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Title: The Lost Girl


Author: D. H. Lawrence



Release Date: December 3, 2007  [eBook #23727]

Language: English

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THE LOST GIRL

by

D. H. LAWRENCE







New York
Thomas Seltzer
1921

Copyright, 1921,
by Thomas Seltzer, Inc.
All rights reserved

First Printing, February, 1921
Second Printing, February, 1921
Third Printing, September, 1921

Printed in the United States of America




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                      PAGE

   I THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE           7

  II THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON              27

 III THE MATERNITY NURSE                      36

  IV TWO WOMEN DIE                            49

   V THE BEAU                                 64

  VI HOUGHTON'S LAST ENDEAVOUR                95

 VII NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA                       130

VIII CICCIO                                  164

  IX ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE                   191

   X THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE            235

  XI HONOURABLE ENGAGEMENT                   273

 XII ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED                  304

XIII THE WEDDED WIFE                         317

 XIV THE JOURNEY ACROSS                      327

  XV THE PLACE CALLED CALIFANO               350

 XVI SUSPENSE                                359




CHAPTER I

THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE


Take a mining townlet like Woodhouse, with a population of ten
thousand people, and three generations behind it. This space of
three generations argues a certain well-established society. The old
"County" has fled from the sight of so much disembowelled coal, to
flourish on mineral rights in regions still idyllic. Remains one
great and inaccessible magnate, the local coal owner: three
generations old, and clambering on the bottom step of the "County,"
kicking off the mass below. Rule him out.

A well established society in Woodhouse, full of fine shades,
ranging from the dark of coal-dust to grit of stone-mason and
sawdust of timber-merchant, through the lustre of lard and butter
and meat, to the perfume of the chemist and the disinfectant of the
doctor, on to the serene gold-tarnish of bank-managers, cashiers for
the firm, clergymen and such-like, as far as the automobile
refulgence of the general-manager of all the collieries. Here the
_ne plus ultra_. The general manager lives in the shrubberied
seclusion of the so-called Manor. The genuine Hall, abandoned by the
"County," has been taken over as offices by the firm.

Here we are then: a vast substratum of colliers; a thick sprinkling
of tradespeople intermingled with small employers of labour and
diversified by elementary schoolmasters and nonconformist clergy; a
higher layer of bank-managers, rich millers and well-to-do
ironmasters, episcopal clergy and the managers of collieries, then
the rich and sticky cherry of the local coal-owner glistening over
all.

Such the complicated social system of a small industrial town in the
Midlands of England, in this year of grace 1920. But let us go back
a little. Such it was in the last calm year of plenty, 1913.

A calm year of plenty. But one chronic and dreary malady: that of
the odd women. Why, in the name of all prosperity, should every
class but the lowest in such a society hang overburdened with Dead
Sea fruit of odd women, unmarried, unmarriageable women, called old
maids? Why is it that every tradesman, every school-master, every
bank-manager, and every clergyman produces one, two, three or more
old maids? Do the middle-classes, particularly the lower
middle-classes, give birth to more girls than boys? Or do the lower
middle-class men assiduously climb up or down, in marriage, thus
leaving their true partners stranded? Or are middle-class women very
squeamish in their choice of husbands?

However it be, it is a tragedy. Or perhaps it is not.

Perhaps these unmarried women of the middle-classes are the famous
sexless-workers of our ant-industrial society, of which we hear so
much. Perhaps all they lack is an occupation: in short, a job. But
perhaps we might hear their own opinion, before we lay the law down.

In Woodhouse, there was a terrible crop of old maids among the
"nobs," the tradespeople and the clergy. The whole town of women,
colliers' wives and all, held its breath as it saw a chance of one
of these daughters of comfort and woe getting off. They flocked to
the well-to-do weddings with an intoxication of relief. For let
class-jealousy be what it may, a woman hates to see another woman
left stalely on the shelf, without a chance. They all _wanted_ the
middle-class girls to find husbands. Every one wanted it, including
the girls themselves. Hence the dismalness.

Now James Houghton had only one child: his daughter Alvina. Surely
Alvina Houghton--

But let us retreat to the early eighties, when Alvina was a baby: or
even further back, to the palmy days of James Houghton. In his palmy
days, James Houghton was _crême de la crême_ of Woodhouse society.
The house of Houghton had always been well-to-do: tradespeople, we
must admit; but after a few generations of affluence, tradespeople
acquire a distinct _cachet_. Now James Houghton, at the age of
twenty-eight, inherited a splendid business in Manchester goods, in
Woodhouse. He was a tall, thin, elegant young man with side-whiskers,
genuinely refined, somewhat in the Bulwer style. He had a taste for
elegant conversation and elegant literature and elegant Christianity:
a tall, thin, brittle young man, rather fluttering in his manner, full
of facile ideas, and with a beautiful speaking voice: most beautiful.
Withal, of course, a tradesman. He courted a small, dark woman, older
than himself, daughter of a Derbyshire squire. He expected to get at
least ten thousand pounds with her. In which he was disappointed, for
he got only eight hundred. Being of a romantic-commercial nature, he
never forgave her, but always treated her with the most elegant
courtesy. To seehim peel and prepare an apple for her was an exquisite
sight. But that peeled and quartered apple was her portion. This
elegant Adam of commerce gave Eve her own back, nicely cored, and had
no more to do with her. Meanwhile Alvina was born.

Before all this, however, before his marriage, James Houghton had
built Manchester House. It was a vast square building--vast, that
is, for Woodhouse--standing on the main street and high-road of the
small but growing town. The lower front consisted of two fine shops,
one for Manchester goods, one for silk and woollens. This was James
Houghton's commercial poem.

For James Houghton was a dreamer, and something of a poet: commercial,
be it understood. He liked the novels of George Macdonald, and the
fantasies of that author, extremely. He wove one continual fantasy for
himself, a fantasy of commerce. He dreamed of silks and poplins,
luscious in texture and of unforeseen exquisiteness: he dreamed of
carriages of the "County" arrested before his windows, of exquisite
women ruffling charmed, entranced to his counter. And charming,
entrancing, he served them his lovely fabrics, which only he and they
could sufficiently appreciate. His fame spread, until Alexandra,
Princess of Wales, and Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, the two
best-dressed women in Europe, floated down from heaven to the shop in
Woodhouse, and sallied forth to show what could be done by purchasing
from James Houghton.

We cannot say why James Houghton failed to become the Liberty or the
Snelgrove of his day. Perhaps he had too much imagination. Be that as
it may, in those early days when he brought his wife to her new home,
his window on the Manchester side was a foam and a may-blossom of
muslins and prints, his window on the London side was an autumn evening
of silks and rich fabrics. What wife could fail to be dazzled! But she,
poor darling, from her stone hall in stony Derbyshire, was a little bit
repulsed by the man's dancing in front of his stock, like David before
the ark.

The home to which he brought her was a monument. In the great bedroom
over the shop he had his furniture _built_: built of solid mahogany: oh
too, too solid. No doubt he hopped or skipped himself with satisfaction
into the monstrous matrimonial bed: it could only be mounted by means
of a stool and chair. But the poor, secluded little woman, older than
he, must have climbed up with a heavy heart, to lie and face the gloomy
Bastille of mahogany, the great cupboard opposite, or to turn wearily
sideways to the great cheval mirror, which performed a perpetual and
hideous bow before her grace. Such furniture! It could never be removed
from the room.

The little child was born in the second year. And then James Houghton
decamped to a small, half-furnished bedroom at the other end of the
house, where he slept on a rough board and played the anchorite for the
rest of his days. His wife was left alone with her baby and the
built-in furniture. She developed heart disease, as a result of nervous
repressions.

But like a butterfly James fluttered over his fabrics. He was a tyrant
to his shop-girls. No French marquis in a Dickens' novel could have
been more elegant and _raffiné_ and heartless. The girls detested him.
And yet, his curious refinement and enthusiasm bore them away. They
submitted to him. The shop attracted much curiosity. But the
poor-spirited Woodhouse people were weak buyers. They wearied James
Houghton with their demand for common zephyrs, for red flannel which
they would scallop with black worsted, for black alpacas and bombazines
and merinos. He fluffed out his silk-striped muslins, his India
cotton-prints. But the natives shied off as if he had offered them the
poisoned robes of Herakles.

There was a sale. These sales contributed a good deal to Mrs.
Houghton's nervous heart-disease. They brought the first signs of wear
and tear into the face of James Houghton. At first, of course, he
merely marked down, with discretion, his less-expensive stock of prints
and muslins, nuns-veilings and muslin delaines, with a few fancy
braidings and trimmings in guimp or bronze to enliven the affair. And
Woodhouse bought cautiously.

After the sale, however, James Houghton felt himself at liberty to
plunge into an orgy of new stock. He flitted, with a tense look on his
face, to Manchester. After which huge bundles, bales and boxes arrived
in Woodhouse, and were dumped on the pavement of the shop. Friday
evening came, and with it a revelation in Houghton's window: the first
piqués, the first strangely-woven and honey-combed toilet covers and
bed quilts, the first frill-caps and aprons for maid-servants: a wonder
in white. That was how James advertised it. "A Wonder in White." Who
knows but that he had been reading Wilkie Collins' famous novel!

As the nine days of the wonder-in-white passed and receded, James
disappeared in the direction of London. A few Fridays later he came out
with his Winter Touch. Weird and wonderful winter coats, for
ladies--everything James handled was for ladies, he scorned the coarser
sex--: weird and wonderful winter coats for ladies, of thick, black,
pockmarked cloth, stood and flourished their bear-fur cuffs in the
background, while tippets, boas, muffs and winter-fancies coquetted in
front of the window-space. Friday-night crowds gathered outside: the
gas-lamps shone their brightest: James Houghton hovered in the
background like an author on his first night in the theatre. The
result was a sensation. Ten villages stared and crushed round the plate
glass. It was a sensation: but what sensation! In the breasts of the
crowd, wonder, admiration, _fear_, and ridicule. Let us stress the word
fear. The inhabitants of Woodhouse were afraid lest James Houghton
should impose his standards upon them. His goods were in excellent
taste: but his customers were in as bad taste as possible. They stood
outside and pointed, giggled, and jeered. Poor James, like an author on
his first night, saw his work fall more than flat.

But still he believed in his own excellence: and quite justly. What
he failed to perceive was that the crowd hated excellence. Woodhouse
wanted a gently graduated progress in mediocrity, a mediocrity so
stale and flat that it fell outside the imagination of any sensitive
mortal. Woodhouse wanted a series of vulgar little thrills, as one
tawdry mediocrity was imported from Nottingham or Birmingham to take
the place of some tawdry mediocrity which Nottingham and Birmingham
had already discarded. That Woodhouse, as a very condition of its
own being, hated any approach to originality or real taste, this
James Houghton could never learn. He thought he had not been clever
enough, when he had been far, far too clever already. He always
thought that Dame Fortune was a capricious and fastidious dame, a
sort of Elizabeth of Austria or Alexandra, Princess of Wales,
elegant beyond his grasp. Whereas Dame Fortune, even in London or
Vienna, let alone in Woodhouse, was a vulgar woman of the middle and
lower middle-class, ready to put her heavy foot on anything that was
not vulgar, machine-made, and appropriate to the herd. When he saw
his delicate originalities, as well as his faint flourishes of
draper's fantasy, squashed flat under the calm and solid foot of
vulgar Dame Fortune, he fell into fits of depression bordering on
mysticism, and talked to his wife in a vague way of higher
influences and the angel Israfel. She, poor lady, was thoroughly
scared by Israfel, and completely unhooked by the vagaries of James.

At last--we hurry down the slope of James' misfortunes--the real
days of Houghton's Great Sales began. Houghton's Great Bargain
Events were really events. After some years of hanging on, he let go
splendidly. He marked down his prints, his chintzes, his dimities
and his veilings with a grand and lavish hand. Bang went his blue
pencil through 3/11, and nobly he subscribed 1/0-3/4. Prices fell
like nuts. A lofty one-and-eleven rolled down to six-three, 1/6
magically shrank into 4-3/4d, whilst good solid prints exposed
themselves at 3-3/4d per yard.

Now this was really an opportunity. Moreover the goods, having
become a little stale during their years of ineffectuality, were
beginning to approximate to the public taste. And besides, good
sound stuff it was, no matter what the pattern. And so the little
Woodhouse girls went to school in petties and drawers made of
material which James had destined for fair summer dresses: petties
and drawers of which the little Woodhouse girls were ashamed, for
all that. For if they should chance to turn up their little skirts,
be sure they would raise a chorus among their companions: "Yah-h-h,
yer've got Houghton's threp'ny draws on!"

All this time James Houghton walked on air. He still saw the Fata
Morgana snatching his fabrics round her lovely form, and pointing
him to wealth untold. True, he became also Superintendent of the
Sunday School. But whether this was an act of vanity, or whether it
was an attempt to establish an Entente Cordiale with higher powers,
who shall judge.

Meanwhile his wife became more and more an invalid; the little
Alvina was a pretty, growing child. Woodhouse was really impressed
by the sight of Mrs. Houghton, small, pale and withheld, taking a
walk with her dainty little girl, so fresh in an ermine tippet and a
muff. Mrs. Houghton in shiny black bear's-fur, the child in the
white and spotted ermine, passing silent and shadowy down the
street, made an impression which the people did not forget.

But Mrs. Houghton had pains at her heart. If, during her walk, she
saw two little boys having a scrimmage, she had to run to them with
pence and entreaty, leaving them dumfounded, whilst she leaned blue
at the lips against a wall. If she saw a carter crack his whip over
the ears of the horse, as the horse laboured uphill, she had to
cover her eyes and avert her face, and all her strength left her.

So she stayed more and more in her room, and the child was given to
the charge of a governess. Miss Frost was a handsome, vigorous young
woman of about thirty years of age, with grey-white hair and
gold-rimmed spectacles. The white hair was not at all tragical: it
was a family _trait_.

Miss Frost mattered more than any one else to Alvina Houghton,
during the first long twenty-five years of the girl's life. The
governess was a strong, generous woman, a musician by nature. She
had a sweet voice, and sang in the choir of the chapel, and took the
first class of girls in the Sunday-School of which James Houghton
was Superintendent. She disliked and rather despised James Houghton,
saw in him elements of a hypocrite, detested his airy and gracious
selfishness, his lack of human feeling, and most of all, his fairy
fantasy. As James went further into life, he became a dreamer. Sad
indeed that he died before the days of Freud. He enjoyed the most
wonderful and fairy-like dreams, which he could describe perfectly,
in charming, delicate language. At such times his beautifully
modulated voice all but sang, his grey eyes gleamed fiercely under
his bushy, hairy eyebrows, his pale face with its side-whiskers had
a strange _lueur_, his long thin hands fluttered occasionally. He
had become meagre in figure, his skimpy but genteel coat would be
buttoned over his breast, as he recounted his dream-adventures,
adventures that were half Edgar Allan Poe, half Andersen, with
touches of Vathek and Lord Byron and George Macdonald: perhaps more
than a touch of the last. Ladies were always struck by these
accounts. But Miss Frost never felt so strongly moved to impatience
as when she was within hearing.

For twenty years, she and James Houghton treated each other with a
courteous distance. Sometimes she broke into open impatience with
him, sometimes he answered her tartly: "Indeed, indeed! Oh, indeed!
Well, well, I'm sorry you find it so--" as if the injury consisted
in her finding it so. Then he would flit away to the Conservative
Club, with a fleet, light, hurried step, as if pressed by fate. At
the club he played chess--at which he was excellent--and conversed.
Then he flitted back at half-past twelve, to dinner.

The whole morale of the house rested immediately on Miss Frost. She
saw her line in the first year. She must defend the little Alvina,
whom she loved as her own, and the nervous, petulant, heart-stricken
woman, the mother, from the vagaries of James. Not that James had
any vices. He did not drink or smoke, was abstemious and clean as an
anchorite, and never lowered his fine tone. But still, the two
unprotected ones must be sheltered from him. Miss Frost
imperceptibly took into her hands the reins of the domestic
government. Her rule was quiet, strong, and generous. She was not
seeking her own way. She was steering the poor domestic ship of
Manchester House, illuminating its dark rooms with her own sure,
radiant presence: her silver-white hair, and her pale, heavy,
reposeful face seemed to give off a certain radiance. She seemed to
give weight, ballast, and repose to the staggering and bewildered
home. She controlled the maid, and suggested the meals--meals which
James ate without knowing what he ate. She brought in flowers and
books, and, very rarely, a visitor. Visitors were out of place in
the dark sombreness of Manchester House. Her flowers charmed the
petulant invalid, her books she sometimes discussed with the airy
James: after which discussions she was invariably filled with
exasperation and impatience, whilst James invariably retired to the
shop, and was heard raising his musical voice, which the work-girls
hated, to one or other of the work-girls.

James certainly had an irritating way of speaking of a book. He
talked of incidents, and effects, and suggestions, as if the whole
thing had just been a sensational-æsthetic attribute to himself. Not
a grain of human feeling in the man, said Miss Frost, flushing pink
with exasperation. She herself invariably took the human line.

Meanwhile the shops began to take on a hopeless and frowsy look.
After ten years' sales, spring sales, summer sales, autumn sales,
winter sales, James began to give up the drapery dream. He himself
could not bear any more to put the heavy, pock-holed black cloth
coat, with wild bear cuffs and collar, on to the stand. He had
marked it down from five guineas to one guinea, and then, oh ignoble
day, to ten-and-six. He nearly kissed the gipsy woman with a basket
of tin saucepan-lids, when at last she bought it for five shillings,
at the end of one of his winter sales. But even she, in spite of the
bitter sleety day, would not put the coat on in the shop. She
carried it over her arm down to the Miners' Arms. And later, with a
shock that really hurt him, James, peeping bird-like out of his shop
door, saw her sitting driving a dirty rag-and-bone cart with a
green-white, mouldy pony, and flourishing her arms like some wild
and hairy-decorated squaw. For the long bear-fur, wet with sleet,
seemed like a _chevaux de frise_ of long porcupine quills round her
fore-arms and her neck. Yet such good, such wonderful material! James
eyed it for one moment, and then fled like a rabbit to the stove in
his back regions.

The higher powers did not seem to fulfil the terms of treaty which
James hoped for. He began to back out from the Entente. The Sunday
School was a great trial to him. Instead of being carried away by
his grace and eloquence, the nasty louts of colliery boys and girls
openly banged their feet and made deafening noises when he tried to
speak. He said many acid and withering things, as he stood there on
the rostrum. But what is the good of saying acid things to those
little fiends and gall-bladders, the colliery children. The
situation was saved by Miss Frost's sweeping together all the big
girls, under her surveillance, and by her organizing that the tall
and handsome blacksmith who taught the lower boys should extend his
influence over the upper boys. His influence was more than
effectual. It consisted in gripping any recalcitrant boy just above
the knee, and jesting with him in a jocular manner, in the dialect.
The blacksmith's hand was all a blacksmith's hand need be, and his
dialect was as broad as could be wished. Between the grip and the
homely idiom no boy could endure without squealing. So the Sunday
School paid more attention to James, whose prayers were beautiful.
But then one of the boys, a protegé of Miss Frost, having been left
for half an hour in the obscure room with Mrs. Houghton, gave away
the secret of the blacksmith's grip, which secret so haunted the
poor lady that it marked a stage in the increase of her malady, and
made Sunday afternoon a nightmare to her. And then James Houghton
resented something in the coarse Scotch manner of the minister of
that day. So that the superintendency of the Sunday School came to
an end.

At the same time, Solomon had to divide his baby. That is, he let
the London side of his shop to W. H. Johnson, the tailor and
haberdasher, a parvenu little fellow whose English would not bear
analysis. Bitter as it was, it had to be. Carpenters and joiners
appeared, and the premises were completely severed. From her room in
the shadows at the back the invalid heard the hammering and sawing,
and suffered. W. H. Johnson came out with a spick-and-span window,
and had his wife, a shrewd, quiet woman, and his daughter, a
handsome, loud girl, to help him on Friday evenings. Men flocked
in--even women, buying their husbands a sixpence-halfpenny tie. They
could have bought a tie for four-three from James Houghton. But no,
they would rather give sixpence-halfpenny for W.H. Johnson's fresh
but rubbishy stuff. And James, who had tried to rise to another
successful sale, saw the streams pass into the other doorway, and
heard the heavy feet on the hollow boards of the other shop: his
shop no more.

After this cut at his pride and integrity he lay in retirement for a
while, mystically inclined. Probably he would have come to
Swedenborg, had not his clipt wings spread for a new flight. He hit
upon the brilliant idea of working up his derelict fabrics into
ready-mades: not men's clothes, oh no: women's, or rather, ladies'.
Ladies' Tailoring, said the new announcement.

James Houghton was happy once more. A zig-zag wooden stair-way was
rigged up the high back of Manchester House. In the great lofts
sewing-machines of various patterns and movements were installed. A
manageress was advertised for, and work-girls were hired. So a new
phase of life started. At half-past six in the morning there was a
clatter of feet and of girls' excited tongues along the back-yard
and up the wooden stair-way outside the back wall. The poor invalid
heard every clack and every vibration. She could never get over her
nervous apprehension of an invasion. Every morning alike, she felt
an invasion of some enemy was breaking in on her. And all day long
the low, steady rumble of sewing-machines overhead seemed like the
low drumming of a bombardment upon her weak heart. To make matters
worse, James Houghton decided that he must have his sewing-machines
driven by some extra-human force. He installed another plant of
machinery--acetylene or some such contrivance--which was intended to
drive all the little machines from one big belt. Hence a further
throbbing and shaking in the upper regions, truly terrible to
endure. But, fortunately or unfortunately, the acetylene plant was
not a success. Girls got their thumbs pierced, and sewing machines
absolutely refused to stop sewing, once they had started, and
absolutely refused to start, once they had stopped. So that after a
while, one loft was reserved for disused and rusty, but expensive
engines.

Dame Fortune, who had refused to be taken by fine fabrics and fancy
trimmings, was just as reluctant to be captured by ready-mades.
Again the good dame was thoroughly lower middle-class. James
Houghton designed "robes." Now Robes were the mode. Perhaps it was
Alexandra, Princess of Wales, who gave glory to the slim,
glove-fitting Princess Robe. Be that as it may, James Houghton
designed robes. His work-girls, a race even more callous than
shop-girls, proclaimed the fact that James tried on his own
inventions upon his own elegant thin person, before the privacy of
his own cheval mirror. And even if he did, why not? Miss Frost,
hearing this legend, looked sideways at the enthusiast.

Let us remark in time that Miss Frost had already ceased to draw any
maintenance from James Houghton. Far from it, she herself
contributed to the upkeep of the domestic hearth and board. She had
fully decided never to leave her two charges. She knew that a
governess was an impossible item in Manchester House, as things
went. And so she trudged the country, giving music lessons to the
daughters of tradesmen and of colliers who boasted pianofortes. She
even taught heavy-handed but dauntless colliers, who were seized
with a passion to "play." Miles she trudged, on her round from
village to village: a white-haired woman with a long, quick stride,
a strong figure, and a quick, handsome smile when once her face
awoke behind her gold-rimmed glasses. Like many short-sighted
people, she had a certain intent look of one who goes her own way.

The miners knew her, and entertained the highest respect and
admiration for her. As they streamed in a grimy stream home from
pit, they diverged like some magic dark river from off the pavement
into the horse-way, to give her room as she approached. And the men
who knew her well enough to salute her, by calling her name "Miss
Frost!" giving it the proper intonation of salute, were fussy men
indeed. "She's a lady if ever there was one," they said. And they
meant it. Hearing her name, poor Miss Frost would flash a smile and
a nod from behind her spectacles, but whose black face she smiled to
she never, or rarely knew. If she did chance to get an inkling, then
gladly she called in reply "Mr. Lamb," or "Mr. Calladine." In her
way she was a proud woman, for she was regarded with cordial
respect, touched with veneration, by at least a thousand colliers,
and by perhaps as many colliers' wives. That is something, for any
woman.

Miss Frost charged fifteen shillings for thirteen weeks' lessons,
two lessons a week. And at that she was considered rather dear. She
was supposed to be making money. What money she made went chiefly to
support the Houghton household. In the meanwhile she drilled Alvina
thoroughly in theory and pianoforte practice, for Alvina was
naturally musical, and besides this she imparted to the girl the
elements of a young lady's education, including the drawing of
flowers in water-colour, and the translation of a Lamartine poem.

Now incredible as it may seem, fate threw another prop to the
falling house of Houghton, in the person of the manageress of the
work-girls, Miss Pinnegar. James Houghton complained of Fortune, yet
to what other man would Fortune have sent two such women as Miss
Frost and Miss Pinnegar, _gratis_? Yet there they were. And doubtful
if James was ever grateful for their presence.

If Miss Frost saved him from heaven knows what domestic débâcle and
horror, Miss Pinnegar saved him from the workhouse. Let us not mince
matters. For a dozen years Miss Frost supported the heart-stricken,
nervous invalid, Clariss Houghton: for more than twenty years she
cherished, tended and protected the young Alvina, shielding the
child alike from a neurotic mother and a father such as James. For
nearly twenty years she saw that food was set on the table, and
clean sheets were spread on the beds: and all the time remained
virtually in the position of an outsider, without one grain of
established authority.

And then to find Miss Pinnegar! In her way, Miss Pinnegar was very
different from Miss Frost. She was a rather short, stout,
mouse-coloured, creepy kind of woman with a high colour in her
cheeks, and dun, close hair like a cap. It was evident she was not a
lady: her grammar was not without reproach. She had pale grey eyes,
and a padding step, and a soft voice, and almost purplish cheeks.
Mrs. Houghton, Miss Frost, and Alvina did not like her. They
suffered her unwillingly.

But from the first she had a curious ascendancy over James Houghton.
One would have expected his æsthetic eye to be offended. But no
doubt it was her voice: her soft, near, sure voice, which seemed
almost like a secret touch upon her hearer. Now many of her hearers
disliked being secretly touched, as it were beneath their clothing.
Miss Frost abhorred it: so did Mrs. Houghton. Miss Frost's voice was
clear and straight as a bell-note, open as the day. Yet Alvina,
though in loyalty she adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, did not
really mind the quiet suggestive power of Miss Pinnegar. For Miss
Pinnegar was not vulgarly insinuating. On the contrary, the things
she said were rather clumsy and downright. It was only that she
seemed to weigh what she said, secretly, before she said it, and
then she approached as if she would slip it into her hearer's
consciousness without his being aware of it. She seemed to slide her
speeches unnoticed into one's ears, so that one accepted them
without the slightest challenge. That was just her manner of
approach. In her own way, she was as loyal and unselfish as Miss
Frost. There are such poles of opposition between honesties and
loyalties.

Miss Pinnegar had the _second_ class of girls in the Sunday School,
and she took second, subservient place in Manchester House. By force
of nature, Miss Frost took first place. Only when Miss Pinnegar
spoke to Mr. Houghton--nay, the very way she addressed herself to
him--"What do _you_ think, Mr. Houghton?"--then there seemed to be
assumed an immediacy of correspondence between the two, and an
unquestioned priority in their unison, his and hers, which was a
cruel thorn in Miss Frost's outspoken breast. This sort of secret
intimacy and secret exulting in having, _really_, the chief power,
was most repugnant to the white-haired woman. Not that there was, in
fact, any secrecy, or any form of unwarranted correspondence between
James Houghton and Miss Pinnegar. Far from it. Each of them would
have found any suggestion of such a possibility repulsive in the
extreme. It was simply an implicit correspondence between their two
psyches, an immediacy of understanding which preceded all
expression, tacit, wireless.

Miss Pinnegar lived in: so that the household consisted of the
invalid, who mostly sat, in her black dress with a white lace collar
fastened by a twisted gold brooch, in her own dim room, doing
nothing, nervous and heart-suffering; then James, and the thin young
Alvina, who adhered to her beloved Miss Frost, and then these two
strange women. Miss Pinnegar never lifted up her voice in household
affairs: she seemed, by her silence, to admit her own inadequacy in
culture and intellect, when topics of interest were being discussed,
only coming out now and then with defiant platitudes and
truisms--for almost defiantly she took the commonplace, vulgarian
point of view; yet after everything she would turn with her quiet,
triumphant assurance to James Houghton, and start on some point of
business, soft, assured, ascendant. The others shut their ears.

Now Miss Pinnegar had to get her footing slowly. She had to let
James run the gamut of his creations. Each Friday night new wonders,
robes and ladies' "suits"--the phrase was very new--garnished the
window of Houghton's shop. It was one of the sights of the place,
Houghton's window on Friday night. Young or old, no individual,
certainly no female left Woodhouse without spending an excited and
usually hilarious ten minutes on the pavement under the window.
Muffled shrieks of young damsels who had just got their first view,
guffaws of sympathetic youths, continued giggling and expostulation
and "Eh, but what price the umbrella skirt, my girl!" and "You'd
like to marry me in _that_, my boy--what? not half!"--or else "Eh,
now, if you'd seen me in _that_ you'd have fallen in love with me at
first sight, shouldn't you?"--with a probable answer "I should have
fallen over myself making haste to get away"--loud guffaws:--all
this was the regular Friday night's entertainment in Woodhouse.
James Houghton's shop was regarded as a weekly comic issue. His
piqué costumes with glass buttons and sort of steel-trimming collars
and cuffs were immortal.

But why, once more, drag it out. Miss Pinnegar served in the shop on
Friday nights. She stood by her man. Sometimes when the shrieks grew
loudest she came to the shop door and looked with her pale grey eyes
at the ridiculous mob of lasses in tam-o-shanters and youths half
buried in caps. And she imposed a silence. They edged away.

Meanwhile Miss Pinnegar pursued the sober and even tenor of her own
way. Whilst James lashed out, to use the local phrase, in robes and
"suits," Miss Pinnegar steadily ground away, producing strong,
indestructible shirts and singlets for the colliers, sound,
serviceable aprons for the colliers' wives, good print dresses for
servants, and so on. She executed no flights of fancy. She had her
goods made to suit her people. And so, underneath the foam and froth
of James' creative adventure flowed a slow but steady stream of
output and income. The women of Woodhouse came at last to _depend_
on Miss Pinnegar. Growing lads in the pit reduce their garments to
shreds with amazing expedition. "I'll go to Miss Pinnegar for thy
shirts this time, my lad," said the harassed mothers, "and see if
_they'll_ stand thee." It was almost like a threat. But it served
Manchester House.

James bought very little stock in these days: just remnants and
pieces for his immortal robes. It was Miss Pinnegar who saw the
travellers and ordered the unions and calicoes and grey flannel.
James hovered round and said the last word, of course. But what was
his last word but an echo of Miss Pinnegar's penultimate! He was not
interested in unions and twills.

His own stock remained on hand. Time, like a slow whirlpool
churned it over into sight and out of sight, like a mass of dead
sea-weed in a backwash. There was a regular series of sales
fortnightly. The display of "creations" fell off. The new
entertainment was the Friday-night's sale. James would attack some
portion of his stock, make a wild jumble of it, spend a delirious
Wednesday and Thursday marking down, and then open on Friday
afternoon. In the evening there was a crush. A good moiré underskirt
for one-and-eleven-three was not to be neglected, and a handsome
string-lace collarette for six-three would iron out and be worth at
least three-and-six. That was how it went: it would nearly all of
it iron out into something really nice, poor James' crumpled stock.
His fine, semi-transparent face flushed pink, his eyes flashed as he
took in the sixpences and handed back knots of tape or packets of
pins for the notorious farthings. What matter if the farthing change
had originally cost him a halfpenny! His shop was crowded with women
peeping and pawing and turning things over and commenting in loud,
unfeeling tones. For there were still many comic items. Once, for
example, he suddenly heaped up piles of hats, trimmed and untrimmed,
the weirdest, sauciest, most screaming shapes. Woodhouse enjoyed
itself that night.

And all the time, in her quiet, polite, think-the-more fashion Miss
Pinnegar waited on the people, showing them considerable forbearance
and just a tinge of contempt. She became very tired those
evenings--her hair under its invisible hairnet became flatter, her
cheeks hung down purplish and mottled. But while James stood she
stood. The people did not like her, yet she influenced them. And the
stock slowly wilted, withered. Some was scrapped. The shop seemed to
have digested some of its indigestible contents.

James accumulated sixpences in a miserly fashion. Luckily for her
work-girls, Miss Pinnegar took her own orders, and received payments
for her own productions. Some of her regular customers paid her a
shilling a week--or less. But it made a small, steady income. She
reserved her own modest share, paid the expenses of her department,
and left the residue to James.

James had accumulated sixpences, and made a little space in his
shop. He had desisted from "creations." Time now for a new flight.
He decided it was better to be a manufacturer than a tradesman. His
shop, already only half its original size, was again too big. It
might be split once more. Rents had risen in Woodhouse. Why not cut
off another shop from his premises?

No sooner said than done. In came the architect, with whom he had
played many a game of chess. Best, said the architect, take off one
good-sized shop, rather than halve the premises. James would be left
a little cramped, a little tight, with only one-third of his present
space. But as we age we dwindle.

More hammering and alterations, and James found himself cooped in a
long, long narrow shop, very dark at the back, with a high oblong
window and a door that came in at a pinched corner. Next door to him
was a cheerful new grocer of the cheap and florid type. The new
grocer whistled "Just Like the Ivy," and shouted boisterously to his
shop-boy. In his doorway, protruding on James' sensitive vision, was
a pyramid of sixpence-halfpenny tins of salmon, red, shiny tins with
pink halved salmons depicted, and another yellow pyramid of
four-pence-halfpenny tins of pineapple. Bacon dangled in pale rolls
_almost_ over James' doorway, whilst straw and paper, redolent of
cheese, lard, and stale eggs filtered through the threshold.

This was coming down in the world, with a vengeance. But what James
lost downstairs he tried to recover upstairs. Heaven knows what he
would have done, but for Miss Pinnegar. She kept her own work-rooms
against him, with a soft, heavy, silent tenacity that would have
beaten stronger men than James. But his strength lay in his
pliability. He rummaged in the empty lofts, and among the discarded
machinery. He rigged up the engines afresh, bought two new machines,
and started an elastic department, making elastic for garters and
for hat-chins.

He was immensely proud of his first cards of elastic, and saw Dame
Fortune this time fast in his yielding hands. But, becoming used to
disillusionment, he almost welcomed it. Within six months he
realized that every inch of elastic cost him exactly sixty per cent.
more than he could sell it for, and so he scrapped his new
department. Luckily, he sold one machine and even gained two pounds
on it.

After this, he made one last effort. This was hosiery webbing, which
could be cut up and made into as-yet-unheard-of garments. Miss
Pinnegar kept her thumb on this enterprise, so that it was not much
more than abortive. And then James left her alone.

Meanwhile the shop slowly churned its oddments. Every Thursday
afternoon James sorted out tangles of bits and bobs, antique
garments and occasional finds. With these he trimmed his window, so
that it looked like a historical museum, rather soiled and scrappy.
Indoors he made baskets of assortments: threepenny, sixpenny,
ninepenny and shilling baskets, rather like a bran pie in which
everything was a plum. And then, on Friday evening, thin and alert
he hovered behind the counter, his coat shabbily buttoned over his
narrow chest, his face agitated. He had shaved his side-whiskers,
so that they only grew becomingly as low as his ears. His rather
large, grey moustache was brushed off his mouth. His hair, gone very
thin, was brushed frail and floating over his baldness. But still a
gentleman, still courteous, with a charming voice he suggested the
possibilities of a pad of green parrots' tail-feathers, or of a few
yards of pink-pearl trimming or of old chenille fringe. The women
would pinch the thick, exquisite old chenille fringe, delicate and
faded, curious to feel its softness. But they wouldn't give
threepence for it. Tapes, ribbons, braids, buttons, feathers,
jabots, bussels, appliqués, fringes, jet-trimmings, bugle-trimmings,
bundles of old coloured machine-lace, many bundles of strange cord,
in all colours, for old-fashioned braid-patterning, ribbons with
H.M.S. Birkenhead, for boys' sailor caps--everything that nobody
wanted, did the women turn over and over, till they chanced on a
find. And James' quick eyes watched the slow surge of his flotsam,
as the pot boiled but did not boil away. Wonderful that he did not
think of the days when these bits and bobs were new treasures. But
he did not.

And at his side Miss Pinnegar quietly took orders for shirts,
discussed and agreed, made measurements and received instalments.

The shop was now only opened on Friday afternoons and evenings, so
every day, twice a day, James was seen dithering bare-headed and
hastily down the street, as if pressed by fate, to the Conservative
Club, and twice a day he was seen as hastily returning, to his
meals. He was becoming an old man: his daughter was a young woman:
but in his own mind he was just the same, and his daughter was a
little child, his wife a young invalid whom he must charm by some
few delicate attentions--such as the peeled apple.

At the club he got into more mischief. He met men who wanted to
extend a brickfield down by the railway. The brickfield was called
Klondyke. James had now a new direction to run in: down hill towards
Bagthorpe, to Klondyke. Big penny-daisies grew in tufts on the brink
of the yellow clay at Klondyke, yellow eggs-and-bacon spread their
midsummer mats of flower. James came home with clay smeared all over
him, discoursing brilliantly on grit and paste and presses and kilns
and stamps. He carried home a rough and pinkish brick, and gloated
over it. It was a _hard_ brick, it was a non-porous brick. It was an
ugly brick, painfully heavy and parched-looking.

This time he was sure: Dame Fortune would rise like Persephone out
of the earth. He was all the more sure, because other men of the
town were in with him at this venture: sound, moneyed grocers and
plumbers. They were all going to become rich.

Klondyke lasted a year and a half, and was not so bad, for in the
end, all things considered, James had lost not more than five per
cent. of his money. In fact, all things considered, he was about
square. And yet he felt Klondyke as the greatest blow of all. Miss
Pinnegar would have aided and abetted him in another scheme, if it
would but have cheered him. Even Miss Frost was nice with him. But
to no purpose. In the year after Klondyke he became an old man, he
seemed to have lost all his feathers, he acquired a plucked,
tottering look.

Yet he roused up, after a coal-strike. Throttle-Ha'penny put new
life into him. During a coal-strike the miners themselves began
digging in the fields, just near the houses, for the surface coal.
They found a plentiful seam of drossy, yellowish coal behind the
Methodist New Connection Chapel. The seam was opened in the side of
a bank, and approached by a footrill, a sloping shaft down which the
men walked. When the strike was over, two or three miners still
remained working the soft, drossy coal, which they sold for
eight-and-sixpence a ton--or sixpence a hundredweight. But a mining
population scorned such dirt, as they called it.

James Houghton, however, was seized with a desire to work the
Connection Meadow seam, as he called it. He gathered two miner
partners--he trotted endlessly up to the field, he talked, as he had
never talked before, with inumerable colliers. Everybody he met he
stopped, to talk Connection Meadow.

And so at last he sank a shaft, sixty feet deep, rigged up a
corrugated-iron engine-house with a winding-engine, and lowered his
men one at a time down the shaft, in a big bucket. The whole affair
was ricketty, amateurish, and twopenny. The name Connection Meadow
was forgotten within three months. Everybody knew the place as
Throttle-Ha'penny. "What!" said a collier to his wife: "have we got
no coal? You'd better get a bit from Throttle-Ha'penny." "Nay,"
replied the wife, "I'm sure I shan't. I'm sure I shan't burn that
muck, and smother myself with white ash."

It was in the early Throttle-Ha'penny days that Mrs. Houghton died.
James Houghton cried, and put a black band on his Sunday silk hat.
But he was too feverishly busy at Throttle-Ha'penny, selling his
hundredweights of ash-pit fodder, as the natives called it, to
realize anything else.

He had three men and two boys working his pit, besides a
superannuated old man driving the winding engine. And in spite of
all jeering, he flourished. Shabby old coal-carts rambled up behind
the New Connection, and filled from the pit-bank. The coal improved
a little in quality: it was cheap and it was handy. James could sell
at last fifty or sixty tons a week: for the stuff was easy getting.
And now at last he was actually handling money. He saw millions
ahead.

This went on for more than a year. A year after the death of Mrs.
Houghton, Miss Frost became ill and suddenly died. Again James
Houghton cried and trembled. But it was Throttle-Ha'penny that made
him tremble. He trembled in all his limbs, at the touch of success.
He saw himself making noble provision for his only daughter.

But alas--it is wearying to repeat the same thing over and over.
First the Board of Trade began to make difficulties. Then there was
a fault in the seam. Then the roof of Throttle-Ha'penny was so loose
and soft, James could not afford timber to hold it up. In short,
when his daughter Alvina was about twenty-seven years old,
Throttle-Ha'penny closed down. There was a sale of poor machinery,
and James Houghton came home to the dark, gloomy house--to Miss
Pinnegar and Alvina.

It was a pinched, dreary house. James seemed down for the last time.
But Miss Pinnegar persuaded him to take the shop again on Friday
evening. For the rest, faded and peaked, he hurried shadowily down
to the club.




CHAPTER II

THE RISE OF ALVINA HOUGHTON


The heroine of this story is Alvina Houghton. If we leave her out of
the first chapter of her own story it is because, during the first
twenty-five years of her life, she really was left out of count, or
so overshadowed as to be negligible. She and her mother were the
phantom passengers in the ship of James Houghton's fortunes.

In Manchester House, every voice lowered its tone. And so from the
first Alvina spoke with a quiet, refined, almost convent voice. She
was a thin child with delicate limbs and face, and wide, grey-blue,
ironic eyes. Even as a small girl she had that odd ironic tilt of
the eyelids which gave her a look as if she were hanging back in
mockery. If she were, she was quite unaware of it, for under Miss
Frost's care she received no education in irony or mockery. Miss
Frost was straightforward, good-humoured, and a little earnest.
Consequently Alvina, or Vina as she was called, understood only the
explicit mode of good-humoured straightforwardness.

It was doubtful which shadow was greater over the child: that of
Manchester House, gloomy and a little sinister, or that of Miss
Frost, benevolent and protective. Sufficient that the girl herself
worshipped Miss Frost: or believed she did.

Alvina never went to school. She had her lessons from her beloved
governess, she worked at the piano, she took her walks, and for
social life she went to the Congregational Chapel, and to the
functions connected with the chapel. While she was little, she went
to Sunday School twice and to Chapel once on Sundays. Then
occasionally there was a magic lantern or a penny reading, to which
Miss Frost accompanied her. As she grew older she entered the choir
at chapel, she attended Christian Endeavour and P.S.A., and the
Literary Society on Monday evenings. Chapel provided her with a
whole social activity, in the course of which she met certain groups
of people, made certain friends, found opportunity for strolls into
the country and jaunts to the local entertainments. Over and above
this, every Thursday evening she went to the subscription library to
change the week's supply of books, and there again she met friends
and acquaintances. It is hard to overestimate the value of church or
chapel--but particularly chapel--as a social institution, in places
like Woodhouse. The Congregational Chapel provided Alvina with a
whole outer life, lacking which she would have been poor indeed. She
was not particularly religious by inclination. Perhaps her father's
beautiful prayers put her off. So she neither questioned nor
accepted, but just let be.

She grew up a slim girl, rather distinguished in appearance, with a
slender face, a fine, slightly arched nose, and beautiful grey-blue
eyes over which the lids tilted with a very odd, sardonic tilt. The
sardonic quality was, however, quite in abeyance. She was ladylike,
not vehement at all. In the street her walk had a delicate,
lingering motion, her face looked still. In conversation she had
rather a quick, hurried manner, with intervals of well-bred repose
and attention. Her voice was like her father's, flexible and
curiously attractive.

Sometimes, however, she would have fits of boisterous hilarity, not
quite natural, with a strange note half pathetic, half jeering. Her
father tended to a supercilious, sneering tone. In Vina it came out
in mad bursts of hilarious jeering. This made Miss Frost uneasy. She
would watch the girl's strange face, that could take on a gargoyle
look. She would see the eyes rolling strangely under sardonic
eyelids, and then Miss Frost would feel that never, never had she
known anything so utterly alien and incomprehensible and
unsympathetic as her own beloved Vina. For twenty years the strong,
protective governess reared and tended her lamb, her dove, only to
see the lamb open a wolf's mouth, to hear the dove utter the wild
cackle of a daw or a magpie, a strange sound of derision. At such
times Miss Frost's heart went cold within her. She dared not
realize. And she chid and checked her ward, restored her to the
usual impulsive, affectionate demureness. Then she dismissed the
whole matter. It was just an accidental aberration on the girl's
part from her own true nature. Miss Frost taught Alvina thoroughly
the qualities of her own true nature, and Alvina believed what she
was taught. She remained for twenty years the demure, refined
creature of her governess' desire. But there was an odd, derisive
look at the back of her eyes, a look of old knowledge and
deliberate derision. She herself was unconscious of it. But it was
there. And this it was, perhaps, that scared away the young men.

Alvina reached the age of twenty-three, and it looked as if she were
destined to join the ranks of the old maids, so many of whom found
cold comfort in the Chapel. For she had no suitors. True there were
extraordinarily few young men of her class--for whatever her
condition, she had certain breeding and inherent culture--in
Woodhouse. The young men of the same social standing as herself were
in some curious way outsiders to her. Knowing nothing, yet her
ancient sapience went deep, deeper than Woodhouse could fathom. The
young men did not like her for it. They did not like the tilt of her
eyelids.

Miss Frost, with anxious foreseeing, persuaded the girl to take over
some pupils, to teach them the piano. The work was distasteful to
Alvina. She was not a good teacher. She persevered in an off-hand
way, somewhat indifferent, albeit dutiful.

When she was twenty-three years old, Alvina met a man called Graham.
He was an Australian, who had been in Edinburgh taking his medical
degree. Before going back to Australia, he came to spend some months
practising with old Dr. Fordham in Woodhouse--Dr. Fordham being in
some way connected with his mother.

Alexander Graham called to see Mrs. Houghton. Mrs. Houghton did not
like him. She said he was creepy. He was a man of medium height,
dark in colouring, with very dark eyes, and a body which seemed to
move inside his clothing. He was amiable and polite, laughed often,
showing his teeth. It was his teeth which Miss Frost could not
stand. She seemed to see a strong mouthful of cruel, compact teeth.
She declared he had dark blood in his veins, that he was not a man
to be trusted, and that never, never would he make any woman's life
happy.

Yet in spite of all, Alvina was attracted by him. The two would stay
together in the parlour, laughing and talking by the hour. What they
could find to talk about was a mystery. Yet there they were,
laughing and chatting, with a running insinuating sound through it
all which made Miss Frost pace up and down unable to bear herself.

The man was always running in when Miss Frost was out. He contrived
to meet Alvina in the evening, to take a walk with her. He went a
long walk with her one night, and wanted to make love to her. But
her upbringing was too strong for her.

"Oh no," she said. "We are only friends."

He knew her upbringing was too strong for him also.

"We're more than friends," he said. "We're more than friends."

"I don't think so," she said.

"Yes we are," he insisted, trying to put his arm round her waist.

"Oh, don't!" she cried. "Let us go home."

And then he burst out with wild and thick protestations of love,
which thrilled her and repelled her slightly.

"Anyhow I must tell Miss Frost," she said.

"Yes, yes," he answered. "Yes, yes. Let us be engaged at once."

As they passed under the lamps he saw her face lifted, the eyes
shining, the delicate nostrils dilated, as of one who scents battle
and laughs to herself. She seemed to laugh with a certain proud,
sinister recklessness. His hands trembled with desire.

So they were engaged. He bought her a ring, an emerald set in tiny
diamonds. Miss Frost looked grave and silent, but would not openly
deny her approval.

"You like him, don't you? You don't dislike him?" Alvina insisted.

"I don't dislike him," replied Miss Frost. "How can I? He is a
perfect stranger to me."

And with this Alvina subtly contented herself. Her father treated
the young man with suave attention, punctuated by fits of jerky
hostility and jealousy. Her mother merely sighed, and took sal
volatile.

To tell the truth, Alvina herself was a little repelled by the man's
love-making. She found him fascinating, but a trifle repulsive. And
she was not sure whether she hated the repulsive element, or whether
she rather gloried in it. She kept her look of arch, half-derisive
recklessness, which was so unbearably painful to Miss Frost, and so
exciting to the dark little man. It was a strange look in a refined,
really virgin girl--oddly sinister. And her voice had a curious
bronze-like resonance that acted straight on the nerves of her
hearers: unpleasantly on most English nerves, but like fire on the
different susceptibilities of the young man--the darkie, as people
called him.

But after all, he had only six weeks in England, before sailing to
Sydney. He suggested that he and Alvina should marry before he
sailed. Miss Frost would not hear of it. He must see his people
first, she said.

So the time passed, and he sailed. Alvina missed him, missed the
extreme excitement of him rather than the human being he was. Miss
Frost set to work to regain her influence over her ward, to remove
that arch, reckless, almost lewd look from the girl's face. It was a
question of heart against sensuality. Miss Frost tried and tried to
wake again the girl's loving heart--which loving heart was certainly
not occupied by _that man_. It was a hard task, an anxious, bitter
task Miss Frost had set herself.

But at last she succeeded. Alvina seemed to thaw. The hard shining
of her eyes softened again to a sort of demureness and tenderness.
The influence of the man was revoked, the girl was left uninhabited,
empty and uneasy.

She was due to follow her Alexander in three months' time, to
Sydney. Came letters from him, en route--and then a cablegram from
Australia. He had arrived. Alvina should have been preparing her
trousseau, to follow. But owing to her change of heart, she lingered
indecisive.

"_Do_ you love him, dear?" said Miss Frost with emphasis, knitting
her thick, passionate, earnest eyebrows. "Do you love him
sufficiently? _That's_ the point."

The way Miss Frost put the question implied that Alvina did not and
could not love him--because Miss Frost could not. Alvina lifted her
large, blue eyes, confused, half-tender towards her governess, half
shining with unconscious derision.

"I don't really know," she said, laughing hurriedly. "I don't
really."

Miss Frost scrutinized her, and replied with a meaningful:

"Well--!"

To Miss Frost it was clear as daylight. To Alvina not so. In her
periods of lucidity, when she saw as clear as daylight also, she
certainly did not love the little man. She felt him a terrible
outsider, an inferior, to tell the truth. She wondered how he could
have the slightest attraction for her. In fact she could not
understand it at all. She was as free of him as if he had never
existed. The square green emerald on her finger was almost
non-sensical. She was quite, quite sure of herself.

And then, most irritating, a complete _volte face_ in her feelings.
The clear-as-daylight mood disappeared as daylight is bound to
disappear. She found herself in a night where the little man loomed
large, terribly large, potent and magical, while Miss Frost had
dwindled to nothingness. At such times she wished with all her force
that she could travel like a cablegram to Australia. She felt it was
the only way. She felt the dark, passionate receptivity of Alexander
overwhelmed her, enveloped her even from the Antipodes. She felt
herself going distracted--she felt she was going out of her mind.
For she could not act.

Her mother and Miss Frost were fixed in one line. Her father said:

"Well, of course, you'll do as you think best. There's a great risk
in going so far--a great risk. You would be entirely unprotected."

"I don't mind being unprotected," said Alvina perversely.

"Because you don't understand what it means," said her father.

He looked at her quickly. Perhaps he understood her better than the
others.

"Personally," said Miss Pinnegar, speaking of Alexander, "I don't
care for him. But every one has their own taste."

Alvina felt she was being overborne, and that she was letting
herself be overborne. She was half relieved. She seemed to nestle
into the well-known surety of Woodhouse. The other unknown had
frightened her.

Miss Frost now took a definite line.

"I feel you don't love him, dear. I'm almost sure you don't. So now
you have to choose. Your mother dreads your going--she dreads it. I
am certain you would never see her again. She says she can't bear
it--she can't bear the thought of you out there with Alexander. It
makes her shudder. She suffers dreadfully, you know. So you will
have to choose, dear. You will have to choose for the best."

Alvina was made stubborn by pressure. She herself had come fully to
believe that she did not love him. She was quite sure she did not
love him. But out of a certain perversity, she wanted to go.

Came his letter from Sydney, and one from his parents to her and one
to her parents. All seemed straightforward--not _very_ cordial, but
sufficiently. Over Alexander's letter Miss Frost shed bitter tears.
To her it seemed so shallow and heartless, with terms of endearment
stuck in like exclamation marks. He semed to have no thought, no
feeling for the girl herself. All he wanted was to hurry her out
there. He did not even mention the grief of her parting from her
English parents and friends: not a word. Just a rush to get her out
there, winding up with "And now, dear, I shall not be myself till I
see you here in Sydney--Your ever-loving Alexander." A selfish,
sensual creature, who would forget the dear little Vina in three
months, if she did not turn up, and who would neglect her in six
months, if she did. Probably Miss Frost was right.

Alvina knew the tears she was costing all round. She went upstairs
and looked at his photograph--his dark and impertinent muzzle. Who
was _he_, after all? She did not know him. With cold eyes she looked
at him, and found him repugnant.

She went across to her governess's room, and found Miss Frost in a
strange mood of trepidation.

"Don't trust me, dear, don't trust what I say," poor Miss Frost
ejaculated hurriedly, even wildly. "Don't notice what I have said.
Act for yourself, dear. Act for yourself entirely. I am sure I am
wrong in trying to influence you. I know I am wrong. It is wrong and
foolish of me. Act just for yourself, dear--the rest doesn't matter.
The rest doesn't matter. Don't take _any_ notice of what I have
said. I know I am wrong."

For the first time in her life Alvina saw her beloved governess
flustered, the beautiful white hair looking a little draggled, the
grey, near-sighted eyes, so deep and kind behind the gold-rimmed
glasses, now distracted and scared. Alvina immediately burst into
tears and flung herself into the arms of Miss Frost. Miss Frost also
cried as if her heart would break, catching her indrawn breath with
a strange sound of anguish, forlornness, the terrible crying of a
woman with a loving heart, whose heart has never been able to relax.
Alvina was hushed. In a second, she became the elder of the two. The
terrible poignancy of the woman of fifty-two, who now at last had
broken down, silenced the girl of twenty-three, and roused all her
passionate tenderness. The terrible sound of "Never now, never
now--it is too late," which seemed to ring in the curious, indrawn
cries of the elder woman, filled the girl with a deep wisdom. She
knew the same would ring in her mother's dying cry. Married or
unmarried, it was the same--the same anguish, realized in all its
pain after the age of fifty--the loss in never having been able to
relax, to submit.

Alvina felt very strong and rich in the fact of her youth. For her
it was not too late. For Miss Frost it was for ever too late.

"I don't want to go, dear," said Alvina to the elder woman. "I know
I don't care for him. He is nothing to me."

Miss Frost became gradually silent, and turned aside her face. After
this there was a hush in the house. Alvina announced her intention
of breaking off her engagement. Her mother kissed her, and cried,
and said, with the selfishness of an invalid:

"I couldn't have parted with you, I couldn't." Whilst the father
said:

"I think you are wise, Vina. I have thought a lot about it."

So Alvina packed up his ring and his letters and little presents,
and posted them over the seas. She was relieved, really: as if she
had escaped some very trying ordeal. For some days she went about
happily, in pure relief. She loved everybody. She was charming and
sunny and gentle with everybody, particularly with Miss Frost, whom
she loved with a deep, tender, rather sore love. Poor Miss Frost
seemed to have lost a part of her confidence, to have taken on a new
wistfulness, a new silence and remoteness. It was as if she found
her busy contact with life a strain now. Perhaps she was getting
old. Perhaps her proud heart had given way.

Alvina had kept a little photograph of the man. She would often go
and look at it. Love?--no, it was not love! It was something more
primitive still. It was curiosity, deep, radical, burning curiosity.
How she looked and looked at his dark, impertinent-seeming face. A
flicker of derision came into her eyes. Yet still she looked.

In the same manner she would look into the faces of the young men of
Woodhouse. But she never found there what she found in her
photograph. They all seemed like blank sheets of paper in
comparison. There was a curious pale surface-look in the faces of
the young men of Woodhouse: or, if there was some underneath
suggestive power, it was a little abject or humiliating, inferior,
common. They were all either blank or common.




CHAPTER III

THE MATERNITY NURSE


Of course Alvina made everybody pay for her mood of submission and
sweetness. In a month's time she was quite intolerable.

"I can't stay here all my life," she declared, stretching her eyes
in a way that irritated the other inmates of Manchester House
extremely. "I know I can't. I can't bear it. I simply can't bear it,
and there's an end of it. I can't, I tell you. I can't bear it. I'm
buried alive--simply buried alive. And it's more than I can stand.
It is, really."

