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diff --git a/23727-h/23727-h.htm b/23727-h/23727-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..445af93 --- /dev/null +++ b/23727-h/23727-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,25147 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lost Girl, by D. H. Lawrence</title> + +<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> + +<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 +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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. 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. +</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> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<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— +</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—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. +</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—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, <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—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. +</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—” 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. +</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—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—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—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. +</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—nay, the very way she addressed herself to him—“What do +<i>you</i> 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, +<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—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”—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 +<i>that</i>, my boy—what? not half!”—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?”—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. +</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—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—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—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—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—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—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—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. +</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—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. +</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—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. +</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—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—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. +</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—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—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—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—!” +</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—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—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—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.” +</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—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—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—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—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—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. +</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?—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—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—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—” 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—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—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—!” 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t you?” said Alvina brightly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh well, if she <i>does</i>—” 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—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—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—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. +</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—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 +<i>looking</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +But she enjoyed it. Amazing how she enjoyed it. She did not care <i>how</i> +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. +</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—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. +</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—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. +</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!—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. +</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—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—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—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: +</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—amply and beautifully right, her darling, her beloved +Miss Frost. Eternally and gloriously right. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>immortel</i>. 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. +</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—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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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—just a few pence. She had exactly four +cases—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—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. +</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—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. +</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—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: +</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—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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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—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! +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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?—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—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—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. +</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—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—?” 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—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. +</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—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—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— +</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—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. +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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—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. +</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—“except—” 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—only to open again tense +with pain. Alvina wiped her blood-phlegmed lips. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Alvina knew death—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—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! +</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—” +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t the heart,” persisted Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“Not yet,” said Mrs. Lawson gently. “You can’t expect—But time—time +brings back—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh well—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—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—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—“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—James settled down at last to the word <i>terrace</i>—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—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—too funny. +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</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—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—but he rejected it. “You +don’t realize that I’m catering for a higher class of custom—” +</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—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—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. +</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?—well—!” 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—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!—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—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—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. +</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—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—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—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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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. +</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—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. +</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—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. +</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—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—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—” +</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—she sat in +the choir-loft—gazing up at her with apparently love-lorn eyes and a +faint, intimate smile—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—” 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—the colliery railway, that is—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—or I go down to Hallam’s—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?”—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—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—” 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—once I thought I had—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—” +</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—! Well, +I declare!—” 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—” +</p> + +<p> +“You think he’ll do?” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” said Miss Pinnegar. “Why shouldn’t he do—if you like him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah—!” 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—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—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—” 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—” +</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—” 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—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?—not the least in the world. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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—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—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. +</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—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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <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—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—“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—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—” 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—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?—suddenly—” 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—” said Miss Pinnegar rather bitingly. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>am</i> quite sure—” 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—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: +</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—” +</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!—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—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—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!—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 <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—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—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. +</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—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—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. +</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—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—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—“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—some <i>rival</i> to +Wright’s Variety?