Oh, I love it, I love it! _You lost
+girl!_ Why of _cauce_ she's lost! And Miss Pinnegar has only just
+found it out. Who _wouldn't_ be lost? Why even Miss Pinnegar would
+be lost if she could. Of _cauce_ she would! Quite natch'ral!"
+
+Mr. May wiped his eyes, with his handkerchief which had
+unfortunately mopped up his whiskey.
+
+So they played on, till Mr. May and Geoffrey had won all the
+pennies, except twopence of Ciccio's. Alvina was in debt.
+
+"Well I think it's been a most agreeable game," said Mr. May. "Most
+agreeable! Don't you all?"
+
+The two other men smiled and nodded.
+
+"I'm only sorry to think Miss Houghton has _lost_ so steadily all
+evening. Really quite remarkable. But _then_--you see--I comfort
+myself with the reflection 'Lucky in cards, unlucky in love.' I'm
+certainly _hounded_ with misfortune in love. And I'm _sure_ Miss
+Houghton would rather be unlucky in cards than in love. What, isn't
+it so?"
+
+"Of course," said Alvina.
+
+"There, you see, _of cauce_! Well, all we can do after that is to
+wish her success in love. Isn't that so, gentlemen? I'm sure _we_
+are all quite willing to do our best to contribute to it. Isn't it
+so, gentlemen? Aren't we all ready to do our best to contribute to
+Miss Houghton's happiness in love? Well then, let us drink to it."
+He lifted his glass, and bowed to Alvina. "With _every_ wish for
+your success in love, Miss Houghton, and your _devoted_ servant--"
+He bowed and drank.
+
+Geoffrey made large eyes at her as he held up his glass.
+
+"_I_ know you'll come out all right in love, _I_ know," he said
+heavily.
+
+"And you, Ciccio? Aren't you drinking?" said Mr. May.
+
+Ciccio held up his glass, looked at Alvina, made a little mouth at
+her, comical, and drank his beer.
+
+"Well," said Mr. May, "_beer_ must confirm it, since words won't."
+
+"What time is it?" said Alvina. "We must have supper."
+
+It was past nine o'clock. Alvina rose and went to the kitchen, the
+men trailing after her. Miss Pinnegar was not there. She was not
+anywhere.
+
+"Has she gone to bed?" said Mr. May. And he crept stealthily
+upstairs on tip-toe, a comical, flush-faced, tubby little man. He
+was familiar with the house. He returned prancing.
+
+"I heard her cough," he said. "There's a light under her door. She's
+gone to bed. Now haven't I always said she was a good soul? I shall
+drink her health. Miss Pinnegar--" and he bowed stiffly in the
+direction of the stairs--"your health, and a _good night's rest_."
+
+After which, giggling gaily, he seated himself at the head of the
+table and began to carve the cold mutton.
+
+"And where are the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras this week?" he asked. They
+told him.
+
+"Oh? And you two are cycling back to the camp of Kishwegin tonight?
+We mustn't prolong our cheerfulness _too_ far."
+
+"Ciccio is staying to help me with my bag tomorrow," said Alvina.
+"You know I've joined the Tawaras permanently--as pianist."
+
+"No, I didn't know that! Oh really! Really! Oh! Well! I see!
+Permanently! Yes, I am surprised! Yes! As pianist? And if I might
+ask, what is your share of the tribal income?"
+
+"That isn't settled yet," said Alvina.
+
+"No! Exactly! Exactly! It _wouldn't_ be settled yet. And you say it
+is a permanent engagement? Of _cauce_, at such a figure."
+
+"Yes, it is a permanent engagement," said Alvina.
+
+"Really! What a blow you give me! You won't come back to the
+Endeavour? What? Not at all?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I shall sell out of the Endeavour."
+
+"Really! You've decided, have you? Oh! This is news to me. And is
+_this_ quite final, too?"
+
+"Quite," said Alvina.
+
+"I see! Putting two and two together, if I may say so--" and he
+glanced from her to the young men--"I _see_. Most decidedly, most
+one-sidedly, if I may use the vulgarism, I _see--e--e!_ Oh! but what
+a blow you give me! What a blow you give me!"
+
+"Why?" said Alvina.
+
+"What's to become of the Endeavour? and consequently, of poor me?"
+
+"Can't you keep it going?--form a company?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't. I've done my best. But I'm afraid, you know,
+you've landed me."
+
+"I'm so sorry," said Alvina. "I hope not."
+
+"Thank you for the _hope_" said Mr. May sarcastically. "They say
+hope is sweet. _I_ begin to find it a little _bitter_!"
+
+Poor man, he had already gone quite yellow in the face. Ciccio and
+Geoffrey watched him with dark-seeing eyes.
+
+"And when are you going to let this fatal decision take effect?"
+asked Mr. May.
+
+"I'm going to see the lawyer tomorrow, and I'm going to tell him to
+sell everything and clear up as soon as possible," said Alvina.
+
+"Sell everything! This house, and all it contains?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. "Everything."
+
+"Really!" Mr. May seemed smitten quite dumb. "I feel as if the world
+had suddenly come to an end," he said.
+
+"But hasn't your world often come to an end before?" said Alvina.
+
+"Well--I suppose, once or twice. But _never_ quite on top of me, you
+see, before--"
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"And have you told Miss Pinnegar?" said Mr. May.
+
+"Not finally. But she has decided to open a little business in
+Tamworth, where she has relations."
+
+"Has she! And are you _really_ going to _tour_ with these young
+people--?" he indicated Ciccio and Gigi. "And at _no_ salary!" His
+voice rose. "Why! It's almost _White Slave Traffic_, on Madame's
+part. Upon my word!"
+
+"I don't think so," said Alvina. "Don't you see that's insulting."
+
+"_Insulting!_ Well, I don't know. I think it's the _truth_--"
+
+"Not to be said to me, for all that," said Alvina, quivering with
+anger.
+
+"Oh!" perked Mr. May, yellow with strange rage. "Oh! I mustn't say
+what I think! Oh!"
+
+"Not if you think those things--" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh really! The difficulty is, you see, I'm afraid I _do_ think
+them--" Alvina watched him with big, heavy eyes.
+
+"Go away," she said. "Go away! I won't be insulted by you."
+
+"No _indeed!_" cried Mr. May, starting to his feet, his eyes almost
+bolting from his head. "No _indeed!_ I wouldn't _think_ of insulting
+you in the presence of these _two_ young gentlemen."
+
+Ciccio rose slowly, and with a slow, repeated motion of the head,
+indicated the door.
+
+"Allez!" he said.
+
+"_Certainement!_" cried Mr. May, flying at Ciccio, verbally, like an
+enraged hen yellow at the gills. "_Certainement!_ Je m'en vais.
+Cette compagnie n'est pas de ma choix."
+
+"Allez!" said Ciccio, more loudly.
+
+And Mr. May strutted out of the room like a bird bursting with its
+own rage. Ciccio stood with his hands on the table, listening. They
+heard Mr. May slam the front door.
+
+"Gone!" said Geoffrey.
+
+Ciccio smiled sneeringly.
+
+"Voyez, un cochon de lait," said Gigi amply and calmly.
+
+Ciccio sat down in his chair. Geoffrey poured out some beer for him,
+saying:
+
+"Drink, my Cic', the bubble has burst, prfff!" And Gigi knocked in
+his own puffed cheek with his fist. "Allaye, my dear, your health!
+We are the Tawaras. We are Allaye! We are Pacohuila! We are
+Walgatchka! Allons! The milk-pig is stewed and eaten. Voila!" He
+drank, smiling broadly.
+
+"One by one," said Geoffrey, who was a little drunk: "One by one we
+put them out of the field, they are _hors de combat_. Who remains?
+Pacohuila, Walgatchka, Allaye--"
+
+He smiled very broadly. Alvina was sitting sunk in thought and
+torpor after her sudden anger.
+
+"Allaye, what do you think about? You are the bride of Tawara," said
+Geoffrey.
+
+Alvina looked at him, smiling rather wanly.
+
+"And who is Tawara?" she asked.
+
+He raised his shoulders and spread his hands and swayed his head
+from side to side, for all the world like a comic mandarin.
+
+"There!" he cried. "The question! Who is Tawara? Who? Tell me!
+Ciccio is he--and I am he--and Max and Louis--" he spread his hand
+to the distant members of the tribe.
+
+"I can't be the bride of all four of you," said Alvina, laughing.
+
+"No--no! No--no! Such a thing does not come into my mind. But you
+are the Bride of Tawara. You dwell in the tent of Pacohuila. And
+comes the day, should it ever be so, there is no room for you in the
+tent of Pacohuila, then the lodge of Walgatchka the bear is open for
+you. Open, yes, wide open--" He spread his arms from his ample
+chest, at the end of the table. "Open, and when Allaye enters, it is
+the lodge of Allaye, Walgatchka is the bear that serves Allaye. By
+the law of the Pale Face, by the law of the Yenghees, by the law of
+the Fransayes, Walgatchka shall be husband-bear to Allaye, that day
+she lifts the door-curtain of his tent--"
+
+He rolled his eyes and looked around. Alvina watched him.
+
+"But I might be afraid of a husband-bear," she said.
+
+Geoffrey got on to his feet.
+
+"By the Manitou," he said, "the head of the bear Walgatchka is
+humble--" here Geoffrey bowed his head--"his teeth are as soft as
+lilies--" here he opened his mouth and put his finger on his small
+close teeth--"his hands are as soft as bees that stroke a flower--"
+here he spread his hands and went and suddenly flopped on his knees
+beside Alvina, showing his hands and his teeth still, and rolling
+his eyes. "Allaye can have no fear at all of the bear Walgatchka,"
+he said, looking up at her comically.
+
+Ciccio, who had been watching and slightly grinning, here rose to
+his feet and took Geoffrey by the shoulder, pulling him up.
+
+"Basta!" he said. "Tu es saoul. You are drunk, my Gigi. Get up. How
+are you going to ride to Mansfield, hein?--great beast."
+
+"Ciccio," said Geoffrey solemnly. "I love thee, I love thee as a
+brother, and also more. I love thee as a brother, my Ciccio, as thou
+knowest. But--" and he puffed fiercely--"I am the slave of Allaye, I
+am the tame bear of Allaye."
+
+"Get up," said Ciccio, "get up! Per bacco! She doesn't want a tame
+bear." He smiled down on his friend.
+
+Geoffrey rose to his feet and flung his arms round Ciccio.
+
+"Cic'," he besought him. "Cic'--I love thee as a brother. But let me
+be the tame bear of Allaye, let me be the gentle bear of Allaye."
+
+"All right," said Ciccio. "Thou art the tame bear of Allaye."
+
+Geoffrey strained Ciccio to his breast.
+
+"Thank you! Thank you! Salute me, my own friend."
+
+And Ciccio kissed him on either cheek. Whereupon Geoffrey
+immediately flopped on his knees again before Alvina, and presented
+her his broad, rich-coloured cheek.
+
+"Salute your bear, Allaye," he cried. "Salute your slave, the tame
+bear Walgatchka, who is a wild bear for all except Allaye and his
+brother Pacohuila the Puma." Geoffrey growled realistically as a
+wild bear as he kneeled before Alvina, presenting his cheek.
+
+Alvina looked at Ciccio, who stood above, watching. Then she lightly
+kissed him on the cheek, and said:
+
+"Won't you go to bed and sleep?"
+
+Geoffrey staggered to his feet, shaking his head.
+
+"No--no--" he said. "No--no! Walgatchka must travel to the tent of
+Kishwegin, to the Camp of the Tawaras."
+
+"Not tonight, _mon brave_," said Ciccio. "Tonight we stay here,
+hein. Why separate, hein?--frere?"
+
+Geoffrey again clasped Ciccio in his arms.
+
+"Pacohuila and Walgatchka are blood-brothers, two bodies, one blood.
+One blood, in two bodies; one stream, in two valleys: one lake,
+between two mountains."
+
+Here Geoffrey gazed with large, heavy eyes on Ciccio. Alvina brought
+a candle and lighted it.
+
+"You will manage in the one room?" she said. "I will give you
+another pillow."
+
+She led the way upstairs. Geoffrey followed, heavily. Then Ciccio.
+On the landing Alvina gave them the pillow and the candle, smiled,
+bade them good-night in a whisper, and went downstairs again. She
+cleared away the supper and carried away all glasses and bottles
+from the drawing-room. Then she washed up, removing all traces of
+the feast. The cards she restored to their old mahogany box.
+Manchester House looked itself again.
+
+She turned off the gas at the meter, and went upstairs to bed. From
+the far room she could hear the gentle, but profound vibrations of
+Geoffrey's snoring. She was tired after her day: too tired to
+trouble about anything any more.
+
+But in the morning she was first downstairs. She heard Miss
+Pinnegar, and hurried. Hastily she opened the windows and doors to
+drive away the smell of beer and smoke. She heard the men rumbling
+in the bath-room. And quickly she prepared breakfast and made a
+fire. Mrs. Rollings would not appear till later in the day. At a
+quarter to seven Miss Pinnegar came down, and went into the scullery
+to make her tea.
+
+"Did both the men stay?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, they both slept in the end room," said Alvina.
+
+Miss Pinnegar said no more, but padded with her tea and her boiled
+egg into the living room. In the morning she was wordless.
+
+Ciccio came down, in his shirt-sleeves as usual, but wearing a
+collar. He greeted Miss Pinnegar politely.
+
+"Good-morning!" she said, and went on with her tea.
+
+Geoffrey appeared. Miss Pinnegar glanced once at him, sullenly, and
+briefly answered his good-morning. Then she went on with her egg,
+slow and persistent in her movements, mum.
+
+The men went out to attend to Geoffrey's bicycle. The morning was
+slow and grey, obscure. As they pumped up the tires, they heard some
+one padding behind. Miss Pinnegar came and unbolted the yard door,
+but ignored their presence. Then they saw her return and slowly
+mount the outer stair-ladder, which went up to the top floor. Two
+minutes afterwards they were startled by the irruption of the
+work-girls. As for the work-girls, they gave quite loud, startled
+squeals, suddenly seeing the two men on their right hand, in the
+obscure morning. And they lingered on the stair-way to gaze in rapt
+curiosity, poking and whispering, until Miss Pinnegar appeared
+overhead, and sharply rang a bell which hung beside the entrance
+door of the work-rooms.
+
+After which excitements Geoffrey and Ciccio went in to breakfast,
+which Alvina had prepared.
+
+"You have done it all, eh?" said Ciccio, glancing round.
+
+"Yes. I've made breakfast for years, now," said Alvina.
+
+"Not many more times here, eh?" he said, smiling significantly.
+
+"I hope not," said Alvina.
+
+Ciccio sat down almost like a husband--as if it were his right.
+
+Geoffrey was very quiet this morning. He ate his breakfast, and rose
+to go.
+
+"I shall see you soon," he said, smiling sheepishly and bowing to
+Alvina. Ciccio accompanied him to the street.
+
+When Ciccio returned, Alvina was once more washing dishes.
+
+"What time shall we go?" he said.
+
+"We'll catch the one train. I must see the lawyer this morning."
+
+"And what shall you say to him?"
+
+"I shall tell him to sell everything--"
+
+"And marry me?"
+
+She started, and looked at him.
+
+"You don't want to marry, do you?" she said.
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Wouldn't you rather wait, and see--"
+
+"What?" he said.
+
+"See if there is any money."
+
+He watched her steadily, and his brow darkened.
+
+"Why?" he said.
+
+She began to tremble.
+
+"You'd like it better if there was money."
+
+A slow, sinister smile came on his mouth. His eyes never smiled,
+except to Geoffrey, when a flood of warm, laughing light sometimes
+suffused them.
+
+"You think I should!"
+
+"Yes. It's true, isn't it? You would!"
+
+He turned his eyes aside, and looked at her hands as she washed the
+forks. They trembled slightly. Then he looked back at her eyes
+again, that were watching him large and wistful and a little
+accusing.
+
+His impudent laugh came on his face.
+
+"Yes," he said, "it is always better if there is money." He put his
+hand on her, and she winced. "But I marry you for love, you know.
+You know what love is--" And he put his arms round her, and laughed
+down into her face.
+
+She strained away.
+
+"But you can have love without marriage," she said. "You know that."
+
+"All right! All right! Give me love, eh? I want that."
+
+She struggled against him.
+
+"But not now," she said.
+
+She saw the light in his eyes fix determinedly, and he nodded.
+
+"Now!" he said. "Now!"
+
+His yellow-tawny eyes looked down into hers, alien and overbearing.
+
+"I can't," she struggled. "I can't now."
+
+He laughed in a sinister way: yet with a certain warmheartedness.
+
+"Come to that big room--" he said.
+
+Her face flew fixed into opposition.
+
+"I can't now, really," she said grimly.
+
+His eyes looked down at hers. Her eyes looked back at him, hard and
+cold and determined. They remained motionless for some seconds.
+Then, a stray wisp of her hair catching his attention, desire filled
+his heart, warm and full, obliterating his anger in the combat. For
+a moment he softened. He saw her hardness becoming more assertive,
+and he wavered in sudden dislike, and almost dropped her. Then again
+the desire flushed his heart, his smile became reckless of her, and
+he picked her right up.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Now."
+
+For a second, she struggled frenziedly. But almost instantly she
+recognized how much stronger he was, and she was still, mute and
+motionless with anger. White, and mute, and motionless, she was taken
+to her room. And at the back of her mind all the time she wondered at
+his deliberate recklessness of her. Recklessly, he had his will of
+her--but deliberately, and thoroughly, not rushing to the issue, but
+taking everything he wanted of her, progressively, and fully, leaving
+her stark, with nothing, nothing of herself--nothing.
+
+When she could lie still she turned away from him, still mute. And
+he lay with his arms over her, motionless. Noises went on, in the
+street, overhead in the work-room. But theirs was complete silence.
+
+At last he rose and looked at her.
+
+"Love is a fine thing, Allaye," he said.
+
+She lay mute and unmoving. He approached, laid his hand on her
+breast, and kissed her.
+
+"Love," he said, asserting, and laughing.
+
+But still she was completely mute and motionless. He threw
+bedclothes over her and went downstairs, whistling softly.
+
+She knew she would have to break her own trance of obstinacy. So she
+snuggled down into the bedclothes, shivering deliciously, for her
+skin had become chilled. She didn't care a bit, really, about her
+own downfall. She snuggled deliciously in the sheets, and admitted
+to herself that she loved him. In truth, she loved him--and she was
+laughing to herself.
+
+Luxuriously, she resented having to get up and tackle her heap of
+broken garments. But she did it. She took other clothes, adjusted
+her hair, tied on her apron, and went downstairs once more. She
+could not find Ciccio: he had gone out. A stray cat darted from the
+scullery, and broke a plate in her leap. Alvina found her washing-up
+water cold. She put on more, and began to dry her dishes.
+
+Ciccio returned shortly, and stood in the doorway looking at her.
+She turned to him, unexpectedly laughing.
+
+"What do you think of yourself?" she laughed.
+
+"Well," he said, with a little nod, and a furtive look of triumph
+about him, evasive. He went past her and into the room. Her inside
+burned with love for him: so elusive, so beautiful, in his silent
+passing out of her sight. She wiped her dishes happily. Why was she
+so absurdly happy, she asked herself? And why did she still fight so
+hard against the sense of his dark, unseizable beauty? Unseizable,
+for ever unseizable! That made her almost his slave. She fought
+against her own desire to fall at his feet. Ridiculous to be so
+happy.
+
+She sang to herself as she went about her work downstairs. Then she
+went upstairs, to do the bedrooms and pack her bag. At ten o'clock
+she was to go to the family lawyer.
+
+She lingered over her possessions: what to take, and what not to
+take. And so doing she wasted her time. It was already ten o'clock
+when she hurried downstairs. He was sitting quite still, waiting. He
+looked up at her.
+
+"Now I must hurry," she said. "I don't think I shall be more than an
+hour."
+
+He put on his hat and went out with her.
+
+"I shall tell the lawyer I am engaged to you. Shall I?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he said. "Tell him what you like." He was indifferent.
+
+"Because," said Alvina gaily, "we can please ourselves what we do,
+whatever we say. I shall say we think of getting married in the
+summer, when we know each other better, and going to Italy."
+
+"Why shall you say all that?" said Ciccio.
+
+"Because I shall _have_ to give some account of myself, or they'll
+make me do something I don't want to do. You might come to the
+lawyer's with me, will you? He's an awfully nice old man. Then he'd
+believe in you."
+
+But Ciccio shook his head.
+
+"No," he said. "I shan't go. He doesn't want to see _me_."
+
+"Well, if you don't want to. But I remember your name, Francesco
+Marasca, and I remember Pescocalascio."
+
+Ciccio heard in silence, as they walked the half-empty,
+Monday-morning street of Woodhouse. People kept nodding to Alvina.
+Some hurried inquisitively across to speak to her and look at
+Ciccio. Ciccio however stood aside and turned his back.
+
+"Oh yes," Alvina said. "I am staying with friends, here and there,
+for a few weeks. No, I don't know when I shall be back. Good-bye!"
+
+"You're looking well, Alvina," people said to her. "I think you're
+looking wonderful. A change does you good."
+
+"It does, doesn't it," said Alvina brightly. And she was pleased she
+was looking well.
+
+"Well, good-bye for a minute," she said, glancing smiling into his
+eyes and nodding to him, as she left him at the gate of the lawyer's
+house, by the ivy-covered wall.
+
+The lawyer was a little man, all grey. Alvina had known him since
+she was a child: but rather as an official than an individual. She
+arrived all smiling in his room. He sat down and scrutinized her
+sharply, officially, before beginning.
+
+"Well, Miss Houghton, and what news have you?"
+
+"I don't think I've any, Mr. Beeby. I came to you for news."
+
+"Ah!" said the lawyer, and he fingered a paper-weight that covered a
+pile of papers. "I'm afraid there is nothing very pleasant,
+unfortunately. And nothing very unpleasant either, for that matter."
+
+
+
+He gave her a shrewd little smile.
+
+"Is the will proved?"
+
+"Not yet. But I expect it will be through in a few days' time."
+
+"And are all the claims in?"
+
+"Yes. I _think_ so. I think so!" And again he laid his hand on the
+pile of papers under the paper-weight, and ran through the edges
+with the tips of his fingers.
+
+"All those?" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes," he said quietly. It sounded ominous.
+
+"Many!" said Alvina.
+
+"A fair amount! A fair amount! Let me show you a statement."
+
+He rose and brought her a paper. She made out, with the lawyer's
+help, that the claims against her father's property exceeded the
+gross estimate of his property by some seven hundred pounds.
+
+"Does it mean we owe seven hundred pounds?" she asked.
+
+"That is only on the _estimate_ of the property. It might, of
+course, realize much more, when sold--or it might realize less."
+
+"How awful!" said Alvina, her courage sinking.
+
+"Unfortunate! Unfortunate! However, I don't think the realization of
+the property would amount to less than the estimate. I don't think
+so."
+
+"But even then," said Alvina. "There is sure to be something
+owing--"
+
+She saw herself saddled with her father's debts.
+
+"I'm afraid so," said the lawyer.
+
+"And then what?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh--the creditors will have to be satisfied with a little less than
+they claim, I suppose. Not a very great deal, you see. I don't
+expect they will complain a great deal. In fact, some of them will
+be less badly off than they feared. No, on that score we need not
+trouble further. Useless if we do, anyhow. But now, about yourself.
+Would you like me to try to compound with the creditors, so that you
+could have some sort of provision? They are mostly people who know
+you, know your condition: and I might try--"
+
+"Try what?" said Alvina.
+
+"To make some sort of compound. Perhaps you might retain a lease of
+Miss Pinnegar's work-rooms. Perhaps even something might be done
+about the cinematograph. What would you like--?"
+
+Alvina sat still in her chair, looking through the window at the ivy
+sprays, and the leaf buds on the lilac. She felt she could not, she
+could not cut off every resource. In her own heart she had
+confidently expected a few hundred pounds: even a thousand or more.
+And that would make her _something_ of a catch, to people who had
+nothing. But now!--nothing!--nothing at the back of her but her
+hundred pounds. When that was gone--!
+
+In her dilemma she looked at the lawyer.
+
+"You didn't expect it would be quite so bad?" he said.
+
+"I think I didn't," she said.
+
+"No. Well--it might have been worse."
+
+Again he waited. And again she looked at him vacantly.
+
+"What do you think?" he said.
+
+For answer, she only looked at him with wide eyes.
+
+"Perhaps you would rather decide later."
+
+"No," she said. "No. It's no use deciding later."
+
+The lawyer watched her with curious eyes, his hand beat a little
+impatiently.
+
+"I will do my best," he said, "to get what I can for you."
+
+"Oh well!" she said. "Better let everything go. I don't _want_ to
+hang on. Don't bother about me at all. I shall go away, anyhow."
+
+"You will go away?" said the lawyer, and he studied his
+finger-nails.
+
+"Yes. I shan't stay here."
+
+"Oh! And may I ask if you have any definite idea, where you will
+go?"
+
+"I've got an engagement as pianist, with a travelling theatrical
+company."
+
+"Oh indeed!" said the lawyer, scrutinizing her sharply. She stared
+away vacantly out of the window. He took to the attentive study of
+his finger-nails once more. "And at a sufficient salary?"
+
+"Quite sufficient, thank you," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh! Well! Well now!--" He fidgetted a little. "You see, we are all
+old neighbours and connected with your father for many years.
+We--that is the persons interested, and myself--would not like to
+think that you were driven out of Woodhouse--er--er--destitute.
+If--er--we could come to some composition--make some arrangement
+that would be agreeable to you, and would, in some measure, secure
+you a means of livelihood--"
+
+He watched Alvina with sharp blue eyes. Alvina looked back at him,
+still vacantly.
+
+"No--thanks awfully!" she said. "But don't bother. I'm going away."
+
+"With the travelling theatrical company?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The lawyer studied his finger-nails intensely.
+
+"Well," he said, feeling with a finger-tip an imaginary roughness of
+one nail-edge. "Well, in that case--In that case--Supposing you have
+made an irrevocable decision--"
+
+He looked up at her sharply. She nodded slowly, like a porcelain
+mandarin.
+
+"In that case," he said, "we must proceed with the valuation and the
+preparation for the sale."
+
+"Yes," she said faintly.
+
+"You realize," he said, "that everything in Manchester House, except
+your private personal property, and that of Miss Pinnegar, belongs
+to the claimants, your father's creditors, and may not be removed
+from the house."
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"And it will be necessary to make an account of everything in the
+house. So if you and Miss Pinnegar will put your possessions
+strictly apart--But I shall see Miss Pinnegar during the course of
+the day. Would you ask her to call about seven--I think she is free
+then--"
+
+Alvina sat trembling.
+
+"I shall pack my things today," she said.
+
+"Of course," said the lawyer, "any little things to which you may be
+attached the claimants would no doubt wish you to regard as your
+own. For anything of greater value--your piano, for example--I
+should have to make a personal request--"
+
+"Oh, I don't want anything--" said Alvina.
+
+"No? Well! You will see. You will be here a few days?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I'm going away today."
+
+"Today! Is that also irrevocable?"
+
+"Yes. I must go this afternoon."
+
+"On account of your engagement? May I ask where your company is
+performing this week? Far away?"
+
+"Mansfield!"
+
+"Oh! Well then, in case I particularly wished to see you, you could
+come over?"
+
+"If necessary," said Alvina. "But I don't want to come to Woodhouse
+unless it _is_ necessary. Can't we write?"
+
+"Yes--certainly! Certainly!--most things! Certainly! And now--"
+
+He went into certain technical matters, and Alvina signed some
+documents. At last she was free to go. She had been almost an hour
+in the room.
+
+"Well, good-morning, Miss Houghton. You will hear from me, and I
+from you. I wish you a pleasant experience in your new occupation.
+You are not leaving Woodhouse for ever."
+
+"Good-bye!" she said. And she hurried to the road.
+
+Try as she might, she felt as if she had had a blow which knocked
+her down. She felt she had had a blow.
+
+At the lawyer's gate she stood a minute. There, across a little
+hollow, rose the cemetery hill. There were her graves: her mother's,
+Miss Frost's, her father's. Looking, she made out the white cross at
+Miss Frost's grave, the grey stone at her parents'. Then she turned
+slowly, under the church wall, back to Manchester House.
+
+She felt humiliated. She felt she did not want to see anybody at all.
+She did not want to see Miss Pinnegar, nor the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: and
+least of all, Ciccio. She felt strange in Woodhouse, almost as if the
+ground had risen from under her feet and hit her over the mouth. The
+fact that Manchester House and its very furniture was under seal to be
+sold on behalf of her father's creditors made her feel as if all her
+Woodhouse life had suddenly gone smash. She loathed the thought of
+Manchester House. She loathed staying another minute in it.
+
+And yet she did not want to go to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras either. The
+church clock above her clanged eleven. She ought to take the
+twelve-forty train to Mansfield. Yet instead of going home she
+turned off down the alley towards the fields and the brook.
+
+How many times had she gone that road! How many times had she seen
+Miss Frost bravely striding home that way, from her music-pupils.
+How many years had she noticed a particular wild cherry-tree come
+into blossom, a particular bit of black-thorn scatter its whiteness
+in among the pleached twigs of a hawthorn hedge. How often, how many
+springs had Miss Frost come home with a bit of this black-thorn in
+her hand!
+
+Alvina did _not_ want to go to Mansfield that afternoon. She felt
+insulted. She knew she would be much cheaper in Madame's eyes. She knew
+her own position with the troupe would be humiliating. It would be
+openly a little humiliating. But it would be much more maddeningly
+humiliating to stay in Woodhouse and experience the full flavour of
+Woodhouse's calculated benevolence. She hardly knew which was worse:
+the cool look of insolent half-contempt, half-satisfaction with which
+Madame would receive the news of her financial downfall, or the
+officious patronage which she would meet from the Woodhouse magnates.
+She knew exactly how Madame's black eyes would shine, how her mouth
+would curl with a sneering, slightly triumphant smile, as she heard the
+news. And she could hear the bullying tone in which Henry Wagstaff
+would dictate the Woodhouse benevolence to her. She wanted to go away
+from them all--from them all--for ever.
+
+Even from Ciccio. For she felt he insulted her too. Subtly, they all
+did it. They had regard for her possibilities as an heiress. Five
+hundred, even two hundred pounds would have made all the difference.
+Useless to deny it. Even to Ciccio. Ciccio would have had a lifelong
+respect for her, if she had come with even so paltry a sum as two
+hundred pounds. Now she had nothing, he would coolly withhold this
+respect. She felt he might jeer at her. And she could not get away
+from this feeling.