There was an odd clang, like a taunt, in her voice. She was trying
them all.

"But what do you want, dear?" asked Miss Frost, knitting her dark
brows in agitation.

"I want to go away," said Alvina bluntly.

Miss Frost gave a slight gesture with her right hand, of helpless
impatience. It was so characteristic, that Alvina almost laughed.

"But where do you want to go?" asked Miss Frost.

"I don't know. I don't care," said Alvina. "Anywhere, if I can get
out of Woodhouse."

"Do you wish you had gone to Australia?" put in Miss Pinnegar.

"No, I don't wish I had gone to Australia," retorted Alvina with a
rude laugh. "Australia isn't the only other place besides
Woodhouse."

Miss Pinnegar was naturally offended. But the curious insolence
which sometimes came out in the girl was inherited direct from her
father.

"You see, dear," said Miss Frost, agitated: "if you knew what you
wanted, it would be easier to see the way."

"I want to be a nurse," rapped out Alvina.

Miss Frost stood still, with the stillness of a middle-aged
disapproving woman, and looked at her charge. She believed that
Alvina was just speaking at random. Yet she dared not check her, in
her present mood.

Alvina was indeed speaking at random. She had never thought of being
a nurse--the idea had never entered her head. If it had she would
certainly never have entertained it. But she had heard Alexander
speak of Nurse This and Sister That. And so she had rapped out her
declaration. And having rapped it out, she prepared herself to stick
to it. Nothing like leaping before you look.

"A nurse!" repeated Miss Frost. "But do you feel yourself fitted to
be a nurse? Do you think you could bear it?"

"Yes, I'm sure I could," retorted Alvina. "I want to be a maternity
nurse--" She looked strangely, even outrageously, at her governess.
"I want to be a maternity nurse. Then I shouldn't have to attend
operations." And she laughed quickly.

Miss Frost's right hand beat like a wounded bird. It was reminiscent
of the way she beat time, insistently, when she was giving music
lessons, sitting close beside her pupils at the piano. Now it beat
without time or reason. Alvina smiled brightly and cruelly.

"Whatever put such an idea into your head, Vina?" asked poor Miss
Frost.

"I don't know," said Alvina, still more archly and brightly.

"Of course you don't mean it, dear," said Miss Frost, quailing.

"Yes, I do. Why should I say it if I don't."

Miss Frost would have done anything to escape the arch, bright,
cruel eyes of her charge.

"Then we must think about it," she said, numbly. And she went away.

Alvina floated off to her room, and sat by the window looking down
on the street. The bright, arch look was still on her face. But her
heart was sore. She wanted to cry, and fling herself on the breast
of her darling. But she couldn't. No, for her life she couldn't.
Some little devil sat in her breast and kept her smiling archly.

Somewhat to her amazement, he sat steadily on for days and days.
Every minute she expected him to go. Every minute she expected to
break down, to burst into tears and tenderness and reconciliation.
But no--she did not break down. She persisted. They all waited for
the old loving Vina to be herself again. But the new and
recalcitrant Vina still shone hard. She found a copy of _The
Lancet_, and saw an advertisement of a home in Islington where
maternity nurses would be fully trained and equipped in six months'
time. The fee was sixty guineas. Alvina declared her intention of
departing to this training home. She had two hundred pounds of her
own, bequeathed by her grandfather.

In Manchester House they were all horrified--not moved with grief,
this time, but shocked. It seemed such a repulsive and indelicate
step to take. Which it was. And which, in her curious perverseness,
Alvina must have intended it to be. Mrs. Houghton assumed a remote
air of silence, as if she did not hear any more, did not belong. She
lapsed far away. She was really very weak. Miss Pinnegar said: "Well
really, if she wants to do it, why, she might as well try." And, as
often with Miss Pinnegar, this speech seemed to contain a veiled
threat.

"A maternity nurse!" said James Houghton. "A maternity nurse! What
exactly do you mean by a maternity nurse?"

"A trained mid-wife," said Miss Pinnegar curtly. "That's it, isn't
it? It is as far as I can see. A trained mid-wife."

"Yes, of course," said Alvina brightly.

"But--!" stammered James Houghton, pushing his spectacles up on to
his forehead, and making his long fleece of painfully thin hair
uncover his baldness. "I can't understand that any young girl of
any--any upbringing, any upbringing whatever, should want to choose
such a--such an--occupation. I can't understand it."

"Can't you?" said Alvina brightly.

"Oh well, if she _does_--" said Miss Pinnegar cryptically.

Miss Frost said very little. But she had serious confidential talks
with Dr. Fordham. Dr. Fordham didn't approve, certainly he
didn't--but neither did he see any great harm in it. At that time it
was rather the thing for young ladies to enter the nursing
profession, if their hopes had been blighted or checked in another
direction! And so, enquiries were made. Enquiries were made.

The upshot was, that Alvina was to go to Islington for her six
months' training. There was a great bustle, preparing her nursing
outfit. Instead of a trousseau, nurse's uniforms in fine
blue-and-white stripe, with great white aprons. Instead of a wreath
of orange blossom, a rather chic nurse's bonnet of blue silk, and
for a trailing veil, a blue silk fall.

Well and good! Alvina expected to become frightened, as the time
drew near. But no, she wasn't a bit frightened. Miss Frost watched
her narrowly. Would there not be a return of the old, tender,
sensitive, shrinking Vina--the exquisitely sensitive and nervous,
loving girl? No, astounding as it may seem, there was no return of
such a creature. Alvina remained bright and ready, the half-hilarious
clang remained in her voice, taunting. She kissed them all good-bye,
brightly and sprightlily, and off she set. She wasn't nervous.

She came to St. Pancras, she got her cab, she drove off to her
destination--and as she drove, she looked out of the window. Horrid,
vast, stony, dilapidated, crumbly-stuccoed streets and squares of
Islington, grey, grey, greyer by far than Woodhouse, and
interminable. How exceedingly sordid and disgusting! But instead of
being repelled and heartbroken, Alvina enjoyed it. She felt her
trunk rumble on the top of the cab, and still she looked out on the
ghastly dilapidated flat facades of Islington, and still she smiled
brightly, as if there were some charm in it all. Perhaps for her
there was a charm in it all. Perhaps it acted like a tonic on the
little devil in her breast. Perhaps if she had seen tufts of
snowdrops--it was February--and yew-hedges and cottage windows, she
would have broken down. As it was, she just enjoyed it. She enjoyed
glimpsing in through uncurtained windows, into sordid rooms where
human beings moved as if sordidly unaware. She enjoyed the smell of
a toasted bloater, rather burnt. So common! so indescribably common!
And she detested bloaters, because of the hairy feel of the spines
in her mouth. But to smell them like this, to know that she was in
the region of "penny beef-steaks," gave her a perverse pleasure.

The cab stopped at a yellow house at the corner of a square where
some shabby bare trees were flecked with bits of blown paper, bits
of paper and refuse cluttered inside the round railings of each
tree. She went up some dirty-yellowish steps, and rang the
"Patients'" bell, because she knew she ought not to ring the
"Tradesmen's." A servant, not exactly dirty, but unattractive, let
her into a hall painted a dull drab, and floored with cocoa-matting,
otherwise bare. Then up bare stairs to a room where a stout, pale,
common woman with two warts on her face, was drinking tea. It was
three o'clock. This was the matron. The matron soon deposited her in
a bedroom, not very small, but bare and hard and dusty-seeming, and
there left her. Alvina sat down on her chair, looked at her box
opposite her, looked round the uninviting room, and smiled to
herself. Then she rose and went to the window: a very dirty window,
looking down into a sort of well of an area, with other wells
ranging along, and straight opposite like a reflection another solid
range of back-premises, with iron stair-ways and horrid little doors
and washing and little W. C.'s and people creeping up and down like
vermin. Alvina shivered a little, but still smiled. Then slowly she
began to take off her hat. She put it down on the drab-painted chest
of drawers.

Presently the servant came in with a tray, set it down, lit a naked
gas-jet, which roared faintly, and drew down a crackly dark-green
blind, which showed a tendency to fly back again alertly to the
ceiling.

"Thank you," said Alvina, and the girl departed.

Then Miss Houghton drank her black tea and ate her bread and
margarine.

Surely enough books have been written about heroines in similar
circumstances. There is no need to go into the details of Alvina's
six months in Islington.

The food was objectionable--yet Alvina got fat on it. The air was
filthy--and yet never had her colour been so warm and fresh, her
skin so soft. Her companions were almost without exception vulgar
and coarse--yet never had she got on so well with women of her own
age--or older than herself. She was ready with a laugh and a word,
and though she was unable to venture on indecencies herself, yet she
had an amazing faculty for _looking_ knowing and indecent beyond
words, rolling her eyes and pitching her eyebrows in a certain
way--oh, it was quite sufficient for her companions! And yet, if
they had ever actually demanded a dirty story or a really open
indecency from her, she would have been floored.

But she enjoyed it. Amazing how she enjoyed it. She did not care
_how_ revolting and indecent these nurses were--she put on a look as
if she were in with it all, and it all passed off as easy as
winking. She swung her haunches and arched her eyes with the best
of them. And they behaved as if she were exactly one of themselves.
And yet, with the curious cold tact of women, they left her alone,
one and all, in private: just ignored her.

It is truly incredible how Alvina became blooming and bouncing at
this time. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was always
ready with her hard, nurse's laugh and her nurse's quips. No one was
better than she at _double-entendres._ No one could better give the
nurse's leer. She had it all in a fortnight. And never once did she
feel anything but exhilarated and in full swing. It seemed to her
she had not a moment's time to brood or reflect about things--she
was too much in the swing. Every moment, in the swing, living, or
active in full swing. When she got into bed she went to sleep. When
she awoke, it was morning, and she got up. As soon as she was up and
dressed she had somebody to answer, something to say, something to
do. Time passed like an express train--and she seemed to have known
no other life than this.

Not far away was a lying-in hospital. A dreadful place it was. There
she had to go, right off, and help with cases. There she had to
attend lectures and demonstrations. There she met the doctors and
students. Well, a pretty lot they were, one way and another. When
she had put on flesh and become pink and bouncing she was just their
sort: just their very ticket. Her voice had the right twang, her
eyes the right roll, her haunches the right swing. She seemed
altogether just the ticket. And yet she wasn't.

It would be useless to say she was not shocked. She was profoundly
and awfully shocked. Her whole state was perhaps largely the result
of shock: a sort of play-acting based on hysteria. But the dreadful
things she saw in the lying-in hospital, and afterwards, went deep,
and finished her youth and her tutelage for ever. How many infernos
deeper than Miss Frost could ever know, did she not travel? the
inferno of the human animal, the human organism in its convulsions,
the human social beast in its abjection and its degradation.

For in her latter half she had to visit the slum cases. And such
cases! A woman lying on a bare, filthy floor, a few old coats thrown
over her, and vermin crawling everywhere, in spite of sanitary
inspectors. But what did the woman, the sufferer, herself care! She
ground her teeth and screamed and yelled with pains. In her calm
periods she lay stupid and indifferent--or she cursed a little. But
abject, stupid indifference was the bottom of it all: abject, brutal
indifference to everything--yes, everything. Just a piece of female
functioning, no more.

Alvina was supposed to receive a certain fee for these cases she
attended in their homes. A small proportion of her fee she kept for
herself, the rest she handed over to the Home. That was the
agreement. She received her grudged fee callously, threatened and
exacted it when it was not forthcoming. Ha!--if they didn't have to
pay you at all, these slum-people, they would treat you with more
contempt than if you were one of themselves. It was one of the
hardest lessons Alvina had to learn--to bully these people, in their
own hovels, into some sort of obedience to her commands, and some
sort of respect for her presence. She had to fight tooth and nail
for this end. And in a week she was as hard and callous to them as
they to her. And so her work was well done. She did not hate them.
There they were. They had a certain life, and you had to take them
at their own worth in their own way. What else! If one should be
gentle, one was gentle. The difficulty did not lie there. The
difficulty lay in being sufficiently rough and hard: that was the
trouble. It cost a great struggle to be hard and callous enough.
Glad she would have been to be allowed to treat them quietly and
gently, with consideration. But pah--it was not their line. They
wanted to be callous, and if you were not callous to match, they
made a fool of you and prevented your doing your work.

Was Alvina her own real self all this time? The mighty question
arises upon us, what is one's own real self? It certainly is not
what we think we are and ought to be. Alvina had been bred to think
of herself as a delicate, tender, chaste creature with unselfish
inclinations and a pure, "high" mind. Well, so she was, in the
more-or-less exhausted part of herself. But high-mindedness had
really come to an end with James Houghton, had really reached the
point, not only of pathetic, but of dry and anti-human, repulsive
quixotry. In Alvina high-mindedness was already stretched beyond the
breaking point. Being a woman of some flexibility of temper,
wrought through generations to a fine, pliant hardness, she flew
back. She went right back on high-mindedness. Did she thereby betray
it?

We think not. If we turn over the head of the penny and look at the
tail, we don't thereby deny or betray the head. We do but adjust it
to its own complement. And so with high-mindedness. It is but one
side of the medal--the crowned reverse. On the obverse the three
legs still go kicking the soft-footed spin of the universe, the
dolphin flirts and the crab leers.

So Alvina spun her medal, and her medal came down tails. Heads or
tails? Heads for generations. Then tails. See the poetic justice.

Now Alvina decided to accept the decision of her fate. Or rather,
being sufficiently a woman, she didn't decide anything. She _was_
her own fate. She went through her training experiences like another
being. She was not herself, said Everybody. When she came home to
Woodhouse at Easter, in her bonnet and cloak, everybody was simply
knocked out. Imagine that this frail, pallid, diffident girl, so
ladylike, was now a rather fat, warm-coloured young woman, strapping
and strong-looking, and with a certain bounce. Imagine her mother's
startled, almost expiring:

"Why, Vina dear!"

Vina laughed. She knew how they were all feeling.

"At least it agrees with your _health_," said her father,
sarcastically, to which Miss Pinnegar answered:

"Well, that's a good deal."

But Miss Frost said nothing the first day. Only the second day, at
breakfast, as Alvina ate rather rapidly and rather well, the
white-haired woman said quietly, with a tinge of cold contempt:

"How changed you are, dear!"

"Am I?" laughed Alvina. "Oh, not really." And she gave the arch look
with her eyes, which made Miss Frost shudder.

Inwardly, Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from questioning.
Alvina was always speaking of the doctors: Doctor Young and Doctor
Headley and Doctor James. She spoke of theatres and music-halls with
these young men, and the jolly good time she had with them. And her
blue-grey eyes seemed to have become harder and greyer, lighter
somehow. In her wistfulness and her tender pathos, Alvina's eyes
would deepen their blue, so beautiful. And now, in her floridity,
they were bright and arch and light-grey. The deep, tender, flowery
blue was gone for ever. They were luminous and crystalline, like the
eyes of a changeling.

Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from question. She wanted, she
_needed_ to ask of her charge: "Alvina, have you betrayed yourself
with any of these young men?" But coldly her heart abstained from
asking--or even from seriously thinking. She left the matter
untouched for the moment. She was already too much shocked.

Certainly Alvina represented the young doctors as very nice, but
rather fast young fellows. "My word, you have to have your wits
about you with them!" Imagine such a speech from a girl tenderly
nurtured: a speech uttered in her own home, and accompanied by a
florid laugh, which would lead a chaste, generous woman like Miss
Frost to imagine--well, she merely abstained from imagining
anything. She had that strength of mind. She never for one moment
attempted to answer the question to herself, as to whether Alvina
had betrayed herself with any of these young doctors, or not. The
question remained stated, but completely unanswered--coldly awaiting
its answer. Only when Miss Frost kissed Alvina good-bye at the
station, tears came to her eyes, and she said hurriedly, in a low
voice:

"Remember we are all praying for you, dear!"

"No, don't do that!" cried Alvina involuntarily, without knowing
what she said.

And then the train moved out, and she saw her darling standing there
on the station, the pale, well-modelled face looking out from behind
the gold-rimmed spectacles, wistfully, the strong, rather stout
figure standing very still and unchangeable, under its coat and
skirt of dark purple, the white hair glistening under the folded
dark hat. Alvina threw herself down on the seat of her carriage. She
loved her darling. She would love her through eternity. She knew she
was right--amply and beautifully right, her darling, her beloved
Miss Frost. Eternally and gloriously right.

And yet--and yet--it was a right which was fulfilled. There were
other rights. There was another side to the medal. Purity and
high-mindedness--the beautiful, but unbearable tyranny. The
beautiful, unbearable tyranny of Miss Frost! It was time now for
Miss Frost to die. It was time for that perfected flower to be
gathered to immortality. A lovely _immortel_. But an obstruction to
other, purple and carmine blossoms which were in bud on the stem. A
lovely edelweiss--but time it was gathered into eternity.
Black-purple and red anemones were due, real Adonis blood, and
strange individual orchids, spotted and fantastic. Time for Miss
Frost to die. She, Alvina, who loved her as no one else would ever
love her, with that love which goes to the core of the universe,
knew that it was time for her darling to be folded, oh, so gently
and softly, into immortality. Mortality was busy with the day after
her day. It was time for Miss Frost to die. As Alvina sat motionless
in the train, running from Woodhouse to Tibshelf, it decided itself
in her.

She was glad to be back in Islington, among all the horrors of her
confinement cases. The doctors she knew hailed her. On the whole,
these young men had not any too deep respect for the nurses as a
whole. Why drag in respect? Human functions were too obviously
established to make any great fuss about. And so the doctors put
their arms round Alvina's waist, because she was plump, and they
kissed her face, because the skin was soft. And she laughed and
squirmed a little, so that they felt all the more her warmth and
softness under their arm's pressure.

"It's no use, you know," she said, laughing rather breathless, but
looking into their eyes with a curious definite look of unchangeable
resistance. This only piqued them.

"What's no use?" they asked.

She shook her head slightly.

"It isn't any use your behaving like that with me," she said, with
the same challenging definiteness, finality: a flat negative.

"Who're you telling?" they said.

For she did not at all forbid them to "behave like that." Not in the
least. She almost encouraged them. She laughed and arched her eyes
and flirted. But her backbone became only the stronger and firmer.
Soft and supple as she was, her backbone never yielded for an
instant. It could not. She had to confess that she liked the young
doctors. They were alert, their faces were clean and bright-looking.
She liked the sort of intimacy with them, when they kissed her and
wrestled with her in the empty laboratories or corridors--often in
the intervals of most critical and appalling cases. She liked their
arm round her waist, the kisses as she reached back her face,
straining away, the sometimes desperate struggles. They took
unpardonable liberties. They pinched her haunches and attacked her
in unheard-of ways. Sometimes her blood really came up in the fight,
and she felt as if, with her hands, she could tear any man, any male
creature, limb from limb. A super-human, voltaic force filled her.
For a moment she surged in massive, inhuman, female strength. The
men always wilted. And invariably, when they wilted, she touched
them with a sudden gentle touch, pitying. So that she always
remained friends with them. When her curious Amazonic power left her
again, and she was just a mere woman, she made shy eyes at them once
more, and treated them with the inevitable female-to-male homage.

The men liked her. They cocked their eyes at her, when she was not
looking, and wondered at her. They wondered over her. They had been
beaten by her, every one of them. But they did not openly know it.
They looked at her, as if she were Woman itself, some creature not
quite personal. What they noticed, all of them, was the way her
brown hair looped over her ears. There was something chaste, and
noble, and war-like about it. The remote quality which hung about
her in the midst of her intimacies and her frequencies, nothing high
or lofty, but something given to the struggle and as yet invincible
in the struggle, made them seek her out.

They felt safe with her. They knew she would not let them down. She
would not intrigue into marriage, or try and make use of them in any
way. She didn't care about them. And so, because of her isolate
self-sufficiency in the fray, her wild, overweening backbone, they
were ready to attend on her and serve her. Headley in particular
hoped he might overcome her. He was a well-built fellow with sandy
hair and a pugnacious face. The battle-spirit was really roused in
him, and he heartily liked the woman. If he could have overcome her
he would have been mad to marry her.

With him, she summoned up all her mettle. She had never to be off
her guard for a single minute. The treacherous suddenness of his
attack--for he was treachery itself--had to be met by the voltaic
suddenness of her resistance and counter-attack. It was nothing less
than magical the way the soft, slumbering body of the woman could
leap in one jet into terrible, overwhelming voltaic force, something
strange and massive, at the first treacherous touch of the man's
determined hand. His strength was so different from hers--quick,
muscular, lambent. But hers was deep and heaving, like the strange
heaving of an earthquake, or the heave of a bull as it rises from
earth. And by sheer non-human power, electric and paralysing, she
could overcome the brawny red-headed fellow.

He was nearly a match for her. But she did not like him. The two
were enemies--and good acquaintances. They were more or less
matched. But as he found himself continually foiled, he became
sulky, like a bear with a sore head. And then she avoided him.

She really liked Young and James much better. James was a quick,
slender, dark-haired fellow, a gentleman, who was always trying to
catch her out with his quickness. She liked his fine, slim limbs,
and his exaggerated generosity. He would ask her out to ridiculously
expensive suppers, and send her sweets and flowers, fabulously
recherché. He was always immaculately well-dressed.

"Of course, as a lady _and_ a nurse," he said to her, "you are two
sorts of women in one."

But she was not impressed by his wisdom.

She was most strongly inclined to Young. He was a plump young man of
middle height, with those blue eyes of a little boy which are so
knowing: particularly of a woman's secrets. It is a strange thing
that these childish men have such a deep, half-perverse knowledge of
the other sex. Young was certainly innocent as far as acts went. Yet
his hair was going thin at the crown already.

He also played with her--being a doctor, and she a nurse who
encouraged it. He too touched her and kissed her: and did _not_
rouse her to contest. For his touch and his kiss had that nearness
of a little boy's, which nearly melted her. She could almost have
succumbed to him. If it had not been that with him there was no
question of succumbing. She would have had to take him between her
hands and caress and cajole him like a cherub, into a fall. And
though she would have like to do so, yet that inflexible stiffness
of her backbone prevented her. She could not do as she liked. There
was an inflexible fate within her, which shaped her ends.

Sometimes she wondered to herself, over her own virginity. Was it
worth much, after all, behaving as she did? Did she care about it,
anyhow? Didn't she rather despise it? To sin in thought was as bad
as to sin in act. If the thought was the same as the act, how much
more was her behaviour equivalent to a whole committal? She wished
she were wholly committed. She wished she had gone the whole length.

But sophistry and wishing did her no good. There she was, still
isolate. And still there was that in her which would preserve her
intact, sophistry and deliberate intention notwithstanding. Her time
was up. She was returning to Woodhouse virgin as she had left it. In
a measure she felt herself beaten. Why? Who knows. But so it was,
she felt herself beaten, condemned to go back to what she was
before. Fate had been too strong for her and her desires: fate which
was not an external association of forces, but which was integral in
her own nature. Her own inscrutable nature was her fate: sore
against her will.

It was August when she came home, in her nurse's uniform. She was
beaten by fate, as far as chastity and virginity went. But she came
home with high material hopes. Here was James Houghton's own
daughter. She had an affluent future ahead of her. A fully-qualified
maternity nurse, she was going to bring all the babies of the
district easily and triumphantly into the world. She was going to
charge the regulation fee of two guineas a case: and even on a
modest estimate of ten babies a month, she would have twenty
guineas. For well-to-do mothers she would charge from three to five
guineas. At this calculation she would make an easy three hundred a
year, without slaving either. She would be independent, she could
laugh every one in the face.

She bounced back into Woodhouse to make her fortune.




CHAPTER IV

TWO WOMEN DIE


It goes without saying that Alvina Houghton did not make her fortune
as a maternity nurse. Being her father's daughter, we might almost
expect that she did not make a penny. But she did--just a few pence.
She had exactly four cases--and then no more.

The reason is obvious. Who in Woodhouse was going to afford a
two-guinea nurse, for a confinement? And who who was going to engage
Alvina Houghton, even if they were ready to stretch their
purse-strings? After all, they all knew her as _Miss_ Houghton, with
a stress on the _Miss_, and they could not conceive of her as Nurse
Houghton. Besides, there seemed something positively indecent in
technically engaging one who was so much part of themselves. They
all preferred either a simple mid-wife, or a nurse procured out of
the unknown by the doctor.

If Alvina wanted to make her fortune--or even her living--she should
have gone to a strange town. She was so advised by every one she
knew. But she never for one moment reflected on the advice. She had
become a maternity nurse in order to practise in Woodhouse, just as
James Houghton had purchased his elegancies to sell in Woodhouse.
And father and daughter alike calmly expected Woodhouse demand to
rise to their supply. So both alike were defeated in their
expectations.

For a little while Alvina flaunted about in her nurse's uniform.
Then she left it off. And as she left it off she lost her bounce,
her colour, and her flesh. Gradually she shrank back to the old,
slim, reticent pallor, with eyes a little too large for her face.
And now it seemed her face was a little too long, a little gaunt.
And in her civilian clothes she seemed a little dowdy, shabby. And
altogether, she looked older: she looked more than her age, which
was only twenty-four years. Here was the old Alvina come back, rather
battered and deteriorated, apparently. There was even a tiny touch of
the trollops in her dowdiness--so the shrewd-eyed collier-wives
decided. But she was a lady still, and unbeaten. Undeniably she was a
lady. And that was rather irritating to the well-to-do and florid
daughter of W.H. Johnson, next door but one. Undeniably a lady, and
undeniably unmastered. This last was irritating to the good-natured
but easy-coming young men in the Chapel Choir, where she resumed her
seat. These young men had the good nature of dogs that wag their tails
and expect to be patted. And Alvina did not pat them. To be sure, a
pat from such a shabbily-black-kid-gloved hand would not have been so
flattering--she need not imagine it! The way she hung back and looked
at them, the young men, as knowing as if she were a prostitute, and
yet with the well-bred indifference of a lady--well, it was almost
offensive.

As a matter of fact, Alvina was detached for the time being from her
interest in young men. Manchester House had settled down on her like
a doom. There was the quartered shop, through which one had to worm
one's encumbered way in the gloom--unless one liked to go miles
round a back street, to the yard entry. There was James Houghton,
faintly powdered with coal-dust, flitting back and forth in a fever
of nervous frenzy, to Throttle-Ha'penny--so carried away that he
never saw his daughter at all the first time he came in, after her
return. And when she reminded him of her presence, with her--"Hello,
father!"--he merely glancied hurriedly at her, as if vexed with her
interruption, and said:

"Well, Alvina, you're back. You're back to find us busy." And he
went off into his ecstasy again.

Mrs. Houghton was now very weak, and so nervous in her weakness that
she could not bear the slightest sound. Her greatest horror was lest
her husband should come into the room. On his entry she became blue
at the lips immediately, so he had to hurry out again. At last he
stayed away, only hurriedly asking, each time he came into the
house, "How is Mrs. Houghton? Ha!" Then off into uninterrupted
Throttle-Ha'penny ecstasy once more.

When Alvina went up to her mother's room, on her return, all the
poor invalid could do was to tremble into tears, and cry faintly:

"Child, you look dreadful. It isn't you."

This from the pathetic little figure in the bed had struck Alvina
like a blow.

"Why not, mother?" she asked.

But for her mother she had to remove her nurse's uniform. And at the
same time, she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a
woman who came in, and the servant had been nursing the invalid
between them. Miss Frost was worn and rather heavy: her old buoyancy
and brightness was gone. She had become irritable also. She was very
glad that Alvina had returned to take this responsibility of nursing
off her shoulders. For her wonderful energy had ebbed and oozed
away.

Alvina said nothing, but settled down to her task. She was quiet and
technical with her mother. The two loved one another, with a curious
impersonal love which had not a single word to exchange: an almost
after-death love. In these days Mrs. Houghton never talked--unless
to fret a little. So Alvina sat for many hours in the lofty, sombre
bedroom, looking out silently on the street, or hurriedly rising to
attend the sick woman. For continually came the fretful murmur:

"Vina!"

To sit still--who knows the long discipline of it, nowadays, as our
mothers and grandmothers knew. To sit still, for days, months, and
years--perforce to sit still, with some dignity of tranquil bearing.
Alvina was old-fashioned. She had the old, womanly faculty for
sitting quiet and collected--not indeed for a life-time, but for
long spells together. And so it was during these months nursing her
mother. She attended constantly on the invalid: she did a good deal
of work about the house: she took her walks and occupied her place
in the choir on Sunday mornings. And yet, from August to January,
she seemed to be seated in her chair in the bedroom, sometimes
reading, but mostly quite still, her hands quietly in her lap, her
mind subdued by musing. She did not even think, not even remember.
Even such activity would have made her presence too disturbing in
the room. She sat quite still, with all her activities in
abeyance--except that strange will-to-passivity which was by no
means a relaxation, but a severe, deep, soul-discipline.

For the moment there was a sense of prosperity--or probable
prosperity, in the house. And there was an abundance of
Throttle-Ha'penny coal. It was dirty ashy stuff. The lower bars of
the grate were constantly blanked in with white powdery ash, which
it was fatal to try to poke away. For if you poked and poked, you
raised white cumulus clouds of ash, and you were left at last with a
few darkening and sulphurous embers. But even so, by continuous
application, you could keep the room moderately warm, without
feeling you were consuming the house's meat and drink in the grate.
Which was one blessing.

The days, the months darkened past, and Alvina returned to her old
thinness and pallor. Her fore-arms were thin, they rested very still
in her lap, there was a ladylike stillness about them as she took
her walk, in her lingering, yet watchful fashion. She saw
everything. Yet she passed without attracting any attention.

Early in the year her mother died. Her father came and wept
self-conscious tears, Miss Frost cried a little, painfully. And
Alvina cried also: she did not quite know why or wherefore. Her poor
mother! Alvina had the old-fashioned wisdom to let be, and not to
think. After all, it was not for her to reconstruct her parents'
lives. She came after them. Her day was not their day, their life
was not hers. Returning up-channel to re-discover their course was
quite another matter from flowing down-stream into the unknown, as
they had done thirty years before. This supercilious and impertinent
exploration of the generation gone by, by the present generation, is
nothing to our credit. As a matter of fact, no generation repeats
the mistakes of the generation ahead, any more than any river
repeats its course. So the young need not be so proud of their
superiority over the old. The young generation glibly makes its own
mistakes: and _how_ detestable these new mistakes are, why, only the
future will be able to tell us. But be sure they are quite as
detestable, quite as full of lies and hypocrisy, as any of the
mistakes of our parents. There is no such thing as _absolute_
wisdom.

Wisdom has reference only to the past. The future remains for ever
an infinite field for mistakes. You can't know beforehand.

So Alvina refrained from pondering on her mother's life and fate.
Whatever the fate of the mother, the fate of the daughter will be
otherwise. That is organically inevitable. The business of the
daughter is with her own fate, not with her mother's.

Miss Frost however meditated bitterly on the fate of the poor dead
woman. Bitterly she brooded on the lot of woman. Here was Clariss
Houghton, married, and a mother--and dead. What a life! Who was
responsible? James Houghton. What ought James Houghton to have done
differently? Everything. In short, he should have been somebody
else, and not himself. Which is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of
idealism. The universe should be something else, and not what it is:
so the nonsense of idealistic conclusion. The cat should not catch
the mouse, the mouse should not nibble holes in the table-cloth, and
so on and so on, in the House that Jack Built.

But Miss Frost sat by the dead in grief and despair. This was the
end of another woman's life: such an end! Poor Clariss: guilty
James.

Yet why? Why was James more guilty than Clariss? Is the only aim and
end of a man's life, to make some woman, or parcel of women, happy?
Why? Why should anybody expect to be _made happy_, and develop
heart-disease if she isn't? Surely Clariss' heart-disease was a more
emphatic sign of obstinate self-importance than ever James'
shop-windows were. She expected to be _made happy_. Every woman in
Europe and America expects it. On her own head then if she is made
unhappy: for her expectation is arrogant and impertinent. The be-all
and end-all of life doesn't lie in feminine happiness--or in any
happiness. Happiness is a sort of soap-tablet--he won't be happy
till he gets it, and when he's got it, the precious baby, it'll cost
him his eyes and his stomach. Could anything be more puerile than a
mankind howling because it isn't happy: like a baby in the bath!

Poor Clariss, however, was dead--and if she had developed
heart-disease because she wasn't happy, well, she had died of her
own heart-disease, poor thing. Wherein lies every moral that mankind
can wish to draw.

Miss Frost wept in anguish, and saw nothing but another woman
betrayed to sorrow and a slow death. Sorrow and a slow death,
because a man had married her. Miss Frost wept also for herself, for
her own sorrow and slow death. Sorrow and slow death, because a man
had _not_ married her. Wretched man, what is he to do with these
exigeant and never-to-be-satisfied women? Our mothers pined because
our fathers drank and were rakes. Our wives pine because we are
virtuous but inadequate. Who is this sphinx, this woman? Where is
the Oedipus that will solve her riddle of happiness, and then
strangle her?--only to marry his own mother!

In the months that followed her mother's death, Alvina went on the
same, in abeyance. She took over the housekeeping, and received one
or two overflow pupils from Miss Frost, young girls to whom she gave
lessons in the dark drawing-room of Manchester House. She was
busy--chiefly with housekeeping. There seemed a great deal to put in
order after her mother's death.

She sorted all her mother's clothes--expensive, old-fashioned
clothes, hardly worn. What was to be done with them? She gave them
away, without consulting anybody. She kept a few private things, she
inherited a few pieces of jewellery. Remarkable how little trace her
mother left--hardly a trace.

She decided to move into the big, monumental bedroom in front of the
house. She liked space, she liked the windows. She was strictly
mistress, too. So she took her place. Her mother's little
sitting-room was cold and disused.

Then Alvina went through all the linen. There was still abundance,
and it was all sound. James had had such large ideas of setting up
house, in the beginning. And now he begrudged the household
expenses, begrudged the very soap and candles, and even would have
liked to introduce margarine instead of butter. This last
degradation the women refused. But James was above food.

The old Alvina seemed completely herself again. She was quiet,
dutiful, affectionate. She appealed in her old, childish way to Miss
Frost, and Miss Frost called her "Dear!" with all the old protective
gentleness. But there was a difference. Underneath her appearance of
appeal, Alvina was almost coldly independent. She did what she
thought she would. The old manner of intimacy persisted between her
and her darling. And perhaps neither of them knew that the intimacy
itself had gone. But it had. There was no spontaneous interchange
between them. It was a kind of deadlock. Each knew the great love
she felt for the other. But now it was a love static, inoperative.
The warm flow did not run any more. Yet each would have died for the
other, would have done anything to spare the other hurt.

Miss Frost was becoming tired, dragged looking. She would sink into
a chair as if she wished never to rise again--never to make the
effort. And Alvina quickly would attend on her, bring her tea and
take away her music, try to make everything smooth. And continually
the young woman exhorted the elder to work less, to give up her
pupils. But Miss Frost answered quickly, nervously:

"When I don't work I shan't live."

"But why--?" came the long query from Alvina. And in her
expostulation there was a touch of mockery for such a creed.

Miss Frost did not answer. Her face took on a greyish tinge.

In these days Alvina struck up an odd friendship with Miss Pinnegar,
after so many years of opposition. She felt herself more in sympathy
with Miss Pinnegar--it was so easy to get on with her, she left so
much unsaid. What was left unsaid mattered more to Alvina now than
anything that was expressed. She began to hate outspokenness and
direct speaking-forth of the whole mind. It nauseated her. She
wanted tacit admission of difference, not open, wholehearted
communication. And Miss Pinnegar made this admission all along. She
never made you feel for an instant that she was one with you. She
was never even near. She kept quietly on her own ground, and left
you on yours. And across the space came her quiet commonplaces--but
fraught with space.

With Miss Frost all was openness, explicit and downright. Not that
Miss Frost trespassed. She was far more well-bred than Miss
Pinnegar. But her very breeding had that Protestant, northern
quality which assumes that we have all the same high standards,
really, and all the same divine nature, intrinsically. It is a fine
assumption. But willy-nilly, it sickened Alvina at this time.

She preferred Miss Pinnegar, and admired Miss Pinnegar's humble
wisdom with a new admiration. The two were talking of Dr. Headley,
who, they read in the newspaper, had disgraced himself finally.

"I suppose," said Miss Pinnegar, "it takes his sort to make all
sorts."

Such bits of homely wisdom were like relief from cramp and pain, to
Alvina. "It takes his sort to make all sorts." It took her sort too.
And it took her father's sort--as well as her mother's and Miss
Frost's. It took every sort to make all sorts. Why have standards
and a regulation pattern? Why have a human criterion? There's the
point! Why, in the name of all the free heavens, have human
criteria? Why? Simply for bullying and narrowness.

Alvina felt at her ease with Miss Pinnegar. The two women talked
away to one another, in their quiet moments: and slipped apart like
conspirators when Miss Frost came in: as if there was something to
be ashamed of. If there was, heaven knows what it might have been,
for their talk was ordinary enough. But Alvina liked to be with Miss
Pinnegar in the kitchen. Miss Pinnegar wasn't competent and
masterful like Miss Frost: she was ordinary and uninspired, with
quiet, unobserved movements. But she was deep, and there was some
secret satisfaction in her very quality of secrecy.

So the days and weeks and months slipped by, and Alvina was hidden
like a mole in the dark chambers of Manchester House, busy with
cooking and cleaning and arranging, getting the house in her own
order, and attending to her pupils. She took her walk in the
afternoon. Once and only once she went to Throttle-Ha'penny, and,
seized with sudden curiosity, insisted on being wound down in the
iron bucket to the little workings underneath. Everything was quite
tidy in the short gang-ways down below, timbered and in sound order.
The miners were competent enough. But water dripped dismally in
places, and there was a stale feeling in the air.

Her father accompanied her, pointed her to the seam of
yellow-flecked coal, the shale and the bind, the direction of the
trend. He had already an airy-fairy kind of knowledge of the whole
affair, and seemed like some not quite trustworthy conjuror who had
conjured it all up by sleight of hand. In the background the miners
stood grey and ghostly, in the candle-light, and seemed to listen
sardonically. One of them, facile in his subordinate way as James in
his authoritative, kept chiming in:

"Ay, that's the road it goes, Miss Huffen--yis, yo'll see th' roof
theer bellies down a bit--s' loose. No, you dunna get th' puddin'
stones i' this pit--s' not deep enough. Eh, they come down on you
plumb, as if th' roof had laid its egg on you. Ay, it runs a bit
thin down here--six inches. You see th' bed's soft, it's a sort o'
clay-bind, it's not clunch such as you get deeper. Oh, it's easy
workin'--you don't have to knock your guts out. There's no need for
shots, Miss Huffen--we bring it down--you see here--" And he
stooped, pointing to a shallow, shelving excavation which he was
making under the coal. The working was low, you must stoop all the
time. The roof and the timbered sides of the way seemed to press on
you. It was as if she were in her tomb for ever, like the dead and
everlasting Egyptians. She was frightened, but fascinated. The
collier kept on talking to her, stretching his bare, grey-black
hairy arm across her vision, and pointing with his knotted hand. The
thick-wicked tallow candles guttered and smelled. There was a
thickness in the air, a sense of dark, fluid presence in the thick
atmosphere, the dark, fluid, viscous voice of the collier making a
broad-vowelled, clapping sound in her ear. He seemed to linger near
her as if he knew--as if he knew--what? Something for ever
unknowable and inadmissible, something that belonged purely to the
underground: to the slaves who work underground: knowledge
humiliated, subjected, but ponderous and inevitable. And still his
voice went on clapping in her ear, and still his presence edged near
her, and seemed to impinge on her--a smallish, semi-grotesque,
grey-obscure figure with a naked brandished forearm: not human: a
creature of the subterranean world, melted out like a bat, fluid.
She felt herself melting out also, to become a mere vocal ghost, a
presence in the thick atmosphere. Her lungs felt thick and slow, her
mind dissolved, she felt she could cling like a bat in the long
swoon of the crannied, underworld darkness. Cling like a bat and
sway for ever swooning in the draughts of the darkness--

When she was up on the earth again she blinked and peered at the
world in amazement. What a pretty, luminous place it was, carved in
substantial luminosity. What a strange and lovely place, bubbling
iridescent-golden on the surface of the underworld. Iridescent
golden--could anything be more fascinating! Like lovely glancing
surface on fluid pitch. But a velvet surface. A velvet surface of
golden light, velvet-pile of gold and pale luminosity, and strange
beautiful elevations of houses and trees, and depressions of fields
and roads, all golden and floating like atmospheric majolica. Never
had the common ugliness of Woodhouse seemed so entrancing. She
thought she had never seen such beauty--a lovely luminous majolica,
living and palpitating, the glossy, svelte world-surface, the
exquisite face of all the darkness. It was like a vision. Perhaps
gnomes and subterranean workers, enslaved in the era of light, see
with such eyes. Perhaps that is why they are absolutely blind to
conventional ugliness. For truly nothing could be more hideous than
Woodhouse, as the miners had built it and disposed it. And yet, the
very cabbage-stumps and rotten fences of the gardens, the very
back-yards were instinct with magic, molten as they seemed with the
bubbling-up of the under-darkness, bubbling up of majolica weight
and luminosity, quite ignorant of the sky, heavy and satisfying.

Slaves of the underworld! She watched the swing of the grey colliers
along the pavement with a new fascination, hypnotized by a new
vision. Slaves--the underground trolls and iron-workers, magic,
mischievous, and enslaved, of the ancient stories. But tall--the
miners seemed to her to loom tall and grey, in their enslaved magic.
Slaves who would cause the superimposed day-order to fall. Not
because, individually, they wanted to. But because, collectively,
something bubbled up in them, the force of darkness which had no
master and no control. It would bubble and stir in them as
earthquakes stir the earth. It would be simply disastrous, because
it had no master. There was no dark master in the world. The puerile
world went on crying out for a new Jesus, another Saviour from the
sky, another heavenly superman. When what was wanted was a Dark
Master from the underworld.

So they streamed past her, home from work--grey from head to foot,
distorted in shape, cramped, with curious faces that came out pallid
from under their dirt. Their walk was heavy-footed and slurring,
their bearing stiff and grotesque. A stream they were--yet they
seemed to her to loom like strange, valid figures of fairy-lore,
unrealized and as yet unexperienced. The miners, the iron-workers,
those who fashion the stuff of the underworld.

As it always comes to its children, the nostalgia of the repulsive,
heavy-footed Midlands came over her again, even whilst she was
there in the midst. The curious, dark, inexplicable and yet
insatiable craving--as if for an earthquake. To feel the earth heave
and shudder and shatter the world from beneath. To go down in the
débâcle.

And so, in spite of everything, poverty, dowdiness, obscurity, and
nothingness, she was content to stay in abeyance at home for the
time. True, she was filled with the same old, slow, dreadful craving
of the Midlands: a craving insatiable and inexplicable. But the very
craving kept her still. For at this time she did not translate it
into a desire, or need, for love. At the back of her mind somewhere
was the fixed idea, the fixed intention of finding love, a man. But
as yet, at this period, the idea was in abeyance, it did not act.
The craving that possessed her as it possesses everybody, in a
greater or less degree, in those parts, sustained her darkly and
unconsciously.

A hot summer waned into autumn, the long, bewildering days drew in,
the transient nights, only a few breaths of shadow between noon and
noon, deepened and strengthened. A restlessness came over everybody.
There was another short strike among the miners. James Houghton,
like an excited beetle, scurried to and fro, feeling he was making
his fortune. Never had Woodhouse been so thronged on Fridays with
purchasers and money-spenders. The place seemed surcharged with
life.

Autumn lasted beautiful till end of October. And then suddenly, cold
rain, endless cold rain, and darkness heavy, wet, ponderous. Through
the wind and rain it was a toil to move. Poor Miss Frost, who had
seemed almost to blossom again in the long hot days, regaining a
free cheerfulness that amounted almost to liveliness, and who even
caused a sort of scandal by her intimacy with a rather handsome but
common stranger, an insurance agent who had come into the place with
a good, unused tenor voice--now she wilted again. She had given the
rather florid young man tea in her room, and had laboured away at
his fine, metallic voice, correcting him and teaching him and
laughing with him and spending really a remarkable number of hours
alone with him in her room in Woodhouse--for she had given up
tramping the country, and had hired a music-room in a quiet street,
where she gave her lessons. And the young man had hung round, and
had never wanted to go away. They would prolong their tête-à-tête
and their singing on till ten o'clock at night, and Miss Frost would
return to Manchester House flushed and handsome and a little shy,
while the young man, who was common, took on a new boldness in the
streets. He had auburn hair, high colouring, and a rather
challenging bearing. He took on a new boldness, his own estimate of
himself rose considerably, with Miss Frost and his trained voice to
justify him. He was a little insolent and condescending to the
natives, who disliked him. For their lives they could not imagine
what Miss Frost could find in him. They began even to dislike her,
and a pretty scandal was started about the pair, in the pleasant
room where Miss Frost had her piano, her books, and her flowers. The
scandal was as unjust as most scandals are. Yet truly, all that
summer and autumn Miss Frost had a new and slightly aggressive
cheerfulness and humour. And Manchester House saw little of her,
comparatively.

And then, at the end of September, the young man was removed by his
Insurance Company to another district. And at the end of October set
in the most abominable and unbearable weather, deluges of rain and
north winds, cutting the tender, summer-unfolded people to pieces.
Miss Frost wilted at once. A silence came over her. She shuddered
when she had to leave the fire. She went in the morning to her room,
and stayed there all the day, in a hot, close atmosphere, shuddering
when her pupils brought the outside weather with them to her.

She was always subject to bronchitis. In November she had a bad
bronchitis cold. Then suddenly one morning she could not get up.
Alvina went in and found her semi-conscious.

The girl was almost mad. She flew to the rescue. She despatched her
father instantly for the doctor, she heaped the sticks in the
bedroom grate and made a bright fire, she brough hot milk and
brandy.

"Thank you, dear, thank you. It's a bronchial cold," whispered Miss
Frost hurriedly, trying to sip the milk. She could not. She didn't
want it.

"I've sent for the doctor," said Alvina, in her cool voice, wherein
none the less there rang the old hesitancy of sheer love.

Miss Frost lifted her eyes:

"There's no need," she said, and she smiled winsomely at Alvina.

It was pneumonia. Useless to talk of the distracted anguish of
Alvina during the next two days. She was so swift and sensitive in
her nursing, she seemed to have second sight. She talked to nobody.
In her silence her soul was alone with the soul of her darling. The
long semi-consciousness and the tearing pain of pneumonia, the
anguished sickness.

But sometimes the grey eyes would open and smile with delicate
winsomeness at Alvina, and Alvina smiled back, with a cheery,
answering winsomeness. But that costs something.

On the evening of the second day, Miss Frost got her hand from under
the bedclothes, and laid it on Alvina's hand. Alvina leaned down to
her.

"Everything is for you, my love," whispered Miss Frost, looking with
strange eyes on Alvina's face.

"Don't talk, Miss Frost," moaned Alvina.

"Everything is for you," murmured the sick woman--"except--" and she
enumerated some tiny legacies which showed her generous, thoughtful
nature.

"Yes, I shall remember," said Alvina, beyond tears now.

Miss Frost smiled with her old bright, wonderful look, that had a
touch of queenliness in it.

"Kiss me, dear," she whispered.

Alvina kissed her, and could not suppress the whimpering of her
too-much grief.

The night passed slowly. Sometimes the grey eyes of the sick woman
rested dark, dilated, haggard on Alvina's face, with a heavy, almost
accusing look, sinister. Then they closed again. And sometimes they
looked pathetic, with a mute, stricken appeal. Then again they
closed--only to open again tense with pain. Alvina wiped her
blood-phlegmed lips.

In the morning she died--lay there haggard, death-smeared, with her
lovely white hair smeared also, and disorderly: she who had been so
beautiful and clean always.

Alvina knew death--which is untellable. She knew that her darling
carried away a portion of her own soul into death.

But she was alone. And the agony of being alone, the agony of grief,
passionate, passionate grief for her darling who was torn into
death--the agony of self-reproach, regret; the agony of remembrance;
the agony of the looks of the dying woman, winsome, and sinisterly
accusing, and pathetically, despairingly appealing--probe after
probe of mortal agony, which throughout eternity would never lose
its power to pierce to the quick!

Alvina seemed to keep strangely calm and aloof all the days after
the death. Only when she was alone she suffered till she felt her
heart really broke.

"I shall never feel anything any more," she said in her abrupt way
to Miss Frost's friend, another woman of over fifty.

"Nonsense, child!" expostulated Mrs. Lawson gently.

"I shan't! I shall never have a heart to feel anything any more,"
said Alvina, with a strange, distraught roll of the eyes.

"Not like this, child. But you'll feel other things--"

"I haven't the heart," persisted Alvina.

"Not yet," said Mrs. Lawson gently. "You can't expect--But
time--time brings back--"

"Oh well--but I don't believe it," said Alvina.

People thought her rather hard. To one of her gossips Miss Pinnegar
confessed:

"I thought she'd have felt it more. She cared more for her than she
did for her own mother--and her mother knew it. Mrs. Houghton
complained bitterly, sometimes, that _she_ had _no_ love. They were
everything to one another, Miss Frost and Alvina. I should have
thought she'd have felt it more. But you never know. A good thing if
she doesn't, really."

Miss Pinnegar herself did not care one little bit that Miss Frost
was dead. She did not feel herself implicated.

The nearest relatives came down, and everything was settled. The
will was found, just a brief line on a piece of notepaper expressing
a wish that Alvina should have everything. Alvina herself told the
verbal requests. All was quietly fulfilled.

As it might well be. For there was nothing to leave. Just
sixty-three pounds in the bank--no more: then the clothes, piano,
books and music. Miss Frost's brother had these latter, at his own
request: the books and music, and the piano. Alvina inherited the
few simple trinkets, and about forty-five pounds in money.

"Poor Miss Frost," cried Mrs. Lawson, weeping rather bitterly--"she
saved nothing for herself. You can see why she never wanted to grow
old, so that she couldn't work. You can see. It's a shame, it's a
shame, one of the best women that ever trod earth."

Manchester House settled down to its deeper silence, its darker
gloom. Miss Frost was irreparably gone. With her, the reality went
out of the house. It seemed to be silently waiting to disappear. And
Alvina and Miss Pinnegar might move about and talk in vain. They
could never remove the sense of waiting to finish: it was all just
waiting to finish. And the three, James and Alvina and Miss
Pinnegar, waited lingering through the months, for the house to come
to an end. With Miss Frost its spirit passed away: it was no more.
Dark, empty-feeling, it seemed all the time like a house just before
a sale.




CHAPTER V

THE BEAU


Throttle-Ha'penny worked fitfully through the winter, and in the
spring broke down. By this time James Houghton had a pathetic,
childish look which touched the hearts of Alvina and Miss Pinnegar.
They began to treat him with a certain feminine indulgence, as he
fluttered round, agitated and bewildered. He was like a bird that
has flown into a room and is exhausted, enfeebled by its attempts to
fly through the false freedom of the window-glass. Sometimes he
would sit moping in a corner, with his head under his wing. But Miss
Pinnegar chased him forth, like the stealthy cat she was, chased him
up to the work-room to consider some detail of work, chased him into
the shop to turn over the old débris of the stock. At one time he
showed the alarming symptom of brooding over his wife's death. Miss
Pinnegar was thoroughly scared. But she was not inventive. It was
left to Alvina to suggest: "Why doesn't father let the shop, and
some of the house?"

Let the shop! Let the last inch of frontage on the street! James
thought of it. Let the shop! Permit the name of Houghton to
disappear from the list of tradesmen? Withdraw? Disappear? Become a
nameless nobody, occupying obscure premises?

He thought about it. And thinking about it, became so indignant at the
thought that he pulled his scattered energies together within his frail
frame. And then he came out with the most original of all his schemes.
Manchester House was to be fitted up as a boarding-house for the better
classes, and was to make a fortune catering for the needs of these
gentry, who had now nowhere to go. Yes, Manchester House should be
fitted up as a sort of quiet family hotel for the better classes. The
shop should be turned into an elegant hall-entrance, carpeted, with a
hall-porter and a wide plate-glass door, round-arched, in the round
arch of which the words: "Manchester House" should appear large and
distinguished, making an arch also, whilst underneath, more refined and
smaller, should show the words: "Private Hotel." James was to be
proprietor and secretary, keeping the books and attending to
correspondence: Miss Pinnegar was to be manageress, superintending the
servants and directing the house, whilst Alvina was to occupy the
equivocal position of "hostess." She was to shake hands with the
guests: she was to play the piano, and she was to nurse the sick. For
in the prospectus James would include: "Trained nurse always on the
premises."

"Why!" cried Miss Pinnegar, for once brutally and angrily hostile to
him: "You'll make it sound like a private lunatic asylum."

"Will you explain why?" answered James tartly.

For himself, he was enraptured with the scheme. He began to tot up
ideas and expenses. There would be the handsome entrance and hall:
there would be an extension of the kitchen and scullery: there would
be an installing of new hot-water and sanitary arrangements: there
would be a light lift-arrangment from the kitchen: there would be a
handsome glazed balcony or loggia or terrace on the first floor at
the back, over the whole length of the back-yard. This loggia would
give a wonderful outlook to the south-west and the west. In the
immediate foreground, to be sure, would be the yard of the
livery-stables and the rather slummy dwellings of the colliers,
sloping downhill. But these could be easily overlooked, for the eye
would instinctively wander across the green and shallow valley, to
the long upslope opposite, showing the Manor set in its clump of
trees, and farms and haystacks pleasantly dotted, and moderately far
off coal-mines with twinkling headstocks and narrow railwaylines
crossing the arable fields, and heaps of burning slag. The balcony
or covered terrace--James settled down at last to the word
_terrace_--was to be one of the features of the house: _the_
feature. It was to be fitted up as a sort of elegant lounging
restaurant. Elegant teas, at two-and-six per head, and elegant
suppers, at five shillings without wine, were to be served here.

As a teetotaller and a man of ascetic views, James, in his first
shallow moments, before he thought about it, assumed that his house
should be entirely non-alcoholic. A temperance house! Already he
winced. We all know what a provincial Temperance Hotel is. Besides,
there is magic in the sound of wine. _Wines Served_. The legend
attracted him immensely--as a teetotaller, it had a mysterious,
hypnotic influence. He must have wines. He knew nothing about them.
But Alfred Swayn, from the Liquor Vaults, would put him in the
running in five minutes.

It was most curious to see Miss Pinnegar turtle up at the mention of
this scheme. When first it was disclosed to her, her colour came up
like a turkey's in a flush of indignant anger.

"It's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous!" she blurted, bridling and
ducking her head and turning aside, like an indignant turkey.

"Ridiculous! Why? Will you explain why!" retorted James, turtling
also.

"It's absolutely ridiculous!" she repeated, unable to do more than
splutter.

"Well, we'll see," said James, rising to superiority.

And again he began to dart absorbedly about, like a bird building a
nest. Miss Pinnegar watched him with a sort of sullen fury. She went
to the shop door to peep out after him. She saw him slip into the
Liquor Vaults, and she came back to announce to Alvina:

"He's taken to drink!"

"Drink?" said Alvina.

"That's what it is," said Miss Pinnegar vindictively. "Drink!"

Alvina sank down and laughed till she was weak. It all seemed really
too funny to her--too funny.

"I can't see what it is to laugh at," said Miss Pinnegar.
"Disgraceful--it's disgraceful! But I'm not going to stop to be made
a fool of. I shall be no manageress, I tell you. It's absolutely
ridiculous. Who does he think will come to the place? He's out of
his mind--and it's drink; that's what it is! Going into the Liquor
Vaults at ten o'clock in the morning! That's where he gets his
ideas--out of whiskey--or brandy! But he's not going to make a fool
of me--"

"Oh dear!" sighed Alvina, laughing herself into composure and a
little weariness. "I know it's _perfectly_ ridiculous. We shall have
to stop him."

"I've said all I can say," blurted Miss Pinnegar.

As soon as James came in to a meal, the two women attacked him.

"But father," said Alvina, "there'll be nobody to come."

"Plenty of people--plenty of people," said her father. "Look at The
Shakespeare's Head, in Knarborough."

"Knarborough! Is this Knarborough!" blurted Miss Pinnegar. "Where
are the business men here? Where are the foreigners coming here for
business, where's our lace-trade and our stocking-trade?"