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ay—’appen—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—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—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—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—<i>disgusting</i>! I never was in a worse, +in all the <i>cauce</i> of my travels. But <i>then</i>—that isn’t the +point—” +</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—” began James. +</p> + +<p> +“Is an audience—of <i>cauce</i>—! And we have it—! Virgin +soil—! +</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—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—and Jordan’s—and we can go to Hathersedge and +Knarborough and Alfreton—beforehand, that is—” +</p> + +<p> +“Why certainly—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—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—excellent.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so simple! You pick up just <i>all</i> the information you require.” +</p> + +<p> +“Decidedly—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—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. +</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—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. +</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—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 <i>disgusting</i> beer that the colliers drank. +Oh!—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—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—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. +</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”—curious that he always called it an +erection—“we shall have to know what we are going to spend.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—yes. Well—” 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>—if we need it—I can +find a few hundreds. Many things are <i>due</i>—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—you can +<i>employ</i> me—” +</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—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—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,—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—but really, did ever you +hear of anything so ridiculous in your life, <i>ten pounds!</i>—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—thank you.” Mr. May took out his pocket-book. +“C-o-w-l-a-r-d—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—thank you. Offerton did you say?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Offerton!—where’s that?” +</p> + +<p> +“About eight mile.” +</p> + +<p> +“Really—and how do you get there?” +</p> + +<p> +“You can walk—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—biggest next to Chesterfield—” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly it dawned on Mr. May. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh-h!” he said. “You mean <i>Alfreton</i>—” +</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—” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t know the trains, do you—?” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s one in th’ afternoon—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—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—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—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—” 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—” 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—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—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—it is a frame-section travelling theatre—will arrive on +Thursday—next Thursday.” +</p> + +<p> +“But who is in with you, father?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Rather short and dressed in grey?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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—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—” +</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—<br/> +How’d you like to spoon with me?<br/> + (<i>Oh-h—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—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—” +</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>—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—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—?” 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—” +</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—” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think so,” said James. “I don’t think so. Many of the turns she will +not need to accompany—” +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“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! <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—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—” and here he laid +his hand on Alvina’s arm—“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—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—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!—beautiful fresh +young champignons—” +</p> + +<p> +“Fresh mushrooms,” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“Mushrooms—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—<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—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—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—” +</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—” +</p> + +<p> +“What a pity!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—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!—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—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—” he attacked Arthur Witham—“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—?” +</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—” 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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—very well then. Mind you manage it—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—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. +</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—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. +</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”—“A little slower”—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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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—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—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—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. +</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—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—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,—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—quite +finally—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—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>—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>—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.” +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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: +</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—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—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 <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!—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—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—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—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 <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—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. +</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—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!—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? +</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—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—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. +</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—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—” +</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—” 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—Geoffrey—” Geoffrey made his bow—a +broad-shouldered, watchful, taciturn man from Alpine France. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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—” 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—evidently something rude—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—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—” 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—” 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—” +</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—” +</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—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!” +</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—niente di bello. Ahimé, che amico, che ragazzo duro, +aspero—” +</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—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—no,” she said to Max, who would have followed to her assistance. “Do +not come up. No—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—what is the name of this place, dear?—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—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—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—” +</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—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—alors—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—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—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. +</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—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. +</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—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.” +</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—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—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!—Ja!—Doch!—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—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—er—you—let me see—if you—no—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—” +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“You haven’t got the girdle,” he said, touching Mr. May’s plump +waist—“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—the bound prisoner is +seated by the fire—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—the prisoner wants his bonds cut. Re-enter the <i>brave</i> +Louis—he is angry with Kishwégin—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—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—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—” he lifted his shoulders and spread his hands and tilted +his brows—“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—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.” +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“How stupid they are,” said Alvina. “I’ve got used to them.” +</p> + +<p> +“They should be—” he lifted his hand with a sharp, vicious +movement—“<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—we love +her—as if she were a mother. You say <i>love</i>—” 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—!” 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.” +</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—” 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?” +</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—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—” +</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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you a mother and father?” +</p> + +<p> +“I? No! I have a brother and two sisters—in America. Parents, none. They +are dead.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you wander about the world—” 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—Frenchwomen—they +have their babies till they are a hundred—” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” said Alvina, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>didn’t</i> know it,” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“But now—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—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: +</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—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—he’s exactly like a girl. +Well, well—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—” 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—” +</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—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—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—also—what shall I +say—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—too haggard—” +</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—” 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—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?” +</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—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—” +</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—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—” 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. +</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—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.” +</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—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—just a non-sensical mood of the +moment. Won’t you sit down? You would like a little whiskey?