+
+Mercifully she had the bit of ready money. And she had a few
+trinkets which might be sold. Nothing else. Mercifully, for the mere
+moment, she was independent.
+
+Whatever else she did, she must go back and pack. She must pack her
+two boxes, and leave them ready. For she felt that once she had
+left, she could never come back to Woodhouse again. If England had
+cliffs all round--why, when there was nowhere else to go and no
+getting beyond, she could walk over one of the cliffs. Meanwhile,
+she had her short run before her. She banked hard on her
+independence.
+
+So she turned back to the town. She would not be able to take the
+twelve-forty train, for it was already mid-day. But she was glad.
+She wanted some time to herself. She would send Ciccio on. Slowly
+she climbed the familiar hill--slowly--and rather bitterly. She felt
+her native place insulted her: and she felt the Natchas insulted
+her. In the midst of the insult she remained isolated upon herself,
+and she wished to be alone.
+
+She found Ciccio waiting at the end of the yard: eternally waiting,
+it seemed. He was impatient.
+
+"You've been a long time," he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+"We shall have to make haste to catch the train."
+
+"I can't go by this train. I shall have to come on later. You can
+just eat a mouthful of lunch, and go now."
+
+They went indoors. Miss Pinnegar had not yet come down. Mrs.
+Rollings was busily peeling potatoes.
+
+"Mr. Marasca is going by the train, he'll have to have a little cold
+meat," said Alvina. "Would you mind putting it ready while I go
+upstairs?"
+
+"Sharpses and Fullbankses sent them bills," said Mrs. Rollings.
+Alvina opened them, and turned pale. It was thirty pounds, the total
+funeral expenses. She had completely forgotten them.
+
+"And Mr. Atterwell wants to know what you'd like put on th'
+headstone for your father--if you'd write it down."
+
+"All right."
+
+Mrs. Rollings popped on the potatoes for Miss Pinnegar's dinner, and
+spread the cloth for Ciccio. When he was eating, Miss Pinnegar came
+in. She inquired for Alvina--and went upstairs.
+
+"Have you had your dinner?" she said. For there was Alvina sitting
+writing a letter.
+
+"I'm going by a later train," said Alvina.
+
+"Both of you?"
+
+"No. He's going now."
+
+Miss Pinnegar came downstairs again, and went through to the
+scullery. When Alvina came down, she returned to the living room.
+
+"Give this letter to Madame," Alvina said to Ciccio. "I shall be at
+the hall by seven tonight. I shall go straight there."
+
+"Why can't you come now?" said Ciccio.
+
+"I can't possibly," said Alvina. "The lawyer has just told me
+father's debts come to much more than everything is worth. Nothing
+is ours--not even the plate you're eating from. Everything is under
+seal to be sold to pay off what is owing. So I've got to get my own
+clothes and boots together, or they'll be sold with the rest. Mr.
+Beeby wants you to go round at seven this evening, Miss
+Pinnegar--before I forget."
+
+"Really!" gasped Miss Pinnegar. "Really! The house and the furniture
+and everything got to be sold up? Then we're on the streets! I can't
+believe it."
+
+"So he told me," said Alvina.
+
+"But how positively awful," said Miss Pinnegar, sinking motionless
+into a chair.
+
+"It's not more than I expected," said Alvina. "I'm putting my things
+into my two trunks, and I shall just ask Mrs. Slaney to store them
+for me. Then I've the bag I shall travel with."
+
+"Really!" gasped Miss Pinnegar. "I can't believe it! And when have
+we got to get out?"
+
+"Oh, I don't think there's a desperate hurry. They'll take an
+inventory of all the things, and we can live on here till they're
+actually ready for the sale."
+
+"And when will that be?"
+
+"I don't know. A week or two."
+
+"And is the cinematograph to be sold the same?"
+
+"Yes--everything! The piano--even mother's portrait--"
+
+"It's impossible to believe it," said Miss Pinnegar. "It's
+impossible. He can never have left things so bad."
+
+"Ciccio," said Alvina. "You'll really have to go if you are to catch
+the train. You'll give Madame my letter, won't you? I should hate
+you to miss the train. I know she can't bear me already, for all the
+fuss and upset I cause."
+
+Ciccio rose slowly, wiping his mouth.
+
+"You'll be there at seven o'clock?" he said.
+
+"At the theatre," she replied.
+
+And without more ado, he left.
+
+Mrs. Rollings came in.
+
+"You've heard?" said Miss Pinnegar dramatically.
+
+"I heard somethink," said Mrs. Rollings.
+
+"Sold up! Everything to be sold up. Every stick and rag! I never
+thought I should live to see the day," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"You might almost have expected it," said Mrs. Rollings. "But you're
+all right, yourself, Miss Pinnegar. Your money isn't with his, is
+it?"
+
+"No," said Miss Pinnegar. "What little I have put by is safe. But
+it's not enough to live on. It's not enough to keep me, even
+supposing I only live another ten years. If I only spend a pound a
+week, it costs fifty-two pounds a year. And for ten years, look at
+it, it's five hundred and twenty pounds. And you couldn't say less.
+And I haven't half that amount. I never had more than a wage, you
+know. Why, Miss Frost earned a good deal more than I do. And _she_
+didn't leave much more than fifty. Where's the money to come
+from--?"
+
+"But if you've enough to start a little business--" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, it's what I shall _have_ to do. It's what I shall have to do.
+And then what about you? What about you?"
+
+"Oh, don't bother about me," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, it's all very well, don't bother. But when you come to my age,
+you know you've _got_ to bother, and bother a great deal, if you're
+not going to find yourself in a position you'd be sorry for. You
+_have_ to bother. And _you'll_ have to bother before you've done."
+
+"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," said Alvina.
+
+"Ha, sufficient for a good many days, it seems to me."
+
+Miss Pinnegar was in a real temper. To Alvina this seemed an odd way
+of taking it. The three women sat down to an uncomfortable dinner of
+cold meat and hot potatoes and warmed-up pudding.
+
+"But whatever you do," pronounced Miss Pinnegar; "whatever you do,
+and however you strive, in this life, you're knocked down in the
+end. You're always knocked down."
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Alvina, "if it's only in the end. It
+doesn't matter if you've had your life."
+
+"You've never had your life, till you're dead," said Miss Pinnegar.
+"And if you work and strive, you've a right to the fruits of your
+work."
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Alvina laconically, "so long as you've
+enjoyed working and striving."
+
+But Miss Pinnegar was too angry to be philosophic. Alvina knew it
+was useless to be either angry or otherwise emotional. None the
+less, she also felt as if she had been knocked down. And she almost
+envied poor Miss Pinnegar the prospect of a little, day-by-day
+haberdashery shop in Tamworth. Her own problem seemed so much more
+menacing. "Answer or die," said the Sphinx of fate. Miss Pinnegar
+could answer her own fate according to its question. She could say
+"haberdashery shop," and her sphinx would recognize this answer as
+true to nature, and would be satisfied. But every individual has his
+own, or her own fate, and her own sphinx. Alvina's sphinx was an
+old, deep thoroughbred, she would take no mongrel answers. And her
+thoroughbred teeth were long and sharp. To Alvina, the last of the
+fantastic but pure-bred race of Houghton, the problem of her fate
+was terribly abstruse.
+
+The only thing to do was not to solve it: to stray on, and answer
+fate with whatever came into one's head. No good striving with fate.
+Trust to a lucky shot, or take the consequences.
+
+"Miss Pinnegar," said Alvina. "Have we any money in hand?"
+
+"There is about twenty pounds in the bank. It's all shown in my
+books," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"We couldn't take it, could we?"
+
+"Every penny shows in the books."
+
+Alvina pondered again.
+
+"Are there more bills to come in?" she asked. "I mean my bills. Do I
+owe anything?"
+
+"I don't think you do," said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"I'm going to keep the insurance money, any way. They can say what
+they like. I've got it, and I'm going to keep it."
+
+"Well," said Miss Pinnegar, "it's not my business. But there's
+Sharps and Fullbanks to pay."
+
+"I'll pay those," said Alvina. "You tell Atterwell what to put on
+father's stone. How much does it cost?"
+
+"Five shillings a letter, you remember."
+
+"Well, we'll just put the name and the date. How much will that be?
+James Houghton. Born 17th January--"
+
+"You'll have to put 'Also of,'" said Miss Pinnegar.
+
+"Also of--" said Alvina. "One--two--three--four--five--six--. Six
+letters--thirty shillings. Seems an awful lot for _Also of_--"
+
+"But you can't leave it out," said Miss Pinnegar. "You can't
+economize over that."
+
+"I begrudge it," said Alvina.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT
+
+
+For days, after joining the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, Alvina was very
+quiet, subdued, and rather remote, sensible of her humiliating
+position as a hanger-on. They none of them took much notice of her.
+They drifted on, rather disjointedly. The cordiality, the _joie de
+vivre_ did not revive. Madame was a little irritable, and very
+exacting, and inclined to be spiteful. Ciccio went his way with
+Geoffrey.
+
+In the second week, Madame found out that a man had been
+surreptitiously inquiring about them at their lodgings, from the
+landlady and the landlady's blowsy daughter. It must have been a
+detective--some shoddy detective. Madame waited. Then she sent Max
+over to Mansfield, on some fictitious errand. Yes, the lousy-looking
+dogs of detectives had been there too, making the most minute
+enquiries as to the behaviour of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, what they
+did, how their sleeping was arranged, how Madame addressed the men,
+what attitude the men took towards Alvina.
+
+Madame waited again. And again, when they moved to Doncaster, the
+same two mongrel-looking fellows were lurking in the street, and
+plying the inmates of their lodging-house with questions. All the
+Natchas caught sight of the men. And Madame cleverly wormed out of
+the righteous and respectable landlady what the men had asked. Once
+more it was about the sleeping accommodation--whether the landlady
+heard anything in the night--whether she noticed anything in the
+bedrooms, in the beds.
+
+No doubt about it, the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were under suspicion. They
+were being followed, and watched. What for? Madame made a shrewd
+guess. "They want to say we are immoral foreigners," she said.
+
+"But what have our personal morals got to do with them?" said Max
+angrily.
+
+"Yes--but the English! They are so pure," said Madame.
+
+"You know," said Louis, "somebody must have put them up to it--"
+
+"Perhaps," said Madame, "somebody on account of Allaye."
+
+Alvina went white.
+
+"Yes," said Geoffrey. "White Slave Traffic! Mr. May said it."
+
+Madame slowly nodded.
+
+"Mr. May!" she said. "Mr. May! It is he. He knows all about
+morals--and immorals. Yes, I know. Yes--yes--yes! He suspects all
+our immoral doings, _mes braves_."
+
+"But there aren't any, except mine," cried Alvina, pale to the lips.
+
+"You! You! There you are!" Madame smiled archly, and rather
+mockingly.
+
+"What are we to do?" said Max, pale on the cheekbones.
+
+"Curse them! Curse them!" Louis was muttering, in his rolling
+accent.
+
+"Wait," said Madame. "Wait. They will not do anything to us. You are
+only dirty foreigners, _mes braves_. At the most they will ask us
+only to leave their pure country."
+
+"We don't interfere with none of them," cried Max.
+
+"Curse them," muttered Louis.
+
+"Never mind, _mon cher_. You are in a pure country. Let us wait."
+
+"If you think it's me," said Alvina, "I can go away."
+
+"Oh, my dear, you are only the excuse," said Madame, smiling
+indulgently at her. "Let us wait, and see."
+
+She took it smilingly. But her cheeks were white as paper, and her
+eyes black as drops of ink, with anger.
+
+"Wait and see!" she chanted ironically. "Wait and see! If we must
+leave the dear country--then _adieu!_" And she gravely bowed to an
+imaginary England.
+
+"I feel it's my fault. I feel I ought to go away," cried Alvina, who
+was terribly distressed, seeing Madame's glitter and pallor, and the
+black brows of the men. Never had Ciccio's brow looked so ominously
+black. And Alvina felt it was all her fault. Never had she
+experienced such a horrible feeling: as if something repulsive were
+creeping on her from behind. Every minute of these weeks was a
+horror to her: the sense of the low-down dogs of detectives hanging
+round, sliding behind them, trying to get hold of some clear proof
+of immorality on their part. And then--the unknown vengeance of the
+authorities. All the repulsive secrecy, and all the absolute power
+of the police authorities. The sense of a great malevolent power
+which had them all the time in its grip, and was watching, feeling,
+waiting to strike the morbid blow: the sense of the utter
+helplessness of individuals who were not even accused, only watched
+and enmeshed! the feeling that they, the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, herself
+included, must be monsters of hideous vice, to have provoked all
+this: and yet the sane knowledge that they, none of them, _were_
+monsters of vice; this was quite killing. The sight of a policeman
+would send up Alvina's heart in a flame of fear, agony; yet she knew
+she had nothing legally to be afraid of. Every knock at the door was
+horrible.
+
+She simply could not understand it. Yet there it was: they were
+watched, followed. Of that there was no question. And all she could
+imagine was that the troupe was secretly accused of White Slave
+Traffic by somebody in Woodhouse. Probably Mr. May had gone the
+round of the benevolent magnates of Woodhouse, concerning himself
+with her virtue, and currying favour with his concern. Of this she
+became convinced, that it was concern for her virtue which had
+started the whole business: and that the first instigator was Mr.
+May, who had got round some vulgar magistrate or County Councillor.
+
+Madame did not consider Alvina's view very seriously. She thought it
+was some personal malevolence against the Tawaras themselves,
+probably put up by some other professionals, with whom Madame was
+not popular.
+
+Be that as it may, for some weeks they went about in the shadow of
+this repulsive finger which was following after them, to touch them
+and destroy them with the black smear of shame. The men were silent
+and inclined to be sulky. They seemed to hold together. They seemed
+to be united into a strong, four-square silence and tension. They
+kept to themselves--and Alvina kept to herself--and Madame kept to
+herself. So they went about.
+
+And slowly the cloud melted. It never broke. Alvina felt that the
+very force of the sullen, silent fearlessness and fury in the
+Tawaras had prevented its bursting. Once there had been a weakening,
+a cringing, they would all have been lost. But their hearts hardened
+with black, indomitable anger. And the cloud melted, it passed away.
+There was no sign.
+
+Early summer was now at hand. Alvina no longer felt at home with the
+Natchas. While the trouble was hanging over, they seemed to ignore
+her altogether. The men hardly spoke to her. They hardly spoke to
+Madame, for that matter. They kept within the four-square enclosure
+of themselves.
+
+But Alvina felt herself particularly excluded, left out. And when
+the trouble of the detectives began to pass off, and the men became
+more cheerful again, wanted her to jest and be familiar with them,
+she responded verbally, but in her heart there was no response.
+
+Madame had been quite generous with her. She allowed her to pay for
+her room, and the expense of travelling. But she had her food with
+the rest. Wherever she was, Madame bought the food for the party,
+and cooked it herself. And Alvina came in with the rest: she paid no
+board.
+
+She waited, however, for Madame to suggest a small salary--or at
+least, that the troupe should pay her living expenses. But Madame
+did not make such a suggestion. So Alvina knew that she was not very
+badly wanted. And she guarded her money, and watched for some other
+opportunity.
+
+It became her habit to go every morning to the public library of the
+town in which she found herself, to look through the advertisements:
+advertisements for maternity nurses, for nursery governesses,
+pianists, travelling companions, even ladies' maids. For some weeks
+she found nothing, though she wrote several letters.
+
+One morning Ciccio, who had begun to hang round her again,
+accompanied her as she set out to the library. But her heart was
+closed against him.
+
+"Why are you going to the library?" he asked her. It was in
+Lancaster.
+
+"To look at the papers and magazines."
+
+"Ha-a! To find a job, eh?"
+
+His cuteness startled her for a moment.
+
+"If I found one I should take it," she said.
+
+"He! I know that," he said.
+
+It so happened that that very morning she saw on the notice-board of
+the library an announcement that the Borough Council wished to
+engage the services of an experienced maternity nurse, applications
+to be made to the medical board. Alvina wrote down the directions.
+Ciccio watched her.
+
+"What is a maternity nurse?" he said.
+
+"An _accoucheuse_!" she said. "The nurse who attends when babies are
+born."
+
+"Do you know how to do that?" he said, incredulous, and jeering
+slightly.
+
+"I was trained to do it," she said.
+
+He said no more, but walked by her side as she returned to the
+lodgings. As they drew near the lodgings, he said:
+
+"You don't want to stop with us any more?"
+
+"I can't," she said.
+
+He made a slight, mocking gesture.
+
+"'I can't,'" he repeated. "Why do you always say you can't?"
+
+"Because I can't," she said.
+
+"Pff--!" he went, with a whistling sound of contempt.
+
+But she went indoors to her room. Fortunately, when she had finally
+cleared her things from Manchester House, she had brought with her
+her nurse's certificate, and recommendations from doctors. She wrote
+out her application, took the tram to the Town Hall and dropped it
+in the letterbox there. Then she wired home to her doctor for
+another reference. After which she went to the library and got out a
+book on her subject. If summoned, she would have to go before the
+medical board on Monday. She had a week. She read and pondered hard,
+recalling all her previous experience and knowledge.
+
+She wondered if she ought to appear before the board in uniform. Her
+nurse's dresses were packed in her trunk at Mrs. Slaney's, in
+Woodhouse. It was now May. The whole business at Woodhouse was
+finished. Manchester House and all the furniture was sold to some
+boot-and-shoe people: at least the boot-and-shoe people had the
+house. They had given four thousand pounds for it--which was above
+the lawyer's estimate. On the other hand, the theatre was sold for
+almost nothing. It all worked out that some thirty-three pounds,
+which the creditors made up to fifty pounds, remained for Alvina.
+She insisted on Miss Pinnegar's having half of this. And so that was
+all over. Miss Pinnegar was already in Tamworth, and her little shop
+would be opened next week. She wrote happily and excitedly about it.
+
+Sometimes fate acts swiftly and without a hitch. On Thursday Alvina
+received her notice that she was to appear before the Board on the
+following Monday. And yet she could not bring herself to speak of it
+to Madame till the Saturday evening. When they were all at supper,
+she said:
+
+"Madame, I applied for a post of maternity nurse, to the Borough of
+Lancaster."
+
+Madame raised her eyebrows. Ciccio had said nothing.
+
+"Oh really! You never told me."
+
+"I thought it would be no use if it all came to nothing. They want
+me to go and see them on Monday, and then they will decide--"
+
+"Really! Do they! On Monday? And then if you get this work you will
+stay here? Yes?"
+
+"Yes, of course."
+
+"Of course! Of course! Yes! H'm! And if not?"
+
+The two women looked at each other.
+
+"What?" said Alvina.
+
+"If you _don't_ get it--! You are not _sure_?"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "I am not a bit sure."
+
+"Well then--! Now! And if you don't get it--?"
+
+"What shall I do, you mean?"
+
+"Yes, what shall you do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How! you don't know! Shall you come back to us, then?"
+
+"I will if you like--"
+
+"If I like! If _I_ like! Come, it is not a question of if _I_ like.
+It is what do you want to do yourself."
+
+"I feel you don't want me very badly," said Alvina.
+
+"Why? Why do you feel? Who makes you? Which of us makes you feel so?
+Tell me."
+
+"Nobody in particular. But I feel it."
+
+"Oh we-ell! If nobody makes you, and yet you feel it, it must be in
+yourself, don't you see? Eh? Isn't it so?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," admitted Alvina.
+
+"We-ell then! We-ell--" So Madame gave her her conge. "But if you
+like to come back--if you _laike_--then--" Madame shrugged her
+shoulders--"you must come, I suppose."
+
+"Thank you," said Alvina.
+
+The young men were watching. They seemed indifferent. Ciccio turned
+aside, with his faint, stupid smile.
+
+In the morning Madame gave Alvina all her belongings, from the
+little safe she called her bank.
+
+"There is the money--so--and so--and so--that is correct. Please
+count it once more!--" Alvina counted it and kept it clutched in her
+hand. "And there are your rings, and your chain, and your
+locket--see--all--everything--! But not the brooch. Where is the
+brooch? Here! Shall I give it back, hein?"
+
+"I gave it to you," said Alvina, offended. She looked into Madame's
+black eyes. Madame dropped her eyes.
+
+"Yes, you gave it. But I thought, you see, as you have now not much
+mo-oney, perhaps you would like to take it again--"
+
+"No, thank you," said Alvina, and she went away, leaving Madame with
+the red brooch in her plump hand.
+
+"Thank goodness I've given her something valuable," thought Alvina
+to herself, as she went trembling to her room.
+
+She had packed her bag. She had to find new rooms. She bade good-bye
+to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. Her face was cold and distant, but she
+smiled slightly as she bade them good-bye.
+
+"And perhaps," said Madame, "per-haps you will come to Wigan
+tomorrow afternoon--or evening? Yes?"
+
+"Thank you," said Alvina.
+
+She went out and found a little hotel, where she took her room for
+the night, explaining the cause of her visit to Lancaster. Her heart
+was hard and burning. A deep, burning, silent anger against
+everything possessed her, and a profound indifference to mankind.
+
+And therefore, the next day, everything went as if by magic. She had
+decided that at the least sign of indifference from the medical
+board people she would walk away, take her bag, and go to
+Windermere. She had never been to the Lakes. And Windermere was not
+far off. She would not endure one single hint of contumely from any
+one else. She would go straight to Windermere, to see the big lake.
+Why not do as she wished! She could be quite happy by herself among
+the lakes. And she would be absolutely free, absolutely free. She
+rather looked forward to leaving the Town Hall, hurrying to take her
+bag and off to the station and freedom. Hadn't she still got about a
+hundred pounds? Why bother for one moment? To be quite alone in the
+whole world--and quite, quite free, with her hundred pounds--the
+prospect attracted her sincerely.
+
+And therefore, everything went charmingly at the Town Hall. The
+medical board were charming to her--charming. There was no
+hesitation at all. From the first moment she was engaged. And she
+was given a pleasant room in a hospital in a garden, and the matron
+was charming to her, and the doctors most courteous.
+
+When could she undertake to commence her duties? When did they want
+her? The very _moment_ she could come. She could begin tomorrow--but
+she had no uniform. Oh, the matron would lend her uniform and
+aprons, till her box arrived.
+
+So there she was--by afternoon installed in her pleasant little room
+looking on the garden, and dressed in a nurse's uniform. It was all
+sudden like magic. She had wired to Madame, she had wired for her
+box. She was another person.
+
+Needless to say, she was glad. Needless to say that, in the morning,
+when she had thoroughly bathed, and dressed in clean clothes, and
+put on the white dress, the white apron, and the white cap, she felt
+another person. So clean, she felt, so thankful! Her skin seemed
+caressed and live with cleanliness and whiteness, luminous she felt.
+It was so different from being with the Natchas.
+
+In the garden the snowballs, guelder-roses, swayed softly among
+green foliage, there was pink may-blossom, and single scarlet
+may-blossom, and underneath the young green of the trees, irises
+rearing purple and moth-white. A young gardener was working--and a
+convalescent slowly trailed a few paces.
+
+Having ten minutes still, Alvina sat down and wrote to Ciccio: "I am
+glad I have got this post as nurse here. Every one is most kind, and
+I feel at home already. I feel quite happy here. I shall think of my
+days with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, and of you, who were such a
+stranger to me. Good-bye.--A. H."
+
+This she addressed and posted. No doubt Madame would find occasion
+to read it. But let her.
+
+Alvina now settled down to her new work. There was of course a great
+deal to do, for she had work both in the hospital and out in the
+town, though chiefly out in the town. She went rapidly from case to
+case, as she was summoned. And she was summoned at all hours. So
+that it was tiring work, which left her no time to herself, except
+just in snatches.
+
+She had no serious acquaintance with anybody, she was too busy. The
+matron and sisters and doctors and patients were all part of her
+day's work, and she regarded them as such. The men she chiefly
+ignored: she felt much more friendly with the matron. She had many a
+cup of tea and many a chat in the matron's room, in the quiet, sunny
+afternoons when the work was not pressing. Alvina took her quiet
+moments when she could: for she never knew when she would be rung up
+by one or other of the doctors in the town.
+
+And so, from the matron, she learned to crochet. It was work she had
+never taken to. But now she had her ball of cotton and her hook, and
+she worked away as she chatted. She was in good health, and she was
+getting fatter again. With the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras, she had improved
+a good deal, her colour and her strength had returned. But
+undoubtedly the nursing life, arduous as it was, suited her best.
+She became a handsome, reposeful woman, jolly with the other nurses,
+really happy with her friend the matron, who was well-bred and wise,
+and never over-intimate.
+
+The doctor with whom Alvina had most to do was a Dr. Mitchell, a
+Scotchman. He had a large practice among the poor, and was an
+energetic man. He was about fifty-four years old, tall,
+largely-built, with a good figure, but with extraordinarily large
+feet and hands. His face was red and clean-shaven, his eyes blue,
+his teeth very good. He laughed and talked rather mouthingly.
+Alvina, who knew what the nurses told her, knew that he had come as
+a poor boy and bottle-washer to Dr. Robertson, a fellow-Scotchman,
+and that he had made his way up gradually till he became a doctor
+himself, and had an independent practice. Now he was quite rich--and
+a bachelor. But the nurses did not set their bonnets at him very
+much, because he was rather mouthy and overbearing.
+
+In the houses of the poor he was a great autocrat.
+
+"What is that stuff you've got there!" he inquired largely, seeing a
+bottle of somebody's Soothing Syrup by a poor woman's bedside. "Take
+it and throw it down the sink, and the next time you want a soothing
+syrup put a little boot-blacking in hot water. It'll do you just as
+much good."
+
+Imagine the slow, pompous, large-mouthed way in which the red-faced,
+handsomely-built man pronounced these words, and you realize why the
+poor set such store by him.
+
+He was eagle-eyed. Wherever he went, there was a scuffle directly
+his foot was heard on the stairs. And he knew they were hiding
+something. He sniffed the air: he glanced round with a sharp eye:
+and during the course of his visit picked up a blue mug which was
+pushed behind the looking-glass. He peered inside--and smelled it.
+
+"Stout?" he said, in a tone of indignant inquiry: God-Almighty would
+presumably take on just such a tone, finding the core of an apple
+flung away among the dead-nettle of paradise: "Stout! Have you been
+drinking stout?" This as he gazed down on the wan mother in the bed.
+
+"They gave me a drop, doctor. I felt that low."
+
+The doctor marched out of the room, still holding the mug in his
+hand. The sick woman watched him with haunted eyes. The attendant
+women threw up their hands and looked at one another. Was he going
+for ever? There came a sudden smash. The doctor had flung the blue
+mug downstairs. He returned with a solemn stride.
+
+"There!" he said. "And the next person that gives you stout will be
+thrown down along with the mug."
+
+"Oh doctor, the bit o' comfort!" wailed the sick woman. "It ud never
+do me no harm."
+
+"Harm! Harm! With a stomach as weak as yours! Harm! Do you know
+better than I do? What have I come here for? To be told by _you_
+what will do you harm and what won't? It appears to me you need no
+doctor here, you know everything already--"
+
+"Oh no, doctor. It's not like that. But when you feel as if you'd
+sink through the bed, an' you don't know what to do with yourself--"
+
+"Take a little beef-tea, or a little rice pudding. Take
+_nourishment_, don't take that muck. Do you hear--" charging upon
+the attendant women, who shrank against the wall--"she's to have
+nothing alcoholic at all, and don't let me catch you giving it her."
+
+"They say there's nobbut fower per cent. i' stout," retorted the
+daring female.
+
+"Fower per cent.," mimicked the doctor brutally. "Why, what does an
+ignorant creature like _you_ know about fower per cent."
+
+The woman muttered a little under her breath.
+
+"What? Speak out. Let me hear what you've got to say, my woman. I've
+no doubt it's something for my benefit--"
+
+But the affronted woman rushed out of the room, and burst into tears
+on the landing. After which Dr. Mitchell, mollified, largely told
+the patient how she was to behave, concluding:
+
+"Nourishment! Nourishment is what you want. Nonsense, don't tell me
+you can't take it. Push it down if it won't go down by itself--"
+
+"Oh doctor--"
+
+"Don't say _oh doctor_ to me. Do as I tell you. That's _your_
+business." After which he marched out, and the rattle of his motor
+car was shortly heard.
+
+Alvina got used to scenes like these. She wondered why the people
+stood it. But soon she realized that they loved it--particularly the
+women.
+
+"Oh, nurse, stop till Dr. Mitchell's been. I'm scared to death of
+him, for fear he's going to shout at me."
+
+"Why does everybody put up with him?" asked innocent Alvina.
+
+"Oh, he's good-hearted, nurse, he _does_ feel for you."
+
+And everywhere it was the same: "Oh, he's got a heart, you know.
+He's rough, but he's got a heart. I'd rather have him than your
+smarmy slormin sort. Oh, you feel safe with Dr. Mitchell, I don't
+care what you say."
+
+But to Alvina this peculiar form of blustering, bullying heart which
+had all the women scurrying like chickens was not particularly
+attractive.
+
+The men did not like Dr. Mitchell, and would not have him if
+possible. Yet since he was club doctor and panel doctor, they had to
+submit. The first thing he said to a sick or injured labourer,
+invariably, was:
+
+"And keep off the beer."
+
+"Oh ay!"
+
+"Keep off the beer, or I shan't set foot in this house again."
+
+"Tha's got a red enough face on thee, tha nedna shout."
+
+"My face is red with exposure to all weathers, attending ignorant
+people like you. I never touch alcohol in any form."
+
+"No, an' I dunna. I drink a drop o' beer, if that's what you ca'
+touchin' alcohol. An' I'm none th' wuss for it, tha sees."
+
+"You've heard what I've told you."
+
+"Ah, I have."
+
+"And if you go on with the beer, you may go on with curing yourself.
+_I_ shan't attend you. You know I mean what I say, Mrs.
+Larrick"--this to the wife.
+
+"I do, doctor. And I know it's true what you say. An' I'm at him
+night an' day about it--"
+
+"Oh well, if he will hear no reason, he must suffer for it. He
+mustn't think _I'm_ going to be running after him, if he disobeys my
+orders." And the doctor stalked off, and the woman began to
+complain.
+
+None the less the women had their complaints against Dr. Mitchell.
+If ever Alvina entered a clean house on a wet day, she was sure to
+hear the housewife chuntering.
+
+"Oh my lawk, come in nurse! What a day! Doctor's not been yet. And
+he's bound to come now I've just cleaned up, trapesin' wi' his gret
+feet. He's got the biggest understandin's of any man i' Lancaster.