"There _are_ business men," said James. "And there are ladies."

"Who," retorted Miss Pinnegar, "is going to give half-a-crown for a
tea? They expect tea and bread-and-butter for fourpence, and cake
for sixpence, and apricots or pineapple for ninepence, and
ham-and-tongue for a shilling, and fried ham and eggs and jam and
cake as much as they can eat for one-and-two. If they expect a
knife-and-fork tea for a shilling, what are you going to give them
for half-a-crown?"

"I know what I shall offer," said James. "And we may make it two
shillings." Through his mind flitted the idea of 1/11-1/2--but he
rejected it. "You don't realize that I'm catering for a higher class
of custom--"

"But there _isn't_ any higher class in Woodhouse, father," said
Alvina, unable to restrain a laugh.

"If you create a supply you create a demand," he retorted.

"But how can you create a supply of better class people?" asked
Alvina mockingly.

James took on his refined, abstracted look, as if he were
preoccupied on higher planes. It was the look of an obstinate little
boy who poses on the side of the angels--or so the women saw it.

Miss Pinnegar was prepared to combat him now by sheer weight of
opposition. She would pitch her dead negative will obstinately
against him. She would not speak to him, she would not observe his
presence, she was stone deaf and stone blind: there _was_ no James.
This nettled him. And she miscalculated him. He merely took another
circuit, and rose another flight higher on the spiral of his
spiritual egotism. He believed himself finely and sacredly in the
right, that he was frustrated by lower beings, above whom it was his
duty to rise, to soar. So he soared to serene heights, and his
Private Hotel seemed a celestial injunction, an erection on a higher
plane.

He saw the architect: and then, with his plans and schemes, he saw
the builder and contractor. The builder gave an estimate of six or
seven hundred--but James had better see the plumber and fitter who
was going to instal the new hot water and sanitary system. James was
a little dashed. He had calculated much less. Having only a few
hundred pounds in possession after Throttle-Ha'penny, he was
prepared to mortgage Manchester House if he could keep in hand a
sufficent sum of money for the running of his establishment for a
year. He knew he would have to sacrifice Miss Pinnegar's work-room.
He knew, and he feared Miss Pinnegar's violent and unmitigated
hostility. Still--his obstinate spirit rose--he was quite prepared
to risk everything on this last throw.

Miss Allsop, daughter of the builder, called to see Alvina. The
Allsops were great Chapel people, and Cassie Allsop was one of the
old maids. She was thin and nipped and wistful looking, about
forty-two years old. In private, she was tyrannously exacting with
the servants, and spiteful, rather mean with her motherless nieces.
But in public she had this nipped, wistful look.

Alvina was surprised by this visit. When she found Miss Allsop at
the back door, all her inherent hostility awoke.

"Oh, is it you, Miss Allsop! Will you come in."

They sat in the middle room, the common living room of the house.

"I called," said Miss Allsop, coming to the point at once, and
speaking in her Sunday-school-teacher voice, "to ask you if you know
about this Private Hotel scheme of your father's?"

"Yes," said Alvina.

"Oh, you do! Well, we wondered. Mr. Houghton came to father about
the building alterations yesterday. They'll be awfully expensive."

"Will they?" said Alvina, making big, mocking eyes.

"Yes, very. What do _you_ think of the scheme?"

"I?--well--!" Alvina hesitated, then broke into a laugh. "To tell
the truth I haven't thought much about it at all."

"Well I think you should," said Miss Allsop severely. "Father's sure
it won't pay--and it will cost I don't know how much. It is bound
to be a dead loss. And your father's getting on. You'll be left
stranded in the world without a penny to bless yourself with. I
think it's an awful outlook for you."

"Do you?" said Alvina.

Here she was, with a bang, planked upon the shelf among the old
maids.

"Oh, I do. Sincerely! I should do all I could to prevent him, if I
were you."

Miss Allsop took her departure. Alvina felt herself jolted in her
mood. An old maid along with Cassie Allsop!--and James Houghton
fooling about with the last bit of money, mortgaging Manchester
House up to the hilt. Alvina sank in a kind of weary mortification,
in which _her_ peculiar obstinacy persisted devilishly and
spitefully. "Oh well, so be it," said her spirit vindictively. "Let
the meagre, mean, despicable fate fulfil itself." Her old anger
against her father arose again.

Arthur Witham, the plumber, came in with James Houghton to examine
the house. Arthur Witham was also one of the Chapel men--as had been
his common, interfering, uneducated father before him. The father
had left each of his sons a fair little sum of money, which Arthur,
the eldest, had already increased ten-fold. He was sly and slow and
uneducated also, and spoke with a broad accent. But he was not
bad-looking, a tight fellow with big blue eyes, who aspired to keep
his "h's" in the right place, and would have been a gentleman if he
could.

Against her usual habit, Alvina joined the plumber and her father in
the scullery. Arthur Witham saluted her with some respect. She liked
his blue eyes and tight figure. He was keen and sly in business,
very watchful, and slow to commit himself. Now he poked and peered
and crept under the sink. Alvina watched him half disappear--she
handed him a candle--and she laughed to herself seeing his tight,
well-shaped hind-quarters protruding from under the sink like the
wrong end of a dog from a kennel. He was keen after money, was
Arthur--and bossy, creeping slyly after his own self-importance and
power. He wanted power--and he would creep quietly after it till he
got it: as much as he was capable of. His "h's" were a barbed-wire
fence and entanglement, preventing his unlimited progress.

He emerged from under the sink, and they went to the kitchen and
afterwards upstairs. Alvina followed them persistently, but a little
aloof, and silent. When the tour of inspection was almost over, she
said innocently:

"Won't it cost a great deal?"

Arthur Witham slowly shook his head. Then he looked at her. She
smiled rather archly into his eyes.

"It won't be done for nothing," he said, looking at her again.

"We can go into that later," said James, leading off the plumber.

"Good morning, Miss Houghton," said Arthur Witham.

"Good morning, Mr. Witham," replied Alvina brightly.

But she lingered in the background, and as Arthur Witham was going
she heard him say: "Well, I'll work it out, Mr. Houghton. I'll work
it out, and let you know tonight. I'll get the figures by tonight."

The younger man's tone was a little off-hand, just a little
supercilious with her father, she thought. James's star was setting.

In the afternoon, directly after dinner, Alvina went out. She
entered the shop, where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty
stood about, varied by sheets of glass and fancy paper. Lottie
Witham, Arthur's wife, appeared. She was a woman of thirty-five, a
bit of a shrew, with social ambitions and no children.

"Is Mr. Witham in?" said Alvina.

Mrs. Witham eyed her.

"I'll see," she answered, and she left the shop.

Presently Arthur entered, in his shirt-sleeves: rather
attractive-looking.

"I don't know what you'll think of me, and what I've come for," said
Alvina, with hurried amiability. Arthur lifted his blue eyes to her,
and Mrs. Witham appeared in the background, in the inner doorway.

"Why, what is it?" said Arthur stolidly.

"Make it as dear as you can, for father," said Alvina, laughing
nervously.

Arthur's blue eyes rested on her face. Mrs. Witham advanced into the
shop.

"Why? What's that for?" asked Lottie Witham shrewdly.

Alvina turned to the woman.

"Don't say anything," she said. "But we don't want father to go on
with this scheme. It's bound to fail. And Miss Pinnegar and I can't
have anything to do with it anyway. I shall go away."

"It's bound to fail," said Arthur Witham stolidly.

"And father has no money, I'm sure," said Alvina.

Lottie Witham eyed the thin, nervous face of Alvina. For some
reason, she liked her. And of course, Alvina was considered a lady
in Woodhouse. That was what it had come to, with James's declining
fortunes: she was merely _considered_ a lady. The consideration was
no longer indisputable.

"Shall you come in a minute?" said Lottie Witham, lifting the flap
of the counter. It was a rare and bold stroke on Mrs. Witham's part.
Alvina's immediate instinct was to refuse. But she liked Arthur
Witham, in his shirt sleeves.

"Well--I must be back in a minute," she said, as she entered the
embrasure of the counter. She felt as if she were really venturing
on new ground. She was led into the new drawing-room, done in new
peacock-and-bronze brocade furniture, with gilt and brass and white
walls. This was the Withams' new house, and Lottie was proud of it.
The two women had a short confidential chat. Arthur lingered in the
doorway a while, then went away.

Alvina did not really like Lottie Witham. Yet the other woman was
sharp and shrewd in the uptake, and for some reason she fancied
Alvina. So she was invited to tea at Manchester House.

After this, so many difficulties rose up in James Houghton's way
that he was worried almost out of his life. His two women left him
alone. Outside difficulties multiplied on him till he abandoned his
scheme--he was simply driven out of it by untoward circumstances.

Lottie Witham came to tea, and was shown over Manchester House. She
had no opinion at all of Manchester House--wouldn't hang a cat in
such a gloomy hole. _Still_, she was rather impressed by the sense
of superiority.

"Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed as she stood in Alvina's bedroom,
and looked at the enormous furniture, the lofty tableland of the
bed.

"Oh my goodness! I wouldn't sleep in _that_ for a trifle, by myself!
Aren't you frightened out of your life? Even if I had Arthur at one
side of me, I should be that frightened on the other side I
shouldn't know what to do. Do you sleep here by yourself?"

"Yes," said Alvina laughing. "I haven't got an Arthur, even for one
side."

"Oh, my word, you'd want a husband on both sides, in that bed," said
Lottie Witham.

Alvina was asked back to tea--on Wednesday afternoon, closing day.
Arthur was there to tea--very ill at ease and feeling as if his
hands were swollen. Alvina got on better with his wife, who watched
closely to learn from her guest the secret of repose. The
indefinable repose and inevitability of a lady--even of a lady who
is nervous and agitated--this was the problem which occupied
Lottie's shrewd and active, but lower-class mind. She even did not
resent Alvina's laughing attempts to draw out the clumsy Arthur:
because Alvina was a lady, and her tactics must be studied.

Alvina really liked Arthur, and thought a good deal about
him--heaven knows why. He and Lottie were quite happy together, and
he was absorbed in his petty ambitions. In his limited way, he was
invincibly ambitious. He would end by making a sufficient fortune,
and by being a town councillor and a J.P. But beyond Woodhouse he
did not exist. Why then should Alvina be attracted by him? Perhaps
because of his "closeness," and his secret determinedness.

When she met him in the street she would stop him--though he was
always busy--and make him exchange a few words with her. And when
she had tea at his house, she would try to rouse his attention. But
though he looked at her, steadily, with his blue eyes, from under
his long lashes, still, she knew, he looked at her objectively. He
never conceived any connection with her whatsoever.

It was Lottie who had a scheming mind. In the family of three
brothers there was one--not black sheep, but white. There was one
who was climbing out, to be a gentleman. This was Albert, the second
brother. He had been a school-teacher in Woodhouse: had gone out to
South Africa and occupied a post in a sort of Grammar School in one
of the cities of Cape Colony. He had accumulated some money, to add
to his patrimony. Now he was in England, at Oxford, where he would
take his belated degree. When he had got his degree, he would return
to South Africa to become head of his school, at seven hundred a
year.

Albert was thirty-two years old, and unmarried. Lottie was
determined he should take back to the Cape a suitable wife:
presumably Alvina. He spent his vacations in Woodhouse--and he was
only in his first year at Oxford. Well now, what could be more
suitable--a young man at Oxford, a young lady in Woodhouse. Lottie
told Alvina all about him, and Alvina was quite excited to meet him.
She imagined him a taller, more fascinating, educated Arthur.

For the fear of being an old maid, the fear of her own virginity was
really gaining on Alvina. There was a terrible sombre futility,
nothingness, in Manchester House. She was twenty-six years old. Her
life was utterly barren now Miss Frost had gone. She was shabby and
penniless, a mere household drudge: for James begrudged even a girl
to help in the kitchen. She was looking faded and worn. Panic, the
terrible and deadly panic which overcomes so many unmarried women at
about the age of thirty, was beginning to overcome her. She would
not care about marriage, if even she had a lover. But some sort of
_terror_ hunted her to the search of a lover. She would become
loose, she would become a prostitute, she said to herself, rather
than die off like Cassie Allsop and the rest, wither slowly and
ignominiously and hideously on the tree. She would rather kill
herself.

But it needs a certain natural gift to become a loose woman or a
prostitute. If you haven't got the qualities which attract loose
men, what are you to do? Supposing it isn't in your nature to
attract loose and promiscuous men! Why, then you can't be a
prostitute, if you try your head off: nor even a loose woman. Since
_willing_ won't do it. It requires a second party to come to an
agreement.

Therefore all Alvina's desperate and profligate schemes and ideas
fell to nought before the inexorable in her nature. And the
inexorable in her nature was highly exclusive and selective, an
inevitable negation of looseness or prostitution. Hence men were
afraid of her--of her power, once they had committed themselves. She
would involve and lead a man on, she would destroy him rather than
not get of him what she wanted. And what she wanted was something
serious and risky. Not mere marriage--oh dear no! But a profound and
dangerous inter-relationship. As well ask the paddlers in the small
surf of passion to plunge themselves into the heaving gulf of
mid-ocean. Bah, with their trousers turned up to their knees it was
enough for them to wet their toes in the dangerous sea. They were
having nothing to do with such desperate nereids as Alvina.

She had cast her mind on Arthur. Truly ridiculous. But there was
something compact and energetic and wilful about him that she
magnified ten-fold and so obtained, imaginatively, an attractive
lover. She brooded her days shabbily away in Manchester House, busy
with housework drudgery. Since the collapse of Throttle-Ha'penny,
James Houghton had become so stingy that it was like an inflammation
in him. A silver sixpence had a pale and celestial radiance which he
could not forego, a nebulous whiteness which made him feel he had
heaven in his hold. How then could he let it go. Even a brown penny
seemed alive and pulsing with mysterious blood, potent, magical. He
loved the flock of his busy pennies, in the shop, as if they had
been divine bees bringing him sustenance from the infinite. But the
pennies he saw dribbling away in household expenses troubled him
acutely, as if they were live things leaving his fold. It was a
constant struggle to get from him enough money for necessities.

And so the household diet became meagre in the extreme, the coal was
eked out inch by inch, and when Alvina must have her boots mended
she must draw on her own little stock of money. For James Houghton
had the impudence to make her an allowance of two shillings a week.
She was very angry. Yet her anger was of that dangerous,
half-ironical sort which wears away its subject and has no outward
effect. A feeling of half-bitter mockery kept her going. In the
ponderous, rather sordid nullity of Manchester House she became
shadowy and absorbed, absorbed in nothing in particular, yet
absorbed. She was always more or less busy: and certainly there was
always something to be done, whether she did it or not.

The shop was opened once a week, on Friday evenings. James Houghton
prowled round the warehouses in Knarborough and picked up job lots
of stuff, with which he replenished his shabby window. But his heart
was not in the business. Mere tenacity made him hover on with it.

In midsummer Albert Witham came to Woodhouse, and Alvina was invited
to tea. She was very much excited. All the time imagining Albert a
taller, finer Arthur, she had abstained from actually fixing her
mind upon this latter little man. Picture her disappointment when
she found Albert quite unattractive. He was tall and thin and
brittle, with a pale, rather dry, flattish face, and with curious
pale eyes. His impression was one of uncanny flatness, something
like a lemon sole. Curiously flat and fish-like he was, one might
have imagined his backbone to be spread like the backbone of a sole
or a plaice. His teeth were sound, but rather large and yellowish
and flat. A most curious person.

He spoke in a slightly mouthing way, not well bred in spite of
Oxford. There was a distinct Woodhouse twang. He would never be a
gentleman if he lived for ever. Yet he was not ordinary. Really an
odd fish: quite interesting, if one could get over the feeling that
one was looking at him through the glass wall of an aquarium: that
most horrifying of all boundaries between two worlds. In an aquarium
fish seem to come smiling broadly to the doorway, and there to stand
talking to one, in a mouthing fashion, awful to behold. For one
hears no sound from all their mouthing and staring conversation. Now
although Albert Witham had a good strong voice, which rang like
water among rocks in her ear, still she seemed never to hear a word
he was saying. He smiled down at her and fixed her and swayed his
head, and said quite original things, really. For he was a genuine
odd fish. And yet she seemed to hear no sound, no word from him:
nothing came to her. Perhaps as a matter of fact fish do actually
pronounce streams of watery words, to which we, with our
aerial-resonant ears, are deaf for ever.

The odd thing was that this odd fish seemed from the very first to
imagine she had accepted him as a follower. And he was quite
prepared to follow. Nay, from the very first moment he was smiling
on her with a sort of complacent delight--compassionate, one might
almost say--as if there was a full understanding between them. If
only she could have got into the right state of mind, she would
really rather have liked him. He smiled at her, and said really
interesting things between his big teeth. There was something rather
nice about him. But, we must repeat, it was as if the glass wall of
an aquarium divided them.

Alvina looked at Arthur. Arthur was short and dark-haired and nicely
coloured. But, now his brother was there, he too seemed to have a
dumb, aqueous silence, fish-like and aloof, about him. He seemed to
swim like a fish in his own little element. Strange it all was,
like Alice in Wonderland. Alvina understood now Lottie's strained
sort of thinness, a haggard, sinewy, sea-weedy look. The poor thing
was all the time swimming for her life.

For Alvina it was a most curious tea-party. She listened and smiled
and made vague answers to Albert, who leaned his broad, thin,
brittle shoulders towards her. Lottie seemed rather shadowily to
preside. But it was Arthur who came out into communication. And now,
uttering his rather broad-mouthed speeches, she seemed to hear in
him a quieter, subtler edition of his father. His father had been a
little, terrifically loud-voiced, hard-skinned man, amazingly
uneducated and amazingly bullying, who had tyrannized for many years
over the Sunday School children during morning service. He had been
an odd-looking creature with round grey whiskers: to Alvina, always
a creature, never a man: an atrocious leprechaun from under the
Chapel floor. And how he used to dig the children in the back with
his horrible iron thumb, if the poor things happened to whisper or
nod in chapel!

These were his children--most curious chips of the old block. Who
ever would have believed she would have been taking tea with them.

"Why don't you have a bicycle, and go out on it?" Arthur was saying.

"But I can't ride," said Alvina.

"You'd learn in a couple of lessons. There's nothing in riding a
bicycle."

"I don't believe I ever should," laughed Alvina.

"You don't mean to say you're nervous?" said Arthur rudely and
sneeringly.

"I _am_," she persisted.

"You needn't be nervous with me," smiled Albert broadly, with his
odd, genuine gallantry. "I'll hold you on."

"But I haven't got a bicycle," said Alvina, feeling she was slowly
colouring to a deep, uneasy blush.

"You can have mine to learn on," said Lottie. "Albert will look
after it."

"There's your chance," said Arthur rudely. "Take it while you've got
it."

Now Alvina did not want to learn to ride a bicycle. The two Miss
Carlins, two more old maids, had made themselves ridiculous for
ever by becoming twin cycle fiends. And the horrible energetic
strain of peddling a bicycle over miles and miles of high-way did
not attract Alvina at all. She was completely indifferent to
sight-seeing and scouring about. She liked taking a walk, in her
lingering indifferent fashion. But rushing about in any way was
hateful to her. And then, to be taught to ride a bicycle by Albert
Witham! Her very soul stood still.

"Yes," said Albert, beaming down at her from his strange pale eyes.
"Come on. When will you have your first lesson?"

"Oh," cried Alvina in confusion. "I can't promise. I haven't time,
really."

"Time!" exclaimed Arthur rudely. "But what do you do wi' yourself
all day?"

"I have to keep house," she said, looking at him archly.

"House! You can put a chain round its neck, and tie it up," he
retorted.

Albert laughed, showing all his teeth.

"I'm sure you find plenty to do, with everything on your hands,"
said Lottie to Alvina.

"I do!" said Alvina. "By evening I'm quite tired--though you mayn't
believe it, since you say I do nothing," she added, laughing
confusedly to Arthur.

But he, hard-headed little fortune-maker, replied:

"You have a girl to help you, don't you!"

Albert, however, was beaming at her sympathetically.

"You have too much to do indoors," he said. "It would do you good to
get a bit of exercise out of doors. Come down to the Coach Road
tomorrow afternoon, and let me give you a lesson. Go on--"

Now the coach-road was a level drive between beautiful park-like
grass-stretches, down in the valley. It was a delightful place for
learning to ride a bicycle, but open in full view of all the world.
Alvina would have died of shame. She began to laugh nervously and
hurriedly at the very thought.

"No, I can't. I really can't. Thanks, awfully," she said.

"Can't you really!" said Albert. "Oh well, we'll say another day,
shall we?"

"When I feel I can," she said.

"Yes, when you feel like it," replied Albert.

"That's more it," said Arthur. "It's not the time. It's the
nervousness." Again Albert beamed at her sympathetically, and said:

"Oh, I'll hold you. You needn't be afraid."

"But I'm not afraid," she said.

"You won't _say_ you are," interposed Arthur. "Women's faults
mustn't be owned up to."

Alvina was beginning to feel quite dazed. Their mechanical,
overbearing way was something she was unaccustomed to. It was like
the jaws of a pair of insentient iron pincers. She rose, saying she
must go.

Albert rose also, and reached for his straw hat, with its coloured
band.

"I'll stroll up with you, if you don't mind," he said. And he took
his place at her side along the Knarborough Road, where everybody
turned to look. For, of course, he had a sort of fame in Woodhouse.
She went with him laughing and chatting. But she did not feel at all
comfortable. He seemed so pleased. Only he was not pleased with
_her_. He was pleased with himself on her account: inordinately
pleased with himself. In his world, as in a fish's, there was but
his own swimming self: and if he chanced to have something swimming
alongside and doing him credit, why, so much the more complacently
he smiled.

He walked stiff and erect, with his head pressed rather back, so
that he always seemed to be advancing from the head and shoulders,
in a flat kind of advance, horizontal. He did not seem to be walking
with his whole body. His manner was oddly gallant, with a gallantry
that completely missed the individual in the woman, circled round
her and flew home gratified to his own hive. The way he raised his
hat, the way he inclined and smiled flatly, even rather excitedly,
as he talked, was all a little discomforting and comical.

He left her at the shop door, saying:

"I shall see you again, I hope."

"Oh, yes," she replied, rattling the door anxiously, for it was
locked. She heard her father's step at last tripping down the shop.

"Good-evening, Mr. Houghton," said Albert suavely and with a certain
confidence, as James peered out.

"Oh, good-evening!" said James, letting Alvina pass, and shutting
the door in Albert's face.

"Who was that?" he asked her sharply.

"Albert Witham," she replied.

"What has _he_ got to do with you?" said James shrewishly.

"Nothing, I hope."

She fled into the obscurity of Manchester House, out of the grey
summer evening. The Withams threw her off her pivot, and made her
feel she was not herself. She felt she didn't know, she couldn't
feel, she was just scattered and decentralized. And she was rather
afraid of the Witham brothers. She might be their victim. She
intended to avoid them.

The following days she saw Albert, in his Norfolk jacket and flannel
trousers and his straw hat, strolling past several times and looking
in through the shop door and up at the upper windows. But she hid
herself thoroughly. When she went out, it was by the back way. So
she avoided him.

But on Sunday evening, there he sat, rather stiff and brittle in the
old Withams' pew, his head pressed a little back, so that his face
and neck seemed slightly flattened. He wore very low, turn-down
starched collars that showed all his neck. And he kept looking up at
her during the service--she sat in the choir-loft--gazing up at her
with apparently love-lorn eyes and a faint, intimate smile--the sort
of _je-sais-tout_ look of a private swain. Arthur also occasionally
cast a judicious eye on her, as if she were a chimney that needed
repairing, and he must estimate the cost, and whether it was worth
it.

Sure enough, as she came out through the narrow choir gate into
Knarborough Road, there was Albert stepping forward like a
policeman, and saluting her and smiling down on her.

"I don't know if I'm presuming--" he said, in a mock deferential
way that showed he didn't imagine he _could_ presume.

"Oh, not at all," said Alvina airily. He smiled with assurance.

"You haven't got any engagement, then, for this evening?" he said.

"No," she replied simply.

"We might take a walk. What do you think?" he said, glancing down
the road in either direction.

What, after all, was she to think? All the girls were pairing off
with the boys for the after-chapel stroll and spoon.

"I don't mind," she said. "But I can't go far. I've got to be in at
nine."

"Which way shall we go?" he said.

He steered off, turned downhill through the common gardens, and
proposed to take her the not-very-original walk up Flint's Lane, and
along the railway line--the colliery railway, that is--then back up
the Marlpool Road: a sort of circle. She agreed.

They did not find a great deal to talk about. She questioned him
about his plans, and about the Cape. But save for bare outlines,
which he gave readily enough, he was rather close.

"What do you do on Sunday nights as a rule?" he asked her.

"Oh, I have a walk with Lucy Grainger--or I go down to Hallam's--or
go home," she answered.

"You don't go walks with the fellows, then?"

"Father would never have it," she replied.

"What will he say now?" he asked, with self-satisfaction.

"Goodness knows!" she laughed.

"Goodness usually does," he answered archly.

When they came to the rather stumbly railway, he said:

"Won't you take my arm?"--offering her the said member.

"Oh, I'm all right," she said. "Thanks."

"Go on," he said, pressing a little nearer to her, and offering his
arm. "There's nothing against it, is there?"

"Oh, it's not that," she said.

And feeling in a false position, she took his arm, rather
unwillingly. He drew a little nearer to her, and walked with a
slight prance.

"We get on better, don't we?" he said, giving her hand the tiniest
squeeze with his arm against his side.

"Much!" she replied, with a laugh.

Then he lowered his voice oddly.

"It's many a day since I was on this railroad," he said.

"Is this one of your old walks?" she asked, malicious.

"Yes, I've been it once or twice--with girls that are all married
now."

"Didn't you want to marry?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know. I may have done. But it never came off, somehow.
I've sometimes thought it never would come off."

"Why?"

"I don't know, exactly. It didn't seem to, you know. Perhaps neither
of us was properly inclined."

"I should think so," she said.

"And yet," he admitted slyly, "I should _like_ to marry--" To this
she did not answer.

"Shouldn't you?" he continued.

"When I meet the right man," she laughed.

"That's it," he said. "There, that's just it! And you _haven't_ met
him?" His voice seemed smiling with a sort of triumph, as if he had
caught her out.

"Well--once I thought I had--when I was engaged to Alexander."

"But you found you were mistaken?" he insisted.

"No. Mother was so ill at the time--"

"There's always something to consider," he said.

She kept on wondering what she should do if he wanted to kiss her.
The mere incongruity of such a desire on his part formed a problem.
Luckily, for this evening he formulated no desire, but left her in
the shop-door soon after nine, with the request:

"I shall see you in the week, shan't I?"

"I'm not sure. I can't promise now," she said hurriedly.
"Good-night."

What she felt chiefly about him was a decentralized perplexity, very
much akin to no feeling at all.

"Who do you think took me for a walk, Miss Pinnegar?" she said,
laughing, to her confidante.

"I can't imagine," replied Miss Pinnegar, eyeing her.

"You never would imagine," said Alvina. "Albert Witham."

"Albert Witham!" exclaimed Miss Pinnegar, standing quite motionless.

"It may well take your breath away," said Alvina.

"No, it's not that!" hurriedly expostulated Miss Pinnegar. "Well--!
Well, I declare!--" and then, on a new note: "Well, he's very
eligible, I think."

"Most eligible!" replied Alvina.

"Yes, he is," insisted Miss Pinnegar. "I think it's very good."

"What's very good?" asked Alvina.

Miss Pinnegar hesitated. She looked at Alvina. She reconsidered.

"Of course he's not the man I should have imagined for you, but--"

"You think he'll do?" said Alvina.

"Why not?" said Miss Pinnegar. "Why shouldn't he do--if you like
him."

"Ah--!" cried Alvina, sinking on the sofa with a laugh. "That's it."

"Of course you couldn't have anything to do with him if you don't
care for him," pronounced Miss Pinnegar.

Albert continued to hang around. He did not make any direct attack
for a few days. Suddenly one evening he appeared at the back door
with a bunch of white stocks in his hand. His face lit up with a
sudden, odd smile when she opened the door--a broad, pale-gleaming,
remarkable smile.

"Lottie wanted to know if you'd come to tea tomorrow," he said
straight out, looking at her with the pale light in his eyes, that
smiled palely right into her eyes, but did not see her at all. He
was waiting on the doorstep to come in.

"Will you come in?" said Alvina. "Father is in."

"Yes, I don't mind," he said, pleased. He mounted the steps, still
holding his bunch of white stocks.

James Houghton screwed round in his chair and peered over his
spectacles to see who was coming.

"Father," said Alvina, "you know Mr. Witham, don't you?"

James Houghton half rose. He still peered over his glasses at the
intruder.

"Well--I do by sight. How do you do?"

He held out his frail hand.

Albert held back, with the flowers in his own hand, and giving his
broad, pleased, pale-gleaming smile from father to daughter, he
said:

"What am I to do with these? Will you accept them, Miss Houghton?"
He stared at her with shining, pallid smiling eyes.

"Are they for me?" she said, with false brightness. "Thank you."

James Houghton looked over the top of his spectacles, searchingly,
at the flowers, as if they had been a bunch of white and
sharp-toothed ferrets. Then he looked as suspiciously at the hand
which Albert at last extended to him. He shook it slightly, and
said:

"Take a seat."

"I'm afraid I'm disturbing you in your reading," said Albert, still
having the drawn, excited smile on his face.

"Well--" said James Houghton. "The light is fading."

Alvina came in with the flowers in a jar. She set them on the table.

"Haven't they a lovely scent?" she said.

"Do you think so?" he replied, again with the excited smile. There
was a pause. Albert, rather embarrassed, reached forward, saying:

"May I see what you're reading!" And he turned over the book.
"'Tommy and Grizel!' Oh yes! What do you think of it?"

"Well," said James, "I am only in the beginning."

"I think it's interesting, myself," said Albert, "as a study of a
man who can't get away from himself. You meet a lot of people like
that. What I wonder is why they find it such a drawback."

"Find what a drawback?" asked James.

"Not being able to get away from themselves. That
self-consciousness. It hampers them, and interferes with their power
of action. Now I wonder why self-consciousness should hinder a man
in his action? Why does it cause misgiving? I think I'm
self-conscious, but I don't think I have so many misgivings. I don't
see that they're necessary."

"Certainly I think Tommy is a weak character. I believe he's a
despicable character," said James.

"No, I don't know so much about that," said Albert. "I shouldn't say
weak, exactly. He's only weak in one direction. No, what I wonder is
why he feels guilty. If you feel self-conscious, there's no need to
feel guilty about it, is there?"

He stared with his strange, smiling stare at James.

"I shouldn't say so," replied James. "But if a man never knows his
own mind, he certainly can't be much of a man."

"I don't see it," replied Albert. "What's the matter is that he
feels guilty for not knowing his own mind. That's the unnecessary
part. The guilty feeling--"

Albert seemed insistent on this point, which had no particular
interest for James.

"Where we've got to make a change," said Albert, "is in the feeling
that other people have a right to tell us what we ought to feel and
do. Nobody knows what another man ought to feel. Every man has his
own special feelings, and his own right to them. That's where it is
with education. You ought not to want all your children to feel
alike. Their natures are all different, and so they should all feel
different, about practically everything."

"There would be no end to the confusion," said James.

"There needn't be any confusion to speak of. You agree to a number
of rules and conventions and laws, for social purposes. But in
private you feel just as you do feel, without occasion for trying to
feel something else."

"I don't know," said James. "There are certain feelings common to
humanity, such as love, and honour, and truth."

"Would you call them feelings?" said Albert. "I should say what is
common is the idea. The idea is common to humanity, once you've put
it into words. But the feeling varies with every man. The same idea
represents a different kind of feeling in every different
individual. It seems to me that's what we've got to recognize if
we're going to do anything with education. We don't want to produce
mass feelings. Don't you agree?"

Poor James was too bewildered to know whether to agree or not to
agree.

"Shall we have a light, Alvina?" he said to his daughter.

Alvina lit the incandescent gas-jet that hung in the middle of the
room. The hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as
she reached up to it. But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly.
It seemed as if his words came off him without affecting him at all.
He did not think about what he was feeling, and he did not feel what
he was thinking about. And therefore she hardly heard what he said.
Yet she believed he was clever.

It was evident Albert was quite blissfully happy, in his own way,
sitting there at the end of the sofa not far from the fire, and
talking animatedly. The uncomfortable thing was that though he
talked in the direction of his interlocutor, he did not speak _to_
him: merely said his words towards him. James, however, was such an
airy feather himself he did not remark this, but only felt a little
self-important at sustaining such a subtle conversation with a man
from Oxford. Alvina, who never expected to be interested in clever
conversations, after a long experience of her father, found her
expectation justified again. She was not interested.

The man was quite nicely dressed, in the regulation tweed jacket and
flannel trousers and brown shoes. He was even rather smart, judging
from his yellow socks and yellow-and-brown tie. Miss Pinnegar eyed
him with approval when she came in.

"Good-evening!" she said, just a trifle condescendingly, as she
shook hands. "How do you find Woodhouse, after being away so long?"
Her way of speaking was so quiet, as if she hardly spoke aloud.

"Well," he answered. "I find it the same in many ways."

"You wouldn't like to settle here again?"

"I don't think I should. It feels a little cramped, you know, after
a new country. But it has its attractions." Here he smiled
meaningful.

"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar. "I suppose the old connections count for
something."

"They do. Oh decidedly they do. There's no associations like the old
ones." He smiled flatly as he looked towards Alvina.

"You find it so, do you!" returned Miss Pinnegar. "You don't find
that the new connections make up for the old?"

"Not altogether, they don't. There's something missing--" Again he
looked towards Alvina. But she did not answer his look.

"Well," said Miss Pinnegar. "I'm glad we still count for something,
in spite of the greater attractions. How long have you in England?"

"Another year. Just a year. This time next year I expect I shall be
sailing back to the Cape." He smiled as if in anticipation. Yet it
was hard to believe that it mattered to him--or that anything
mattered.

"And is Oxford agreeable to you?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. I keep myself busy."

"What are your subjects?" asked James.

"English and History. But I do mental science for my own interest."

Alvina had taken up a piece of sewing. She sat under the light,
brooding a little. What _had_ all this to do with her. The man
talked on, and beamed in her direction. And she felt a little
important. But moved or touched?--not the least in the world.

She wondered if any one would ask him to supper--bread and cheese
and currant-loaf, and water, was all that offered. No one asked him,
and at last he rose.

"Show Mr. Witham out through the shop, Alvina," said Miss Pinnegar.

Alvina piloted the man through the long, dark, encumbered way of the
shop. At the door he said:

"You've never said whether you're coming to tea on Thursday."

"I don't think I can," said Alvina.

He seemed rather taken aback.

"Why?" he said. "What stops you?"

"I've so much to do."

He smiled slowly and satirically.

"Won't it keep?" he said.

"No, really. I can't come on Thursday--thank you so much.
Good-night!" She gave him her hand and turned quickly into the shop,
closing the door. He remained standing in the porch, staring at the
closed door. Then, lifting his lip, he turned away.

"Well," said Miss Pinnegar decidedly, as Alvina re-entered. "You can
say what you like--but I think he's _very pleasant_, _very_
pleasant."

"Extremely intelligent," said James Houghton, shifting in his chair.

"I was awfully bored," said Alvina.

They both looked at her, irritated.

After this she really did what she could to avoid him. When she saw
him sauntering down the street in all his leisure, a sort of anger
possessed her. On Sunday, she slipped down from the choir into the
Chapel, and out through the main entrance, whilst he awaited her at
the small exit. And by good luck, when he called one evening in the
week, she was out. She returned down the yard. And there, through
the uncurtained window, she saw him sitting awaiting her. Without a
thought, she turned on her heel and fled away. She did not come in
till he had gone.

"How late you are!" said Miss Pinnegar. "Mr. Witham was here till
ten minutes ago."

"Yes," laughed Alvina. "I came down the yard and saw him. So I went
back till he'd gone."

Miss Pinnegar looked at her in displeasure:

"I suppose you know your own mind," she said.

"How do you explain such behaviour?" said her father pettishly.

"I didn't want to meet him," she said.

The next evening was Saturday. Alvina had inherited Miss Frost's
task of attending to the Chapel flowers once a quarter. She had been
round the gardens of her friends, and gathered the scarlet and hot
yellow and purple flowers of August, asters, red stocks, tall
Japanese sunflowers, coreopsis, geraniums. With these in her basket
she slipped out towards evening, to the Chapel. She knew Mr.
Calladine, the caretaker would not lock up till she had been.

The moment she got inside the Chapel--it was a big, airy, pleasant
building--she heard hammering from the organ-loft, and saw the
flicker of a candle. Some workman busy before Sunday. She shut the
baize door behind her, and hurried across to the vestry, for vases,
then out to the tap, for water. All was warm and still.

It was full early evening. The yellow light streamed through the
side windows, the big stained-glass window at the end was deep and
full of glowing colour, in which the yellows and reds were richest.
Above in the organ-loft the hammering continued. She arranged her
flowers in many vases, till the communion table was like the window,
a tangle of strong yellow, and crimson, and purple, and
bronze-green. She tried to keep the effect light and kaleidoscopic,
an interplay of tossed pieces of strong, hot colour, vibrating and
lightly intermingled. It was very gorgeous, for a communion table.
But the day of white lilies was over.

Suddenly there was a terrific crash and bang and tumble, up in the
organ-loft, followed by a cursing.

"Are you hurt?" called Alvina, looking up into space. The candle had
disappeared.

But there was no reply. Feeling curious, she went out of the Chapel
to the stairs in the side porch, and ran up to the organ. She went
round the side--and there she saw a man in his shirt-sleeves sitting
crouched in the obscurity on the floor between the organ and the
wall of the back, while a collapsed pair of steps lay between her
and him. It was too dark to see who it was.

"That rotten pair of steps came down with me," said the infuriated
voice of Arthur Witham, "and about broke my leg."

Alvina advanced towards him, picking her way over the steps. He was
sitting nursing his leg.

"Is it bad?" she asked, stooping towards him.

In the shadow he lifted up his face. It was pale, and his eyes were
savage with anger. Her face was near his.

"It is bad," he said furious because of the shock. The shock had
thrown him off his balance.

"Let me see," she said.

He removed his hands from clasping his shin, some distance above the
ankle. She put her fingers over the bone, over his stocking, to feel
if there was any fracture. Immediately her fingers were wet with
blood. Then he did a curious thing. With both his hands he pressed
her hand down over his wounded leg, pressed it with all his might,
as if her hand were a plaster. For some moments he sat pressing her
hand over his broken shin, completely oblivious, as some people are
when they have had a shock and a hurt, intense on one point of
consciousness only, and for the rest unconscious.

Then he began to come to himself. The pain modified itself. He could
not bear the sudden acute hurt to his shin. That was one of his
sensitive, unbearable parts.

"The bone isn't broken," she said professionally. "But you'd better
get the stocking out of it."

Without a thought, he pulled his trouser-leg higher and rolled down
his stocking, extremely gingerly, and sick with pain.

"Can you show a light?" he said.

She found the candle. And she knew where matches always rested, on a
little ledge of the organ. So she brought him a light, whilst he
examined his broken shin. The blood was flowing, but not so much. It
was a nasty cut bruise, swelling and looking very painful. He sat
looking at it absorbedly, bent over it in the candle-light.

"It's not so very bad, when the pain goes off," she said, noticing
the black hairs of his shin. "We'd better tie it up. Have you got a
handkerchief?"

"It's in my jacket," he said.

She looked round for his jacket. He annoyed her a little, by being
completely oblivious of her. She got his handkerchief and wiped her
fingers on it. Then of her own kerchief she made a pad for the
wound.

"Shall I tie it up, then?" she said.

But he did not answer. He sat still nursing his leg, looking at his
hurt, while the blood slowly trickled down the wet hairs towards his
ankle. There was nothing to do but wait for him.

"Shall I tie it up, then?" she repeated at length, a little
impatient. So he put his leg a little forward.

She looked at the wound, and wiped it a little. Then she folded the
pad of her own handkerchief, and laid it over the hurt. And again he
did the same thing, he took her hand as if it were a plaster, and
applied it to his wound, pressing it cautiously but firmly down. She
was rather angry. He took no notice of her at all. And she, waiting,
seemed to go into a dream, a sleep, her arm trembled a little,
stretched out and fixed. She seemed to lose count, under the firm
compression he imposed on her. It was as if the pressure on her hand
pressed her into oblivion.

"Tie it up," he said briskly.

And she, obedient, began to tie the bandage with numb fingers. He
seemed to have taken the use out of her.

When she had finished, he scrambled to his feet, looked at the organ
which he was repairing, and looked at the collapsed pair of steps.

"A rotten pair of things to have, to put a man's life in danger," he
said, towards the steps. Then stubbornly, he rigged them up again,
and stared again at his interrupted job.

"You won't go on, will you?" she asked.

"It's got to be done, Sunday tomorrow," he said. "If you'd hold them
steps a minute! There isn't more than a minute's fixing to do. It's
all done, but fixing."

"Hadn't you better leave it," she said.

"Would you mind holding the steps, so that they don't let me down
again," he said. Then he took the candle, and hobbled stubbornly and
angrily up again, with spanner and hammer. For some minutes he
worked, tapping and readjusting, whilst she held the ricketty steps
and stared at him from below, the shapeless bulk of his trousers.
Strange the difference--she could not help thinking it--between the
vulnerable hairy, and somehow childish leg of the real man, and the
shapeless form of these workmen's trousers. The kernel, the man
himself--seemed so tender--the covering so stiff and insentient.

And was he not going to speak to her--not one human word of
recognition? Men are the most curious and unreal creatures. After
all he had made use of her. Think how he had pressed her hand gently
but firmly down, down over his bruise, how he had taken the virtue
out of her, till she felt all weak and dim. And after that was he
going to relapse into his tough and ugly workman's hide, and treat
her as if _she_ were a pair of steps, which might let him down or
hold him up, as might be.

As she stood clinging to the steps she felt weak and a little
hysterical. She wanted to summon her strength, to have her own back
from him. After all he had taken the virtue from her, he might have
the grace to say thank you, and treat her as if she were a human
being.

At last he left off tinkering, and looked round.

"Have you finished?" she said.

"Yes," he answered crossly.

And taking the candle he began to clamber down. When he got to the
bottom he crouched over his leg and felt the bandage.

"That gives you what for," he said, as if it were her fault.

"Is the bandage holding?" she said.

"I think so," he answered churlishly.

"Aren't you going to make sure?" she said.

"Oh, it's all right," he said, turning aside and taking up his
tools. "I'll make my way home."

"So will I," she answered.

She took the candle and went a little in front. He hurried into his
coat and gathered his tools, anxious to get away. She faced him,
holding the candle.

"Look at my hand," she said, holding it out. It was smeared with
blood, as was the cuff of her dress--a black-and-white striped
cotton dress.

"Is it hurt?" he said.

"No, but look at it. Look here!" She showed the bloodstains on her
dress.

"It'll wash out," he said, frightened of her.

"Yes, so it will. But for the present it's there. Don't you think
you ought to thank me?"

He recoiled a little.

"Yes," he said. "I'm very much obliged."

"You ought to be more than that," she said.

He did not answer, but looked her up and down.

"We'll be going down," he said. "We s'll have folks talking."

Suddenly she began to laugh. It seemed so comical. What a position!
The candle shook as she laughed. What a man, answering her like a
little automaton! Seriously, quite seriously he said it to her--"We
s'll have folks talking!" She laughed in a breathless, hurried way,
as they tramped downstairs.

At the bottom of the stairs Calladine, the caretaker, met them. He
was a tall thin man with a black moustache--about fifty years old.

"Have you done for tonight, all of you?" he said, grinning in echo
to Alvina's still fluttering laughter.

"That's a nice rotten pair of steps you've got up there for a
death-trap," said Arthur angrily. "Come down on top of me, and I'm
lucky I haven't got my leg broken. It _is_ near enough."

"Come down with you, did they?" said Calladine good-humouredly. "I
never knowed 'em come down wi' me."

"You ought to, then. My leg's as near broke as it can be."

"What, have you hurt yourself?"

"I should think I have. Look here--" And he began to pull up his
trouser leg. But Alvina had given the candle to Calladine, and fled.
She had a last view of Arthur stooping over his precious leg, while
Calladine stooped his length and held down the candle.

When she got home she took off her dress and washed herself hard and
washed the stained sleeve, thoroughly, thoroughly, and threw away
the wash water and rinsed the wash-bowls with fresh water,
scrupulously. Then she dressed herself in her black dress once
more, did her hair, and went downstairs.

But she could not sew--and she could not settle down. It was
Saturday evening, and her father had opened the shop, Miss Pinnegar
had gone to Knarborough. She would be back at nine o'clock. Alvina
set about to make a mock woodcock, or a mock something or other,
with cheese and an egg and bits of toast. Her eyes were dilated and
as if amused, mocking, her face quivered a little with irony that
was not all enjoyable.

"I'm glad you've come," said Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar entered. "The
supper's just done. I'll ask father if he'll close the shop."

Of course James would not close the shop, though he was merely
wasting light. He nipped in to eat his supper, and started out again
with a mouthful the moment he heard the ping of the bell. He kept
his customers chatting as long as he could. His love for
conversation had degenerated into a spasmodic passion for chatter.

Alvina looked across at Miss Pinnegar, as the two sat at the meagre
supper-table. Her eyes were dilated and arched with a mocking,
almost satanic look.

"I've made up my mind about Albert Witham," said Alvina. Miss
Pinnegar looked at her.

"Which way?" she asked, demurely, but a little sharp.

"It's all off," said Alvina, breaking into a nervous laugh.

"Why? What has happened?"

"Nothing has happened. I can't stand him."

"Why?--suddenly--" said Miss Pinnegar.

"It's not sudden," laughed Alvina. "Not at all. I can't stand him. I
never could. And I won't try. There! Isn't that plain?" And she went
off into her hurried laugh, partly at herself, partly at Arthur,
partly at Albert, partly at Miss Pinnegar.

"Oh, well, if you're so sure--" said Miss Pinnegar rather bitingly.

"I _am_ quite sure--" said Alvina. "I'm quite certain."

"Cock-sure people are often most mistaken," said Miss Pinnegar.

"I'd rather have my own mistakes than somebody else's rights," said
Alvina.

"Then don't expect anybody to pay for your mistakes," said Miss
Pinnegar.

"It would be all the same if I did," said Alvina.

When she lay in bed, she stared at the light of the street-lamp on
the wall. She was thinking busily: but heaven knows what she was
thinking. She had sharpened the edge of her temper. She was waiting
till tomorrow. She was waiting till she saw Albert Witham. She
wanted to finish off with him. She was keen to cut clean through any
correspondence with him. She stared for many hours at the light of
the street-lamp, and there was a narrowed look in her eyes.

The next day she did not go to Morning Service, but stayed at home
to cook the dinner. In the evening she sat in her place in the
choir. In the Withams' pew sat Lottie and Albert--no Arthur. Albert
kept glancing up. Alvina could not bear the sight of him--she simply
could not bear the sight of him. Yet in her low, sweet voice she
sang the alto to the hymns, right to the vesper:

    "Lord keep us safe this night
    Secure from all our fears,
    May angels guard us while we sleep
    Till morning light appears--"

As she sang her alto, and as the soft and emotional harmony of the
vesper swelled luxuriously through the chapel, she was peeping over
her folded hands at Lottie's hat. She could not bear Lottie's hats.
There was something aggressive and vulgar about them. And she simply
detested the look of the back of Albert's head, as he too stooped to
the vesper prayer. It looked mean and rather common. She remembered
Arthur had the same look, bending to prayer. There!--why had she not
seen it before! That petty, vulgar little look! How could she have
thought twice of Arthur. She had made a fool of herself, as usual.
Him and his little leg. She grimaced round the chapel, waiting for
people to bob up their heads and take their departure.

At the gate Albert was waiting for her. He came forward lifting his
hat with a smiling and familiar "Good evening!"

"Good evening," she murmured.

"It's ages since I've seen you," he said. "And I've looked out for
you everywhere."

It was raining a little. She put up her umbrella.

"You'll take a little stroll. The rain isn't much," he said.

"No, thank you," she said. "I must go home."

"Why, what's your hurry! Walk as far as Beeby Bridge. Go on."

"No, thank you."

"How's that? What makes you refuse?"

"I don't want to."

He paused and looked down at her. The cold and supercilious look of
anger, a little spiteful, came into his face.

"Do you mean because of the rain?" he said.

"No. I hope you don't mind. But I don't want to take any more walks.
I don't mean anything by them."

"Oh, as for that," he said, taking the words out of her mouth. "Why
should you mean anything by them!" He smiled down on her.

She looked him straight in the face.

"But I'd rather not take any more walks, thank you--none at all,"
she said, looking him full in the eyes.

"You wouldn't!" he replied, stiffening.

"Yes. I'm quite sure," she said.

"As sure as all that, are you!" he said, with a sneering grimace. He
stood eyeing her insolently up and down.

"Good-night," she said. His sneering made her furious. Putting her
umbrella between him and her, she walked off.

"Good-night then," he replied, unseen by her. But his voice was
sneering and impotent.

She went home quivering. But her soul was burning with satisfaction.
She had shaken them off.

Later she wondered if she had been unkind to him. But it was
done--and done for ever. _Vogue la galère._




CHAPTER VI

HOUGHTON'S LAST ENDEAVOUR


The trouble with her ship was that it would _not_ sail. It rode
water-logged in the rotting port of home. All very well to have
wild, reckless moods of irony and independence, if you have to pay
for them by withering dustily on the shelf.

Alvina fell again into humility and fear: she began to show symptoms
of her mother's heart trouble. For day followed day, month followed
month, season after season went by, and she grubbed away like a
housemaid in Manchester House, she hurried round doing the shopping,
she sang in the choir on Sundays, she attended the various chapel
events, she went out to visit friends, and laughed and talked and
played games. But all the time, what was there actually in her life?
Not much. She was withering towards old-maiddom. Already in her
twenty-eighth year, she spent her days grubbing in the house, whilst
her father became an elderly, frail man still too lively in mind and
spirit. Miss Pinnegar began to grow grey and elderly too, money
became scarcer and scarcer, there was a black day ahead when her
father would die and the home be broken up, and she would have to
tackle life as a worker.

There lay the only alternative: in work. She might slave her days
away teaching the piano, as Miss Frost had done: she might find a
subordinate post as nurse: she might sit in the cash-desk of some
shop. Some work of some sort would be found for her. And she would
sink into the routine of her job, as did so many women, and grow old
and die, chattering and fluttering. She would have what is called
her independence. But, seriously faced with that treasure, and
without the option of refusing it, strange how hideous she found it.

Work!--a job! More even than she rebelled against the Withams did
she rebel against a job. Albert Witham was distasteful to her--or
rather, he was not exactly distasteful, he was chiefly incongruous.
She could never get over the feeling that he was mouthing and
smiling at her through the glass wall of an aquarium, he being on
the watery side. Whether she would ever be able to take to his
strange and dishuman element, who knows? Anyway it would be some
sort of an adventure: better than a job. She rebelled with all her
backbone against the word _job_. Even the substitutes, _employment_
or _work_, were detestable, unbearable. Emphatically, she did not
want to work for a wage. It was too humiliating. Could anything be
more _infra dig_ than the performing of a set of special actions day
in day out, for a life-time, in order to receive some shillings
every seventh day. Shameful! A condition of shame. The most vulgar,
sordid and humiliating of all forms of slavery: so mechanical. Far
better be a slave outright, in contact with all the whims and
impulses of a human being, than serve some mechanical routine of
modern work.

She trembled with anger, impotence, and fear. For months, the
thought of Albert was a torment to her. She might have married him.
He would have been strange, a strange fish. But were it not better
to take the strange leap, over into his element, than to condemn
oneself to the routine of a job? He would have been curious and
dishuman. But after all, it would have been an experience. In a way,
she liked him. There was something odd and integral about him, which
she liked. He was not a liar. In his own line, he was honest and
direct. Then he would take her to South Africa: a whole new
_milieu_. And perhaps she would have children. She shivered a
little. No, not his children! He seemed so curiously cold-blooded.
And yet, why not? Why not his curious, pale, half cold-blooded
children, like little fishes of her own? Why not? Everything was
possible: and even desirable, once one could see the strangeness of
it. Once she could plunge through the wall of the aquarium! Once she
could kiss him!

Therefore Miss Pinnegar's quiet harping on the string was
unbearable.

"I can't understand that you disliked Mr. Witham so much?" said Miss
Pinnegar.

"We never can understand those things," said Alvina. "I can't
understand why I dislike tapioca and arrowroot--but I do."

"That's different," said Miss Pinnegar shortly.

"It's no more easy to understand," said Alvina.

"Because there's no need to understand it," said Miss Pinnegar.

"And is there need to understand the other?"

"Certainly. I can see nothing wrong with him," said Miss Pinnegar.

Alvina went away in silence. This was in the first months after she
had given Albert his dismissal. He was at Oxford again--would not
return to Woodhouse till Christmas. Between her and the Woodhouse
Withams there was a decided coldness. They never looked at her
now--nor she at them.

None the less, as Christmas drew near Alvina worked up her feelings.
Perhaps she would be reconciled to him. She would slip across and
smile to him. She would take the plunge, once and for all--and kiss
him and marry him and bear the little half-fishes, his children. She
worked herself into quite a fever of anticipation.

But when she saw him, the first evening, sitting stiff and staring
flatly in front of him in Chapel, staring away from everything in
the world, at heaven knows what--just as fishes stare--then his
dishumanness came over her again like an arrest, and arrested all
her flights of fancy. He stared flatly in front of him, and flatly
set a wall of oblivion between him and her. She trembled and let be.

After Christmas, however, she had nothing at all to think forward
to. And it was then she seemed to shrink: she seemed positively to
shrink.

"You never spoke to Mr. Witham?" Miss Pinnegar asked.

"He never spoke to me," replied Alvina.

"He raised his hat to me."

"_You_ ought to have married him, Miss Pinnegar," said Alvina. "He
would have been right for you." And she laughed rather mockingly.

"There is no need to make provision for me," said Miss Pinnegar.

And after this, she was a long time before she forgave Alvina, and
was really friendly again. Perhaps she would never have forgiven her
if she had not found her weeping rather bitterly in her mother's
abandoned sitting-room.

Now so far, the story of Alvina is commonplace enough. It is more or
less the story of thousands of girls. They all find work. It is the
ordinary solution of everything. And if we were dealing with an
ordinary girl we should have to carry on mildly and dully down the
long years of employment; or, at the best, marriage with some dull
school-teacher or office-clerk.

But we protest that Alvina is not ordinary. Ordinary people,
ordinary fates. But extraordinary people, extraordinary fates. Or
else no fate at all. The all-to-one-pattern modern system is too
much for most extraordinary individuals. It just kills them off or
throws them disused aside.

There have been enough stories about ordinary people. I should think
the Duke of Clarence must even have found malmsey nauseating, when
he choked and went purple and was really asphyxiated in a butt of
it. And ordinary people are no malmsey. Just ordinary tap-water. And
we have been drenched and deluged and so nearly drowned in perpetual
floods of ordinariness, that tap-water tends to become a really
hateful fluid to us. We loathe its out-of-the-tap tastelessness. We
detest ordinary people. We are in peril of our lives from them: and
in peril of our souls too, for they would damn us one and all to the
ordinary. Every individual should, by nature, have his extraordinary
points. But nowadays you may look for them with a microscope, they
are so worn-down by the regular machine-friction of our average and
mechanical days.

There was no hope for Alvina in the ordinary. If help came, it would
have to come from the extraordinary. Hence the extreme peril of her
case. Hence the bitter fear and humiliation she felt as she drudged
shabbily on in Manchester House, hiding herself as much as possible
from public view. Men can suck the heady juice of exalted
self-importance from the bitter weed of failure--failures are
usually the most conceited of men: even as was James Houghton. But
to a woman, failure is another matter. For her it means failure to
live, failure to establish her own life on the face of the earth.
And this is humiliating, the ultimate humiliation.

And so the slow years crept round, and the completed coil of each
one was a further heavy, strangling noose. Alvina had passed her
twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and even her
twenty-ninth year. She was in her thirtieth. It ought to be a
laughing matter. But it isn't.