—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—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—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—” +</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—so! +Just curiosity, impertinent curiosity. That’s all. In all countries, the same. +And so—in ten years’ time—no more Kishwégin at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“No. Then what future have you?” said Mr. May gloomily. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which I am also,” said Mr. May. +</p> + +<p> +“So! Are you? An American Catholic?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—English—Irish—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—“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. +</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—stop—!” 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—!” 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—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—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—lift. It hurts you—so—. +No—no—it is not broken—no—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—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, <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—” +</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—” 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—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—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—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—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. +</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—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’—! 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—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—looking for thee. Where have you—?” +</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’—” said Geoffrey. +</p> + +<p> +Ciccio shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +“Never?” said Geoffrey. +</p> + +<p> +“Basta—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!—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—Ciccio—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’—” +</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—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—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—” 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.” +</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?—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?—hein?—aren’t we?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I’m</i> awfully glad,” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“Awfully glad—yes—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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“I should love to be one of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras,” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</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—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—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—it was +left to him. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</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—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.” +</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—” +</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—perhaps all of them. Then they will go when they like—” +</p> + +<p> +“I will come round to say good-bye—” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—don’t disturb yourself—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I want to take home the things—the kettle for the bronchitis, and +those things—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh thank you very much—but don’t trouble yourself. I will send Ciccio +with them—or one of the others—” +</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—” Madame indicated +a little pile—“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—but I don’t want to take them—” 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—” +</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—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—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—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—but don’t buy—” Alvina checked +herself in time. “Don’t buy anything. Send me a little thing from +Natcha-Kee-Tawara. I <i>love</i> the slippers—” +</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—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—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—” 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—” 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—?” he answered, with a sly smile and a faint shrug. +</p> + +<p> +“I should like awfully—” 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—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—” 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—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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Of <i>cauce</i>!” he said. “Naturally! Where else—!” 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!”—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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why is it any worse?” said Alvina. “I enjoy it—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—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 <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—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—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. +</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—she went to the +registrar—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—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?—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—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. +</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—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—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—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>—” +</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—” +</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—I am so shocked to +hear of your poor father. Am I to believe it?—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—with Mr. May—?” +</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—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—” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Alvina. “I have arranged for you—” +</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—” +</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—?” and she looked at him. +</p> + +<p> +Madame kept silence for some moments. Then she said gravely: +</p> + +<p> +“Well!—yes!—well!” She looked from one to another. “Well, there is +a lot to consider. But if you have decided—” +</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—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?—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—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. +</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—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—” 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!—because you +like him! But you know nothing <i>of</i> him—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—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—” +</p> + +<p> +“How old is he?” asked Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“He is twenty-five—a boy only. And you? You are older.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thirty,” confessed Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“Thirty! Well now—so much difference! How can you trust him? How can you? +Why does he want to marry you—why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know—” 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—” 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—” +</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—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—” +</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—and will +you tell Ciccio that? Eh? Hein?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—certainly—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—” +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Alvina. “I should hate being a labourer’s wife in a nasty little +house in a street—” +</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—” +</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—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—because there it is sunny very often—” +</p> + +<p> +“And you don’t need a house,” said Alvina. “I should like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“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—” +</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—” +</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—” +</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—” +</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—a common +show-fellow, <i>looks</i> what he is—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—so—” 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—Francesco. Francesco Marasca—Neapolitan.” +</p> + +<p> +“Marasca!” echoed Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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!—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—down—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—! 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?—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—” +</p> + +<p> +“And if she wants to sell out—?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. May spread his hands, and looked dismal, but distant. +</p> + +<p> +“You should form a company, and carry on—” 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—” said Madame shrewdly. +</p> + +<p> +“Of cauce,” said Mr. May. “Miss Houghton herself must decide.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh sure—! You—are you married?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your wife here?” +</p> + +<p> +“My wife is in London.” +</p> + +<p> +“And children—?” +</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—!” +</p> + +<p> +“No—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>—?” queried Mr. May, with an uprising cadence. +Madame nodded slightly towards the kitchen. +</p> + +<p> +“The old one—the Miss—Miss Pin—Pinny—what you call +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Pinnegar! The manageress of the work-girls? Really, I don’t know at +all—” Mr. May was most freezing. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha—ha! Ha—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>—” +</p> + +<p> +Again Madame nodded sagely. “Debts perhaps—eh? Mortgage—” 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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no—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—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—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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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 <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—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, +<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—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—look, down there. Not a very grand one, considering. No, +it isn’t. Look, there’s room for Alvina’s name underneath. Sh!— +</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—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—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. +</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—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—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 <i>maraschino</i>. 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. +</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—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. +</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—” Alvina looked round. +</p> + +<p> +“Ciccio is there. I see him. We must catch the train.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh but—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—” 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 <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—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—” +</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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</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—?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—maybe—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—? 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—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—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—” +</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—!” 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—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—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—” +</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—Yes? Am I right? You like him very much?