+My husband says they're the best pair o' pasties i' th' kingdom. An'
+he does make such a mess, for he never stops to wipe his feet on th'
+mat, marches straight up your clean stairs--"
+
+"Why don't you tell him to wipe his feet?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh my word! Fancy me telling him! He'd jump down my throat with
+both feet afore I'd opened my mouth. He's not to be spoken to, he
+isn't. He's my-lord, he is. You mustn't look, or you're done for."
+
+Alvina laughed. She knew they all liked him for browbeating them,
+and having a heart over and above.
+
+Sometimes he was given a good hit--though nearly always by a man. It
+happened he was in a workman's house when the man was at dinner.
+
+"Canna yer gi'e a man summat better nor this 'ere pap, Missis?" said
+the hairy husband, turning up his nose at the rice pudding.
+
+"Oh go on," cried the wife. "I hadna time for owt else." Dr.
+Mitchell was just stooping his handsome figure in the doorway.
+
+"Rice pudding!" he exclaimed largely. "You couldn't have anything
+more wholesome and nourishing. I have a rice pudding every day of my
+life--every day of my life, I do."
+
+The man was eating his pudding and pearling his big moustache
+copiously with it. He did not answer.
+
+"Do you doctor!" cried the woman. "And never no different."
+
+"Never," said the doctor.
+
+"Fancy that! You're that fond of them?"
+
+"I find they agree with me. They are light and digestible. And my
+stomach is as weak as a baby's."
+
+The labourer wiped his big moustache on his sleeve.
+
+"Mine _isna_, tha sees," he said, "so pap's no use. 'S watter ter
+me. I want ter feel as I've had summat: a bit o' suetty dumplin' an'
+a pint o' hale, summat ter fill th' hole up. An' tha'd be th' same
+if tha did my work."
+
+"If I did your work," sneered the doctor. "Why I do ten times the
+work that any one of you does. It's just the work that has ruined my
+digestion, the never getting a quiet meal, and never a whole night's
+rest. When do you think _I_ can sit at table and digest my dinner? I
+have to be off looking after people like you--"
+
+"Eh, tha can ta'e th' titty-bottle wi' thee," said the labourer.
+
+But Dr. Mitchell was furious for weeks over this. It put him in a
+black rage to have his great manliness insulted. Alvina was quietly
+amused.
+
+The doctor began by being rather lordly and condescending with her.
+But luckily she felt she knew her work at least as well as he knew
+it. She smiled and let him condescend. Certainly she neither feared
+nor even admired him. To tell the truth, she rather disliked him:
+the great, red-faced bachelor of fifty-three, with his bald spot and
+his stomach as weak as a baby's, and his mouthing imperiousness and
+his good heart which was as selfish as it could be. Nothing can be
+more cocksuredly selfish than a good heart which believes in its own
+beneficence. He was a little too much the teetotaller on the one
+hand to be so largely manly on the other. Alvina preferred the
+labourers with their awful long moustaches that got full of food.
+And he was a little too loud-mouthedly lordly to be in human good
+taste.
+
+As a matter of fact, he was conscious of the fact that he had risen
+to be a gentleman. Now if a man is conscious of being a _gentleman_,
+he is bound to be a little less than a _man_. But if he is gnawed
+with anxiety lest he may _not_ be a gentleman, he is only pitiable.
+There is a third case, however. If a man must loftily, by his
+manner, assert that he is _now_ a gentleman, he shows himself a
+clown. For Alvina, poor Dr. Mitchell fell into this third category,
+of clowns. She tolerated him good-humouredly, as women so often
+tolerate ninnies and _poseurs_. She smiled to herself when she saw
+his large and important presence on the board. She smiled when she
+saw him at a sale, buying the grandest pieces of antique furniture.
+She smiled when he talked of going up to Scotland, for grouse
+shooting, or of snatching an hour on Sunday morning, for golf. And
+she talked him over, with quiet, delicate malice, with the matron.
+He was no favourite at the hospital.
+
+Gradually Dr. Mitchell's manner changed towards her. From his
+imperious condescension he took to a tone of uneasy equality. This
+did not suit him. Dr. Mitchell had no equals: he had only the vast
+stratum of inferiors, towards whom he exercised his quite profitable
+beneficence--it brought him in about two thousand a year: and then
+his superiors, people who had been born with money. It was the
+tradesmen and professionals who had started at the bottom and
+clambered to the motor-car footing, who distressed him. And
+therefore, whilst he treated Alvina on this uneasy tradesman
+footing, he felt himself in a false position.
+
+She kept her attitude of quiet amusement, and little by little he
+sank. From being a lofty creature soaring over her head, he was now
+like a big fish poking its nose above water and making eyes at her.
+He treated her with rather presuming deference.
+
+"You look tired this morning," he barked at her one hot day.
+
+"I think it's thunder," she said.
+
+"Thunder! Work, you mean," and he gave a slight smile. "I'm going to
+drive you back."
+
+"Oh no, thanks, don't trouble! I've got to call on the way."
+
+"Where have you got to call?"
+
+She told him.
+
+"Very well. That takes you no more than five minutes. I'll wait for
+you. Now take your cloak."
+
+She was surprised. Yet, like other women, she submitted.
+
+As they drove he saw a man with a barrow of cucumbers. He stopped
+the car and leaned towards the man.
+
+"Take that barrow-load of poison and _bury_ it!" he shouted, in his
+strong voice. The busy street hesitated.
+
+"What's that, mister?" replied the mystified hawker.
+
+Dr. Mitchell pointed to the green pile of cucumbers.
+
+"Take that barrow-load of poison, and bury it," he called, "before
+you do anybody any more harm with it."
+
+"What barrow-load of poison's that?" asked the hawker, approaching.
+A crowd began to gather.
+
+"What barrow-load of poison is that!" repeated the doctor. "Why your
+barrow-load of cucumbers."
+
+"Oh," said the man, scrutinizing his cucumbers carefully. To be
+sure, some were a little yellow at the end. "How's that? Cumbers is
+right enough: fresh from market this morning."
+
+"Fresh or not fresh," said the doctor, mouthing his words
+distinctly, "you might as well put poison into your stomach, as
+those things. Cucumbers are the worst thing you can eat."
+
+"Oh!" said the man, stuttering. "That's 'appen for them as doesn't
+like them. I niver knowed a cumber do _me_ no harm, an' I eat 'em
+like a happle." Whereupon the hawker took a "cumber" from his
+barrow, bit off the end, and chewed it till the sap squirted.
+"What's wrong with that?" he said, holding up the bitten cucumber.
+
+"I'm not talking about what's wrong with that," said the doctor. "My
+business is what's wrong with the stomach it goes into. I'm a
+doctor. And I know that those things cause me half my work. They
+cause half the internal troubles people suffer from in summertime."
+
+"Oh ay! That's no loss to you, is it? Me an' you's partners. More
+cumbers I sell, more graft for you, 'cordin' to that. What's wrong
+then. _Cum-bers! Fine fresh Cum-berrrs! All fresh and juisty, all
+cheap and tasty--!_" yelled the man.
+
+"I am a doctor not only to cure illness, but to prevent it where I
+can. And cucumbers are poison to everybody."
+
+"_Cum-bers! Cum-bers! Fresh cumbers!_" yelled the man,
+
+Dr. Mitchell started his car.
+
+"When will they learn intelligence?" he said to Alvina, smiling and
+showing his white, even teeth.
+
+"I don't care, you know, myself," she said. "I should always let
+people do what they wanted--"
+
+"Even if you knew it would do them harm?" he queried, smiling with
+amiable condescension.
+
+"Yes, why not! It's their own affair. And they'll do themselves harm
+one way or another."
+
+"And you wouldn't try to prevent it?"
+
+"You might as well try to stop the sea with your fingers."
+
+"You think so?" smiled the doctor. "I see, you are a pessimist. You
+are a pessimist with regard to human nature."
+
+"Am I?" smiled Alvina, thinking the rose would smell as sweet. It
+seemed to please the doctor to find that Alvina was a pessimist with
+regard to human nature. It seemed to give her an air of distinction.
+In his eyes, she _seemed_ distinguished. He was in a fair way to
+dote on her.
+
+She, of course, when he began to admire her, liked him much better,
+and even saw graceful, boyish attractions in him. There was really
+something childish about him. And this something childish, since it
+looked up to her as if she were the saving grace, naturally
+flattered her and made her feel gentler towards him.
+
+He got in the habit of picking her up in his car, when he could. And
+he would tap at the matron's door, smiling and showing all his
+beautiful teeth, just about tea-time.
+
+"May I come in?" His voice sounded almost flirty.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"I see you're having tea! Very nice, a cup of tea at this hour!"
+
+"Have one too, doctor."
+
+"I will with pleasure." And he sat down wreathed with smiles. Alvina
+rose to get a cup. "I didn't intend to disturb you, nurse," he said.
+"Men are always intruders," he smiled to the matron.
+
+"Sometimes," said the matron, "women are charmed to be intruded
+upon."
+
+"Oh really!" his eyes sparkled. "Perhaps _you_ wouldn't say so,
+nurse?" he said, turning to Alvina. Alvina was just reaching at the
+cupboard. Very charming she looked, in her fresh dress and cap and
+soft brown hair, very attractive her figure, with its full, soft
+loins. She turned round to him.
+
+"Oh yes," she said. "I quite agree with the matron."
+
+"Oh, you do!" He did not quite know how to take it. "But you mind
+being disturbed at your tea, I am sure."
+
+"No," said Alvina. "We are so used to being disturbed."
+
+"Rather weak, doctor?" said the matron, pouring the tea.
+
+"Very weak, please."
+
+The doctor was a little laboured in his gallantry, but unmistakably
+gallant. When he was gone, the matron looked demure, and Alvina
+confused. Each waited for the other to speak.
+
+"Don't you think Dr. Mitchell is quite coming out?" said Alvina.
+
+"Quite! _Quite_ the ladies' man! I wonder who it is can be
+_bringing_ him out. A very praiseworthy work, I am sure." She looked
+wickedly at Alvina.
+
+"No, don't look at me," laughed Alvina, "_I_ know nothing about it."
+
+"Do you think it may be _me_!" said the matron, mischievous.
+
+"I'm sure of it, matron! He begins to show some taste at last."
+
+"There now!" said the matron. "I shall put my cap straight." And she
+went to the mirror, fluffing her hair and settling her cap.
+
+"There!" she said, bobbing a little curtsey to Alvina.
+
+They both laughed, and went off to work.
+
+But there was no mistake, Dr. Mitchell was beginning to expand. With
+Alvina he quite unbent, and seemed even to sun himself when she was
+near, to attract her attention. He smiled and smirked and became
+oddly self-conscious: rather uncomfortable. He liked to hang over
+her chair, and he made a great event of offering her a cigarette
+whenever they met, although he himself never smoked. He had a gold
+cigarette case.
+
+One day he asked her in to see his garden. He had a pleasant old
+square house with a big walled garden. He showed her his flowers and
+his wall-fruit, and asked her to eat his strawberries. He bade her
+admire his asparagus. And then he gave her tea in the drawing-room,
+with strawberries and cream and cakes, of all of which he ate
+nothing. But he smiled expansively all the time. He was a made man:
+and now he was really letting himself go, luxuriating in everything;
+above all, in Alvina, who poured tea gracefully from the old
+Georgian tea-pot, and smiled so pleasantly above the Queen Anne
+tea-cups.
+
+And she, wicked that she was, admired every detail of his
+drawing-room. It was a pleasant room indeed, with roses outside the
+French door, and a lawn in sunshine beyond, with bright red flowers
+in beds. But indoors, it was insistently antique. Alvina admired the
+Jacobean sideboard and the Jacobean arm-chairs and the Hepplewhite
+wall-chairs and the Sheraton settee and the Chippendale stands and
+the Axminster carpet and the bronze clock with Shakespeare and
+Ariosto reclining on it--yes, she even admired Shakespeare on the
+clock--and the ormolu cabinet and the bead-work foot-stools and the
+dreadful Sevres dish with a cherub in it and--but why enumerate. She
+admired _everything_! And Dr. Mitchell's heart expanded in his bosom
+till he felt it would burst, unless he either fell at her feet or
+did something extraordinary. He had never even imagined what it was
+to be so expanded: what a delicious feeling. He could have kissed
+her feet in an ecstasy of wild expansion. But habit, so far,
+prevented his doing more than beam.
+
+Another day he said to her, when they were talking of age:
+
+"You are as young as you feel. Why, when I was twenty I felt I had
+all the cares and responsibility of the world on my shoulders. And
+now I am middle-aged more or less, I feel as light as if I were just
+beginning life." He beamed down at her.
+
+"Perhaps you _are_ only just beginning your _own_ life," she said.
+"You have lived for your work till now."
+
+"It may be that," he said. "It may be that up till now I have lived
+for others, for my patients. And now perhaps I may be allowed to
+live a little more for myself." He beamed with real luxury, saw the
+real luxury of life begin.
+
+"Why shouldn't you?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh yes, I intend to," he said, with confidence.
+
+He really, by degrees, made up his mind to marry now, and to retire
+in part from his work. That is, he would hire another assistant,
+and give himself a fair amount of leisure. He was inordinately proud
+of his house. And now he looked forward to the treat of his life:
+hanging round the woman he had made his wife, following her about,
+feeling proud of her and his house, talking to her from morning till
+night, really finding himself in her. When he had to go his rounds
+she would go with him in the car: he made up his mind she would be
+willing to accompany him. He would teach her to drive, and they
+would sit side by side, she driving him and waiting for him. And he
+would run out of the houses of his patients, and find her sitting
+there, and he would get in beside her and feel so snug and so sure
+and so happy as she drove him off to the next case, he informing her
+about his work.
+
+And if ever she did not go out with him, she would be there on the
+doorstep waiting for him the moment she heard the car. And they
+would have long, cosy evenings together in the drawing-room, as he
+luxuriated in her very presence. She would sit on his knees and they
+would be snug for hours, before they went warmly and deliciously to
+bed. And in the morning he need not rush off. He would loiter about
+with her, they would loiter down the garden looking at every new
+flower and every new fruit, she would wear fresh flowery dresses and
+no cap on her hair, he would never be able to tear himself away from
+her. Every morning it would be unbearable to have to tear himself
+away from her, and every hour he would be rushing back to her. They
+would be simply everything to one another. And how he would enjoy
+it! Ah!
+
+He pondered as to whether he would have children. A child would take
+her away from him. That was his first thought. But then--! Ah well,
+he would have to leave it till the time. Love's young dream is never
+so delicious as at the virgin age of fifty-three.
+
+But he was quite cautious. He made no definite advances till he had
+put a plain question. It was August Bank Holiday, that for ever
+black day of the declaration of war, when his question was put. For
+this year of our story is the fatal year 1914.
+
+There was quite a stir in the town over the declaration of war. But
+most people felt that the news was only intended to give an extra
+thrill to the all-important event of Bank Holiday. Half the world
+had gone to Blackpool or Southport, the other half had gone to the
+Lakes or into the country. Lancaster was busy with a sort of fete,
+notwithstanding. And as the weather was decent, everybody was in a
+real holiday mood.
+
+So that Dr. Mitchell, who had contrived to pick up Alvina at the
+Hospital, contrived to bring her to his house at half-past three,
+for tea.
+
+"What do you think of this new war?" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh, it will be over in six weeks," said the doctor easily. And
+there they left it. Only, with a fleeting thought, Alvina wondered
+if it would affect the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She had never heard any
+more of them.
+
+"Where would you have liked to go today?" said the doctor, turning
+to smile at her as he drove the car.
+
+"I think to Windermere--into the Lakes," she said.
+
+"We might make a tour of the Lakes before long," he said. She was
+not thinking, so she took no particular notice of the speech.
+
+"How nice!" she said vaguely.
+
+"We could go in the car, and take them as we chose," said the
+doctor.
+
+"Yes," she said, wondering at him now.
+
+When they had had tea, quietly and gallantly tete-a-tete in his
+drawing-room, he asked her if she would like to see the other rooms
+of the house. She thanked him, and he showed her the substantial oak
+dining-room, and the little room with medical works and a revolving
+chair, which he called his study: then the kitchen and the pantry,
+the housekeeper looking askance; then upstairs to his bedroom, which
+was very fine with old mahogany tall-boys and silver candle-sticks
+on the dressing-table, and brushes with green ivory backs, and a
+hygienic white bed and straw mats: then the visitors' bedroom
+corresponding, with its old satin-wood furniture and cream-coloured
+chairs with large, pale-blue cushions, and a pale carpet with
+reddish wreaths. Very nice, lovely, awfully nice, I do like that,
+isn't that beautiful, I've never seen anything like that! came the
+gratifying fireworks of admiration from Alvina. And he smiled and
+gloated. But in her mind she was thinking of Manchester House, and
+how dark and horrible it was, how she hated it, but how it had
+impressed Ciccio and Geoffrey, how they would have loved to feel
+themselves masters of it, and how done in the eye they were. She
+smiled to herself rather grimly. For this afternoon she was feeling
+unaccountably uneasy and wistful, yearning into the distance again:
+a trick she thought she had happily lost.
+
+The doctor dragged her up even to the slanting attics. He was a big
+man, and he always wore navy blue suits, well-tailored and
+immaculate. Unconsciously she felt that big men in good navy-blue
+suits, especially if they had reddish faces and rather big feet and
+if their hair was wearing thin, were a special type all to
+themselves, solid and rather namby-pamby and tiresome.
+
+"What very nice attics! I think the many angles which the roof
+makes, the different slants, you know, are so attractive. Oh, and
+the fascinating little window!" She crouched in the hollow of the
+small dormer window. "Fascinating! See the town and the hills! I
+know I should want this room for my own."
+
+"Then have it," he said. "Have it for _one_ of your own."
+
+She crept out of the window recess and looked up at him. He was
+leaning forward to her, smiling, self-conscious, tentative, and
+eager. She thought it best to laugh it off.
+
+"I was only talking like a child, from the imagination," she said.
+
+"I quite understand that," he replied deliberately. "But I am
+speaking what I _mean_--"
+
+She did not answer, but looked at him reproachfully. He was smiling
+and smirking broadly at her.
+
+"Won't you marry me, and come and have this garret for your own?" He
+spoke as if he were offering her a chocolate. He smiled with curious
+uncertainty.
+
+"I don't know," she said vaguely.
+
+His smile broadened.
+
+"Well now," he said, "make up your mind. I'm not good at _talking_
+about love, you know. But I think I'm pretty good at _feeling_ it,
+you know. I want you to come here and be happy: with me." He added
+the two last words as a sort of sly post-scriptum, and as if to
+commit himself finally.
+
+"But I've never thought about it," she said, rapidly cogitating.
+
+"I know you haven't. But think about it now--" He began to be hugely
+pleased with himself. "Think about it now. And tell me if you could
+put up with _me_, as well as the garret." He beamed and put his head
+a little on one side--rather like Mr. May, for one second. But he
+was much more dangerous than Mr. May. He was overbearing, and had
+the devil's own temper if he was thwarted. This she knew. He was a
+big man in a navy blue suit, with very white teeth.
+
+Again she thought she had better laugh it off.
+
+"It's you I _am_ thinking about," she laughed, flirting still. "It's
+you I _am_ wondering about."
+
+"Well," he said, rather pleased with himself, "you wonder about me
+till you've made up your mind--"
+
+"I will--" she said, seizing the opportunity. "I'll wonder about you
+till I've made up my mind--shall I?"
+
+"Yes," he said. "That's what I wish you to do. And the next time I
+ask you, you'll let me know. That's it, isn't it?" He smiled
+indulgently down on her: thought her face young and charming,
+charming.
+
+"Yes," she said. "But don't ask me too soon, will you?"
+
+"How, too soon--?" He smiled delightedly.
+
+"You'll give me time to wonder about you, won't you? You won't ask
+me again this month, will you?"
+
+"This month?" His eyes beamed with pleasure. He enjoyed the
+procrastination as much as she did. "But the month's only just
+begun! However! Yes, you shall have your way. I won't ask you again
+this month."
+
+"And I'll promise to wonder about you all the month," she laughed.
+
+"That's a bargain," he said.
+
+They went downstairs, and Alvina returned to her duties. She was
+very much excited, very much excited indeed. A big, well-to-do man
+in a navy blue suit, of handsome appearance, aged fifty-three, with
+white teeth and a delicate stomach: it _was_ exciting. A sure
+position, a very nice home and lovely things in it, once they were
+dragged about a bit. And of course he'd adore her. That went without
+saying. She was as fussy as if some one had given her a lovely new
+pair of boots. She was really fussy and pleased with herself: and
+_quite_ decided she'd take it all on. That was how it put itself to
+her: she would take it all on.
+
+Of course there was the man himself to consider. But he was quite
+presentable. There was nothing at all against it: nothing at all. If
+he had pressed her during the first half of the month of August, he
+would almost certainly have got her. But he only beamed in
+anticipation.
+
+Meanwhile the stir and restlessness of the war had begun, and was
+making itself felt even in Lancaster. And the excitement and the
+unease began to wear through Alvina's rather glamorous fussiness.
+Some of her old fretfulness came back on her. Her spirit, which had
+been as if asleep these months, now woke rather irritably, and
+chafed against its collar. Who was this elderly man, that she should
+marry him? Who was he, that she should be kissed by him. Actually
+kissed and fondled by him! Repulsive. She avoided him like the
+plague. Fancy reposing against his broad, navy blue waistcoat! She
+started as if she had been stung. Fancy seeing his red, smiling face
+just above hers, coming down to embrace her! She pushed it away with
+her open hand. And she ran away, to avoid the thought.
+
+And yet! And yet! She would be so comfortable, she would be so
+well-off for the rest of her life. The hateful problem of material
+circumstance would be solved for ever. And she knew well how hateful
+material circumstances can make life.
+
+Therefore, she could not decide in a hurry. But she bore poor Dr.
+Mitchell a deep grudge, that he could not grant her all the
+advantages of his offer, and excuse her the acceptance of him
+himself. She dared not decide in a hurry. And this very fear, like a
+yoke on her, made her resent the man who drove her to decision.
+
+Sometimes she rebelled. Sometimes she laughed unpleasantly in the
+man's face: though she dared not go _too_ far: for she was a little
+afraid of him and his rabid temper, also. In her moments of sullen
+rebellion she thought of Natcha-Kee-Tawara. She thought of them
+deeply. She wondered where they were, what they were doing, how the
+war had affected them. Poor Geoffrey was a Frenchman--he would have
+to go to France to fight. Max and Louis were Swiss, it would not
+affect them: nor Ciccio, who was Italian. She wondered if the troupe
+was in England: if they would continue together when Geoffrey was
+gone. She wondered if they thought of her. She felt they did. She
+felt they did not forget her. She felt there was a connection.
+
+In fact, during the latter part of August she wondered a good deal
+more about the Natchas than about Dr. Mitchell. But wondering about
+the Natchas would not help her. She felt, if she knew where they
+were, she would fly to them. But then she knew she wouldn't.
+
+When she was at the station she saw crowds and bustle. People were
+seeing their young men off. Beer was flowing: sailors on the train
+were tipsy: women were holding young men by the lapel of the coat.
+And when the train drew away, the young men waving, the women cried
+aloud and sobbed after them.
+
+A chill ran down Alvina's spine. This was another matter, apart from
+her Dr. Mitchell. It made him feel very unreal, trivial. She did not
+know what she was going to do. She realized she must do
+something--take some part in the wild dislocation of life. She knew
+that she would put off Dr. Mitchell again.
+
+She talked the matter over with the matron. The matron advised her
+to procrastinate. Why not volunteer for war-service? True, she was a
+maternity nurse, and this was hardly the qualification needed for
+the nursing of soldiers. But still, she _was_ a nurse.
+
+Alvina felt this was the thing to do. Everywhere was a stir and a
+seethe of excitement. Men were active, women were needed too. She
+put down her name on the list of volunteers for active service. This
+was on the last day of August.
+
+On the first of September Dr. Mitchell was round at the hospital
+early, when Alvina was just beginning her morning duties there. He
+went into the matron's room, and asked for Nurse Houghton. The
+matron left them together.
+
+The doctor was excited. He smiled broadly, but with a tension of
+nervous excitement. Alvina was troubled. Her heart beat fast.
+
+"Now!" said Dr. Mitchell. "What have you to say to me?"
+
+She looked up at him with confused eyes. He smiled excitedly and
+meaningful at her, and came a little nearer.
+
+"Today is the day when you answer, isn't it?" he said. "Now then,
+let me hear what you have to say."
+
+But she only watched him with large, troubled eyes, and did not
+speak. He came still nearer to her.
+
+"Well then," he said, "I am to take it that silence gives consent."
+And he laughed nervously, with nervous anticipation, as he tried to
+put his arm round her. But she stepped suddenly back.
+
+"No, not yet," she said.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"I haven't given my answer," she said.
+
+"Give it then," he said, testily.
+
+"I've volunteered for active service," she stammered. "I felt I
+ought to do something."
+
+"Why?" he asked. He could put a nasty intonation into that
+monosyllable. "I should have thought you would answer _me_ first."
+
+She did not answer, but watched him. She did not like him.
+
+"I only signed yesterday," she said.
+
+"Why didn't you leave it till tomorrow? It would have looked
+better." He was angry. But he saw a half-frightened, half-guilty
+look on her face, and during the weeks of anticipation he had worked
+himself up.
+
+"But put that aside," he smiled again, a little dangerously. "You
+have still to answer my question. Having volunteered for war service
+doesn't prevent your being engaged to me, does it?"
+
+Alvina watched him with large eyes. And again he came very near to
+her, so that his blue-serge waistcoat seemed, to impinge on her, and
+his purplish red face was above her.
+
+"I'd rather not be engaged, under the circumstances," she said.
+
+"Why?" came the nasty monosyllable. "What have the circumstances got
+to do with it?"
+
+"Everything is so uncertain," she said. "I'd rather wait."
+
+"Wait! Haven't you waited long enough? There's nothing at all to
+prevent your getting engaged to me now. Nothing whatsoever! Come
+now. I'm old enough not to be played with. And I'm much too much in
+love with you to let you go on indefinitely like this. Come now!" He
+smiled imminent, and held out his large hand for her hand. "Let me
+put the ring on your finger. It will be the proudest day of my life
+when I make you my wife. Give me your hand--"
+
+Alvina was wavering. For one thing, mere curiosity made her want to
+see the ring. She half lifted her hand. And but for the knowledge
+that he would kiss her, she would have given it. But he would kiss
+her--and against that she obstinately set her will. She put her hand
+behind her back, and looked obstinately into his eyes.
+
+"Don't play a game with me," he said dangerously.
+
+But she only continued to look mockingly and obstinately into his
+eyes.
+
+"Come," he said, beckoning for her to give her hand.
+
+With a barely perceptible shake of the head, she refused, staring at
+him all the time. His ungovernable temper got the better of him. He
+saw red, and without knowing, seized her by the shoulder, swung her
+back, and thrust her, pressed her against the wall as if he would
+push her through it. His face was blind with anger, like a hot, red
+sun. Suddenly, almost instantaneously, he came to himself again and
+drew back his hands, shaking his right hand as if some rat had
+bitten it.
+
+"I'm sorry!" he shouted, beside himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean
+it. I'm sorry." He dithered before her.
+
+She recovered her equilibrium, and, pale to the lips, looked at him
+with sombre eyes.
+
+"I'm sorry!" he continued loudly, in his strange frenzy like a small
+boy. "Don't remember! Don't remember! Don't think I did it."
+
+His face was a kind of blank, and unconsciously he wrung the hand
+that had gripped her, as if it pained him. She watched him, and
+wondered why on earth all this frenzy. She was left rather cold, she
+did not at all feel the strong feelings he seemed to expect of her.
+There was nothing so very unnatural, after all, in being bumped up
+suddenly against the wall. Certainly her shoulder hurt where he had
+gripped it. But there were plenty of worse hurts in the world. She
+watched him with wide, distant eyes.
+
+And he fell on his knees before her, as she backed against the
+bookcase, and he caught hold of the edge of her dress-bottom,
+drawing it to him. Which made her rather abashed, and much more
+uncomfortable.
+
+"Forgive me!" he said. "Don't remember! Forgive me! Love me! Love
+me! Forgive me and love me! Forgive me and love me!"
+
+As Alvina was looking down dismayed on the great, red-faced, elderly
+man, who in his crying-out showed his white teeth like a child, and
+as she was gently trying to draw her skirt from his clutch, the
+door opened, and there stood the matron, in her big frilled cap.
+Alvina glanced at her, flushed crimson and looked down to the man.
+She touched his face with her hand.
+
+"Never mind," she said. "It's nothing. Don't think about it."
+
+He caught her hand and clung to it.
+
+"Love me! Love me! Love me!" he cried.
+
+The matron softly closed the door again, withdrawing.
+
+"Love me! Love me!"
+
+Alvina was absolutely dumbfounded by this scene. She had no idea men
+did such things. It did not touch her, it dumbfounded her.
+
+The doctor, clinging to her hand, struggled to his feet and flung
+his arms round her, clasping her wildly to him.
+
+"You love me! You love me, don't you?" he said, vibrating and beside
+himself as he pressed her to his breast and hid his face against her
+hair. At such a moment, what was the good of saying she didn't? But
+she didn't. Pity for his shame, however, kept her silent, motionless
+and silent in his arms, smothered against the blue-serge waistcoat
+of his broad breast.
+
+He was beginning to come to himself. He became silent. But he still
+strained her fast, he had no idea of letting her go.
+
+"You will take my ring, won't you?" he said at last, still in the
+strange, lamentable voice. "You will take my ring."
+
+"Yes," she said coldly. Anything for a quiet emergence from this
+scene.
+
+He fumbled feverishly in his pocket with one hand, holding her still
+fast by the other arm. And with one hand he managed to extract the
+ring from its case, letting the case roll away on the floor. It was
+a diamond solitaire.
+
+"Which finger? Which finger is it?" he asked, beginning to smile
+rather weakly. She extricated her hand, and held out her engagement
+finger. Upon it was the mourning-ring Miss Frost had always worn.
+The doctor slipped the diamond solitaire above the mourning ring,
+and folded Alvina to his breast again.
+
+"Now," he said, almost in his normal voice. "Now I know you love
+me." The pleased self-satisfaction in his voice made her angry. She
+managed to extricate herself.
+
+"You will come along with me now?" he said.
+
+"I can't," she answered. "I must get back to my work here."
+
+"Nurse Allen can do that."