          Ach, schon zwanzig
          Ach, schon zwanzig
       Immer noch durch's Leben tanz' ich

       Jeder, Jeder will mich küssen
       Mir das Leben zu versüssen.

          Ach, schon dreissig
          Ach, schon dreissig
       Immer Mädchen, Mädchen heiss' ich.
       In dem Zopf schon graue Härchen
       Ach, wie schnell vergehn die Jährchen.

          Ach, schon vierzig
          Ach, schon vierzig
       Und noch immer Keiner find 'sich.
       Im gesicht schon graue Flecken
       Ach, das muss im Spiegel stecken.

          Ach, schon fünfzig
          Ach, schon fünfzig
       Und noch immer Keiner will 'mich;
       Soll ich mich mit Bänden zieren
       Soll ich einen Schleier führen?
          Dann heisst's, die Alte putzt sich,
          Sie ist fu'fzig, sie ist fu'fzig.

True enough, in Alvina's pig-tail of soft brown the grey hairs were
already showing. True enough, she still preferred to be thought of
as a girl. And the slow-footed years, so heavy in passing, were so
imperceptibly numerous in their accumulation.

But we are not going to follow our song to its fatal and dreary
conclusion. Presumably, the _ordinary_ old-maid heroine nowadays is
destined to die in her fifties, she is not allowed to be the
long-liver of the by-gone novels. Let the song suffice her.

James Houghton had still another kick in him. He had one last scheme
up his sleeve. Looking out on a changing world, it was the popular
novelties which had the last fascination for him. The Skating Rink,
like another Charybdis, had all but entangled him in its swirl as he
pushed painfully off from the rocks of Throttle-Ha'penny. But he had
escaped, and for almost three years had lain obscurely in port, like
a frail and finished bark, selling the last of his bits and bobs,
and making little splashes in warehouse-oddments. Miss Pinnegar
thought he had really gone quiet.

But alas, at that degenerated and shabby, down-at-heel club he met
another tempter: a plump man who had been in the music-hall line as
a sort of agent. This man had catered for the little shows of
little towns. He had been in America, out West, doing shows there.
He had trailed his way back to England, where he had left his wife
and daughter. But he did not resume his family life. Wherever he
was, his wife was a hundred miles away. Now he found himself more or
less stranded in Woodhouse. He had _nearly_ fixed himself up with a
music-hall in the Potteries--as manager: he had all-but got such
another place at Ickley, in Derbyshire: he had forced his way
through the industrial and mining townlets, prospecting for any sort
of music-hall or show from which he could get a picking. And now, in
very low water, he found himself at Woodhouse.

Woodhouse had a cinema already: a famous Empire run-up by Jordan,
the sly builder and decorator who had got on so surprisingly. In
James's younger days, Jordan was an obscure and illiterate nobody.
And now he had a motor car, and looked at the tottering James with
sardonic contempt, from under his heavy, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He
was rather stout, frail in health, but silent and insuperable, was
A. W. Jordan.

"I missed a chance there," said James, fluttering. "I missed a rare
chance there. I ought to have been first with a cinema."

He admitted as much to Mr. May, the stranger who was looking for
some sort of "managing" job. Mr. May, who also was plump and who
could hold his tongue, but whose pink, fat face and light-blue eyes
had a loud look, for all that, put the speech in his pipe and smoked
it. Not that he smoked a pipe: always cigarettes. But he seized on
James's admission, as something to be made the most of.

Now Mr. May's mind, though quick, was pedestrian, not winged. He had
come to Woodhouse not to look at Jordan's "Empire," but at the
temporary wooden structure that stood in the old Cattle
Market--"Wright's Cinematograph and Variety Theatre." Wright's was
not a superior show, like the Woodhouse Empire. Yet it was always
packed with colliers and work-lasses. But unfortunately there was no
chance of Mr. May's getting a finger in the Cattle Market pie.
Wright's was a family affair. Mr. and Mrs. Wright and a son and two
daughters with their husbands: a tight old lock-up family concern.
Yet it was the kind of show that appealed to Mr. May: pictures
between the turns. The cinematograph was but an item in the program,
amidst the more thrilling incidents--to Mr. May--of conjurors,
popular songs, five-minute farces, performing birds, and comics. Mr.
May was too human to believe that a show should consist entirely of
the dithering eye-ache of a film.

He was becoming really depressed by his failure to find any opening.
He had his family to keep--and though his honesty was of the variety
sort, he had a heavy conscience in the direction of his wife and
daughter. Having been so long in America, he had acquired American
qualities, one of which was this heavy sort of private innocence,
coupled with complacent and natural unscrupulousness in "matters of
business." A man of some odd sensitiveness in material things, he
liked to have his clothes neat and spick, his linen immaculate, his
face clean-shaved like a cherub. But alas, his clothes were now
old-fashioned, so that their rather expensive smartness was
detrimental to his chances, in spite of their scrupulous look of
having come almost new out of the bandbox that morning. His rather
small felt hats still curved jauntily over his full pink face. But
his eyes looked lugubrious, as if he felt he had not deserved so
much bad luck, and there were bilious lines beneath them.

So Mr. May, in his room in the Moon and Stars, which was the best inn
in Woodhouse--he must have a good hötel--lugubriously considered his
position. Woodhouse offered little or nothing. He must go to Alfreton.
And would he find anything there? Ah, where, where in this hateful
world was there refuge for a man saddled with responsibilities, who
wanted to do his best and was given no opportunity? Mr. May had
travelled in his Pullman car and gone straight to the best hotel in the
town, like any other American with money--in America. He had done it
smart, too. And now, in this grubby penny-picking England, he saw his
boots being worn-down at the heel, and was afraid of being stranded
without cash even for a railway ticket. If he had to clear out without
paying his hotel bill--well, that was the world's fault. He had to
live. But he must perforce keep enough in hand for a ticket to
Birmingham. He always said his wife was in London. And he always walked
down to Lumley to post his letters. He was full of evasions.

So again he walked down to Lumley to post his letters. And he looked
at Lumley. And he found it a damn god-forsaken hell of a hole. It
was a long straggle of a dusty road down in the valley, with a
pale-grey dust and spatter from the pottery, and big chimneys
bellying forth black smoke right by the road. Then there was a short
cross-way, up which one saw the iron foundry, a black and rusty
place. A little further on was the railway junction, and beyond
that, more houses stretching to Hathersedge, where the stocking
factories were busy. Compared with Lumley, Woodhouse, whose church
could be seen sticking up proudly and vulgarly on an eminence, above
trees and meadow-slopes, was an idyllic heaven.

Mr. May turned in to the Derby Hotel to have a small whiskey. And of
course he entered into conversation.

"You seem somewhat quiet at Lumley," he said, in his odd,
refined-showman's voice. "Have you _nothing at all_ in the way of
amusement?"

"They all go up to Woodhouse, else to Hathersedge."

"But couldn't you support some place of your own--some _rival_ to
Wright's Variety?"

"Ay--'appen--if somebody started it."

And so it was that James was inoculated with the idea of starting a
cinema on the virgin soil of Lumley. To the women he said not a
word. But on the very first morning that Mr. May broached the
subject, he became a new man. He fluttered like a boy, he fluttered
as if he had just grown wings.

"Let us go down," said Mr. May, "and look at a site. You pledge
yourself to nothing--you don't compromise yourself. You merely have
a site in your mind."

And so it came to pass that, next morning, this oddly assorted
couple went down to Lumley together. James was very shabby, in his
black coat and dark grey trousers, and his cheap grey cap. He bent
forward as he walked, and still nipped along hurriedly, as if
pursued by fate. His face was thin and still handsome. Odd that his
cheap cap, by incongruity, made him look more a gentleman. But it
did. As he walked he glanced alertly hither and thither, and saluted
everybody.

By his side, somewhat tight and tubby, with his chest out and his
head back, went the prim figure of Mr. May, reminding one of a
consequential bird of the smaller species. His plumbago-grey suit
fitted exactly--save that it was perhaps a little tight. The jacket
and waistcoat were bound with silk braid of exactly the same shade
as the cloth. His soft collar, immaculately fresh, had a dark stripe
like his shirt. His boots were black, with grey suède uppers: but a
_little_ down at heel. His dark-grey hat was jaunty. Altogether he
looked very spruce, though a _little_ behind the fashions: very pink
faced, though his blue eyes were bilious beneath: very much on the
spot, although the spot was the wrong one.

They discoursed amiably as they went, James bending forward, Mr. May
bending back. Mr. May took the refined man-of-the-world tone.

"Of course," he said--he used the two words very often, and
pronounced the second, rather mincingly, to rhyme with _sauce_: "Of
course," said Mr. May, "it's a disgusting place--_disgusting_! I
never was in a worse, in all the _cauce_ of my travels. But
_then_--that isn't the point--"

He spread his plump hands from his immaculate shirt-cuffs.

"No, it isn't. Decidedly it isn't. That's beside the point
altogether. What we want--" began James.

"Is an audience--of _cauce_--! And we have it--! Virgin soil--!

"Yes, decidedly. Untouched! An unspoiled market."

"An unspoiled market!" reiterated Mr. May, in full confirmation,
though with a faint flicker of a smile. "How very _fortunate_ for
us."

"Properly handled," said James. "Properly handled."

"Why yes--of _cauce_! Why _shouldn't_ we handle it properly!"

"Oh, we shall manage that, we shall manage that," came the quick,
slightly husky voice of James.

"Of _cauce_ we shall! Why bless my life, if we can't manage an
audience in Lumley, what _can_ we do."

"We have a guide in the matter of their taste," said James. "We can
see what Wright's are doing--and Jordan's--and we can go to
Hathersedge and Knarborough and Alfreton--beforehand, that is--"

"Why certainly--if you think it's _necessary_. I'll do all that for
you. _And_ I'll interview the managers and the performers
themselves--as if I were a journalist, don't you see. I've done a
fair amount of journalism, and nothing easier than to get cards from
various newspapers."

"Yes, that's a good suggestion," said James. "As if you were going
to write an account in the newspapers--excellent."

"And so simple! You pick up just _all_ the information you require."

"Decidedly--decidedly!" said James.

And so behold our two heroes sniffing round the sordid backs and
wasted meadows and marshy places of Lumley. They found one barren
patch where two caravans were standing. A woman was peeling
potatoes, sitting on the bottom step of her caravan. A half-caste
girl came up with a large pale-blue enamelled jug of water. In the
background were two booths covered up with coloured canvas.
Hammering was heard inside.

"Good-morning!" said Mr. May, stopping before the woman. "'Tisn't
fair time, is it?"

"No, it's no fair," said the woman.

"I see. You're just on your own. Getting on all right?"

"Fair," said the woman.

"Only fair! Sorry. Good-morning."

Mr. May's quick eye, roving round, had seen a negro stoop from under
the canvas that covered one booth. The negro was thin, and looked
young but rather frail, and limped. His face was very like that of
the young negro in Watteau's drawing--pathetic, wistful,
north-bitten. In an instant Mr. May had taken all in: the man was
the woman's husband--they were acclimatized in these regions: the
booth where he had been hammering was a Hoop-La. The other would be
a cocoanut-shy. Feeling the instant American dislike for the
presence of a negro, Mr. May moved off with James.

They found out that the woman was a Lumley woman, that she had two
children, that the negro was a most quiet and respectable chap, but
that the family kept to itself, and didn't mix up with Lumley.

"I should think so," said Mr. May, a little disgusted even at the
suggestion.

Then he proceeded to find out how long they had stood on this
ground--three months--how long they would remain--only another week,
then they were moving off to Alfreton fair--who was the owner of the
pitch--Mr. Bows, the butcher. Ah! And what was the ground used for?
Oh, it was building land. But the foundation wasn't very good.

"The very thing! Aren't we _fortunate_!" cried Mr. May, perking up
the moment they were in the street. But this cheerfulness and brisk
perkiness was a great strain on him. He missed his eleven o'clock
whiskey terribly--terribly--his pick-me-up! And he daren't confess
it to James, who, he knew, was T-T. So he dragged his weary and
hollow way up to Woodhouse, and sank with a long "Oh!" of nervous
exhaustion in the private bar of the Moon and Stars. He wrinkled his
short nose. The smell of the place was distasteful to him. The
_disgusting_ beer that the colliers drank. Oh!--he _was_ so tired.
He sank back with his whiskey and stared blankly, dismally in front
of him. Beneath his eyes he looked more bilious still. He felt
thoroughly out of luck, and petulant.

None the less he sallied out with all his old bright perkiness, the
next time he had to meet James. He hadn't yet broached the question
of costs. When would he be able to get an advance from James? He
_must_ hurry the matter forward. He brushed his crisp, curly brown
hair carefully before the mirror. How grey he was at the temples! No
wonder, dear me, with such a life! He was in his shirt-sleeves. His
waistcoat, with its grey satin back, fitted him tightly. He had
filled out--but he hadn't developed a corporation. Not at all. He
looked at himself sideways, and feared dismally he was thinner. He
was one of those men who carry themselves in a birdie fashion, so
that their tail sticks out a little behind, jauntily. How
wonderfully the satin of his waistcoat had worn! He looked at his
shirt-cuffs. They were going. Luckily, when he had had the shirts
made he had secured enough material for the renewing of cuffs and
neckbands. He put on his coat, from which he had flicked the
faintest suspicion of dust, and again settled himself to go out and
meet James on the question of an advance. He simply must have an
advance.

He didn't get it that day, none the less. The next morning he was
ringing for his tea at six o'clock. And before ten he had already
flitted to Lumley and back, he had already had a word with Mr. Bows,
about that pitch, and, overcoming all his repugnance, a word with
the quiet, frail, sad negro, about Alfreton fair, and the chance of
buying some sort of collapsible building, for his cinematograph.

With all this news he met James--not at the shabby club, but in the
deserted reading-room of the so-called Artizans Hall--where never an
artizan entered, but only men of James's class. Here they took the
chessboard and pretended to start a game. But their conversation
was rapid and secretive.

Mr. May disclosed all his discoveries. And then he said,
tentatively:

"Hadn't we better think about the financial part now? If we're going
to look round for an erection"--curious that he always called it an
erection--"we shall have to know what we are going to spend."

"Yes--yes. Well--" said James vaguely, nervously, giving a glance at
Mr. May. Whilst Mr. May abstractedly fingered his black knight.

"You see at the moment," said Mr. May, "I have no funds that I can
represent in cash. I have no doubt a little _later_--if we need
it--I can find a few hundreds. Many things are _due_--numbers of
things. But it is so difficult to _collect_ one's dues, particularly
from America." He lifted his blue eyes to James Houghton. "Of course
we can _delay_ for some time, until I get my supplies. Or I can act
just as your manager--you can _employ_ me--"

He watched James's face. James looked down at the chessboard. He was
fluttering with excitement. He did not want a partner. He wanted to
be in this all by himself. He hated partners.

"You will agree to be manager, at a fixed salary?" said James
hurriedly and huskily, his fine fingers slowly rubbing each other,
along the sides.

"Why yes, willingly, if you'll give me the option of becoming your
partner upon terms of mutual agreement, later on."

James did not quite like this.

"What terms are you thinking of?" he asked.

"Well, it doesn't matter for the moment. Suppose for the moment I
enter an engagement as your manager, at a salary, let us say, of--of
what, do you think?"

"So much a week?" said James pointedly.

"Hadn't we better make it monthly?"

The two men looked at one another.

"With a month's notice on either hand?" continued Mr. May.

"How much?" said James, avaricious.

Mr. May studied his own nicely kept hands.

"Well, I don't see how I can do it under twenty pounds a month. Of
course it's ridiculously low. In America I _never_ accepted less
than three hundred dollars a month, and that was my poorest and
lowest. But of _cauce_, England's not America--more's the pity."

But James was shaking his head in a vibrating movement.

"Impossible!" he replied shrewdly. "Impossible! Twenty pounds a
month? Impossible. I couldn't do it. I couldn't think of it."

"Then name a figure. Say what you _can_ think of," retorted Mr. May,
rather annoyed by this shrewd, shaking head of a doddering
provincial, and by his own sudden collapse into mean subordination.

"I can't make it more than ten pounds a month," said James sharply.

"What!" screamed Mr. May. "What am I to live on? What is my wife to
live on?"

"I've got to make it pay," said James. "If I've got to make it pay,
I must keep down expenses at the beginning."

"No,--on the contrary. You must be prepared to spend something at
the beginning. If you go in a pinch-and-scrape fashion in the
beginning, you will get nowhere at all. Ten pounds a month! Why it's
impossible! Ten pounds a month! But how am I to _live_?"

James's head still vibrated in a negative fashion. And the two men
came to no agreement _that_ morning. Mr. May went home more sick and
weary than ever, and took his whiskey more biliously. But James was
lit with the light of battle.

Poor Mr. May had to gather together his wits and his sprightliness
for his next meeting. He had decided he must make a percentage in
other ways. He schemed in all known ways. He would accept the ten
pounds--but really, did ever you hear of anything so ridiculous in
your life, _ten pounds!_--dirty old screw, dirty, screwing old
woman! He would accept the ten pounds; but he would get his own
back.

He flitted down once more to the negro, to ask him of a certain
wooden show-house, with section sides and roof, an old travelling
theatre which stood closed on Selverhay Common, and might probably
be sold. He pressed across once more to Mr. Bows. He wrote various
letters and drew up certain notes. And the next morning, by eight
o'clock, he was on his way to Selverhay: walking, poor man, the long
and uninteresting seven miles on his small and rather tight-shod
feet, through country that had been once beautiful but was now
scrubbled all over with mining villages, on and on up heavy hills
and down others, asking his way from uncouth clowns, till at last he
came to the Common, which wasn't a Common at all, but a sort of
village more depressing than usual: naked, high, exposed to heaven
and to full barren view.

There he saw the theatre-booth. It was old and sordid-looking, painted
dark-red and dishevelled with narrow, tattered announcements. The
grass was growing high up the wooden sides. If only it wasn't rotten?
He crouched and probed and pierced with his pen-knife, till a
country-policeman in a high helmet like a jug saw him, got off his
bicycle and came stealthily across the grass wheeling the same bicycle,
and startled poor Mr. May almost into apoplexy by demanding behind him,
in a loud voice:

"What're you after?"

Mr. May rose up with flushed face and swollen neck-veins, holding
his pen-knife in his hand.

"Oh," he said, "good-morning." He settled his waistcoat and glanced
over the tall, lanky constable and the glittering bicycle. "I was
taking a look at this old erection, with a view to buying it. I'm
afraid it's going rotten from the bottom."

"Shouldn't wonder," said the policeman suspiciously, watching Mr.
May shut the pocket knife.

"I'm afraid that makes it useless for my purpose," said Mr. May.

The policeman did not deign to answer.

"Could you tell me where I can find out about it, anyway?" Mr. May
used his most affable, man of the world manner. But the policeman
continued to stare him up and down, as if he were some marvellous
specimen unknown on the normal, honest earth.

"What, find out?" said the constable.

"About being able to buy it," said Mr. May, a little testily. It was
with great difficulty he preserved his man-to-man openness and
brightness.

"They aren't here," said the constable.

"Oh indeed! Where _are_ they? And _who_ are they?"

The policeman eyed him more suspiciously than ever.

"Cowlard's their name. An' they live in Offerton when they aren't
travelling."

"Cowlard--thank you." Mr. May took out his pocket-book.
"C-o-w-l-a-r-d--is that right? And the address, please?"

"I dunno th' street. But you can find out from the Three Bells.
That's Missis' sister."

"The Three Bells--thank you. Offerton did you say?"

"Yes."

"Offerton!--where's that?"

"About eight mile."

"Really--and how do you get there?"

"You can walk--or go by train."

"Oh, there is a station?"

"Station!" The policeman looked at him as if he were either a
criminal or a fool.

"Yes. There _is_ a station there?"

"Ay--biggest next to Chesterfield--"

Suddenly it dawned on Mr. May.

"Oh-h!" he said. "You mean _Alfreton_--"

"Alfreton, yes." The policeman was now convinced the man was a
wrong-'un. But fortunately he was not a pushing constable, he did
not want to rise in the police-scale: thought himself safest at the
bottom.

"And which is the way to the station here?" asked Mr. May.

"Do yer want Pinxon or Bull'ill?"

"Pinxon or Bull'ill?"

"There's two," said the policeman.

"For Selverhay?" asked Mr. May.

"Yes, them's the two."

"And which is the best?"

"Depends what trains is runnin'. Sometimes yer have to wait an hour
or two--"

"You don't know the trains, do you--?"

"There's one in th' afternoon--but I don't know if it'd be gone by
the time you get down."

"To where?"

"Bull'ill."

"Oh Bull'ill! Well, perhaps I'll try. Could you tell me the way?"

When, after an hour's painful walk, Mr. May came to Bullwell Station
and found there was no train till six in the evening, he felt he
was earning every penny he would ever get from Mr. Houghton.

The first intelligence which Miss Pinnegar and Alvina gathered of
the coming adventure was given them when James announced that he had
let the shop to Marsden, the grocer next door. Marsden had agreed to
take over James's premises at the same rent as that of the premises
he already occupied, and moreover to do all alterations and put in
all fixtures himself. This was a grand scoop for James: not a penny
was it going to cost him, and the rent was clear profit.

"But when?" cried Miss Pinnegar.

"He takes possession on the first of October."

"Well--it's a good idea. The shop isn't worth while," said Miss
Pinnegar.

"Certainly it isn't," said James, rubbing his hands: a sign that he
was rarely excited and pleased.

"And you'll just retire, and live quietly," said Miss Pinnegar.

"I shall see," said James. And with those fatal words he wafted away
to find Mr. May.

James was now nearly seventy years old. Yet he nipped about like a
leaf in the wind. Only, it was a frail leaf.

"Father's got something going," said Alvina, in a warning voice.

"I believe he has," said Miss Pinnegar pensively. "I wonder what it
is, now."

"I can't imagine," laughed Alvina. "But I'll bet it's something
awful--else he'd have told us."

"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar slowly. "Most likely he would. I wonder
what it can be."

"I haven't an idea," said Alvina.

Both women were so retired, they had heard nothing of James's little
trips down to Lumley. So they watched like cats for their man's
return, at dinner-time.

Miss Pinnegar saw him coming along talking excitedly to Mr. May,
who, all in grey, with his chest perkily stuck out like a robin, was
looking rather pinker than usual. Having come to an agreement, he
had ventured on whiskey and soda in honour, and James had actually
taken a glass of port.

"Alvina!" Miss Pinnegar called discreetly down the shop. "Alvina!
Quick!"

Alvina flew down to peep round the corner of the shop window. There
stood the two men, Mr. May like a perky, pink-faced grey bird
standing cocking his head in attention to James Houghton, and
occasionally catching James by the lapel of his coat, in a vain
desire to get a word in, whilst James's head nodded and his face
simply wagged with excited speech, as he skipped from foot to foot,
and shifted round his listener.

"Who _ever_ can that common-looking man be?" said Miss Pinnegar, her
heart going down to her boots.

"I can't imagine," said Alvina, laughing at the comic sight.

"Don't you think he's dreadful?" said the poor elderly woman.

"Perfectly impossible. Did ever you see such a pink face?"

"_And_ the braid binding!" said Miss Pinnegar in indignation.

"Father might almost have sold him the suit," said Alvina.

"Let us hope he hasn't sold your father, that's all," said Miss
Pinnegar.

The two men had moved a few steps further towards home, and the
women prepared to flee indoors. Of course it was frightfully wrong
to be standing peeping in the high street at all. But who could
consider the proprieties now?

"They've stopped again," said Miss Pinnegar, recalling Alvina.

The two men were having a few more excited words, their voices just
audible.

"I do wonder who he can be," murmured Miss Pinnegar miserably.

"In the theatrical line, I'm sure," declared Alvina.

"Do you think so?" said Miss Pinnegar. "Can't be! Can't be!"

"He couldn't be anything else, don't you think?"

"Oh I _can't_ believe it, I can't."

But now Mr. May had laid his detaining hand on James's arm. And now
he was shaking his employer by the hand. And now James, in his cheap
little cap, was smiling a formal farewell. And Mr. May, with a
graceful wave of his grey-suède-gloved hand, was turning back to the
Moon and Stars, strutting, whilst James was running home on
tip-toe, in his natural hurry.

Alvina hastily retreated, but Miss Pinnegar stood it out. James
started as he nipped into the shop entrance, and found her
confronting him.

"Oh--Miss Pinnegar!" he said, and made to slip by her.

"Who was that man?" she asked sharply, as if James were a child whom
she could endure no more.

"Eh? I beg your pardon?" said James, starting back.

"Who was that man?"

"Eh? Which man?"

James was a little deaf, and a little husky.

"The man--" Miss Pinnegar turned to the door. "There! That man!"

James also came to the door, and peered out as if he expected to see
a sight. The sight of Mr. May's tight and perky back, the jaunty
little hat and the grey suède hands retreating quite surprised him.
He was angry at being introduced to the sight.

"Oh," he said. "That's my manager." And he turned hastily down the
shop, asking for his dinner.

Miss Pinnegar stood for some moments in pure oblivion in the shop
entrance. Her consciousness left her. When she recovered, she felt
she was on the brink of hysteria and collapse. But she hardened
herself once more, though the effort cost her a year of her life.
She had never collapsed, she had never fallen into hysteria.

She gathered herself together, though bent a little as from a blow,
and, closing the shop door, followed James to the living room, like
the inevitable. He was eating his dinner, and seemed oblivious of
her entry. There was a smell of Irish stew.

"What manager?" said Miss Pinnegar, short, silent, and inevitable in
the doorway.

But James was in one of his abstractions, his trances.

"What manager?" persisted Miss Pinnegar.

But he still bent unknowing over his plate and gobbled his Irish
stew.

"Mr. Houghton!" said Miss Pinnegar, in a sudden changed voice. She
had gone a livid yellow colour. And she gave a queer, sharp little
rap on the table with her hand.

James started. He looked up bewildered, as one startled out of
sleep.

"Eh?" he said, gaping. "Eh?"

"Answer me," said Miss Pinnegar. "What manager?"

"Manager? Eh? Manager? What manager?"

She advanced a little nearer, menacing in her black dress. James
shrank.

"What manager?" he re-echoed. "My manager. The manager of my
cinema."

Miss Pinnegar looked at him, and looked at him, and did not speak.
In that moment all the anger which was due to him from all womanhood
was silently discharged at him, like a black bolt of silent
electricity. But Miss Pinnegar, the engine of wrath, felt she would
burst.

"Cinema! Cinema! Do you mean to tell me--" but she was really
suffocated, the vessels of her heart and breast were bursting. She
had to lean her hand on the table.

It was a terrible moment. She looked ghastly and terrible, with her
mask-like face and her stony eyes and her bluish lips. Some fearful
thunderbolt seemed to fall. James withered, and was still. There was
silence for minutes, a suspension.

And in those minutes, she finished with him. She finished with him
for ever. When she had sufficiently recovered, she went to her
chair, and sat down before her plate. And in a while she began to
eat, as if she were alone.

Poor Alvina, for whom this had been a dreadful and uncalled-for
moment, had looked from one to another, and had also dropped her
head to her plate. James too, with bent head, had forgotten to eat.
Miss Pinnegar ate very slowly, alone.

"Don't you want your dinner, Alvina?" she said at length.

"Not as much as I did," said Alvina.

"Why not?" said Miss Pinnegar. She sounded short, almost like Miss
Frost. Oddly like Miss Frost.

Alvina took up her fork and began to eat automatically.

"I always think," said Miss Pinnegar, "Irish stew is more tasty with
a bit of Swede in it."

"So do I, really," said Alvina. "But Swedes aren't come yet."

"Oh! Didn't we have some on Tuesday?"

"No, they were yellow turnips--but they weren't Swedes."

"Well then, yellow turnip. I like a little yellow turnip," said Miss
Pinnegar.

"I might have put some in, if I'd known," said Alvina.

"Yes. We will another time," said Miss Pinnegar.

Not another word about the cinema: not another breath. As soon as
James had eaten his plum tart, he ran away.

"What can he have been doing?" said Alvina when he had gone.

"Buying a cinema show--and that man we saw is his manager. It's
quite simple."

"But what are we going to do with a cinema show?" said Alvina.

"It's what is _he_ going to do. It doesn't concern me. It's no
concern of mine. I shall not lend him anything, I shall not think
about it, it will be the same to me as if there _were_ no cinema.
Which is all I have to say," announced Miss Pinnegar.

"But he's gone and done it," said Alvina.

"Then let him go through with it. It's no affair of mine. After all,
your father's affairs don't concern me. It would be impertinent of
me to introduce myself into them."

"They don't concern _me_ very much," said Alvina.

"You're different. You're his daughter. He's no connection of mine,
I'm glad to say. I pity your mother."

"Oh, but he was always alike," said Alvina.

"That's where it is," said Miss Pinnegar.

There was something fatal about her feelings. Once they had gone
cold, they would never warm up again. As well try to warm up a
frozen mouse. It only putrifies.

But poor Miss Pinnegar after this looked older, and seemed to get a
little round-backed. And the things she said reminded Alvina so
often of Miss Frost.

James fluttered into conversation with his daughter the next
evening, after Miss Pinnegar had retired.

"I told you I had bought a cinematograph building," said James. "We
are negotiating for the machinery now: the dynamo and so on."

"But where is it to be?" asked Alvina.

"Down at Lumley. I'll take you and show you the site tomorrow. The
building--it is a frame-section travelling theatre--will arrive on
Thursday--next Thursday."

"But who is in with you, father?"

"I am quite alone--quite alone," said James Houghton. "I have found
an excellent manager, who knows the whole business thoroughly--a Mr.
May. Very nice man. Very nice man."

"Rather short and dressed in grey?"

"Yes. And I have been thinking--if Miss Pinnegar will take the cash
and issue tickets: if she will take over the ticket-office: and you
will play the piano: and if Mr. May learns the control of the
machine--he is having lessons now--: and if I am the indoors
attendant, we shan't need any more staff."

"Miss Pinnegar won't take the cash, father."

"Why not? Why not?"

"I can't say why not. But she won't do anything--and if I were you I
wouldn't ask her."

There was a pause.

"Oh, well," said James, huffy. "She isn't indispensable."

And Alvina was to play the piano! Here was a blow for her! She
hurried off to her bedroom to laugh and cry at once. She just saw
herself at that piano, banging off the _Merry Widow Waltz_, and, in
tender moments, _The Rosary_. Time after time, _The Rosary_. While
the pictures flickered and the audience gave shouts and some grubby
boy called "Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let,
penny a bar!" away she banged at another tune.

What a sight for the gods! She burst out laughing. And at the same
time, she thought of her mother and Miss Frost, and she cried as if
her heart would break. And then all kinds of comic and incongruous
tunes came into her head. She imagined herself dressing up with most
priceless variations. _Linger Longer Lucy_, for example. She began
to spin imaginary harmonies and variations in her head, upon the
theme of _Linger Longer Lucy_.

       "Linger longer Lucy, linger longer Loo.
        How I love to linger longer linger long o' you.
        Listen while I sing, love, promise you'll be true,
        And linger longer longer linger linger longer Loo."

All the tunes that used to make Miss Frost so angry. All the Dream
Waltzes and Maiden's Prayers, and the awful songs.

          "For in Spooney-ooney Island
           Is there any one cares for me?
           In Spooney-ooney Island
           Why surely there ought to be--"

Poor Miss Frost! Alvina imagined herself leading a chorus of
collier louts, in a bad atmosphere of "Woodbines" and oranges,
during the intervals when the pictures had collapsed.

       "How'd you like to spoon with me?
        How'd you like to spoon with me?
                                       (_Why ra-ther!_)

        Underneath the oak-tree nice and shady
        Calling me your tootsey-wootsey lady?
        How'd you like to hug and squeeze,
                                       (_Just try me!_)

        Dandle me upon your knee,
        Calling me your little lovey-dovey--
        How'd you like to spoon with me?
                                       (_Oh-h--Go on!_)"

Alvina worked herself into quite a fever, with her imaginings.

In the morning she told Miss Pinnegar.

"Yes," said Miss Pinnegar, "you see me issuing tickets, don't you?
Yes--well. I'm afraid he will have to do that part himself. And
you're going to play the piano. It's a disgrace! It's a disgrace!
It's a disgrace! It's a mercy Miss Frost and your mother are dead.
He's lost every bit of shame--every bit--if he ever had any--which I
doubt very much. Well, all I can say, I'm glad I am not concerned.
And I'm sorry for you, for being his daughter. I'm heart sorry for
you, I am. Well, well--no sense of shame--no sense of shame--"

And Miss Pinnegar padded out of the room.

Alvina walked down to Lumley and was shown the site and was
introduced to Mr. May. He bowed to her in his best American fashion,
and treated her with admirable American deference.

"Don't you think," he said to her, "it's an admirable scheme?"

"Wonderful," she replied.

"Of cauce," he said, "the erection will be a merely temporary one.
Of cauce it won't be anything to _look_ at: just an old wooden
travelling theatre. But _then_--all we need is to make a start."

"And you are going to work the film?" she asked.

"Yes," he said with pride, "I spend every evening with the operator
at Marsh's in Knarborough. Very interesting I find it--very
interesting indeed. And _you_ are going to play the piano?" he said,
perking his head on one side and looking at her archly.

"So father says," she answered.

"But what do _you_ say?" queried Mr. May.

"I suppose I don't have any say."

"Oh but _surely_. Surely you won't do it if you don't wish to. That
would never do. Can't we hire some young fellow--?" And he turned to
Mr. Houghton with a note of query.

"Alvina can play as well as anybody in Woodhouse," said James. "We
mustn't add to our expenses. And wages in particular--"

"But surely Miss Houghton will have her wage. The labourer is worthy
of his hire. Surely! Even of _her_ hire, to put it in the feminine.
And for the same wage you could get some unimportant fellow with
strong wrists. I'm afraid it will tire Miss Houghton to death--"

"I don't think so," said James. "I don't think so. Many of the turns
she will not need to accompany--"

"Well, if it comes to that," said Mr. May, "I can accompany some of
them myself, when I'm not operating the film. I'm not an expert
pianist--but I can play a little, you know--" And he trilled his
fingers up and down an imaginary keyboard in front of Alvina,
cocking his eye at her smiling a little archly.

"I'm sure," he continued, "I can accompany anything except a man
juggling dinner-plates--and then I'd be afraid of making him drop
the plates. But songs--oh, songs! _Con molto espressione!_"

And again he trilled the imaginary keyboard, and smiled his rather
fat cheeks at Alvina.

She began to like him. There was something a little dainty about
him, when you knew him better--really rather fastidious. A showman,
true enough! Blatant too. But fastidiously so.

He came fairly frequently to Manchester House after this. Miss
Pinnegar was rather stiff with him and he did not like her. But he
was very happy sitting chatting tête-à-tête with Alvina.

"Where is your wife?" said Alvina to him.

"My wife! Oh, don't speak of _her_," he said comically. "She's in
London."

"Why not speak of her?" asked Alvina.

"Oh, every reason for not speaking of her. We don't get on at _all_
well, she and I."

"What a pity," said Alvina.

"Dreadful pity! But what are you to do?" He laughed comically. Then
he became grave. "No," he said. "She's an impossible person."

"I see," said Alvina.

"I'm sure you _don't_ see," said Mr. May. "Don't--" and here he laid
his hand on Alvina's arm--"don't run away with the idea that she's
_immoral_! You'd never make a greater mistake. Oh dear me, no.
Morality's her strongest point. Live on three lettuce leaves, and
give the rest to the char. That's her. Oh, dreadful times we had in
those first years. We only lived together for three years. But dear
_me_! how awful it was!"

"Why?"

"There was no pleasing the woman. She wouldn't eat. If I said to her
'What shall we have for supper, Grace?' as sure as anything she'd
answer 'Oh, I shall take a bath when I go to bed--that will be my
supper.' She was one of these advanced vegetarian women, don't you
know."

"How extraordinary!" said Alvina.

"Extraordinary! I should think so. Extraordinary hard lines on _me_.
And she wouldn't let _me_ eat either. She followed me to the kitchen in
a _fury_ while I cooked for myself. Why imagine! I prepared a dish of
champignons: oh, most _beautiful_ champignons, beautiful--and I put
them on the stove to fry in butter: beautiful young champignons. I'm
hanged if she didn't go into the kitchen while my back was turned, and
pour a pint of old carrot-water into the pan. I was _furious_.
Imagine!--beautiful fresh young champignons--"

"Fresh mushrooms," said Alvina.

"Mushrooms--most beautiful things in the world. Oh! don't you think
so?" And he rolled his eyes oddly to heaven.

"They _are_ good," said Alvina.

"I should say so. And swamped--_swamped_ with her dirty old carrot
water. Oh I was so angry. And all she could say was, 'Well, I
didn't want to waste it!' Didn't want to waste her old carrot water,
and so _ruined_ my champignons. _Can_ you imagine such a person?"

"It must have been trying."

"I should think it was. I lost weight. I lost I don't know how many
pounds, the first year I was married to that woman. She hated me to
eat. Why, one of her great accusations against me, at the last, was
when she said: 'I've looked round the larder,' she said to me, 'and
seen it was quite empty, and I thought to myself: _Now_ he _can't_
cook a supper! And _then_ you did!' There! What do you think of
that? The spite of it! 'And _then_ you did!'"

"What did she expect you to live on?" asked Alvina.

"Nibble a lettuce leaf with her, and drink water from the tap--and
then elevate myself with a Bernard Shaw pamphlet. That was the sort
of woman she was. All it gave _me_ was gas in the stomach."

"So overbearing!" said Alvina.

"Oh!" he turned his eyes to heaven, and spread his hands. "I didn't
believe my senses. I didn't know such people existed. And her
friends! Oh the dreadful friends she had--these Fabians! Oh, their
eugenics. They wanted to examine my private morals, for eugenic
reasons. Oh, you can't imagine such a state. Worse than the Spanish
Inquisition. And I stood it for three years. _How_ I stood it, I
don't know--"

"Now don't you see her?"

"Never! I never let her know where I am! But I _support_ her, of
cauce."

"And your daughter?"

"Oh, she's the dearest child in the world. I saw her at a friend's
when I came back from America. Dearest little thing in the world.
But of _cauce_ suspicious of me. Treats me as if she didn't _know_
me--"

"What a pity!"

"Oh--unbearable!" He spread his plump, manicured hands, on one
finger of which was a green intaglio ring.

"How old is your daughter?"

"Fourteen."

"What is her name?"

"Gemma. She was born in Rome, where I was managing for Miss Maud
Callum, the _danseuse_."

Curious the intimacy Mr. May established with Alvina at once. But
it was all purely verbal, descriptive. He made no physical advances.
On the contrary, he was like a dove-grey, disconsolate bird pecking
the crumbs of Alvina's sympathy, and cocking his eye all the time to
watch that she did not advance one step towards him. If he had seen
the least sign of coming-on-ness in her, he would have fluttered off
in a great dither. Nothing _horrified_ him more than a woman who was
coming-on towards him. It horrified him, it exasperated him, it made
him hate the whole tribe of women: horrific two-legged cats without
whiskers. If he had been a bird, his innate horror of a cat would
have been such. He liked the _angel_, and particularly the
angel-mother in woman. Oh!--that he worshipped. But coming-on-ness!

So he never wanted to be seen out-of-doors with Alvina; if he met
her in the street he bowed and passed on: bowed very deep and
reverential, indeed, but passed on, with his little back a little
more strutty and assertive than ever. Decidedly he turned his back
on her in public.

But Miss Pinnegar, a regular old, grey, dangerous she-puss, eyed him
from the corner of her pale eye, as he turned tail.

"So unmanly!" she murmured. "In his dress, in his way, in
everything--so unmanly."

"If I was you, Alvina," she said, "I shouldn't see so much of Mr.
May, in the drawing-room. People will talk."

"I should almost feel flattered," laughed Alvina.

"What do you mean?" snapped Miss Pinnegar.

None the less, Mr. May was dependable in matters of business. He was
up at half-past five in the morning, and by seven was well on his
way. He sailed like a stiff little ship before a steady breeze,
hither and thither, out of Woodhouse and back again, and across from
side to side. Sharp and snappy, he was, on the spot. He trussed
himself up, when he was angry or displeased, and sharp, snip-snap
came his words, rather like scissors.

"But how is it--" he attacked Arthur Witham--"that the gas isn't
connected with the main yet? It was to be ready yesterday."

"We've had to wait for the fixings for them brackets," said Arthur.

"_Had_ to _wait_ for _fixings_! But didn't you know a fortnight ago
that you'd want the fixings?"

"I thought we should have some as would do."

"Oh! you thought so! Really! Kind of you to think so. And have you
just thought about those that are coming, or have you made sure?"

Arthur looked at him sullenly. He hated him. But Mr. May's sharp
touch was not to be foiled.

"I hope you'll go further than _thinking_," said Mr. May. "Thinking
seems such a slow process. And when do you expect the fittings--?"

"Tomorrow."

"What! Another day! Another day _still!_ But you're strangely
indifferent to time, in your line of business. Oh! _Tomorrow!_
Imagine it! Two days late already, and then _tomorrow!_ Well I hope
by tomorrow you mean _Wednesday_, and not tomorrow's tomorrow, or
some other absurd and fanciful date that you've just _thought
about_. But now, _do_ have the thing finished by tomorrow--" here he
laid his hand cajoling on Arthur's arm. "You promise me it will all
be ready by tomorrow, don't you?"

"Yes, I'll do it if anybody could do it."

"Don't say 'if anybody could do it.' Say it shall be done."

"It shall if I can possibly manage it--"

"Oh--very well then. Mind you manage it--and thank you _very_ much.
I shall be _most_ obliged, if it _is_ done."

Arthur was annoyed, but he was kept to the scratch. And so, early in
October the place was ready, and Woodhouse was plastered with
placards announcing "Houghton's Pleasure Palace." Poor Mr. May could
not but see an irony in the Palace part of the phrase. "We can
guarantee the _pleasure_," he said. "But personally, I feel I can't
take the responsibility for the palace."

But James, to use the vulgar expression, was in his eye-holes.

"Oh, father's in his eye-holes," said Alvina to Mr. May.

"Oh!" said Mr. May, puzzled and concerned.

But it merely meant that James was having the time of his life. He
was drawing out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion
strips, with the mystic script, in big black letters: Houghton's
Picture Palace, underneath which, quite small: Opens at Lumley on
October 7th, at 6:30 P.M. Everywhere you went, these vermilion and
black bars sprang from the wall at you. Then there were other
notices, in delicate pale-blue and pale red, like a genuine theatre
notice, giving full programs. And beneath these a broad-letter
notice announced, in green letters on a yellow ground: "Final and
Ultimate Clearance Sale at Houghton's, Knarborough Road, on Friday,
September 30th. Come and Buy Without Price."

James was in his eye-holes. He collected all his odds and ends from
every corner of Manchester House. He sorted them in heaps, and
marked the heaps in his own mind. And then he let go. He pasted up
notices all over the window and all over the shop: "Take what you
want and Pay what you Like."

He and Miss Pinnegar kept shop. The women flocked in. They turned
things over. It nearly killed James to take the prices they offered.
But take them he did. But he exacted that they should buy one
article at a time. "One piece at a time, if you don't mind," he
said, when they came up with their three-a-penny handfuls. It was
not till later in the evening that he relaxed this rule.

Well, by eleven o'clock he had cleared out a good deal--really, a
very great deal--and many women had bought what they didn't want, at
their own figure. Feverish but content, James shut the shop for the
last time. Next day, by eleven, he had removed all his belongings,
the door that connected the house with the shop was screwed up fast,
the grocer strolled in and looked round his bare extension, took the
key from James, and immediately set his boy to paste a new notice in
the window, tearing down all James's announcements. Poor James had
to run round, down Knarborough Road, and down Wellington Street as
far as the Livery Stable, then down long narrow passages, before he
could get into his own house, from his own shop.

But he did not mind. Every hour brought the first performance of his
Pleasure Palace nearer. He was satisfied with Mr. May: he had to
admit that he was satisfied with Mr. May. The Palace stood firm at
last--oh, it was so ricketty when it arrived!--and it glowed with a
new coat, all over, of dark-red paint, like ox-blood. It was
tittivated up with a touch of lavender and yellow round the door and
round the decorated wooden eaving. It had a new wooden slope up to
the doors--and inside, a new wooden floor, with red-velvet seats in
front, before the curtain, and old chapel-pews behind. The collier
youths recognized the pews.

"Hey! These 'ere's the pews out of the old Primitive Chapel."

"Sorry ah! We'n come ter hear t' parson."

Theme for endless jokes. And the Pleasure Palace was christened, in
some lucky stroke, Houghton's Endeavour, a reference to that
particular Chapel effort called the Christian Endeavour, where
Alvina and Miss Pinnegar both figured.

"Wheer art off, Sorry?"

"Lumley."

"Houghton's Endeavour?"

"Ah."

"Rotten."

So, when one laconic young collier accosted another. But we
anticipate.

Mr. May had worked hard to get a program for the first week. His
pictures were: "The Human Bird," which turned out to be a ski-ing
film from Norway, purely descriptive; "The Pancake," a humorous
film: and then his grand serial: "The Silent Grip." And then, for
Turns, his first item was Miss Poppy Traherne, a lady in innumerable
petticoats, who could whirl herself into anything you like, from an
arum lily in green stockings to a rainbow and a Catherine wheel and
a cup-and-saucer: marvellous, was Miss Poppy Traherne. The next turn
was The Baxter Brothers, who ran up and down each other's backs and
up and down each other's front, and stood on each other's heads and
on their own heads, and perched for a moment on each other's
shoulders, as if each of them was a flight of stairs with a landing,
and the three of them were three flights, three storeys up, the top
flight continually running down and becoming the bottom flight,
while the middle flight collapsed and became a horizontal corridor.

Alvina had to open the performance by playing an overture called
"Welcome All": a ridiculous piece. She was excited and unhappy. On
the Monday morning there was a rehearsal, Mr. May conducting. She
played "Welcome All," and then took the thumbed sheets which Miss
Poppy Traherne carried with her. Miss Poppy was rather exacting. As
she whirled her skirts she kept saying: "A little faster,
please"--"A little slower"--in a rather haughty, official voice that
was somewhat muffled by the swim of her drapery. "Can you give it
_expression_?" she cried, as she got the arum lily in full blow, and
there was a sound of real ecstasy in her tones. But why she should
have called "Stronger! Stronger!" as she came into being as a cup
and saucer, Alvina could not imagine: unless Miss Poppy was fancying
herself a strong cup of tea.

However, she subsided into her mere self, panted frantically, and
then, in a hoarse voice, demanded if she was in the bare front of
the show. She scorned to count "Welcome All." Mr. May said Yes. She
was the first item. Whereupon she began to raise a dust. Mr.
Houghton said, hurriedly interposing, that he meant to make a little
opening speech. Miss Poppy eyed him as if he were a cuckoo-clock,
and she had to wait till he'd finished cuckooing. Then she said:

"That's not every night. There's six nights to a week." James was
properly snubbed. It ended by Mr. May metamorphizing himself into a
pug dog: he said he had got the "costoom" in his bag: and doing a
lump-of-sugar scene with one of the Baxter Brothers, as a brief
first item. Miss Poppy's professional virginity was thus saved from
outrage.

At the back of the stage there was half-a-yard of curtain screening
the two dressing-rooms, ladies and gents. In her spare time Alvina
sat in the ladies' dressing room, or in its lower doorway, for there
was not room right inside. She watched the ladies making up--she
gave some slight assistance. She saw the men's feet, in their shabby
pumps, on the other side of the curtain, and she heard the men's
gruff voices. Often a slangy conversation was carried on through the
curtain--for most of the turns were acquainted with each other: very
affable before each other's faces, very sniffy behind each other's
backs.

Poor Alvina was in a state of bewilderment. She was extremely
nice--oh, much too nice with the female turns. They treated her with
a sort of off-hand friendliness, and they snubbed and patronized her
and were a little spiteful with her because Mr. May treated her with
attention and deference. She felt bewildered, a little excited, and
as if she was not herself.

The first evening actually came. Her father had produced a pink
crêpe de Chine blouse and a back-comb massed with brilliants--both
of which she refused to wear. She stuck to her black blouse and
black shirt, and her simple hair-dressing. Mr. May said "Of cauce!
She wasn't intended to attract attention to herself." Miss Pinnegar
actually walked down the hill with her, and began to cry when she
saw the ox-blood red erection, with its gas-flares in front. It was
the first time she had seen it. She went on with Alvina to the
little stage door at the back, and up the steps into the scrap of
dressing-room. But she fled out again from the sight of Miss Poppy
in her yellow hair and green knickers with green-lace frills. Poor
Miss Pinnegar! She stood outside on the trodden grass behind the
Band of Hope, and really cried. Luckily she had put a veil on.

She went valiantly round to the front entrance, and climbed the
steps. The crowd was just coming. There was James's face peeping
inside the little ticket-window.

"One!" he said officially, pushing out the ticket. And then he
recognized her. "Oh," he said, "_You're_ not going to pay."

"Yes I am," she said, and she left her fourpence, and James's
coppery, grimy fingers scooped it in, as the youth behind Miss
Pinnegar shoved her forward.

"Arf way down, fourpenny," said the man at the door, poking her in
the direction of Mr. May, who wanted to put her in the red velvet.
But she marched down one of the pews, and took her seat.

The place was crowded with a whooping, whistling, excited audience.
The curtain was down. James had let it out to his fellow tradesmen,
and it represented a patchwork of local adverts. There was a fat
porker and a fat pork-pie, and the pig was saying: "You all know
where to find me. Inside the crust at Frank Churchill's, Knarborough
Road, Woodhouse." Round about the name of W. H. Johnson floated a
bowler hat, a collar-and-necktie, a pair of braces and an umbrella.
And so on and so on. It all made you feel very homely. But Miss
Pinnegar was sadly hot and squeezed in her pew.

Time came, and the colliers began to drum their feet. It was exactly
the excited, crowded audience Mr. May wanted. He darted out to drive
James round in front of the curtain. But James, fascinated by raking
in the money so fast, could not be shifted from the pay-box, and the
two men nearly had a fight. At last Mr. May was seen shooing James,
like a scuffled chicken, down the side gangway and on to the stage.

James before the illuminated curtain of local adverts, bowing and
beginning and not making a single word audible! The crowd quieted
itself, the eloquence flowed on. The crowd was sick of James, and
began to shuffle. "Come down, come down!" hissed Mr. May frantically
from in front. But James did not move. He would flow on all night.
Mr. May waved excitedly at Alvina, who sat obscurely at the piano,
and darted on to the stage. He raised his voice and drowned James.
James ceased to wave his penny-blackened hands, Alvina struck up
"Welcome All" as loudly and emphatically as she could.

And all the time Miss Pinnegar sat like a sphinx--like a sphinx.
What she thought she did not know herself. But stolidly she stared
at James, and anxiously she glanced sideways at the pounding Alvina.
She knew Alvina had to pound until she received the cue that Mr. May
was fitted in his pug-dog "Costoom."

A twitch of the curtain. Alvina wound up her final flourish, the
curtain rose, and:

"Well really!" said Miss Pinnegar, out loud.

There was Mr. May as a pug dog begging, too lifelike and too
impossible. The audience shouted. Alvina sat with her hands in her
lap. The Pug was a great success.

Curtain! A few bars of Toreador--and then Miss Poppy's sheets of
music. Soft music. Miss Poppy was on the ground under a green scarf.
And so the accumulating dilation, on to the whirling climax of the
perfect arum lily. Sudden curtain, and a yell of ecstasy from the
colliers. Of all blossoms, the arum, the arum lily is most mystical
and portentous.

Now a crash and rumble from Alvina's piano. This is the storm from
whence the rainbow emerges. Up goes the curtain--Miss Poppy twirling
till her skirts lift as in a breeze, rise up and become a rainbow
above her now darkened legs. The footlights are all but
extinguished. Miss Poppy is all but extinguished also.

The rainbow is not so moving as the arum lily. But the Catherine
wheel, done at the last moment on one leg and then an amazing leap
into the air backwards, again brings down the house.

Miss Poppy herself sets all store on her cup and saucer. But the
audience, vulgar as ever, cannot quite see it.

And so, Alvina slips away with Miss Poppy's music-sheets, while Mr.
May sits down like a professional at the piano and makes things fly
for the up-and-down-stairs Baxter Bros. Meanwhile, Alvina's pale
face hovering like a ghost in the side darkness, as it were under
the stage.

The lamps go out: gurglings and kissings--and then the dither on the
screen: "The Human Bird," in awful shivery letters. It's not a very
good machine, and Mr. May is not a very good operator. Audience
distinctly critical. Lights up--an "Chot-let, penny a bar! Chot-let,
penny a bar!" even as in Alvina's dream--and then "The Pancake"--so
the first half over. Lights up for the interval.

Miss Pinnegar sighed and folded her hands. She looked neither to
right nor to left. In spite of herself, in spite of outraged shame
and decency, she was excited. But she felt such excitement was not
wholesome. In vain the boy most pertinently yelled "Chot-let" at
her. She looked neither to right nor left. But when she saw Alvina
nodding to her with a quick smile from the side gangway under the
stage, she almost burst into tears. It was too much for her, all at
once. And Alvina looked almost indecently excited. As she slipped
across in front of the audience, to the piano, to play the seductive
"Dream Waltz!" she looked almost fussy, like her father. James,
needless to say, flittered and hurried hither and thither around the
audience and the stage, like a wagtail on the brink of a pool.

The second half consisted of a comic drama acted by two Baxter
Bros., disguised as women, and Miss Poppy disguised as a man--with a
couple of locals thrown in to do the guardsman and the Count. This
went very well. The winding up was the first instalment of "The
Silent Grip."

When lights went up and Alvina solemnly struck "God Save Our
Gracious King," the audience was on its feet and not very quiet,
evidently hissing with excitement like doughnuts in the pan even
when the pan is taken off the fire. Mr. Houghton thanked them for
their courtesy and attention, and hoped--And nobody took the
slightest notice.

Miss Pinnegar stayed last, waiting for Alvina. And Alvina, in her
excitement, waited for Mr. May and her father.

Mr. May fairly pranced into the empty hall.

"Well!" he said, shutting both his fists and flourishing them in
Miss Pinnegar's face. "How did it go?"

"I think it went very well," she said.

"Very well! I should think so, indeed. It went like a house on fire.
What? Didn't it?" And he laughed a high, excited little laugh.

James was counting pennies for his life, in the cash-place, and
dropping them into a Gladstone bag. The others had to wait for him.
At last he locked his bag.

"Well," said Mr. May, "done well?"

"Fairly well," said James, huskily excited. "Fairly well."

"Only fairly? Oh-h!" And Mr. May suddenly picked up the bag. James
turned as if he would snatch it from him. "Well! Feel that, for
fairly well!" said Mr. May, handing the bag to Alvina.

"Goodness!" she cried, handing it to Miss Pinnegar.

"Would you believe it?" said Miss Pinnegar, relinquishing it to
James. But she spoke coldly, aloof.

Mr. May turned off the gas at the meter, came talking through the
darkness of the empty theatre, picking his way with a flash-light.

"C'est le premier pas qui coute," he said, in a sort of American
French, as he locked the doors and put the key in his pocket. James
tripped silently alongside, bowed under the weight of his Gladstone
bag of pennies.

"How much have we taken, father?" asked Alvina gaily.

"I haven't counted," he snapped.

When he got home he hurried upstairs to his bare chamber. He swept
his table clear, and then, in an expert fashion, he seized handfuls
of coin and piled them in little columns on his board. There was an
army of fat pennies, a dozen to a column, along the back, rows and
rows of fat brown rank-and-file. In front of these, rows of slim
halfpence, like an advance-guard. And commanding all, a stout column
of half-crowns, a few stoutish and important florin-figures, like
general and colonels, then quite a file of shillings, like so many
captains, and a little cloud of silvery lieutenant sixpences. Right
at the end, like a frail drummer boy, a thin stick of threepenny
pieces.

There they all were: burly dragoons of stout pennies, heavy and
holding their ground, with a screen of halfpenny light infantry,
officered by the immovable half-crown general, who in his turn was
flanked by all his staff of florin colonels and shilling captains,
from whom lightly moved the nimble sixpenny lieutenants all
ignoring the wan, frail Joey of the threepenny-bits.

