THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
Alvina rose chastened and wistful. As she was doing her hair, she heard
the plaintive nasal sound of Ciccio’s mandoline. She looked down the
mixed vista of back-yards and little gardens, and was able to catch
sight of a portion of Ciccio, who was sitting on a box in the
blue-brick yard of his house, bare-headed and in his shirt-sleeves,
twitching away at the wailing mandoline. It was not a warm morning, but
there was a streak of sunshine. Alvina had noticed that Ciccio did not
seem to feel the cold, unless it were a wind or a driving rain. He was
playing the wildly-yearning Neapolitan songs, of which Alvina knew
nothing. But, although she only saw a section of him, the glimpse of
his head was enough to rouse in her that overwhelming fascination,
which came and went in spells. His remoteness, his southernness,
something velvety and dark. So easily she might miss him altogether!
Within a hair’s-breadth she had let him disappear.
She hurried down. Geoffrey opened the door to her. She smiled at him in
a quick, luminous smile, a magic change in her.
“I could hear Ciccio playing,” she said.
Geoffrey spread his rather thick lips in a smile, and jerked his head
in the direction of the back door, with a deep, intimate look into
Alvina’s eyes, as if to say his friend was lovesick.
“Shall I go through?” said Alvina.
Geoffrey laid his large hand on her shoulder for a moment, looked into
her eyes, and nodded. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, with a rather
flat, handsome face, well-coloured, and with the look of the Alpine ox
about him, slow, eternal, even a little mysterious. Alvina was startled
by the deep, mysterious look in his dark-fringed ox-eyes. The odd arch
of his eyebrows made him suddenly seem not quite human to her. She
smiled to him again, startled. But he only inclined his head, and with
his heavy hand on her shoulder gently impelled her towards Ciccio.
When she came out at the back she smiled straight into Ciccio’s face,
with her sudden, luminous smile. His hand on the mandoline trembled
into silence. He sat looking at her with an instant re-establishment of
knowledge. And yet she shrank from the long, inscrutable gaze of his
black-set, tawny eyes. She resented him a little. And yet she went
forward to him and stood so that her dress touched him. And still he
gazed up at her, with the heavy, unspeaking look, that seemed to bear
her down: he seemed like some creature that was watching her for his
purposes. She looked aside at the black garden, which had a wiry
goose-berry bush.
“You will come with me to Woodhouse?” she said.
He did not answer till she turned to him again. Then, as she met his
eyes,
“To Woodhouse?” he said, watching her, to fix her.
“Yes,” she said, a little pale at the lips.
And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his
mouth. She wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred his
tawny eyes with their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched her as a
cat watches a bird, but without the white gleam of ferocity. In his
eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth, something fathomless, deepening black
and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.
“Will you?” she repeated.
But his eyes had already begun to glimmer their consent. He turned
aside his face, as if unwilling to give a straight answer.
“Yes,” he said.
“Play something to me,” she cried.
He lifted his face to her, and shook his head slightly.
“Yes do,” she said, looking down on him.
And he bent his head to the mandoline, and suddenly began to sing a
Neapolitan song, in a faint, compressed head-voice, looking up at her
again as his lips moved, looking straight into her face with a curious
mocking caress as the muted _voix blanche_ came through his lips at
her, amid the louder quavering of the mandoline. The sound penetrated
her like a thread of fire, hurting, but delicious, the high thread of
his voice. She could see the Adam’s apple move in his throat, his brows
tilted as he looked along his lashes at her all the time. Here was the
strange sphinx singing again, and herself between its paws! She seemed
almost to melt into his power.
Madame intervened to save her.
“What, serenade before breakfast! You have strong stomachs, I say. Eggs
and ham are more the question, hein? Come, you smell them, don’t you?”
A flicker of contempt and derision went over Ciccio’s face as he broke
off and looked aside.
“I prefer the serenade,” said Alvina. “I’ve had ham and eggs before.”
“You do, hein? Well—always, you won’t. And now you must eat the ham and
eggs, however. Yes? Isn’t it so?”
Ciccio rose to his feet, and looked at Alvina: as he would have looked
at Gigi, had Gigi been there. His eyes said unspeakable things about
Madame. Alvina flashed a laugh, suddenly. And a good-humoured,
half-mocking smile came over his face too.
They turned to follow Madame into the house. And as Alvina went before
him, she felt his fingers stroke the nape of her neck, and pass in a
soft touch right down her back. She started as if some unseen creature
had stroked her with its paw, and she glanced swiftly round, to see the
face of Ciccio mischievous behind her shoulder.
“Now I think,” said Madame, “that today we all take the same train. We
go by the Great Central as far as the junction, together. Then you,
Allaye, go on to Knarborough, and we leave you until tomorrow. And now
there is not much time.”
“I am going to Woodhouse,” said Ciccio in French.
“You also! By the train, or the bicycle?”
“Train,” said Ciccio.
“Waste so much money?”
Ciccio raised his shoulders slightly.
When breakfast was over, and Alvina had gone to her room, Geoffrey went
out into the back yard, where the bicycles stood.
“Cic’,” he said. “I should like to go with thee to Woodhouse. Come on
bicycle with me.”
Ciccio shook his head.
“I’m going in train with _her_,” he said.
Geoffrey darkened with his heavy anger.
“I would like to see how it is, there, _chez elle_,” he said.
“Ask _her_,” said Ciccio.
Geoffrey watched him suddenly.
“Thou forsakest me,” he said. “I would like to see it, there.”
“Ask _her_,” repeated Ciccio. “Then come on bicycle.”
“You’re content to leave me,” muttered Geoffrey.
Ciccio touched his friend on his broad cheek, and smiled at him with
affection.
“I don’t leave thee, Gigi. I asked thy advice. You said, Go. But come.
Go and ask her, and then come. Come on bicycle, eh? Ask her! Go on! Go
and ask her.”
Alvina was surprised to hear a tap at her door, and Gigi’s voice, in
his strong foreign accent:
“Mees Houghton, I carry your bag.”
She opened her door in surprise. She was all ready.
“There it is,” she said, smiling at him.
But he confronted her like a powerful ox, full of dangerous force. Her
smile had reassured him.
“Na, Allaye,” he said, “tell me something.”
“What?” laughed Alvina.
“Can I come to Woodhouse?”
“When?”
“Today. Can I come on bicycle, to tea, eh? At your house with you and
Ciccio? Eh?”
He was smiling with a thick, doubtful, half sullen smile.
“Do!” said Alvina.
He looked at her with his large, dark-blue eyes.
“Really, eh?” he said, holding out his large hand.
She shook hands with him warmly.
“Yes, really!” she said. “I wish you would.”
“Good,” he said, a broad smile on his thick mouth. And all the time he
watched her curiously, from his large eyes.
“Ciccio—a good chap, eh?” he said.
“Is he?” laughed Alvina.
“Ha-a—!” Gigi shook his head solemnly. “The best!” He made such solemn
eyes, Alvina laughed. He laughed too, and picked up her bag as if it
were a bubble.
“Na Cic’—” he said, as he saw Ciccio in the street. “Sommes d’accord.”
“Ben!” said Ciccio, holding out his hand for the bag. “Donne.”
“Ne-ne,” said Gigi, shrugging.
Alvina found herself on the new and busy station that Sunday morning,
one of the little theatrical company. It was an odd experience. They
were so obviously a theatrical company—people apart from the world.
Madame was darting her black eyes here and there, behind her spotted
veil, and standing with the ostensible self-possession of her
profession. Max was circling round with large strides, round a big
black box on which the red words Natcha-Kee-Tawara showed mystic, and
round the small bunch of stage fittings at the end of the platform.
Louis was waiting to get the tickets, Gigi and Ciccio were bringing up
the bicycles. They were a whole train of departure in themselves, busy,
bustling, cheerful—and curiously apart, vagrants.
Alvina strolled away towards the half-open bookstall. Geoffrey was
standing monumental between her and the company. She returned to him.
“What time shall we expect you?” she said.
He smiled at her in his broad, friendly fashion.
“Expect me to be there? Why—” he rolled his eyes and proceeded to
calculate. “At four o’clock.”
“Just about the time when we get there,” she said.