+
+"I'd rather not."
+
+"Where are you going today?"
+
+She told him her cases.
+
+"Well, you will come and have tea with me. I shall expect you to
+have tea with me every day."
+
+But Alvina was straightening her crushed cap before the mirror, and
+did not answer.
+
+"We can see as much as we like of each other now we're engaged," he
+said, smiling with satisfaction.
+
+"I wonder where the matron is," said Alvina, suddenly going into the
+cool white corridor. He followed her. And they met the matron just
+coming out of the ward.
+
+"Matron!" said Dr. Mitchell, with a return of his old mouthing
+importance. "You may congratulate Nurse Houghton and me on our
+engagement--" He smiled largely.
+
+"I may congratulate _you_, you mean," said the matron.
+
+"Yes, of course. And both of us, since we are now one," he replied.
+
+"Not quite, yet," said the matron gravely.
+
+And at length she managed to get rid of him.
+
+At once she went to look for Alvina, who had gone to her duties.
+
+"Well, I _suppose_ it is all right," said the matron gravely.
+
+"No it isn't," said Alvina. "I shall _never_ marry him."
+
+"Ah, never is a long while! Did he hear me come in?"
+
+"No, I'm sure he didn't."
+
+"Thank goodness for that."
+
+"Yes indeed! It was perfectly horrible. Following me round on his
+knees and shouting for me to love him! Perfectly horrible!"
+
+"Well," said the matron. "You never know what men will do till
+you've known them. And then you need be surprised at nothing,
+_nothing_. I'm surprised at nothing they do--"
+
+"I must say," said Alvina, "I was surprised. Very unpleasantly."
+
+"But you accepted him--"
+
+"Anything to quieten him--like a hysterical child."
+
+"Yes, but I'm not sure you haven't taken a very risky way of
+quietening him, giving him what he wanted--"
+
+"I think," said Alvina, "I can look after myself. I may be moved any
+day now."
+
+"Well--!" said the matron. "He may prevent your getting moved, you
+know. He's on the board. And if he says you are indispensable--"
+
+This was a new idea for Alvina to cogitate. She had counted on a
+speedy escape. She put his ring in her apron pocket, and there she
+forgot it until he pounced on her in the afternoon, in the house of
+one of her patients. He waited for her, to take her off.
+
+"Where is your ring?" he said.
+
+And she realized that it lay in the pocket of a soiled, discarded
+apron--perhaps lost for ever.
+
+"I shan't wear it on duty," she said. "You know that."
+
+She had to go to tea with him. She avoided his love-making, by
+telling him any sort of spooniness revolted her. And he was too much
+an old bachelor to take easily to a fondling habit--before marriage,
+at least. So he mercifully left her alone: he was on the whole
+devoutly thankful she wanted to be left alone. But he wanted her to
+be there. That was his greatest craving. He wanted her to be always
+there. And so he craved for marriage: to possess her entirely, and
+to have her always there with him, so that he was never alone. Alone
+and apart from all the world: but by her side, always by her side.
+
+"Now when shall we fix the marriage?" he said. "It is no good
+putting it back. We both know what we are doing. And now the
+engagement is announced--"
+
+He looked at her anxiously. She could see the hysterical little boy
+under the great, authoritative man.
+
+"Oh, not till after Christmas!" she said.
+
+"After Christmas!" he started as if he had been bitten. "Nonsense!
+It's nonsense to wait so long. Next month, at the latest."
+
+"Oh no," she said. "I don't think so soon."
+
+"Why not? The sooner the better. You had better send in your
+resignation at once, so that you're free."
+
+"Oh but is there any need? I may be transferred for war service."
+
+"That's not likely. You're our only maternity nurse--"
+
+And so the days went by. She had tea with him practically every
+afternoon, and she got used to him. They discussed the furnishing--she
+could not help suggesting a few alterations, a few arrangements
+according to _her_ idea. And he drew up a plan of a wedding tour in
+Scotland. Yet she was quite certain she would not marry him. The matron
+laughed at her certainty. "You will drift into it," she said. "He is
+tying you down by too many little threads."
+
+"Ah, well, you'll see!" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes," said the matron. "I _shall_ see."
+
+And it was true that Alvina's will was indeterminate, at this time.
+She was _resolved_ not to marry. But her will, like a spring that is
+hitched somehow, did not fly direct against the doctor. She had sent
+in her resignation, as he suggested. But not that she might be free
+to marry him, but that she might be at liberty to flee him. So she
+told herself. Yet she worked into his hands.
+
+One day she sat with the doctor in the car near the station--it was
+towards the end of September--held up by a squad of soldiers in
+khaki, who were marching off with their band wildly playing, to
+embark on the special troop train that was coming down from the
+north. The town was in great excitement. War-fever was spreading
+everywhere. Men were rushing to enlist--and being constantly
+rejected, for it was still the days of regular standards.
+
+As the crowds surged on the pavement, as the soldiers tramped to the
+station, as the traffic waited, there came a certain flow in the
+opposite direction. The 4:15 train had come in. People were
+struggling along with luggage, children were running with spades and
+buckets, cabs were crawling along with families: it was the seaside
+people coming home. Alvina watched the two crowds mingle.
+
+And as she watched she saw two men, one carrying a mandoline case
+and a suit-case which she knew. It was Ciccio. She did not know the
+other man; some theatrical individual. The two men halted almost
+near the car, to watch the band go by. Alvina saw Ciccio quite near
+to her. She would have liked to squirt water down his brown,
+handsome, oblivious neck. She felt she hated him. He stood there,
+watching the music, his lips curling in his faintly-derisive Italian
+manner, as he talked to the other man. His eyelashes were as long
+and dark as ever, his eyes had still the attractive look of being
+set in with a smutty finger. He had got the same brownish suit on,
+which she disliked, the same black hat set slightly, jauntily over
+one eye. He looked common: and yet with that peculiar southern
+aloofness which gave him a certain beauty and distinction in her
+eyes. She felt she hated him, rather. She felt she had been let down
+by him.
+
+The band had passed. A child ran against the wheel of the standing
+car. Alvina suddenly reached forward and made a loud, screeching
+flourish on the hooter. Every one looked round, including the laden,
+tramping soldiers.
+
+"We can't move yet," said Dr. Mitchell.
+
+But Alvina was looking at Ciccio at that moment. He had turned with
+the rest, looking inquiringly at the car. And his quick eyes, the
+whites of which showed so white against his duskiness, the yellow
+pupils so non-human, met hers with a quick flash of recognition. His
+mouth began to curl in a smile of greeting. But she stared at him
+without moving a muscle, just blankly stared, abstracting every
+scrap of feeling, even of animosity or coldness, out of her gaze.
+She saw the smile die on his lips, his eyes glance sideways, and
+again sideways, with that curious animal shyness which characterized
+him. It was as if he did not want to see her looking at him, and ran
+from side to side like a caged weasel, avoiding her blank, glaucous
+look.
+
+She turned pleasantly to Dr. Mitchell.
+
+"What did you say?" she asked sweetly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED
+
+
+Alvina found it pleasant to be respected as she was respected in
+Lancaster. It is not only the prophet who hath honour _save_ in his
+own country: it is every one with individuality. In this northern
+town Alvina found that her individuality really told. Already she
+belonged to the revered caste of medicine-men. And into the bargain
+she was a personality, a person.
+
+Well and good. She was not going to cheapen herself. She felt that
+even in the eyes of the natives--the well-to-do part, at least--she
+lost a _little_ of her distinction when she was engaged to Dr.
+Mitchell. The engagement had been announced in _The Times_, _The
+Morning Post_, _The Manchester Guardian_, and the local _News_. No
+fear about its being known. And it cast a slight slur of vulgar
+familiarity over her. In Woodhouse, she knew, it elevated her in the
+common esteem tremendously. But she was no longer in Woodhouse. She
+was in Lancaster. And in Lancaster her engagement pigeonholed her.
+Apart from Dr. Mitchell she had a magic potentiality. Connected with
+him, she was a known and labelled quantity.
+
+This she gathered from her contact with the local gentry. The matron
+was a woman of family, who somehow managed, in her big, white,
+frilled cap, to be distinguished like an abbess of old. The really
+toney women of the place came to take tea in her room, and these
+little teas in the hospital were like a little elegant female
+conspiracy. There was a slight flavour of art and literature about.
+The matron had known Walter Pater, in the somewhat remote past.
+
+Alvina was admitted to these teas with the few women who formed the
+toney intellectual elite of this northern town. There was a certain
+freemasonry in the matron's room. The matron, a lady-doctor, a
+clergyman's daughter, and the wives of two industrial magnates of
+the place, these five, and then Alvina, formed the little group.
+They did not meet a great deal outside the hospital. But they always
+met with that curious female freemasonry which can form a law unto
+itself even among most conventional women. They talked as they would
+never talk before men, or before feminine outsiders. They threw
+aside the whole vestment of convention. They discussed plainly the
+things they thought about--even the most secret--and they were quite
+calm about the things they did--even the most impossible. Alvina
+felt that her transgression was a very mild affair, and that her
+engagement was really _infra dig_.
+
+"And are you going to marry him?" asked Mrs. Tuke, with a long, cool
+look.
+
+"I can't _imagine_ myself--" said Alvina.
+
+"Oh, but so many things happen outside one's imagination. That's
+where your body has you. I can't _imagine_ that I'm going to have a
+child--" She lowered her eyelids wearily and sardonically over her
+large eyes.
+
+Mrs. Tuke was the wife of the son of a local manufacturer. She was
+about twenty-eight years old, pale, with great dark-grey eyes and an
+arched nose and black hair, very like a head on one of the lovely
+Syracusan coins. The odd look of a smile which wasn't a smile, at
+the corners of the mouth, the arched nose, and the slowness of the
+big, full, classic eyes gave her the dangerous Greek look of the
+Syracusan women of the past: the dangerous, heavily-civilized women
+of old Sicily: those who laughed about the latomia.
+
+"But do you think you can have a child without wanting it _at all_?"
+asked Alvina.
+
+"Oh, but there isn't _one bit_ of me wants it, not _one bit_. My
+_flesh_ doesn't want it. And my mind doesn't--yet there it is!" She
+spread her fine hands with a flicker of inevitability.
+
+"Something must want it," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Tuke. "The universe is one big machine, and we're
+just part of it." She flicked out her grey silk handkerchief, and
+dabbed her nose, watching with big, black-grey eyes the fresh face
+of Alvina.
+
+"There's not _one bit_ of me concerned in having this child," she
+persisted to Alvina. "My flesh isn't concerned, and my mind isn't.
+And _yet_!--_le voila!_--I'm just _plante_. I can't _imagine_ why I
+married Tommy. And yet--I did--!" She shook her head as if it was
+all just beyond her, and the pseudo-smile at the corners of her
+ageless mouth deepened.
+
+Alvina was to nurse Mrs. Tuke. The baby was expected at the end of
+August. But already the middle of September was here, and the baby
+had not arrived.
+
+The Tukes were not very rich--the young ones, that is. Tommy wanted
+to compose music, so he lived on what his father gave him. His
+father gave him a little house outside the town, a house furnished
+with expensive bits of old furniture, in a way that the townspeople
+thought insane. But there you are--Effie would insist on dabbing a
+rare bit of yellow brocade on the wall, instead of a picture, and in
+painting apple-green shelves in the recesses of the whitewashed wall
+of the dining-room. Then she enamelled the hall-furniture yellow,
+and decorated it with curious green and lavender lines and flowers,
+and had unearthly cushions and Sardinian pottery with unspeakable
+peaked griffins.
+
+What were you to make of such a woman! Alvina slept in her house
+these days, instead of at the hospital. For Effie was a very bad
+sleeper. She would sit up in bed, the two glossy black plaits
+hanging beside her white, arch face, wrapping loosely round her her
+dressing-gown of a sort of plumbago-coloured, dark-grey silk lined
+with fine silk of metallic blue, and there, ivory and jet-black and
+grey like black-lead, she would sit in the white bedclothes
+flicking her handkerchief and revealing a flicker of kingfisher-blue
+silk and white silk night dress, complaining of her neuritis nerve
+and her own impossible condition, and begging Alvina to stay with
+her another half-hour, and suddenly studying the big, blood-red
+stone on her finger as if she was reading something in it.
+
+"I believe I shall be like the woman in the _Cent Nouvelles_ and
+carry my child for five years. Do you know that story? She said that
+eating a parsley leaf on which bits of snow were sticking started
+the child in her. It might just as well--"
+
+Alvina would laugh and get tired. There was about her a kind of half
+bitter sanity and nonchalance which the nervous woman liked.
+
+One night as they were sitting thus in the bedroom, at nearly eleven
+o'clock, they started and listened. Dogs in the distance had also
+started to yelp. A mandoline was wailing its vibration in the night
+outside, rapidly, delicately quivering. Alvina went pale. She knew
+it was Ciccio. She had seen him lurking in the streets of the town,
+but had never spoken to him.
+
+"What's this?" cried Mrs. Tuke, cocking her head on one side.
+"Music! A mandoline! How extraordinary! Do you think it's a
+serenade?--" And she lifted her brows archly.
+
+"I should think it is," said Alvina.
+
+"How extraordinary! What a moment to choose to serenade the lady!
+_Isn't_ it like life--! I _must_ look at it--"
+
+She got out of bed with some difficulty, wrapped her dressing-gown
+round her, pushed her feet into slippers, and went to the window.
+She opened the sash. It was a lovely moonlight night of September.
+Below lay the little front garden, with its short drive and its iron
+gates that closed on the high-road. From the shadow of the high-road
+came the noise of the mandoline.
+
+"Hello, Tommy!" called Mrs. Tuke to her husband, whom she saw on the
+drive below her. "How's your musical ear--?"
+
+"All right. Doesn't it disturb you?" came the man's voice from the
+moonlight below.
+
+"Not a bit. I like it. I'm waiting for the voice. '_O Richard, O mon
+roi!_'--"
+
+But the music had stopped.
+
+"There!" cried Mrs. Tuke. "You've frightened him off! And we're
+dying to be serenaded, aren't we, nurse?" She turned to Alvina. "Do
+give me my fur, will you? Thanks so much. Won't you open the other
+window and look out there--?"
+
+Alvina went to the second window. She stood looking out.
+
+"Do play again!" Mrs. Tuke called into the night. "Do sing
+something." And with her white arm she reached for a glory rose that
+hung in the moonlight from the wall, and with a flash of her white
+arm she flung it toward the garden wall--ineffectually, of course.
+
+"Won't you play again?" she called into the night, to the unseen.
+"Tommy, go indoors, the bird won't sing when you're about."
+
+"It's an Italian by the sound of him. Nothing I hate more than
+emotional Italian music. Perfectly nauseating."
+
+"Never mind, dear. I know it sounds as if all their insides were
+coming out of their mouth. But we want to be serenaded, don't we,
+nurse?--"
+
+Alvina stood at her window, but did not answer.
+
+"Ah-h?" came the odd query from Mrs. Tuke. "Don't you like it?"
+
+"Yes," said Alvina. "Very much."
+
+"And aren't you dying for the song?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"There!" cried Mrs. Tuke, into the moonlight. "Una canzone
+bella-bella--molto bella--"
+
+She pronounced her syllables one by one, calling into the night. It
+sounded comical. There came a rude laugh from the drive below.
+
+"Go indoors, Tommy! He won't sing if you're there. Nothing will sing
+if you're there," called the young woman.
+
+They heard a footstep on the gravel, and then the slam of the hall
+door.
+
+"Now!" cried Mrs. Tuke.
+
+They waited. And sure enough, came the fine tinkle of the mandoline,
+and after a few moments, the song. It was one of the well-known
+Neapolitan songs, and Ciccio sang it as it should be sung.
+
+Mrs. Tuke went across to Alvina.
+
+"Doesn't he put his _bowels_ into it--?" she said, laying her hand
+on her own full figure, and rolling her eyes mockingly. "I'm _sure_
+it's more effective than senna-pods."
+
+Then she returned to her own window, huddled her furs over her
+breast, and rested her white elbows in the moonlight.
+
+
+       "Torn' a Surrientu
+        Fammi campar--"
+
+The song suddenly ended, in a clamorous, animal sort of yearning.
+Mrs. Tuke was quite still, resting her chin on her fingers. Alvina
+also was still. Then Mrs. Tuke slowly reached for the rose-buds on
+the old wall.
+
+"Molto bella!" she cried, half ironically. "Molto bella! Je vous
+envoie une rose--" And she threw the roses out on to the drive. A
+man's figure was seen hovering outside the gate, on the high-road.
+"Entrez!" called Mrs. Tuke. "Entrez! Prenez votre rose. Come in and
+take your rose."
+
+The man's voice called something from the distance.
+
+"What?" cried Mrs. Tuke.
+
+"Je ne peux pas entrer."
+
+"Vous ne pouvez pas entrer? Pourquoi alors! La porte n'est pas
+fermee a clef. Entrez donc!"
+
+"Non. On n'entre pas--" called the well-known voice of Ciccio.
+
+"Quoi faire, alors! Alvina, take him the rose to the gate, will you?
+Yes do! Their singing is horrible, I think. I can't go down to him.
+But do take him the roses, and see what he looks like. Yes do!" Mrs.
+Tuke's eyes were arched and excited. Alvina looked at her slowly.
+Alvina also was smiling to herself.
+
+She went slowly down the stairs and out of the front door. From a
+bush at the side she pulled two sweet-smelling roses. Then in the
+drive she picked up Effie's flowers. Ciccio was standing outside the
+gate.
+
+"Allaye!" he said, in a soft, yearning voice.
+
+"Mrs. Tuke sent you these roses," said Alvina, putting the flowers
+through the bars of the gate.
+
+"Allaye!" he said, caressing her hand, kissing it with a soft,
+passionate, yearning mouth. Alvina shivered. Quickly he opened the
+gate and drew her through. He drew her into the shadow of the wall,
+and put his arms round her, lifting her from her feet with
+passionate yearning.
+
+"Allaye!" he said. "I love you, Allaye, my beautiful, Allaye. I love
+you, Allaye!" He held her fast to his breast and began to walk away
+with her. His throbbing, muscular power seemed completely to envelop
+her. He was just walking away with her down the road, clinging fast
+to her, enveloping her.
+
+"Nurse! Nurse! I can't see you! Nurse!--" came the long call of Mrs.
+Tuke through the night. Dogs began to bark.
+
+"Put me down," murmured Alvina. "Put me down, Ciccio."
+
+"Come with me to Italy. Come with me to Italy, Allaye. I can't go to
+Italy by myself, Allaye. Come with me, be married to me--Allaye,
+Allaye--"
+
+His voice was a strange, hoarse whisper just above her face, he
+still held her in his throbbing, heavy embrace.
+
+"Yes--yes!" she whispered. "Yes--yes! But put me down, Ciccio. Put
+me down."
+
+"Come to Italy with me, Allaye. Come with me," he still reiterated,
+in a voice hoarse with pain and yearning.
+
+"Nurse! Nurse! Wherever are you? Nurse! I want you," sang the
+uneasy, querulous voice of Mrs. Tuke.
+
+"Do put me down!" murmured Alvina, stirring in his arms.
+
+He slowly relaxed his clasp, and she slid down like rain to earth.
+But still he clung to her.
+
+"Come with me, Allaye! Come with me to Italy!" he said.
+
+She saw his face, beautiful, non-human in the moonlight, and she
+shuddered slightly.
+
+"Yes!" she said. "I will come. But let me go now. Where is your
+mandoline?"
+
+He turned round and looked up the road.
+
+"Nurse! You absolutely _must_ come. I can't bear it," cried the
+strange voice of Mrs. Tuke.
+
+Alvina slipped from the man, who was a little bewildered, and
+through the gate into the drive.
+
+"You must come!" came the voice in pain from the upper window.
+
+Alvina ran upstairs. She found Mrs. Tuke crouched in a chair, with a
+drawn, horrified, terrified face. As her pains suddenly gripped her,
+she uttered an exclamation, and pressed her clenched fists hard on
+her face.
+
+"The pains have begun," said Alvina, hurrying to her.
+
+"Oh, it's horrible! It's horrible! I don't want it!" cried the woman
+in travail. Alvina comforted her and reassured her as best she
+could. And from outside, once more, came the despairing howl of the
+Neapolitan song, animal and inhuman on the night.
+
+       "E tu dic' Io part', addio!
+        T'alluntare di sta core,
+        Nel paese del amore
+        Tien' o cor' di non turnar'
+        --Ma nun me lasciar'--"
+
+It was almost unendurable. But suddenly Mrs. Tuke became quite
+still, and sat with her fists clenched on her knees, her two
+jet-black plaits dropping on either side of her ivory face, her big
+eyes fixed staring into space. At the line--
+
+        Ma nun me lasciar'--
+
+she began to murmur softly to herself--"Yes, it's dreadful! It's
+horrible! I can't understand it. What does it mean, that noise? It's
+as bad as these pains. What does it mean? What does he say? I can
+understand a little Italian--" She paused. And again came the sudden
+complaint:
+
+        Ma nun me lasciar'--
+
+"Ma nun me lasciar'--!" she murmured, repeating the music. "That
+means--Don't leave me! Don't leave me! But why? Why shouldn't one
+human being go away from another? What does it mean? That _awful_
+noise! Isn't love the most horrible thing! I think it's horrible. It
+just does one in, and turns one into a sort of howling animal. I'm
+howling with one sort of pain, he's howling with another. Two
+hellish animals howling through the night! I'm not myself, he's not
+himself. Oh, I think it's horrible. What does he look like, Nurse?
+Is he beautiful? Is he a great hefty brute?"
+
+She looked with big, slow, enigmatic eyes at Alvina.
+
+"He's a man I knew before," said Alvina.
+
+Mrs. Tuke's face woke from its half-trance.
+
+"Really! Oh! A man you knew before! Where?"
+
+"It's a long story," said Alvina. "In a travelling music-hall
+troupe."
+
+"In a travelling music-hall troupe! How extraordinary! Why, how did
+you come across such an individual--?"
+
+Alvina explained as briefly as possible. Mrs. Tuke watched her.
+
+"Really!" she said. "You've done all those things!" And she
+scrutinized Alvina's face. "You've had some effect on him, that's
+evident," she said. Then she shuddered, and dabbed her nose with her
+handkerchief. "Oh, the flesh is a _beastly_ thing!" she cried. "To
+make a man howl outside there like that, because you're here. And to
+make me howl because I've got a child inside me. It's unbearable!
+What does he look like, really?"
+
+"I don't know," said Alvina. "Not extraordinary. Rather a hefty
+brute--"
+
+Mrs. Tuke glanced at her, to detect the irony.
+
+"I should like to see him," she said. "Do you think I might?"
+
+"I don't know," said Alvina, non-committal.
+
+"Do you think he might come up? Ask him. Do let me see him."
+
+"Do you really want to?" said Alvina.
+
+"Of course--" Mrs. Tuke watched Alvina with big, dark, slow eyes.
+Then she dragged herself to her feet. Alvina helped her into bed.
+
+"Do ask him to come up for a minute," Effie said. "We'll give him a
+glass of Tommy's famous port. Do let me see him. Yes do!" She
+stretched out her long white arm to Alvina, with sudden imploring.
+
+Alvina laughed, and turned doubtfully away.
+
+The night was silent outside. But she found Ciccio leaning against a
+gate-pillar. He started up.
+
+"Allaye!" he said.
+
+"Will you come in for a moment? I can't leave Mrs. Tuke."
+
+Ciccio obediently followed Alvina into the house and up the stairs,
+without a word. He was ushered into the bedroom. He drew back when
+he saw Effie in the bed, sitting with her long plaits and her dark
+eyes, and the subtle-seeming smile at the corners of her mouth.
+
+"Do come in!" she said. "I want to thank you for the music. Nurse
+says it was for her, but I enjoyed it also. Would you tell me the
+words? I think it's a wonderful song."
+
+Ciccio hung back against the door, his head dropped, and the shy,
+suspicious, faintly malicious smile on his face.
+
+"Have a glass of port, do!" said Effie. "Nurse, give us all one. I
+should like one too. And a biscuit." Again she stretched out her
+long white arm from the sudden blue lining of her wrap, suddenly, as
+if taken with the desire. Ciccio shifted on his feet, watching
+Alvina pour out the port.
+
+He swallowed his in one swallow, and put aside his glass.
+
+"Have some more!" said Effie, watching over the top of her glass.
+
+He smiled faintly, stupidly, and shook his head.
+
+"Won't you? Now tell me the words of the song--"
+
+He looked at her from out of the dusky hollows of his brow, and did
+not answer. The faint, stupid half-smile, half-sneer was on his
+lips.
+
+"Won't you tell them me? I understood one line--"
+
+Ciccio smiled more pronouncedly as he watched her, but did not
+speak.
+
+"I understood one line," said Effie, making big eyes at him. "_Ma
+non me lasciare_--_Don't leave me!_ There, isn't that it?"
+
+He smiled, stirred on his feet, and nodded.
+
+"Don't leave me! There, I knew it was that. Why don't you want Nurse
+to leave you? Do you want her to be with you _every minute_?"
+
+He smiled a little contemptuously, awkwardly, and turned aside his
+face, glancing at Alvina. Effie's watchful eyes caught the glance.
+It was swift, and full of the terrible yearning which so horrified
+her.
+
+At the same moment a spasm crossed her face, her expression went
+blank.
+
+"Shall we go down?" said Alvina to Ciccio.
+
+He turned immediately, with his cap in his hand, and followed. In
+the hall he pricked up his ears as he took the mandoline from the
+chest. He could hear the stifled cries and exclamations from Mrs.
+Tuke. At the same moment the door of the study opened, and the
+musician, a burly fellow with troubled hair, came out.
+
+"Is that Mrs. Tuke?" he snapped anxiously.
+
+"Yes. The pains have begun," said Alvina.
+
+"Oh God! And have you left her!" He was quite irascible.
+
+"Only for a minute," said Alvina.
+
+But with a _Pf_! of angry indignation, he was climbing the stairs.
+
+"She is going to have a child," said Alvina to Ciccio. "I shall have
+to go back to her." And she held out her hand.
+
+He did not take her hand, but looked down into her face with the
+same slightly distorted look of overwhelming yearning, yearning
+heavy and unbearable, in which he was carried towards her as on a
+flood.
+
+"Allaye!" he said, with a faint lift of the lip that showed his
+teeth, like a pained animal: a curious sort of smile. He could not
+go away.
+
+"I shall have to go back to her," she said.
+
+"Shall you come with me to Italy, Allaye?"
+
+"Yes. Where is Madame?"
+
+"Gone! Gigi--all gone."
+
+"Gone where?"
+
+"Gone back to France--called up."
+
+"And Madame and Louis and Max?"
+
+"Switzerland."
+
+He stood helplessly looking at her.
+
+"Well, I must go," she said.
+
+He watched her with his yellow eyes, from under his long black
+lashes, like some chained animal, haunted by doom. She turned and
+left him standing.
+
+She found Mrs. Tuke wildly clutching the edge of the sheets, and
+crying: "No, Tommy dear. I'm awfully fond of you, you know I am. But
+go away. Oh God, go away. And put a space between us. Put a space
+between us!" she almost shrieked.
+
+He pushed up his hair. He had been working on a big choral work
+which he was composing, and by this time he was almost demented.
+
+"Can't you stand my presence!" he shouted, and dashed downstairs.
+
+"Nurse!" cried Effie. "It's _no use_ trying to get a grip on life.
+You're just at the mercy of _Forces_," she shrieked angrily.
+
+"Why not?" said Alvina. "There are good life-forces. Even the will
+of God is a life-force."
+
+"You don't understand! I want to be _myself_. And I'm _not_ myself.
+I'm just torn to pieces by _Forces_. It's horrible--"
+
+"Well, it's not my fault. I didn't make the universe," said Alvina.
+"If you have to be torn to pieces by forces, well, you have. Other
+forces will put you together again."
+
+"I don't want them to. I want to be myself. I don't want to be
+nailed together like a chair, with a hammer. I want to be myself."
+
+"You won't be nailed together like a chair. You should have faith in
+life."
+
+"But I hate life. It's nothing but a mass of forces. _I_ am
+intelligent. Life isn't intelligent. Look at it at this moment. Do
+you call this intelligent? Oh--Oh! It's horrible! Oh--!" She was
+wild and sweating with her pains. Tommy flounced out downstairs,
+beside himself. He was heard talking to some one in the moonlight
+outside. To Ciccio. He had already telephoned wildly for the doctor.
+But the doctor had replied that Nurse would ring him up.
+
+The moment Mrs. Tuke recovered her breath she began again.
+
+"I hate life, and faith, and such things. Faith is only fear. And
+life is a mass of unintelligent forces to which intelligent beings
+are submitted. Prostituted. Oh--oh!!--prostituted--"
+
+"Perhaps life itself is something bigger than intelligence," said
+Alvina.
+
+"Bigger than intelligence!" shrieked Effie. "_Nothing_ is bigger
+than intelligence. Your man is a hefty brute. His yellow eyes
+_aren't_ intelligent. They're _animal_--"
+
+"No," said Alvina. "Something else. I wish he didn't attract me--"
+
+"There! Because you're not content to be at the mercy of _Forces_!"
+cried Effie. "I'm not. I'm not. I want to be myself. And so forces
+tear me to pieces! Tear me to pie--eee--Oh-h-h! No!--"
+
+Downstairs Tommy had walked Ciccio back into the house again, and
+the two men were drinking port in the study, discussing Italy, for
+which Tommy had a great sentimental affection, though he hated all
+Italian music after the younger Scarlatti. They drank port all
+through the night, Tommy being strictly forbidden to interfere
+upstairs, or even to fetch the doctor. They drank three and a half
+bottles of port, and were discovered in the morning by Alvina fast
+asleep in the study, with the electric light still burning. Tommy
+slept with his fair and ruffled head hanging over the edge of the
+couch like some great loose fruit, Ciccio was on the floor, face
+downwards, his face in his folded arms.
+
+Alvina had a great difficulty in waking the inert Ciccio. In the
+end, she had to leave him and rouse Tommy first: who in rousing fell
+off the sofa with a crash which woke him disagreeably. So that he
+turned on Alvina in a fury, and asked her what the hell she thought
+she was doing. In answer to which Alvina held up a finger warningly,
+and Tommy, suddenly remembering, fell back as if he had been struck.
+
+"She is sleeping now," said Alvina.
+
+"Is it a boy or a girl?" he cried.
+
+"It isn't born yet," she said.