Time after time James ran his almighty eye over his army. He loved
them. He loved to feel that his table was pressed down, that it
groaned under their weight. He loved to see the pence, like
innumerable pillars of cloud, standing waiting to lead on into
wildernesses of unopened resource, while the silver, as pillars of
light, should guide the way down the long night of fortune. Their
weight sank sensually into his muscle, and gave him gratification.
The dark redness of bronze, like full-blooded fleas, seemed alive
and pulsing, the silver was magic as if winged.




CHAPTER VII

NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA


Mr. May and Alvina became almost inseparable, and Woodhouse buzzed
with scandal. Woodhouse could not believe that Mr. May was
absolutely final in his horror of any sort of coming-on-ness in a
woman. It could not believe that he was only _so_ fond of Alvina
because she was like a sister to him, poor, lonely, harassed soul
that he was: a pure sister who really hadn't any body. For although
Mr. May was rather fond, in an epicurean way, of his own body, yet
other people's bodies rather made him shudder. So that his grand
utterance on Alvina was: "She's not physical, she's mental."

He even explained to her one day how it was, in his naïve fashion.

"There are two kinds of friendships," he said, "physical and mental.
The physical is a thing of the moment. Of cauce you quite _like_ the
individual, you remain quite nice with them, and so on,--to keep the
thing as decent as possible. It _is_ quite decent, so long as you
keep it so. But it is a thing of the moment. Which you know. It may
last a week or two, or a month or two. But you know from the
beginning it is going to end--quite finally--quite soon. You take it
for what it is. But it's so different with the mental friendships.
_They_ are lasting. They are eternal--if anything human (he said
yuman) ever is eternal, ever _can_ be eternal." He pressed his hands
together in an odd cherubic manner. He was quite sincere: if man
ever _can_ be quite sincere.

Alvina was quite content to be one of his mental and eternal
friends, or rather _friendships_--since she existed _in abstractu_
as far as he was concerned. For she did not find him at all
physically moving. Physically he was not there: he was oddly an
absentee. But his naïveté roused the serpent's tooth of her bitter
irony.

"And your wife?" she said to him.

"Oh, my wife! Dreadful thought! _There_ I made the great mistake of
trying to find the two in one person! And _didn't_ I fall between
two stools! Oh dear, _didn't_ I? Oh, I fell between the two stools
beautifully, beautifully! And _then_--she nearly set the stools on
top of me. I thought I should never get up again. When I was
physical, she was mental--Bernard Shaw and cold baths for
supper!--and when I was mental she was physical, and threw her arms
round my neck. In the morning, mark you. Always in the morning, when
I was on the alert for business. Yes, invariably. What do you think
of it? Could the devil himself have invented anything more trying?
Oh dear me, don't mention it. Oh, what a time I had! Wonder I'm
alive. Yes, really! Although you smile."

Alvina did more than smile. She laughed outright. And yet she
remained good friends with the odd little man.

He bought himself a new, smart overcoat, that fitted his figure, and
a new velour hat. And she even noticed, one day when he was curling
himself up cosily on the sofa, that he had pale blue silk underwear,
and purple silk suspenders. She wondered where he got them, and how
he afforded them. But there they were.

James seemed for the time being wrapt in his
undertaking--particularly in the takings part of it. He seemed for
the time being contented--or nearly so, nearly so. Certainly there
was money coming in. But then he had to pay off all he had borrowed
to buy his erection and its furnishings, and a bulk of pennies
sublimated into a very small £.s.d. account, at the bank.

The Endeavour was successful--yes, it was successful. But not
overwhelmingly so. On wet nights Woodhouse did not care to trail
down to Lumley. And then Lumley was one of those depressed, negative
spots on the face of the earth which have no pull at all. In that
region of sharp hills with fine hill-brows, and shallow, rather
dreary canal-valleys, it was the places on the hill-brows, like
Woodhouse and Hathersedge and Rapton which flourished, while the
dreary places down along the canals existed only for work-places,
not for life and pleasure. It was just like James to have planted
his endeavour down in the stagnant dust and rust of potteries and
foundries, where no illusion could bloom.

He had dreamed of crowded houses every night, and of raised prices.
But there was no probability of his being able to raise his prices.
He had to figure lower than the Woodhouse Empire. He was second-rate
from the start. His hope now lay in the tramway which was being
built from Knarborough away through the country--a black country
indeed--through Woodhouse and Lumley and Hathersedge, to Rapton.
When once this tramway-system was working, he would have a supply of
youths and lasses always on tap, as it were. So he spread his
rainbow wings towards the future, and began to say:

"When we've got the trams, I shall buy a new machine and finer
lenses, and I shall extend my premises."

Mr. May did not talk business to Alvina. He was terribly secretive
with respect to business. But he said to her once, in the early year
following their opening:

"Well, how do you think we're doing, Miss Houghton?"

"We're not doing any better than we did at first, I think," she
said.

"No," he answered. "No! That's true. That's perfectly true. But why?
They seem to like the programs."

"I think they do," said Alvina. "I think they like them when they're
there. But isn't it funny, they don't seem to want to come to them.
I know they always talk as if we were second-rate. And they only
come because they can't get to the Empire, or up to Hathersedge.
We're a stop-gap. I know we are."

Mr. May looked down in the mouth. He cocked his blue eyes at her,
miserable and frightened. Failure began to frighten him abjectly.

"Why do you think that is?" he said.

"I don't believe they like the turns," she said.

"But _look_ how they applaud them! _Look_ how pleased they are!"

"I know. I know they like them once they're there, and they see
them. But they don't come again. They crowd the Empire--and the
Empire is only pictures now; and it's much cheaper to run."

He watched her dismally.

"I can't believe they want nothing but pictures. I can't believe
they want everything in the flat," he said, coaxing and miserable.
He himself was not interested in the film. His interest was still
the human interest in living performers and their living feats.
"Why," he continued, "they are ever so much more excited after a
good turn, than after any film."

"I know they are," said Alvina. "But I don't believe they want to be
excited in that way."

"In what way?" asked Mr. May plaintively.

"By the things which the artistes do. I believe they're jealous."

"Oh nonsense!" exploded Mr. May, starting as if he had been shot.
Then he laid his hand on her arm. "But forgive my rudeness! I don't
mean it, of _cauce_! But do you mean to say that these collier louts
and factory girls are jealous of the things the artistes do, because
they could never do them themselves?"

"I'm sure they are," said Alvina.

"But I _can't_ believe it," said Mr. May, pouting up his mouth and
smiling at her as if she were a whimsical child. "What a low opinion
you have of human nature!"

"Have I?" laughed Alvina. "I've never reckoned it up. But I'm sure
that these common people here are jealous if anybody does anything
or has anything they can't have themselves."

"I can't believe it," protested Mr. May. "Could they be so _silly_!
And then why aren't they jealous of the extraordinary things which
are done on the film?"

"Because they don't see the flesh-and-blood people. I'm sure that's
it. The film is only pictures, like pictures in the _Daily Mirror_.
And pictures don't have any feelings apart from their own feelings.
I mean the feelings of the people who watch them. Pictures don't
have any life except in the people who watch them. And that's why
they like them. Because they make them feel that they are
everything."

"The pictures make the colliers and lasses feel that they themselves
are everything? But how? They identify themselves with the heroes
and heroines on the screen?"

"Yes--they take it all to themselves--and there isn't anything
except themselves. I know it's like that. It's because they can
spread themselves over a film, and they _can't_ over a living
performer. They're up against the performer himself. And they hate
it."

Mr. May watched her long and dismally.

"I _can't_ believe people are like that!--sane people!" he said.
"Why, to me the whole joy is in the living personality, the curious
_personality_ of the artiste. That's what I enjoy so much."

"I know. But that's where you're different from them."

"But _am_ I?"

"Yes. You're not as up to the mark as they are."

"Not up to the mark? What do you mean? Do you mean they are more
intelligent?"

"No, but they're more modern. You like things which aren't yourself.
But they don't. They hate to admire anything that they can't take to
themselves. They hate anything that isn't themselves. And that's why
they like pictures. It's all themselves to them, all the time."

He still puzzled.

"You know I don't follow you," he said, a little mocking, as if she
were making a fool of herself.

"Because you don't know them. You don't know the common people. You
don't know how conceited they are."

He watched her a long time.

"And you think we ought to cut out the variety, and give nothing but
pictures, like the Empire?" he said.

"I believe it takes best," she said.

"And costs less," he answered. "But _then_! It's so dull. Oh my
_word_, it's so dull. I don't think I could bear it."

"And our pictures aren't good enough," she said. "We should have to
get a new machine, and pay for the expensive films. Our pictures do
shake, and our films are rather ragged."

"But then, _surely_ they're good enough!" he said.

That was how matters stood. The Endeavour paid its way, and made
just a margin of profit--no more. Spring went on to summer, and then
there was a very shadowy margin of profit. But James was not at all
daunted. He was waiting now for the trams, and building up hopes
since he could not build in bricks and mortar.

The navvies were busy in troops along the Knarborough Road, and down
Lumley Hill. Alvina became quite used to them. As she went down the
hill soon after six o'clock in the evening, she met them trooping
home. And some of them she liked. There was an outlawed look about
them as they swung along the pavement--some of them; and there was a
certain lurking set of the head which rather frightened her because
it fascinated her. There was one tall young fellow with a red face
and fair hair, who looked as if he had fronted the seas and the
arctic sun. He looked at her. They knew each other quite well, in
passing. And he would glance at perky Mr. May. Alvina tried to
fathom what the young fellow's look meant. She wondered what he
thought of Mr. May.

She was surprised to hear Mr. May's opinion of the navvy.

"_He's_ a handsome young man, now!" exclaimed her companion one
evening as the navvies passed. And all three turned round, to find
all three turning round. Alvina laughed, and made eyes. At that
moment she would cheerfully have gone along with the navvy. She was
getting so tired of Mr. May's quiet prance.

On the whole, Alvina enjoyed the cinema and the life it brought her.
She accepted it. And she became somewhat vulgarized in her bearing.
She was _déclassée_: she had lost her class altogether. The other
daughters of respectable tradesmen avoided her now, or spoke to her
only from a distance. She was supposed to be "carrying on" with Mr.
May.

Alvina did not care. She rather liked it. She liked being
_déclassée_. She liked feeling an outsider. At last she seemed to
stand on her own ground. She laughed to herself as she went back and
forth from Woodhouse to Lumley, between Manchester House and the
Pleasure Palace. She laughed when she saw her father's theatre-notices
plastered about. She laughed when she saw his thrilling announcements
in the _Woodhouse Weekly_. She laughed when she knew that all the
Woodhouse youths recognized her, and looked on her as one of their
 inferior entertainers. She was off the map: and she liked it.

For after all, she got a good deal of fun out of it. There was not
only the continual activity. There were the artistes. Every week she
met a new set of stars--three or four as a rule. She rehearsed with
them on Monday afternoons, and she saw them every evening, and twice
a week at matinees. James now gave two performances each
evening--and he always had _some_ audience. So that Alvina had
opportunity to come into contact with all the odd people of the
inferior stage. She found they were very much of a type: a little
frowsy, a little flea-bitten as a rule, indifferent to ordinary
morality, and philosophical even if irritable. They were often very
irritable. And they had always a certain fund of callous
philosophy. Alvina did not _like_ them--you were not supposed,
really, to get deeply emotional over them. But she found it amusing
to see them all and know them all. It was so different from
Woodhouse, where everything was priced and ticketed. These people
were nomads. They didn't care a straw who you were or who you
weren't. They had a most irritable professional vanity, and that was
all. It was most odd to watch them. They weren't very squeamish. If
the young gentlemen liked to peep round the curtain when the young
lady was in her knickers: oh, well, she rather roundly told them
off, perhaps, but nobody minded. The fact that ladies wore knickers
and black silk stockings thrilled nobody, any more than grease-paint
or false moustaches thrilled. It was all part of the stock-in-trade.
As for immorality--well, what did it amount to? Not a great deal.
Most of the men cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about
any more carnal vice, and most of the girls were good pals with each
other, men were only there to act with: even if the act was a
private love-farce of an improper description. What's the odds? You
couldn't get excited about it: not as a rule.

Mr. May usually took rooms for the artistes in a house down in
Lumley. When any one particular was coming, he would go to a rather
better-class widow in Woodhouse. He never let Alvina take any part
in the making of these arrangements, except with the widow in
Woodhouse, who had long ago been a servant at Manchester House, and
even now came in to do cleaning.

Odd, eccentric people they were, these entertainers. Most of them
had a streak of imagination, and most of them drank. Most of them
were middle-aged. Most of them had an abstracted manner; in ordinary
life, they seemed left aside, somehow. Odd, extraneous creatures,
often a little depressed, feeling life slip away from them. The
cinema was killing them.

Alvina had quite a serious flirtation with a man who played a flute
and piccolo. He was about fifty years old, still handsome, and
growing stout. When sober, he was completely reserved. When rather
drunk, he talked charmingly and amusingly--oh, most charmingly.
Alvina quite loved him. But alas, _how_ he drank! But what a charm
he had! He went, and she saw him no more.

The usual rather American-looking, clean-shaven, slightly pasty
young man left Alvina quite cold, though he had an amiable and truly
chivalrous _galanterie_. He was quite likeable. But so unattractive.
Alvina was more fascinated by the odd fish: like the lady who did
marvellous things with six ferrets, or the Jap who was tattooed all
over, and had the most amazing strong wrists, so that he could throw
down any collier, with one turn of the hand. Queer cuts these!--but
just a little bit beyond her. She watched them rather from a
distance. She wished she could jump across the distance.
Particularly with the Jap, who was almost quite naked, but clothed
with the most exquisite tattooing. Never would she forget the eagle
that flew with terrible spread wings between his shoulders, or the
strange mazy pattern that netted the roundness of his buttocks. He
was not very large, but nicely shaped, and with no hair on his
smooth, tattooed body. He was almost blue in colour--that is, his
tattooing was blue, with pickings of brilliant vermilion: as for
instance round the nipples, and in a strange red serpent's-jaws over
the navel. A serpent went round his loins and haunches. He told her
how many times he had had blood-poisoning, during the process of his
tattooing. He was a queer, black-eyed creature, with a look of
silence and toad-like lewdness. He frightened her. But when he was
dressed in common clothes, and was just a cheap, shoddy-looking
European Jap, he was more frightening still. For his face--he was
not tattooed above a certain ring low on his neck--was yellow and
flat and basking with one eye open, like some age-old serpent. She
felt he was smiling horribly all the time: lewd, unthinkable. A
strange sight he was in Woodhouse, on a sunny morning; a
shabby-looking bit of riff-raff of the East, rather down at the
heel. Who could have imagined the terrible eagle of his shoulders,
the serpent of his loins, his supple, magic skin?

The summer passed again, and autumn. Winter was a better time for
James Houghton. The trams, moreover, would begin to run in January.

He wanted to arrange a good program for the week when the trams
started. A long time ahead, Mr. May prepared it. The one item was
the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe. The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe consisted
of five persons, Madame Rochard and four young men. They were a
strictly Red Indian troupe. But one of the young men, the German
Swiss, was a famous yodeller, and another, the French Swiss, was a
good comic with a French accent, whilst Madame and the German did a
screaming two-person farce. Their great turn, of course, was the
Natcha-Kee-Tawara Red Indian scene.

The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were due in the third week in January,
arriving from the Potteries on the Sunday evening. When Alvina came
in from Chapel that Sunday evening, she found her widow, Mrs.
Rollings, seated in the living room talking with James, who had an
anxious look. Since opening the Pleasure Palace James was less
regular at Chapel. And moreover, he was getting old and shaky, and
Sunday was the one evening he might spend in peace. Add that on this
particular black Sunday night it was sleeting dismally outside, and
James had already a bit of a cough, and we shall see that he did
right to stay at home.

Mrs. Rollings sat nursing a bottle. She was to go to the chemist for
some cough-cure, because Madame had got a bad cold. The chemist was
gone to Chapel--he wouldn't open till eight.

Madame and the four young men had arrived at about six. Madame, said
Mrs. Rollings, was a little fat woman, and she was complaining all
the time that she had got a cold on her chest, laying her hand on
her chest and trying her breathing and going "He-e-e-er! Herr!" to
see if she could breathe properly. She, Mrs. Rollings, had suggested
that Madame should put her feet in hot mustard and water, but Madame
said she must have something to clear her chest. The four young men
were four nice civil young fellows. They evidently liked Madame.
Madame had insisted on cooking the chops for the young men. She
herself had eaten one, but she laid her hand on her chest when she
swallowed. One of the young men had gone out to get her some brandy,
and he had come back with half-a-dozen large bottles of Bass as
well.

Mr. Houghton was very much concerned over Madame's cold. He asked
the same questions again and again, to try and make sure how bad it
was. But Mrs. Rollings didn't seem quite to know. James wrinkled his
brow. Supposing Madame could not take her part! He was most anxious.

"Do you think you might go across with Mrs. Rollings and see how
this woman is, Alvina?" he said to his daughter.

"I should think you'll never turn Alvina out on such a night," said
Miss Pinnegar. "And besides, it isn't right. Where is Mr. May? It's
his business to go."

"Oh!" returned Alvina. "_I_ don't mind going. Wait a minute, I'll
see if we haven't got some of those pastilles for burning. If it's
very bad, I can make one of those plasters mother used."

And she ran upstairs. She was curious to see what Madame and her
four young men were like.

With Mrs. Rollings she called at the chemist's back door, and then
they hurried through the sleet to the widow's dwelling. It was not
far. As they went up the entry they heard the sound of voices. But
in the kitchen all was quiet. The voices came from the front room.

Mrs. Rollings tapped.

"Come in!" said a rather sharp voice. Alvina entered on the widow's
heels.

"I've brought you the cough stuff," said the widow. "And Miss
Huff'n's come as well, to see how you was."

Four young men were sitting round the table in their shirt-sleeves,
with bottles of Bass. There was much cigarette smoke. By the fire,
which was burning brightly, sat a plump, pale woman with dark bright
eyes and finely-drawn eyebrows: she might be any age between forty
and fifty. There were grey threads in her tidy black hair. She was
neatly dressed in a well-made black dress with a small lace collar.
There was a slight look of self-commiseration on her face. She had a
cigarette between her drooped fingers.

She rose as if with difficulty, and held out her plump hand, on
which four or five rings showed. She had dropped the cigarette
unnoticed into the hearth.

"How do you do," she said. "I didn't catch your name." Madame's
voice was a little plaintive and plangent now, like a bronze reed
mournfully vibrating.

"Alvina Houghton," said Alvina.

"Daughter of him as owns the thee-etter where you're goin' to act,"
interposed the widow.

"Oh yes! Yes! I see. Miss Houghton. I didn't know how it was said.
Huff-ton--yes? Miss Houghton. I've got a bad cold on my chest--"
laying her plump hand with the rings on her plump bosom. "But let me
introduce you to my young men--" A wave of the plump hand, whose
forefinger was very slightly cigarette-stained, towards the table.

The four young men had risen, and stood looking at Alvina and
Madame. The room was small, rather bare, with horse-hair and
white-crochet antimacassars and a linoleum floor. The table also was
covered with a brightly-patterned American oil-cloth, shiny but
clean. A naked gas-jet hung over it. For furniture, there were just
chairs, arm-chairs, table, and a horse-hair antimacassar-ed sofa.
Yet the little room seemed very full--full of people, young men with
smart waistcoats and ties, but without coats.

"That is Max," said Madame. "I shall tell you only their names, and
not their family names, because that is easier for you--"

In the meantime Max had bowed. He was a tall Swiss with almond eyes
and a flattish face and a rather stiff, ramrod figure.

"And that is Louis--" Louis bowed gracefully. He was a Swiss
Frenchman, moderately tall, with prominent cheekbones and a wing
of glossy black hair falling on his temple.

"And that is Géoffroi--Geoffrey--" Geoffrey made his bow--a
broad-shouldered, watchful, taciturn man from Alpine France.

"And that is Francesco--Frank--" Francesco gave a faint curl of his
lip, half smile, as he saluted her involuntarily in a military
fashion. He was dark, rather tall and loose, with yellow-tawny eyes.
He was an Italian from the south. Madame gave another look at him.
"He doesn't like his English name of Frank. You will see, he pulls a
face. No, he doesn't like it. We call him Ciccio also--" But Ciccio
was dropping his head sheepishly, with the same faint smile on his
face, half grimace, and stooping to his chair, wanting to sit down.

"These are my family of young men," said Madame. "We are drawn from
three races, though only Ciccio is not of our mountains. Will you
please to sit down."

They all took their chairs. There was a pause.

"My young men drink a little beer, after their horrible journey. As
a rule, I do not like them to drink. But tonight they have a little
beer. I do not take any myself, because I am afraid of inflaming
myself." She laid her hand on her breast, and took long, uneasy
breaths. "I feel it. I feel it _here_." She patted her breast. "It
makes me afraid for tomorrow. Will you perhaps take a glass of beer?
Ciccio, ask for another glass--" Ciccio, at the end of the table,
did not rise, but looked round at Alvina as if he presumed there
would be no need for him to move. The odd, supercilious curl of the
lip persisted. Madame glared at him. But he turned the handsome side
of his cheek towards her, with the faintest flicker of a sneer.

"No, thank you. I never take beer," said Alvina hurriedly.

"No? Never? Oh!" Madame folded her hands, but her black eyes still
darted venom at Ciccio. The rest of the young men fingered their
glasses and put their cigarettes to their lips and blew the smoke
down their noses, uncomfortably.

Madame closed her eyes and leaned back a moment. Then her face
looked transparent and pallid, there were dark rings under her eyes,
the beautifully-brushed hair shone dark like black glass above her
ears. She was obviously unwell. The young men looked at her, and
muttered to one another.

"I'm afraid your cold is rather bad," said Alvina. "Will you let me
take your temperature?"

Madame started and looked frightened.

"Oh, I don't think you should trouble to do that," she said.

Max, the tall, highly-coloured Swiss, turned to her, saying:

"Yes, you must have your temperature taken, and then we s'll know,
shan't we. I had a hundred and five when we were in Redruth."

Alvina had taken the thermometer from her pocket. Ciccio meanwhile
muttered something in French--evidently something rude--meant for
Max.

"What shall I do if I can't work tomorrow!" moaned Madame, seeing
Alvina hold up the thermometer towards the light. "Max, what shall
we do?"

"You will stay in bed, and we must do the White Prisoner scene,"
said Max, rather staccato and official.

Ciccio curled his lip and put his head aside. Alvina went across to
Madame with the thermometer. Madame lifted her plump hand and fended
off Alvina, while she made her last declaration:

"Never--never have I missed my work, for a single day, for ten
years. Never. If I am going to lie abandoned, I had better die at
once."

"Lie abandoned!" said Max. "You know you won't do no such thing.
What are you talking about?"

"Take the thermometer," said Geoffrey roughly, but with feeling.

"Tomorrow, see, you will be well. Quite certain!" said Louis. Madame
mournfully shook her head, opened her mouth, and sat back with
closed eyes and the stump of the thermometer comically protruding
from a corner of her lips. Meanwhile Alvina took her plump white
wrist and felt her pulse.

"We can practise--" began Geoffrey.

"Sh!" said Max, holding up his finger and looking anxiously at
Alvina and Madame, who still leaned back with the stump of the
thermometer jauntily perking up from her pursed mouth, while her
face was rather ghastly.

Max and Louis watched anxiously. Geoffrey sat blowing the smoke down
his nose, while Ciccio callously lit another cigarette, striking a
match on his boot-heel and puffing from under the tip of his rather
long nose. Then he took the cigarette from his mouth, turned his
head, slowly spat on the floor, and rubbed his foot on his spit. Max
flapped his eyelids and looked all disdain, murmuring something
about "ein schmutziges italienisches Volk," whilst Louis, refusing
either to see or to hear, framed the word "chien" on his lips.

Then quick as lightning both turned their attention again to Madame.

Her temperature was a hundred and two.

"You'd better go to bed," said Alvina. "Have you eaten anything?"

"One little mouthful," said Madame plaintively.

Max sat looking pale and stricken, Louis had hurried forward to take
Madame's hand. He kissed it quickly, then turned aside his head
because of the tears in his eyes. Geoffrey gulped beer in large
throatfuls, and Ciccio, with his head bent, was watching from under
his eyebrows.

"I'll run round for the doctor--" said Alvina.

"Don't! Don't do that, my dear! Don't you go and do that! I'm likely
to a temperature--"

"Liable to a temperature," murmured Louis pathetically.

"I'll go to bed," said Madame, obediently rising.

"Wait a bit. I'll see if there's a fire in the bedroom," said
Alvina.

"Oh, my dear, you are too good. Open the door for her, Ciccio--"

Ciccio reached across at the door, but was too late. Max had
hastened to usher Alvina out. Madame sank back in her chair.

"Never for ten years," she was wailing. "Quoi faire, ah, quoi
faire! Que ferez-vous, mes pauvres, sans votre Kishwégin. Que
vais-je faire, mourir dans un tel pays! La bonne demoiselle--la
bonne demoiselle--elle a du coeur. Elle pourrait aussi être belle,
s'il y avait un peu plus de chair. Max, liebster, schau ich sehr
elend aus? Ach, oh jeh, oh jeh!"

"Ach nein, Madame, ach nein. Nicht so furchtbar elend," said Max.

"Manca il cuore solamente al Ciccio," moaned Madame. "Che natura
povera, senza sentimento--niente di bello. Ahimé, che amico, che
ragazzo duro, aspero--"

"Trova?" said Ciccio, with a curl of the lip. He looked, as he
dropped his long, beautiful lashes, as if he might weep for all
that, if he were not bound to be misbehaving just now.

So Madame moaned in four languages as she posed pallid in her
arm-chair. Usually she spoke in French only, with her young men. But
this was an extra occasion.

"La pauvre Kishwégin!" murmured Madame. "Elle va finir au monde.
Elle passe--la pauvre Kishwégin."

Kishwégin was Madame's Red Indian name, the name under which she
danced her Squaw's fire-dance.

Now that she knew she was ill, Madame seemed to become more ill. Her
breath came in little pants. She had a pain in her side. A feverish
flush seemed to mount her cheek. The young men were all extremely
uncomfortable. Louis did not conceal his tears. Only Ciccio kept the
thin smile on his lips, and added to Madame's annoyance and pain.

Alvina came down to take her to bed. The young men all rose, and
kissed Madame's hand as she went out: her poor jewelled hand, that
was faintly perfumed with eau de Cologne. She spoke an appropriate
good-night, to each of them.

"Good-night, my faithful Max, I trust myself to you. Good-night,
Louis, the tender heart. Good-night valiant Geoffrey. Ah Ciccio, do
not add to the weight of my heart. Be good _braves_, all, be
brothers in one accord. One little prayer for poor Kishwégin.
Good-night!"

After which valediction she slowly climbed the stairs, putting her
hand on her knee at each step, with the effort.

"No--no," she said to Max, who would have followed to her
assistance. "Do not come up. No--no!"

Her bedroom was tidy and proper.

"Tonight," she moaned, "I shan't be able to see that the boys'
rooms are well in order. They are not to be trusted, no. They need
an overseeing eye: especially Ciccio; especially Ciccio!"

She sank down by the fire and began to undo her dress.

"You must let me help you," said Alvina. "You know I have been a
nurse."

"Ah, you are too kind, too kind, dear young lady. I am a lonely old
woman. I am not used to attentions. Best leave me."

"Let me help you," said Alvina.

"Alas, ahimé! Who would have thought Kishwégin would need help. I
danced last night with the boys in the theatre in Leek: and tonight
I am put to bed in--what is the name of this place, dear?--It seems
I don't remember it."

"Woodhouse," said Alvina.

"Woodhouse! Woodhouse! Is there not something called Woodlouse? I
believe. Ugh, horrible! Why is it horrible?"

Alvina quickly undressed the plump, trim little woman. She seemed so
soft. Alvina could not imagine how she could be a dancer on the
stage, strenuous. But Madame's softness could flash into wild
energy, sudden convulsive power, like a cuttle-fish. Alvina brushed
out the long black hair, and plaited it lightly. Then she got Madame
into bed.

"Ah," sighed Madame, "the good bed! The good bed! But cold--it is so
cold. Would you hang up my dress, dear, and fold my stockings?"

Alvina quickly folded and put aside the dainty underclothing. Queer,
dainty woman, was Madame, even to her wonderful threaded
black-and-gold garters.

"My poor boys--no Kishwégin tomorrow! You don't think I need see a
priest, dear? A priest!" said Madame, her teeth chattering.

"Priest! Oh no! You'll be better when we can get you warm. I think
it's only a chill. Mrs. Rollings is warming a blanket--"

Alvina ran downstairs. Max opened the sitting-room door and stood
watching at the sound of footsteps. His rather bony fists were
clenched beneath his loose shirt-cuffs, his eyebrows tragically
lifted.

"Is she much ill?" he asked.

"I don't know. But I don't think so. Do you mind heating the
blanket while Mrs. Rollings makes thin gruel?"

Max and Louis stood heating blankets. Louis' trousers were cut
rather tight at the waist, and gave him a female look. Max was
straight and stiff. Mrs. Rollings asked Geoffrey to fill the
coal-scuttles and carry one upstairs. Geoffrey obediently went out
with a lantern to the coal-shed. Afterwards he was to carry up the
horse-hair arm-chair.

"I must go home for some things," said Alvina to Ciccio. "Will you
come and carry them for me?"

He started up, and with one movement threw away his cigarette. He
did not look at Alvina. His beautiful lashes seemed to screen his
eyes. He was fairly tall, but loosely built for an Italian, with
slightly sloping shoulders. Alvina noticed the brown, slender
Mediterranean hand, as he put his fingers to his lips. It was a hand
such as she did not know, prehensile and tender and dusky. With an
odd graceful slouch he went into the passage and reached for his
coat.

He did not say a word, but held aloof as he walked with Alvina.

"I'm sorry for Madame," said Alvina, as she hurried rather
breathless through the night. "She does think for you men."

But Ciccio vouchsafed no answer, and walked with his hands in the
pockets of his water-proof, wincing from the weather.

"I'm afraid she will never be able to dance tomorrow," said Alvina.

"You think she won't be able?" he said.

"I'm almost sure she won't."

After which he said nothing, and Alvina also kept silence till they
came to the black dark passage and encumbered yard at the back of
the house.

"I don't think you can see at all," she said. "It's this way." She
groped for him in the dark, and met his groping hand.

"This way," she said.

It was curious how light his fingers were in their clasp--almost
like a child's touch. So they came under the light from the window
of the sitting-room.

Alvina hurried indoors, and the young man followed.

"I shall have to stay with Madame tonight," she explained hurriedly.
"She's feverish, but she may throw it off if we can get her into a
sweat." And Alvina ran upstairs collecting things necessary. Ciccio
stood back near the door, and answered all Miss Pinnegar's
entreaties to come to the fire with a shake of the head and a slight
smile of the lips, bashful and stupid.

"But do come and warm yourself before you go out again," said Miss
Pinnegar, looking at the man as he drooped his head in the distance.
He still shook dissent, but opened his mouth at last.

"It makes it colder after," he said, showing his teeth in a slight,
stupid smile.

"Oh well, if you think so," said Miss Pinnegar, nettled. She
couldn't make heads or tails of him, and didn't try.

When they got back, Madame was light-headed, and talking excitedly
of her dance, her young men. The three young men were terrified.
They had got the blankets scorching hot. Alvina smeared the plasters
and applied them to Madame's side, where the pain was. What a
white-skinned, soft, plump child she seemed! Her pain meant a touch
of pleurisy, for sure. The men hovered outside the door. Alvina
wrapped the poor patient in the hot blankets, got a few spoonfuls of
hot gruel and whiskey down her throat, fastened her down in bed,
lowered the light and banished the men from the stairs. Then she sat
down to watch. Madame chafed, moaned, murmured feverishly. Alvina
soothed her, and put her hands in bed. And at last the poor dear
became quiet. Her brow was faintly moist. She fell into a quiet
sleep, perspiring freely. Alvina watched her still, soothed her when
she suddenly started and began to break out of the bedclothes,
quieted her, pressed her gently, firmly down, folded her tight and
made her submit to the perspiration against which, in convulsive
starts, she fought and strove, crying that she was suffocating, she
was too hot, too hot.

"Lie still, lie still," said Alvina. "You must keep warm."

Poor Madame moaned. How she hated seething in the bath of her own
perspiration. Her wilful nature rebelled strongly. She would have
thrown aside her coverings and gasped into the cold air, if Alvina
had not pressed her down with that soft, inevitable pressure.

So the hours passed, till about one o'clock, when the perspiration
became less profuse, and the patient was really better, really
quieter. Then Alvina went downstairs for a moment. She saw the light
still burning in the front room. Tapping, she entered. There sat Max
by the fire, a picture of misery, with Louis opposite him, nodding
asleep after his tears. On the sofa Geoffrey snored lightly, while
Ciccio sat with his head on the table, his arms spread out, dead
asleep. Again she noticed the tender, dusky Mediterranean hands, the
slender wrists, slender for a man naturally loose and muscular.

"Haven't you gone to bed?" whispered Alvina. "Why?"

Louis started awake. Max, the only stubborn watcher, shook his head
lugubriously.

"But she's better," whispered Alvina. "She's perspired. She's
better. She's sleeping naturally."

Max stared with round, sleep-whitened, owlish eyes, pessimistic and
sceptical:

"Yes," persisted Alvina. "Come and look at her. But don't wake her,
whatever you do."

Max took off his slippers and rose to his tall height. Louis, like a
scared chicken, followed. Each man held his slippers in his hand.
They noiselessly entered and peeped stealthily over the heaped
bedclothes. Madame was lying, looking a little flushed and very
girlish, sleeping lightly, with a strand of black hair stuck to her
cheek, and her lips lightly parted.

Max watched her for some moments. Then suddenly he straightened
himself, pushed back his brown hair that was brushed up in the
German fashion, and crossed himself, dropping his knee as before an
altar; crossed himself and dropped his knee once more; and then a
third time crossed himself and inclined before the altar. Then he
straightened himself again, and turned aside.

Louis also crossed himself. His tears burst out. He bowed and took
the edge of a blanket to his lips, kissing it reverently. Then he
covered his face with his hand.

Meanwhile Madame slept lightly and innocently on.

Alvina turned to go. Max silently followed, leading Louis by the
arm. When they got downstairs, Max and Louis threw themselves in
each other's arms, and kissed each other on either cheek, gravely,
in Continental fashion.

"She is better," said Max gravely, in French.

"Thanks to God," replied Louis.

Alvina witnessed all this with some amazement. The men did not heed
her. Max went over and shook Geoffrey, Louis put his hand on
Ciccio's shoulder. The sleepers were difficult to wake. The wakers
shook the sleeping, but in vain. At last Geoffrey began to stir.
But in vain Louis lifted Ciccio's shoulders from the table. The head
and the hands dropped inert. The long black lashes lay motionless,
the rather long, fine Greek nose drew the same light breaths, the
mouth remained shut. Strange fine black hair, he had, close as fur,
animal, and naked, frail-seeming, tawny hands. There was a silver
ring on one hand.

Alvina suddenly seized one of the inert hands that slid on the
table-cloth as Louis shook the young man's shoulders. Tight she
pressed the hand. Ciccio opened his tawny-yellowish eyes, that
seemed to have been put in with a dirty finger, as the saying goes,
owing to the sootiness of the lashes and brows. He was quite drunk
with his first sleep, and saw nothing.

"Wake up," said Alvina, laughing, pressing his hand again.

He lifted his head once more, suddenly clasped her hand, his eyes
came to consciousness, his hand relaxed, he recognized her, and he
sat back in his chair, turning his face aside and lowering his
lashes.

"Get up, great beast," Louis was saying softly in French, pushing
him as ox-drivers sometimes push their oxen. Ciccio staggered to his
feet.

"She is better," they told him. "We are going to bed."

They took their candles and trooped off upstairs, each one bowing to
Alvina as he passed. Max solemnly, Louis gallant, the other two dumb
and sleepy. They occupied the two attic chambers.

Alvina carried up the loose bed from the sofa, and slept on the
floor before the fire in Madame's room.

Madame slept well and long, rousing and stirring and settling off
again. It was eight o'clock before she asked her first question.
Alvina was already up.

"Oh--alors--Then I am better, I am quite well. I can dance today."

"I don't think today," said Alvina. "But perhaps tomorrow."

"No, today," said Madame. "I can dance today, because I am quite
well. I am Kishwégin."

"You are better. But you must lie still today. Yes, really--you will
find you are weak when you try to stand."

Madame watched Alvina's thin face with sullen eyes.

"You are an Englishwoman, severe and materialist," she said.

Alvina started and looked round at her with wide blue eyes.

"Why?" she said. There was a wan, pathetic look about her, a sort of
heroism which Madame detested, but which now she found touching.

"Come!" said Madame, stretching out her plump jewelled hand. "Come,
I am an ungrateful woman. Come, they are not good for you, the
people, I see it. Come to me."

Alvina went slowly to Madame, and took the outstretched hand. Madame
kissed her hand, then drew her down and kissed her on either cheek,
gravely, as the young men had kissed each other.

"You have been good to Kishwégin, and Kishwégin has a heart that
remembers. There, Miss Houghton, I shall do what you tell me.
Kishwégin obeys you." And Madame patted Alvina's hand and nodded her
head sagely.

"Shall I take your temperature?" said Alvina.

"Yes, my dear, you shall. You shall bid me, and I shall obey."

So Madame lay back on her pillow, submissively pursing the
thermometer between her lips and watching Alvina with black eyes.

"It's all right," said Alvina, as she looked at the thermometer.
"Normal."

"Normal!" re-echoed Madame's rather guttural voice. "Good! Well,
then when shall I dance?"

Alvina turned and looked at her.

"I think, truly," said Alvina, "it shouldn't be before Thursday or
Friday."

"Thursday!" repeated Madame. "You say Thursday?" There was a note of
strong rebellion in her voice.

"You'll be so weak. You've only just escaped pleurisy. I can only
say what I truly think, can't I?"

"Ah, you Englishwomen," said Madame, watching with black eyes. "I
think you like to have your own way. In all things, to have your own
way. And over all people. You are so good, to have your own way.
Yes, you good Englishwomen. Thursday. Very well, it shall be
Thursday. Till Thursday, then, Kishwégin does not exist."

And she subsided, already rather weak, upon her pillow again. When
she had taken her tea and was washed and her room was tidied, she
summoned the young men. Alvina had warned Max that she wanted
Madame to be kept as quiet as possible this day.

As soon as the first of the four appeared, in his shirt-sleeves and
his slippers, in the doorway, Madame said:

"Ah, there you are, my young men! Come in! Come in! It is not
Kishwégin addresses you. Kishwégin does not exist till Thursday, as
the English demoiselle makes it." She held out her hand, faintly
perfumed with eau de Cologne--the whole room smelled of eau de
Cologne--and Max stooped his brittle spine and kissed it. She
touched his cheek gently with her other hand.

"My faithful Max, my support."

Louis came smiling with a bunch of violets and pinky anemones. He
laid them down on the bed before her, and took her hand, bowing and
kissing it reverently.

"You are better, dear Madame?" he said, smiling long at her.

"Better, yes, gentle Louis. And better for thy flowers, chivalric
heart." She put the violets and anemones to her face with both
hands, and then gently laid them aside to extend her hand to
Geoffrey.

"The good Geoffrey will do his best, while there is no Kishwégin?"
she said as he stooped to her salute.

"Bien sûr, Madame."

"Ciccio, a button off thy shirt-cuff. Where is my needle?" She
looked round the room as Ciccio kissed her hand.

"Did you want anything?" said Alvina, who had not followed the
French.

"My needle, to sew on this button. It is there, in the silk bag."

"I will do it," said Alvina.

"Thank you."

While Alvina sewed on the button, Madame spoke to her young men,
principally to Max. They were to obey Max, she said, for he was
their eldest brother. This afternoon they would practise well the
scene of the White Prisoner. Very carefully they must practise, and
they must find some one who would play the young squaw--for in this
scene she had practically nothing to do, the young squaw, but just
sit and stand. Miss Houghton--but ah, Miss Houghton must play the
piano, she could not take the part of the young squaw. Some other
then.

While the interview was going on, Mr. May arrived, full of concern.

"Shan't we have the procession!" he cried.

"Ah, the procession!" cried Madame.

The Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe upon request would signalize its entry
into any town by a procession. The young men were dressed as Indian
_braves_, and headed by Kishwégin they rode on horseback through the
main streets. Ciccio, who was the crack horseman, having served a
very well-known horsey Marchese in an Italian cavalry regiment, did
a bit of show riding.

Mr. May was very keen on the procession. He had the horses in
readiness. The morning was faintly sunny, after the sleet and bad
weather. And now he arrived to find Madame in bed and the young men
holding council with her.

"How _very_ unfortunate!" cried Mr. May. "How _very_ unfortunate!"

"Dreadful! Dreadful!" wailed Madame from the bed.

"But can't we do _anything_?"

"Yes--you can do the White Prisoner scene--the young men can do
that, if you find a dummy squaw. Ah, I think I must get up after
all."

Alvina saw the look of fret and exhaustion in Madame's face.

"Won't you all go downstairs now?" said Alvina. "Mr. Max knows what
you must do."

And she shooed the five men out of the bedroom.

"I _must_ get up. I won't dance. I will be a dummy. But I must be
there. It is too dre-eadful, too dre-eadful!" wailed Madame.

"Don't take any notice of them. They can manage by themselves. Men
are such babies. Let them carry it through by themselves."

"Children--they are all children!" wailed Madame. "All children! And
so, what will they do without their old _gouvernante_? My poor
_braves_, what will they do without Kishwégin? It is too dreadful,
too dre-eadful, yes. The poor Mr. May--so _disappointed_."

"Then let him _be_ disappointed," cried Alvina, as she forcibly
tucked up Madame and made her lie still.

"You are hard! You are a hard Englishwoman. All alike. All alike!"
Madame subsided fretfully and weakly. Alvina moved softly about.
And in a few minutes Madame was sleeping again.

Alvina went downstairs. Mr. May was listening to Max, who was
telling in German all about the White Prisoner scene. Mr. May had
spent his boyhood in a German school. He cocked his head on one
side, and, laying his hand on Max's arm, entertained him in odd
German. The others were silent. Ciccio made no pretence of
listening, but smoked and stared at his own feet. Louis and Geoffrey
half understood, so Louis nodded with a look of deep comprehension,
whilst Geoffrey uttered short, snappy "Ja!--Ja!--Doch!--Eben!"
rather irrelevant.

"I'll be the squaw," cried Mr. May in English, breaking off and
turning round to the company. He perked up his head in an odd,
parrot-like fashion. "_I'll_ be the squaw! What's her name?
Kishwégin? I'll be Kishwégin." And he bridled and beamed
self-consciously.

The two tall Swiss looked down on him, faintly smiling. Ciccio,
sitting with his arms on his knees on the sofa, screwed round his
head and watched the phenomenon of Mr. May with inscrutable,
expressionless attention.

"Let us go," said Mr. May, bubbling with new importance. "Let us go
and rehearse _this morning_, and let us do the procession this
afternoon, when the colliers are just coming home. There! What?
Isn't that exactly the idea? Well! Will you be ready at once,
_now_?"

He looked excitedly at the young men. They nodded with slow gravity,
as if they were already _braves_. And they turned to put on their
boots. Soon they were all trooping down to Lumley, Mr. May prancing
like a little circus-pony beside Alvina, the four young men rolling
ahead.

"What do you think of it?" cried Mr. May. "We've saved the
situation--what? Don't you think so? Don't you think we can
congratulate ourselves."

They found Mr. Houghton fussing about in the theatre. He was on
tenterhooks of agitation, knowing Madame was ill.

Max gave a brilliant display of yodelling.

"But I must _explain_ to them," cried Mr. May. "I must _explain_ to
them what yodel means."

And turning to the empty theatre, he began, stretching forth his
hand.

"In the high Alps of Switzerland, where eternal snows and glaciers
reign over luscious meadows full of flowers, if you should chance to
awaken, as I have done, in some lonely wooden farm amid the mountain
pastures, you--er--you--let me see--if you--no--if you should chance
to _spend the night_ in some lonely wooden farm, amid the upland
pastures, dawn will awake you with a wild, inhuman song, you will
open your eyes to the first gleam of icy, eternal sunbeams, your
ears will be ringing with weird singing, that has no words and no
meaning, but sounds as if some wild and icy god were warbling to
himself as he wandered among the peaks of dawn. You look forth
across the flowers to the blue snow, and you see, far off, a small
figure of a man moving among the grass. It is a peasant singing his
mountain song, warbling like some creature that lifted up its voice
on the edge of the eternal snows, before the human race began--"

During this oration James Houghton sat with his chin in his hand,
devoured with bitter jealousy, measuring Mr. May's eloquence. And
then he started, as Max, tall and handsome now in Tyrolese costume,
white shirt and green, square braces, short trousers of chamois
leather stitched with green and red, firm-planted naked knees, naked
ankles and heavy shoes, warbled his native Yodel strains, a piercing
and disturbing sound. He was flushed, erect, keen tempered and
fierce and mountainous. There was a fierce, icy passion in the man.
Alvina began to understand Madame's subjection to him.

Louis and Geoffrey did a farce dialogue, two foreigners at the same
moment spying a purse in the street, struggling with each other and
protesting they wanted to take it to the policeman, Ciccio, who
stood solid and ridiculous. Mr. Houghton nodded slowly and gravely,
as if to give his measured approval.

Then all retired to dress for the great scene. Alvina practised the
music Madame carried with her. If Madame found a good pianist, she
welcomed the accompaniment: if not, she dispensed with it.

"Am I all right?" said a smirking voice.

And there was Kishwégin, dusky, coy, with long black hair and a
short chamois dress, gaiters and moccasins and bare arms: _so_ coy,
and _so_ smirking. Alvina burst out laughing.

"But shan't I do?" protested Mr. May, hurt.

"Yes, you're wonderful," said Alvina, choking. "But I _must_ laugh."

"But why? Tell me why?" asked Mr. May anxiously. "Is it my
_appearance_ you laugh at, or is it only _me_? If it's me I don't
mind. But if it's my appearance, tell me so."

Here an appalling figure of Ciccio in war-paint strolled on to the
stage. He was naked to the waist, wore scalp-fringed trousers, was
dusky-red-skinned, had long black hair and eagle's feathers--only
two feathers--and a face wonderfully and terribly painted with
white, red, yellow, and black lines. He was evidently pleased with
himself. His curious soft slouch, and curious way of lifting his lip
from his white teeth, in a sort of smile, was very convincing.

"You haven't got the girdle," he said, touching Mr. May's plump
waist--"and some flowers in your hair."

Mr. May here gave a sharp cry and a jump. A bear on its hind legs,
slow, shambling, rolling its loose shoulders, was stretching a paw
towards him. The bear dropped heavily on four paws again, and a
laugh came from its muzzle.

"You won't have to dance," said Geoffrey out of the bear.

"Come and put in the flowers," said Mr. May anxiously, to Alvina.

In the dressing-room, the dividing-curtain was drawn. Max, in
deerskin trousers but with unpainted torso looked very white and
strange as he put the last touches of war-paint on Louis' face. He
glanced round at Alvina, then went on with his work. There was a
sort of nobility about his erect white form and stiffly-carried
head, the semi-luminous brown hair. He seemed curiously superior.

Alvina adjusted the maidenly Mr. May. Louis arose, a _brave_ like
Ciccio, in war-paint even more hideous. Max slipped on a tattered
hunting-shirt and cartridge belt. His face was a little darkened. He
was the white prisoner.

They arranged the scenery, while Alvina watched. It was soon done. A
back cloth of tree-trunks and dark forest: a wigwam, a fire, and a
cradle hanging from a pole. As they worked, Alvina tried in vain to
dissociate the two _braves_ from their war-paint. The lines were
drawn so cleverly that the grimace of ferocity was fixed and
horrible, so that even in the quiet work of scene-shifting Louis'
stiffish, female grace seemed full of latent cruelty, whilst
Ciccio's more muscular slouch made her feel she would not trust him
for one single moment. Awful things men were, savage, cruel,
underneath their civilization.

The scene had its beauty. It began with Kishwégin alone at the door
of the wigwam, cooking, listening, giving an occasional push to the
hanging cradle, and, if only Madame were taking the part, crooning
an Indian cradle-song. Enter the _brave_ Louis with his white
prisoner, Max, who has his hands bound to his side. Kishwégin
gravely salutes her husband--the bound prisoner is seated by the
fire--Kishwégin serves food, and asks permission to feed the
prisoner. The _brave_ Louis, hearing a sound, starts up with his bow
and arrow. There is a dumb scene of sympathy between Kishwégin and
the prisoner--the prisoner wants his bonds cut. Re-enter the _brave_
Louis--he is angry with Kishwégin--enter the _brave_ Ciccio hauling
a bear, apparently dead. Kishwégin examines the bear, Ciccio
examines the prisoner. Ciccio tortures the prisoner, makes him
stand, makes him caper unwillingly. Kishwégin swings the cradle. The
prisoner is tripped up--falls, and cannot rise. He lies near the
fallen bear. Kishwégin carries food to Ciccio. The two _braves_
converse in dumb show, Kishwégin swings the cradle and croons. The
men rise once more and bend over the prisoner. As they do so, there
is a muffled roar. The bear is sitting up. Louis swings round, and
at the same moment the bear strikes him down. Ciccio springs forward
and stabs the bear, then closes with it. Kishwégin runs and cuts the
prisoner's bonds. He rises, and stands trying to lift his numbed and
powerless arms, while the bear slowly crushes Ciccio, and Kishwégin
kneels over her husband. The bear drops Ciccio lifeless, and turns
to Kishwégin. At that moment Max manages to kill the bear--he takes
Kishwégin by the hand and kneels with her beside the dead Louis.

It was wonderful how well the men played their different parts. But
Mr. May was a little too frisky as Kishwégin. However, it would do.

Ciccio got dressed as soon as possible, to go and look at the horses
hired for the afternoon procession. Alvina accompanied him, Mr. May
and the others were busy.

"You know I think it's quite wonderful, your scene," she said to
Ciccio.

He turned and looked down at her. His yellow, dusky-set eyes rested
on her good-naturedly, without seeing her, his lip curled in a
self-conscious, contemptuous sort of smile.

"Not without Madame," he said, with the slow, half-sneering, stupid
smile. "Without Madame--" he lifted his shoulders and spread his
hands and tilted his brows--"fool's play, you know."

"No," said Alvina. "I think Mr. May is good, considering. What does
Madame _do_?" she asked a little jealously.

"Do?" He looked down at her with the same long, half-sardonic look
of his yellow eyes, like a cat looking casually at a bird which
flutters past. And again he made his shrugging motion. "She does it
all, really. The others--they are nothing--what they are Madame has
made them. And now they think they've done it all, you see. You see,
that's it."

"But how has Madame made it all? Thought it out, you mean?"

"Thought it out, yes. And then _done_ it. You should see her
dance--ah! You should see her dance round the bear, when I bring him
in! Ah, a beautiful thing, you know. She claps her hand--" And
Ciccio stood still in the street, with his hat cocked a little on
one side, rather common-looking, and he smiled along his fine nose
at Alvina, and he clapped his hands lightly, and he tilted his
eyebrows and his eyelids as if facially he were imitating a dance,
and all the time his lips smiled stupidly. As he gave a little
assertive shake of his head, finishing, there came a great yell of
laughter from the opposite pavement, where a gang of pottery lasses,
in aprons all spattered with grey clay, and hair and boots and skin
spattered with pallid spots, had stood to watch. The girls opposite
shrieked again, for all the world like a gang of grey baboons.
Ciccio turned round and looked at them with a sneer along his nose.
They yelled the louder. And he was horribly uncomfortable, walking
there beside Alvina with his rather small and effeminately-shod
feet.

"How stupid they are," said Alvina. "I've got used to them."

"They should be--" he lifted his hand with a sharp, vicious
movement--"_smacked_," he concluded, lowering his hand again.

"Who is going to do it?" said Alvina.

He gave a Neapolitan grimace, and twiddled the fingers of one hand
outspread in the air, as if to say: "There you are! You've got to
thank the fools who've failed to do it."

"Why do you all love Madame so much?" Alvina asked.

"How, love?" he said, making a little grimace. "We like her--we love
her--as if she were a mother. You say _love_--" He raised his
shoulders slightly, with a shrug. And all the time he looked down at
Alvina from under his dusky eyelashes, as if watching her sideways,
and his mouth had the peculiar, stupid, self-conscious, half-jeering
smile. Alvina was a little bit annoyed. But she felt that a great
instinctive good-naturedness came out of him, he was self-conscious
and constrained, knowing she did not follow his language of gesture.
For him, it was not yet quite natural to express himself in speech.
Gesture and grimace were instantaneous, and spoke worlds of things,
if you would but accept them.

But certainly he was stupid, in her sense of the word. She could
hear Mr. May's verdict of him: "Like a child, you know, just as
charming and just as tiresome and just as stupid."

"Where is your home?" she asked him.

"In Italy." She felt a fool.

"Which part?" she insisted.

"Naples," he said, looking down at her sideways, searchingly.

"It must be lovely," she said.

"Ha--!" He threw his head on one side and spread out his hands, as
if to say--"What do you want, if you don't find Naples lovely."

"I should like to see it. But I shouldn't like to die," she said.

"What?"

"They say 'See Naples and die,'" she laughed.

He opened his mouth, and understood. Then he smiled at her directly.

"You know what that means?" he said cutely. "It means see Naples and
die afterwards. Don't die _before_ you've seen it." He smiled with a
knowing smile.

"I see! I see!" she cried. "I never thought of that."

He was pleased with her surprise and amusement.

"Ah Naples!" he said. "She is lovely--" He spread his hand across
the air in front of him--"The sea--and Posilippo--and Sorrento--and
Capri--Ah-h! You've never been out of England?"

"No," she said. "I should love to go."

He looked down into her eyes. It was his instinct to say at once he
would take her.

"You've seen nothing--nothing," he said to her.

"But if Naples is so lovely, how could you leave it?" she asked.

"What?"

She repeated her question. For answer, he looked at her, held out
his hand, and rubbing the ball of his thumb across the tips of his
fingers, said, with a fine, handsome smile:

"Pennies! Money! You can't earn money in Naples. Ah, Naples is
beautiful, but she is poor. You live in the sun, and you earn
fourteen, fifteen pence a day--"

"Not enough," she said.

He put his head on one side and tilted his brows, as if to say "What
are you to do?" And the smile on his mouth was sad, fine, and
charming. There was an indefinable air of sadness or wistfulness
about him, something so robust and fragile at the same time, that
she was drawn in a strange way.

"But you'll go back?" she said.

"Where?"

"To Italy. To Naples."

"Yes, I shall go back to Italy," he said, as if unwilling to commit
himself. "But perhaps I shan't go back to Naples."

"Never?"

"Ah, never! I don't say never. I shall go to Naples, to see my
mother's sister. But I shan't go to live--"

"Have you a mother and father?"

"I? No! I have a brother and two sisters--in America. Parents, none.
They are dead."

"And you wander about the world--" she said.

He looked at her, and made a slight, sad gesture, indifferent also.

"But you have Madame for a mother," she said.

He made another gesture this time: pressed down the corners of his
mouth as if he didn't like it. Then he turned with the slow, fine
smile.

"Does a man want two mothers? Eh?" he said, as if he posed a
conundrum.

"I shouldn't think so," laughed Alvina.

He glanced at her to see what she meant, what she understood.

"My mother is dead, see!" he said. "Frenchwomen--Frenchwomen--they
have their babies till they are a hundred--"

"What do you mean?" said Alvina, laughing.

"A Frenchman is a little man when he's seven years old--and if his
mother comes, he is a little baby boy when he's seventy. Do you know
that?"

"I _didn't_ know it," said Alvina.

"But now--you do," he said, lurching round a corner with her.

They had come to the stables. Three of the horses were there,
including the thoroughbred Ciccio was going to ride. He stood and
examined the beasts critically. Then he spoke to them with strange
sounds, patted them, stroked them down, felt them, slid his hand
down them, over them, under them, and felt their legs.

Then, he looked up from stooping there under the horses, with a
long, slow look of his yellow eyes, at Alvina. She felt
unconsciously flattered. His long, yellow look lingered, holding her
eyes. She wondered what he was thinking. Yet he never spoke. He
turned again to the horses. They seemed to understand him, to prick
up alert.