He looked at her sagely, and nodded.
They were a good-humoured company in the railway carriage. The men
smoked cigarettes and tapped off the ash on the heels of their boots,
Madame watched every traveller with professional curiosity. Max
scrutinized the newspaper, Lloyds, and pointed out items to Louis, who
read them over Max’s shoulder, Ciccio suddenly smacked Geoffrey on the
thigh, and looked laughing into his face. So till they arrived at the
junction. And then there was a kissing and a taking of farewells, as if
the company were separating for ever. Louis darted into the refreshment
bar and returned with little pies and oranges, which he deposited in
the carriage, Madame presented Alvina with a packet of chocolate. And
it was “Good-bye, good-bye, Allaye! Good-bye, Ciccio! Bon voyage. Have
a good time, both.”
So Alvina sped on in the fast train to Knarborough with Ciccio.
“I _do_ like them all,” she said.
He opened his mouth slightly and lifted his head up and down. She saw
in the movement how affectionate he was, and in his own way, how
emotional. He loved them all. She put her hand to his. He gave her hand
one sudden squeeze, of physical understanding, then left it as if
nothing had happened. There were other people in the carriage with
them. She could not help feeling how sudden and lovely that moment’s
grasp of his hand was: so warm, so whole.
And thus they watched the Sunday morning landscape slip by, as they ran
into Knarborough. They went out to a little restaurant to eat. It was
one o’clock.
“Isn’t it strange, that we are travelling together like this?” she
said, as she sat opposite him.
He smiled, looking into her eyes.
“You think it’s strange?” he said, showing his teeth slightly.
“Don’t you?” she cried.
He gave a slight, laconic laugh.
“And I can hardly bear it that I love you so much,” she said,
quavering, across the potatoes.
He glanced furtively round, to see if any one was listening, if any one
might hear. He would have hated it. But no one was near. Beneath the
tiny table, he took her two knees between his knees, and pressed them
with a slow, immensely powerful pressure. Helplessly she put her hand
across the table to him. He covered it for one moment with his hand,
then ignored it. But her knees were still between the powerful, living
vice of his knees.
“Eat!” he said to her, smiling, motioning to her plate. And he relaxed
her.
They decided to go out to Woodhouse on the tram-car, a long hour’s
ride. Sitting on the top of the covered car, in the atmosphere of
strong tobacco smoke, he seemed self-conscious, withdrawn into his own
cover, so obviously a dark-skinned foreigner. And Alvina, as she sat
beside him, was reminded of the woman with the negro husband, down in
Lumley. She understood the woman’s reserve. She herself felt, in the
same way, something of an outcast, because of the man at her side. An
outcast! And glad to be an outcast. She clung to Ciccio’s dark,
despised foreign nature. She loved it, she worshipped it, she defied
all the other world. Dark, he sat beside her, drawn in to himself,
overcast by his presumed inferiority among these northern industrial
people. And she was with him, on his side, outside the pale of her own
people.
There were already acquaintances on the tram. She nodded in answer to
their salutation, but so obviously from a distance, that they kept
turning round to eye her and Ciccio. But they left her alone. The
breach between her and them was established for ever—and it was her
will which established it.
So up and down the weary hills of the hilly, industrial countryside,
till at last they drew near to Woodhouse. They passed the ruins of
Throttle-Ha’penny, and Alvina glanced at it indifferent. They ran along
the Knarborough Road. A fair number of Woodhouse young people were
strolling along the pavements in their Sunday clothes. She knew them
all. She knew Lizzie Bates’s fox furs, and Fanny Clough’s lilac
costume, and Mrs. Smitham’s winged hat. She knew them all. And almost
inevitably the old Woodhouse feeling began to steal over her, she was
glad they could not see her, she was a little ashamed of Ciccio. She
wished, for the moment, Ciccio were not there. And as the time came to
get down, she looked anxiously back and forth to see at which halt she
had better descend—where fewer people would notice her. But then she
threw her scruples to the wind, and descended into the staring, Sunday
afternoon street, attended by Ciccio, who carried her bag. She knew she
was a marked figure.
They slipped round to Manchester House. Miss Pinnegar expected Alvina,
but by the train, which came later. So she had to be knocked up, for
she was lying down. She opened the door looking a little patched in her
cheeks, because of her curious colouring, and a little forlorn, and a
little dumpy, and a little irritable.
“I didn’t know there’d be two of you,” was her greeting.
“Didn’t you,” said Alvina, kissing her. “Ciccio came to carry my bag.”
“Oh,” said Miss Pinnegar. “How do you do?” and she thrust out her hand
to him. He shook it loosely.
“I had your wire,” said Miss Pinnegar. “You said the train. Mrs.
Rollings is coming in at four again—”
“Oh all right—” said Alvina.
The house was silent and afternoon-like. Ciccio took off his coat and
sat down in Mr. Houghton’s chair. Alvina told him to smoke. He kept
silent and reserved. Miss Pinnegar, a poor, patch-cheeked, rather
round-backed figure with grey-brown fringe, stood as if she did not
quite know what to say or do.
She followed Alvina upstairs to her room.
“I can’t think why you bring _him_ here,” snapped Miss Pinnegar. “I
don’t know what you’re thinking about. The whole place is talking
already.”
“I don’t care,” said Alvina. “I like him.”
“Oh—for shame!” cried Miss Pinnegar, lifting her hand with Miss Frost’s
helpless, involuntary movement. “What do you think of yourself? And
your father a month dead.”
“It doesn’t matter. Father _is_ dead. And I’m sure the dead don’t
mind.”
“I never _knew_ such things as you say.”
“Why? I mean them.”
Miss Pinnegar stood blank and helpless.
“You’re not asking him to stay the night,” she blurted.
“Yes. And I’m going back with him to Madame tomorrow. You know I’m part
of the company now, as pianist.”
“And are you going to marry him?”
“I don’t know.”
“How _can_ you say you don’t know! Why, it’s awful. You make me feel I
shall go out of my mind.”
“But I _don’t_ know,” said Alvina.
“It’s incredible! Simply incredible! I believe you’re out of your
senses. I used to think sometimes there was something wrong with your
mother. And that’s what it is with you. You’re not quite right in your
mind. You need to be looked after.”
“Do I, Miss Pinnegar! Ah, well, don’t you trouble to look after me,
will you?”
“No one will if I don’t.”
“I hope no one will.”
There was a pause.
“I’m ashamed to live another day in Woodhouse,” said Miss Pinnegar.
“_I’m_ leaving it for ever,” said Alvina.
“I should think so,” said Miss Pinnegar.
Suddenly she sank into a chair, and burst into tears, wailing:
“Your poor father! Your poor father!”
“I’m sure the dead are all right. Why must you pity him?”
“You’re a lost girl!” cried Miss Pinnegar.
“Am I really?” laughed Alvina. It sounded funny.
“Yes, you’re a lost girl,” sobbed Miss Pinnegar, on a final note of
despair.
“I like being lost,” said Alvina.
Miss Pinnegar wept herself into silence. She looked huddled and
forlorn. Alvina went to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t fret, Miss Pinnegar,” she said. “Don’t be silly. I love to be
with Ciccio and Madame. Perhaps in the end I shall marry him. But if I
don’t—” her hand suddenly gripped Miss Pinnegar’s heavy arm till it
hurt—“I wouldn’t lose a minute of him, no, not for anything would I.”
Poor Miss Pinnegar dwindled, convinced.
“You make it hard for _me_, in Woodhouse,” she said, hopeless.
“Never mind,” said Alvina, kissing her. “Woodhouse isn’t heaven and
earth.”
“It’s been my home for forty years.”
“It’s been mine for thirty. That’s why I’m glad to leave it.” There was
a pause.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Miss Pinnegar, “about opening a little
business in Tamworth. You know the Watsons are there.”
“I believe you’d be happy,” said Alvina.
Miss Pinnegar pulled herself together. She had energy and courage
still.
“I don’t want to stay here, anyhow,” she said. “Woodhouse has nothing
for me any more.”
“Of course it hasn’t,” said Alvina. “I think you’d be happier away from
it.”
“Yes—probably I should—now!”