+
+"Oh God, it's an accursed fugue!" cried the bemused Tommy. After
+which they proceeded to wake Ciccio, who was like the dead doll in
+Petrushka, all loose and floppy. When he was awake, however, he
+smiled at Alvina, and said: "Allaye!"
+
+The dark, waking smile upset her badly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE WEDDED WIFE
+
+
+The upshot of it all was that Alvina ran away to Scarborough without
+telling anybody. It was in the first week in October. She asked for
+a week-end, to make some arrangements for her marriage. The marriage
+was presumably with Dr. Mitchell--though she had given him no
+definite word. However, her month's notice was up, so she was
+legally free. And therefore she packed a rather large bag with all
+her ordinary things, and set off in her everyday dress, leaving the
+nursing paraphernalia behind.
+
+She knew Scarborough quite well: and quite quickly found rooms which
+she had occupied before, in a boarding-house where she had stayed
+with Miss Frost long ago. Having recovered from her journey, she
+went out on to the cliffs on the north side. It was evening, and the
+sea was before her. What was she to do?
+
+She had run away from both men--from Ciccio as well as from
+Mitchell. She had spent the last fortnight more or less avoiding the
+pair of them. Now she had a moment to herself. She was even free
+from Mrs. Tuke, who in her own way was more exacting than the men.
+Mrs. Tuke had a baby daughter, and was getting well. Ciccio was
+living with the Tukes. Tommy had taken a fancy to him, and had half
+engaged him as a sort of personal attendant: the sort of thing Tommy
+would do, not having paid his butcher's bills.
+
+So Alvina sat on the cliffs in a mood of exasperation. She was sick
+of being badgered about. She didn't really want to marry anybody.
+Why should she? She was thankful beyond measure to be by herself.
+How sick she was of other people and their importunities! What was
+she to do? She decided to offer herself again, in a little while,
+for war service--in a new town this time. Meanwhile she wanted to be
+by herself.
+
+She made excursions, she walked on the moors, in the brief but
+lovely days of early October. For three days it was all so sweet and
+lovely--perfect liberty, pure, almost paradisal.
+
+The fourth day it rained: simply rained all day long, and was cold,
+dismal, disheartening beyond words. There she sat, stranded in the
+dismalness, and knew no way out. She went to bed at nine o'clock,
+having decided in a jerk to go to London and find work in the
+war-hospitals at once: not to leave off until she had found it.
+
+But in the night she dreamed that Alexander, her first fiance, was
+with her on the quay of some harbour, and was reproaching her
+bitterly, even reviling her, for having come too late, so that they
+had missed their ship. They were there to catch the boat--and she,
+for dilatoriness, was an hour late, and she could see the broad
+stern of the steamer not far off. Just an hour late. She showed
+Alexander her watch--exactly ten o'clock, instead of nine. And he
+was more angry than ever, because her watch was slow. He pointed to
+the harbour clock--it was ten minutes past ten.
+
+When she woke up she was thinking of Alexander. It was such a long
+time since she had thought of him. She wondered if he had a right to
+be angry with her.
+
+The day was still grey, with sweepy rain-clouds on the
+sea--gruesome, objectionable. It was a prolongation of yesterday.
+Well, despair was no good, and being miserable was no good either.
+She got no satisfaction out of either mood. The only thing to do was
+to act: seize hold of life and wring its neck.
+
+She took the time-table that hung in the hall: the time-table, that
+magic carpet of today. When in doubt, _move_. This was the maxim.
+Move. Where to?
+
+Another click of a resolution. She would wire to Ciccio and meet
+him--where? York--Leeds--Halifax--? She looked up the places in the
+time-table, and decided on Leeds. She wrote out a telegram, that she
+would be at Leeds that evening. Would he get it in time? Chance it.
+
+She hurried off and sent the telegram. Then she took a little
+luggage, told the people of her house she would be back next day,
+and set off. She did not like whirling in the direction of
+Lancaster. But no matter.
+
+She waited a long time for the train from the north to come in. The
+first person she saw was Tommy. He waved to her and jumped from the
+moving train.
+
+"I say!" he said. "So glad to see you! Ciccio is with me. Effie
+insisted on my coming to see you."
+
+There was Ciccio climbing down with the bag. A sort of servant! This
+was too much for her.
+
+"So you came with your valet?" she said, as Ciccio stood with the
+bag.
+
+"Not a bit," said Tommy, laying his hand on the other man's
+shoulder. "We're the best of friends. I don't carry bags because my
+heart is rather groggy. I say, nurse, excuse me, but I like you
+better in uniform. Black doesn't suit you. You don't _mind_--"
+
+"Yes, I do. But I've only got black clothes, except uniforms."
+
+"Well look here now--! You're not going on anywhere tonight, are
+you?"
+
+"It is too late."
+
+"Well now, let's turn into the hotel and have a talk. I'm acting
+under Effie's orders, as you may gather--"
+
+At the hotel Tommy gave her a letter from his wife: to the tune
+of--don't marry this Italian, you'll put yourself in a wretched
+hole, and one wants to avoid getting into holes. _I know_--concluded
+Effie, on a sinister note.
+
+Tommy sang another tune. Ciccio was a lovely chap, a rare chap, a
+treat. He, Tommy, could quite understand any woman's wanting to
+marry him--didn't agree a bit with Effie. But marriage, you know,
+was so final. And then with this war on: you never knew how things
+might turn out: a foreigner and all that. And then--you won't mind
+what I say--? We won't talk about class and that rot. If the man's
+good enough, he's good enough by himself. But is he your
+intellectual equal, nurse? After all, it's a big point. You don't
+want to marry a man you can't talk to. Ciccio's a treat to be with,
+because he's so natural. But it isn't a _mental_ treat--
+
+Alvina thought of Mrs. Tuke, who complained that Tommy talked music
+and pseudo-philosophy _by the hour_ when he was wound up. She saw
+Effie's long, outstretched arm of repudiation and weariness.
+
+"Of course!"--another of Mrs. Tuke's exclamations. "Why not _be_
+atavistic if you _can_ be, and follow at a man's heel just because
+he's a man. Be like barbarous women, a slave."
+
+During all this, Ciccio stayed out of the room, as bidden. It was
+not till Alvina sat before her mirror that he opened her door
+softly, and entered.
+
+"I come in," he said, and he closed the door.
+
+Alvina remained with her hair-brush suspended, watching him. He came
+to her, smiling softly, to take her in his arms. But she put the
+chair between them.
+
+"Why did you bring Mr. Tuke?" she said.
+
+He lifted his shoulders.
+
+"I haven't brought him," he said, watching her.
+
+"Why did you show him the telegram?"
+
+"It was Mrs. Tuke took it."
+
+"Why did you give it her?"
+
+"It was she who gave it me, in her room. She kept it in her room
+till I came and took it."
+
+"All right," said Alvina. "Go back to the Tukes." And she began
+again to brush her hair.
+
+Ciccio watched her with narrowing eyes.
+
+"What you mean?" he said. "I shan't go, Allaye. You come with me."
+
+"Ha!" she sniffed scornfully. "I shall go where I like."
+
+But slowly he shook his head.
+
+"You'll come, Allaye," he said. "You come with me, with Ciccio."
+
+She shuddered at the soft, plaintive entreaty.
+
+"How can I go with you? How can I depend on you at all?"
+
+Again he shook his head. His eyes had a curious yellow fire,
+beseeching, plaintive, with a demon quality of yearning compulsion.
+
+"Yes, you come with me, Allaye. You come with me, to Italy. You
+don't go to that other man. He is too old, not healthy. You come
+with me to Italy. Why do you send a telegram?"
+
+Alvina sat down and covered her face, trembling.
+
+"I can't! I can't! I can't!" she moaned. "I can't do it."
+
+"Yes, you come with me. I have money. You come with me, to my place
+in the mountains, to my uncle's house. Fine house, you like it. Come
+with me, Allaye."
+
+She could not look at him.
+
+"Why do you want me?" she said.
+
+"Why I want you?" He gave a curious laugh, almost of ridicule. "I
+don't know that. You ask me another, eh?"
+
+She was silent, sitting looking downwards.
+
+"I can't, I think," she said abstractedly, looking up at him.
+
+He smiled, a fine, subtle smile, like a demon's, but inexpressibly
+gentle. He made her shiver as if she was mesmerized. And he was
+reaching forward to her as a snake reaches, nor could she recoil.
+
+"You come, Allaye," he said softly, with his foreign intonation.
+"You come. You come to Italy with me. Yes?" He put his hand on her,
+and she started as if she had been struck. But his hands, with the
+soft, powerful clasp, only closed her faster.
+
+"Yes?" he said. "Yes? All right, eh? All right!"--he had a strange
+mesmeric power over her, as if he possessed the sensual secrets, and
+she was to be subjected.
+
+"I can't," she moaned, trying to struggle. But she was powerless.
+
+Dark and insidious he was: he had no regard for her. How could a
+man's movements be so soft and gentle, and yet so inhumanly
+regardless! He had no regard for her. Why didn't she revolt? Why
+couldn't she? She was as if bewitched. She couldn't fight against
+her bewitchment. Why? Because he seemed to her beautiful, so
+beautiful. And this left her numb, submissive. Why must she see him
+beautiful? Why was she will-less? She felt herself like one of the
+old sacred prostitutes: a sacred prostitute.
+
+In the morning, very early, they left for Scarborough, leaving a
+letter for the sleeping Tommy. In Scarborough they went to the
+registrar's office: they could be married in a fortnight's time. And
+so the fortnight passed, and she was under his spell. Only she knew
+it. She felt extinguished. Ciccio talked to her: but only ordinary
+things. There was no wonderful intimacy of speech, such as she had
+always imagined, and always craved for. No. He loved her--but it was
+in a dark, mesmeric way, which did not let her be herself. His love
+did not stimulate her or excite her. It extinguished her. She had to
+be the quiescent, obscure woman: she felt as if she were veiled. Her
+thoughts were dim, in the dim back regions of consciousness--yet,
+somewhere, she almost exulted. Atavism! Mrs. Tuke's word would play
+in her mind. Was it atavism, this sinking into extinction under the
+spell of Ciccio? Was it atavism, this strange, sleep-like submission
+to his being? Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was. But it was also heavy
+and sweet and rich. Somewhere, she was content. Somewhere even she
+was vastly proud of the dark veiled eternal loneliness she felt,
+under his shadow.
+
+And so it had to be. She shuddered when she touched him, because he
+was so beautiful, and she was so submitted. She quivered when he
+moved as if she were his shadow. Yet her mind remained distantly
+clear. She would criticize him, find fault with him, the things he
+did. But _ultimately_ she could find no fault with him. She had lost
+the power. She didn't care. She had lost the power to care about his
+faults. Strange, sweet, poisonous indifference! She was drugged. And
+she knew it. Would she ever wake out of her dark, warm coma? She
+shuddered, and hoped not. Mrs. Tuke would say atavism. Atavism! The
+word recurred curiously.
+
+But under all her questionings she felt well; a nonchalance deep as
+sleep, a passivity and indifference so dark and sweet she felt it
+must be evil. Evil! She was evil. And yet she had no power to be
+otherwise. They were legally married. And she was glad. She was
+relieved by knowing she could not escape. She was Mrs. Marasca. What
+was the good of trying to be Miss Houghton any longer? Marasca, the
+bitter cherry. Some dark poison fruit she had eaten. How glad she
+was she had eaten it! How beautiful he was! And no one saw it but
+herself. For her it was so potent it made her tremble when she
+noticed him. His beauty, his dark shadow. Ciccio really was much
+handsomer since his marriage. He seemed to emerge. Before, he had
+seemed to make himself invisible in the streets, in England,
+altogether. But now something unfolded in him, he was a potent,
+glamorous presence, people turned to watch him. There was a certain
+dark, leopard-like pride in the air about him, something that the
+English people watched.
+
+He wanted to go to Italy. And now it was _his_ will which counted.
+Alvina, as his wife, must submit. He took her to London the day
+after the marriage. He wanted to get away to Italy. He did not like
+being in England, a foreigner, amid the beginnings of the spy craze.
+
+In London they stayed at his cousin's house. His cousin kept a
+restaurant in Battersea, and was a flourishing London Italian, a
+real London product with all the good English virtues of cleanliness
+and honesty added to an Italian shrewdness. His name was Giuseppe
+Califano, and he was pale, and he had four children of whom he was
+very proud. He received Alvina with an affable respect, as if she
+were an asset in the family, but as if he were a little uneasy and
+disapproving. She had _come down_, in marrying Ciccio. She had lost
+caste. He rather seemed to exult over her degradation. For he was a
+northernized Italian, he had accepted English standards. His
+children were English brats. He almost patronized Alvina.
+
+But then a long, slow look from her remote blue eyes brought him up
+sharp, and he envied Ciccio suddenly, he was almost in love with her
+himself. She disturbed him. She disturbed him in his new English
+aplomb of a London _restaurateur_, and she disturbed in him the old
+Italian dark soul, to which he was renegade. He tried treating her
+as an English lady. But the slow, remote look in her eyes made this
+fall flat. He had to be Italian.
+
+And he was jealous of Ciccio. In Ciccio's face was a lurking smile,
+and round his fine nose there seemed a subtle, semi-defiant triumph.
+After all, he had triumphed over his well-to-do, Anglicized cousin.
+With a stealthy, leopard-like pride Ciccio went through the streets
+of London in those wild early days of war. He was the one victor,
+arching stealthily over the vanquished north.
+
+Alvina saw nothing of all these complexities. For the time being,
+she was all dark and potent. Things were curious to her. It was
+curious to be in Battersea, in this English-Italian household, where
+the children spoke English more readily than Italian. It was strange
+to be high over the restaurant, to see the trees of the park, to
+hear the clang of trams. It was strange to walk out and come to the
+river. It was strange to feel the seethe of war and dread in the
+air. But she did not question. She seemed steeped in the passional
+influence of the man, as in some narcotic. She even forgot Mrs.
+Tuke's atavism. Vague and unquestioning she went through the days,
+she accompanied Ciccio into town, she went with him to make
+purchases, or she sat by his side in the music hall, or she stayed
+in her room and sewed, or she sat at meals with the Califanos, a
+vague brightness on her face. And Mrs. Califano was very nice to
+her, very gentle, though with a suspicion of malicious triumph,
+mockery, beneath her gentleness. Still, she was nice and womanly,
+hovering as she was between her English emancipation and her Italian
+subordination. She half pitied Alvina, and was more than half
+jealous of her.
+
+Alvina was aware of nothing--only of the presence of Ciccio. It was
+his physical presence which cast a spell over her. She lived within
+his aura. And she submitted to him as if he had extended his dark
+nature over her. She knew nothing about him. She lived mindlessly
+within his presence, quivering within his influence, as if his blood
+beat in her. She _knew_ she was subjected. One tiny corner of her
+knew, and watched.
+
+He was very happy, and his face had a real beauty. His eyes glowed with
+lustrous secrecy, like the eyes of some victorious, happy wild creature
+seen remote under a bush. And he was very good to her. His tenderness
+made her quiver into a swoon of complete self-forgetfulness, as if the
+flood-gates of her depths opened. The depth of his warm, mindless,
+enveloping love was immeasurable. She felt she could sink forever into
+his warm, pulsating embrace.
+
+Afterwards, later on, when she was inclined to criticize him, she
+would remember the moment when she saw his face at the Italian
+Consulate in London. There were many people at the Consulate,
+clamouring for passports--a wild and ill-regulated crowd. They had
+waited their turn and got inside--Ciccio was not good at pushing his
+way. And inside a courteous tall old man with a white beard had
+lifted the flap for Alvina to go inside the office and sit down to
+fill in the form. She thanked the old man, who bowed as if he had a
+reputation to keep up.
+
+Ciccio followed, and it was he who had to sit down and fill up the
+form, because she did not understand the Italian questions. She
+stood at his side, watching the excited, laughing, noisy, east-end
+Italians at the desk. The whole place had a certain free-and-easy
+confusion, a human, unofficial, muddling liveliness which was not
+quite like England, even though it was in the middle of London.
+
+"What was your mother's name?" Ciccio was asking her. She turned to
+him. He sat with the pen perched flourishingly at the end of his
+fingers, suspended in the serious and artistic business of filling in a
+form. And his face had a dark luminousness, like a dark transparence
+which was shut and has now expanded. She quivered, as if it was more
+than she could bear. For his face was open like a flower right to
+the depths of his soul, a dark, lovely translucency, vulnerable to
+the deep quick of his soul. The lovely, rich darkness of his southern
+nature, so different from her own, exposing itself now in its passional
+vulnerability, made her go white with a kind of fear. For an instant,
+her face seemed drawn and old as she looked down at him, answering his
+questions. Then her eyes became sightless with tears, she stooped as if
+to look at his writing, and quickly kissed his fingers that held the
+pen, there in the midst of the crowded, vulgar Consulate.
+
+He stayed suspended, again looking up at her with the bright,
+unfolded eyes of a wild creature which plays and is not seen. A
+faint smile, very beautiful to her, was on his face. What did he see
+when he looked at her? She did not know, she did not know. And she
+would never know. For an instant, she swore inside herself that God
+Himself should not take her away from this man. She would commit
+herself to him through every eternity. And then the vagueness came
+over her again, she turned aside, photographically seeing the crowd
+in the Consulate, but really unconscious. His movement as he rose
+seemed to move her in her sleep, she turned to him at once.
+
+It was early in November before they could leave for Italy, and her
+dim, lustrous state lasted all the time. She found herself at
+Charing Cross in the early morning, in all the bustle of catching
+the Continental train. Giuseppe was there, and Gemma his wife, and
+two of the children, besides three other Italian friends of Ciccio.
+They all crowded up the platform. Giuseppe had insisted that Ciccio
+should take second-class tickets. They were very early. Alvina and
+Ciccio were installed in a second-class compartment, with all their
+packages, Ciccio was pale, yellowish under his tawny skin, and
+nervous. He stood excitedly on the platform talking in Italian--or
+rather, in his own dialect--whilst Alvina sat quite still in her
+corner. Sometimes one of the women or one of the children came to
+say a few words to her, or Giuseppe hurried to her with illustrated
+papers. They treated her as if she were some sort of invalid or
+angel, now she was leaving. But most of their attention they gave to
+Ciccio, talking at him rapidly all at once, whilst he answered, and
+glanced in this way and that, under his fine lashes, and smiled his
+old, nervous, meaningless smile. He was curiously upset.
+
+Time came to shut the doors. The women and children kissed Alvina,
+saying:
+
+"You'll be all right, eh? Going to Italy--!" And then profound and
+meaningful nods, which she could not interpret, but which were
+fraught surely with good-fellowship.
+
+Then they all kissed Ciccio. The men took him in their arms and
+kissed him on either cheek, the children lifted their faces in eager
+anticipation of the double kiss. Strange, how eager they were for
+this embrace--how they all kept taking Ciccio's hand, one after the
+other, whilst he smiled constrainedly and nervously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE JOURNEY ACROSS
+
+
+The train began to move. Giuseppe ran alongside, holding Ciccio's
+hand still; the women and children were crying and waving their
+handkerchiefs, the other men were shouting messages, making strange,
+eager gestures. And Alvina sat quite still, wonderingly. And so the
+big, heavy train drew out, leaving the others small and dim on the
+platform. It was foggy, the river was a sea of yellow beneath the
+ponderous iron bridge. The morning was dim and dank.
+
+The train was very full. Next to Alvina sat a trim Frenchwoman
+reading _L'Aiglon_. There was a terrible encumbrance of packages and
+luggage everywhere. Opposite her sat Ciccio, his black overcoat open
+over his pale-grey suit, his black hat a little over his left eye.
+He glanced at her from time to time, smiling constrainedly. She
+remained very still. They ran through Bromley and out into the open
+country. It was grey, with shivers of grey sunshine. On the downs
+there was thin snow. The air in the train was hot, heavy with the
+crowd and tense with excitement and uneasiness. The train seemed to
+rush ponderously, massively, across the Weald.
+
+And so, through Folkestone to the sea. There was sun in the sky now,
+and white clouds, in the sort of hollow sky-dome above the grey
+earth with its horizon walls of fog. The air was still. The sea
+heaved with a sucking noise inside the dock. Alvina and Ciccio sat
+aft on the second-class deck, their bags near them. He put a white
+muffler round himself, Alvina hugged herself in her beaver scarf and
+muff. She looked tender and beautiful in her still vagueness, and
+Ciccio, hovering about her, was beautiful too, his estrangement gave
+him a certain wistful nobility which for the moment put him beyond
+all class inferiority. The passengers glanced at them across the
+magic of estrangement.
+
+The sea was very still. The sun was fairly high in the open sky,
+where white cloud-tops showed against the pale, wintry blue. Across
+the sea came a silver sun-track. And Alvina and Ciccio looked at the
+sun, which stood a little to the right of the ship's course.
+
+"The sun!" said Ciccio, nodding towards the orb and smiling to her.
+
+"I love it," she said.
+
+He smiled again, silently. He was strangely moved: she did not know
+why.
+
+The wind was cold over the wintry sea, though the sun's beams were
+warm. They rose, walked round the cabins. Other ships were at
+sea--destroyers and battleships, grey, low, and sinister on the
+water. Then a tall bright schooner glimmered far down the channel.
+Some brown fishing smacks kept together. All was very still in the
+wintry sunshine of the Channel.
+
+So they turned to walk to the stern of the boat. And Alvina's heart
+suddenly contracted. She caught Ciccio's arm, as the boat rolled
+gently. For there behind, behind all the sunshine, was England.
+England, beyond the water, rising with ash-grey, corpse-grey cliffs,
+and streaks of snow on the downs above. England, like a long,
+ash-grey coffin slowly submerging. She watched it, fascinated and
+terrified. It seemed to repudiate the sunshine, to remain
+unilluminated, long and ash-grey and dead, with streaks of snow like
+cerements. That was England! Her thoughts flew to Woodhouse, the
+grey centre of it all. Home!
+
+Her heart died within her. Never had she felt so utterly strange and
+far-off. Ciccio at her side was as nothing, as spell-bound she
+watched, away off, behind all the sunshine and the sea, the grey,
+snow-streaked substance of England slowly receding and sinking,
+submerging. She felt she could not believe it. It was like looking
+at something else. What? It was like a long, ash-grey coffin,
+winter, slowly submerging in the sea. England?
+
+She turned again to the sun. But clouds and veils were already
+weaving in the sky. The cold was beginning to soak in, moreover. She
+sat very still for a long time, almost an eternity. And when she
+looked round again there was only a bank of mist behind, beyond the
+sea: a bank of mist, and a few grey, stalking ships. She must watch
+for the coast of France.
+
+And there it was already, looming up grey and amorphous, patched
+with snow. It had a grey, heaped, sordid look in the November light.
+She had imagined Boulogne gay and brilliant. Whereas it was more
+grey and dismal than England. But not that magical, mystic, phantom
+look.
+
+The ship slowly put about, and backed into the harbour. She watched
+the quay approach. Ciccio was gathering up the luggage. Then came
+the first cry one ever hears: "_Porteur! Porteur!_ Want a
+_porteur_?" A porter in a blouse strung the luggage on his strap,
+and Ciccio and Alvina entered the crush for the exit and the
+passport inspection. There was a tense, eager, frightened crowd, and
+officials shouting directions in French and English. Alvina found
+herself at last before a table where bearded men in uniforms were
+splashing open the big pink sheets of the English passports: she
+felt strange and uneasy, that her passport was unimpressive and
+Italian. The official scrutinized her, and asked questions of
+Ciccio. Nobody asked her anything--she might have been Ciccio's
+shadow. So they went through to the vast, crowded cavern of a
+Customs house, where they found their porter waving to them in the
+mob. Ciccio fought in the mob while the porter whisked off Alvina to
+get seats in the big train. And at last she was planted once more in
+a seat, with Ciccio's place reserved beside her. And there she sat,
+looking across the railway lines at the harbour, in the last burst
+of grey sunshine. Men looked at her, officials stared at her,
+soldiers made remarks about her. And at last, after an eternity,
+Ciccio came along the platform, the porter trotting behind.
+
+They sat and ate the food they had brought, and drank wine and tea.
+And after weary hours the train set off through snow-patched country
+to Paris. Everywhere was crowded, the train was stuffy without being
+warm. Next to Alvina sat a large, fat, youngish Frenchman who
+overflowed over her in a hot fashion. Darkness began to fall. The
+train was very late. There were strange and frightening delays.
+Strange lights appeared in the sky, everybody seemed to be listening
+for strange noises. It was all such a whirl and confusion that
+Alvina lost count, relapsed into a sort of stupidity. Gleams,
+flashes, noises and then at last the frenzy of Paris.
+
+It was night, a black city, and snow falling, and no train that
+night across to the Gare de Lyon. In a state of semi-stupefaction
+after all the questionings and examinings and blusterings, they
+were finally allowed to go straight across Paris. But this meant
+another wild tussle with a Paris taxi-driver, in the filtering snow.
+So they were deposited in the Gare de Lyon.
+
+And the first person who rushed upon them was Geoffrey, in a rather
+grimy private's uniform. He had already seen some hard service, and
+had a wild, bewildered look. He kissed Ciccio and burst into tears
+on his shoulder, there in the great turmoil of the entrance hall of
+the Gare de Lyon. People looked, but nobody seemed surprised.
+Geoffrey sobbed, and the tears came silently down Ciccio's cheeks.
+
+"I've waited for you since five o'clock, and I've got to go back
+now. Ciccio! Ciccio! I wanted so badly to see you. I shall never see
+thee again, brother, my brother!" cried Gigi, and a sob shook him.
+
+"Gigi! Mon Gigi. Tu as done regu ma lettre?"
+
+"Yesterday. O Ciccio, Ciccio, I shall die without thee!"
+
+"But no, Gigi, frere. You won't die."
+
+"Yes, Ciccio, I shall. I know I shall."
+
+"I say _no_, brother," said Ciccio. But a spasm suddenly took him,
+he pulled off his hat and put it over his face and sobbed into it.
+
+"Adieu, ami! Adieu!" cried Gigi, clutching the other man's arm.
+Ciccio took his hat from his tear-stained face and put it on his
+head. Then the two men embraced.
+
+"_Toujours a toi!_" said Geoffrey, with a strange, solemn salute in
+front of Ciccio and Alvina. Then he turned on his heel and marched
+rapidly out of the station, his soiled soldier's overcoat flapping
+in the wind at the door. Ciccio watched him go. Then he turned and
+looked with haunted eyes into the eyes of Alvina. And then they
+hurried down the desolate platform in the darkness. Many people,
+Italians, largely, were camped waiting there, while bits of snow
+wavered down. Ciccio bought food and hired cushions. The train
+backed in. There was a horrible fight for seats, men scrambling
+through windows. Alvina got a place--but Ciccio had to stay in the
+corridor.
+
+Then the long night journey through France, slow and blind. The
+train was now so hot that the iron plate on the floor burnt Alvina's
+feet. Outside she saw glimpses of snow. A fat Italian hotel-keeper
+put on a smoking cap, covered the light, and spread himself before
+Alvina. In the next carriage a child was screaming. It screamed all
+the night--all the way from Paris to Chambery it screamed. The train
+came to sudden halts, and stood still in the snow. The hotel-keeper
+snored. Alvina became almost comatose, in the burning heat of the
+carriage. And again the train rumbled on. And again she saw glimpses
+of stations, glimpses of snow, through the chinks in the curtained
+windows. And again there was a jerk and a sudden halt, a drowsy
+mutter from the sleepers, somebody uncovering the light, and
+somebody covering it again, somebody looking out, somebody tramping
+down the corridor, the child screaming.
+
+The child belonged to two poor Italians--Milanese--a shred of a thin
+little man, and a rather loose woman. They had five tiny children,
+all boys: and the four who could stand on their feet all wore
+scarlet caps. The fifth was a baby. Alvina had seen a French
+official yelling at the poor shred of a young father on the
+platform.
+
+When morning came, and the bleary people pulled the curtains, it was
+a clear dawn, and they were in the south of France. There was no
+sign of snow. The landscape was half southern, half Alpine. White
+houses with brownish tiles stood among almond trees and cactus. It
+was beautiful, and Alvina felt she had known it all before, in a
+happier life. The morning was graceful almost as spring. She went
+out in the corridor to talk to Ciccio.
+
+He was on his feet with his back to the inner window, rolling
+slightly to the motion of the train. His face was pale, he had that
+sombre, haunted, unhappy look. Alvina, thrilled by the southern
+country, was smiling excitedly.
+
+"This is my first morning abroad," she said.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"I love it here," she said. "Isn't this like Italy?"
+
+He looked darkly out of the window, and shook his head.
+
+But the sombre look remained on his face. She watched him. And her
+heart sank as she had never known it sink before.
+
+"Are you thinking of Gigi?" she said.
+
+He looked at her, with a faint, unhappy, bitter smile, but he said
+nothing. He seemed far off from her. A wild unhappiness beat inside
+her breast. She went down the corridor, away from him, to avoid this
+new agony, which after all was not her agony. She listened to the
+chatter of French and Italian in the corridor. She felt the
+excitement and terror of France, inside the railway carriage: and
+outside she saw white oxen slowly ploughing, beneath the lingering
+yellow poplars of the sub-Alps, she saw peasants looking up, she saw
+a woman holding a baby to her breast, watching the train, she saw
+the excited, yeasty crowds at the station. And they passed a river,
+and a great lake. And it all seemed bigger, nobler than England. She
+felt vaster influences spreading around, the Past was greater, more
+magnificent in these regions. For the first time the nostalgia of
+the vast Roman and classic world took possession of her. And she
+found it splendid. For the first time she opened her eyes on a
+continent, the Alpine core of a continent. And for the first time
+she realized what it was to escape from the smallish perfection of
+England, into the grander imperfection of a great continent.
+
+Near Chambery they went down for breakfast to the restaurant car.
+And secretly, she was very happy. Ciccio's distress made her uneasy.
+But underneath she was extraordinarily relieved and glad. Ciccio did
+not trouble her very much. The sense of the bigness of the lands
+about her, the excitement of travelling with Continental people, the
+pleasantness of her coffee and rolls and honey, the feeling that
+vast events were taking place--all this stimulated her. She had
+brushed, as it were, the fringe of the terror of the war and the
+invasion. Fear was seething around her. And yet she was excited and
+glad. The vast world was in one of its convulsions, and she was
+moving amongst it. Somewhere, she believed in the convulsion, the
+event elated her.