"This is mine," he said, with his hand on the neck of the old
thoroughbred. It was a bay with a white blaze.

"I think he's nice," she said. "He seems so sensitive."

"In England," he answered suddenly, "horses live a long time,
because they _don't_ live--never alive--see? In England
railway-engines are alive, and horses go on wheels." He smiled into
her eyes as if she understood. She was a trifle nervous as he smiled
at her from out of the stable, so yellow-eyed and half-mysterious,
derisive. Her impulse was to turn and go away from the stable. But a
deeper impulse made her smile into his face, as she said to him:

"They like you to touch them."

"Who?" His eyes kept hers. Curious how _dark_ they seemed, with only
a yellow ring of pupil. He was looking right into her, beyond her
usual self, impersonal.

"The horses," she said. She was afraid of his long, cat-like look.
Yet she felt convinced of his ultimate good-nature. He seemed to her
to be the only passionately good-natured man she had ever seen. She
watched him vaguely, with strange vague trust, implicit belief in
him. In him--in what?

That afternoon the colliers trooping home in the winter afternoon
were rejoiced with a spectacle: Kishwégin, in her deerskin, fringed
gaiters and fringed frock of deerskin, her long hair down her back,
and with marvellous cloths and trappings on her steed, riding
astride on a tall white horse, followed by Max in chieftain's robes
and chieftain's long head-dress of dyed feathers, then by the others
in war-paint and feathers and brilliant Navajo blankets. They
carried bows and spears. Ciccio was without his blanket, naked to
the waist, in war-paint, and brandishing a long spear. He dashed up
from the rear, saluted the chieftain with his arm and his spear on
high as he swept past, suddenly drew up his rearing steed, and
trotted slowly back again, making his horse perform its paces. He
was extraordinarily velvety and alive on horseback.

Crowds of excited, shouting children ran chattering along the
pavements. The colliers, as they tramped grey and heavy, in an
intermittent stream uphill from the low grey west, stood on the
pavement in wonder as the cavalcade approached and passed, jingling
the silver bells of its trappings, vibrating the wonderful colours
of the barred blankets and saddle cloths, the scarlet wool of the
accoutrements, the bright tips of feathers. Women shrieked as
Ciccio, in his war-paint, wheeled near the pavement. Children
screamed and ran. The colliers shouted. Ciccio smiled in his
terrifying war-paint, brandished his spear and trotted softly, like
a flower on its stem, round to the procession.

Miss Pinnegar and Alvina and James Houghton had come round into
Knarborough Road to watch. It was a great moment. Looking along the
road they saw all the shopkeepers at their doors, the pavements
eager. And then, in the distance, the white horse jingling its
trappings of scarlet hair and bells, with the dusky Kishwégin
sitting on the saddle-blanket of brilliant, lurid stripes, sitting
impassive and all dusky above that intermittent flashing of colour:
then the chieftain, dark-faced, erect, easy, swathed in a white
blanket, with scarlet and black stripes, and all his strange crest
of white, tip-dyed feathers swaying down his back: as he came nearer
one saw the wolfskin and the brilliant moccasins against the black
sides of his horse; Louis and Goeffrey followed, lurid, horrid in
the face, wearing blankets with stroke after stroke of blazing
colour upon their duskiness, and sitting stern, holding their
spears: lastly, Ciccio, on his bay horse with a green seat,
flickering hither and thither in the rear, his feathers swaying, his
horse sweating, his face ghastlily smiling in its war-paint. So they
advanced down the grey pallor of Knarborough Road, in the late
wintry afternoon. Somewhere the sun was setting, and far overhead
was a flush of orange.

"Well I never!" murmured Miss Pinnegar. "Well I never!"

The strange savageness of the striped Navajo blankets seemed to her
unsettling, advancing down Knarborough Road: she examined Kishwégin
curiously.

"Can you _believe_ that that's Mr. May--he's exactly like a girl.
Well, well--it makes you wonder what is and what isn't. But _aren't_
they good? What? Most striking. Exactly like Indians. You can't
believe your eyes. My word what a terrifying race they--" Here she
uttered a scream and ran back clutching the wall as Ciccio swept
past, brushing her with his horse's tail, and actually swinging his
spear so as to touch Alvina and James Houghton lightly with the butt
of it. James too started with a cry, the mob at the corner screamed.
But Alvina caught the slow, mischievous smile as the painted horror
showed his teeth in passing; she was able to flash back an excited
laugh. She felt his yellow-tawny eyes linger on her, in that one
second, as if negligently.

"I call that too much!" Miss Pinnegar was crying, thoroughly upset.
"Now that was unnecessary! Why it was enough to scare one to death.
Besides, it's dangerous. It ought to be put a stop to. I don't
believe in letting these show-people have liberties."

The cavalcade was slowly passing, with its uneasy horses and its
flare of striped colour and its silent riders. Ciccio was trotting
softly back, on his green saddle-cloth, suave as velvet, his dusky,
naked torso beautiful.

"Eh, you'd think he'd get his death," the women in the crowd were
saying.

"A proper savage one, that. Makes your blood run cold--"

"Ay, an' a man for all that, take's painted face for what's worth. A
tidy man, _I_ say."

He did not look at Alvina. The faint, mischievous smile uncovered
his teeth. He fell in suddenly behind Geoffrey, with a jerk of his
steed, calling out to Geoffrey in Italian.

It was becoming cold. The cavalcade fell into a trot, Mr. May
shaking rather badly. Ciccio halted, rested his lance against a
lamp-post, switched his green blanket from beneath him, flung it
round him as he sat, and darted off. They had all disappeared over
the brow of Lumley Hill, descending. He was gone too. In the wintry
twilight the crowd began, lingeringly, to turn away. And in some
strange way, it manifested its disapproval of the spectacle: as
grown-up men and women, they were a little bit insulted by such a
show. It was an anachronism. They wanted a direct appeal to the
mind. Miss Pinnegar expressed it.

"Well," she said, when she was safely back in Manchester House, with
the gas lighted, and as she was pouring the boiling water into the
tea-pot, "You may say what you like. It's interesting in a way, just
to show what savage Red-Indians were like. But it's childish. It's
only childishness. I can't understand, myself, how people can go on
liking shows. Nothing happens. It's not like the cinema, where you
see it all and take it all in at once; you _know_ everything at a
glance. You don't know anything by looking at these people. You know
they're only men dressed up, for money. I can't see why you should
encourage it. I don't hold with idle show-people, parading round, I
don't, myself. I like to go to the cinema once a week. It's
instruction, you take it all in at a glance, all you need to know,
and it lasts you for a week. You can get to know everything about
people's actual lives from the cinema. I don't see why you want
people dressing up and showing off."

They sat down to their tea and toast and marmalade, during this
harangue. Miss Pinnegar was always like a douche of cold water to
Alvina, bringing her back to consciousness after a delicious
excitement. In a minute Madame and Ciccio and all seemed to become
unreal--the actual unrealities: while the ragged dithering pictures
of the film were actual, real as the day. And Alvina was always put
out when this happened. She really hated Miss Pinnegar. Yet she had
nothing to answer. They _were_ unreal, Madame and Ciccio and the
rest. Ciccio was just a fantasy blown in on the wind, to blow away
again. The real, permanent thing was Woodhouse, the _semper idem_
Knarborough Road, and the unchangeable grubby gloom of Manchester
House, with the stuffy, padding Miss Pinnegar, and her father, whose
fingers, whose very soul seemed dirty with pennies. These were the
solid, permanent fact. These were life itself. And Ciccio, splashing
up on his bay horse and green cloth, he was a mountebank and an
extraneous nonentity, a coloured old rag blown down the Knarborough
Road into Limbo. Into Limbo. Whilst Miss Pinnegar and her father sat
frowsily on for ever, eating their toast and cutting off the crust,
and sipping their third cup of tea. They would never blow
away--never, never. Woodhouse was there to eternity. And the
Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe was blowing like a rag of old paper into
Limbo. Nothingness! Poor Madame! Poor gallant histrionic Madame! The
frowsy Miss Pinnegar could crumple her up and throw her down the
utilitarian drain, and have done with her. Whilst Miss Pinnegar
lived on for ever.

This put Alvina into a sharp temper.

"Miss Pinnegar," she said. "I do think you go on in the most
unattractive way sometimes. You're a regular spoil-sport."

"Well," said Miss Pinnegar tartly. "I don't approve of your way of
sport, I'm afraid."

"You can't disapprove of it as much as I hate your spoil-sport
existence," said Alvina in a flare.

"Alvina, are you mad!" said her father.

"Wonder I'm not," said Alvina, "considering what my life is."




CHAPTER VIII

CICCIO


Madame did not pick up her spirits, after her cold. For two days she
lay in bed, attended by Mrs. Rollings and Alvina and the young men.
But she was most careful never to give any room for scandal. The
young men might not approach her save in the presence of some third
party. And then it was strictly a visit of ceremony or business.

"Oh, your Woodhouse, how glad I shall be when I have left it," she
said to Alvina. "I feel it is unlucky for me."

"Do you?" said Alvina. "But if you'd had this bad cold in some
places, you might have been much worse, don't you think."

"Oh my dear!" cried Madame. "Do you think I could confuse you in my
dislike of this Woodhouse? Oh no! You are not Woodhouse. On the
contrary, I think it is unkind for you also, this place. You
look--also--what shall I say--thin, not very happy."

It was a note of interrogation.

"I'm sure I dislike Woodhouse much more than you can," replied
Alvina.

"I am sure. Yes! I am sure. I see it. Why don't you go away? Why
don't you marry?"

"Nobody wants to marry me," said Alvina.

Madame looked at her searchingly, with shrewd black eyes under her
arched eyebrows.

"How!" she exclaimed. "How don't they? You are not bad looking, only
a little too thin--too haggard--"

She watched Alvina. Alvina laughed uncomfortably.

"Is there _nobody_?" persisted Madame.

"Not now," said Alvina. "Absolutely nobody." She looked with a
confused laugh into Madame's strict black eyes. "You see I didn't
care for the Woodhouse young men, either. I _couldn't_."

Madame nodded slowly up and down. A secret satisfaction came over
her pallid, waxy countenance, in which her black eyes were like twin
swift extraneous creatures: oddly like two bright little dark
animals in the snow.

"Sure!" she said, sapient. "Sure! How could you? But there are other
men besides these here--" She waved her hand to the window.

"I don't meet them, do I?" said Alvina.

"No, not often. But sometimes! sometimes!"

There was a silence between the two women, very pregnant.

"Englishwomen," said Madame, "are so practical. Why are they?"

"I suppose they can't help it," said Alvina. "But they're not half
so practical and clever as _you_, Madame."

"Oh la--la! I am practical differently. I am practical
impractically--" she stumbled over the words. "But your Sue now, in
Jude the Obscure--is it not an interesting book? And is she not
always too practically practical. If she had been impractically
practical she could have been quite happy. Do you know what I
mean?--no. But she is ridiculous. Sue: so Anna Karénine. Ridiculous
both. Don't you think?"

"Why?" said Alvina.

"Why did they both make everybody unhappy, when they had the man
they wanted, and enough money? I think they are both so silly. If
they had been beaten, they would have lost all their practical ideas
and troubles, merely forgot them, and been happy enough. I am a
woman who says it. Such ideas they have are not tragical. No, not at
all. They are nonsense, you see, nonsense. That is all. Nonsense.
Sue and Anna, they are--non-sensical. That is all. No tragedy
whatsoever. Nonsense. I am a woman. I know men also. And I know
nonsense when I see it. Englishwomen are all nonsense: the worst
women in the world for nonsense."

"Well, I am English," said Alvina.

"Yes, my dear, you are English. But you are not necessarily so
non-sensical. Why are you at all?"

"Nonsensical?" laughed Alvina. "But I don't know what you call my
nonsense."

"Ah," said Madame wearily. "They never understand. But I like you,
my dear. I am an old woman--"

"Younger than I," said Alvina.

"Younger than you, because I am practical from the heart, and not
only from the head. You are not practical from the heart. And yet
you have a heart."

"But all Englishwomen have good hearts," protested Alvina.

"No! No!" objected Madame. "They are all ve-ry kind, and ve-ry
practical with their kindness. But they have no heart in all their
kindness. It is all head, all head: the kindness of the head."

"I can't agree with you," said Alvina.

"No. No. I don't expect it. But I don't mind. You are very kind to
me, and I thank you. But it is from the head, you see. And so I
thank you from the head. From the heart--no."

Madame plucked her white fingers together and laid them on her
breast with a gesture of repudiation. Her black eyes stared
spitefully.

"But Madame," said Alvina, nettled, "I should never be half such a
good business woman as you. Isn't that from the head?"

"Ha! of course! Of course you wouldn't be a good business woman.
Because you are kind from the head. I--" she tapped her forehead and
shook her head--"I am not kind from the head. From the head I am
business-woman, good business-woman. Of course I am a good
business-woman--of course! But--" here she changed her expression,
widened her eyes, and laid her hand on her breast--"when the heart
speaks--then I listen with the heart. I do not listen with the head.
The heart hears the heart. The head--that is another thing. But you
have blue eyes, you cannot understand. Only dark eyes--" She paused
and mused.

"And what about yellow eyes?" asked Alvina, laughing.

Madame darted a look at her, her lips curling with a very faint,
fine smile of derision. Yet for the first time her black eyes
dilated and became warm.

"Yellow eyes like Ciccio's?" she said, with her great watchful eyes
and her smiling, subtle mouth. "They are the darkest of all." And
she shook her head roguishly.

"Are they!" said Alvina confusedly, feeling a blush burning up her
throat into her face.

"Ha--ha!" laughed Madame. "Ha-ha! I am an old woman, you see. My
heart is old enough to be kind, and my head is old enough to be
clever. My heart is kind to few people--very few--especially in this
England. My young men know that. But perhaps to you it is kind."

"Thank you," said Alvina.

"There! From the head _Thank you_. It is not well done, you see. You
see!"

But Alvina ran away in confusion. She felt Madame was having her on
a string.

Mr. May enjoyed himself hugely playing Kishwégin. When Madame came
downstairs Louis, who was a good satirical mimic, imitated him.
Alvina happened to come into their sitting-room in the midst of
their bursts of laughter. They all stopped and looked at her
cautiously.

"Continuez! Continuez!" said Madame to Louis. And to Alvina: "Sit
down, my dear, and see what a good actor we have in our Louis."

Louis glanced round, laid his head a little on one side and drew in
his chin, with Mr. May's smirk exactly, and wagging his tail
slightly, he commenced to play the false Kishwégin. He sidled and
bridled and ejaculated with raised hands, and in the dumb show the
tall Frenchman made such a ludicrous caricature of Mr. Houghton's
manager that Madame wept again with laughter, whilst Max leaned back
against the wall and giggled continuously like some pot
involuntarily boiling. Geoffrey spread his shut fists across the
table and shouted with laughter, Ciccio threw back his head and
showed all his teeth in a loud laugh of delighted derision. Alvina
laughed also. But she flushed. There was a certain biting,
annihilating quality in Louis' derision of the absentee. And the
others enjoyed it so much. At moments Alvina caught her lip between
her teeth, it was so screamingly funny, and so annihilating. She
laughed in spite of herself. In spite of herself she was shaken into
a convulsion of laughter. Louis was masterful--he mastered her
psyche. She laughed till her head lay helpless on the chair, she
could not move. Helpless, inert she lay, in her orgasm of laughter.
The end of Mr. May. Yet she was hurt.

And then Madame wiped her own shrewd black eyes, and nodded slow
approval. Suddenly Louis started and held up a warning finger. They
all at once covered their smiles and pulled themselves together.
Only Alvina lay silently laughing.

"Oh, good morning, Mrs. Rollings!" they heard Mr. May's voice. "Your
company is lively. Is Miss Houghton here? May I go through?"

They heard his quick little step and his quick little tap.

"Come in," called Madame.

The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras all sat with straight faces. Only poor Alvina
lay back in her chair in a new weak convulsion. Mr. May glanced
quickly round, and advanced to Madame.

"Oh, good-morning, Madame, so glad to see you downstairs," he said,
taking her hand and bowing ceremoniously. "Excuse my intruding on
your mirth!" He looked archly round. Alvina was still incompetent.
She lay leaning sideways in her chair, and could not even speak to
him.

"It was evidently a good joke," he said. "May I hear it too?"

"Oh," said Madame, drawling. "It was no joke. It was only Louis
making a fool of himself, doing a turn."

"Must have been a good one," said Mr. May. "Can't we put it on?"

"No," drawled Madame, "it was nothing--just a non-sensical mood of
the moment. Won't you sit down? You would like a little
whiskey?--yes?"

Max poured out whiskey and water for Mr. May.

Alvina sat with her face averted, quiet, but unable to speak to Mr.
May. Max and Louis had become polite. Geoffrey stared with his big,
dark-blue eyes stolidly at the newcomer. Ciccio leaned with his arms
on his knees, looking sideways under his long lashes at the inert
Alvina.

"Well," said Madame, "and are you satisfied with your houses?"

"Oh yes," said Mr. May. "Quite! The two nights have been excellent.
Excellent!"

"Ah--I am glad. And Miss Houghton tells me I should not dance
tomorrow, it is too soon."

"Miss Houghton _knows_," said Mr. May archly.

"Of course!" said Madame. "I must do as she tells me."

"Why yes, since it is for your good, and not hers."

"Of course! Of course! It is very kind of her."

"Miss Houghton is _most_ kind--to _every one_," said Mr. May.

"I am sure," said Madame. "And I am very glad you have been such a
good Kishwégin. That is very nice also."

"Yes," replied Mr. May. "I begin to wonder if I have mistaken my
vocation. I should have been _on_ the boards, instead of behind
them."

"No doubt," said Madame. "But it is a little late--"

The eyes of the foreigners, watching him, flattered Mr. May.

"I'm afraid it is," he said. "Yes. Popular taste is a mysterious
thing. How do you feel, now? Do you feel they appreciate your work
as much as they did?"

Madame watched him with her black eyes.

"No," she replied. "They don't. The pictures are driving us away.
Perhaps we shall last for ten years more. And after that, we are
finished."

"You think so," said Mr. May, looking serious.

"I am sure," she said, nodding sagely.

"But why is it?" said Mr. May, angry and petulant.

"Why is it? I don't know. I don't know. The pictures are cheap, and
they are easy, and they cost the audience nothing, no feeling of the
heart, no appreciation of the spirit, cost them nothing of these.
And so they like them, and they don't like us, because they must
_feel_ the things we do, from the heart, and appreciate them from
the spirit. There!"

"And they don't want to appreciate and to feel?" said Mr. May.

"No. They don't want. They want it all through the eye, and
finished--so! Just curiosity, impertinent curiosity. That's all. In
all countries, the same. And so--in ten years' time--no more
Kishwégin at all."

"No. Then what future have you?" said Mr. May gloomily.

"I may be dead--who knows. If not, I shall have my little apartment
in Lausanne, or in Bellizona, and I shall be a bourgeoise once more,
and the good Catholic which I am."

"Which I am also," said Mr. May.

"So! Are you? An American Catholic?"

"Well--English--Irish--American."

"So!"

Mr. May never felt more gloomy in his life than he did that day.
Where, finally, was he to rest his troubled head?

There was not all peace in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara group either. For
Thursday, there was to be a change of program--"Kishwégin's
Wedding--" (with the white prisoner, be if said)--was to take the
place of the previous scene. Max of course was the director of the
rehearsal. Madame would not come near the theatre when she herself
was not to be acting.

Though very quiet and unobtrusive as a rule, Max could suddenly
assume an air of _hauteur_ and overbearing which was really very
annoying. Geoffrey always fumed under it. But Ciccio it put into
unholy, ungovernable tempers. For Max, suddenly, would reveal his
contempt of the Eyetalian, as he called Ciccio, using the Cockney
word.

"Bah! quelle tête de veau," said Max, suddenly contemptuous and
angry because Ciccio, who really was slow at taking in the things
said to him, had once more failed to understand.

"Comment?" queried Ciccio, in his slow, derisive way.

"_Comment_!" sneered Max, in echo. "_What?_ _What?_ Why what _did_ I
say? Calf's-head I said. Pig's-head, if that seems more suitable to
you."

"To whom? To me or to you?" said Ciccio, sidling up.

"To you, lout of an Italian."

Max's colour was up, he held himself erect, his brown hair seemed to
rise erect from his forehead, his blue eyes glared fierce.

"That is to say, to me, from an uncivilized German pig, ah? ah?"

All this in French. Alvina, as she sat at the piano, saw Max tall
and blanched with anger; Ciccio with his neck stuck out, oblivious
and convulsed with rage, stretching his neck at Max. All were in
ordinary dress, but without coats, acting in their shirt-sleeves.
Ciccio was clutching a property knife.

"Now! None of that! None of that!" said Mr. May, peremptory. But
Ciccio, stretching forward taut and immobile with rage, was quite
unconscious. His hand was fast on his stage knife.

"A dirty Eyetalian," said Max, in English, turning to Mr. May. "They
understand nothing."

But the last word was smothered in Ciccio's spring and stab. Max
half started on to his guard, received the blow on his collar-bone,
near the pommel of the shoulder, reeled round on top of Mr. May,
whilst Ciccio sprang like a cat down from the stage and bounded
across the theatre and out of the door, leaving the knife rattling
on the boards behind him. Max recovered and sprang like a demon,
white with rage, straight out into the theatre after him.

"Stop--stop--!" cried Mr. May.

"Halte, Max! Max, Max, attends!" cried Louis and Geoffrey, as Louis
sprang down after his friend. Thud went the boards again, with the
spring of a man.

Alvina, who had been seated waiting at the piano below, started up
and overturned her chair as Ciccio rushed past her. Now Max, white,
with set blue eyes, was upon her.

"Don't--!" she cried, lifting her hand to stop his progress. He saw
her, swerved, and hesitated, turned to leap over the seats and avoid
her, when Louis caught him and flung his arms round him.

"Max--attends, ami! Laisse le partir. Max, tu sais que je t'aime. Tu
le sais, ami. Tu le sais. Laisse le partir."

Max and Louis wrestled together in the gangway, Max looking down
with hate on his friend. But Louis was determined also, he wrestled
as fiercely as Max, and at last the latter began to yield. He was
panting and beside himself. Louis still held him by the hand and by
the arm.

"Let him go, brother, he isn't worth it. What does he understand,
Max, dear brother, what does he understand? These fellows from the
south, they are half children, half animal. They don't know what
they are doing. Has he hurt you, dear friend? Has he hurt you? It
was a dummy knife, but it was a heavy blow--the dog of an Italian.
Let us see."

So gradually Max was brought to stand still. From under the edge of
his waistcoat, on the shoulder, the blood was already staining the
shirt.

"Are you cut, brother, brother?" said Louis. "Let us see."

Max now moved his arm with pain. They took off his waistcoat and
pushed back his shirt. A nasty blackening wound, with the skin
broken.

"If the bone isn't broken!" said Louis anxiously. "If the bone isn't
broken! Lift thy arm, frère--lift. It hurts you--so--. No--no--it is
not broken--no--the bone is not broken."

"There is no bone broken, I know," said Max.

"The animal. He hasn't done _that_, at least."

"Where do you imagine he's gone?" asked Mr. May.

The foreigners shrugged their shoulders, and paid no heed. There was
no more rehearsal.

"We had best go home and speak to Madame," said Mr. May, who was
very frightened for his evening performance.

They locked up the Endeavour. Alvina was thinking of Ciccio. He was
gone in his shirt sleeves. She had taken his jacket and hat from the
dressing-room at the back, and carried them under her rain-coat,
which she had on her arm.

Madame was in a state of perturbation. She had heard some one come
in at the back, and go upstairs, and go out again. Mrs. Rollings had
told her it was the Italian, who had come in in his shirt-sleeves
and gone out in his black coat and black hat, taking his bicycle,
without saying a word. Poor Madame! She was struggling into her
shoes, she had her hat on, when the others arrived.

"What is it?" she cried.

She heard a hurried explanation from Louis.

"Ah, the animal, the animal, he wasn't worth all my pains!" cried poor
Madame, sitting with one shoe off and one shoe on. "Why, Max, why didst
thou not remain man enough to control that insulting mountain temper of
thine. Have I not said, and said, and said that in the Natcha-Kee-Tawara
there was but one nation, the Red Indian, and but one tribe, the tribe
of Kishwe? And now thou hast called him a dirty Italian, or a dog of an
Italian, and he has behaved like an animal. Too much, too much of an
animal, too little _esprit_. But thou, Max, art almost as bad. Thy
temper is a devil's, which maybe is worse than an animal's. Ah, this
Woodhouse, a curse is on it, I know it is. Would we were away from it.
Will the week never pass? We shall have to find Ciccio. Without him the
company is ruined--until I get a substitute. I must get a substitute.
And how?--and where?--in this country?--tell me that. I am tired of
Natcha-Kee-Tawara. There is no true tribe of Kishwe--no, never. I have
had enough of Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Let us break up, let us part, _mes
braves_, let us say adieu here in this _funeste_ Woodhouse."

"Oh, Madame, dear Madame," said Louis, "let us hope. Let us swear a
closer fidelity, dear Madame, our Kishwégin. Let us never part.
Max, thou dost not want to part, brother, well-loved? Thou dost not
want to part, brother whom I love? And thou, Geoffrey, thou--"

Madame burst into tears, Louis wept too, even Max turned aside his
face, with tears. Alvina stole out of the room, followed by Mr. May.

In a while Madame came out to them.

"Oh," she said. "You have not gone away! We are wondering which way
Ciccio will have gone, on to Knarborough or to Marchay. Geoffrey
will go on his bicycle to find him. But shall it be to Knarborough
or to Marchay?"

"Ask the policeman in the market-place," said Alvina. "He's sure to
have noticed him, because Ciccio's yellow bicycle is so uncommon."

Mr. May tripped out on this errand, while the others discussed among
themselves where Ciccio might be.

Mr. May returned, and said that Ciccio had ridden off down the
Knarborough Road. It was raining slightly.

"Ah!" said Madame. "And now how to find him, in that great town. I
am afraid he will leave us without pity."

"Surely he will want to speak to Geoffrey before he goes," said
Louis. "They were always good friends."

They all looked at Geoffrey. He shrugged his broad shoulders.

"Always good friends," he said. "Yes. He will perhaps wait for me at
his cousin's in Battersea. In Knarborough, I don't know."

"How much money had he?" asked Mr. May.

Madame spread her hands and lifted her shoulders.

"Who knows?" she said.

"These Italians," said Louis, turning to Mr. May. "They have always
money. In another country, they will not spend one sou if they can
help. They are like this--" And he made the Neapolitan gesture
drawing in the air with his fingers.

"But would he abandon you all without a word?" cried Mr. May.

"Yes! Yes!" said Madame, with a sort of stoic pathos. "_He_ would.
He alone would do such a thing. But he would do it."

"And what point would he make for?"

"What point? You mean where would he go? To Battersea, no doubt, to
his cousin--and then to Italy, if he thinks he has saved enough
money to buy land, or whatever it is."

"And so good-bye to him," said Mr. May bitterly.

"Geoffrey ought to know," said Madame, looking at Geoffrey.

Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, and would not give his comrade
away.

"No," he said. "I don't know. He will leave a message at Battersea,
I know. But I don't know if he will go to Italy."

"And you don't know where to find him in Knarborough?" asked Mr.
May, sharply, very much on the spot.

"No--I don't. Perhaps at the station he will go by train to London."
It was evident Geoffrey was not going to help Mr. May.

"Alors!" said Madame, cutting through this futility. "Go thou to
Knarborough, Geoffrey, and see--and be back at the theatre for work.
Go now. And if thou can'st find him, bring him again to us. Tell him
to come out of kindness to me. Tell him."

And she waved the young man away. He departed on his nine mile ride
through the rain to Knarborough.

"They know," said Madame. "They know each other's places. It is a
little more than a year since we came to Knarborough. But they will
remember."

Geoffrey rode swiftly as possible through the mud. He did not care
very much whether he found his friend or not. He liked the Italian,
but he never looked on him as a permanency. He knew Ciccio was
dissatisfied, and wanted a change. He knew that Italy was pulling
him away from the troupe, with which he had been associated now for
three years or more. And the Swiss from Martigny knew that the
Neapolitan would go, breaking all ties, one day suddenly back to
Italy. It was so, and Geoffrey was philosophical about it.

He rode into town, and the first thing he did was to seek out the
music-hall artistes at their lodgings. He knew a good many of them.
They gave him a welcome and a whiskey--but none of them had seen
Ciccio. They sent him off to other artistes, other lodging-houses.
He went the round of associates known and unknown, of lodgings
strange and familiar, of third-rate possible public houses. Then he
went to the Italians down in the Marsh--he knew these people always
ask for one another. And then, hurrying, he dashed to the Midland
Station, and then to the Great Central Station, asking the porters
on the London departure platform if they had seen his pal, a man
with a yellow bicycle, and a black bicycle cape. All to no purpose.

Geoffrey hurriedly lit his lamp and swung off in the dark back to
Woodhouse. He was a powerfully built, imperturbable fellow. He
pressed slowly uphill through the streets, then ran downhill into
the darkness of the industrial country. He had continually to cross
the new tram-lines, which were awkward, and he had occasionally to
dodge the brilliantly-illuminated tram-cars which threaded their way
across-country through so much darkness. All the time it rained, and
his back wheel slipped under him, in the mud and on the new
tram-track.

As he pressed in the long darkness that lay between Slaters Mill and
Durbeyhouses, he saw a light ahead--another cyclist. He moved to his
side of the road. The light approached very fast. It was a strong
acetylene flare. He watched it. A flash and a splash and he saw the
humped back of what was probably Ciccio going by at a great pace on
the low racing machine.

"Hi Cic'--! Ciccio!" he yelled, dropping off his own bicycle.

"Ha-er-er!" he heard the answering shout, unmistakably Italian, way
down the darkness.

He turned--saw the other cyclist had stopped. The flare swung round,
and Ciccio softly rode up. He dropped off beside Geoffrey.

"Toi!" said Ciccio.

"Hé! Où vas-tu?"

"Hé!" ejaculated Ciccio.

Their conversation consisted a good deal in noises variously
ejaculated.

"Coming back?" asked Geoffrey.

"Where've you been?" retorted Ciccio.

"Knarborough--looking for thee. Where have you--?"

"Buckled my front wheel at Durbeyhouses."

"Come off?"

"Hé!"

"Hurt?"

"Nothing."

"Max is all right."

"Merde!"

"Come on, come back with me."

"Nay." Ciccio shook his head.

"Madame's crying. Wants thee to come back."

Ciccio shook his head.

"Come on, Cic'--" said Geoffrey.

Ciccio shook his head.

"Never?" said Geoffrey.

"Basta--had enough," said Ciccio, with an invisible grimace.

"Come for a bit, and we'll clear together."

Ciccio again shook his head.

"What, is it adieu?"

Ciccio did not speak.

"Don't go, comrade," said Geoffrey.

"Faut," said Ciccio, slightly derisive.

"Eh alors! I'd like to come with thee. What?"

"Where?"

"Doesn't matter. Thou'rt going to Italy?"

"Who knows!--seems so."

"I'd like to go back."

"Eh alors!" Ciccio half veered round.

"Wait for me a few days," said Geoffrey.

"Where?"

"See you tomorrow in Knarborough. Go to Mrs. Pym's, 6 Hampden
Street. Gittiventi is there. Right, eh?"

"I'll think about it."

"Eleven o'clock, eh?"

"I'll think about it."

"Friends ever--Ciccio--eh?" Geoffrey held out his hand.

Ciccio slowly took it. The two men leaned to each other and kissed
farewell, on either cheek.

"Tomorrow, Cic'--"

"Au revoir, Gigi."

Ciccio dropped on to his bicycle and was gone in a breath. Geoffrey
waited a moment for a tram which was rushing brilliantly up to him
in the rain. Then he mounted and rode in the opposite direction. He
went straight down to Lumley, and Madame had to remain on
tenterhooks till ten o'clock.

She heard the news, and said:

"Tomorrow I go to fetch him." And with this she went to bed.

In the morning she was up betimes, sending a note to Alvina. Alvina
appeared at nine o'clock.

"You will come with me?" said Madame. "Come. Together we will go to
Knarborough and bring back the naughty Ciccio. Come with me, because
I haven't all my strength. Yes, you will? Good! Good! Let us tell
the young men, and we will go now, on the tram-car."

"But I am not properly dressed," said Alvina.

"Who will see?" said Madame. "Come, let us go."

They told Geoffrey they would meet him at the corner of Hampden
Street at five minutes to eleven.

"You see," said Madame to Alvina, "they are very funny, these young
men, particularly Italians. You must never let them think you have
caught them. Perhaps he will not let us see him--who knows? Perhaps
he will go off to Italy all the same."

They sat in the bumping tram-car, a long and wearying journey. And
then they tramped the dreary, hideous streets of the manufacturing
town. At the corner of the street they waited for Geoffrey, who rode
up muddily on his bicycle.

"Ask Ciccio to come out to us, and we will go and drink coffee at
the Geisha Restaurant--or tea or something," said Madame.

Again the two women waited wearily at the street-end. At last
Geoffrey returned, shaking his head.

"He won't come?" cried Madame.

"No."

"He says he is going back to Italy?"

"To London."

"It is the same. You can never trust them. Is he quite obstinate?"

Geoffrey lifted his shoulders. Madame could see the beginnings of
defection in him too. And she was tired and dispirited.

"We shall have to finish the Natcha-Kee-Tawara, that is all," she
said fretfully.

Geoffrey watched her stolidly, impassively.

"Dost thou want to go with him?" she asked suddenly.

Geoffrey smiled sheepishly, and his colour deepened. But he did not
speak.

"Go then--" she said. "Go then! Go with him! But for the sake of my
honour, finish this week at Woodhouse. Can I make Miss Houghton's
father lose these two nights? Where is your shame? Finish this week
and then go, go--But finish this week. Tell Francesco that. I have
finished with him. But let him finish this engagement. Don't put me
to shame, don't destroy my honour, and the honour of the
Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Tell him that."

Geoffrey turned again into the house. Madame, in her chic little
black hat and spotted veil, and her trim black coat-and-skirt, stood
there at the street-corner staring before her, shivering a little
with cold, but saying no word of any sort.

Again Geoffrey appeared out of the doorway. His face was impassive.

"He says he doesn't want," he said.

"Ah!" she cried suddenly in French, "the ungrateful, the animal! He
shall suffer. See if he shall not suffer. The low canaille, without
faith or feeling. My Max, thou wert right. Ah, such canaille should
be beaten, as dogs are beaten, till they follow at heel. Will no one
beat him for me, no one? Yes. Go back. Tell him before he leaves
England he shall feel the hand of Kishwégin, and it shall be heavier
than the Black Hand. Tell him that, the coward, that causes a
woman's word to be broken against her will. Ah, canaille, canaille!
Neither faith nor feeling, neither faith nor feeling. Trust them
not, dogs of the south." She took a few agitated steps down the
pavement. Then she raised her veil to wipe away her tears of anger
and bitter disappointment.

"Wait a bit," said Alvina. "I'll go." She was touched.

"No. Don't you!" cried Madame.

"Yes I will," she said. The light of battle was in her eyes. "You'll
come with me to the door," she said to Geoffrey.

Geoffrey started obediently, and led the way up a long narrow stair,
covered with yellow-and-brown oil-cloth, rather worn, on to the top
of the house.

"Ciccio," he said, outside the door.

"Oui!" came the curly voice of Ciccio.

Geoffrey opened the door. Ciccio was sitting on a narrow bed, in a
rather poor attic, under the steep slope of the roof.

"Don't come in," said Alvina to Geoffrey, looking over her shoulder
at him as she entered. Then she closed the door behind her, and
stood with her back to it, facing the Italian. He sat loose on the
bed, a cigarette between his fingers, dropping ash on the bare
boards between his feet. He looked up curiously at Alvina. She stood
watching him with wide, bright blue eyes, smiling slightly, and
saying nothing. He looked up at her steadily, on his guard, from
under his long black lashes.

"Won't you come?" she said, smiling and looking into his eyes. He
flicked off the ash of his cigarette with his little finger. She
wondered why he wore the nail of his little finger so long, so very
long. Still she smiled at him, and still he gave no sign.

"Do come!" she urged, never taking her eyes from him.

He made not the slightest movement, but sat with his hands dropped
between his knees, watching her, the cigarette wavering up its blue
thread of smoke.

"Won't you?" she said, as she stood with her back to the door.
"Won't you come?" She smiled strangely and vividly.

Suddenly she took a pace forward, stooped, watching his face as if
timidly, caught his brown hand in her own and lifted it towards
herself. His hand started, dropped the cigarette, but was not
withdrawn.

"You will come, won't you?" she said, smiling gently into his
strange, watchful yellow eyes, that looked fixedly into hers, the
dark pupil opening round and softening. She smiled into his
softening round eyes, the eyes of some animal which stares in one of
its silent, gentler moments. And suddenly she kissed his hand,
kissed it twice, quickly, on the fingers and the back. He wore a
silver ring. Even as she kissed his fingers with her lips, the
silver ring seemed to her a symbol of his subjection, inferiority.
She drew his hand slightly. And he rose to his feet.

She turned round and took the door-handle, still holding his fingers
in her left hand.

"You are coming, aren't you?" she said, looking over her shoulder
into his eyes. And taking consent from his unchanging eyes, she let
go his hand and slightly opened the door. He turned slowly, and
taking his coat from a nail, slung it over his shoulders and drew it
on. Then he picked up his hat, and put his foot on his half-smoked
cigarette, which lay smoking still. He followed her out of the room,
walking with his head rather forward, in the half loutish,
sensual-subjected way of the Italians.

As they entered the street, they saw the trim, French figure of
Madame standing alone, as if abandoned. Her face was very white
under her spotted veil, her eyes very black. She watched Ciccio
following behind Alvina in his dark, hangdog fashion, and she did
not move a muscle until he came to a standstill in front of her. She
was watching his face.

"Te voilà donc!" she said, without expression. "Allons boire un
café, hé? Let us go and drink some coffee." She had now put an
inflection of tenderness into her voice. But her eyes were black
with anger. Ciccio smiled slowly, the slow, fine, stupid smile, and
turned to walk alongside.

Madame said nothing as they went. Geoffrey passed on his bicycle,
calling out that he would go straight to Woodhouse.

When the three sat with their cups of coffee, Madame pushed up her
veil just above her eyes, so that it was a black band above her
brows. Her face was pale and full like a child's, but almost stonily
expressionless, her eyes were black and inscrutable. She watched
both Ciccio and Alvina with her black, inscrutable looks.

"Would you like also biscuits with your coffee, the two of you?" she
said, with an amiable intonation which her strange black looks
belied.

"Yes," said Alvina. She was a little flushed, as if defiant, while
Ciccio sat sheepishly, turning aside his ducked head, the slow,
stupid, yet fine smile on his lips.

"And no more trouble with Max, hein?--you Ciccio?" said Madame,
still with the amiable intonation and the same black, watching eyes.
"No more of these stupid scenes, hein? What? Do you answer me."

"No more from me," he said, looking up at her with a narrow,
cat-like look in his derisive eyes.

"Ho? No? No more? Good then! It is good! We are glad, aren't we,
Miss Houghton, that Ciccio has come back and there are to be no
more rows?--hein?--aren't we?"

"_I'm_ awfully glad," said Alvina.

"Awfully glad--yes--awfully glad! You hear, you Ciccio. And you
remember another time. What? Don't you? Hé?"

He looked up at her, the slow, derisive smile curling his lips.

"Sure," he said slowly, with subtle intonation.

"Yes. Good! Well then! Well then! We are all friends. We are all
friends, aren't we, all the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Hé? What you think?
What you say?"

"Yes," said Ciccio, again looking up at her with his yellow,
glinting eyes.

"All right! All right then! It is all right--forgotten--" Madame
sounded quite frank and restored. But the sullen watchfulness in her
eyes, and the narrowed look in Ciccio's, as he glanced at her,
showed another state behind the obviousness of the words. "And Miss
Houghton is one of us! Yes? She has united us once more, and so she
has become one of us." Madame smiled strangely from her blank, round
white face.

"I should love to be one of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras," said Alvina.

"Yes--well--why not? Why not become one? Why not? What you say,
Ciccio? You can play the piano, perhaps do other things. Perhaps
better than Kishwégin. What you say, Ciccio, should she not join us?
Is she not one of us?"

He smiled and showed his teeth but did not answer.

"Well, what is it? Say then? Shall she not?"

"Yes," said Ciccio, unwilling to commit himself.

"Yes, so I say! So I say. Quite a good idea! We will think of it,
and speak perhaps to your father, and you shall come! Yes."

So the two women returned to Woodhouse by the tram-car, while Ciccio
rode home on his bicycle. It was surprising how little Madame and
Alvina found to say to one another.

Madame effected the reunion of her troupe, and all seemed pretty
much as before. She had decided to dance the next night, the
Saturday night. On Sunday the party would leave for Warsall, about
thirty miles away, to fulfil their next engagement.

That evening Ciccio, whenever he had a moment to spare, watched
Alvina. She knew it. But she could not make out what his watching
meant. In the same way he might have watched a serpent, had he found
one gliding in the theatre. He looked at her sideways, furtively,
but persistently. And yet he did not want to meet her glance. He
avoided her, and watched her. As she saw him standing, in his
negligent, muscular, slouching fashion, with his head dropped
forward, and his eyes sideways, sometimes she disliked him. But
there was a sort of _finesse_ about his face. His skin was
delicately tawny, and slightly lustrous. The eyes were set in so
dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one
met the yellow pupils, sulphureous and remote. It was like meeting a
lion. His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling
lips seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture. He was
waiting: silent there, with something muscular and remote about his
very droop, he was waiting. What for? Alvina could not guess. She
wanted to meet his eye, to have an open understanding with him. But
he would not. When she went up to talk to him, he answered in his
stupid fashion, with a smile of the mouth and no change of the eyes,
saying nothing at all. Obstinately he held away from her. When he
was in his war-paint, for one moment she hated his muscular,
handsome, downward-drooping torso: so stupid and full. The fine
sharp uprightness of Max seemed much finer, clearer, more manly.
Ciccio's velvety, suave heaviness, the very heave of his muscles, so
full and softly powerful, sickened her.

She flashed away angrily on her piano. Madame, who was dancing
Kishwégin on the last evening, cast sharp glances at her. Alvina had
avoided Madame as Ciccio had avoided Alvina--elusive and yet
conscious, a distance, and yet a connection.

Madame danced beautifully. No denying it, she was an artist. She
became something quite different: fresh, virginal, pristine, a magic
creature flickering there. She was infinitely delicate and
attractive. Her _braves_ became glamorous and heroic at once, and
magically she cast her spell over them. It was all very well for
Alvina to bang the piano crossly. She could not put out the glow
which surrounded Kishwégin and her troupe. Ciccio was handsome now:
without war-paint, and roused, fearless and at the same time
suggestive, a dark, mysterious glamour on his face, passionate and
remote. A stranger--and so beautiful. Alvina flashed at the piano,
almost in tears. She hated his beauty. It shut her apart. She had
nothing to do with it.

Madame, with her long dark hair hanging in finely-brushed tresses,
her cheek burning under its dusky stain, was another creature. How
soft she was on her feet. How humble and remote she seemed, as
across a chasm from the men. How submissive she was, with an
eternity of inaccessible submission. Her hovering dance round the
dead bear was exquisite: her dark, secretive curiosity, her
admiration of the massive, male strength of the creature, her
quivers of triumph over the dead beast, her cruel exultation, and
her fear that he was not really dead. It was a lovely sight,
suggesting the world's morning, before Eve had bitten any
white-fleshed apple, whilst she was still dusky, dark-eyed, and
still. And then her stealthy sympathy with the white prisoner! Now
indeed she was the dusky Eve tempted into knowledge. Her fascination
was ruthless. She kneeled by the dead _brave_, her husband, as she
had knelt by the bear: in fear and admiration and doubt and
exultation. She gave him the least little push with her foot. Dead
meat like the bear! And a flash of delight went over her, that
changed into a sob of mortal anguish. And then, flickering, wicked,
doubtful, she watched Ciccio wrestling with the bear.

She was the clue to all the action, was Kishwégin. And her dark
_braves_ seemed to become darker, more secret, malevolent, burning
with a cruel fire, and at the same time wistful, knowing their end.
Ciccio laughed in a strange way, as he wrestled with the bear, as he
had never laughed on the previous evenings. The sound went out into
the audience, a soft, malevolent, derisive sound. And when the bear
was supposed to have crushed him, and he was to have fallen, he
reeled out of the bear's arms and said to Madame, in his derisive
voice:

"Vivo sempre, Madame." And then he fell.

Madame stopped as if shot, hearing his words: "I am still alive,
Madame." She remained suspended motionless, suddenly wilted. Then
all at once her hand went to her mouth with a scream:

"The Bear!"

So the scene concluded itself. But instead of the tender,
half-wistful triumph of Kishwégin, a triumph electric as it should
have been when she took the white man's hand and kissed it, there
was a doubt, a hesitancy, a nullity, and Max did not quite know what
to do.

After the performance, neither Madame nor Max dared say anything to
Ciccio about his innovation into the play. Louis felt he had to
speak--it was left to him.

"I say, Cic'--" he said, "why did you change the scene? It might
have spoiled everything if Madame wasn't such a genius. Why did you
say that?"

"Why," said Ciccio, answering Louis' French in Italian, "I am tired
of being dead, you see."

Madame and Max heard in silence.

When Alvina had played _God Save the King_ she went round behind the
stage. But Ciccio and Geoffrey had already packed up the property,
and left. Madame was talking to James Houghton. Louis and Max were
busy together. Mr. May came to Alvina.

"Well," he said. "That closes another week. I think we've done very
well, in face of difficulties, don't you?"

"Wonderfully," she said.

But poor Mr. May spoke and looked pathetically. He seemed to feel
forlorn. Alvina was not attending to him. Her eye was roving. She
took no notice of him.

Madame came up.

"Well, Miss Houghton," she said, "time to say good-bye, I suppose."

"How do you feel after dancing?" asked Alvina.

"Well--not so strong as usual--but not so bad, you know. I shall be
all right--thanks to you. I think your father is more ill than I. To
me he looks very ill."

"Father wears himself away," said Alvina.

"Yes, and when we are no longer young, there is not so much to wear.
Well, I must thank you once more--"

"What time do you leave in the morning?"

"By the train at half-past ten. If it doesn't rain, the young men
will cycle--perhaps all of them. Then they will go when they like--"

"I will come round to say good-bye--" said Alvina.

"Oh no--don't disturb yourself--"

"Yes, I want to take home the things--the kettle for the bronchitis,
and those things--"

"Oh thank you very much--but don't trouble yourself. I will send
Ciccio with them--or one of the others--"

"I should like to say good-bye to you all," persisted Alvina.

Madame glanced round at Max and Louis.

"Are we not all here? No. The two have gone. No! Well! Well what
time will you come?"

"About nine?"

"Very well, and I leave at ten. Very well. Then _au revoir_ till the
morning. Good-night."

"Good-night," said Alvina. Her colour was rather flushed.

She walked up with Mr. May, and hardly noticed he was there. After
supper, when James Houghton had gone up to count his pennies, Alvina
said to Miss Pinnegar:

"Don't you think father looks rather seedy, Miss Pinnegar?"

"I've been thinking so a long time," said Miss Pinnegar tartly.

"What do you think he ought to do?"

"He's killing himself down there, in all weathers and freezing in
that box-office, and then the bad atmosphere. He's killing himself,
that's all."

"What can we do?"

"Nothing so long as there's that place down there. Nothing at all."

Alvina thought so too. So she went to bed.

She was up in time, and watching the clock. It was a grey morning,
but not raining. At five minutes to nine, she hurried off to Mrs.
Rollings. In the back yard the bicycles were out, glittering and
muddy according to their owners. Ciccio was crouching mending a
tire, crouching balanced on his toes, near the earth. He turned like
a quick-eared animal glancing up as she approached, but did not
rise.

"Are you getting ready to go?" she said, looking down at him. He
screwed his head round to her unwillingly, upside down, his chin
tilted up at her. She did not know him thus inverted. Her eyes
rested on his face, puzzled. His chin seemed so large, aggressive.
He was a little bit repellent and brutal, inverted. Yet she
continued:

"Would you help me to carry back the things we brought for Madame?"

He rose to his feet, but did not look at her. He was wearing broken
cycling shoes. He stood looking at his bicycle tube.

"Not just yet," she said. "I want to say good-bye to Madame. Will
you come in half an hour?"

"Yes, I will come," he said, still watching his bicycle tube, which
sprawled nakedly on the floor. The forward drop of his head was
curiously beautiful to her, the straight, powerful nape of the neck,
the delicate shape of the back of the head, the black hair. The way
the neck sprang from the strong, loose shoulders was beautiful.
There was something mindless but _intent_ about the forward reach of
his head. His face seemed colourless, neutral-tinted and
expressionless.

She went indoors. The young men were moving about making
preparations.

"Come upstairs, Miss Houghton!" called Madame's voice from above.
Alvina mounted, to find Madame packing.

"It is an uneasy moment, when we are busy to move," said Madame,
looking up at Alvina as if she were a stranger.

"I'm afraid I'm in the way. But I won't stay a minute."

"Oh, it is all right. Here are the things you brought--" Madame
indicated a little pile--"and thank you _very_ much, _very_ much. I
feel you saved my life. And now let me give you one little token of
my gratitude. It is not much, because we are not millionaires in the
Natcha-Kee-Tawara. Just a little remembrance of our troublesome
visit to Woodhouse."

She presented Alvina with a pair of exquisite bead moccasins, woven
in a weird, lovely pattern, with soft deerskin soles and sides.

"They belong to Kishwégin, so it is Kishwégin who gives them to you,
because she is grateful to you for saving her life, or at least from
a long illness."

"Oh--but I don't want to take them--" said Alvina.

"You don't like them? Why?"

"I think they're lovely, lovely! But I don't want to take them from
you--"

"If I give them, you do not take them from me. You receive them.
Hé?" And Madame pressed back the slippers, opening her plump
jewelled hands in a gesture of finality.

"But I don't like to take _these_," said Alvina. "I feel they belong
to Natcha-Kee-Tawara. And I don't want to rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara, do
I? Do take them back."

"No, I have given them. You cannot rob Natcha-Kee-Tawara in taking a
pair of shoes--impossible!"

"And I'm sure they are much too small for me."

"Ha!" exclaimed Madame. "It is that! Try."

"I know they are," said Alvina, laughing confusedly.

She sat down and took off her own shoe. The moccasin was a little
too short--just a little. But it was charming on the foot, charming.

"Yes," said Madame. "It is too short. Very well. I must find you
something else."

"Please don't," said Alvina. "Please don't find me anything. I don't
want anything. Please!"

"What?" said Madame, eyeing her closely. "You don't want? Why? You
don't want anything from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, or from Kishwégin? Hé?
From which?"

"Don't give me anything, please," said Alvina.

"All right! All right then. I won't. I won't give you anything. I
can't give you anything you want from Natcha-Kee-Tawara."

And Madame busied herself again with the packing.

"I'm awfully sorry you are going," said Alvina.

"Sorry? Why? Yes, so am I sorry we shan't see you any more. Yes, so
I am. But perhaps we shall see you another time--hé? I shall send
you a post-card. Perhaps I shall send one of the young men on his
bicycle, to bring you something which I shall buy for you. Yes?
Shall I?"

"Oh! I should be awfully glad--but don't buy--" Alvina checked
herself in time. "Don't buy anything. Send me a little thing from
Natcha-Kee-Tawara. I _love_ the slippers--"

"But they are too small," said Madame, who had been watching her
with black eyes that read every motive. Madame too had her
avaricious side, and was glad to get back the slippers. "Very
well--very well, I will do that. I will send you some small thing
from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, and one of the young men shall bring it.
Perhaps Ciccio? Hé?"

"Thank you _so_ much," said Alvina, holding out her hand. "Good-bye.
I'm so sorry you're going."

"Well--well! We are not going so very far. Not so very far. Perhaps
we shall see each other another day. It may be. Good-bye!"

Madame took Alvina's hand, and smiled at her winsomely all at once,
kindly, from her inscrutable black eyes. A sudden unusual kindness.
Alvina flushed with surprise and a desire to cry.

"Yes. I am sorry you are not with Natcha-Kee-Tawara. But we shall
see. Good-bye. I shall do my packing."

Alvina carried down the things she had to remove. Then she went to
say good-bye to the young men, who were in various stages of their
toilet. Max alone was quite presentable.

Ciccio was just putting on the outer cover of his front tire. She
watched his brown thumbs press it into place. He was quick and sure,
much more capable, and even masterful, than you would have supposed,
seeing his tawny Mediterranean hands. He spun the wheel round,
patting it lightly.

"Is it finished?"

"Yes, I think." He reached his pump and blew up the tire. She
watched his softly-applied force. What physical, muscular force
there was in him. Then he swung round the bicycle, and stood it
again on its wheels. After which he quickly folded his tools.

"Will you come now?" she said.

He turned, rubbing his hands together, and drying them on an old
cloth. He went into the house, pulled on his coat and his cap, and
picked up the things from the table.

"Where are you going?" Max asked.

Ciccio jerked his head towards Alvina.

"Oh, allow me to carry them, Miss Houghton. He is not fit--" said
Max.

True, Ciccio had no collar on, and his shoes were burst.

"I don't mind," said Alvina hastily. "He knows where they go. He
brought them before."

"But I will carry them. I am dressed. Allow me--" and he began to
take the things. "You get dressed, Ciccio."

Ciccio looked at Alvina.

"Do you want?" he said, as if waiting for orders.

"Do let Ciccio take them," said Alvina to Max. "Thank you _ever_ so
much. But let him take them."

So Alvina marched off through the Sunday morning streets, with the
Italian, who was down at heel and encumbered with an armful of
sick-room apparatus. She did not know what to say, and he said
nothing.

"We will go in this way," she said, suddenly opening the hall door.
She had unlocked it before she went out, for that entrance was
hardly ever used. So she showed the Italian into the sombre
drawing-room, with its high black bookshelves with rows and rows of
calf-bound volumes, its old red and flowered carpet, its grand piano
littered with music. Ciccio put down the things as she directed, and
stood with his cap in his hands, looking aside.

"Thank you so much," she said, lingering.

He curled his lips in a faint deprecatory smile.

"Nothing," he murmured.

His eye had wandered uncomfortably up to a portrait on the wall.

"That was my mother," said Alvina.

He glanced down at her, but did not answer.

"I am so sorry you're going away," she said nervously. She stood
looking up at him with wide blue eyes.

The faint smile grew on the lower part of his face, which he kept
averted. Then he looked at her.

"We have to move," he said, with his eyes watching her reservedly,
his mouth twisting with a half-bashful smile.

"Do you like continually going away?" she said, her wide blue eyes
fixed on his face.

He nodded slightly.

"We have to do it. I like it."

What he said meant nothing to him. He now watched her fixedly, with
a slightly mocking look, and a reserve he would not relinquish.

"Do you think I shall ever see you again?" she said.

"Should you like--?" he answered, with a sly smile and a faint
shrug.

"I should like awfully--" a flush grew on her cheek. She heard Miss
Pinnegar's scarcely audible step approaching.

He nodded at her slightly, watching her fixedly, turning up the
corners of his eyes slyly, his nose seeming slyly to sharpen.

"All right. Next week, eh? In the morning?"

"Do!" cried Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar came through the door. He
glanced quickly over his shoulder.

"Oh!" cried Miss Pinnegar. "I couldn't imagine who it was." She eyed
the young fellow sharply.

"Couldn't you?" said Alvina. "We brought back these things."

"Oh yes. Well--you'd better come into the other room, to the fire,"
said Miss Pinnegar.

"I shall go along. Good-bye!" said Ciccio, and with a slight bow to
Alvina, and a still slighter to Miss Pinnegar, he was out of the
room and out of the front door, as if turning tail.

"I suppose they're going this morning," said Miss Pinnegar.




CHAPTER IX

ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE


Alvina wept when the Natchas had gone. She loved them so much, she
wanted to be with them. Even Ciccio she regarded as only one of the
Natchas. She looked forward to his coming as to a visit from the
troupe.