None the less, poor Miss Pinnegar was grey-haired, she was almost a
dumpy, odd old woman.
They went downstairs. Miss Pinnegar put on the kettle.
“Would you like to see the house?” said Alvina to Ciccio.
He nodded. And she took him from room to room. His eyes looked quickly
and curiously over everything, noticing things, but without criticism.
“This was my mother’s little sitting-room,” she said. “She sat here for
years, in this chair.”
“Always here?” he said, looking into Alvina’s face.
“Yes. She was ill with her heart. This is another photograph of her.
I’m not like her.”
“Who is _that_?” he asked, pointing to a photograph of the handsome,
white-haired Miss Frost.
“That was Miss Frost, my governess. She lived here till she died. I
loved her—she meant everything to me.”
“She also dead—?”
“Yes, five years ago.”
They went to the drawing-room. He laid his hand on the keys of the
piano, sounding a chord.
“Play,” she said.
He shook his head, smiling slightly. But he wished her to play. She sat
and played one of Kishwégin’s pieces. He listened, faintly smiling.
“Fine piano—eh?” he said, looking into her face.
“I like the tone,” she said.
“Is it yours?”
“The piano? Yes. I suppose everything is mine—in name at least. I don’t
know how father’s affairs are really.”
He looked at her, and again his eye wandered over the room. He saw a
little coloured portrait of a child with a fleece of brownish-gold hair
and surprised eyes, in a pale-blue stiff frock with a broad dark-blue
sash.
“You?” he said.
“Do you recognize me?” she said. “Aren’t I comical?”
She took him upstairs—first to the monumental bedroom.
“This was mother’s room,” she said. “Now it is mine.”
He looked at her, then at the things in the room, then out of the
window, then at her again. She flushed, and hurried to show him his
room, and the bath-room. Then she went downstairs.
He kept glancing up at the height of the ceilings, the size of the
rooms, taking in the size and proportion of the house, and the quality
of the fittings.
“It is a big house,” he said. “Yours?”
“Mine in name,” said Alvina. “Father left all to me—and his debts as
well, you see.”
“Much debts?”
“Oh yes! I don’t quite know how much. But perhaps more debts than there
is property. I shall go and see the lawyer in the morning. Perhaps
there will be nothing at all left for me, when everything is paid.”
She had stopped on the stairs, telling him this, turning round to him,
who was on the steps above. He looked down on her, calculating. Then he
smiled sourly.
“Bad job, eh, if it is all gone—!” he said.
“I don’t mind, really, if I can live,” she said.
He spread his hands, deprecating, not understanding. Then he glanced up
the stairs and along the corridor again, and downstairs into the hall.
“A fine big house. Grand if it was yours,” he said.
“I wish it were,” she said rather pathetically, “if you like it so
much.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Hé!” he said. “How not like it!”
“I don’t like it,” she said. “I think it’s a gloomy miserable hole. I
hate it. I’ve lived here all my life and seen everything bad happen
here. I hate it.”
“Why?” he said, with a curious, sarcastic intonation.
“It’s a bad job it isn’t yours, for certain,” he said, as they entered
the living-room, where Miss Pinnegar sat cutting bread and butter.
“What?” said Miss Pinnegar sharply.
“The house,” said Alvina.
“Oh well, we don’t know. We’ll hope for the best,” replied Miss
Pinnegar, arranging the bread and butter on the plate. Then, rather
tart, she added: “It is a bad job. And a good many things are a bad
job, besides that. If Miss Houghton had what she _ought_ to have,
things would be very different, I assure you.”
“Oh yes,” said Ciccio, to whom this address was directed.
“Very different indeed. If all the money hadn’t been—lost—in the way it
has, Miss Houghton wouldn’t be playing the piano, for one thing, in a
cinematograph show.”
“No, perhaps not,” said Ciccio.
“Certainly not. It’s not the right thing for her to be doing, _at
all_!”
“You think not?” said Ciccio.
“Do you imagine it is?” said Miss Pinnegar, turning point blank on him
as he sat by the fire.
He looked curiously at Miss Pinnegar, grinning slightly.
“Hé!” he said. “How do I know!”
“I should have thought it was obvious,” said Miss Pinnegar.
“Hé!” he ejaculated, not fully understanding.
“But of course those that are used to nothing better can’t see anything
but what they’re used to,” she said, rising and shaking the crumbs from
her black silk apron, into the fire. He watched her.
Miss Pinnegar went away into the scullery. Alvina was laying a fire in
the drawing-room. She came with a dustpan to take some coal from the
fire of the living-room.
“What do you want?” said Ciccio, rising. And he took the shovel from
her hand.
“Big, hot fires, aren’t they?” he said, as he lifted the burning coals
from the glowing mass of the grate.
“Enough,” said Alvina. “Enough! We’ll put it in the drawing-room.” He
carried the shovel of flaming, smoking coals to the other room, and
threw them in the grate on the sticks, watching Alvina put on more
pieces of coal.
“Fine, a fire! Quick work, eh? A beautiful thing, a fire! You know what
they say in my place: You can live without food, but you can’t live
without fire.”
“But I thought it was always hot in Naples,” said Alvina.
“No, it isn’t. And my village, you know, when I was small boy, that was
in the mountains, an hour quick train from Naples. Cold in the winter,
hot in the summer—”
“As cold as England?” said Alvina.
“Hé—and colder. The wolves come down. You could hear them crying in the
night, in the frost—”
“How terrifying—!” said Alvina.
“And they will kill the dogs! Always they kill the dogs. You know, they
hate dogs, wolves do.” He made a queer noise, to show how wolves hate
dogs. Alvina understood, and laughed.
“So should I, if I was a wolf,” she said.
“Yes—eh?” His eyes gleamed on her for a moment.
“Ah but, the poor dogs! You find them bitten—carried away among the
trees or the stones, hard to find them, poor things, the next day.”
“How frightened they must be—!” said Alvina.
“Frightened—hu!” he made sudden gesticulations and ejaculations, which
added volumes to his few words.
“And did you like it, your village?” she said.
He put his head on one side in deprecation.
“No,” he said, “because, you see—hé, there is nothing to do—no
money—work—work—work—no life—you see nothing. When I was a small boy my
father, he died, and my mother comes with me to Naples. Then I go with
the little boats on the sea—fishing, carrying people—” He flourished
his hand as if to make her understand all the things that must be
wordless. He smiled at her—but there was a faint, poignant sadness and
remoteness in him, a beauty of old fatality, and ultimate indifference
to fate.
“And were you very poor?”
“Poor?—why yes! Nothing. Rags—no shoes—bread, little fish from the
sea—shell-fish—”
His hands flickered, his eyes rested on her with a profound look of
knowledge. And it seemed, in spite of all, one state was very much the
same to him as another, poverty was as much life as affluence. Only he
had a sort of jealous idea that it was humiliating to be poor, and so,
for vanity’s sake, he would have possessions. The countless generations
of civilization behind him had left him an instinct of the world’s
meaninglessness. Only his little modern education made money and
independence an _idée fixe_. Old instinct told him the world was
nothing. But modern education, so shallow, was much more efficacious
than instinct. It drove him to make a show of himself to the world.
Alvina watching him, as if hypnotized, saw his old beauty, formed
through civilization after civilization; and at the same time she saw
his modern vulgarianism, and decadence.
“And when you go back, you will go back to your old village?” she said.
He made a gesture with his head and shoulders, evasive, non-committal.
“I don’t know, you see,” he said.
“What is the name of it?”
“Pescocalascio.” He said the word subduedly, unwillingly.
“Tell me again,” said Alvina.
“Pescocalascio.”
She repeated it.
“And tell me how you spell it,” she said.
He fumbled in his pocket for a pencil and a piece of paper. She rose
and brought him an old sketch-book. He wrote, slowly, but with the
beautiful Italian hand, the name of his village.
“And write your name,” she said.
“Marasca Francesco,” he wrote.
“And write the name of your father and mother,” she said. He looked at
her enquiringly.
“I want to see them,” she said.
“Marasca Giovanni,” he wrote, and under that “Califano Maria.”
She looked at the four names, in the graceful Italian script. And one
after the other she read them out. He corrected her, smiling gravely.
When she said them properly, he nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s it. You say it well.”