—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—quite simply. +What? Yes?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Alvina. “Don’t say anything—not yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hé? Not yet? Not yet. All right, not yet then. You will see—” +</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—” +</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—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—what?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do call me Alvina,” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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—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—” +</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—” +</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—it’s enough—” +</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—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.” +</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—Viale! +Le Petit Chemin! Comment? Me prends-tu? L’allée—” +</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’—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—” +</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—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—” they shouted, with varying accent. +</p> + +<p> +“Good!” said Madame. “And no nation do we know but the nation of the +Hirondelles—” +</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—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—” +</p> + +<p> +“W<small>E ARE ATONQUOIS</small>—” +</p> + +<p> +“We are Atonquois—” +</p> + +<p> +“W<small>E ARE PACOHUILA</small>—” +</p> + +<p> +“We are Pacohuila—” +</p> + +<p> +“W<small>E ARE WALGATCHKA</small>—” +</p> + +<p> +“We are Walgatchka—” +</p> + +<p> +“W<small>E ARE ALLAYE</small>—” +</p> + +<p> +“We are Allaye—” +</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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Pacohuila!” cried Madame, with an imperious gesture. “Allaye! Come—” +</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—” chanted the men. +</p> + +<p> +“Is the nest warm?” chanted Kishwégin. +</p> + +<p> +“The nest is warm.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does the he-bird stoop—?” +</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—” +</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—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—” +</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—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—” 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—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—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—” +</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—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—” 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—” +</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—?” +</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—yes, I +will show you in one minute—” +</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—!” 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!” +</p> + +<p> +And Madame really stamped her foot. +</p> + +<p> +“Bring me everything you’ve got—every <i>thing</i> that is valuable. I +shall lock it up. How <i>can</i> you—” +</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—what?” +</p> + +<p> +“I will give you that brooch if you like to take it—” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</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!—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes do—” +</p> + +<p> +“The beautiful red stones!—antique gems, antique gems—! 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—” 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—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—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—“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—it was Friday—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—“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. +</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—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! +</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—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—a good chap, eh?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he?” laughed Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Na Cic’—” 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—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. +</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—” 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—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—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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh all right—” 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—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—” +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.” +</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—probably I should—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—she meant everything to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“She also dead—?” +</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—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—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—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—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—!” 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—lost—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—” +</p> + +<p> +“As cold as England?” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“Hé—and colder. The wolves come down. You could hear them crying in the +night, in the frost—” +</p> + +<p> +“How terrifying—!” 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—eh?” His eyes gleamed on her for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“How frightened they must be—!” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“Frightened—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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“And were you very poor?” +</p> + +<p> +“Poor?—why yes! Nothing. Rags—no shoes—bread, little fish +from the sea—shell-fish—” +</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—if it was <i>hers</i>, you know—” +</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—” 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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Look, my boy—if you could marry <i>this</i>—” 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—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—” 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—and what your father thought—and your mother +and Miss Frost—” +</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—” +</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?—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—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—” he fell into a whisper—“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—!” 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>—you see—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—” 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—” and he bowed stiffly in the direction of the +stairs—“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—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—” and he glanced +from her to the young men—“I <i>see</i>. Most decidedly, most +one-sidedly, if I may use the vulgarism, I <i>see—e—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?—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—I suppose, once or twice. But <i>never</i> quite on top of me, you +see, before—” +</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—?” 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>—” +</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—” said Alvina. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh really! The difficulty is, you see, I’m afraid I <i>do</i> think +them—” 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—” +</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—and I am he—and Max and Louis—” 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—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—” +</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—” +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. +</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?—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—” +and he puffed fiercely—“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’—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—no—” he said. “No—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?—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—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—” +</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—” +</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—” 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—” 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—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. +</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—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—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—” +</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—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—” +</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—?” +</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!—nothing!—nothing at the +back of her but her hundred pounds. When that was gone—! +</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—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!—” 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—” +</p> + +<p> +He watched Alvina with sharp blue eyes. Alvina looked back at him, still +vacantly. +</p> + +<p> +“No—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—In that case—Supposing you have made +an irrevocable decision—” +</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—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—” +</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—your piano, for example—I should have to make a +personal request—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t want anything—” 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—certainly! Certainly!—most things! Certainly! And now—” +</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—from them all—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—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—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. +</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—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—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—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.” +</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—everything! The piano—even mother’s portrait—” +</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—?” +</p> + +<p> +“But if you’ve enough to start a little business—” 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—” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll have to put ‘Also of,’” said Miss Pinnegar. +</p> + +<p> +“Also of—” said Alvina. +“One—two—three—four—five—six—. Six +letters—thirty shillings. Seems an awful lot for <i>Also of</i>—” +</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—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—whether the landlady heard anything in the +night—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—but the English! They are so pure,” said Madame. +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” said Louis, “somebody must have put them up to it—” +</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—and +immorals. Yes, I know. Yes—yes—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—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—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—and Alvina kept +to herself—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—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—!” 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—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—” +</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—! You are not <i>sure</i>?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Alvina. “I am not a bit sure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well then—! Now! And if you don’t get it—?” +</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—” +</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—” So Madame gave her her congé. “But if you like to +come back—if you <i>laike</i>—then—” Madame shrugged her +shoulders—“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—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?” +</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—” +</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—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—and quite, quite +free, with her hundred pounds—the prospect attracted her sincerely. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—but she had +no uniform. Oh, the matron would lend her uniform and aprons, till her box +arrived. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—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.—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—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—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—” +</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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Take a little beef-tea, or a little rice pudding. Take <i>nourishment</i>, +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.” +</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—” +</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—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh doctor—” +</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—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”—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—” +</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—” +</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—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—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—” +</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—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—!</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—” +</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—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 <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—! 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—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>—” +</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—” 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—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—” +</p> + +<p> +“I will—” she said, seizing the opportunity. “I’ll wonder about you till +I’ve made up my mind—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—?” 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—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—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—” +</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—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—” 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—” +</p> + +<p> +“I must say,” said Alvina, “I was surprised. Very unpleasantly.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you accepted him—” +</p> + +<p> +“Anything to quieten him—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—” +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said Alvina, “I can look after myself. I may be moved any day now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—!” said the matron. “He may prevent your getting moved, you know. +He’s on the board. And if he says you are indispensable—” +</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—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—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—” +</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—” +</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—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—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. +</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—the well-to-do part, at least—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—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 +<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—” 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—” 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—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>!—<i>le voilà!</i>—I’m just <i>planté</i>. I can’t +<i>imagine</i> 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. +</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—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. +</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—” +</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?—” 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—! I <i>must</i> look at it—” +</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—?” +</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>’—” +</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—?” +</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—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?—” +</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—molto bella—” +</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—?” 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—” +</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—” 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—” 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!—” 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—Allaye, Allaye—” +</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—yes!” she whispered. “Yes—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/> +—Ma nun me lasciar’—” +</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— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Ma nun me lasciar’— +</p> + +<p> +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: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Ma nun me lasciar’— +</p> + +<p> +“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 <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—?” +</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—” +</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—” 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—” +</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—” +</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>—<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—all gone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gone where?” +</p> + +<p> +“Gone back to France—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—” +</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—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. +</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—oh!!—prostituted—” +</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>—” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Alvina. “Something else. I wish he didn’t attract me—” +</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—eee—Oh-h-h! No!—” +</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—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—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—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—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—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. +</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—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—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. +</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>—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I do. But I’ve only got black clothes, except uniforms.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well look here now—! 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—” +</p> + +<p> +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>I know</i>—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—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 <i>mental</i> treat— +</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!”—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!”—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—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. +</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—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—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. +</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—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. +</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—!” 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—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—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—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—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—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—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. +</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—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!—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—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—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—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. +</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—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—<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— +</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—!” +</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—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—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—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—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?—” +</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—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—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—eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ka—? Fanno il buga’—” 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—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—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—” +</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—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—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—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—” +</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—” +</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—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. +</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—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—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—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. +</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—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—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—then Ciccio with the black +kettle—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—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—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—lost—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—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—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—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—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?—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. +</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—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—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—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. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s good—” he said, his eyes full of a triumphant, incommunicable +meaning. +</p> + +<p> +“Well!—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—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—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—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—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—” +</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—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— +</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—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—” +</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—’ It was three o’clock, as I said, so he gave me a shilling +instead of sixpence as he had said—” +</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—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—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—long-delayed letters, that had been censored. Alvina’s heart +went down. +</p> + +<p> +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—” +</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—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. +</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—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—” 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—” +</p> + +<p> +“I want to go if Italy goes in—and she ought to go in—” +</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—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—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—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—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—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—just as Pancrazio was. She +felt that in some way Pancrazio had killed his wife—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—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. +</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—a long journey over the hill-tracks, almost two hours. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</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—” +</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—“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—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—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--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST GIRL ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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