How dull the theatre was without them! She was tired of the
Endeavour. She wished it did not exist. The rehearsal on the Monday
morning bored her terribly. Her father was nervous and irritable.
The previous week had tried him sorely. He had worked himself into a
state of nervous apprehension such as nothing would have justified,
unless perhaps, if the wooden walls of the Endeavour had burnt to
the ground, with James inside victimized like another Samson. He had
developed a nervous horror of all artistes. He did not feel safe for
one single moment whilst he depended on a single one of them.

"We shall have to convert into all pictures," he said in a nervous
fever to Mr. May. "Don't make any more engagements after the end of
next month."

"Really!" said Mr. May. "Really! Have you quite decided?"

"Yes quite! Yes quite!" James fluttered. "I have written about a new
machine, and the supply of films from Chanticlers."

"Really!" said Mr. May. "Oh well then, in that case--" But he was
filled with dismay and chagrin.

"Of cauce," he said later to Alvina, "I can't _possibly_ stop on if
we are nothing but a picture show!" And he arched his blanched and
dismal eyelids with ghastly finality.

"Why?" cried Alvina.

"Oh--why!" He was rather ironic. "Well, it's not my line at _all_.
I'm not a _film-operator_!" And he put his head on one side with a
grimace of contempt and superiority.

"But you are, as well," said Alvina.

"Yes, _as well_. But not _only_! You _may_ wash the dishes in the
scullery. But you're not only the _char_, are you?"

"But is it the same?" cried Alvina.

"Of cauce!" cried Mr. May. "Of _cauce_ it's the same."

Alvina laughed, a little heartlessly, into his pallid, stricken
eyes.

"But what will you do?" she asked.

"I shall have to look for something else," said the injured but
dauntless little man. "There's nothing _else_, is there?"

"Wouldn't you stay on?" she asked.

"I wouldn't think of it. I wouldn't think of it." He turtled like an
injured pigeon.

"Well," she said, looking laconically into his face: "It's between
you and father--"

"Of _cauce_!" he said. "Naturally! Where else--!" But his tone was a
little spiteful, as if he had rested his last hopes on Alvina.

Alvina went away. She mentioned the coming change to Miss Pinnegar.

"Well," said Miss Pinnegar, judicious but aloof, "it's a move in the
right direction. But I doubt if it'll do any good."

"Do you?" said Alvina. "Why?"

"I don't believe in the place, and I never did," declared Miss
Pinnegar. "I don't believe any good will come of it."

"But why?" persisted Alvina. "What makes you feel so sure about it?"

"I don't know. But that's how I feel. And I have from the first. It
was wrong from the first. It was wrong to begin it."

"But why?" insisted Alvina, laughing.

"Your father had no business to be led into it. He'd no business to
touch this show business. It isn't like him. It doesn't belong to
him. He's gone against his own nature and his own life."

"Oh but," said Alvina, "father was a showman even in the shop. He
always was. Mother said he was like a showman in a booth."

Miss Pinnegar was taken aback.

"Well!" she said sharply. "If _that's_ what you've seen in
him!"--there was a pause. "And in that case," she continued tartly,
"I think some of the showman has come out in his daughter! or
show-woman!--which doesn't improve it, to my idea."

"Why is it any worse?" said Alvina. "I enjoy it--and so does
father."

"No," cried Miss Pinnegar. "There you're wrong! There you make a
mistake. It's all against his better nature."

"Really!" said Alvina, in surprise. "What a new idea! But which is
father's better nature?"

"You may not know it," said Miss Pinnegar coldly, "and if so, I can
never tell you. But that doesn't alter it." She lapsed into dead
silence for a moment. Then suddenly she broke out, vicious and cold:
"He'll go on till he's killed himself, and _then_ he'll know."

The little adverb _then_ came whistling across the space like a
bullet. It made Alvina pause. Was her father going to die? She
reflected. Well, all men must die.

She forgot the question in others that occupied her. First, could
she bear it, when the Endeavour was turned into another cheap and
nasty film-shop? The strange figures of the artistes passing under
her observation had really entertained her, week by week. Some weeks
they had bored her, some weeks she had detested them, but there was
always a chance in the coming week. Think of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras!

She thought too much of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She knew it. And she
tried to force her mind to the contemplation of the new state of
things, when she banged at the piano to a set of dithering and
boring pictures. There would be her father, herself, and Mr. May--or
a new operator, a new manager. The new manager!--she thought of him
for a moment--and thought of the mechanical factory-faced persons
who _managed_ Wright's and the Woodhouse Empire.

But her mind fell away from this barren study. She was obsessed by
the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. They seemed to have fascinated her. Which of
them it was, or what it was that had cast the spell over her, she
did not know. But she was as if hypnotized. She longed to be with
them. Her soul gravitated towards them all the time.

Monday passed, and Ciccio did not come: Tuesday passed: and
Wednesday. In her soul she was sceptical of their keeping their
promise--either Madame or Ciccio. Why should they keep their
promise? She knew what these nomadic artistes were. And her soul was
stubborn within her.

On Wednesday night there was another sensation at the Endeavour. Mr.
May found James Houghton fainting in the box-office after the
performance had begun. What to do? He could not interrupt Alvina,
nor the performance. He sent the chocolate-and-orange boy across to
the Pear Tree for brandy.

James revived. "I'm all right," he said, in a brittle fashion. "I'm
all right. Don't bother." So he sat with his head on his hand in the
box-office, and Mr. May had to leave him to operate the film.

When the interval arrived, Mr. May hurried to the box-office, a
narrow hole that James could just sit in, and there he found the
invalid in the same posture, semi-conscious. He gave him more
brandy.

"I'm all right, I tell you," said James, his eyes flaring. "Leave me
alone." But he looked anything but all right.

Mr. May hurried for Alvina. When the daughter entered the ticket
place, her father was again in a state of torpor.

"Father," she said, shaking his shoulder gently. "What's the
matter."

He murmured something, but was incoherent. She looked at his face.
It was grey and blank.

"We shall have to get him home," she said. "We shall have to get a
cab."

"Give him a little brandy," said Mr. May.

The boy was sent for the cab, James swallowed a spoonful of brandy.
He came to himself irritably.

"What? What," he said. "I won't have all this fuss. Go on with the
performance, there's no need to bother about me." His eye was wild.

"You must go home, father," said Alvina.

"Leave me alone! Will you leave me alone! Hectored by women all my
life--hectored by women--first one, then another. I won't stand
it--I won't stand it--" He looked at Alvina with a look of frenzy as
he lapsed again, fell with his head on his hands on his
ticket-board. Alvina looked at Mr. May.

"We must get him home," she said. She covered him up with a coat,
and sat by him. The performance went on without music. At last the
cab came. James, unconscious, was driven up to Woodhouse. He had to
be carried indoors. Alvina hurried ahead to make a light in the dark
passage.

"Father's ill!" she announced to Miss Pinnegar.

"Didn't I say so!" said Miss Pinnegar, starting from her chair.

The two women went out to meet the cab-man, who had James in his
arms.

"Can you manage?" cried Alvina, showing a light.

"He doesn't weigh much," said the man.

"Tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu!" went Miss Pinnegar's tongue, in a rapid
tut-tut of distress. "What have I said, now," she exclaimed. "What
have I said all along?"

James was laid on the sofa. His eyes were half-shut. They made him
drink brandy, the boy was sent for the doctor, Alvina's bed was
warmed. The sick man was got to bed. And then started another vigil.
Alvina sat up in the sick room. James started and muttered, but did
not regain consciousness. Dawn came, and he was the same. Pneumonia
and pleurisy and a touch of meningitis. Alvina drank her tea, took a
little breakfast, and went to bed at about nine o'clock in the
morning, leaving James in charge of Miss Pinnegar. Time was all
deranged.

Miss Pinnegar was a nervous nurse. She sat in horror and
apprehension, her eyebrows raised, starting and looking at James in
terror whenever he made a noise. She hurried to him and did what she
could. But one would have said she was repulsed, she found her task
unconsciously repugnant.

During the course of the morning Mrs. Rollings came up and said that
the Italian from last week had come, and could he speak to Miss
Houghton.

"Tell him she's resting, and Mr. Houghton is seriously ill," said
Miss Pinnegar sharply.

When Alvina came downstairs at about four in the afternoon she found
a package: a comb of carved bone, and a message from Madame: "To
Miss Houghton, with kindest greetings and most sincere thanks from
Kishwégin."

The comb with its carved, beast-faced serpent was her portion.
Alvina asked if there had been any other message. None.

Mr. May came in, and stayed for a dismal half-hour. Then Alvina went
back to her nursing. The patient was no better, still unconscious.
Miss Pinnegar came down, red eyed and sullen looking. The condition
of James gave little room for hope.

In the early morning he died. Alvina called Mrs. Rollings, and they
composed the body. It was still only five o'clock, and not light.
Alvina went to lie down in her father's little, rather chilly
chamber at the end of the corridor. She tried to sleep, but could
not. At half-past seven she arose, and started the business of the
new day. The doctor came--she went to the registrar--and so on.

Mr. May came. It was decided to keep open the theatre. He would find
some one else for the piano, some one else to issue the tickets.

In the afternoon arrived Frederick Houghton, James's cousin and
nearest relative. He was a middle-aged, blond, florid, church-going
draper from Knarborough, well-to-do and very _bourgeois_. He tried
to talk to Alvina in a fatherly fashion, or a friendly, or a helpful
fashion. But Alvina could not listen to him. He got on her nerves.

Hearing the gate bang, she rose and hurried to the window. She was
in the drawing-room with her cousin, to give the interview its
proper air of solemnity. She saw Ciccio rearing his yellow bicycle
against the wall, and going with his head forward along the narrow,
dark way of the back yard, to the scullery door.

"Excuse me a minute," she said to her cousin, who looked up
irritably as she left the room.

She was just in time to open the door as Ciccio tapped. She stood on
the doorstep above him. He looked up, with a faint smile, from under
his black lashes.

"How nice of you to come," she said. But her face was blanched and
tired, without expression. Only her large eyes looked blue in their
tiredness, as she glanced down at Ciccio. He seemed to her far away.

"Madame asks how is Mr. Houghton," he said.

"Father! He died this morning," she said quietly.

"He died!" exclaimed the Italian, a flash of fear and dismay going
over his face.

"Yes--this morning." She had neither tears nor emotion, but just
looked down on him abstractedly, from her height on the kitchen
step. He dropped his eyes and looked at his feet. Then he lifted his
eyes again, and looked at her. She looked back at him, as from
across a distance. So they watched each other, as strangers across a
wide, abstract distance.

He turned and looked down the dark yard, towards the gate where he
could just see the pale grey tire of his bicycle, and the yellow
mud-guard. He seemed to be reflecting. If he went now, he went for
ever. Involuntarily he turned and lifted his face again towards Alvina,
as if studying her curiously. She remained there on the doorstep,
neutral, blanched, with wide, still, neutral eyes. She did not seem to
see him. He studied her with alert, yellow-dusky, inscrutable eyes,
until she met his look. And then he gave the faintest gesture with his
head, as of summons towards him. Her soul started, and died in her. And
again he gave the slight, almost imperceptible jerk of the head,
backwards and sideways, as if summoning her towards him. His face too
was closed and expressionless. But in his eyes, which kept hers, there
was a dark flicker of ascendancy. He was going to triumph over her. She
knew it. And her soul sank as if it sank out of her body. It sank away
out of her body, left her there powerless, soulless.

And yet as he turned, with his head stretched forward, to move away:
as he glanced slightly over his shoulder: she stepped down from the
step, down to his level, to follow him. He went ducking along the
dark yard, nearly to the gate. Near the gate, near his bicycle, was
a corner made by a shed. Here he turned, lingeringly, to her, and
she lingered in front of him.

Her eyes were wide and neutral and submissive, with a new, awful
submission as if she had lost her soul. So she looked up at him,
like a victim. There was a faint smile in his eyes. He stretched
forward over her.

"You love me? Yes?--Yes?" he said, in a voice that seemed like a
palpable contact on her.

"Yes," she whispered involuntarily, soulless, like a victim. He put
his arm round her, subtly, and lifted her.

"Yes," he re-echoed, almost mocking in his triumph. "Yes. Yes!" And
smiling, he kissed her, delicately, with a certain finesse of
knowledge. She moaned in spirit, in his arms, felt herself dead,
dead. And he kissed her with a finesse, a passionate finesse which
seemed like coals of fire on her head.

They heard footsteps. Miss Pinnegar was coming to look for her.
Ciccio set her down, looked long into her eyes, inscrutably,
smiling, and said:

"I come tomorrow."

With which he ducked and ran out of the yard, picking up his bicycle
like a feather, and, taking no notice of Miss Pinnegar, letting the
yard-door bang to behind him.

"Alvina!" said Miss Pinnegar.

But Alvina did not answer. She turned, slipped past, ran indoors and
upstairs to the little bare bedroom she had made her own. She locked
the door and kneeled down on the floor, bowing down her head to her
knees in a paroxysm on the floor. In a paroxysm--because she loved
him. She doubled herself up in a paroxysm on her knees on the
floor--because she loved him. It was far more like pain, like agony,
than like joy. She swayed herself to and fro in a paroxysm of
unbearable sensation, because she loved him.

Miss Pinnegar came and knocked at the door.

"Alvina! Alvina! Oh, you are there! Whatever are you doing? Aren't
you coming down to speak to your cousin?"

"Soon," said Alvina.

And taking a pillow from the bed, she crushed it against herself and
swayed herself unconsciously, in her orgasm of unbearable feeling.
Right in her bowels she felt it--the terrible, unbearable feeling.
How could she bear it.

She crouched over until she became still. A moment of stillness
seemed to cover her like sleep: an eternity of sleep in that one
second. Then she roused and got up. She went to the mirror, still,
evanescent, and tidied her hair, smoothed her face. She was so
still, so remote, she felt that nothing, nothing could ever touch
her.

And so she went downstairs, to that horrible cousin of her father's.
She seemed so intangible, remote and virginal, that her cousin and
Miss Pinnegar both failed to make anything of her. She answered
their questions simply, but did not talk. They talked to each other.
And at last the cousin went away, with a profound dislike of Miss
Alvina.

She did not notice. She was only glad he was gone. And she went
about for the rest of the day elusive and vague. She slept deeply
that night, without dreams.

The next day was Saturday. It came with a great storm of wind and
rain and hail: a fury. Alvina looked out in dismay. She knew Ciccio
would not be able to come--he could not cycle, and it was impossible
to get by train and return the same day. She was almost relieved.
She was relieved by the intermission of fate, she was thankful for
the day of neutrality.

In the early afternoon came a telegram: Coming both tomorrow morning
deepest sympathy Madame. Tomorrow was Sunday: and the funeral was in
the afternoon. Alvina felt a burning inside her, thinking of Ciccio.
She winced--and yet she wanted him to come. Terribly she wanted him
to come.

She showed the telegram to Miss Pinnegar.

"Good gracious!" said the weary Miss Pinnegar. "Fancy those people.
And I warrant they'll want to be at the funeral. As if he was
anything to _them_--"

"I think it's very nice of her," said Alvina.

"Oh well," said Miss Pinnegar. "If you think so. I don't fancy he
would have wanted such people following, myself. And what does she
mean by _both_. Who's the other?" Miss Pinnegar looked sharply at
Alvina.

"Ciccio," said Alvina.

"The Italian! Why goodness me! What's _he_ coming for? I can't make
you out, Alvina. Is that his name, Chicho? I never heard such a
name. Doesn't sound like a name at all to me. There won't be room
for them in the cabs."

"We'll order another."

"More expense. I never knew such impertinent people--"

But Alvina did not hear her. On the next morning she dressed herself
carefully in her new dress. It was black voile. Carefully she did
her hair. Ciccio and Madame were coming. The thought of Ciccio made
her shudder. She hung about, waiting. Luckily none of the funeral
guests would arrive till after one o'clock. Alvina sat listless,
musing, by the fire in the drawing-room. She left everything now to
Miss Pinnegar and Mrs. Rollings. Miss Pinnegar, red-eyed and
yellow-skinned, was irritable beyond words.

It was nearly mid-day when Alvina heard the gate. She hurried to
open the front door. Madame was in her little black hat and her
black spotted veil, Ciccio in a black overcoat was closing the yard
door behind her.

"Oh, my dear girl!" Madame cried, trotting forward with outstretched
black-kid hands, one of which held an umbrella: "I am so shocked--I
am so shocked to hear of your poor father. Am I to believe it?--am I
really? No, I can't."

She lifted her veil, kissed Alvina, and dabbed her eyes. Ciccio came
up the steps. He took off his hat to Alvina, smiled slightly as he
passed her. He looked rather pale, constrained. She closed the door
and ushered them into the drawing-room.

Madame looked round like a bird, examining the room and the
furniture. She was evidently a little impressed. But all the time
she was uttering her condolences.

"Tell me, poor girl, how it happened?"

"There isn't much to tell," said Alvina, and she gave the brief
account of James's illness and death.

"Worn out! Worn out!" Madame said, nodding slowly up and down. Her
black veil, pushed up, sagged over her brows like a mourning band.
"You cannot afford to waste the stamina. And will you keep on the
theatre--with Mr. May--?"

Ciccio was sitting looking towards the fire. His presence made
Alvina tremble. She noticed how the fine black hair of his head
showed no parting at all--it just grew like a close cap, and was
pushed aside at the forehead. Sometimes he looked at her, as Madame
talked, and again looked at her, and looked away.

At last Madame came to a halt. There was a long pause.

"You will stay to the funeral?" said Alvina.

"Oh my dear, we shall be too much--"

"No," said Alvina. "I have arranged for you--"

"There! You think of everything. But I will come, not Ciccio. He
will not trouble you."

Ciccio looked up at Alvina.

"I should like him to come," said Alvina simply. But a deep flush
began to mount her face. She did not know where it came from, she
felt so cold. And she wanted to cry.

Madame watched her closely.

"Siamo di accordo," came the voice of Ciccio.

Alvina and Madame both looked at him. He sat constrained, with his
face averted, his eyes dropped, but smiling.

Madame looked closely at Alvina.

"Is it true what he says?" she asked.

"I don't understand him," said Alvina. "I don't understand what he
said."

"That you have agreed with him--"

Madame and Ciccio both watched Alvina as she sat in her new black
dress. Her eyes involuntarily turned to his.

"I don't know," she said vaguely. "Have I--?" and she looked at him.

Madame kept silence for some moments. Then she said gravely:

"Well!--yes!--well!" She looked from one to another. "Well, there is
a lot to consider. But if you have decided--"

Neither of them answered. Madame suddenly rose and went to Alvina.
She kissed her on either cheek.

"I shall protect you," she said.

Then she returned to her seat.

"What have you said to Miss Houghton?" she said suddenly to Ciccio,
tackling him direct, and speaking coldly.

He looked at Madame with a faint derisive smile. Then he turned to
Alvina. She bent her head and blushed.

"Speak then," said Madame, "you have a reason." She seemed
mistrustful of him.

But he turned aside his face, and refused to speak, sitting as if he
were unaware of Madame's presence.

"Oh well," said Madame. "I shall be there, Signorino."

She spoke with a half-playful threat. Ciccio curled his lip.

"You do not know him yet," she said, turning to Alvina.

"I know that," said Alvina, offended. Then she added: "Wouldn't you
like to take off your hat?"

"If you truly wish me to stay," said Madame.

"Yes, please do. And will you hang your coat in the hall?" she said
to Ciccio.

"Oh!" said Madame roughly. "He will not stay to eat. He will go out
to somewhere."

Alvina looked at him.

"Would you rather?" she said.

He looked at her with sardonic yellow eyes.

"If you want," he said, the awkward, derisive smile curling his lips
and showing his teeth.

She had a moment of sheer panic. Was he just stupid and bestial? The
thought went clean through her. His yellow eyes watched her
sardonically. It was the clean modelling of his dark, other-world
face that decided her--for it sent the deep spasm across her.

"I'd like you to stay," she said.

A smile of triumph went over his face. Madame watched him stonily as
she stood beside her chair, one hand lightly balanced on her hip.
Alvina was reminded of Kishwégin. But even in Madame's stony
mistrust there was an element of attraction towards him. He had
taken his cigarette case from his pocket.

"On ne fume pas dans le salon," said Madame brutally.

"Will you put your coat in the passage?--and do smoke if you wish,"
said Alvina.

He rose to his feet and took off his overcoat. His face was
obstinate and mocking. He was rather floridly dressed, though in
black, and wore boots of black patent leather with tan uppers.
Handsome he was--but undeniably in bad taste. The silver ring was
still on his finger--and his close, fine, unparted hair went badly
with smart English clothes. He looked common--Alvina confessed it.
And her heart sank. But what was she to do? He evidently was not
happy. Obstinacy made him stick out the situation.

Alvina and Madame went upstairs. Madame wanted to see the dead
James. She looked at his frail, handsome, ethereal face, and crossed
herself as she wept.

"Un bel homme, cependant," she whispered. "Mort en un jour. C'est
trop fort, voyez!" And she sniggered with fear and sobs.

They went down to Alvina's bare room. Madame glanced round, as she
did in every room she entered.

"This was father's bedroom," said Alvina. "The other was mine. He
wouldn't have it anything but like this--bare."

"Nature of a monk, a hermit," whispered Madame. "Who would have
thought it! Ah, the men, the men!"

And she unpinned her hat and patted her hair before the small
mirror, into which she had to peep to see herself. Alvina stood
waiting.

"And now--" whispered Madame, suddenly turning: "What about this
Ciccio, hein?" It was ridiculous that she would not raise her voice
above a whisper, upstairs there. But so it was.

She scrutinized Alvina with her eyes of bright black glass. Alvina
looked back at her, but did not know what to say.

"What about him, hein? Will you marry him? Why will you?"

"I suppose because I like him," said Alvina, flushing.

Madame made a little grimace.

"Oh yes!" she whispered, with a contemptuous mouth. "Oh
yes!--because you like him! But you know nothing _of_ him--nothing.
How can you like him, not knowing him? He may be a real bad
character. How would you like him then?"

"He isn't, is he?" said Alvina.

"I don't know. I don't know. He may be. Even I, I don't know
him--no, though he has been with me for three years. What is he? He
is a man of the people, a boatman, a labourer, an artist's model. He
sticks to nothing--"

"How old is he?" asked Alvina.

"He is twenty-five--a boy only. And you? You are older."

"Thirty," confessed Alvina.

"Thirty! Well now--so much difference! How can you trust him? How
can you? Why does he want to marry you--why?"

"I don't know--" said Alvina.

"No, and I don't know. But I know something of these Italian men,
who are labourers in every country, just labourers and under-men
always, always down, down, down--" And Madame pressed her spread
palms downwards. "And so--when they have a chance to come up--" she
raised her hand with a spring--"they are very conceited, and they
take their chance. He will want to rise, by you, and you will go
down, with him. That is how it is. I have seen it before--yes--more
than one time--"

"But," said Alvina, laughing ruefully. "He can't rise much because
of me, can he?"

"How not? How not? In the first place, you are English, and he
thinks to rise by that. Then you are not of the lower class, you are
of the higher class, the class of the masters, such as employ Ciccio
and men like him. How will he not rise in the world by you? Yes, he
will rise very much. Or he will draw you down, down--Yes, one or
another. And then he thinks that now you have money--now your father
is dead--" here Madame glanced apprehensively at the closed
door--"and they all like money, yes, very much, all Italians--"

"Do they?" said Alvina, scared. "I'm sure there won't _be_ any
money. I'm sure father is in debt."

"What? You think? Do you? Really? Oh poor Miss Houghton! Well--and
will you tell Ciccio that? Eh? Hein?"

"Yes--certainly--if it matters," said poor Alvina.

"Of course it matters. Of course it matters very much. It matters to
him. Because he will not have much. He saves, saves, saves, as they
all do, to go back to Italy and buy a piece of land. And if he has
you, it will cost him much more, he cannot continue with
Natcha-Kee-Tawara. All will be much more difficult--"

"Oh, I will tell him in time," said Alvina, pale at the lips.

"You will tell him! Yes. That is better. And then you will see. But
he is obstinate--as a mule. And if he will still have you, then you
must think. Can you live in England as the wife of a labouring man,
a dirty Eyetalian, as they all say? It is serious. It is not
pleasant for you, who have not known it. I also have not known it.
But I have seen--" Alvina watched with wide, troubled eyes, while
Madame darted looks, as from bright, deep black glass.

"Yes," said Alvina. "I should hate being a labourer's wife in a
nasty little house in a street--"

"In a house?" cried Madame. "It would not be in a house. They live
many together in one house. It would be two rooms, or even one room,
in another house with many people not quite clean, you see--"

Alvina shook her head.

"I couldn't stand that," she said finally.

"No!" Madame nodded approval. "No! you could not. They live in a bad
way, the Italians. They do not know the English home--never. They
don't like it. Nor do they know the Swiss clean and proper house.
No. They don't understand. They run into their holes to sleep or to
shelter, and that is all."

"The same in Italy?" said Alvina.

"Even more--because there it is sunny very often--"

"And you don't need a house," said Alvina. "I should like that."

"Yes, it is nice--but you don't know the life. And you would be
alone with people like animals. And if you go to Italy he will beat
you--he will beat you--"

"If I let him," said Alvina.

"But you can't help it, away there from everybody. Nobody will help
you. If you are a wife in Italy, nobody will help you. You are his
property, when you marry by Italian law. It is not like England.
There is no divorce in Italy. And if he beats you, you are
helpless--"

"But why should he beat me?" said Alvina. "Why should he want to?"

"They do. They are so jealous. And then they go into their
ungovernable tempers, horrible tempers--"

"Only when they are provoked," said Alvina, thinking of Max.

"Yes, but you will not know what provokes him. Who can _say_ when he
will be provoked? And then he beats you--"

There seemed to be a gathering triumph in Madame's bright black
eyes. Alvina looked at her, and turned to the door.

"At any rate I know now," she said, in rather a flat voice.

"And it is _true_. It is all of it true," whispered Madame
vindictively. Alvina wanted to run from her.

"I _must_ go to the kitchen," she said. "Shall we go down?"

Alvina did not go into the drawing-room with Madame. She was too
much upset, and she had almost a horror of seeing Ciccio at that
moment.

Miss Pinnegar, her face stained carmine by the fire, was helping
Mrs. Rollings with the dinner.

"Are they both staying, or only one?" she said tartly.

"Both," said Alvina, busying herself with the gravy, to hide her
distress and confusion.

"The man as well," said Miss Pinnegar. "What does the woman want to
bring _him_ for? I'm sure I don't know what your father would say--a
common show-fellow, _looks_ what he is--and staying to dinner."

Miss Pinnegar was thoroughly out of temper as she tried the
potatoes. Alvina set the table. Then she went to the drawing-room.

"Will you come to dinner?" she said to her two guests.

Ciccio rose, threw his cigarette into the fire, and looked round.
Outside was a faint, watery sunshine: but at least it was out of
doors. He felt himself imprisoned and out of his element. He had an
irresistible impulse to go.

When he got into the hall he laid his hand on his hat. The stupid,
constrained smile was on his face.

"I'll go now," he said.

"We have set the table for you," said Alvina.

"Stop now, since you have stopped for so long," said Madame, darting
her black looks at him.

But he hurried on his coat, looking stupid. Madame lifted her
eyebrows disdainfully.

"This is polite behaviour!" she said sarcastically.

Alvina stood at a loss.

"You return to the funeral?" said Madame coldly.

He shook his head.

"When you are ready to go," he said.

"At four o'clock," said Madame, "when the funeral has come home.
Then we shall be in time for the train."

He nodded, smiled stupidly, opened the door, and went.

"This is just like him, to be so--so--" Madame could not express
herself as she walked down to the kitchen.

"Miss Pinnegar, this is Madame," said Alvina.

"How do you do?" said Miss Pinnegar, a little distant and
condescending. Madame eyed her keenly.

"Where is the man? I don't know his name," said Miss Pinnegar.

"He wouldn't stay," said Alvina. "What _is_ his name, Madame?"

"Marasca--Francesco. Francesco Marasca--Neapolitan."

"Marasca!" echoed Alvina.

"It has a bad sound--a sound of a bad augury, bad sign," said
Madame. "Ma-rà-sca!" She shook her head at the taste of the
syllables.

"Why do you think so?" said Alvina. "Do you think there is a meaning
in sounds? goodness and badness?"

"Yes," said Madame. "Certainly. Some sounds are good, they are for
life, for creating, and some sounds are bad, they are for
destroying. Ma-rà-sca!--that is bad, like swearing."

"But what sort of badness? What does it do?" said Alvina.

"What does it do? It sends life down--down--instead of lifting it
up."

"Why should things always go up? Why should life always go up?" said
Alvina.

"I don't know," said Madame, cutting her meat quickly. There was a
pause.

"And what about other names," interrupted Miss Pinnegar, a little
lofty. "What about Houghton, for example?"

Madame put down her fork, but kept her knife in her hand. She looked
across the room, not at Miss Pinnegar.

"Houghton--! Huff-ton!" she said. "When it is said, it has a sound
_against_: that is, against the neighbour, against humanity. But
when it is written _Hough-ton!_ then it is different, it is _for_."

"It is always pronounced _Huff-ton_," said Miss Pinnegar.

"By us," said Alvina.

"We ought to know," said Miss Pinnegar.

Madame turned to look at the unhappy, elderly woman.

"You are a relative of the family?" she said.

"No, not a relative. But I've been here many years," said Miss
Pinnegar.

"Oh, yes!" said Madame. Miss Pinnegar was frightfully affronted. The
meal, with the three women at table, passed painfully.

Miss Pinnegar rose to go upstairs and weep. She felt very forlorn.
Alvina rose to wipe the dishes, hastily, because the funeral guests
would all be coming. Madame went into the drawing-room to smoke her
sly cigarette.

Mr. May was the first to turn up for the lugubrious affair: very
tight and tailored, but a little extinguished, all in black. He
never wore black, and was very unhappy in it, being almost morbidly
sensitive to the impression the colour made on him. He was set to
entertain Madame.

She did not pretend distress, but sat black-eyed and watchful, very
much her business self.

"What about the theatre?--will it go on?" she asked.

"Well I don't know. I don't know Miss Houghton's intentions," said
Mr. May. He was a little stilted today.

"It's hers?" said Madame.

"Why, as far as I understand--"

"And if she wants to sell out--?"

Mr. May spread his hands, and looked dismal, but distant.

"You should form a company, and carry on--" said Madame.

Mr. May looked even more distant, drawing himself up in an odd
fashion, so that he looked as if he were trussed. But Madame's
shrewd black eyes and busy mind did not let him off.

"Buy Miss Houghton out--" said Madame shrewdly.

"Of cauce," said Mr. May. "Miss Houghton herself must decide."

"Oh sure--! You--are you married?"

"Yes."

"Your wife here?"

"My wife is in London."

"And children--?"

"A daughter."

Madame slowly nodded her head up and down, as if she put thousands
of two-and-two's together.

"You think there will be much to come to Miss Houghton?" she said.

"Do you mean property? I really can't say. I haven't enquired."

"No, but you have a good idea, eh?"

"I'm afraid I haven't.

"No! Well! It won't be much, then?"

"Really, I don't know. I should say, not a _large_ fortune--!"

"No--eh?" Madame kept him fixed with her black eyes. "Do you think
the other one will get anything?"

"The _other one_--?" queried Mr. May, with an uprising cadence.
Madame nodded slightly towards the kitchen.

"The old one--the Miss--Miss Pin--Pinny--what you call her."

"Miss Pinnegar! The manageress of the work-girls? Really, I don't
know at all--" Mr. May was most freezing.

"Ha--ha! Ha--ha!" mused Madame quietly. Then she asked: "Which
work-girls do you say?"

And she listened astutely to Mr. May's forced account of the
work-room upstairs, extorting all the details she desired to gather.
Then there was a pause. Madame glanced round the room.

"Nice house!" she said. "Is it their own?"

"So I _believe_--"

Again Madame nodded sagely. "Debts perhaps--eh? Mortgage--" and she
looked slyly sardonic.

"Really!" said Mr. May, bouncing to his feet. "Do you mind if I go
to speak to Mrs. Rollings--"

"Oh no--go along," said Madame, and Mr. May skipped out in a temper.



Madame was left alone in her comfortable chair, studying details of
the room and making accounts in her own mind, until the actual
funeral guests began to arrive. And then she had the satisfaction of
sizing them up. Several arrived with wreaths. The coffin had been
carried down and laid in the small sitting-room--Mrs. Houghton's
sitting-room. It was covered with white wreaths and streamers of
purple ribbon. There was a crush and a confusion.

And then at last the hearse and the cabs had arrived--the coffin was
carried out--Alvina followed, on the arm of her father's cousin,
whom she disliked. Miss Pinnegar marshalled the other mourners. It
was a wretched business.

But it was a great funeral. There were nine cabs, besides the
hearse--Woodhouse had revived its ancient respect for the house of
Houghton. A posse of minor tradesmen followed the cabs--all in black
and with black gloves. The richer tradesmen sat in the cabs.

Poor Alvina, this was the only day in all her life when she was the
centre of public attention. For once, every eye was upon her, every
mind was thinking about her. Poor Alvina! said every member of the
Woodhouse "middle class": Poor Alvina Houghton, said every collier's
wife. Poor thing, left alone--and hardly a penny to bless herself
with. Lucky if she's not left with a pile of debts. James Houghton
ran through some money in his day. Ay, if she had her rights she'd
be a rich woman. Why, her mother brought three or four thousands
with her. Ay, but James sank it all in Throttle-Ha'penny and
Klondyke and the Endeavour. Well, he was his own worst enemy. He
paid his way. I'm not so sure about that. Look how he served his
wife, and now Alvina. I'm not so sure he was his own worst enemy. He
was bad enough enemy to his own flesh and blood. Ah well, he'll
spend no more money, anyhow. No, he went sudden, didn't he? But he
was getting very frail, if you noticed. Oh yes, why he fair seemed
to totter down to Lumley. Do you reckon as that place pays its way?
What, the Endeavour?--they say it does. They say it makes a nice
bit. Well, it's mostly pretty full. Ay, it is. Perhaps it won't be
now Mr. Houghton's gone. Perhaps not. I wonder if he _will_ leave
much. I'm sure he won't. Everything he's got's mortgaged up to the
hilt. He'll leave debts, you see if he doesn't. What is she going to
do then? She'll have to go out of Manchester House--her and Miss
Pinnegar. Wonder what she'll do. Perhaps she'll take up that
nursing. She never made much of that, did she--and spent a sight of
money on her training, they say. She's a bit like her father in the
business line--all flukes. Pity some nice young man doesn't turn up
and marry her. I don't know, she doesn't seem to hook on, does she?
Why she's never had a proper boy. They make out she was engaged
once. Ay, but nobody ever saw him, and it was off as soon as it was
on. Can you remember she went with Albert Witham for a bit. Did she?
No, I never knew. When was that? Why, when he was at Oxford, you
know, learning for his head master's place. Why didn't she marry him
then? Perhaps he never asked her. Ay, there's that to it. She'd have
looked down her nose at him, times gone by. Ay, but that's all over,
my boy. She'd snap at anybody now. Look how she carries on with that
manager. Why, _that's_ something awful. Haven't you ever watched her
in the Cinema? She never lets him alone. And it's anybody alike. Oh,
she doesn't respect herself. I don't consider. No girl who respected
herself would go on as she does, throwing herself at every feller's
head. Does she, though? Ay, any performer or anybody. She's a tidy
age, though. She's not much chance of getting off. How old do you
reckon she is? Must be well over thirty. You never say. Well, she
_looks_ it. She does beguy--a dragged old maid. Oh but she
sprightles up a bit sometimes. Ay, when she thinks she's hooked on
to somebody. I wonder why she never did take? It's funny. Oh, she
was too high and mighty before, and now it's too late. Nobody wants
her. And she's got no relations to go to either, has she? No, that's
her father's cousin who she's walking with. Look, they're coming.
He's a fine-looking man, isn't he? You'd have thought they'd have
buried Miss Frost beside Mrs. Houghton. You would, wouldn't you? I
should think Alvina will lie by Miss Frost. They say the grave was
made for both of them. Ay, she was a lot more of a mother to her
than her own mother. She _was_ good to them, Miss Frost was. Alvina
thought the world of her. That's her stone--look, down there. Not a
very grand one, considering. No, it isn't. Look, there's room for
Alvina's name underneath. Sh!--

Alvina had sat back in the cab and watched from her obscurity the
many faces on the street: so familiar, so familiar, familiar as her
own face. And now she seemed to see them from a great distance, out
of her darkness. Her big cousin sat opposite her--how she disliked
his presence.

In chapel she cried, thinking of her mother, and Miss Frost, and her
father. She felt so desolate--it all seemed so empty. Bitterly she
cried, when she bent down during the prayer. And her crying started
Miss Pinnegar, who cried almost as bitterly. It was all rather
horrible. The afterwards--the horrible afterwards.

There was the slow progress to the cemetery. It was a dull, cold
day. Alvina shivered as she stood on the bleak hillside, by the open
grave. Her coat did not seem warm enough, her old black seal-skin
furs were not much protection. The minister stood on the plank by
the grave, and she stood near, watching the white flowers blowing in
the cold wind. She had watched them for her mother--and for Miss
Frost. She felt a sudden clinging to Miss Pinnegar. Yet they would
have to part. Miss Pinnegar had been so fond of her father, in a
quaint, reserved way. Poor Miss Pinnegar, that was all life had
offered her. Well, after all, it had been a home and a home life. To
which home and home life Alvina now clung with a desperate yearning,
knowing inevitably she was going to lose it, now her father was
gone. Strange, that he was gone. But he was weary, worn very thin
and weary. He had lived his day. How different it all was, now, at
his death, from the time when Alvina knew him as a little child and
thought him such a fine gentleman. You live and learn and lose.

For one moment she looked at Madame, who was shuddering with cold,
her face hidden behind her black spotted veil. But Madame seemed
immensely remote: so unreal. And Ciccio--what was his name? She
could not think of it. What was it? She tried to think of Madame's
slow enunciation. Marasca--maraschino. Marasca! Maraschino! What was
maraschino? Where had she heard it. Cudgelling her brains, she
remembered the doctors, and the suppers after the theatre. And
maraschino--why, that was the favourite white liqueur of the
innocent Dr. Young. She could remember even now the way he seemed to
smack his lips, saying the word _maraschino_. Yet she didn't think
much of it. Hot, bitterish stuff--nothing: not like green
Chartreuse, which Dr. James gave her. Maraschino! Yes, that was it.
Made from cherries. Well, Ciccio's name was nearly the same.
Ridiculous! But she supposed Italian words were a good deal alike.

Ciccio, the marasca, the bitter cherry, was standing on the edge of
the crowd, looking on. He had no connection whatever with the
proceedings--stood outside, self-conscious, uncomfortable, bitten by
the wind, and hating the people who stared at him. He saw the trim,
plump figure of Madame, like some trim plump partridge among a flock
of barn-yard fowls. And he depended on her presence. Without her, he
would have felt too horribly uncomfortable on that raw hillside. She
and he were in some way allied. But these others, how alien and
uncouth he felt them. Impressed by their fine clothes, the English
working-classes were none the less barbarians to him, uncivilized:
just as he was to them an uncivilized animal. Uncouth, they seemed
to him, all raw angles and harshness, like their own weather. Not
that he thought about them. But he felt it in his flesh, the
harshness and discomfort of them. And Alvina was one of them. As she
stood there by the grave, pale and pinched and reserved looking, she
was of a piece with the hideous cold grey discomfort of the whole
scene. Never had anything been more uncongenial to him. He was dying
to get away--to clear out. That was all he wanted. Only some
southern obstinacy made him watch, from the duskiness of his face,
the pale, reserved girl at the grave. Perhaps he even disliked her,
at that time. But he watched in his dislike.

When the ceremony was over, and the mourners turned away to go back
to the cabs, Madame pressed forward to Alvina.

"I shall say good-bye now, Miss Houghton. We must go to the station
for the train. And thank you, thank you. Good-bye."

"But--" Alvina looked round.

"Ciccio is there. I see him. We must catch the train."

"Oh but--won't you drive? Won't you ask Ciccio to drive with you in
the cab? Where is he?"

Madame pointed him out as he hung back among the graves, his black
hat cocked a little on one side. He was watching. Alvina broke away
from her cousin, and went to him.

"Madame is going to drive to the station," she said. "She wants you
to get in with her."

He looked round at the cabs.

"All right," he said, and he picked his way across the graves to
Madame, following Alvina.

"So, we go together in the cab," said Madame to him. Then:
"Good-bye, my dear Miss Houghton. Perhaps we shall meet once more.
Who knows? My heart is with you, my dear." She put her arms round
Alvina and kissed her, a little theatrically. The cousin looked on,
very much aloof. Ciccio stood by.

"Come then, Ciccio," said Madame.

"Good-bye," said Alvina to him. "You'll come again, won't you?" She
looked at him from her strained, pale face.

"All right," he said, shaking her hand loosely. It sounded
hopelessly indefinite.

"You will come, won't you?" she repeated, staring at him with
strained, unseeing blue eyes.

"All right," he said, ducking and turning away.

She stood quite still for a moment, quite lost. Then she went on
with her cousin to her cab, home to the funeral tea.

"Good-bye!" Madame fluttered a black-edged handkerchief. But Ciccio,
most uncomfortable in his four-wheeler, kept hidden.

The funeral tea, with its baked meats and sweets, was a terrible
affair. But it came to an end, as everything comes to an end, and
Miss Pinnegar and Alvina were left alone in the emptiness of
Manchester House.

"If you weren't here, Miss Pinnegar, I should be quite by myself,"
said Alvina, blanched and strained.

"Yes. And so should I without you," said Miss Pinnegar doggedly.
They looked at each other. And that night both slept in Miss
Pinnegar's bed, out of sheer terror of the empty house.

During the days following the funeral, no one could have been more
tiresome than Alvina. James had left everything to his daughter,
excepting some rights in the work-shop, which were Miss Pinnegar's.
But the question was, how much did "everything" amount to? There
was something less than a hundred pounds in the bank. There was a
mortgage on Manchester House. There were substantial bills owing on
account of the Endeavour. Alvina had about a hundred pounds left
from the insurance money, when all funeral expenses were paid. Of
that she was sure, and of nothing else.

For the rest, she was almost driven mad by people coming to talk to
her. The lawyer came, the clergyman came, her cousin came, the old,
stout, prosperous tradesmen of Woodhouse came, Mr. May came, Miss
Pinnegar came. And they all had schemes, and they all had advice.
The chief plan was that the theatre should be sold up: and that
Manchester House should be sold, reserving a lease on the top floor,
where Miss Pinnegar's work-rooms were: that Miss Pinnegar and Alvina
should move into a small house, Miss Pinnegar keeping the work-room,
Alvina giving music-lessons: that the two women should be partners
in the work-shop.

There were other plans, of course. There was a faction against the
chapel faction, which favoured the plan sketched out above. The
theatre faction, including Mr. May and some of the more florid
tradesmen, favoured the risking of everything in the Endeavour.
Alvina was to be the proprietress of the Endeavour, she was to run
it on some sort of successful lines, and abandon all other
enterprise. Minor plans included the election of Alvina to the post
of parish nurse, at six pounds a month: a small private school; a
small haberdashery shop; and a position in the office of her
cousin's Knarborough business. To one and all Alvina answered with a
tantalizing: "I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know. I
can't say yet. I shall see. I shall see." Till one and all became
angry with her. They were all so benevolent, and all so sure that
they were proposing the very best thing she could do. And they were
all nettled, even indignant that she did not jump at their
proposals. She listened to them all. She even invited their advice.
Continually she said: "Well, what do _you_ think of it?" And she
repeated the chapel plan to the theatre group, the theatre plan to
the chapel party, the nursing to the pianoforte proposers, the
haberdashery shop to the private school advocates. "Tell me what
_you_ think," she said repeatedly. And they all told her they
thought _their_ plan was best. And bit by bit she told every
advocate the proposal of every other advocate "Well, Lawyer Beeby
thinks--" and "Well now, Mr. Clay, the minister, advises--" and so
on and so on, till it was all buzzing through thirty benevolent and
officious heads. And thirty benevolently-officious wills were
striving to plant each one its own particular scheme of benevolence.
And Alvina, naïve and pathetic, egged them all on in their strife,
without even knowing what she was doing. One thing only was certain.
Some obstinate will in her own self absolutely refused to have her
mind made up. She would _not_ have her mind made up for her, and she
would not make it up for herself. And so everybody began to say "I'm
getting tired of her. You talk to her, and you get no forrarder. She
slips off to something else. I'm not going to bother with her any
more." In truth, Woodhouse was in a fever, for three weeks or more,
arranging Alvina's unarrangeable future for her. Offers of charity
were innumerable--for three weeks.

Meanwhile, the lawyer went on with the proving of the will and the
drawing up of a final account of James's property; Mr. May went on
with the Endeavour, though Alvina did not go down to play; Miss
Pinnegar went on with the work-girls: and Alvina went on unmaking
her mind.

Ciccio did not come during the first week. Alvina had a post-card
from Madame, from Cheshire: rather far off. But such was the buzz
and excitement over her material future, such a fever was worked up
round about her that Alvina, the petty-propertied heroine of the
moment, was quite carried away in a storm of schemes and benevolent
suggestions. She answered Madame's post-card, but did not give much
thought to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. As a matter of fact, she was
enjoying a real moment of importance, there at the centre of
Woodhouse's rather domineering benevolence: a benevolence which she
unconsciously, but systematically frustrated. All this scheming for
selling out and making reservations and hanging on and fixing prices
and getting private bids for Manchester House and for the Endeavour,
the excitement of forming a Limited Company to run the Endeavour, of
seeing a lawyer about the sale of Manchester House and the
auctioneer about the sale of the furniture, of receiving men who
wanted to pick up the machines upstairs cheap, and of keeping
everything dangling, deciding nothing, putting everything off till
she had seen somebody else, this for the moment fascinated her, went
to her head. It was not until the second week had passed that her
excitement began to merge into irritation, and not until the third
week had gone by that she began to feel herself entangled in an
asphyxiating web of indecision, and her heart began to sing because
Ciccio had never turned up. Now she would have given anything to see
the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras again. But she did not know where they were.
Now she began to loathe the excitement of her property: doubtfully
hers, every stick of it. Now she would give anything to get away
from Woodhouse, from the horrible buzz and entanglement of her
sordid affairs. Now again her wild recklessness came over her.

She suddenly said she was going away somewhere: she would not say
where. She cashed all the money she could: a hundred-and-twenty-five
pounds. She took the train to Cheshire, to the last address of the
Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: she followed them to Stockport: and back to
Chinley: and there she was stuck for the night. Next day she dashed
back almost to Woodhouse, and swerved round to Sheffield. There, in
that black town, thank heaven, she saw their announcement on the
wall. She took a taxi to their theatre, and then on to their
lodgings. The first thing she saw was Louis, in his shirt sleeves,
on the landing above.

She laughed with excitement and pleasure. She seemed another woman.
Madame looked up, almost annoyed, when she entered.

"I couldn't keep away from you, Madame," she cried.

"Evidently," said Madame.

Madame was darning socks for the young men. She was a wonderful
mother for them, sewed for them, cooked for them, looked after them
most carefully. Not many minutes was Madame idle.

"Do you mind?" said Alvina.

Madame darned for some moments without answering.

"And how is everything at Woodhouse?" she asked.

"I couldn't bear it any longer. I couldn't bear it. So I collected
all the money I could, and ran away. Nobody knows where I am."

Madame looked up with bright, black, censorious eyes, at the flushed
girl opposite. Alvina had a certain strangeness and brightness,
which Madame did not know, and a frankness which the Frenchwoman
mistrusted, but found disarming.

"And all the business, the will and all?" said Madame.

"They're still fussing about it."

"And there is some money?"

"I have got a hundred pounds here," laughed Alvina. "What there will
be when everything is settled, I don't know. But not very much, I'm
sure of that."

"How much do you think? A thousand pounds?"

"Oh, it's just possible, you know. But it's just as likely there
won't be another penny--"

Madame nodded slowly, as always when she did her calculations.

"And if there is nothing, what do you intend?" said Madame.

"I don't know," said Alvina brightly.

"And if there is something?"

"I don't know either. But I thought, if you would let me play for
you, I could keep myself for some time with my own money. You said
perhaps I might be with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. I wish you would let
me."

Madame bent her head so that nothing showed but the bright black
folds of her hair. Then she looked up, with a slow, subtle, rather
jeering smile.

"Ciccio didn't come to see you, hein?"

"No," said Alvina. "Yet he promised."

Again Madame smiled sardonically.

"Do you call it a promise?" she said. "You are easy to be satisfied
with a word. A hundred pounds? No more?"

"A hundred and twenty--"

"Where is it?"

"In my bag at the station--in notes. And I've got a little here--"
Alvina opened her purse, and took out some little gold and silver.

"At the station!" exclaimed Madame, smiling grimly. "Then perhaps
you have nothing."

"Oh, I think it's quite safe, don't you--?"

"Yes--maybe--since it is England. And you think a hundred and twenty
pounds is enough?"

"What for?"

"To satisfy Ciccio."

"I wasn't thinking of him," cried Alvina.

"No?" said Madame ironically. "I can propose it to him. Wait one
moment." She went to the door and called Ciccio.

He entered, looking not very good-tempered.

"Be so good, my dear," said Madame to him, "to go to the station and
fetch Miss Houghton's little bag. You have got the ticket, have
you?" Alvina handed the luggage ticket to Madame. "Midland Railway,"
said Madame. "And, Ciccio, you are listening--? Mind! There is a
hundred and twenty pounds of Miss Houghton's money in the bag. You
hear? Mind it is not lost."

"It's all I have," said Alvina.

"For the time, for the time--till the will is proved, it is all the
cash she has. So mind doubly. You hear?"

"All right," said Ciccio.

"Tell him what sort of a bag, Miss Houghton," said Madame.

Alvina told him. He ducked and went. Madame listened for his final
departure. Then she nodded sagely at Alvina.

"Take off your hat and coat, my dear. Soon we will have tea--when
Cic' returns. Let him think, let him think what he likes. So much
money is certain, perhaps there will be more. Let him think. It will
make all the difference that there is so much cash--yes, so much--"

"But would it _really_ make a difference to him?" cried Alvina.

"Oh my dear!" exclaimed Madame. "Why should it not? We are on earth,
where we must eat. We are not in Paradise. If it were a thousand
pounds, then he would want very badly to marry you. But a hundred
and twenty is better than a blow to the eye, eh? Why sure!"

"It's dreadful, though--!" said Alvina.

"Oh la-la! Dreadful! If it was Max, who is sentimental, then no, the
money is nothing. But all the others--why, you see, they are men,
and they know which side to butter their bread. Men are like cats,
my dear, they don't like their bread without butter. Why should
they? Nor do I, nor do I."

"Can I help with the darning?" said Alvina.

"Hein? I shall give you Ciccio's socks, yes? He pushes holes in the
toes--you see?" Madame poked two fingers through the hole in the
toe of a red-and-black sock, and smiled a little maliciously at
Alvina.

"I don't mind which sock I darn," she said.

"No? You don't? Well then, I give you another. But if you like I
will speak to him--"

"What to say?" asked Alvina.

"To say that you have so much money, and hope to have more. And that
you like him--Yes? Am I right? You like him very much?--hein? Is it
so?"

"And then what?" said Alvina.

"That he should tell me if he should like to marry you also--quite
simply. What? Yes?"

"No," said Alvina. "Don't say anything--not yet."

"Hé? Not yet? Not yet. All right, not yet then. You will see--"

Alvina sat darning the sock and smiling at her own shamelessness.
The point that amused her most of all was the fact that she was not
by any means sure she wanted to marry him. There was Madame spinning
her web like a plump prolific black spider. There was Ciccio, the
unrestful fly. And there was herself, who didn't know in the least
what she was doing. There sat two of them, Madame and herself,
darning socks in a stuffy little bedroom with a gas fire, as if they
had been born to it. And after all, Woodhouse wasn't fifty miles
away.

Madame went downstairs to get tea ready. Wherever she was, she
superintended the cooking and the preparation of meals for her young
men, scrupulous and quick. She called Alvina downstairs. Ciccio came
in with the bag.

"See, my dear, that your money is safe," said Madame.

Alvina unfastened her bag and counted the crisp white notes.

"And now," said Madame, "I shall lock it in my little bank, yes,
where it will be safe. And I shall give you a receipt, which the
young men will witness."

The party sat down to tea, in the stuffy sitting-room.

"Now, boys," said Madame, "what do you say? Shall Miss Houghton join
the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Shall she be our pianist?"

The eyes of the four young men rested on Alvina. Max, as being the
responsible party, looked business-like. Louis was tender, Geoffrey
round-eyed and inquisitive, Ciccio furtive.

"With great pleasure," said Max. "But can the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras
afford to pay a pianist for themselves?"

"No," said Madame. "No. I think not. Miss Houghton will come for one
month, to prove, and in that time she shall pay for herself. Yes? So
she fancies it."

"Can we pay her expenses?" said Max.

"No," said Alvina. "Let me pay everything for myself, for a month. I
should like to be with you, awfully--"

She looked across with a look half mischievous, half beseeching at
the erect Max. He bowed as he sat at table.

"I think we shall all be honoured," he said.

"Certainly," said Louis, bowing also over his tea-cup.

Geoffrey inclined his head, and Ciccio lowered his eyelashes in
indication of agreement.

"Now then," said Madame briskly, "we are all agreed. Tonight we will
have a bottle of wine on it. Yes, gentlemen? What d'you say?
Chianti--hein?"

They all bowed above the table.

"And Miss Houghton shall have her professional name, eh? Because we
cannot say Miss Houghton--what?"

"Do call me Alvina," said Alvina.

"Alvina--Al-vy-na! No, excuse me, my dear, I don't like it. I don't
like this 'vy' sound. Tonight we shall find a name."

After tea they inquired for a room for Alvina. There was none in the
house. But two doors away was another decent lodging-house, where a
bedroom on the top floor was found for her.

"I think you are very well here," said Madame.

"Quite nice," said Alvina, looking round the hideous little room,
and remembering her other term of probation, as a maternity nurse.

She dressed as attractively as possible, in her new dress of black
voile, and imitating Madame, she put four jewelled rings on her
fingers. As a rule she only wore the mourning-ring of black enamel
and diamond, which had been always on Miss Frost's finger. Now she
left off this, and took four diamond rings, and one good sapphire.
She looked at herself in her mirror as she had never done before,
really interested in the effect she made. And in her dress she
pinned a valuable old ruby brooch.

Then she went down to Madame's house. Madame eyed her shrewdly, with
just a touch of jealousy: the eternal jealousy that must exist
between the plump, pale partridge of a Frenchwoman, whose black hair
is so glossy and tidy, whose black eyes are so acute, whose black
dress is so neat and _chic_, and the rather thin Englishwoman in
soft voile, with soft, rather loose brown hair and demure, blue-grey
eyes.

"Oh--a difference--what a difference! When you have a little more
flesh--then--" Madame made a slight click with her tongue. "What a
good brooch, eh?" Madame fingered the brooch. "Old paste--old
paste--antique--"

"No," said Alvina. "They are real rubies. It was my
great-grandmother's."

"Do you mean it? Real? Are you sure--"

"I think I'm quite sure."

Madame scrutinized the jewels with a fine eye.

"Hm!" she said. And Alvina did not know whether she was sceptical,
or jealous, or admiring, or really impressed.

"And the diamonds are real?" said Madame, making Alvina hold up her
hands.

"I've always understood so," said Alvina.

Madame scrutinized, and slowly nodded her head. Then she looked into
Alvina's eyes, really a little jealous.

"Another four thousand francs there," she said, nodding sagely.

"Really!" said Alvina.

"For sure. It's enough--it's enough--"

And there was a silence between the two women.