At that moment Miss Pinnegar came in to say Mrs. Rollings had seen
another of the young men riding down the street.
“That’s Gigi! He doesn’t know how to come here,” said Ciccio, quickly
taking his hat and going out to find his friend.
Geoffrey arrived, his broad face hot and perspiring.
“Couldn’t you find it?” said Alvina.
“I find the house, but I couldn’t find no door,” said Geoffrey.
They all laughed, and sat down to tea. Geoffrey and Ciccio talked to
each other in French, and kept each other in countenance. Fortunately
for them, Madame had seen to their table-manners. But still they were
far too free and easy to suit Miss Pinnegar.
“Do you know,” said Ciccio in French to Geoffrey, “what a fine house
this is?”
“No,” said Geoffrey, rolling his large eyes round the room, and
speaking with his cheek stuffed out with food. “Is it?”
“Ah—if it was _hers_, you know—”
And so, after tea, Ciccio said to Alvina:
“Shall you let Geoffrey see the house?”
The tour commenced again. Geoffrey, with his thick legs planted apart,
gazed round the rooms, and made his comments in French to Ciccio. When
they climbed the stairs, he fingered the big, smooth mahogany
bannister-rail. In the bedroom he stared almost dismayed at the
colossal bed and cupboard. In the bath-room he turned on the
old-fashioned, silver taps.
“Here is my room—” said Ciccio in French.
“Assez éloigné!” replied Gigi. Ciccio also glanced along the corridor.
“Yes,” he said. “But an open course—”
“Look, my boy—if you could marry _this_—” meaning the house.
“Ha, she doesn’t know if it hers any more! Perhaps the debts cover
every bit of it.”
“Don’t say so! Na, that’s a pity, that’s a pity! La pauvre fille—pauvre
demoiselle!” lamented Geoffrey.
“Isn’t it a pity! What dost say?”
“A thousand pities! A thousand pities! Look, my boy, love needs no
havings, but marriage does. Love is for all, even the grasshoppers. But
marriage means a kitchen. That’s how it is. La pauvre demoiselle; c’est
malheur pour elle.”
“That’s true,” said Ciccio. “Et aussi pour moi. For me as well.”
“For thee as well, cher! Perhaps—” said Geoffrey, laying his arm on
Ciccio’s shoulder, and giving him a sudden hug. They smiled to each
other.
“Who knows!” said Ciccio.
“Who knows, truly, my Cic’.”
As they went downstairs to rejoin Alvina, whom they heard playing on
the piano in the drawing-room, Geoffrey peeped once more into the big
bedroom.
“Tu n’es jamais monté si haut, mon beau. Pour moi, ça serait difficile
de m’élever. J’aurais bien peur, moi. Tu te trouves aussi un peu ébahi,
hein? n’est-ce pas?”
“Y’a place pour trois,” said Ciccio.
“Non, je crêverais, là haut. Pas pour moi!”
And they went laughing downstairs.
Miss Pinnegar was sitting with Alvina, determined not to go to Chapel
this evening. She sat, rather hulked, reading a novel. Alvina flirted
with the two men, played the piano to them, and suggested a game of
cards.
“Oh, Alvina, you will never bring out the cards tonight!” expostulated
poor Miss Pinnegar.
“But, Miss Pinnegar, it can’t possibly hurt anybody.”
“You know what I think—and what your father thought—and your mother and
Miss Frost—”
“You see I think it’s only prejudice,” said Alvina.
“Oh very well!” said Miss Pinnegar angrily.
And closing her book, she rose and went to the other room.
Alvina brought out the cards, and a little box of pence which remained
from Endeavour harvests. At that moment there was a knock. It was Mr.
May. Miss Pinnegar brought him in, in triumph.
“Oh!” he said. “Company! I heard you’d come, Miss Houghton, so I
_hastened_ to pay my compliments. I didn’t know you had _company_. How
do you do, Francesco! How do you do, Geoffrey. Comment allez-vous,
alors?”
“Bien!” said Geoffrey. “You are going to take a hand?”
“Cards on Sunday evening! Dear me, what a revolution! Of course, I’m
not _bigoted_. If Miss Houghton asks me—”
Miss Pinnegar looked solemnly at Alvina.
“Yes, do take a hand, Mr. May,” said Alvina.
“Thank you, I will then, if I may. Especially as I see those tempting
piles of pennies and ha’pennies. Who is bank, may I ask? Is Miss
Pinnegar going to play too?”
But Miss Pinnegar had turned her poor, bowed back, and departed.
“I’m afraid she’s offended,” said Alvina.
“But why? We don’t put _her_ soul in danger, do we now? I’m a good
Catholic, you know, I _can’t_ do with these provincial little creeds.
Who deals? Do you, Miss Houghton? But I’m afraid we shall have a rather
_dry_ game? What? Isn’t that your opinion?”
The other men laughed.
“If Miss Houghton would just _allow_ me to run round and bring
something in. Yes? May I? That would be _so_ much more cheerful. What
is your choice, gentlemen?”
“Beer,” said Ciccio, and Geoffrey nodded.
“Beer! Oh really! Extraor’nary! I always take a little whiskey myself.
What kind of beer? Ale?—or bitter? I’m afraid I’d better bring bottles.
Now how can I secrete them? You haven’t a small travelling case, Miss
Houghton? Then I shall look as if I’d just been taking a _journey_.
Which I have—to the Sun and back: and if _that_ isn’t far enough, even
for Miss Pinnegar and John Wesley, why, I’m sorry.”
Alvina produced the travelling case.
“Excellent!” he said. “Excellent! It will hold half-a-dozen
beautifully. Now—” he fell into a whisper—“hadn’t I better sneak out at
the front door, and so escape the clutches of the watch-dog?”
Out he went, on tip-toe, the other two men grinning at him. Fortunately
there were glasses, the best old glasses, in the side cupboard in the
drawing room. But unfortunately, when Mr. May returned, a corkscrew was
in request. So Alvina stole to the kitchen. Miss Pinnegar sat dumped by
the fire, with her spectacles and her book. She watched like a lynx as
Alvina returned. And she saw the tell-tale corkscrew. So she dumped a
little deeper in her chair.
“There was a sound of revelry by night!” For Mr. May, after a long
depression, was in high feather. They shouted, positively shouted over
their cards, they roared with excitement, expostulation, and laughter.
Miss Pinnegar sat through it all. But at one point she could bear it no
longer.
The drawing-room door opened, and the dumpy, hulked, faded woman in a
black serge dress stood like a rather squat avenging angel in the
doorway.
“What would your _father_ say to this?” she said sternly.
The company suspended their laughter and their cards, and looked
around. Miss Pinnegar wilted and felt strange under so many eyes.
“Father!” said Alvina. “But why father?”
“You lost girl!” said Miss Pinnegar, backing out and closing the door.
Mr. May laughed so much that he knocked his whiskey over.
“There,” he cried, helpless, “look what she’s cost me!” And he went off
into another paroxysm, swelling like a turkey.
Ciccio opened his mouth, laughing silently.
“Lost girl! Lost girl! How lost, when you are at home?” said Geoffrey,
making large eyes and looking hither and thither as if _he_ had lost
something.
They all went off again in a muffled burst.
“No but, really,” said Mr. May, “drinking and card-playing with strange
men in the drawing-room on Sunday evening, of _cauce_ it’s scandalous.
It’s _terrible_! I don’t know how ever you’ll be saved, after such a
sin. And in Manchester House, too—!” He went off into another silent,
turkey-scarlet burst of mirth, wriggling in his chair and squealing
faintly: “Oh, I love it, I love it! _You lost girl!_ Why of _cauce_
she’s lost! And Miss Pinnegar has only just found it out. Who
_wouldn’t_ be lost? Why even Miss Pinnegar would be lost if she could.
Of _cauce_ she would! Quite natch’ral!”
Mr. May wiped his eyes, with his handkerchief which had unfortunately
mopped up his whiskey.
So they played on, till Mr. May and Geoffrey had won all the pennies,
except twopence of Ciccio’s. Alvina was in debt.
“Well I think it’s been a most agreeable game,” said Mr. May. “Most
agreeable! Don’t you all?”