+
+The train began to climb up to Modane. How wonderful the Alps
+were!--what a bigness, an unbreakable power was in the mountains! Up
+and up the train crept, and she looked at the rocky slopes, the
+glistening peaks of snow in the blue heaven, the hollow valleys with
+fir trees and low-roofed houses. There were quarries near the
+railway, and men working. There was a strange mountain town,
+dirty-looking. And still the train climbed up and up, in the hot
+morning sunshine, creeping slowly round the mountain loops, so that
+a little brown dog from one of the cottages ran alongside the train
+for a long way, barking at Alvina, even running ahead of the
+creeping, snorting train, and barking at the people ahead. Alvina,
+looking out, saw the two unfamiliar engines snorting out their
+smoke round the bend ahead. And the morning wore away to mid-day.
+
+Ciccio became excited as they neared Modane, the frontier station.
+His eye lit up again, he pulled himself together for the entrance
+into Italy. Slowly the train rolled in to the dismal station. And
+then a confusion indescribable, of porters and masses of luggage,
+the unspeakable crush and crowd at the customs barriers, the more
+intense crowd through the passport office, all like a madness.
+
+They were out on the platform again, they had secured their places.
+Ciccio wanted to have luncheon in the station restaurant. They went
+through the passages. And there in the dirty station gang-ways and
+big corridors dozens of Italians were lying on the ground, men,
+women, children, camping with their bundles and packages in heaps.
+They were either emigrants or refugees. Alvina had never seen people
+herd about like cattle, dumb, brute cattle. It impressed her. She
+could not grasp that an Italian labourer would lie down just where
+he was tired, in the street, on a station, in any corner, like a
+dog.
+
+In the afternoon they were slipping down the Alps towards Turin. And
+everywhere was snow--deep, white, wonderful snow, beautiful and
+fresh, glistening in the afternoon light all down the mountain
+slopes, on the railway track, almost seeming to touch the train. And
+twilight was falling. And at the stations people crowded in once
+more.
+
+It had been dark a long time when they reached Turin. Many people
+alighted from the train, many surged to get in. But Ciccio and
+Alvina had seats side by side. They were becoming tired now. But
+they were in Italy. Once more they went down for a meal. And then
+the train set off again in the night for Alessandria and Genoa, Pisa
+and Rome.
+
+It was night, the train ran better, there was a more easy sense in
+Italy. Ciccio talked a little with other travelling companions. And
+Alvina settled her cushion, and slept more or less till Genoa. After
+the long wait at Genoa she dozed off again. She woke to see the sea
+in the moonlight beneath her--a lovely silvery sea, coming right to
+the carriage. The train seemed to be tripping on the edge of the
+Mediterranean, round bays, and between dark rocks and under castles,
+a night-time fairy-land, for hours. She watched spell-bound:
+spell-bound by the magic of the world itself. And she thought to
+herself: "Whatever life may be, and whatever horror men have made
+of it, the world is a lovely place, a magic place, something to
+marvel over. The world is an amazing place."
+
+This thought dozed her off again. Yet she had a consciousness of
+tunnels and hills and of broad marshes pallid under a moon and a
+coming dawn. And in the dawn there was Pisa. She watched the word
+hanging in the station in the dimness: "Pisa." Ciccio told her
+people were changing for Florence. It all seemed wonderful to
+her--wonderful. She sat and watched the black station--then she
+heard the sound of the child's trumpet. And it did not occur to her
+to connect the train's moving on with the sound of the trumpet.
+
+But she saw the golden dawn, a golden sun coming out of level
+country. She loved it. She loved being in Italy. She loved the
+lounging carelessness of the train, she liked having Italian money,
+hearing the Italians round her--though they were neither as
+beautiful nor as melodious as she expected. She loved watching the
+glowing antique landscape. She read and read again: "E pericoloso
+sporgersi," and "E vietato fumare," and the other little magical
+notices on the carriages. Ciccio told her what they meant, and how
+to say them. And sympathetic Italians opposite at once asked him if
+they were married and who and what his bride was, and they gazed at
+her with bright, approving eyes, though she felt terribly bedraggled
+and travel-worn.
+
+"You come from England? Yes! Nice contry!" said a man in a corner,
+leaning forward to make this display of his linguistic capacity.
+
+"Not so nice as this," said Alvina.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+Alvina repeated herself.
+
+"Not so nice? Oh? No! Fog, eh!" The fat man whisked his fingers in
+the air, to indicate fog in the atmosphere. "But nice contry!
+Very--_convenient_."
+
+He sat up in triumph, having achieved this word. And the
+conversation once more became a spatter of Italian. The women were
+very interested. They looked at Alvina, at every atom of her. And
+she divined that they were wondering if she was already with child.
+Sure enough, they were asking Ciccio in Italian if she was "making
+him a baby." But he shook his head and did not know, just a bit
+constrained. So they ate slices of sausages and bread and fried
+rice-balls, with wonderfully greasy fingers, and they drank red
+wine in big throatfuls out of bottles, and they offered their fare
+to Ciccio and Alvina, and were charmed when she said to Ciccio she
+_would_ have some bread and sausage. He picked the strips off the
+sausage for her with his fingers, and made her a sandwich with a
+roll. The women watched her bite it, and bright-eyed and pleased
+they said, nodding their heads--
+
+"Buono? Buono?"
+
+And she, who knew this word, understood, and replied:
+
+"Yes, good! Buono!" nodding her head likewise. Which caused immense
+satisfaction. The women showed the whole paper of sausage slices,
+and nodded and beamed and said:
+
+"Se vuole ancora--!"
+
+And Alvina bit her wide sandwich, and smiled, and said:
+
+"Yes, awfully nice!"
+
+And the women looked at each other and said something, and Ciccio
+interposed, shaking his head. But one woman ostentatiously wiped a
+bottle mouth with a clean handkerchief, and offered the bottle to
+Alvina, saying:
+
+"Vino buono. Vecchio! Vecchio!" nodding violently and indicating
+that she should drink. She looked at Ciccio, and he looked back at
+her, doubtingly.
+
+"Shall I drink some?" she said.
+
+"If you like," he replied, making an Italian gesture of
+indifference.
+
+So she drank some of the wine, and it dribbled on to her chin. She
+was not good at managing a bottle. But she liked the feeling of
+warmth it gave her. She was very tired.
+
+"Si piace? Piace?"
+
+"Do you like it," interpreted Ciccio.
+
+"Yes, very much. What is very much?" she asked of Ciccio.
+
+"Molto."
+
+"Si, molto. Of course, I knew molto, from, music," she added.
+
+The women made noises, and smiled and nodded, and so the train
+pulsed on till they came to Rome. There was again, the wild scramble
+with luggage, a general leave taking, and then the masses of people
+on the station at Rome. _Roma! Roma!_ What was it to Alvina but a
+name, and a crowded, excited station, and Ciccio running after the
+luggage, and the pair of them eating in a station restaurant?
+
+Almost immediately after eating, they were in the train once more,
+with new fellow travellers, running south this time towards Naples.
+In a daze of increasing weariness Alvina watched the dreary, to her
+sordid-seeming Campagna that skirts the railway, the broken aqueduct
+trailing in the near distance over the stricken plain. She saw a
+tram-car, far out from everywhere, running up to cross the railway.
+She saw it was going to Frascati.
+
+And slowly the hills approached--they passed the vines of the
+foothills, the reeds, and were among the mountains. Wonderful little
+towns perched fortified on rocks and peaks, mountains rose straight
+up off the level plain, like old topographical prints, rivers
+wandered in the wild, rocky places, it all seemed ancient and
+shaggy, savage still, under all its remote civilization, this region
+of the Alban Mountains south of Rome. So the train clambered up and
+down, and went round corners.
+
+They had not far to go now. Alvina was almost too tired to care what
+it would be like. They were going to Ciccio's native village. They
+were to stay in the house of his uncle, his mother's brother. This
+uncle had been a model in London. He had built a house on the land
+left by Ciccio's grandfather. He lived alone now, for his wife was
+dead and his children were abroad. Giuseppe was his son: Giuseppe of
+Battersea, in whose house Alvina had stayed.
+
+This much Alvina knew. She knew that a portion of the land down at
+Pescocalascio belonged to Ciccio: a bit of half-savage, ancient
+earth that had been left to his mother by old Francesco Califano,
+her hard-grinding peasant father. This land remained integral in the
+property, and was worked by Ciccio's two uncles, Pancrazio and
+Giovanni. Pancrazio was the well-to-do uncle, who had been a model
+and had built a "villa." Giovanni was not much good. That was how
+Ciccio put it.
+
+They expected Pancrazio to meet them at the station. Ciccio
+collected his bundles and put his hat straight and peered out of the
+window into the steep mountains of the afternoon. There was a town
+in the opening between steep hills, a town on a flat plain that ran
+into the mountains like a gulf. The train drew up. They had arrived.
+
+Alvina was so tired she could hardly climb down to the platform. It
+was about four o'clock. Ciccio looked up and down for Pancrazio, but
+could not see him. So he put his luggage into a pile on the
+platform, told Alvina to stand by it, whilst he went off for the
+registered boxes. A porter came and asked her questions, of which
+she understood nothing. Then at last came Ciccio, shouldering one
+small trunk, whilst a porter followed, shouldering another. Out they
+trotted, leaving Alvina abandoned with the pile of hand luggage. She
+waited. The train drew out. Ciccio and the porter came bustling
+back. They took her out through the little gate, to where, in the
+flat desert space behind the railway, stood two great drab
+motor-omnibuses, and a rank of open carriages. Ciccio was handing up
+the handbags to the roof of one of the big post-omnibuses. When it
+was finished the man on the roof came down, and Ciccio gave him and
+the station porter each sixpence. The station-porter immediately
+threw his coin on the ground with a gesture of indignant contempt,
+spread his arms wide and expostulated violently. Ciccio expostulated
+back again, and they pecked at each other, verbally, like two birds.
+It ended by the rolling up of the burly, black moustached driver of
+the omnibus. Whereupon Ciccio quite amicably gave the porter two
+nickel twopences in addition to the sixpence, whereupon the porter
+quite lovingly wished him "buon' viaggio."
+
+So Alvina was stowed into the body of the omnibus, with Ciccio at
+her side. They were no sooner seated than a voice was heard, in
+beautifully-modulated English:
+
+"You are here! Why how have I missed you?"
+
+It was Pancrazio, a smallish, rather battered-looking, shabby
+Italian of sixty or more, with a big moustache and reddish-rimmed
+eyes and a deeply-lined face. He was presented to Alvina.
+
+"How have I missed you?" he said. "I was on the station when the
+train came, and I did not see you."
+
+But it was evident he had taken wine. He had no further opportunity
+to talk. The compartment was full of large, mountain-peasants with
+black hats and big cloaks and overcoats. They found Pancrazio a seat
+at the far end, and there he sat, with his deeply-lined, impassive
+face and slightly glazed eyes. He had yellow-brown eyes like Ciccio.
+But in the uncle the eyelids dropped in a curious, heavy way, the
+eyes looked dull like those of some old, rakish tom-cat, they were
+slightly rimmed with red. A curious person! And his English, though
+slow, was beautifully pronounced. He glanced at Alvina with slow,
+impersonal glances, not at all a stare. And he sat for the most part
+impassive and abstract as a Red Indian.
+
+At the last moment a large black priest was crammed in, and the door
+shut behind him. Every available seat was let down and occupied. The
+second great post-omnibus rolled away, and then the one for Mola
+followed, rolling Alvina and Ciccio over the next stage of their
+journey.
+
+The sun was already slanting to the mountain tops, shadows were
+falling on the gulf of the plain. The omnibus charged at a great
+speed along a straight white road, which cut through the cultivated
+level straight towards the core of the mountain. By the road-side,
+peasant men in cloaks, peasant women in full-gathered dresses with
+white bodices or blouses having great full sleeves, tramped in the
+ridge of grass, driving cows or goats, or leading heavily-laden
+asses. The women had coloured kerchiefs on their heads, like the
+women Alvina remembered at the Sunday-School treats, who used to
+tell fortunes with green little love-birds. And they all tramped
+along towards the blue shadow of the closing-in mountains, leaving
+the peaks of the town behind on the left.
+
+At a branch-road the 'bus suddenly stopped, and there it sat calmly
+in the road beside an icy brook, in the falling twilight. Great
+moth-white oxen waved past, drawing a long, low load of wood; the
+peasants left behind began to come up again, in picturesque groups.
+The icy brook tinkled, goats, pigs and cows wandered and shook their
+bells along the grassy borders of the road and the flat, unbroken
+fields, being driven slowly home. Peasants jumped out of the omnibus
+on to the road, to chat--and a sharp air came in. High overhead, as
+the sun went down, was the curious icy radiance of snow mountains,
+and a pinkness, while shadow deepened in the valley.
+
+At last, after about half an hour, the youth who was conductor of
+the omnibus came running down the wild side-road, everybody
+clambered in, and away the vehicle charged, into the neck of the
+plain. With a growl and a rush it swooped up the first loop of the
+ascent. Great precipices rose on the right, the ruddiness of sunset
+above them. The road wound and swirled, trying to get up the pass.
+The omnibus pegged slowly up, then charged round a corner, swirled
+into another loop, and pegged heavily once more. It seemed dark
+between the closing-in mountains. The rocks rose very high, the
+road looped and swerved from one side of the wide defile to the
+other, the vehicle pulsed and persisted. Sometimes there was a
+house, sometimes a wood of oak-trees, sometimes the glimpse of a
+ravine, then the tall white glisten of snow above the earthly
+blackness. And still they went on and on, up the darkness.
+
+Peering ahead, Alvina thought she saw the hollow between the peaks,
+which was the top of the pass. And every time the omnibus took a new
+turn, she thought it was coming out on the top of this hollow
+between the heights. But no--the road coiled right away again.
+
+A wild little village came in sight. This was the destination. Again
+no. Only the tall, handsome mountain youth who had sat across from
+her, descended grumbling because the 'bus had brought him past his
+road, the driver having refused to pull up. Everybody expostulated
+with him, and he dropped into the shadow. The big priest squeezed
+into his place. The 'bus wound on and on, and always towards that
+hollow sky-line between the high peaks.
+
+At last they ran up between buildings nipped between high
+rock-faces, and out into a little market-place, the crown of the
+pass. The luggage was got out and lifted down. Alvina descended.
+There she was, in a wild centre of an old, unfinished little
+mountain town. The facade of a church rose from a small eminence. A
+white road ran to the right, where a great open valley showed
+faintly beyond and beneath. Low, squalid sort of buildings stood
+around--with some high buildings. And there were bare little trees.
+The stars were in the sky, the air was icy. People stood darkly,
+excitedly about, women with an odd, shell-pattern head-dress of
+gofered linen, something like a parlour-maid's cap, came and stared
+hard. They were hard-faced mountain women.
+
+Pancrazio was talking to Ciccio in dialect.
+
+"I couldn't get a cart to come down," he said in English. "But I
+shall find one here. Now what will you do? Put the luggage in
+Grazia's place while you wait?--"
+
+They went across the open place to a sort of shop called the Post
+Restaurant. It was a little hole with an earthen floor and a smell
+of cats. Three crones were sitting over a low brass brazier, in
+which charcoal and ashes smouldered. Men were drinking. Ciccio
+ordered coffee with rum--and the hard-faced Grazia, in her unfresh
+head-dress, dabbled the little dirty coffee-cups in dirty water,
+took the coffee-pot out of the ashes, poured in the old black
+boiling coffee three parts full, and slopped the cup over with rum.
+Then she dashed in a spoonful of sugar, to add to the pool in the
+saucer, and her customers were served.
+
+However, Ciccio drank up, so Alvina did likewise, burning her lips
+smartly. Ciccio paid and ducked his way out.
+
+"Now what will you buy?" asked Pancrazio.
+
+"Buy?" said Ciccio.
+
+"Food," said Pancrazio. "Have you brought food?"
+
+"No," said Ciccio.
+
+So they trailed up stony dark ways to a butcher, and got a big red
+slice of meat; to a baker, and got enormous flat loaves. Sugar and
+coffee they bought. And Pancrazio lamented in his elegant English
+that no butter was to be obtained. Everywhere the hard-faced women
+came and stared into Alvina's face, asking questions. And both
+Ciccio and Pancrazio answered rather coldly, with some _hauteur_.
+There was evidently not too much intimacy between the people of
+Pescocalascio and these semi-townfolk of Ossona. Alvina felt as if
+she were in a strange, hostile country, in the darkness of the
+savage little mountain town.
+
+At last they were ready. They mounted into a two-wheeled cart,
+Alvina and Ciccio behind, Pancrazio and the driver in front, the
+luggage promiscuous. The bigger things were left for the morrow. It
+was icy cold, with a flashing darkness. The moon would not rise till
+later.
+
+And so, without any light but that of the stars, the cart went
+spanking and rattling downhill, down the pale road which wound down
+the head of the valley to the gulf of darkness below. Down in the
+darkness into the darkness they rattled, wildly, and without heed,
+the young driver making strange noises to his dim horse, cracking a
+whip and asking endless questions of Pancrazio.
+
+Alvina sat close to Ciccio. He remained almost impassive. The wind
+was cold, the stars flashed. And they rattled down the rough, broad
+road under the rocks, down and down in the darkness. Ciccio sat
+crouching forwards, staring ahead. Alvina was aware of mountains,
+rocks, and stars.
+
+"I didn't know it was so _wild_!" she said.
+
+"It is not much," he said. There was a sad, plangent note in his
+voice. He put his hand upon her.
+
+"You don't like it?" he said.
+
+"I think it's lovely--wonderful," she said, dazed.
+
+He held her passionately. But she did not feel she needed
+protecting. It was all wonderful and amazing to her. She could not
+understand why he seemed upset and in a sort of despair. To her
+there was magnificence in the lustrous stars and the steepnesses,
+magic, rather terrible and grand.
+
+They came down to the level valley bed, and went rolling along.
+There was a house, and a lurid red fire burning outside against the
+wall, and dark figures about it.
+
+"What is that?" she said. "What are they doing?"
+
+"I don't know," said Ciccio. "Cosa fanno li--eh?"
+
+"Ka--? Fanno il buga'--" said the driver.
+
+"They are doing some washing," said Pancrazio, explanatory.
+
+"Washing!" said Alvina.
+
+"Boiling the clothes," said Ciccio.
+
+On the cart rattled and bumped, in the cold night, down the high-way
+in the valley. Alvina could make out the darkness of the slopes.
+Overhead she saw the brilliance of Orion. She felt she was quite,
+quite lost. She had gone out of the world, over the border, into
+some place of mystery. She was lost to Woodhouse, to Lancaster, to
+England--all lost.
+
+They passed through a darkness of woods, with a swift sound of cold
+water. And then suddenly the cart pulled up. Some one came out of a
+lighted doorway in the darkness.
+
+"We must get down here--the cart doesn't go any further," said
+Pancrazio.
+
+"Are we there?" said Alvina.
+
+"No, it is about a mile. But we must leave the cart."
+
+Ciccio asked questions in Italian. Alvina climbed down.
+
+"Good-evening! Are you cold?" came a loud, raucous, American-Italian
+female voice. It was another relation of Ciccio's. Alvina stared and
+looked at the handsome, sinister, raucous-voiced young woman who
+stood in the light of the doorway.
+
+"Rather cold," she said.
+
+"Come in, and warm yourself," said the young woman.
+
+"My sister's husband lives here," explained Pancrazio.
+
+Alvina went through the doorway into the room. It was a sort of
+inn. On the earthen floor glowed a great round pan of charcoal,
+which looked like a flat pool of fire. Men in hats and cloaks sat at
+a table playing cards by the light of a small lamp, a man was
+pouring wine. The room seemed like a cave.
+
+"Warm yourself," said the young woman, pointing to the flat disc of
+fire on the floor. She put a chair up to it, and Alvina sat down.
+The men in the room stared, but went on noisily with their cards.
+Ciccio came in with luggage. Men got up and greeted him effusively,
+watching Alvina between whiles as if she were some alien creature.
+Words of American sounded among the Italian dialect.
+
+There seemed to be a confab of some sort, aside. Ciccio came and
+said to her:
+
+"They want to know if we will stay the night here."
+
+"I would rather go on home," she said.
+
+He averted his face at the word home.
+
+"You see," said Pancrazio, "I think you might be more comfortable
+here, than in my poor house. You see I have no woman to care for
+it--"
+
+Alvina glanced round the cave of a room, at the rough fellows in
+their black hats. She was thinking how she would be "more
+comfortable" here.
+
+"I would rather go on," she said.
+
+"Then we will get the donkey," said Pancrazio stoically. And Alvina
+followed him out on to the high-road.
+
+From a shed issued a smallish, brigand-looking fellow carrying a
+lantern. He had his cloak over his nose and his hat over his eyes.
+His legs were bundled with white rag, crossed and crossed with hide
+straps, and he was shod in silent skin sandals.
+
+"This is my brother Giovanni," said Pancrazio. "He is not quite
+sensible." Then he broke into a loud flood of dialect.
+
+Giovanni touched his hat to Alvina, and gave the lantern to
+Pancrazio. Then he disappeared, returning in a few moments with the
+ass. Ciccio came out with the baggage, and by the light of the
+lantern the things were slung on either side of the ass, in a rather
+precarious heap. Pancrazio tested the rope again.
+
+"There! Go on, and I shall come in a minute."
+
+"Ay-er-er!" cried Giovanni at the ass, striking the flank of the
+beast. Then he took the leading rope and led up on the dark high-way,
+stalking with his dingy white legs under his muffled cloak, leading
+the ass. Alvina noticed the shuffle of his skin-sandalled feet, the
+quiet step of the ass.
+
+She walked with Ciccio near the side of the road. He carried the
+lantern. The ass with its load plodded a few steps ahead. There were
+trees on the road-side, and a small channel of invisible but noisy
+water. Big rocks jutted sometimes. It was freezing, the mountain
+high-road was congealed. High stars flashed overhead.
+
+"How strange it is!" said Alvina to Ciccio. "Are you glad you have
+come home?"
+
+"It isn't my home," he replied, as if the word fretted him. "Yes, I
+like to see it again. But it isn't the place for young people to
+live in. You will see how you like it."
+
+She wondered at his uneasiness. It was the same in Pancrazio. The
+latter now came running to catch them up.
+
+"I think you will be tired," he said. "You ought to have stayed at
+my relation's house down there."
+
+"No, I am not tired," said Alvina. "But I'm hungry."
+
+"Well, we shall eat something when we come to my house."
+
+They plodded in the darkness of the valley high-road. Pancrazio took
+the lantern and went to examine the load, hitching the ropes. A
+great flat loaf fell out, and rolled away, and smack came a little
+valise. Pancrazio broke into a flood of dialect to Giovanni, handing
+him the lantern. Ciccio picked up the bread and put it under his
+arm.
+
+"Break me a little piece," said Alvina.
+
+And in the darkness they both chewed bread.
+
+After a while, Pancrazio halted with the ass just ahead, and took
+the lantern from Giovanni.
+
+"We must leave the road here," he said.
+
+And with the lantern he carefully, courteously showed Alvina a small
+track descending in the side of the bank, between bushes. Alvina
+ventured down the steep descent, Pancrazio following showing a light.
+In the rear was Giovanni, making noises at the ass. They all picked
+their way down into the great white-bouldered bed of a mountain river.
+It was a wide, strange bed of dry boulders, pallid under the stars.
+There was a sound of a rushing river, glacial-sounding. The place
+seemed wild and desolate. In the distance was a darkness of bushes,
+along the far shore.
+
+Pancrazio swinging the lantern, they threaded their way through the
+uneven boulders till they came to the river itself--not very wide,
+but rushing fast. A long, slender, drooping plank crossed over.
+Alvina crossed rather tremulous, followed by Pancrazio with the
+light, and Ciccio with the bread and the valise. They could hear the
+click of the ass and the ejaculations of Giovanni.
+
+Pancrazio went back over the stream with the light. Alvina saw the
+dim ass come up, wander uneasily to the stream, plant his fore legs,
+and sniff the water, his nose right down.
+
+"Er! Err!" cried Pancrazio, striking the beast on the flank.
+
+But it only lifted its nose and turned aside. It would not take the
+stream. Pancrazio seized the leading rope angrily and turned
+upstream.
+
+"Why were donkeys made! They are beasts without sense," his voice
+floated angrily across the chill darkness.
+
+Ciccio laughed. He and Alvina stood in the wide, stony river-bed, in
+the strong starlight, watching the dim figures of the ass and the
+men crawl upstream with the lantern.
+
+Again the same performance, the white muzzle of the ass stooping
+down to sniff the water suspiciously, his hind-quarters tilted up
+with the load. Again the angry yells and blows from Pancrazio. And
+the ass seemed to be taking the water. But no! After a long
+deliberation he drew back. Angry language sounded through the
+crystal air. The group with the lantern moved again upstream,
+becoming smaller.
+
+Alvina and Ciccio stood and watched. The lantern looked small up the
+distance. But there--a clocking, shouting, splashing sound.
+
+"He is going over," said Ciccio.
+
+Pancrazio came hurrying back to the plank with the lantern.
+
+"Oh the stupid beast! I could kill him!" cried he.
+
+"Isn't he used to the water?" said Alvina.
+
+"Yes, he is. But he won't go except where he thinks he will go. You
+might kill him before he should go."
+
+They picked their way across the river bed, to the wild scrub and
+bushes of the farther side. There they waited for the ass, which
+came up clicking over the boulders, led by the patient Giovanni. And
+then they took a difficult, rocky track ascending between banks.
+Alvina felt the uneven scramble a great effort. But she got up.
+Again they waited for the ass. And then again they struck off to
+the right, under some trees.
+
+A house appeared dimly.
+
+"Is that it?" said Alvina.
+
+"No. It belongs to me. But that is not my house. A few steps
+further. Now we are on my land."
+
+They were treading a rough sort of grass-land--and still climbing.
+It ended in a sudden little scramble between big stones, and
+suddenly they were on the threshold of a quite important-looking
+house: but it was all dark.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Pancrazio, "they have done nothing that I told
+them." He made queer noises of exasperation.
+
+"What?" said Alvina.
+
+"Neither made a fire nor anything. Wait a minute--"
+
+The ass came up. Ciccio, Alvina, Giovanni and the ass waited in the
+frosty starlight under the wild house. Pancrazio disappeared round
+the back. Ciccio talked to Giovanni. He seemed uneasy, as if he felt
+depressed.
+
+Pancrazio returned with the lantern, and opened the big door. Alvina
+followed him into a stone-floored, wide passage, where stood farm
+implements, where a little of straw and beans lay in a corner, and
+whence rose bare wooden stairs. So much she saw in the glimpse of
+lantern-light, as Pancrazio pulled the string and entered the
+kitchen: a dim-walled room with a vaulted roof and a great dark,
+open hearth, fireless: a bare room, with a little rough dark
+furniture: an unswept stone floor: iron-barred windows, rather
+small, in the deep-thickness of the wall, one-half shut with a drab
+shutter. It was rather like a room on the stage, gloomy, not meant
+to be lived in.
+
+"I will make a light," said Pancrazio, taking a lamp from the
+mantel-piece, and proceeding to wind it up.
+
+Ciccio stood behind Alvina, silent. He had put down the bread and
+valise on a wooden chest. She turned to him.
+
+"It's a beautiful room," she said.
+
+Which, with its high, vaulted roof, its dirty whitewash, its great
+black chimney, it really was. But Ciccio did not understand. He
+smiled gloomily.
+
+The lamp was lighted. Alvina looked round in wonder.
+
+"Now I will make a fire. You, Ciccio, will help Giovanni with the
+donkey," said Pancrazio, scuttling with the lantern.
+
+Alvina looked at the room. There was a wooden settle in front of the
+hearth, stretching its back to the room. There was a little table
+under a square, recessed window, on whose sloping ledge were
+newspapers, scattered letters, nails and a hammer. On the table were
+dried beans and two maize cobs. In a corner were shelves, with two
+chipped enamel plates, and a small table underneath, on which stood
+a bucket of water with a dipper. Then there was a wooden chest, two
+little chairs, and a litter of faggots, cane, vine-twigs, bare
+maize-hubs, oak-twigs filling the corner by the hearth.
+
+Pancrazio came scrambling in with fresh faggots.
+
+"They have not done what I told them, the tiresome people!" he said.
+"I told them to make a fire and prepare the house. You will be
+uncomfortable in my poor home. I have no woman, nothing, everything
+is wrong--"
+
+He broke the pieces of cane and kindled them in the hearth. Soon
+there was a good blaze. Ciccio came in with the bags and the food.
+
+"I had better go upstairs and take my things off," said Alvina. "I
+am so hungry."
+
+"You had better keep your coat on," said Pancrazio. "The room is
+cold." Which it was, ice-cold. She shuddered a little. She took off
+her hat and fur.
+
+"Shall we fry some meat?" said Pancrazio.
+
+He took a frying-pan, found lard in the wooden chest--it was the
+food-chest--and proceeded to fry pieces of meat in a frying-pan over
+the fire. Alvina wanted to lay the table. But there was no cloth.
+
+"We will sit here, as I do, to eat," said Pancrazio. He produced two
+enamel plates and one soup-plate, three penny iron forks and two old
+knives, and a little grey, coarse salt in a wooden bowl. These he
+placed on the seat of the settle in front of the fire. Ciccio was
+silent.
+
+The settle was dark and greasy. Alvina feared for her clothes. But
+she sat with her enamel plate and her impossible fork, a piece of
+meat and a chunk of bread, and ate. It was difficult--but the food
+was good, and the fire blazed. Only there was a film of wood-smoke
+in the room, rather smarting. Ciccio sat on the settle beside her,
+and ate in large mouthfuls.
+
+"I think it's fun," said Alvina.
+
+He looked at her with dark, haunted, gloomy eyes. She wondered what
+was the matter with him.
+
+"Don't you think it's fun?" she said, smiling.
+
+He smiled slowly.
+
+"You won't like it," he said.
+
+"Why not?" she cried, in panic lest he prophesied truly.
+
+Pancrazio scuttled in and out with the lantern. He brought wrinkled
+pears, and green, round grapes, and walnuts, on a white cloth, and
+presented them.
+
+"I think my pears are still good," he said. "You must eat them, and
+excuse my uncomfortable house."
+
+Giovanni came in with a big bowl of soup and a bottle of milk. There
+was room only for three on the settle before the hearth. He pushed
+his chair among the litter of fire-kindling, and sat down. He had
+bright, bluish eyes, and a fattish face--was a man of about fifty,
+but had a simple, kindly, slightly imbecile face. All the men kept
+their hats on.
+
+The soup was from Giovanni's cottage. It was for Pancrazio and him.