The young men had been out shopping for the supper. Louis, who knew
where to find French and German stuff, came in with bundles, Ciccio
returned with a couple of flasks, Geoffrey with sundry moist papers
of edibles. Alvina helped Madame to put the anchovies and sardines
and tunny and ham and salami on various plates, she broke off a bit
of fern from one of the flower-pots, to stick in the pork-pie, she
set the table with its ugly knives and forks and glasses. All the
time her rings sparkled, her red brooch sent out beams, she laughed
and was gay, she was quick, and she flattered Madame by being very
deferential to her. Whether she was herself or not, in the hideous,
common, stuffy sitting-room of the lodging-house she did not know or
care. But she felt excited and gay. She knew the young men were
watching her. Max gave his assistance wherever possible. Geoffrey
watched her rings, half spell-bound. But Alvina was concerned only
to flatter the plump, white, soft vanity of Madame. She carefully
chose for Madame the finest plate, the clearest glass, the
whitest-hafted knife, the most delicate fork. All of which Madame
saw, with acute eyes.

At the theatre the same: Alvina played for Kishwégin, only for
Kishwégin. And Madame had the time of her life.

"You know, my dear," she said afterward to Alvina, "I understand
sympathy in music. Music goes straight to the heart." And she kissed
Alvina on both cheeks, throwing her arms round her neck
dramatically.

"I'm _so_ glad," said the wily Alvina.

And the young men stirred uneasily, and smiled furtively.

They hurried home to the famous supper. Madame sat at one end of the
table, Alvina at the other. Madame had Max and Louis by her side,
Alvina had Ciccio and Geoffrey. Ciccio was on Alvina's right hand: a
delicate hint.

They began with hors d'oeuvres and tumblers three parts full of
Chianti. Alvina wanted to water her wine, but was not allowed to
insult the sacred liquid. There was a spirit of great liveliness and
conviviality. Madame became paler, her eyes blacker, with the wine
she drank, her voice became a little raucous.

"Tonight," she said, "the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras make their feast of
affiliation. The white daughter has entered the tribe of the
Hirondelles, swallows that pass from land to land, and build their
nests between roof and wall. A new swallow, a new Huron from the
tents of the pale-face, from the lodges of the north, from the tribe
of the Yenghees." Madame's black eyes glared with a kind of wild
triumph down the table at Alvina. "Nameless, without having a name,
comes the maiden with the red jewels, dark-hearted, with the red
beams. Wine from the pale-face shadows, drunken wine for Kishwégin,
strange wine for the _braves_ in their nostrils, Vaali, _à vous_."

Madame lifted her glass.

"Vaali, drink to her--Boire à elle--" She thrust her glass forwards
in the air. The young men thrust their glasses up towards Alvina, in
a cluster. She could see their mouths all smiling, their teeth white
as they cried in their throats: "Vaali! Vaali! Boire à vous."

Ciccio was near to her. Under the table he laid his hand on her
knee. Quickly she put forward her hand to protect herself. He took
her hand, and looked at her along the glass as he drank. She saw his
throat move as the wine went down it. He put down his glass, still
watching her.

"Vaali!" he said, in his throat. Then across the table "Hé,
Gigi--Viale! Le Petit Chemin! Comment? Me prends-tu? L'allée--"

There came a great burst of laughter from Louis.

"It is good, it is good!" he cried. "Oh Madame! Viale, it is Italian
for the little way, the alley. That is too rich."

Max went off into a high and ribald laugh.

"L'allée italienne!" he said, and shouted with laughter.

"Alley or avenue, what does it matter," cried Madame in French, "so
long as it is a good journey."

Here Geoffrey at last saw the joke. With a strange determined
flourish he filled his glass, cocking up his elbow.

"A toi, Cic'--et bon voyage!" he said, and then he tilted up his
chin and swallowed in great throatfuls.

"Certainly! Certainly!" cried Madame. "To thy good journey, my
Ciccio, for thou art not a great traveller--"

"Na, pour _ça_, y'a plus d'une voie," said Geoffrey.

During this passage in French Alvina sat with very bright eyes
looking from one to another, and not understanding. But she knew it
was something improper, on her account. Her eyes had a bright,
slightly-bewildered look as she turned from one face to another.
Ciccio had let go her hand, and was wiping his lips with his
fingers. He too was a little self-conscious.

"Assez de cette éternelle voix italienne," said Madame. "Courage,
courage au chemin d'Angleterre."

"Assez de cette éternelle voix rauque," said Ciccio, looking round.
Madame suddenly pulled herself together.

"They will not have my name. They will call you Allay!" she said to
Alvina. "Is it good? Will it do?"

"Quite," said Alvina.

And she could not understand why Gigi, and then the others after
him, went off into a shout of laughter. She kept looking round with
bright, puzzled eyes. Her face was slightly flushed and tender
looking, she looked naïve, young.

"Then you will become one of the tribe of Natcha-Kee-Tawara, of the
name Allaye? Yes?"

"Yes," said Alvina.

"And obey the strict rules of the tribe. Do you agree?"

"Yes."

"Then listen." Madame primmed and preened herself like a black
pigeon, and darted glances out of her black eyes.

"We are one tribe, one nation--say it."

"We are one tribe, one nation," repeated Alvina.

"Say all," cried Madame.

"We are one tribe, one nation--" they shouted, with varying accent.

"Good!" said Madame. "And no nation do we know but the nation of the
Hirondelles--"

"No nation do we know but the nation of the Hirondelles," came the
ragged chant of strong male voices, resonant and gay with mockery.

"Hurons--Hirondelles, means _swallows_," said Madame.

"Yes, I know," said Alvina.

"So! you know! Well, then! We know no nation but the Hirondelles. WE
HAVE NO LAW BUT HURON LAW!"

"We have no law but Huron law!" sang the response, in a deep,
sardonic chant.

"WE HAVE NO LAWGIVER EXCEPT KISHWÉGIN."

"We have no lawgiver except Kishwégin," they sang sonorous.

"WE HAVE NO HOME BUT THE TENT OF KISHWÉGIN."

"We have no home but the tent of Kishwégin."

"THERE IS NO GOOD BUT THE GOOD OF NATCHA-KEE-TAWARA."

"There is no good but the good of Natcha-Kee-Tawara."

"WE ARE THE HIRONDELLES."

"We are the Hirondelles."

"WE ARE KISHWÉGIN."

"We are Kishwégin."

"WE ARE MONDAGUA."

"We are Mondagua--"

"WE ARE ATONQUOIS--"

"We are Atonquois--"

"WE ARE PACOHUILA--"

"We are Pacohuila--"

"WE ARE WALGATCHKA--"

"We are Walgatchka--"

"WE ARE ALLAYE--"

"We are Allaye--"

"La musica! Pacohuila, la musica!" cried Madame, starting to her
feet and sounding frenzied.

Ciccio got up quickly and took his mandoline from its case.

"A--A--Ai--Aii--eee--ya--" began Madame, with a long, faint wail.
And on the wailing mandoline the music started. She began to dance a
slight but intense dance. Then she waved for a partner, and set up a
tarantella wail. Louis threw off his coat and sprang to tarantella
attention, Ciccio rang out the peculiar tarantella, and Madame and
Louis danced in the tight space.

"Brava--Brava!" cried the others, when Madame sank into her place.
And they crowded forward to kiss her hand. One after the other, they
kissed her fingers, whilst she laid her left hand languidly on the
head of one man after another, as she sat slightly panting. Ciccio
however did not come up, but sat faintly twanging the mandoline. Nor
did Alvina leave her place.

"Pacohuila!" cried Madame, with an imperious gesture. "Allaye!
Come--"

Ciccio laid down his mandoline and went to kiss the fingers of
Kishwégin. Alvina also went forward. Madame held out her hand.
Alvina kissed it. Madame laid her hand on the head of Alvina.

"This is the squaw Allaye, this is the daughter of Kishwégin," she
said, in her Tawara manner.

"And where is the _brave_ of Allaye, where is the arm that upholds
the daughter of Kishwégin, which of the Swallows spreads his wings
over the gentle head of the new one!"

"Pacohuila!" said Louis.

"Pacohuila! Pacohuila! Pacohuila!" said the others.

"Spread soft wings, spread dark-roofed wings, Pacohuila," said
Kishwégin, and Ciccio, in his shirt-sleeves solemnly spread his
arms.

"Stoop, stoop, Allaye, beneath the wings of Pacohuila," said
Kishwégin, faintly pressing Alvina on the shoulder.

Alvina stooped and crouched under the right arm of Pacohuila.

"Has the bird flown home?" chanted Kishwégin, to one of the strains
of their music.

"The bird is home--" chanted the men.

"Is the nest warm?" chanted Kishwégin.

"The nest is warm."

"Does the he-bird stoop--?"

"He stoops."

"Who takes Allaye?"

"Pacohuila."

Ciccio gently stooped and raised Alvina to her feet.

"C'est ça!" said Madame, kissing her. "And now, children, unless the
Sheffield policeman will knock at our door, we must retire to our
wigwams all--"

Ciccio was watching Alvina. Madame made him a secret, imperative
gesture that he should accompany the young woman.

"You have your key, Allaye?" she said.

"Did I have a key?" said Alvina.

Madame smiled subtly as she produced a latch-key.

"Kishwégin must open your doors for you all," she said. Then, with a
slight flourish, she presented the key to Ciccio. "I give it to him?
Yes?" she added, with her subtle, malicious smile.

Ciccio, smiling slightly, and keeping his head ducked, took the key.
Alvina looked brightly, as if bewildered, from one to another.

"Also the light!" said Madame, producing a pocket flash-light, which
she triumphantly handed to Ciccio. Alvina watched him. She noticed
how he dropped his head forward from his straight, strong shoulders,
how beautiful that was, the strong, forward-inclining nape and back
of the head. It produced a kind of dazed submission in her, the
drugged sense of unknown beauty.

"And so good-night, Allaye--bonne nuit, fille des Tawara." Madame
kissed her, and darted black, unaccountable looks at her.

Each _brave_ also kissed her hand, with a profound salute. Then the
men shook hands warmly with Ciccio, murmuring to him.

He did not put on his hat nor his coat, but ran round as he was to
the neighbouring house with her, and opened the door. She entered,
and he followed, flashing on the light. So she climbed weakly up the
dusty, drab stairs, he following. When she came to her door, she
turned and looked at him. His face was scarcely visible, it seemed,
and yet so strange and beautiful. It was the unknown beauty which
almost killed her.

"You aren't coming?" she quavered.

He gave an odd, half-gay, half-mocking twitch of his thick dark
brows, and began to laugh silently. Then he nodded again, laughing
at her boldly, carelessly, triumphantly, like the dark Southerner he
was. Her instinct was to defend herself. When suddenly she found
herself in the dark.

She gasped. And as she gasped, he quite gently put her inside her
room, and closed the door, keeping one arm round her all the time.
She felt his heavy muscular predominance. So he took her in both
arms, powerful, mysterious, horrible in the pitch dark. Yet the
sense of the unknown beauty of him weighed her down like some force.
If for one moment she could have escaped from that black spell of
his beauty, she would have been free. But she could not. He was
awful to her, shameless so that she died under his shamelessness,
his smiling, progressive shamelessness. Yet she could not see him
ugly. If only she could, for one second, have seen him ugly, he
would not have killed her and made her his slave as he did. But the
spell was on her, of his darkness and unfathomed handsomeness. And
he killed her. He simply took her and assassinated her. How she
suffered no one can tell. Yet all the time, his lustrous dark
beauty, unbearable.

When later she pressed her face on his chest and cried, he held her
gently as if she was a child, but took no notice, and she felt in
the darkness that he smiled. It was utterly dark, and she knew he
smiled, and she began to get hysterical. But he only kissed her, his
smiling deepening to a heavy laughter, silent and invisible, but
sensible, as he carried her away once more. He intended her to be
his slave, she knew. And he seemed to throw her down and suffocate
her like a wave. And she could have fought, if only the sense of his
dark, rich handsomeness had not numbed her like a venom. So she was
suffocated in his passion.

In the morning when it was light he turned and looked at her from
under his long black lashes, a long, steady, cruel, faintly-smiling
look from his tawny eyes, searching her as if to see whether she
were still alive. And she looked back at him, heavy-eyed and half
subjected. He smiled slightly at her, rose, and left her. And she
turned her face to the wall, feeling beaten. Yet not quite beaten
to death. Save for the fatal numbness of her love for him, she could
still have escaped him. But she lay inert, as if envenomed. He
wanted to make her his slave.

When she went down to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras for breakfast she found
them waiting for her. She was rather frail and tender-looking, with
wondering eyes that showed she had been crying.

"Come, daughter of the Tawaras," said Madame brightly to her. "We
have been waiting for you. Good-morning, and all happiness, eh?
Look, it is a gift-day for you--"

Madame smilingly led Alvina to her place. Beside her plate was a
bunch of violets, a bunch of carnations, a pair of exquisite bead
moccasins, and a pair of fine doeskin gloves delicately decorated
with feather-work on the cuffs. The slippers were from Kishwégin,
the gloves from Mondagua, the carnations from Atonquois, the violets
from Walgatchka--all _To the Daughter of the Tawaras, Allaye_, as it
said on the little cards.

"The gift of Pacohuila you know," said Madame, smiling. "The
brothers of Pacohuila are your brothers."

One by one they went to her and each one laid the back of her
fingers against his forehead, saying in turn:

"I am your brother Mondagua, Allaye!"

"I am your brother Atonquois, Allaye!"

"I am your brother Walgatchka, Allaye, best brother, you know--" So
spoke Geoffrey, looking at her with large, almost solemn eyes of
affection. Alvina smiled a little wanly, wondering where she was. It
was all so solemn. Was it all mockery, play-acting? She felt
bitterly inclined to cry.

Meanwhile Madame came in with the coffee, which she always made
herself, and the party sat down to breakfast. Ciccio sat on Alvina's
right, but he seemed to avoid looking at her or speaking to her. All
the time he looked across the table, with the half-asserted, knowing
look in his eyes, at Gigi: and all the time he addressed himself to
Gigi, with the throaty, rich, plangent quality in his voice, that
Alvina could not bear, it seemed terrible to her: and he spoke in
French: and the two men seemed to be exchanging unspeakable
communications. So that Alvina, for all her wistfulness and
subjectedness, was at last seriously offended. She rose as soon as
possible from table. In her own heart she wanted attention and
public recognition from Ciccio--none of which she got. She returned
to her own house, to her own room, anxious to tidy everything, not
wishing to have her landlady in the room. And she half expected
Ciccio to come to speak to her.

As she was busy washing a garment in the bowl, her landlady knocked
and entered. She was a rough and rather beery-looking Yorkshire
woman, not attractive.

"Oh, yo'n made yer bed then, han' yer!"

"Yes," said Alvina. "I've done everything."

"I see yer han. Yo'n bin sharp."

Alvina did not answer.

"Seems yer doin' yersen a bit o' weshin'."

Still Alvina didn't answer.

"Yo' can 'ing it i' th' back yard."

"I think it'll dry here," said Alvina.

"Isna much dryin' up here. Send us howd when 't's ready. Yo'll
'appen be wantin' it. I can dry it off for yer i' t' kitchen. You
don't take a drop o' nothink, do yer?"

"No," said Alvina. "I don't like it."

"Summat a bit stronger 'n 't bottle, my sakes alive! Well, yo mun
ha'e yer fling, like t' rest. But coom na, which on 'em is it? I
catched sight on 'im goin' out, but I didna ma'e out then which on
'em it wor. He--eh, it's a pity you don't take a drop of nothink,
it's a world's pity. Is it the fairest on 'em, the tallest."

"No," said Alvina. "The darkest one."

"Oh ay! Well, 's a strappin' anuff feller, for them as goes that
road. I thought Madame was partikler. I s'll charge yer a bit more,
yer know. I s'll 'ave to make a bit out of it. _I'm_ partikler as a
rule. I don't like 'em comin' in an' goin' out, you know. Things get
said. You look so quiet, you do. Come now, it's worth a hextra quart
to me, else I shan't have it, I shan't. You can't make as free as
all that with the house, you know, be it what it may--"

She stood red-faced and dour in the doorway. Alvina quietly gave her
half-a-sovereign.

"Nay, lass," said the woman, "if you share niver a drop o' th'
lashins, you mun split it. Five shillin's is oceans, ma wench. I'm
not down on you--not me. On'y we've got to keep up appearances a
bit, you know. Dash my rags, it's a caution!"

"I haven't got five shillings--" said Alvina.

"Yer've not? All right, gi'e 's ha 'efcrown today, an' t'other
termorrer. It'll keep, it'll keep. God bless you for a good wench.
A' open 'eart 's worth all your bum-righteousness. It is for me. An'
a sight more. You're all right, ma wench, you're all right--"

And the rather bleary woman went nodding away.

Alvina ought to have minded. But she didn't. She even laughed into
her ricketty mirror. At the back of her thoughts, all she minded was
that Ciccio did not pay her some attention. She really expected him
now to come to speak to her. If she could have imagined how far he
was from any such intention.

So she loitered unwillingly at her window high over the grey, hard,
cobbled street, and saw her landlady hastening along the black
asphalt pavement, her dirty apron thrown discreetly over what was
most obviously a quart jug. She followed the squat, intent figure
with her eye, to the public-house at the corner. And then she saw
Ciccio humped over his yellow bicycle, going for a steep and
perilous ride with Gigi.

Still she lingered in her sordid room. She could feel Madame was
expecting her. But she felt inert, weak, incommunicative. Only a
real fear of offending Madame drove her down at last.

Max opened the door to let her in.

"Ah!" he said. "You've come. We were wondering about you."

"Thank you," she said, as she passed into the dirty hall where still
two bicycles stood.

"Madame is in the kitchen," he said.

Alvina found Madame trussed in a large white apron, busy rubbing a
yellow-fleshed hen with lemon, previous to boiling.

"Ah!" said Madame. "So there you are! I have been out and done my
shopping, and already begun to prepare the dinner. Yes, you may help
me. Can you wash leeks? Yes? Every grain of sand? Shall I trust you
then--?"

Madame usually had a kitchen to herself, in the morning. She either
ousted her landlady, or used her as second cook. For Madame was a
gourmet, if not gourmand. If she inclined towards self-indulgence in
any direction, it was in the direction of food. She _loved_ a good
table. And hence the Tawaras saved less money than they might. She
was an exacting, tormenting, bullying cook. Alvina, who knew well
enough how to prepare a simple dinner, was offended by Madame's
exactions. Madame turning back the green leaves of a leek, and
hunting a speck of earth down into the white, like a flea in a bed,
was too much for Alvina.

"I'm afraid I shall never be particular enough," she said. "Can't I
do anything else for you?"

"For me? I need nothing to be done for me. But for the young
men--yes, I will show you in one minute--"

And she took Alvina upstairs to her room, and gave her a pair of the
thin leather trousers fringed with hair, belonging to one of the
_braves_. A seam had ripped. Madame gave Alvina a fine awl and some
waxed thread.

"The leather is not good in these things of Gigi's," she said. "It
is badly prepared. See, like this." And she showed Alvina another
place where the garment was repaired. "Keep on your apron. At the
week-end you must fetch more clothes, not spoil this beautiful gown
of voile. Where have you left your diamonds? What? In your room? Are
they locked? Oh my dear--!" Madame turned pale and darted looks of
fire at Alvina. "If they are stolen--!" she cried. "Oh! I have
become quite weak, hearing you!" She panted and shook her head. "If
they are not stolen, you have the Holy Saints alone to be thankful
for keeping them. But run, run!"

And Madame really stamped her foot.

"Bring me everything you've got--every _thing_ that is valuable. I
shall lock it up. How _can_ you--"

Alvina was hustled off to her lodging. Fortunately nothing was gone.
She brought all to Madame, and Madame fingered the treasures
lovingly.

"Now what you want you must ask me for," she said.

With what close curiosity Madame examined the ruby brooch.

"You can have that if you like, Madame," said Alvina.

"You mean--what?"

"I will give you that brooch if you like to take it--"

"Give me this--!" cried Madame, and a flash went over her face. Then
she changed into a sort of wheedling. "No--no. I shan't take it! I
shan't take it. You don't want to give away such a thing."

"I don't mind," said Alvina. "Do take it if you like it."

"Oh no! Oh no! I can't take it. A beautiful thing it is, really. It
would be worth over a thousand francs, because I believe it is quite
genuine."

"I'm sure it's genuine," said Alvina. "Do have it since you like
it."

"Oh, I can't! I can't!--"

"Yes do--"

"The beautiful red stones!--antique gems, antique gems--! And do you
really give it to me?"

"Yes, I should like to."

"You are a girl with a noble heart--" Madame threw her arms round
Alvina's neck, and kissed her. Alvina felt very cool about it.
Madame locked up the jewels quickly, after one last look.

"My fowl," she said, "which must not boil too fast."

At length Alvina was called down to dinner. The young men were at
table, talking as young men do, not very interestingly. After the
meal, Ciccio sat and twanged his mandoline, making its crying noise
vibrate through the house.

"I shall go and look at the town," said Alvina.

"And who shall go with you?" asked Madame.

"I will go alone," said Alvina, "unless you will come, Madame."

"Alas no, I can't. I can't come. Will you really go alone?"

"Yes, I want to go to the women's shops," said Alvina.

"You want to! All right then! And you will come home at tea-time,
yes?"

As soon as Alvina had gone out Ciccio put away his mandoline and lit
a cigarette. Then after a while he hailed Geoffrey, and the two
young men sallied forth. Alvina, emerging from a draper's shop in
Rotherhampton Broadway, found them loitering on the pavement
outside. And they strolled along with her. So she went into a shop
that sold ladies' underwear, leaving them on the pavement. She
stayed as long as she could. But there they were when she came out.
They had endless lounging patience.

"I thought you would be gone on," she said.

"No hurry," said Ciccio, and he took away her parcels from her, as
if he had a right. She wished he wouldn't tilt the flap of his black
hat over one eye, and she wished there wasn't quite so much
waist-line in the cut of his coat, and that he didn't smoke
cigarettes against the end of his nose in the street. But wishing
wouldn't alter him. He strayed alongside as if he half belonged, and
half didn't--most irritating.

She wasted as much time as possible in the shops, then they took the
tram home again. Ciccio paid the three fares, laying his hand
restrainingly on Gigi's hand, when Gigi's hand sought pence in his
trouser pocket, and throwing his arm over his friend's shoulder, in
affectionate but vulgar triumph, when the fares were paid. Alvina
was on her high horse.

They tried to talk to her, they tried to ingratiate themselves--but
she wasn't having any. She talked with icy pleasantness. And so the
tea-time passed, and the time after tea. The performance went rather
mechanically, at the theatre, and the supper at home, with bottled
beer and boiled ham, was a conventionally cheerful affair. Even
Madame was a little afraid of Alvina this evening.

"I am tired, I shall go early to my room," said Alvina.

"Yes, I think we are all tired," said Madame.

"Why is it?" said Max metaphysically--"why is it that two merry
evenings never follow one behind the other."

"Max, beer makes thee a _farceur_ of a fine quality," said Madame.
Alvina rose.

"Please don't get up," she said to the others. "I have my key and
can see quite well," she said. "Good-night all."

They rose and bowed their good-nights. But Ciccio, with an obstinate
and ugly little smile on his face, followed her.

"Please don't come," she said, turning at the street door. But
obstinately he lounged into the street with her. He followed her to
her door.

"Did you bring the flash-light?" she said. "The stair is so dark."

He looked at her, and turned as if to get the light. Quickly she
opened the house-door and slipped inside, shutting it sharply in his
face. He stood for some moments looking at the door, and an ugly
little look mounted his straight nose. He too turned indoors.

Alvina hurried to bed and slept well. And the next day the same, she
was all icy pleasantness. The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were a little bit
put out by her. She was a spoke in their wheel, a scotch to their
facility. She made them irritable. And that evening--it was
Friday--Ciccio did not rise to accompany her to her house. And she
knew they were relieved that she had gone.

That did not please her. The next day, which was Saturday, the last
and greatest day of the week, she found herself again somewhat of an
outsider in the troupe. The tribe had assembled in its old unison.
She was the intruder, the interloper. And Ciccio never looked at
her, only showed her the half-averted side of his cheek, on which
was a slightly jeering, ugly look.

"Will you go to Woodhouse tomorrow?" Madame asked her, rather
coolly. They none of them called her Allaye any more.

"I'd better fetch some things, hadn't I?" said Alvina.

"Certainly, if you think you will stay with us."

This was a nasty slap in the face for her. But:

"I want to," she said.

"Yes! Then you will go to Woodhouse tomorrow, and come to Mansfield
on Monday morning? Like that shall it be? You will stay one night at
Woodhouse?"

Through Alvina's mind flitted the rapid thought--"They want an
evening without me." Her pride mounted obstinately. She very nearly
said--"I may stay in Woodhouse altogether." But she held her tongue.

After all, they were very common people. They ought to be glad to
have her. Look how Madame snapped up that brooch! And look what an
uncouth lout Ciccio was! After all, she was demeaning herself
shamefully staying with them in common, sordid lodgings. After all,
she had been bred up differently from that. They had horribly low
standards--such low standards--not only of morality, but of life
altogether. Really, she had come down in the world, conforming to
such standards of life. She evoked the images of her mother and Miss
Frost: ladies, and noble women both. Whatever could she be thinking
of herself!

However, there was time for her to retrace her steps. She had not
given herself away. Except to Ciccio. And her heart burned when she
thought of him, partly with anger and mortification, partly, alas,
with undeniable and unsatisfied love. Let her bridle as she might,
her heart burned, and she wanted to look at him, she wanted him to
notice her. And instinct told her that he might ignore her for ever.
She went to her room an unhappy woman, and wept and fretted till
morning, chafing between humiliation and yearning.




CHAPTER X

THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE


Alvina rose chastened and wistful. As she was doing her hair, she
heard the plaintive nasal sound of Ciccio's mandoline. She looked
down the mixed vista of back-yards and little gardens, and was able
to catch sight of a portion of Ciccio, who was sitting on a box in
the blue-brick yard of his house, bare-headed and in his
shirt-sleeves, twitching away at the wailing mandoline. It was not a
warm morning, but there was a streak of sunshine. Alvina had noticed
that Ciccio did not seem to feel the cold, unless it were a wind or
a driving rain. He was playing the wildly-yearning Neapolitan songs,
of which Alvina knew nothing. But, although she only saw a section
of him, the glimpse of his head was enough to rouse in her that
overwhelming fascination, which came and went in spells. His
remoteness, his southernness, something velvety and dark. So easily
she might miss him altogether! Within a hair's-breadth she had let
him disappear.

She hurried down. Geoffrey opened the door to her. She smiled at him
in a quick, luminous smile, a magic change in her.

"I could hear Ciccio playing," she said.

Geoffrey spread his rather thick lips in a smile, and jerked his
head in the direction of the back door, with a deep, intimate look
into Alvina's eyes, as if to say his friend was lovesick.

"Shall I go through?" said Alvina.

Geoffrey laid his large hand on her shoulder for a moment, looked
into her eyes, and nodded. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, with a
rather flat, handsome face, well-coloured, and with the look of the
Alpine ox about him, slow, eternal, even a little mysterious. Alvina
was startled by the deep, mysterious look in his dark-fringed
ox-eyes. The odd arch of his eyebrows made him suddenly seem not
quite human to her. She smiled to him again, startled. But he only
inclined his head, and with his heavy hand on her shoulder gently
impelled her towards Ciccio.

When she came out at the back she smiled straight into Ciccio's
face, with her sudden, luminous smile. His hand on the mandoline
trembled into silence. He sat looking at her with an instant
re-establishment of knowledge. And yet she shrank from the long,
inscrutable gaze of his black-set, tawny eyes. She resented him a
little. And yet she went forward to him and stood so that her dress
touched him. And still he gazed up at her, with the heavy,
unspeaking look, that seemed to bear her down: he seemed like some
creature that was watching her for his purposes. She looked aside at
the black garden, which had a wiry goose-berry bush.

"You will come with me to Woodhouse?" she said.

He did not answer till she turned to him again. Then, as she met his
eyes,

"To Woodhouse?" he said, watching her, to fix her.

"Yes," she said, a little pale at the lips.

And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his
mouth. She wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred
his tawny eyes with their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched
her as a cat watches a bird, but without the white gleam of
ferocity. In his eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth, something
fathomless, deepening black and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.

"Will you?" she repeated.

But his eyes had already begun to glimmer their consent. He turned
aside his face, as if unwilling to give a straight answer.

"Yes," he said.

"Play something to me," she cried.

He lifted his face to her, and shook his head slightly.

"Yes do," she said, looking down on him.

And he bent his head to the mandoline, and suddenly began to sing a
Neapolitan song, in a faint, compressed head-voice, looking up at
her again as his lips moved, looking straight into her face with a
curious mocking caress as the muted _voix blanche_ came through his
lips at her, amid the louder quavering of the mandoline. The sound
penetrated her like a thread of fire, hurting, but delicious, the
high thread of his voice. She could see the Adam's apple move in his
throat, his brows tilted as he looked along his lashes at her all the
time. Here was the strange sphinx singing again, and herself between
its paws! She seemed almost to melt into his power.

Madame intervened to save her.

"What, serenade before breakfast! You have strong stomachs, I say.
Eggs and ham are more the question, hein? Come, you smell them,
don't you?"

A flicker of contempt and derision went over Ciccio's face as he
broke off and looked aside.

"I prefer the serenade," said Alvina. "I've had ham and eggs
before."

"You do, hein? Well--always, you won't. And now you must eat the ham
and eggs, however. Yes? Isn't it so?"

Ciccio rose to his feet, and looked at Alvina: as he would have
looked at Gigi, had Gigi been there. His eyes said unspeakable
things about Madame. Alvina flashed a laugh, suddenly. And a
good-humoured, half-mocking smile came over his face too.

They turned to follow Madame into the house. And as Alvina went
before him, she felt his fingers stroke the nape of her neck, and
pass in a soft touch right down her back. She started as if some
unseen creature had stroked her with its paw, and she glanced
swiftly round, to see the face of Ciccio mischievous behind her
shoulder.

"Now I think," said Madame, "that today we all take the same train.
We go by the Great Central as far as the junction, together. Then
you, Allaye, go on to Knarborough, and we leave you until tomorrow.
And now there is not much time."

"I am going to Woodhouse," said Ciccio in French.

"You also! By the train, or the bicycle?"

"Train," said Ciccio.

"Waste so much money?"

Ciccio raised his shoulders slightly.

When breakfast was over, and Alvina had gone to her room, Geoffrey
went out into the back yard, where the bicycles stood.

"Cic'," he said. "I should like to go with thee to Woodhouse. Come
on bicycle with me."

Ciccio shook his head.

"I'm going in train with _her_," he said.

Geoffrey darkened with his heavy anger.

"I would like to see how it is, there, _chez elle_," he said.

"Ask _her_," said Ciccio.

Geoffrey watched him suddenly.

"Thou forsakest me," he said. "I would like to see it, there."

"Ask _her_," repeated Ciccio. "Then come on bicycle."

"You're content to leave me," muttered Geoffrey.

Ciccio touched his friend on his broad cheek, and smiled at him with
affection.

"I don't leave thee, Gigi. I asked thy advice. You said, Go. But
come. Go and ask her, and then come. Come on bicycle, eh? Ask her!
Go on! Go and ask her."

Alvina was surprised to hear a tap at her door, and Gigi's voice, in
his strong foreign accent:

"Mees Houghton, I carry your bag."

She opened her door in surprise. She was all ready.

"There it is," she said, smiling at him.

But he confronted her like a powerful ox, full of dangerous force.
Her smile had reassured him.

"Na, Allaye," he said, "tell me something."

"What?" laughed Alvina.

"Can I come to Woodhouse?"

"When?"

"Today. Can I come on bicycle, to tea, eh? At your house with you
and Ciccio? Eh?"

He was smiling with a thick, doubtful, half sullen smile.

"Do!" said Alvina.

He looked at her with his large, dark-blue eyes.

"Really, eh?" he said, holding out his large hand.

She shook hands with him warmly.

"Yes, really!" she said. "I wish you would."

"Good," he said, a broad smile on his thick mouth. And all the time
he watched her curiously, from his large eyes.

"Ciccio--a good chap, eh?" he said.

"Is he?" laughed Alvina.

"Ha-a--!" Gigi shook his head solemnly. "The best!" He made such
solemn eyes, Alvina laughed. He laughed too, and picked up her bag
as if it were a bubble.

"Na Cic'--" he said, as he saw Ciccio in the street. "Sommes
d'accord."

"Ben!" said Ciccio, holding out his hand for the bag. "Donne."

"Ne-ne," said Gigi, shrugging.

Alvina found herself on the new and busy station that Sunday morning,
one of the little theatrical company. It was an odd experience. They
were so obviously a theatrical company--people apart from the world.
Madame was darting her black eyes here and there, behind her spotted
veil, and standing with the ostensible self-possession of her
profession. Max was circling round with large strides, round a big
black box on which the red words Natcha-Kee-Tawara showed mystic, and
round the small bunch of stage fittings at the end of the platform.
Louis was waiting to get the tickets, Gigi and Ciccio were bringing up
the bicycles. They were a whole train of departure in themselves, busy,
bustling, cheerful--and curiously apart, vagrants.

Alvina strolled away towards the half-open bookstall. Geoffrey was
standing monumental between her and the company. She returned to
him.

"What time shall we expect you?" she said.

He smiled at her in his broad, friendly fashion.

"Expect me to be there? Why--" he rolled his eyes and proceeded to
calculate. "At four o'clock."

"Just about the time when we get there," she said.

He looked at her sagely, and nodded.

They were a good-humoured company in the railway carriage. The men
smoked cigarettes and tapped off the ash on the heels of their
boots, Madame watched every traveller with professional curiosity.
Max scrutinized the newspaper, Lloyds, and pointed out items to
Louis, who read them over Max's shoulder, Ciccio suddenly smacked
Geoffrey on the thigh, and looked laughing into his face. So till
they arrived at the junction. And then there was a kissing and a
taking of farewells, as if the company were separating for ever.
Louis darted into the refreshment bar and returned with little pies
and oranges, which he deposited in the carriage, Madame presented
Alvina with a packet of chocolate. And it was "Good-bye, good-bye,
Allaye! Good-bye, Ciccio! Bon voyage. Have a good time, both."

So Alvina sped on in the fast train to Knarborough with Ciccio.

"I _do_ like them all," she said.

He opened his mouth slightly and lifted his head up and down. She
saw in the movement how affectionate he was, and in his own way, how
emotional. He loved them all. She put her hand to his. He gave her
hand one sudden squeeze, of physical understanding, then left it as
if nothing had happened. There were other people in the carriage
with them. She could not help feeling how sudden and lovely that
moment's grasp of his hand was: so warm, so whole.

And thus they watched the Sunday morning landscape slip by, as they
ran into Knarborough. They went out to a little restaurant to eat.
It was one o'clock.

"Isn't it strange, that we are travelling together like this?" she
said, as she sat opposite him.

He smiled, looking into her eyes.

"You think it's strange?" he said, showing his teeth slightly.

"Don't you?" she cried.

He gave a slight, laconic laugh.

"And I can hardly bear it that I love you so much," she said,
quavering, across the potatoes.

He glanced furtively round, to see if any one was listening, if any
one might hear. He would have hated it. But no one was near. Beneath
the tiny table, he took her two knees between his knees, and pressed
them with a slow, immensely powerful pressure. Helplessly she put
her hand across the table to him. He covered it for one moment with
his hand, then ignored it. But her knees were still between the
powerful, living vice of his knees.

"Eat!" he said to her, smiling, motioning to her plate. And he
relaxed her.

They decided to go out to Woodhouse on the tram-car, a long hour's
ride. Sitting on the top of the covered car, in the atmosphere of
strong tobacco smoke, he seemed self-conscious, withdrawn into his
own cover, so obviously a dark-skinned foreigner. And Alvina, as she
sat beside him, was reminded of the woman with the negro husband,
down in Lumley. She understood the woman's reserve. She herself
felt, in the same way, something of an outcast, because of the man
at her side. An outcast! And glad to be an outcast. She clung to
Ciccio's dark, despised foreign nature. She loved it, she
worshipped it, she defied all the other world. Dark, he sat beside
her, drawn in to himself, overcast by his presumed inferiority among
these northern industrial people. And she was with him, on his side,
outside the pale of her own people.

There were already acquaintances on the tram. She nodded in answer
to their salutation, but so obviously from a distance, that they
kept turning round to eye her and Ciccio. But they left her alone.
The breach between her and them was established for ever--and it was
her will which established it.

So up and down the weary hills of the hilly, industrial countryside,
till at last they drew near to Woodhouse. They passed the ruins of
Throttle-Ha'penny, and Alvina glanced at it indifferent. They ran
along the Knarborough Road. A fair number of Woodhouse young people
were strolling along the pavements in their Sunday clothes. She knew
them all. She knew Lizzie Bates's fox furs, and Fanny Clough's lilac
costume, and Mrs. Smitham's winged hat. She knew them all. And
almost inevitably the old Woodhouse feeling began to steal over her,
she was glad they could not see her, she was a little ashamed of
Ciccio. She wished, for the moment, Ciccio were not there. And as
the time came to get down, she looked anxiously back and forth to
see at which halt she had better descend--where fewer people would
notice her. But then she threw her scruples to the wind, and
descended into the staring, Sunday afternoon street, attended by
Ciccio, who carried her bag. She knew she was a marked figure.

They slipped round to Manchester House. Miss Pinnegar expected
Alvina, but by the train, which came later. So she had to be knocked
up, for she was lying down. She opened the door looking a little
patched in her cheeks, because of her curious colouring, and a
little forlorn, and a little dumpy, and a little irritable.

"I didn't know there'd be two of you," was her greeting.

"Didn't you," said Alvina, kissing her. "Ciccio came to carry my
bag."

"Oh," said Miss Pinnegar. "How do you do?" and she thrust out her
hand to him. He shook it loosely.

"I had your wire," said Miss Pinnegar. "You said the train. Mrs.
Rollings is coming in at four again--"

"Oh all right--" said Alvina.

The house was silent and afternoon-like. Ciccio took off his coat
and sat down in Mr. Houghton's chair. Alvina told him to smoke. He
kept silent and reserved. Miss Pinnegar, a poor, patch-cheeked,
rather round-backed figure with grey-brown fringe, stood as if she
did not quite know what to say or do.

She followed Alvina upstairs to her room.

"I can't think why you bring _him_ here," snapped Miss Pinnegar. "I
don't know what you're thinking about. The whole place is talking
already."

"I don't care," said Alvina. "I like him."

"Oh--for shame!" cried Miss Pinnegar, lifting her hand with Miss
Frost's helpless, involuntary movement. "What do you think of
yourself? And your father a month dead."

"It doesn't matter. Father _is_ dead. And I'm sure the dead don't
mind."

"I never _knew_ such things as you say."

"Why? I mean them."

Miss Pinnegar stood blank and helpless.

"You're not asking him to stay the night," she blurted.

"Yes. And I'm going back with him to Madame tomorrow. You know I'm
part of the company now, as pianist."

"And are you going to marry him?"

"I don't know."

"How _can_ you say you don't know! Why, it's awful. You make me feel
I shall go out of my mind."

"But I _don't_ know," said Alvina.

"It's incredible! Simply incredible! I believe you're out of your
senses. I used to think sometimes there was something wrong with
your mother. And that's what it is with you. You're not quite right
in your mind. You need to be looked after."

"Do I, Miss Pinnegar! Ah, well, don't you trouble to look after me,
will you?"

"No one will if I don't."

"I hope no one will."

There was a pause.

"I'm ashamed to live another day in Woodhouse," said Miss Pinnegar.

"_I'm_ leaving it for ever," said Alvina.

"I should think so," said Miss Pinnegar.

Suddenly she sank into a chair, and burst into tears, wailing:

"Your poor father! Your poor father!"

"I'm sure the dead are all right. Why must you pity him?"

"You're a lost girl!" cried Miss Pinnegar.

"Am I really?" laughed Alvina. It sounded funny.

"Yes, you're a lost girl," sobbed Miss Pinnegar, on a final note of
despair.

"I like being lost," said Alvina.

Miss Pinnegar wept herself into silence. She looked huddled and
forlorn. Alvina went to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.

"Don't fret, Miss Pinnegar," she said. "Don't be silly. I love to be
with Ciccio and Madame. Perhaps in the end I shall marry him. But if
I don't--" her hand suddenly gripped Miss Pinnegar's heavy arm till
it hurt--"I wouldn't lose a minute of him, no, not for anything
would I."

Poor Miss Pinnegar dwindled, convinced.

"You make it hard for _me_, in Woodhouse," she said, hopeless.

"Never mind," said Alvina, kissing her. "Woodhouse isn't heaven and
earth."

"It's been my home for forty years."

"It's been mine for thirty. That's why I'm glad to leave it." There
was a pause.

"I've been thinking," said Miss Pinnegar, "about opening a little
business in Tamworth. You know the Watsons are there."

"I believe you'd be happy," said Alvina.

Miss Pinnegar pulled herself together. She had energy and courage
still.

"I don't want to stay here, anyhow," she said. "Woodhouse has
nothing for me any more."

"Of course it hasn't," said Alvina. "I think you'd be happier away
from it."

"Yes--probably I should--now!"

None the less, poor Miss Pinnegar was grey-haired, she was almost a
dumpy, odd old woman.

They went downstairs. Miss Pinnegar put on the kettle.

"Would you like to see the house?" said Alvina to Ciccio.

He nodded. And she took him from room to room. His eyes looked
quickly and curiously over everything, noticing things, but without
criticism.

"This was my mother's little sitting-room," she said. "She sat here
for years, in this chair."

"Always here?" he said, looking into Alvina's face.

"Yes. She was ill with her heart. This is another photograph of her.
I'm not like her."

"Who is _that_?" he asked, pointing to a photograph of the handsome,
white-haired Miss Frost.

"That was Miss Frost, my governess. She lived here till she died. I
loved her--she meant everything to me."

"She also dead--?"

"Yes, five years ago."

They went to the drawing-room. He laid his hand on the keys of the
piano, sounding a chord.

"Play," she said.

He shook his head, smiling slightly. But he wished her to play. She
sat and played one of Kishwégin's pieces. He listened, faintly
smiling.

"Fine piano--eh?" he said, looking into her face.

"I like the tone," she said.

"Is it yours?"

"The piano? Yes. I suppose everything is mine--in name at least. I
don't know how father's affairs are really."

He looked at her, and again his eye wandered over the room. He saw a
little coloured portrait of a child with a fleece of brownish-gold
hair and surprised eyes, in a pale-blue stiff frock with a broad
dark-blue sash.

"You?" he said.

"Do you recognize me?" she said. "Aren't I comical?"

She took him upstairs--first to the monumental bedroom.

"This was mother's room," she said. "Now it is mine."

He looked at her, then at the things in the room, then out of the
window, then at her again. She flushed, and hurried to show him his
room, and the bath-room. Then she went downstairs.

He kept glancing up at the height of the ceilings, the size of the
rooms, taking in the size and proportion of the house, and the
quality of the fittings.

"It is a big house," he said. "Yours?"

"Mine in name," said Alvina. "Father left all to me--and his debts
as well, you see."

"Much debts?"

"Oh yes! I don't quite know how much. But perhaps more debts than
there is property. I shall go and see the lawyer in the morning.
Perhaps there will be nothing at all left for me, when everything is
paid."

She had stopped on the stairs, telling him this, turning round to
him, who was on the steps above. He looked down on her, calculating.
Then he smiled sourly.

"Bad job, eh, if it is all gone--!" he said.

"I don't mind, really, if I can live," she said.

He spread his hands, deprecating, not understanding. Then he glanced
up the stairs and along the corridor again, and downstairs into the
hall.

"A fine big house. Grand if it was yours," he said.

"I wish it were," she said rather pathetically, "if you like it so
much."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Hé!" he said. "How not like it!"

"I don't like it," she said. "I think it's a gloomy miserable hole.
I hate it. I've lived here all my life and seen everything bad
happen here. I hate it."

"Why?" he said, with a curious, sarcastic intonation.

"It's a bad job it isn't yours, for certain," he said, as they
entered the living-room, where Miss Pinnegar sat cutting bread and
butter.

"What?" said Miss Pinnegar sharply.

"The house," said Alvina.

"Oh well, we don't know. We'll hope for the best," replied Miss
Pinnegar, arranging the bread and butter on the plate. Then, rather
tart, she added: "It is a bad job. And a good many things are a bad
job, besides that. If Miss Houghton had what she _ought_ to have,
things would be very different, I assure you."

"Oh yes," said Ciccio, to whom this address was directed.

"Very different indeed. If all the money hadn't been--lost--in the
way it has, Miss Houghton wouldn't be playing the piano, for one
thing, in a cinematograph show."

"No, perhaps not," said Ciccio.

"Certainly not. It's not the right thing for her to be doing, _at
all_!"

"You think not?" said Ciccio.

"Do you imagine it is?" said Miss Pinnegar, turning point blank on
him as he sat by the fire.

He looked curiously at Miss Pinnegar, grinning slightly.

"Hé!" he said. "How do I know!"

"I should have thought it was obvious," said Miss Pinnegar.

"Hé!" he ejaculated, not fully understanding.

"But of course those that are used to nothing better can't see
anything but what they're used to," she said, rising and shaking the
crumbs from her black silk apron, into the fire. He watched her.

Miss Pinnegar went away into the scullery. Alvina was laying a fire
in the drawing-room. She came with a dustpan to take some coal from
the fire of the living-room.

"What do you want?" said Ciccio, rising. And he took the shovel from
her hand.

"Big, hot fires, aren't they?" he said, as he lifted the burning
coals from the glowing mass of the grate.

"Enough," said Alvina. "Enough! We'll put it in the drawing-room."
He carried the shovel of flaming, smoking coals to the other room,
and threw them in the grate on the sticks, watching Alvina put on
more pieces of coal.

"Fine, a fire! Quick work, eh? A beautiful thing, a fire! You know
what they say in my place: You can live without food, but you can't
live without fire."

"But I thought it was always hot in Naples," said Alvina.

"No, it isn't. And my village, you know, when I was small boy, that
was in the mountains, an hour quick train from Naples. Cold in the
winter, hot in the summer--"

"As cold as England?" said Alvina.

"Hé--and colder. The wolves come down. You could hear them crying in
the night, in the frost--"

"How terrifying--!" said Alvina.

"And they will kill the dogs! Always they kill the dogs. You know,
they hate dogs, wolves do." He made a queer noise, to show how
wolves hate dogs. Alvina understood, and laughed.

"So should I, if I was a wolf," she said.

"Yes--eh?" His eyes gleamed on her for a moment.

"Ah but, the poor dogs! You find them bitten--carried away among the
trees or the stones, hard to find them, poor things, the next day."

"How frightened they must be--!" said Alvina.

"Frightened--hu!" he made sudden gesticulations and ejaculations,
which added volumes to his few words.

"And did you like it, your village?" she said.

He put his head on one side in deprecation.

"No," he said, "because, you see--hé, there is nothing to do--no
money--work--work--work--no life--you see nothing. When I was a
small boy my father, he died, and my mother comes with me to Naples.
Then I go with the little boats on the sea--fishing, carrying
people--" He flourished his hand as if to make her understand all
the things that must be wordless. He smiled at her--but there was a
faint, poignant sadness and remoteness in him, a beauty of old
fatality, and ultimate indifference to fate.

"And were you very poor?"

"Poor?--why yes! Nothing. Rags--no shoes--bread, little fish from
the sea--shell-fish--"

His hands flickered, his eyes rested on her with a profound look of
knowledge. And it seemed, in spite of all, one state was very much
the same to him as another, poverty was as much life as affluence.
Only he had a sort of jealous idea that it was humiliating to be
poor, and so, for vanity's sake, he would have possessions. The
countless generations of civilization behind him had left him an
instinct of the world's meaninglessness. Only his little modern
education made money and independence an _idée fixe_. Old instinct
told him the world was nothing. But modern education, so shallow,
was much more efficacious than instinct. It drove him to make a show
of himself to the world. Alvina watching him, as if hypnotized, saw
his old beauty, formed through civilization after civilization; and
at the same time she saw his modern vulgarianism, and decadence.

"And when you go back, you will go back to your old village?" she
said.

He made a gesture with his head and shoulders, evasive,
non-committal.

"I don't know, you see," he said.

"What is the name of it?"

"Pescocalascio." He said the word subduedly, unwillingly.

"Tell me again," said Alvina.

"Pescocalascio."

She repeated it.

"And tell me how you spell it," she said.

He fumbled in his pocket for a pencil and a piece of paper. She rose
and brought him an old sketch-book. He wrote, slowly, but with the
beautiful Italian hand, the name of his village.

"And write your name," she said.

"Marasca Francesco," he wrote.

"And write the name of your father and mother," she said. He looked
at her enquiringly.

"I want to see them," she said.

"Marasca Giovanni," he wrote, and under that "Califano Maria."

She looked at the four names, in the graceful Italian script. And
one after the other she read them out. He corrected her, smiling
gravely. When she said them properly, he nodded.

"Yes," he said. "That's it. You say it well."

At that moment Miss Pinnegar came in to say Mrs. Rollings had seen
another of the young men riding down the street.

"That's Gigi! He doesn't know how to come here," said Ciccio,
quickly taking his hat and going out to find his friend.

Geoffrey arrived, his broad face hot and perspiring.

"Couldn't you find it?" said Alvina.

"I find the house, but I couldn't find no door," said Geoffrey.

They all laughed, and sat down to tea. Geoffrey and Ciccio talked to
each other in French, and kept each other in countenance.
Fortunately for them, Madame had seen to their table-manners. But
still they were far too free and easy to suit Miss Pinnegar.

"Do you know," said Ciccio in French to Geoffrey, "what a fine house
this is?"

"No," said Geoffrey, rolling his large eyes round the room, and
speaking with his cheek stuffed out with food. "Is it?"

"Ah--if it was _hers_, you know--"

And so, after tea, Ciccio said to Alvina:

"Shall you let Geoffrey see the house?"

The tour commenced again. Geoffrey, with his thick legs planted
apart, gazed round the rooms, and made his comments in French to
Ciccio. When they climbed the stairs, he fingered the big, smooth
mahogany bannister-rail. In the bedroom he stared almost dismayed
at the colossal bed and cupboard. In the bath-room he turned on the
old-fashioned, silver taps.

"Here is my room--" said Ciccio in French.

"Assez éloigné!" replied Gigi. Ciccio also glanced along the
corridor.

"Yes," he said. "But an open course--"

"Look, my boy--if you could marry _this_--" meaning the house.

"Ha, she doesn't know if it hers any more! Perhaps the debts cover
every bit of it."

"Don't say so! Na, that's a pity, that's a pity! La pauvre
fille--pauvre demoiselle!" lamented Geoffrey.

"Isn't it a pity! What dost say?"

"A thousand pities! A thousand pities! Look, my boy, love needs no
havings, but marriage does. Love is for all, even the grasshoppers.
But marriage means a kitchen. That's how it is. La pauvre
demoiselle; c'est malheur pour elle."

"That's true," said Ciccio. "Et aussi pour moi. For me as well."

"For thee as well, cher! Perhaps--" said Geoffrey, laying his arm on
Ciccio's shoulder, and giving him a sudden hug. They smiled to each
other.

"Who knows!" said Ciccio.

"Who knows, truly, my Cic'."

As they went downstairs to rejoin Alvina, whom they heard playing on
the piano in the drawing-room, Geoffrey peeped once more into the
big bedroom.

"Tu n'es jamais monté si haut, mon beau. Pour moi, ça serait
difficile de m'élever. J'aurais bien peur, moi. Tu te trouves aussi
un peu ébahi, hein? n'est-ce pas?"

"Y'a place pour trois," said Ciccio.

"Non, je crêverais, là haut. Pas pour moi!"

And they went laughing downstairs.

Miss Pinnegar was sitting with Alvina, determined not to go to
Chapel this evening. She sat, rather hulked, reading a novel. Alvina
flirted with the two men, played the piano to them, and suggested a
game of cards.

"Oh, Alvina, you will never bring out the cards tonight!"
expostulated poor Miss Pinnegar.

"But, Miss Pinnegar, it can't possibly hurt anybody."

"You know what I think--and what your father thought--and your
mother and Miss Frost--"

"You see I think it's only prejudice," said Alvina.

"Oh very well!" said Miss Pinnegar angrily.

And closing her book, she rose and went to the other room.

Alvina brought out the cards, and a little box of pence which
remained from Endeavour harvests. At that moment there was a knock.
It was Mr. May. Miss Pinnegar brought him in, in triumph.

"Oh!" he said. "Company! I heard you'd come, Miss Houghton, so I
_hastened_ to pay my compliments. I didn't know you had _company_.
How do you do, Francesco! How do you do, Geoffrey. Comment
allez-vous, alors?"

"Bien!" said Geoffrey. "You are going to take a hand?"

"Cards on Sunday evening! Dear me, what a revolution! Of course, I'm
not _bigoted_. If Miss Houghton asks me--"

Miss Pinnegar looked solemnly at Alvina.

"Yes, do take a hand, Mr. May," said Alvina.

"Thank you, I will then, if I may. Especially as I see those
tempting piles of pennies and ha'pennies. Who is bank, may I ask? Is
Miss Pinnegar going to play too?"

But Miss Pinnegar had turned her poor, bowed back, and departed.

"I'm afraid she's offended," said Alvina.

"But why? We don't put _her_ soul in danger, do we now? I'm a good
Catholic, you know, I _can't_ do with these provincial little
creeds. Who deals? Do you, Miss Houghton? But I'm afraid we shall
have a rather _dry_ game? What? Isn't that your opinion?"

The other men laughed.

"If Miss Houghton would just _allow_ me to run round and bring
something in. Yes? May I? That would be _so_ much more cheerful.
What is your choice, gentlemen?"

"Beer," said Ciccio, and Geoffrey nodded.

"Beer! Oh really! Extraor'nary! I always take a little whiskey
myself. What kind of beer? Ale?--or bitter? I'm afraid I'd better
bring bottles. Now how can I secrete them? You haven't a small
travelling case, Miss Houghton? Then I shall look as if I'd just
been taking a _journey_. Which I have--to the Sun and back: and if
_that_ isn't far enough, even for Miss Pinnegar and John Wesley,
why, I'm sorry."

Alvina produced the travelling case.

"Excellent!" he said. "Excellent! It will hold half-a-dozen
beautifully. Now--" he fell into a whisper--"hadn't I better sneak
out at the front door, and so escape the clutches of the watch-dog?"

Out he went, on tip-toe, the other two men grinning at him.
Fortunately there were glasses, the best old glasses, in the side
cupboard in the drawing room. But unfortunately, when Mr. May
returned, a corkscrew was in request. So Alvina stole to the
kitchen. Miss Pinnegar sat dumped by the fire, with her spectacles
and her book. She watched like a lynx as Alvina returned. And she
saw the tell-tale corkscrew. So she dumped a little deeper in her
chair.

"There was a sound of revelry by night!" For Mr. May, after a long
depression, was in high feather. They shouted, positively shouted
over their cards, they roared with excitement, expostulation, and
laughter. Miss Pinnegar sat through it all. But at one point she
could bear it no longer.

The drawing-room door opened, and the dumpy, hulked, faded woman in
a black serge dress stood like a rather squat avenging angel in the
doorway.

"What would your _father_ say to this?" she said sternly.

The company suspended their laughter and their cards, and looked
around. Miss Pinnegar wilted and felt strange under so many eyes.

"Father!" said Alvina. "But why father?"

"You lost girl!" said Miss Pinnegar, backing out and closing the
door.

Mr. May laughed so much that he knocked his whiskey over.

"There," he cried, helpless, "look what she's cost me!" And he went
off into another paroxysm, swelling like a turkey.

Ciccio opened his mouth, laughing silently.

"Lost girl! Lost girl! How lost, when you are at home?" said
Geoffrey, making large eyes and looking hither and thither as if
_he_ had lost something.

They all went off again in a muffled burst.

"No but, really," said Mr. May, "drinking and card-playing with
strange men in the drawing-room on Sunday evening, of _cauce_ it's
scandalous. It's _terrible_! I don't know how ever you'll be saved,
after such a sin. And in Manchester House, too--!" He went off into
another silent, turkey-scarlet burst of mirth, wriggling in his
chair and squealing faintly: "Oh, I love it, I love it! _You lost
girl!_ Why of _cauce_ she's lost! And Miss Pinnegar has only just
found it out. Who _wouldn't_ be lost? Why even Miss Pinnegar would
be lost if she could. Of _cauce_ she would! Quite natch'ral!"

Mr. May wiped his eyes, with his handkerchief which had
unfortunately mopped up his whiskey.

So they played on