The two other men smiled and nodded.
“I’m only sorry to think Miss Houghton has _lost_ so steadily all
evening. Really quite remarkable. But _then_—you see—I comfort myself
with the reflection ‘Lucky in cards, unlucky in love.’ I’m certainly
_hounded_ with misfortune in love. And I’m _sure_ Miss Houghton would
rather be unlucky in cards than in love. What, isn’t it so?”
“Of course,” said Alvina.
“There, you see, _of cauce_! Well, all we can do after that is to wish
her success in love. Isn’t that so, gentlemen? I’m sure _we_ are all
quite willing to do our best to contribute to it. Isn’t it so,
gentlemen? Aren’t we all ready to do our best to contribute to Miss
Houghton’s happiness in love? Well then, let us drink to it.” He lifted
his glass, and bowed to Alvina. “With _every_ wish for your success in
love, Miss Houghton, and your _devoted_ servant—” He bowed and drank.
Geoffrey made large eyes at her as he held up his glass.
“_I_ know you’ll come out all right in love, _I_ know,” he said
heavily.
“And you, Ciccio? Aren’t you drinking?” said Mr. May.
Ciccio held up his glass, looked at Alvina, made a little mouth at her,
comical, and drank his beer.
“Well,” said Mr. May, “_beer_ must confirm it, since words won’t.”
“What time is it?” said Alvina. “We must have supper.”
It was past nine o’clock. Alvina rose and went to the kitchen, the men
trailing after her. Miss Pinnegar was not there. She was not anywhere.
“Has she gone to bed?” said Mr. May. And he crept stealthily upstairs
on tip-toe, a comical, flush-faced, tubby little man. He was familiar
with the house. He returned prancing.
“I heard her cough,” he said. “There’s a light under her door. She’s
gone to bed. Now haven’t I always said she was a good soul? I shall
drink her health. Miss Pinnegar—” and he bowed stiffly in the direction
of the stairs—“your health, and a _good night’s rest_.”
After which, giggling gaily, he seated himself at the head of the table
and began to carve the cold mutton.
“And where are the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras this week?” he asked. They told
him.
“Oh? And you two are cycling back to the camp of Kishwégin tonight? We
mustn’t prolong our cheerfulness _too_ far.”
“Ciccio is staying to help me with my bag tomorrow,” said Alvina. “You
know I’ve joined the Tawaras permanently—as pianist.”
“No, I didn’t know that! Oh really! Really! Oh! Well! I see!
Permanently! Yes, I am surprised! Yes! As pianist? And if I might ask,
what is your share of the tribal income?”
“That isn’t settled yet,” said Alvina.
“No! Exactly! Exactly! It _wouldn’t_ be settled yet. And you say it is
a permanent engagement? Of _cauce_, at such a figure.”
“Yes, it is a permanent engagement,” said Alvina.
“Really! What a blow you give me! You won’t come back to the Endeavour?
What? Not at all?”
“No,” said Alvina. “I shall sell out of the Endeavour.”
“Really! You’ve decided, have you? Oh! This is news to me. And is
_this_ quite final, too?”
“Quite,” said Alvina.
“I see! Putting two and two together, if I may say so—” and he glanced
from her to the young men—“I _see_. Most decidedly, most one-sidedly,
if I may use the vulgarism, I _see—e—e!_ Oh! but what a blow you give
me! What a blow you give me!”
“Why?” said Alvina.
“What’s to become of the Endeavour? and consequently, of poor me?”
“Can’t you keep it going?—form a company?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve done my best. But I’m afraid, you know,
you’ve landed me.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Alvina. “I hope not.”
“Thank you for the _hope_” said Mr. May sarcastically. “They say hope
is sweet. _I_ begin to find it a little _bitter_!”
Poor man, he had already gone quite yellow in the face. Ciccio and
Geoffrey watched him with dark-seeing eyes.
“And when are you going to let this fatal decision take effect?” asked
Mr. May.
“I’m going to see the lawyer tomorrow, and I’m going to tell him to
sell everything and clear up as soon as possible,” said Alvina.
“Sell everything! This house, and all it contains?”
“Yes,” said Alvina. “Everything.”
“Really!” Mr. May seemed smitten quite dumb. “I feel as if the world
had suddenly come to an end,” he said.
“But hasn’t your world often come to an end before?” said Alvina.
“Well—I suppose, once or twice. But _never_ quite on top of me, you
see, before—”
There was a silence.
“And have you told Miss Pinnegar?” said Mr. May.
“Not finally. But she has decided to open a little business in
Tamworth, where she has relations.”
“Has she! And are you _really_ going to _tour_ with these young
people—?” he indicated Ciccio and Gigi. “And at _no_ salary!” His voice
rose. “Why! It’s almost _White Slave Traffic_, on Madame’s part. Upon
my word!”
“I don’t think so,” said Alvina. “Don’t you see that’s insulting.”
“_Insulting!_ Well, I don’t know. I think it’s the _truth_—”
“Not to be said to me, for all that,” said Alvina, quivering with
anger.
“Oh!” perked Mr. May, yellow with strange rage. “Oh! I mustn’t say what
I think! Oh!”
“Not if you think those things—” said Alvina.
“Oh really! The difficulty is, you see, I’m afraid I _do_ think them—”
Alvina watched him with big, heavy eyes.
“Go away,” she said. “Go away! I won’t be insulted by you.”
“No _indeed!_” cried Mr. May, starting to his feet, his eyes almost
bolting from his head. “No _indeed!_ I wouldn’t _think_ of insulting
you in the presence of these _two_ young gentlemen.”
Ciccio rose slowly, and with a slow, repeated motion of the head,
indicated the door.
“Allez!” he said.
“_Certainement!_” cried Mr. May, flying at Ciccio, verbally, like an
enraged hen yellow at the gills. “_Certainement!_ Je m’en vais. Cette
compagnie n’est pas de ma choix.”
“Allez!” said Ciccio, more loudly.
And Mr. May strutted out of the room like a bird bursting with its own
rage. Ciccio stood with his hands on the table, listening. They heard
Mr. May slam the front door.
“Gone!” said Geoffrey.
Ciccio smiled sneeringly.
“Voyez, un cochon de lait,” said Gigi amply and calmly.
Ciccio sat down in his chair. Geoffrey poured out some beer for him,
saying:
“Drink, my Cic’, the bubble has burst, prfff!” And Gigi knocked in his
own puffed cheek with his fist. “Allaye, my dear, your health! We are
the Tawaras. We are Allaye! We are Pacohuila! We are Walgatchka!
Allons! The milk-pig is stewed and eaten. Voilà!” He drank, smiling
broadly.
“One by one,” said Geoffrey, who was a little drunk: “One by one we put
them out of the field, they are _hors de combat_. Who remains?
Pacohuila, Walgatchka, Allaye—”
He smiled very broadly. Alvina was sitting sunk in thought and torpor
after her sudden anger.
“Allaye, what do you think about? You are the bride of Tawara,” said
Geoffrey.
Alvina looked at him, smiling rather wanly.
“And who is Tawara?” she asked.
He raised his shoulders and spread his hands and swayed his head from
side to side, for all the world like a comic mandarin.
“There!” he cried. “The question! Who is Tawara? Who? Tell me! Ciccio
is he—and I am he—and Max and Louis—” he spread his hand to the distant
members of the tribe.
“I can’t be the bride of all four of you,” said Alvina, laughing.
“No—no! No—no! Such a thing does not come into my mind. But you are the
Bride of Tawara. You dwell in the tent of Pacohuila. And comes the day,
should it ever be so, there is no room for you in the tent of
Pacohuila, then the lodge of Walgatchka the bear is open for you. Open,
yes, wide open—” He spread his arms from his ample chest, at the end of
the table. “Open, and when Allaye enters, it is the lodge of Allaye,
Walgatchka is the bear that serves Allaye. By the law of the Pale Face,
by the law of the Yenghees, by the law of the Fransayes, Walgatchka
shall be husband-bear to Allaye, that day she lifts the door-curtain of
his tent—”
He rolled his eyes and looked around. Alvina watched him.
“But I might be afraid of a husband-bear,” she said.
Geoffrey got on to his feet.