+But there was only one spoon. So Pancrazio ate a dozen spoonfuls,
+and handed the bowl to Giovanni--who protested and tried to
+refuse--but accepted, and ate ten spoonfuls, then handed the bowl
+back to his brother, with the spoon. So they finished the bowl
+between them. Then Pancrazio found wine--a whitish wine, not very
+good, for which he apologized. And he invited Alvina to coffee.
+Which she accepted gladly.
+
+For though the fire was warm in front, behind was very cold.
+Pancrazio stuck a long pointed stick down the handle of a saucepan,
+and gave this utensil to Ciccio, to hold over the fire and scald the
+milk, whilst he put the tin coffee-pot in the ashes. He took a long
+iron tube or blow-pipe, which rested on two little feet at the far
+end. This he gave to Giovanni to blow the fire.
+
+Giovanni was a fire-worshipper. His eyes sparkled as he took the
+blowing tube. He put fresh faggots behind the fire--though Pancrazio
+forbade him. He arranged the burning faggots. And then softly he
+blew a red-hot fire for the coffee.
+
+"Basta! Basta!" said Ciccio. But Giovanni blew on, his eyes
+sparkling, looking to Alvina. He was making the fire beautiful for
+her.
+
+There was one cup, one enamelled mug, one little bowl. This was the
+coffee-service. Pancrazio noisily ground the coffee. He seemed to do
+everything, old, stooping as he was.
+
+At last Giovanni took his leave--the kettle which hung on the hook
+over the fire was boiling over. Ciccio burnt his hand lifting it
+off. And at last, at last Alvina could go to bed.
+
+Pancrazio went first with the candle--then Ciccio with the black
+kettle--then Alvina. The men still had their hats on. Their boots
+tramped noisily on the bare stairs.
+
+The bedroom was very cold. It was a fair-sized room with a concrete
+floor and white walls, and window-door opening on a little balcony.
+There were two high white beds on opposite sides of the room. The
+wash-stand was a little tripod thing.
+
+The air was very cold, freezing, the stone floor was dead cold to
+the feet. Ciccio sat down on a chair and began to take off his
+boots. She went to the window. The moon had risen. There was a flood
+of light on dazzling white snow tops, glimmering and marvellous in
+the evanescent night. She went out for a moment on to the balcony.
+It was a wonder-world: the moon over the snow heights, the pallid
+valley-bed away below; the river hoarse, and round about her,
+scrubby, blue-dark foothills with twiggy trees. Magical it all
+was--but so cold.
+
+"You had better shut the door," said Ciccio.
+
+She came indoors. She was dead tired, and stunned with cold, and
+hopelessly dirty after that journey. Ciccio had gone to bed without
+washing.
+
+"Why does the bed rustle?" she asked him.
+
+It was stuffed with dry maize-leaves, the dry sheathes from the
+cobs--stuffed enormously high. He rustled like a snake among dead
+foliage.
+
+Alvina washed her hands. There was nothing to do with the water but
+throw it out of the door. Then she washed her face, thoroughly, in
+good hot water. What a blessed relief! She sighed as she dried
+herself.
+
+"It does one good!" she sighed.
+
+Ciccio watched her as she quickly brushed her hair. She was almost
+stupefied with weariness and the cold, bruising air. Blindly she
+crept into the high, rustling bed. But it was made high in the
+middle. And it was icy cold. It shocked her almost as if she had
+fallen into water. She shuddered, and became semi-conscious with
+fatigue. The blankets were heavy, heavy. She was dazed with
+excitement and wonder. She felt vaguely that Ciccio was miserable,
+and wondered why.
+
+She woke with a start an hour or so later. The moon was in the room.
+She did not know where she was. And she was frightened. And she was
+cold. A real terror took hold of her. Ciccio in his bed was quite
+still. Everything seemed electric with horror. She felt she would
+die instantly, everything was so terrible around her. She could not
+move. She felt that everything around her was horrific,
+extinguishing her, putting her out. Her very being was threatened.
+In another instant she would be transfixed.
+
+Making a violent effort she sat up. The silence of Ciccio in his bed
+was as horrible as the rest of the night. She had a horror of him
+also. What would she do, where should she flee? She was
+lost--lost--lost utterly.
+
+The knowledge sank into her like ice. Then deliberately she got out
+of bed and went across to him. He was horrible and frightening, but
+he was warm. She felt his power and his warmth invade her and
+extinguish her. The mad and desperate passion that was in him sent
+her completely unconscious again, completely unconscious.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO
+
+
+There is no mistake about it, Alvina was a lost girl. She was cut
+off from everything she belonged to. Ovid isolated in Thrace might
+well lament. The soul itself needs its own mysterious nourishment.
+This nourishment lacking, nothing is well.
+
+At Pescocalascio it was the mysterious influence of the mountains
+and valleys themselves which seemed always to be annihilating the
+Englishwoman: nay, not only her, but the very natives themselves.
+Ciccio and Pancrazio clung to her, essentially, as if she saved them
+also from extinction. It needed all her courage. Truly, she had to
+support the souls of the two men.
+
+At first she did not realize. She was only stunned with the
+strangeness of it all: startled, half-enraptured with the terrific
+beauty of the place, half-horrified by its savage annihilation of
+her. But she was stunned. The days went by.
+
+It seems there are places which resist us, which have the power to
+overthrow our psychic being. It seems as if every country has its
+potent negative centres, localities which savagely and triumphantly
+refuse our living culture. And Alvina had struck one of them, here
+on the edge of the Abruzzi.
+
+She was not in the village of Pescocalascio itself. That was a long
+hour's walk away. Pancrazio's house was the chief of a tiny hamlet
+of three houses, called Califano because the Califanos had made it.
+There was the ancient, savage hole of a house, quite windowless,
+where Pancrazio and Ciccio's mother had been born: the family home.
+Then there was Pancrazio's villa. And then, a little below, another
+newish, modern house in a sort of wild meadow, inhabited by the
+peasants who worked the land. Ten minutes' walk away was another
+cluster of seven or eight houses, where Giovanni lived. But there
+was no shop, no post nearer than Pescocalascio, an hour's heavy
+road up deep and rocky, wearying tracks.
+
+And yet, what could be more lovely than the sunny days: pure, hot,
+blue days among the mountain foothills: irregular, steep little
+hills half wild with twiggy brown oak-trees and marshes and broom
+heaths, half cultivated, in a wild, scattered fashion. Lovely, in
+the lost hollows beyond a marsh, to see Ciccio slowly ploughing with
+two great white oxen: lovely to go with Pancrazio down to the wild
+scrub that bordered the river-bed, then over the white-bouldered,
+massive desert and across stream to the other scrubby savage shore,
+and so up to the high-road. Pancrazio was very happy if Alvina would
+accompany him. He liked it that she was not afraid. And her sense of
+the beauty of the place was an infinite relief to him.
+
+Nothing could have been more marvellous than the winter twilight.
+Sometimes Alvina and Pancrazio were late returning with the ass. And
+then gingerly the ass would step down the steep banks, already
+beginning to freeze when the sun went down. And again and again he
+would balk the stream, while a violet-blue dusk descended on the
+white, wide stream-bed, and the scrub and lower hills became dark,
+and in heaven, oh, almost unbearably lovely, the snow of the near
+mountains was burning rose, against the dark-blue heavens. How
+unspeakably lovely it was, no one could ever tell, the grand, pagan
+twilight of the valleys, savage, cold, with a sense of ancient gods
+who knew the right for human sacrifice. It stole away the soul of
+Alvina. She felt transfigured in it, clairvoyant in another mystery
+of life. A savage hardness came in her heart. The gods who had
+demanded human sacrifice were quite right, immutably right. The
+fierce, savage gods who dipped their lips in blood, these were the
+true gods.
+
+The terror, the agony, the nostalgia of the heathen past was a
+constant torture to her mediumistic soul. She did not know what it
+was. But it was a kind of neuralgia in the very soul, never to be
+located in the human body, and yet physical. Coming over the brow of
+a heathy, rocky hillock, and seeing Ciccio beyond leaning deep over
+the plough, in his white shirt-sleeves following the slow, waving,
+moth-pale oxen across a small track of land turned up in the heathen
+hollow, her soul would go all faint, she would almost swoon with
+realization of the world that had gone before. And Ciccio was so
+silent, there seemed so much dumb magic and anguish in him, as if he
+were for ever afraid of himself and the thing he was. He seemed, in
+his silence, to _concentrate_ upon her so terribly. She believed she
+would not live.
+
+Sometimes she would go gathering acorns, large, fine acorns, a
+precious crop in that land where the fat pig was almost an object of
+veneration. Silently she would crouch filling the pannier. And far
+off she would hear the sound of Giovanni chopping wood, of Ciccio
+calling to the oxen or Pancrazio making noises to the ass, or the
+sound of a peasant's mattock. Over all the constant speech of the
+passing river, and the real breathing presence of the upper snows.
+And a wild, terrible happiness would take hold of her, beyond
+despair, but very like despair. No one would ever find her. She had
+gone beyond the world into the pre-world, she had reopened on the
+old eternity.
+
+And then Maria, the little elvish old wife of Giovanni, would come
+up with the cows. One cow she held by a rope round its horns, and
+she hauled it from the patches of young corn into the rough grass,
+from the little plantation of trees in among the heath. Maria wore
+the full-pleated white-sleeved dress of the peasants, and a red
+kerchief on her head. But her dress was dirty, and her face was
+dirty, and the big gold rings of her ears hung from ears which
+perhaps had never been washed. She was rather smoke-dried too, from
+perpetual wood-smoke.
+
+Maria in her red kerchief hauling the white cow, and screaming at
+it, would come laughing towards Alvina, who was rather afraid of
+cows. And then, screaming high in dialect, Maria would talk to her.
+Alvina smiled and tried to understand. Impossible. It was not
+strictly a human speech. It was rather like the crying of
+half-articulate animals. It certainly was not Italian. And yet
+Alvina by dint of constant hearing began to pick up the coagulated
+phrases.
+
+She liked Maria. She liked them all. They were all very kind to her,
+as far as they knew. But they did not know. And they were kind with
+each other. For they all seemed lost, like lost, forlorn aborigines,
+and they treated Alvina as if she were a higher being. They loved
+her that she would strip maize-cobs or pick acorns. But they were
+all anxious to serve her. And it seemed as if they needed some one
+to serve. It seemed as if Alvina, the Englishwoman, had a certain
+magic glamour for them, and so long as she was happy, it was a
+supreme joy and relief to them to have her there. But it seemed to
+her she would not live.
+
+And when she was unhappy! Ah, the dreadful days of cold rain mingled
+with sleet, when the world outside was more than impossible, and the
+house inside was a horror. The natives kept themselves alive by
+going about constantly working, dumb and elemental. But what was
+Alvina to do?
+
+For the house was unspeakable. The only two habitable rooms were the
+kitchen and Alvina's bedroom: and the kitchen, with its little
+grated windows high up in the wall, one of which had a broken pane
+and must keep one-half of its shutters closed, was like a dark
+cavern vaulted and bitter with wood-smoke. Seated on the settle
+before the fire, the hard, greasy settle, Alvina could indeed keep
+the fire going, with faggots of green oak. But the smoke hurt her
+chest, she was not clean for one moment, and she could do nothing
+else. The bedroom again was just impossibly cold. And there was no
+other place. And from far away came the wild braying of an ass,
+primeval and desperate in the snow.
+
+The house was quite large; but uninhabitable. Downstairs, on the
+left of the wide passage where the ass occasionally stood out of the
+weather, and where the chickens wandered in search of treasure, was
+a big, long apartment where Pancrazio kept implements and tools and
+potatoes and pumpkins, and where four or five rabbits hopped
+unexpectedly out of the shadows. Opposite this, on the right, was
+the cantina, a dark place with wine-barrels and more agricultural
+stores. This was the whole of the downstairs.
+
+Going upstairs, half way up, at the turn of the stairs was the
+opening of a sort of barn, a great wire-netting behind which showed
+a glow of orange maize-cobs and some wheat. Upstairs were four
+rooms. But Alvina's room alone was furnished. Pancrazio slept in the
+unfurnished bedroom opposite, on a pile of old clothes. Beyond was a
+room with litter in it, a chest of drawers, and rubbish of old books
+and photographs Pancrazio had brought from England. There was a
+battered photograph of Lord Leighton, among others. The fourth room,
+approached through the corn-chamber, was always locked.
+
+Outside was just as hopeless. There had been a little garden within
+the stone enclosure. But fowls, geese, and the ass had made an end
+of this. Fowl-droppings were everywhere, indoors and out, the ass
+left his pile of droppings to steam in the winter air on the
+threshold, while his heartrending bray rent the air. Roads there
+were none: only deep tracks, like profound ruts with rocks in them,
+in the hollows, and rocky, grooved tracks over the brows. The hollow
+grooves were full of mud and water, and one struggled slipperily
+from rock to rock, or along narrow grass-ledges.
+
+What was to be done, then, on mornings that were dark with sleet?
+Pancrazio would bring a kettle of hot water at about half-past
+eight. For had he not travelled Europe with English gentlemen, as a
+sort of model-valet! Had he not _loved_ his English gentlemen? Even
+now, he was infinitely happier performing these little attentions
+for Alvina than attending to his wretched domains.
+
+Ciccio rose early, and went about in the hap-hazard, useless way of
+Italians all day long, getting nothing done. Alvina came out of the
+icy bedroom to the black kitchen. Pancrazio would be gallantly
+heating milk for her, at the end of a long stick. So she would sit
+on the settle and drink her coffee and milk, into which she dipped
+her dry bread. Then the day was before her.
+
+She washed her cup and her enamelled plate, and she tried to clean
+the kitchen. But Pancrazio had on the fire a great black pot,
+dangling from the chain. He was boiling food for the eternal
+pig--the only creature for which any cooking was done. Ciccio was
+tramping in with faggots. Pancrazio went in and out, back and forth
+from his pot.
+
+Alvina stroked her brow and decided on a method. Once she was rid of
+Pancrazio, she would wash every cup and plate and utensil in boiling
+water. Well, at last Pancrazio went off with his great black pan,
+and she set to. But there were not six pieces of crockery in the
+house, and not more than six cooking utensils. These were soon
+scrubbed. Then she scrubbed the two little tables and the shelves.
+She lined the food-chest with clean paper. She washed the high
+window-ledges and the narrow mantel-piece, that had large mounds of
+dusty candle-wax, in deposits. Then she tackled the settle. She
+scrubbed it also. Then she looked at the floor. And even she,
+English housewife as she was, realized the futility of trying to
+wash it. As well try to wash the earth itself outside. It was just a
+piece of stone-laid earth. She swept it as well as she could, and
+made a little order in the faggot-heap in the corner. Then she
+washed the little, high-up windows, to try and let in light.
+
+And what was the difference? A dank wet soapy smell, and not much
+more. Maria had kept scuffling admiringly in and out, crying her
+wonderment and approval. She had most ostentatiously chased out an
+obtrusive hen, from this temple of cleanliness. And that was all.
+
+It was hopeless. The same black walls, the same floor, the same cold
+from behind, the same green-oak wood-smoke, the same bucket of water
+from the well--the same come-and-go of aimless busy men, the same
+cackle of wet hens, the same hopeless nothingness.
+
+Alvina stood up against it for a time. And then she caught a bad
+cold, and was wretched. Probably it was the wood-smoke. But her
+chest was raw, she felt weak and miserable. She could not sit in her
+bedroom, for it was too cold. If she sat in the darkness of the
+kitchen she was hurt with smoke, and perpetually cold behind her
+neck. And Pancrazio rather resented the amount of faggots consumed
+for nothing. The only hope would have been in work. But there was
+nothing in that house to be done. How could she even sew?
+
+She was to prepare the mid-day and evening meals. But with no pots,
+and over a smoking wood fire, what could she prepare? Black and
+greasy, she boiled potatoes and fried meat in lard, in a
+long-handled frying pan. Then Pancrazio decreed that Maria should
+prepare macaroni with the tomato sauce, and thick vegetable soup,
+and sometimes polenta. This coarse, heavy food was wearying beyond
+words.
+
+Alvina began to feel she would die, in the awful comfortless
+meaninglessness of it all. True, sunny days returned and some magic.
+But she was weak and feverish with her cold, which would not get
+better. So that even in the sunshine the crude comfortlessness and
+inferior savagery of the place only repelled her.
+
+The others were depressed when she was unhappy.
+
+"Do you wish you were back in England?" Ciccio asked her, with a
+little sardonic bitterness in his voice. She looked at him without
+answering. He ducked and went away.
+
+"We will make a fire-place in the other bedroom," said Pancrazio.
+
+No sooner said than done. Ciccio persuaded Alvina to stay in bed a
+few days. She was thankful to take refuge. Then she heard a rare
+come-and-go. Pancrazio, Ciccio, Giovanni, Maria and a mason all set
+about the fire-place. Up and down stairs they went, Maria carrying
+stone and lime on her head, and swerving in Alvina's doorway, with
+her burden perched aloft, to shout a few unintelligible words. In
+the intervals of lime-carrying she brought the invalid her soup or
+her coffee or her hot milk.
+
+It turned out quite a good job--a pleasant room with two windows,
+that would have all the sun in the afternoon, and would see the
+mountains on one hand, the far-off village perched up on the other.
+When she was well enough they set off one early Monday morning to
+the market in Ossona. They left the house by starlight, but dawn
+was coming by the time they reached the river. At the high-road,
+Pancrazio harnessed the ass, and after endless delay they jogged off
+to Ossona. The dawning mountains were wonderful, dim-green and mauve
+and rose, the ground rang with frost. Along the roads many peasants
+were trooping to market, women in their best dresses, some of thick
+heavy silk with the white, full-sleeved bodices, dresses green,
+lavender, dark-red, with gay kerchiefs on the head: men muffled in
+cloaks, treading silently in their pointed skin sandals: asses with
+loads, carts full of peasants, a belated cow.
+
+The market was lovely, there in the crown of the pass, in the old
+town, on the frosty sunny morning. Bulls, cows, sheep, pigs, goats
+stood and lay about under the bare little trees on the platform high
+over the valley: some one had kindled a great fire of brush-wood,
+and men crowded round, out of the blue frost. From laden asses
+vegetables were unloaded, from little carts all kinds of things,
+boots, pots, tin-ware, hats, sweet-things, and heaps of corn and
+beans and seeds. By eight o'clock in the December morning the market
+was in full swing: a great crowd of handsome mountain people, all
+peasants, nearly all in costume, with different head-dresses.
+
+Ciccio and Pancrazio and Alvina went quietly about. They bought pots
+and pans and vegetables and sweet-things and thick rush matting and
+two wooden arm-chairs and one old soft arm-chair, going quietly and
+bargaining modestly among the crowd, as Anglicized Italians do.
+
+The sun came on to the market at about nine o'clock, and then, from
+the terrace of the town gate, Alvina looked down on the wonderful
+sight of all the coloured dresses of the peasant women, the black
+hats of the men, the heaps of goods, the squealing pigs, the pale
+lovely cattle, the many tethered asses--and she wondered if she
+would die before she became one with it altogether. It was
+impossible for her to become one with it altogether. Ciccio would
+have to take her to England again, or to America. He was always
+hinting at America.
+
+But then, Italy might enter the war. Even here it was the great
+theme of conversation. She looked down on the seethe of the market.
+The sun was warm on her. Ciccio and Pancrazio were bargaining for
+two cowskin rugs: she saw Ciccio standing with his head rather
+forward. Her husband! She felt her heart die away within her.
+
+All those other peasant women, did they feel as she did?--the same
+sort of acquiescent passion, the same lapse of life? She believed
+they did. The same helpless passion for the man, the same remoteness
+from the world's actuality? Probably, under all their tension of
+money and money-grubbing and vindictive mountain morality and rather
+horrible religion, probably they felt the same. She was one with
+them. But she could never endure it for a life-time. It was only a
+test on her. Ciccio must take her to America, or England--to America
+preferably.
+
+And even as he turned to look for her, she felt a strange thrilling
+in her bowels: a sort of trill strangely within her, yet extraneous
+to her. She caught her hand to her flank. And Ciccio was looking up
+for her from the market beneath, searching with that quick, hasty
+look. He caught sight of her. She seemed to glow with a delicate
+light for him, there beyond all the women. He came straight towards
+her, smiling his slow, enigmatic smile. He could not bear it if he
+lost her. She knew how he loved her--almost inhumanly, elementally,
+without communication. And she stood with her hand to her side, her
+face frightened. She hardly noticed him. It seemed to her she was
+with child. And yet in the whole market-place she was aware of
+nothing but him.
+
+"We have bought the skins," he said. "Twenty-seven lire each."
+
+She looked at him, his dark skin, his golden eyes--so near to her,
+so unified with her, yet so incommunicably remote. How far off was
+his being from hers!
+
+"I believe I'm going to have a child," she said.
+
+"Eh?" he ejaculated quickly. But he had understood. His eyes shone
+weirdly on her. She felt the strange terror and loveliness of his
+passion. And she wished she could lie down there by that town gate,
+in the sun, and swoon for ever unconscious. Living was almost too
+great a demand on her. His yellow, luminous eyes watched her and
+enveloped her. There was nothing for her but to yield, yield, yield.
+And yet she could not sink to earth.
+
+She saw Pancrazio carrying the skins to the little cart, which was
+tilted up under a small, pale-stemmed tree on the platform above the
+valley. Then she saw him making his way quickly back through the
+crowd, to rejoin them.
+
+"Did you feel something?" said Ciccio.
+
+"Yes--here--!" she said, pressing her hand on her side as the
+sensation trilled once more upon her consciousness. She looked at
+him with remote, frightened eyes.
+
+"That's good--" he said, his eyes full of a triumphant,
+incommunicable meaning.
+
+"Well!--And now," said Pancrazio, coming up, "shall we go and eat
+something?"
+
+They jogged home in the little flat cart in the wintry afternoon. It
+was almost night before they had got the ass untackled from the
+shafts, at the wild lonely house where Pancrazio left the cart.
+Giovanni was there with the lantern. Ciccio went on ahead with
+Alvina, whilst the others stood to load up the ass by the high-way.
+
+Ciccio watched Alvina carefully. When they were over the river, and
+among the dark scrub, he took her in his arms and kissed her with
+long, terrible passion. She saw the snow-ridges flare with evening,
+beyond his cheek. They had glowed dawn as she crossed the river
+outwards, they were white-fiery now in the dusk sky as she returned.
+What strange valley of shadow was she threading? What was the
+terrible man's passion that haunted her like a dark angel? Why was
+she so much beyond herself?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+SUSPENSE
+
+
+Christmas was at hand. There was a heap of maize cobs still
+unstripped. Alvina sat with Ciccio stripping them, in the
+corn-place.
+
+"Will you be able to stop here till the baby is born?" he asked her.
+
+She watched the films of the leaves come off from the burning gold
+maize cob under his fingers, the long, ruddy cone of fruition. The
+heap of maize on one side burned like hot sunshine, she felt it
+really gave off warmth, it glowed, it burned. On the other side the
+filmy, crackly, sere sheaths were also faintly sunny. Again and
+again the long, red-gold, full ear of corn came clear in his hands,
+and was put gently aside. He looked up at her, with his yellow eyes.
+
+"Yes, I think so," she said. "Will you?"
+
+"Yes, if they let me. I should like it to be born here."
+
+"Would you like to bring up a child here?" she asked.
+
+"You wouldn't be happy here, so long," he said, sadly.
+
+"Would you?"
+
+He slowly shook his head: indefinite.
+
+She was settling down. She had her room upstairs, her cups and
+plates and spoons, her own things. Pancrazio had gone back to his
+old habit, he went across and ate with Giovanni and Maria, Ciccio
+and Alvina had their meals in their pleasant room upstairs. They
+were happy alone. Only sometimes the terrible influence of the place
+preyed on her.
+
+However, she had a clean room of her own, where she could sew and
+read. She had written to the matron and Mrs. Tuke, and Mrs. Tuke had
+sent books. Also she helped Ciccio when she could, and Maria was
+teaching her to spin the white sheep's wool into coarse thread.
+
+This morning Pancrazio and Giovanni had gone off somewhere, Alvina
+and Ciccio were alone on the place, stripping the last maize.
+Suddenly, in the grey morning air, a wild music burst out: the
+drone of a bagpipe, and a man's high voice half singing, half
+yelling a brief verse, at the end of which a wild flourish on some
+other reedy wood instrument. Alvina sat still in surprise. It was a
+strange, high, rapid, yelling music, the very voice of the
+mountains. Beautiful, in our musical sense of the word, it was not.
+But oh, the magic, the nostalgia of the untamed, heathen past which
+it evoked.
+
+"It is for Christmas," said Ciccio. "They will come every day now."
+
+Alvina rose and went round to the little balcony. Two men stood
+below, amid the crumbling of finely falling snow. One, the elder,
+had a bagpipe whose bag was patched with shirting: the younger was
+dressed in greenish clothes, he had his face lifted, and was yelling
+the verses of the unintelligible Christmas ballad: short, rapid
+verses, followed by a brilliant flourish on a short wooden pipe he
+held ready in his hand. Alvina felt he was going to be out of
+breath. But no, rapid and high came the next verse, verse after
+verse, with the wild scream on the little new pipe in between, over
+the roar of the bagpipe. And the crumbs of snow were like a speckled
+veil, faintly drifting the atmosphere and powdering the littered
+threshold where they stood--a threshold littered with faggots,
+leaves, straw, fowls and geese and ass droppings, and rag thrown out
+from the house, and pieces of paper.
+
+The carol suddenly ended, the young man snatched off his hat to
+Alvina who stood above, and in the same breath he was gone, followed
+by the bagpipe. Alvina saw them dropping hurriedly down the incline
+between the twiggy wild oaks.
+
+"They will come every day now, till Christmas," said Ciccio. "They
+go to every house."
+
+And sure enough, when Alvina went down, in the cold, silent house,
+and out to the well in the still crumbling snow, she heard the sound
+far off, strange, yelling, wonderful: and the same ache for she knew
+not what overcame her, so that she felt one might go mad, there in
+the veiled silence of these mountains, in the great hilly valley cut
+off from the world.
+
+Ciccio worked all day on the land or round about. He was building a
+little earth closet also: the obvious and unscreened place outside
+was impossible. It was curious how little he went to Pescocalascio,
+how little he mixed with the natives. He seemed always to withhold
+something from them. Only with his relatives, of whom he had many,
+he was more free, in a kind of family intimacy.
+
+Yet even here he was guarded. His uncle at the mill, an unwashed,
+fat man with a wife who tinkled with gold and grime, and who shouted
+a few lost words of American, insisted on giving Alvina wine and a
+sort of cake made with cheese and rice. Ciccio too was feasted, in
+the dark hole of a room. And the two natives seemed to press their
+cheer on Alvina and Ciccio whole-heartedly.
+
+"How nice they are!" said Alvina when she had left. "They give so
+freely."
+
+But Ciccio smiled a wry smile, silent.
+
+"Why do you make a face?" she said.
+
+"It's because you are a foreigner, and they think you will go away
+again," he said.
+
+"But I should have thought that would make them less generous," she
+said.
+
+"No. They like to give to foreigners. They don't like to give to the
+people here. Giocomo puts water in the wine which he sells to the
+people who go by. And if I leave the donkey in her shed, I give
+Marta Maria something, or the next time she won't let me have it.
+Ha, they are--they are sly ones, the people here."
+
+"They are like that everywhere," said Alvina.
+
+"Yes. But nowhere they say so many bad things about people as
+here--nowhere where I have ever been."
+
+It was strange to Alvina to feel the deep-bed-rock distrust which
+all the hill-peasants seemed to have of one another. They were
+watchful, venomous, dangerous.
+
+"Ah," said Pancrazio, "I am glad there is a woman in my house once
+more."
+
+"But did _nobody_ come in and do for you before?" asked Alvina. "Why
+didn't you pay somebody?"
+
+"Nobody will come," said Pancrazio, in his slow, aristocratic
+English. "Nobody will come, because I am a man, and if somebody
+should see her at my house, they will all talk."
+
+"Talk!" Alvina looked at the deeply-lined man of sixty-six, "But
+what will they say?"
+
+"Many bad things. Many bad things indeed. They are not good people
+here. All saying bad things, and all jealous. They don't like me
+because I have a house--they think I am too much a _signore_. They
+say to me 'Why do you think you are a signore?' Oh, they are bad
+people, envious, you cannot have anything to do with them."
+
+"They are nice to me," said Alvina.
+
+"They think you will go away. But if you stay, they will say bad
+things. You must wait. Oh, they are evil people, evil against one
+another, against everybody but strangers who don't know them--"
+
+Alvina felt the curious passion in Pancrazio's voice, the passion of a
+man who has lived for many years in England and known the social
+confidence of England, and who, coming back, is deeply injured by the
+ancient malevolence of the remote, somewhat gloomy hill-peasantry. She
+understood also why he was so glad to have her in his house, so proud,
+why he loved serving her. She seemed to see a fairness, a luminousness
+in the northern soul, something free, touched with divinity such as
+"these people here" lacked entirely.
+
+When she went to Ossona with him, she knew everybody questioned him
+about her and Ciccio. She began to get the drift of the
+questions--which Pancrazio answered with reserve.
+
+"And how long are they staying?"
+
+This was an invariable, envious question. And invariably Pancrazio
+answered with a reserved--
+
+"Some months. As long as _they_ like."
+
+And Alvina could feel waves of black envy go out against Pancrazio,
+because she was domiciled with him, and because she sat with him in
+the flat cart, driving to Ossona.
+
+Yet Pancrazio himself was a study. He was thin, and very shabby, and
+rather out of shape. Only in his yellow eyes lurked a strange
+sardonic fire, and a leer which puzzled her. When Ciccio happened to
+be out in the evening he would sit with her and tell her stories of
+Lord Leighton and Millais and Alma Tadema and other academicians
+dead and living. There would sometimes be a strange passivity on his
+worn face, an impassive, almost Red Indian look. And then again he
+would stir into a curious, arch, malevolent laugh, for all the world
+like a debauched old tom-cat. His narration was like this: either
+simple, bare, stoical, with a touch of nobility; or else satiric,
+malicious, with a strange, rather repellent jeering.
+
+"Leighton--he wasn't Lord Leighton then--he wouldn't have me to sit
+for him, because my figure was too poor, he didn't like it. He liked
+fair young men, with plenty of flesh. But once, when he was doing a
+picture--I don't know if you know it? It is a crucifixion, with a
+man on a cross, and--" He described the picture. "No! Well, the
+model had to be tied hanging on to a wooden cross. And it made you
+suffer! Ah!" Here the odd, arch, diabolic yellow flare lit up
+through the stoicism of Pancrazio's eyes. "Because Leighton, he was
+cruel to his model. He wouldn't let you rest. 'Damn you, you've got
+to keep still till I've finished with you, you devil,' so he said.