“By the Manitou,” he said, “the head of the bear Walgatchka is humble—”
here Geoffrey bowed his head—“his teeth are as soft as lilies—” here he
opened his mouth and put his finger on his small close teeth—“his hands
are as soft as bees that stroke a flower—” here he spread his hands and
went and suddenly flopped on his knees beside Alvina, showing his hands
and his teeth still, and rolling his eyes. “Allaye can have no fear at
all of the bear Walgatchka,” he said, looking up at her comically.
Ciccio, who had been watching and slightly grinning, here rose to his
feet and took Geoffrey by the shoulder, pulling him up.
“Basta!” he said. “Tu es saoul. You are drunk, my Gigi. Get up. How are
you going to ride to Mansfield, hein?—great beast.”
“Ciccio,” said Geoffrey solemnly. “I love thee, I love thee as a
brother, and also more. I love thee as a brother, my Ciccio, as thou
knowest. But—” and he puffed fiercely—“I am the slave of Allaye, I am
the tame bear of Allaye.”
“Get up,” said Ciccio, “get up! Per bacco! She doesn’t want a tame
bear.” He smiled down on his friend.
Geoffrey rose to his feet and flung his arms round Ciccio.
“Cic’,” he besought him. “Cic’—I love thee as a brother. But let me be
the tame bear of Allaye, let me be the gentle bear of Allaye.”
“All right,” said Ciccio. “Thou art the tame bear of Allaye.”
Geoffrey strained Ciccio to his breast.
“Thank you! Thank you! Salute me, my own friend.”
And Ciccio kissed him on either cheek. Whereupon Geoffrey immediately
flopped on his knees again before Alvina, and presented her his broad,
rich-coloured cheek.
“Salute your bear, Allaye,” he cried. “Salute your slave, the tame bear
Walgatchka, who is a wild bear for all except Allaye and his brother
Pacohuila the Puma.” Geoffrey growled realistically as a wild bear as
he kneeled before Alvina, presenting his cheek.
Alvina looked at Ciccio, who stood above, watching. Then she lightly
kissed him on the cheek, and said:
“Won’t you go to bed and sleep?”
Geoffrey staggered to his feet, shaking his head.
“No—no—” he said. “No—no! Walgatchka must travel to the tent of
Kishwégin, to the Camp of the Tawaras.”
“Not tonight, _mon brave_,” said Ciccio. “Tonight we stay here, hein.
Why separate, hein?—frère?”
Geoffrey again clasped Ciccio in his arms.
“Pacohuila and Walgatchka are blood-brothers, two bodies, one blood.
One blood, in two bodies; one stream, in two valleys: one lake, between
two mountains.”
Here Geoffrey gazed with large, heavy eyes on Ciccio. Alvina brought a
candle and lighted it.
“You will manage in the one room?” she said. “I will give you another
pillow.”
She led the way upstairs. Geoffrey followed, heavily. Then Ciccio. On
the landing Alvina gave them the pillow and the candle, smiled, bade
them good-night in a whisper, and went downstairs again. She cleared
away the supper and carried away all glasses and bottles from the
drawing-room. Then she washed up, removing all traces of the feast. The
cards she restored to their old mahogany box. Manchester House looked
itself again.
She turned off the gas at the meter, and went upstairs to bed. From the
far room she could hear the gentle, but profound vibrations of
Geoffrey’s snoring. She was tired after her day: too tired to trouble
about anything any more.
But in the morning she was first downstairs. She heard Miss Pinnegar,
and hurried. Hastily she opened the windows and doors to drive away the
smell of beer and smoke. She heard the men rumbling in the bath-room.
And quickly she prepared breakfast and made a fire. Mrs. Rollings would
not appear till later in the day. At a quarter to seven Miss Pinnegar
came down, and went into the scullery to make her tea.
“Did both the men stay?” she asked.
“Yes, they both slept in the end room,” said Alvina.
Miss Pinnegar said no more, but padded with her tea and her boiled egg
into the living room. In the morning she was wordless.
Ciccio came down, in his shirt-sleeves as usual, but wearing a collar.
He greeted Miss Pinnegar politely.
“Good-morning!” she said, and went on with her tea.
Geoffrey appeared. Miss Pinnegar glanced once at him, sullenly, and
briefly answered his good-morning. Then she went on with her egg, slow
and persistent in her movements, mum.
The men went out to attend to Geoffrey’s bicycle. The morning was slow
and grey, obscure. As they pumped up the tires, they heard some one
padding behind. Miss Pinnegar came and unbolted the yard door, but
ignored their presence. Then they saw her return and slowly mount the
outer stair-ladder, which went up to the top floor. Two minutes
afterwards they were startled by the irruption of the work-girls. As
for the work-girls, they gave quite loud, startled squeals, suddenly
seeing the two men on their right hand, in the obscure morning. And
they lingered on the stair-way to gaze in rapt curiosity, poking and
whispering, until Miss Pinnegar appeared overhead, and sharply rang a
bell which hung beside the entrance door of the work-rooms.
After which excitements Geoffrey and Ciccio went in to breakfast, which
Alvina had prepared.
“You have done it all, eh?” said Ciccio, glancing round.
“Yes. I’ve made breakfast for years, now,” said Alvina.
“Not many more times here, eh?” he said, smiling significantly.
“I hope not,” said Alvina.
Ciccio sat down almost like a husband—as if it were his right.
Geoffrey was very quiet this morning. He ate his breakfast, and rose to
go.
“I shall see you soon,” he said, smiling sheepishly and bowing to
Alvina. Ciccio accompanied him to the street.
When Ciccio returned, Alvina was once more washing dishes.
“What time shall we go?” he said.
“We’ll catch the one train. I must see the lawyer this morning.”
“And what shall you say to him?”
“I shall tell him to sell everything—”
“And marry me?”
She started, and looked at him.
“You don’t want to marry, do you?” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Wouldn’t you rather wait, and see—”
“What?” he said.
“See if there is any money.”
He watched her steadily, and his brow darkened.
“Why?” he said.
She began to tremble.
“You’d like it better if there was money.”
A slow, sinister smile came on his mouth. His eyes never smiled, except
to Geoffrey, when a flood of warm, laughing light sometimes suffused
them.
“You think I should!”
“Yes. It’s true, isn’t it? You would!”
He turned his eyes aside, and looked at her hands as she washed the
forks. They trembled slightly. Then he looked back at her eyes again,
that were watching him large and wistful and a little accusing.
His impudent laugh came on his face.
“Yes,” he said, “it is always better if there is money.” He put his
hand on her, and she winced. “But I marry you for love, you know. You
know what love is—” And he put his arms round her, and laughed down
into her face.
She strained away.
“But you can have love without marriage,” she said. “You know that.”
“All right! All right! Give me love, eh? I want that.”
She struggled against him.
“But not now,” she said.
She saw the light in his eyes fix determinedly, and he nodded.
“Now!” he said. “Now!”
His yellow-tawny eyes looked down into hers, alien and overbearing.
“I can’t,” she struggled. “I can’t now.”
He laughed in a sinister way: yet with a certain warmheartedness.
“Come to that big room—” he said.
Her face flew fixed into opposition.
“I can’t now, really,” she said grimly.
His eyes looked down at hers. Her eyes looked back at him, hard and
cold and determined. They remained motionless for some seconds. Then, a
stray wisp of her hair catching his attention, desire filled his heart,
warm and full, obliterating his anger in the combat. For a moment he
softened. He saw her hardness becoming more assertive, and he wavered
in sudden dislike, and almost dropped her. Then again the desire
flushed his heart, his smile became reckless of her, and he picked her
right up.
“Yes,” he said. “Now.”
For a second, she struggled frenziedly. But almost instantly she
recognized how much stronger he was, and she was still, mute and
motionless with anger. White, and mute, and motionless, she was taken
to her room. And at the back of her mind all the time she wondered at
his deliberate recklessness of her. Recklessly, he had his will of
her—but deliberately, and thoroughly, not rushing to the issue, but
taking everything he wanted of her, progressively, and fully, leaving
her stark, with nothing, nothing of herself—nothing.
When she could lie still she turned away from him, still mute. And he
lay with his arms over her, motionless. Noises went on, in the street,
overhead in the work-room. But theirs was complete silence.
At last he rose and looked at her.
“Love is a fine thing, Allaye,” he said.
She lay mute and unmoving. He approached, laid his hand on her breast,
and kissed her.
“Love,” he said, asserting, and laughing.
But still she was completely mute and motionless. He threw bedclothes
over her and went downstairs, whistling softly.
She knew she would have to break her own trance of obstinacy. So she
snuggled down into the bedclothes, shivering deliciously, for her skin
had become chilled. She didn’t care a bit, really, about her own
downfall. She snuggled deliciously in the sheets, and admitted to
herself that she loved him. In truth, she loved him—and she was
laughing to herself.
Luxuriously, she resented having to get up and tackle her heap of
broken garments. But she did it. She took other clothes, adjusted her
hair, tied on her apron, and went downstairs once more. She could not
find Ciccio: he had gone out. A stray cat darted from the scullery, and
broke a plate in her leap. Alvina found her washing-up water cold. She
put on more, and began to dry her dishes.
Ciccio returned shortly, and stood in the doorway looking at her. She
turned to him, unexpectedly laughing.
“What do you think of yourself?” she laughed.
“Well,” he said, with a little nod, and a furtive look of triumph about
him, evasive. He went past her and into the room. Her inside burned
with love for him: so elusive, so beautiful, in his silent passing out
of her sight. She wiped her dishes happily. Why was she so absurdly
happy, she asked herself? And why did she still fight so hard against
the sense of his dark, unseizable beauty? Unseizable, for ever
unseizable! That made her almost his slave. She fought against her own
desire to fall at his feet. Ridiculous to be so happy.
She sang to herself as she went about her work downstairs. Then she
went upstairs, to do the bedrooms and pack her bag. At ten o’clock she
was to go to the family lawyer.
She lingered over her possessions: what to take, and what not to take.
And so doing she wasted her time. It was already ten o’clock when she
hurried downstairs. He was sitting quite still, waiting. He looked up
at her.
“Now I must hurry,” she said. “I don’t think I shall be more than an
hour.”
He put on his hat and went out with her.
“I shall tell the lawyer I am engaged to you. Shall I?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Tell him what you like.” He was indifferent.
“Because,” said Alvina gaily, “we can please ourselves what we do,
whatever we say. I shall say we think of getting married in the summer,
when we know each other better, and going to Italy.”
“Why shall you say all that?” said Ciccio.
“Because I shall _have_ to give some account of myself, or they’ll make
me do something I don’t want to do. You might come to the lawyer’s with
me, will you? He’s an awfully nice old man. Then he’d believe in you.”
But Ciccio shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I shan’t go. He doesn’t want to see _me_.”
“Well, if you don’t want to. But I remember your name, Francesco
Marasca, and I remember Pescocalascio.”
Ciccio heard in silence, as they walked the half-empty, Monday-morning
street of Woodhouse. People kept nodding to Alvina. Some hurried
inquisitively across to speak to her and look at Ciccio. Ciccio however
stood aside and turned his back.
“Oh yes,” Alvina said. “I am staying with friends, here and there, for
a few weeks. No, I don’t know when I shall be back. Good-bye!”
“You’re looking well, Alvina,” people said to her. “I think you’re
looking wonderful. A change does you good.”
“It does, doesn’t it,” said Alvina brightly. And she was pleased she
was looking well.
“Well, good-bye for a minute,” she said, glancing smiling into his eyes
and nodding to him, as she left him at the gate of the lawyer’s house,
by the ivy-covered wall.
The lawyer was a little man, all grey. Alvina had known him since she
was a child: but rather as an official than an individual. She arrived
all smiling in his room. He sat down and scrutinized her sharply,
officially, before beginning.
“Well, Miss Houghton, and what news have you?”
“I don’t think I’ve any, Mr. Beeby. I came to you for news.”
“Ah!” said the lawyer, and he fingered a paper-weight that covered a
pile of papers. “I’m afraid there is nothing very pleasant,
unfortunately. And nothing very unpleasant either, for that matter.”
He gave her a shrewd little smile.
“Is the will proved?”
“Not yet. But I expect it will be through in a few days’ time.”
“And are all the claims in?”
“Yes. I _think_ so. I think so!” And again he laid his hand on the pile
of papers under the paper-weight, and ran through the edges with the
tips of his fingers.
“All those?” said Alvina.
“Yes,” he said quietly. It sounded ominous.
“Many!” said Alvina.
“A fair amount! A fair amount! Let me show you a statement.”
He rose and brought her a paper. She made out, with the lawyer’s help,
that the claims against her father’s property exceeded the gross
estimate of his property by some seven hundred pounds.
“Does it mean we owe seven hundred pounds?” she asked.
“That is only on the _estimate_ of the property. It might, of course,
realize much more, when sold—or it might realize less.”
“How awful!” said Alvina, her courage sinking.
“Unfortunate! Unfortunate! However, I don’t think the realization of
the property would amount to less than the estimate. I don’t think so.”
“But even then,” said Alvina. “There is sure to be something owing—”
She saw herself saddled with her father’s debts.
“I’m afraid so,” said the lawyer.
“And then what?” said Alvina.
“Oh—the creditors will have to be satisfied with a little less than
they claim, I suppose. Not a very great deal, you see. I don’t expect
they will complain a great deal. In fact, some of them will be less
badly off than they feared. No, on that score we need not trouble
further. Useless if we do, anyhow. But now, about yourself. Would you
like me to try to compound with the creditors, so that you could have
some sort of provision? They are mostly people who know you, know your
condition: and I might try—”
“Try what?” said Alvina.
“To make some sort of compound. Perhaps you might retain a lease of
Miss Pinnegar’s work-rooms. Perhaps even something might be done about
the cinematograph. What would you like—?”
Alvina sat still in her chair, looking through the window at the ivy
sprays, and the leaf buds on the lilac. She felt she could not, she
could not cut off every resource. In her own heart she had confidently
expected a few hundred pounds: even a thousand or more. And that would
make her _something_ of a catch, to people who had nothing. But
now!—nothing!—nothing at the back of her but her hundred pounds. When
that was gone—!
In her dilemma she looked at the lawyer.
“You didn’t expect it would be quite so bad?” he said.
“I think I didn’t,” she said.
“No. Well—it might have been worse.”
Again he waited. And again she looked at him vacantly.
“What do you think?” he said.
For answer, she only looked at him with wide eyes.
“Perhaps you would rather decide later.”
“No,” she said. “No. It’s no use deciding later.”
The lawyer watched her with curious eyes, his hand beat a little
impatiently.
“I will do my best,” he said, “to get what I can for you.”
“Oh well!” she said. “Better let everything go. I don’t _want_ to hang
on. Don’t bother about me at all. I shall go away, anyhow.”
“You will go away?” said the lawyer, and he studied his finger-nails.
“Yes. I shan’t stay here.”
“Oh! And may I ask if you have any definite idea, where you will go?”
“I’ve got an engagement as pianist, with a travelling theatrical
company.”
“Oh indeed!” said the lawyer, scrutinizing her sharply. She stared away
vacantly out of the window. He took to the attentive study of his
finger-nails once more. “And at a sufficient salary?”
“Quite sufficient, thank you,” said Alvina.
“Oh! Well! Well now!—” He fidgetted a little. “You see, we are all old
neighbours and connected with your father for many years. We—that is
the persons interested, and myself—would not like to think that you
were driven out of Woodhouse—er—er—destitute. If—er—we could come to
some composition—make some arrangement that would be agreeable to you,
and would, in some measure, secure you a means of livelihood—”
He watched Alvina with sharp blue eyes. Alvina looked back at him,
still vacantly.
“No—thanks awfully!” she said. “But don’t bother. I’m going away.”
“With the travelling theatrical company?”
“Yes.”
The lawyer studied his finger-nails intensely.
“Well,” he said, feeling with a finger-tip an imaginary roughness of
one nail-edge. “Well, in that case—In that case—Supposing you have made
an irrevocable decision—”
He looked up at her sharply. She nodded slowly, like a porcelain
mandarin.
“In that case,” he said, “we must proceed with the valuation and the
preparation for the sale.”