+Well, for this man on the cross, he couldn't get a model who would
+do it for him. They all tried it once, but they would not go again.
+So they said to him, he must try Califano, because Califano was the
+only man who would stand it. At last then he sent for me. 'I don't
+like your damned figure, Califano,' he said to me, 'but nobody will
+do this if you won't. Now will you do it? 'Yes!' I said, 'I will.'
+So he tied me up on the cross. And he paid me well, so I stood it.
+Well, he kept me tied up, hanging you know forwards naked on this
+cross, for four hours. And then it was luncheon. And after luncheon
+he would tie me again. Well, I suffered. I suffered so much, that I
+must lean against the wall to support me to walk home. And in the
+night I could not sleep, I could cry with the pains in my arms and
+my ribs, I had no sleep. 'You've said you'd do it, so now you must,'
+he said to me. 'And I will do it,' I said. And so he tied me up.
+This cross, you know, was on a little raised place--I don't know
+what you call it--"
+
+"A platform," suggested Alvina.
+
+"A platform. Now one day when he came to do something to me, when I
+was tied up, he slipped back over this platform, and he pulled me,
+who was tied on the cross, with him. So we all fell down, he with
+the naked man on top of him, and the heavy cross on top of us both.
+I could not move, because I was tied. And it was so, with me on top
+of him, and the heavy cross, that he could not get out. So he had to
+lie shouting underneath me until some one came to the studio to
+untie me. No, we were not hurt, because the top of the cross fell so
+that it did not crush us. 'Now you have had a taste of the cross,' I
+said to him. 'Yes, you devil, but I shan't let you off,' he said to
+me.
+
+"To make the time go he would ask me questions. Once he said, 'Now,
+Califano, what time is it? I give you three guesses, and if you
+guess right once I give you sixpence.' So I guessed three o'clock.
+'That's one. Now then, what time is it? 'Again, three o'clock.
+'That's two guesses gone, you silly devil. Now then, what time is
+it? 'So now I was obstinate, and I said _Three o'clock_. He took out
+his watch. 'Why damn you, how did you know? I give you a shilling--'
+It was three o'clock, as I said, so he gave me a shilling instead of
+sixpence as he had said--"
+
+It was strange, in the silent winter afternoon, downstairs in the
+black kitchen, to sit drinking a cup of tea with Pancrazio and
+hearing these stories of English painters. It was strange to look at
+the battered figure of Pancrazio, and think how much he had been
+crucified through the long years in London, for the sake of late
+Victorian art. It was strangest of all to see through his yellow,
+often dull, red-rimmed eyes these blithe and well-conditioned
+painters. Pancrazio looked on them admiringly and contemptuously, as
+an old, rakish tom-cat might look on such frivolous well-groomed
+young gentlemen.
+
+As a matter of fact Pancrazio had never been rakish or debauched,
+but mountain-moral, timid. So that the queer, half-sinister drop of
+his eyelids was curious, and the strange, wicked yellow flare that
+came into his eyes was almost frightening. There was in the man a
+sort of sulphur-yellow flame of passion which would light up in his
+battered body and give him an almost diabolic look. Alvina felt that
+if she were left much alone with him she would need all her English
+ascendancy not to be afraid of him.
+
+It was a Sunday morning just before Christmas when Alvina and Ciccio
+and Pancrazio set off for Pescocalascio for the first time. Snow had
+fallen--not much round the house, but deep between the banks as they
+climbed. And the sun was very bright. So that the mountains were
+dazzling. The snow was wet on the roads. They wound between
+oak-trees and under the broom-scrub, climbing over the jumbled hills
+that lay between the mountains, until the village came near. They
+got on to a broader track, where the path from a distant village
+joined theirs. They were all talking, in the bright clear air of the
+morning.
+
+A little man came down an upper path. As he joined them near the
+village he hailed them in English:
+
+"Good morning. Nice morning."
+
+"Does everybody speak English here?" asked Alvina.
+
+"I have been eighteen years in Glasgow. I am only here for a trip."
+
+He was a little Italian shop-keeper from Glasgow. He was most
+friendly, insisted on paying for drinks, and coffee and almond
+biscuits for Alvina. Evidently he also was grateful to Britain.
+
+The village was wonderful. It occupied the crown of an eminence in
+the midst of the wide valley. From the terrace of the high-road the
+valley spread below, with all its jumble of hills, and two rivers,
+set in the walls of the mountains, a wide space, but imprisoned. It
+glistened with snow under the blue sky. But the lowest hollows were
+brown. In the distance, Ossona hung at the edge of a platform. Many
+villages clung like pale swarms of birds to the far slopes, or
+perched on the hills beneath. It was a world within a world, a
+valley of many hills and townlets and streams shut in beyond access.
+
+Pescocalascio itself was crowded. The roads were sloppy with snow.
+But none the less, peasants in full dress, their feet soaked in the
+skin sandals, were trooping in the sun, purchasing, selling,
+bargaining for cloth, talking all the time. In the shop, which was
+also a sort of inn, an ancient woman was making coffee over a
+charcoal brazier, while a crowd of peasants sat at the tables at the
+back, eating the food they had brought.
+
+Post was due at mid-day. Ciccio went to fetch it, whilst Pancrazio
+took Alvina to the summit, to the castle. There, in the level
+region, boys were snowballing and shouting. The ancient castle,
+badly cracked by the last earthquake, looked wonderfully down on the
+valley of many hills beneath, Califano a speck down the left, Ossona
+a blot to the right, suspended, its towers and its castle clear in
+the light. Behind the castle of Pescocalascio was a deep, steep
+valley, almost a gorge, at the bottom of which a river ran, and
+where Pancrazio pointed out the electricity works of the village,
+deep in the gloom. Above this gorge, at the end, rose the long
+slopes of the mountains, up to the vivid snow--and across again was
+the wall of the Abruzzi.
+
+They went down, past the ruined houses broken by the earthquake.
+Ciccio still had not come with the post. A crowd surged at the
+post-office door, in a steep, black, wet side-street. Alvina's feet
+were sodden. Pancrazio took her to the place where she could drink
+coffee and a strega, to make her warm. On the platform of the
+high-way, above the valley, people were parading in the hot sun.
+Alvina noticed some ultra-smart young men. They came up to
+Pancrazio, speaking English. Alvina hated their Cockney accent and
+florid showy vulgar presence. They were more models. Pancrazio was
+cool with them.
+
+Alvina sat apart from the crowd of peasants, on a chair the old
+crone had ostentatiously dusted for her. Pancrazio ordered beer for
+himself. Ciccio came with letters--long-delayed letters, that had
+been censored. Alvina's heart went down.
+
+The first she opened was from Miss Pinnegar--all war and fear and
+anxiety. The second was a letter, a real insulting letter from Dr.
+Mitchell. "I little thought, at the time when I was hoping to make
+you my wife, that you were carrying on with a dirty Italian
+organ-grinder. So your fair-seeming face covered the schemes and
+vice of your true nature. Well, I can only thank Providence which
+spared me the disgust and shame of marrying you, and I hope that,
+when I meet you on the streets of Leicester Square, I shall have
+forgiven you sufficiently to be able to throw you a coin--"
+
+Here was a pretty little epistle! In spite of herself, she went pale
+and trembled. She glanced at Ciccio. Fortunately he was turning
+round talking to another man. She rose and went to the ruddy
+brazier, as if to warm her hands. She threw on the screwed-up
+letter. The old crone said something unintelligible to her. She
+watched the letter catch fire--glanced at the peasants at the
+table--and out at the wide, wild valley. The world beyond could not
+help, but it still had the power to injure one here. She felt she
+had received a bitter blow. A black hatred for the Mitchells of this
+world filled her.
+
+She could hardly bear to open the third letter. It was from Mrs.
+Tuke, and again, all war. Would Italy join the Allies? She ought to,
+her every interest lay that way. Could Alvina bear to be so far off,
+when such terrible events were happening near home? Could she
+possibly be happy? Nurses were so valuable now. She, Mrs. Tuke, had
+volunteered. She would do whatever she could. She had had to leave
+off nursing Jenifer, who had an _excellent_ Scotch nurse, much
+better than a mother. Well, Alvina and Mrs. Tuke might yet meet in
+some hospital in France. So the letter ended.
+
+Alvina sat down, pale and trembling. Pancrazio was watching her
+curiously.
+
+"Have you bad news?" he asked.
+
+"Only the war."
+
+"Ha!" and the Italian gesture of half-bitter "what can one do?"
+
+They were talking war--all talking war. The dandy young models had
+left England because of the war, expecting Italy to come in. And
+everybody talked, talked, talked. Alvina looked round her. It all
+seemed alien to her, bruising upon the spirit.
+
+"Do you think I shall ever be able to come here alone and do my
+shopping by myself?" she asked.
+
+"You must never come alone," said Pancrazio, in his curious,
+benevolent courtesy. "Either Ciccio or I will come with you. You
+must never come so far alone."
+
+"Why not?" she said.
+
+"You are a stranger here. You are not a contadina--" Alvina could
+feel the oriental idea of women, which still leaves its mark on the
+Mediterranean, threatening her with surveillance and subjection. She
+sat in her chair, with cold wet feet, looking at the sunshine
+outside, the wet snow, the moving figures in the strong light, the
+men drinking at the counter, the cluster of peasant women bargaining
+for dress-material. Ciccio was still turning talking in the rapid
+way to his neighbour. She knew it was war. She noticed the movement
+of his finely-modelled cheek, a little sallow this morning.
+
+And she rose hastily.
+
+"I want to go into the sun," she said.
+
+When she stood above the valley in the strong, tiring light, she
+glanced round. Ciccio inside the shop had risen, but he was still
+turning to his neighbour and was talking with all his hands and all
+his body. He did not talk with his mind and lips alone. His whole
+physique, his whole living body spoke and uttered and emphasized
+itself.
+
+A certain weariness possessed her. She was beginning to realize
+something about him: how he had no sense of home and domestic life,
+as an Englishman has. Ciccio's home would never be his castle. His
+castle was the piazza of Pescocalascio. His home was nothing to him
+but a possession, and a hole to sleep in. He didn't _live_ in it. He
+lived in the open air, and in the community. When the true Italian
+came out in him, his veriest home was the piazza of Pescocalascio,
+the little sort of market-place where the roads met in the village,
+under the castle, and where the men stood in groups and talked,
+talked, talked. This was where Ciccio belonged: his active, mindful
+self. His active, mindful self was none of hers. She only had his
+passive self, and his family passion. His masculine mind and
+intelligence had its home in the little public square of his
+village. She knew this as she watched him now, with all his body
+talking politics. He could not break off till he had finished. And
+then, with a swift, intimate handshake to the group with whom he had
+been engaged, he came away, putting all his interest off from
+himself.
+
+She tried to make him talk and discuss with her. But he wouldn't. An
+obstinate spirit made him darkly refuse masculine conversation with
+her.
+
+"If Italy goes to war, you will have to join up?" she asked him.
+
+"Yes," he said, with a smile at the futility of the question.
+
+"And I shall have to stay here?"
+
+He nodded, rather gloomily.
+
+"Do you want to go?" she persisted.
+
+"No, I don't want to go."
+
+"But you think Italy ought to join in?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"Then you _do_ want to go--"
+
+"I want to go if Italy goes in--and she ought to go in--"
+
+Curious, he was somewhat afraid of her, he half venerated her, and
+half despised her. When she tried to make him discuss, in the
+masculine way, he shut obstinately against her, something like a
+child, and the slow, fine smile of dislike came on his face.
+Instinctively he shut off all masculine communication from her,
+particularly politics and religion. He would discuss both,
+violently, with other men. In politics he was something of a
+Socialist, in religion a freethinker. But all this had nothing to do
+with Alvina. He would not enter on a discussion in English.
+
+Somewhere in her soul, she knew the finality of his refusal to hold
+discussion with a woman. So, though at times her heart hardened with
+indignant anger, she let herself remain outside. The more so, as
+she felt that in matters intellectual he was rather stupid. Let him
+go to the piazza or to the wine-shop, and talk.
+
+To do him justice, he went little. Pescocalascio was only half his
+own village. The nostalgia, the campanilismo from which Italians
+suffer, the craving to be in sight of the native church-tower, to
+stand and talk in the native market place or piazza, this was only
+half formed in Ciccio, taken away as he had been from Pescocalascio
+when so small a boy. He spent most of his time working in the fields
+and woods, most of his evenings at home, often weaving a special
+kind of fishnet or net-basket from fine, frail strips of cane. It
+was a work he had learned at Naples long ago. Alvina meanwhile would
+sew for the child, or spin wool. She became quite clever at drawing
+the strands of wool from her distaff, rolling them fine and even
+between her fingers, and keeping her bobbin rapidly spinning away
+below, dangling at the end of the thread. To tell the truth, she was
+happy in the quietness with Ciccio, now they had their own pleasant
+room. She loved his presence. She loved the quality of his silence,
+so rich and physical. She felt he was never very far away: that he
+was a good deal a stranger in Califano, as she was: that he clung to
+her presence as she to his. Then Pancrazio also contrived to serve
+her and shelter her, he too, loved her for being there. They both
+revered her because she was with child. So that she lived more and
+more in a little, isolate, illusory, wonderful world then, content,
+moreover, because the living cost so little. She had sixty pounds of
+her own money, always intact in the little case. And after all, the
+high-way beyond the river led to Ossona, and Ossona gave access to
+the railway, and the railway would take her anywhere.
+
+So the month of January passed, with its short days and its bits of
+snow and bursts of sunshine. On sunny days Alvina walked down to the
+desolate river-bed, which fascinated her. When Pancrazio was
+carrying up stone or lime on the ass, she accompanied him. And
+Pancrazio was always carrying up something, for he loved the
+extraneous jobs like building a fire-place much more than the heavy
+work of the land. Then she would find little tufts of wild narcissus
+among the rocks, gold-centred pale little things, many on one stem.
+And their scent was powerful and magical, like the sound of the men
+who came all those days and sang before Christmas. She loved them.
+There was green hellebore too, a fascinating plant--and one or two
+little treasures, the last of the rose-coloured Alpine cyclamens,
+near the earth, with snake-skin leaves, and so rose, so rose, like
+violets for shadowiness. She sat and cried over the first she found:
+heaven knows why.
+
+In February, as the days opened, the first almond trees flowered
+among grey olives, in warm, level corners between the hills. But it
+was March before the real flowering began. And then she had
+continual bowl-fuls of white and blue violets, she had sprays of
+almond blossom, silver-warm and lustrous, then sprays of peach and
+apricot, pink and fluttering. It was a great joy to wander looking
+for flowers. She came upon a bankside all wide with lavender
+crocuses. The sun was on them for the moment, and they were opened
+flat, great five-pointed, seven-pointed lilac stars, with burning
+centres, burning with a strange lavender flame, as she had seen some
+metal burn lilac-flamed in the laboratory of the hospital at
+Islington. All down the oak-dry bankside they burned their great
+exposed stars. And she felt like going down on her knees and bending
+her forehead to the earth in an oriental submission, they were so
+royal, so lovely, so supreme. She came again to them in the morning,
+when the sky was grey, and they were closed, sharp clubs,
+wonderfully fragile on their stems of sap, among leaves and old
+grass and wild periwinkle. They had wonderful dark stripes running
+up their cheeks, the crocuses, like the clear proud stripes on a
+badger's face, or on some proud cat. She took a handful of the
+sappy, shut, striped flames. In her room they opened into a grand
+bowl of lilac fire.
+
+March was a lovely month. The men were busy in the hills. She
+wandered, extending her range. Sometimes with a strange fear. But it
+was a fear of the elements rather than of man. One day she went
+along the high-road with her letters, towards the village of Casa
+Latina. The high-road was depressing, wherever there were houses.
+For the houses had that sordid, ramshackle, slummy look almost
+invariable on an Italian high-road. They were patched with a
+hideous, greenish mould-colour, blotched, as if with leprosy. It
+frightened her, till Pancrazio told her it was only the copper
+sulphate that had sprayed the vines hitched on to the walls. But
+none the less the houses were sordid, unkempt, slummy. One house by
+itself could make a complete slum.
+
+Casa Latina was across the valley, in the shadow. Approaching it
+were rows of low cabins--fairly new. They were the one-storey
+dwellings commanded after the earthquake. And hideous they were. The
+village itself was old, dark, in perpetual shadow of the mountain.
+Streams of cold water ran round it. The piazza was gloomy, forsaken.
+But there was a great, twin-towered church, wonderful from outside.
+
+She went inside, and was almost sick with repulsion. The place was
+large, whitewashed, and crowded with figures in glass cases and ex
+voto offerings. The lousy-looking, dressed-up dolls, life size and
+tinselly, that stood in the glass cases; the blood-streaked Jesus on
+the crucifix; the mouldering, mumbling, filthy peasant women on
+their knees; all the sense of trashy, repulsive, degraded
+fetish-worship was too much for her. She hurried out, shrinking from
+the contamination of the dirty leather door-curtain.
+
+Enough of Casa Latina. She would never go _there_ again. She was
+beginning to feel that, if she lived in this part of the world at
+all, she must avoid the _inside_ of it. She must never, if she could
+help it, enter into any interior but her own--neither into house nor
+church nor even shop or post-office, if she could help it. The
+moment she went through a door the sense of dark repulsiveness came
+over her. If she was to save her sanity she must keep to the open
+air, and avoid any contact with human interiors. When she thought of
+the insides of the native people she shuddered with repulsion, as in
+the great, degraded church of Casa Latina. They were horrible.
+
+Yet the outside world was so fair. Corn and maize were growing green
+and silken, vines were in the small bud. Everywhere little grape
+hyacinths hung their blue bells. It was a pity they reminded her of
+the many-breasted Artemis, a picture of whom, or of whose statue,
+she had seen somewhere. Artemis with her clusters of breasts was
+horrible to her, now she had come south: nauseating beyond words.
+And the milky grape hyacinths reminded her.
+
+She turned with thankfulness to the magenta anemones that were so
+gay. Some one told her that wherever Venus had shed a tear for
+Adonis, one of these flowers had sprung. They were not tear-like.
+And yet their red-purple silkiness had something pre-world about it,
+at last. The more she wandered, the more the shadow of the by-gone
+pagan world seemed to come over her. Sometimes she felt she would
+shriek and go mad, so strong was the influence on her, something
+pre-world and, it seemed to her now, vindictive. She seemed to feel
+in the air strange Furies, Lemures, things that had haunted her with
+their tomb-frenzied vindictiveness since she was a child and had
+pored over the illustrated Classical Dictionary. Black and cruel
+presences were in the under-air. They were furtive and slinking.
+They bewitched you with loveliness, and lurked with fangs to hurt
+you afterwards. There it was: the fangs sheathed in beauty: the
+beauty first, and then, horribly, inevitably, the fangs.
+
+Being a great deal alone, in the strange place, fancies possessed
+her, people took on strange shapes. Even Ciccio and Pancrazio. And
+it came that she never wandered far from the house, from her room,
+after the first months. She seemed to hide herself in her room.
+There she sewed and spun wool and read, and learnt Italian. Her men
+were not at all anxious to teach her Italian. Indeed her chief
+teacher, at first, was a young fellow called Bussolo. He was a model
+from London, and he came down to Califano sometimes, hanging about,
+anxious to speak English.
+
+Alvina did not care for him. He was a dandy with pale grey eyes and
+a heavy figure. Yet he had a certain penetrating intelligence.
+
+"No, this country is a country for old men. It is only for old men,"
+he said, talking of Pescocalascio. "You won't stop here. Nobody
+young can stop here."
+
+The odd plangent certitude in his voice penetrated her. And all the
+young people said the same thing. They were all waiting to go away.
+But for the moment the war held them up.
+
+Ciccio and Pancrazio were busy with the vines. As she watched them
+hoeing, crouching, tying, tending, grafting, mindless and utterly
+absorbed, hour after hour, day after day, thinking vines, living
+vines, she wondered they didn't begin to sprout vine-buds and vine
+stems from their own elbows and neck-joints. There was something to
+her unnatural in the quality of the attention the men gave to the
+wine. It was a sort of worship, almost a degradation again. And
+heaven knows, Pancrazio's wine was poor enough, his grapes almost
+invariably bruised with hail-stones, and half-rotten instead of
+ripe.
+
+The loveliness of April came, with hot sunshine. Astonishing the
+ferocity of the sun, when he really took upon himself to blaze.
+Alvina was amazed. The burning day quite carried her away. She loved
+it: it made her quite careless about everything, she was just swept
+along in the powerful flood of the sunshine. In the end, she felt
+that intense sunlight had on her the effect of night: a sort of
+darkness, and a suspension of life. She had to hide in her room till
+the cold wind blew again.
+
+Meanwhile the declaration of war drew nearer, and became inevitable.
+She knew Ciccio would go. And with him went the chance of her
+escape. She steeled herself to bear the agony of the knowledge that
+he would go, and she would be left alone in this place, which
+sometimes she hated with a hatred unspeakable. After a spell of hot,
+intensely dry weather she felt she would die in this valley, wither
+and go to powder as some exposed April roses withered and dried into
+dust against a hot wall. Then the cool wind came in a storm, the
+next day there was grey sky and soft air. The rose-coloured wild
+gladioli among the young green corn were a dream of beauty, the
+morning of the world. The lovely, pristine morning of the world,
+before our epoch began. Rose-red gladioli among corn, in among the
+rocks, and small irises, black-purple and yellow blotched with
+brown, like a wasp, standing low in little desert places, that would
+seem forlorn but for this weird, dark-lustrous magnificence. Then
+there were the tiny irises, only one finger tall, growing in dry
+places, frail as crocuses, and much tinier, and blue, blue as the
+eye of the morning heaven, which was a morning earlier, more
+pristine than ours. The lovely translucent pale irises, tiny and
+morning-blue, they lasted only a few hours. But nothing could be
+more exquisite, like gods on earth. It was the flowers that brought
+back to Alvina the passionate nostalgia for the place. The human
+influence was a bit horrible to her. But the flowers that came out
+and uttered the earth in magical expression, they cast a spell on
+her, bewitched her and stole her own soul away from her.
+
+She went down to Ciccio where he was weeding armfuls of rose-red
+gladioli from the half-grown wheat, and cutting the lushness of the
+first weedy herbage. He threw down his sheaves of gladioli, and with
+his sickle began to cut the forest of bright yellow corn-marigolds.
+He looked intent, he seemed to work feverishly.
+
+"Must they all be cut?" she said, as she went to him.
+
+He threw aside the great armful of yellow flowers, took off his cap,
+and wiped the sweat from his brow. The sickle dangled loose in his
+hand.
+
+"We have declared war," he said.
+
+In an instant she realized that she had seen the figure of the old
+post-carrier dodging between the rocks. Rose-red and gold-yellow of
+the flowers swam in her eyes. Ciccio's dusk-yellow eyes were
+watching her. She sank on her knees on a sheaf of corn-marigolds.
+Her eyes, watching him, were vulnerable as if stricken to death.
+Indeed she felt she would die.
+
+"You will have to go?" she said.
+
+"Yes, we shall all have to go." There seemed a certain sound of
+triumph in his voice. Cruel!
+
+She sank lower on the flowers, and her head dropped. But she would
+not be beaten. She lifted her face.
+
+"If you are very long," she said, "I shall go to England. I can't
+stay here very long without you."
+
+"You will have Pancrazio--and the child," he said.
+
+"Yes. But I shall still be myself. I can't stay here very long
+without you. I shall go to England."
+
+He watched her narrowly.
+
+"I don't think they'll let you," he said.
+
+"Yes they will."
+
+At moments she hated him. He seemed to want to crush her altogether.
+She was always making little plans in her mind--how she could get
+out of that great cruel valley and escape to Rome, to English
+people. She would find the English Consul and he would help her. She
+would do anything rather than be really crushed. She knew how easy
+it would be, once her spirit broke, for her to die and be buried in
+the cemetery at Pescocalascio.
+
+And they would all be so sentimental about her--just as Pancrazio
+was. She felt that in some way Pancrazio had killed his wife--not
+consciously, but unconsciously, as Ciccio might kill _her_.
+Pancrazio would tell Alvina about his wife and her ailments. And he
+seemed always anxious to prove that he had been so good to her. No
+doubt he had been good to her, also. But there was something
+underneath--malevolent in his spirit, some caged-in sort of cruelty,
+malignant beyond his control. It crept out in his stories. And it
+revealed itself in his fear of his dead wife. Alvina knew that in
+the night the elderly man was afraid of his dead wife, and of her
+ghost or her avenging spirit. He would huddle over the fire in fear.
+In the same way the cemetery had a fascination of horror for
+him--as, she noticed, for most of the natives. It was an ugly,
+square place, all stone slabs and wall-cupboards, enclosed in
+four-square stone walls, and lying away beneath Pescocalascio
+village obvious as if it were on a plate.
+
+"That is our cemetery," Pancrazio said, pointing it out to her,
+"where we shall all be carried some day."
+
+And there was fear, horror in his voice. He told her how the men had
+carried his wife there--a long journey over the hill-tracks, almost
+two hours.
+
+These were days of waiting--horrible days of waiting for Ciccio to
+be called up. One batch of young men left the village--and there was
+a lugubrious sort of saturnalia, men and women alike got rather
+drunk, the young men left amid howls of lamentation and shrieks of
+distress. Crowds accompanied them to Ossona, whence they were
+marched towards the railway. It was a horrible event.
+
+A shiver of horror and death went through the valley. In a
+lugubrious way, they seemed to enjoy it.
+
+"You'll never be satisfied till you've gone," she said to Ciccio.
+"Why don't they be quick and call you?"
+
+"It will be next week," he said, looking at her darkly. In the
+twilight he came to her, when she could hardly see him.
+
+"Are you sorry you came here with me, Allaye?" he asked. There was
+malice in the very question.
+
+She put down the spoon and looked up from the fire. He stood
+shadowy, his head ducked forward, the firelight faint on his
+enigmatic, timeless, half-smiling face.
+
+"I'm not sorry," she answered slowly, using all her courage.
+"Because I love you--"
+
+She crouched quite still on the hearth. He turned aside his face.
+After a moment or two he went out. She stirred her pot slowly and
+sadly. She had to go downstairs for something.
+
+And there on the landing she saw him standing in the darkness with
+his arm over his face, as if fending a blow.
+
+"What is it?" she said, laying her hand on him. He uncovered his
+face.
+
+"I would take you away if I could," he said.
+
+"I can wait for you," she answered.
+
+He threw himself in a chair that stood at a table there on the broad
+landing, and buried his head in his arms.
+
+"Don't wait for me! Don't wait for me!" he cried, his voice muffled.
+
+"Why not?" she said, filled with terror. He made no sign. "Why not?"
+she insisted. And she laid her fingers on his head.
+
+He got up and turned to her.
+
+"I love you, even if it kills me," she said.
+
+But he only turned aside again, leaned his arm against the wall, and
+hid his face, utterly noiseless.
+
+"What is it?" she said. "What is it? I don't understand." He wiped
+his sleeve across his face, and turned to her.
+
+"I haven't any hope," he said, in a dull, dogged voice.
+
+She felt her heart and the child die within her.
+
+"Why?" she said.
+
+Was she to bear a hopeless child?
+
+"You _have_ hope. Don't make a scene," she snapped. And she went
+downstairs, as she had intended.
+
+And when she got into the kitchen, she forgot what she had come for.
+She sat in the darkness on the seat, with all life gone dark and
+still, death and eternity settled down on her. Death and eternity
+were settled down on her as she sat alone. And she seemed to hear
+him moaning upstairs--"I can't come back. I can't come back." She
+heard it. She heard it so distinctly, that she never knew whether it
+had been an actual utterance, or whether it was her inner ear which
+had heard the inner, unutterable sound. She wanted to answer, to
+call to him. But she could not. Heavy, mute, powerless, there she
+sat like a lump of darkness, in that doomed Italian kitchen. "I
+can't come back." She heard it so fatally.
+
+She was interrupted by the entrance of Pancrazio.
+
+"Oh!" he cried, startled when, having come near the fire, he caught
+sight of her. And he said something, frightened, in Italian.
+
+"Is it you? Why are you in the darkness?" he said.
+
+"I am just going upstairs again."
+
+"You frightened me."
+
+She went up to finish the preparing of the meal. Ciccio came down to
+Pancrazio. The latter had brought a newspaper. The two men sat on
+the settle, with the lamp between them, reading and talking the
+news.
+
+Ciccio's group was called up for the following week, as he had said.
+The departure hung over them like a doom. Those were perhaps the
+worst days of all: the days of the impending departure. Neither of
+them spoke about it.
+
+But the night before he left she could bear the silence no more.
+
+"You will come back, won't you?" she said, as he sat motionless in
+his chair in the bedroom. It was a hot, luminous night. There was
+still a late scent of orange blossom from the garden, the
+nightingale was shaking the air with his sound. At times other,
+honey scents wafted from the hills.
+
+"You will come back?" she insisted.
+
+"Who knows?" he replied.
+
+"If you make up your mind to come back, you will come back. We have
+our fate in our hands," she said.
+
+He smiled slowly.
+
+"You think so?" he said.
+
+"I know it. If you don't come back it will be because you don't want
+to--no other reason. It won't be because you can't. It will be
+because you don't want to."
+
+"Who told you so?" he asked, with the same cruel smile.
+
+"I know it," she said.
+
+"All right," he answered.
+
+But he still sat with his hands abandoned between his knees.
+
+"So make up your mind," she said.
+
+He sat motionless for a long while: while she undressed and brushed
+her hair and went to bed. And still he sat there unmoving, like a
+corpse. It was like having some unnatural, doomed, unbearable
+presence in the room. She blew out the light, that she need not see
+him. But in the darkness it was worse.
+
+At last he stirred--he rose. He came hesitating across to her.
+
+"I'll come back, Allaye," he said quietly. "Be damned to them all."
+She heard unspeakable pain in his voice.
+
+"To whom?" she said, sitting up.
+
+He did not answer, but put his arms round her.
+
+"I'll come back, and we'll go to America," he said.
+
+"You'll come back to me," she whispered, in an ecstasy of pain and
+relief. It was not her affair, where they should go, so long as he
+really returned to her.
+
+"I'll come back," he said.
+
+"Sure?" she whispered, straining him to her.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST GIRL***
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