“Yes,” she said faintly.
“You realize,” he said, “that everything in Manchester House, except
your private personal property, and that of Miss Pinnegar, belongs to
the claimants, your father’s creditors, and may not be removed from the
house.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And it will be necessary to make an account of everything in the
house. So if you and Miss Pinnegar will put your possessions strictly
apart—But I shall see Miss Pinnegar during the course of the day. Would
you ask her to call about seven—I think she is free then—”
Alvina sat trembling.
“I shall pack my things today,” she said.
“Of course,” said the lawyer, “any little things to which you may be
attached the claimants would no doubt wish you to regard as your own.
For anything of greater value—your piano, for example—I should have to
make a personal request—”
“Oh, I don’t want anything—” said Alvina.
“No? Well! You will see. You will be here a few days?”
“No,” said Alvina. “I’m going away today.”
“Today! Is that also irrevocable?”
“Yes. I must go this afternoon.”
“On account of your engagement? May I ask where your company is
performing this week? Far away?”
“Mansfield!”
“Oh! Well then, in case I particularly wished to see you, you could
come over?”
“If necessary,” said Alvina. “But I don’t want to come to Woodhouse
unless it _is_ necessary. Can’t we write?”
“Yes—certainly! Certainly!—most things! Certainly! And now—”
He went into certain technical matters, and Alvina signed some
documents. At last she was free to go. She had been almost an hour in
the room.
“Well, good-morning, Miss Houghton. You will hear from me, and I from
you. I wish you a pleasant experience in your new occupation. You are
not leaving Woodhouse for ever.”
“Good-bye!” she said. And she hurried to the road.
Try as she might, she felt as if she had had a blow which knocked her
down. She felt she had had a blow.
At the lawyer’s gate she stood a minute. There, across a little hollow,
rose the cemetery hill. There were her graves: her mother’s, Miss
Frost’s, her father’s. Looking, she made out the white cross at Miss
Frost’s grave, the grey stone at her parents’. Then she turned slowly,
under the church wall, back to Manchester House.
She felt humiliated. She felt she did not want to see anybody at all.
She did not want to see Miss Pinnegar, nor the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: and
least of all, Ciccio. She felt strange in Woodhouse, almost as if the
ground had risen from under her feet and hit her over the mouth. The
fact that Manchester House and its very furniture was under seal to be
sold on behalf of her father’s creditors made her feel as if all her
Woodhouse life had suddenly gone smash. She loathed the thought of
Manchester House. She loathed staying another minute in it.
And yet she did not want to go to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras either. The
church clock above her clanged eleven. She ought to take the
twelve-forty train to Mansfield. Yet instead of going home she turned
off down the alley towards the fields and the brook.
How many times had she gone that road! How many times had she seen Miss
Frost bravely striding home that way, from her music-pupils. How many
years had she noticed a particular wild cherry-tree come into blossom,
a particular bit of black-thorn scatter its whiteness in among the
pleached twigs of a hawthorn hedge. How often, how many springs had
Miss Frost come home with a bit of this black-thorn in her hand!
Alvina did _not_ want to go to Mansfield that afternoon. She felt
insulted. She knew she would be much cheaper in Madame’s eyes. She knew
her own position with the troupe would be humiliating. It would be
openly a little humiliating. But it would be much more maddeningly
humiliating to stay in Woodhouse and experience the full flavour of
Woodhouse’s calculated benevolence. She hardly knew which was worse:
the cool look of insolent half-contempt, half-satisfaction with which
Madame would receive the news of her financial downfall, or the
officious patronage which she would meet from the Woodhouse magnates.
She knew exactly how Madame’s black eyes would shine, how her mouth
would curl with a sneering, slightly triumphant smile, as she heard the
news. And she could hear the bullying tone in which Henry Wagstaff
would dictate the Woodhouse benevolence to her. She wanted to go away
from them all—from them all—for ever.
Even from Ciccio. For she felt he insulted her too. Subtly, they all
did it. They had regard for her possibilities as an heiress. Five
hundred, even two hundred pounds would have made all the difference.
Useless to deny it. Even to Ciccio. Ciccio would have had a lifelong
respect for her, if she had come with even so paltry a sum as two
hundred pounds. Now she had nothing, he would coolly withhold this
respect. She felt he might jeer at her. And she could not get away from
this feeling.
Mercifully she had the bit of ready money. And she had a few trinkets
which might be sold. Nothing else. Mercifully, for the mere moment, she
was independent.
Whatever else she did, she must go back and pack. She must pack her two
boxes, and leave them ready. For she felt that once she had left, she
could never come back to Woodhouse again. If England had cliffs all
round—why, when there was nowhere else to go and no getting beyond, she
could walk over one of the cliffs. Meanwhile, she had her short run
before her. She banked hard on her independence.
So she turned back to the town. She would not be able to take the
twelve-forty train, for it was already mid-day. But she was glad. She
wanted some time to herself. She would send Ciccio on. Slowly she
climbed the familiar hill—slowly—and rather bitterly. She felt her
native place insulted her: and she felt the Natchas insulted her. In
the midst of the insult she remained isolated upon herself, and she
wished to be alone.
She found Ciccio waiting at the end of the yard: eternally waiting, it
seemed. He was impatient.
“You’ve been a long time,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered.
“We shall have to make haste to catch the train.”
“I can’t go by this train. I shall have to come on later. You can just
eat a mouthful of lunch, and go now.”
They went indoors. Miss Pinnegar had not yet come down. Mrs. Rollings
was busily peeling potatoes.
“Mr. Marasca is going by the train, he’ll have to have a little cold
meat,” said Alvina. “Would you mind putting it ready while I go
upstairs?”
“Sharpses and Fullbankses sent them bills,” said Mrs. Rollings. Alvina
opened them, and turned pale. It was thirty pounds, the total funeral
expenses. She had completely forgotten them.
“And Mr. Atterwell wants to know what you’d like put on th’ headstone
for your father—if you’d write it down.”
“All right.”
Mrs. Rollings popped on the potatoes for Miss Pinnegar’s dinner, and
spread the cloth for Ciccio. When he was eating, Miss Pinnegar came in.
She inquired for Alvina—and went upstairs.
“Have you had your dinner?” she said. For there was Alvina sitting
writing a letter.
“I’m going by a later train,” said Alvina.
“Both of you?”
“No. He’s going now.”
Miss Pinnegar came downstairs again, and went through to the scullery.
When Alvina came down, she returned to the living room.
“Give this letter to Madame,” Alvina said to Ciccio. “I shall be at the
hall by seven tonight. I shall go straight there.”
“Why can’t you come now?” said Ciccio.
“I can’t possibly,” said Alvina. “The lawyer has just told me father’s
debts come to much more than everything is worth. Nothing is ours—not
even the plate you’re eating from. Everything is under seal to be sold
to pay off what is owing. So I’ve got to get my own clothes and boots
together, or they’ll be sold with the rest. Mr. Beeby wants you to go
round at seven this evening, Miss Pinnegar—before I forget.”
“Really!” gasped Miss Pinnegar. “Really! The house and the furniture
and everything got to be sold up? Then we’re on the streets! I can’t
believe it.”
“So he told me,” said Alvina.
“But how positively awful,” said Miss Pinnegar, sinking motionless into
a chair.
“It’s not more than I expected,” said Alvina. “I’m putting my things
into my two trunks, and I shall just ask Mrs. Slaney to store them for
me. Then I’ve the bag I shall travel with.”
“Really!” gasped Miss Pinnegar. “I can’t believe it! And when have we
got to get out?”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s a desperate hurry. They’ll take an inventory
of all the things, and we can live on here till they’re actually ready
for the sale.”
“And when will that be?”
“I don’t know. A week or two.”
“And is the cinematograph to be sold the same?”
“Yes—everything! The piano—even mother’s portrait—”
“It’s impossible to believe it,” said Miss Pinnegar. “It’s impossible.
He can never have left things so bad.”
“Ciccio,” said Alvina. “You’ll really have to go if you are to catch
the train. You’ll give Madame my letter, won’t you? I should hate you
to miss the train. I know she can’t bear me already, for all the fuss
and upset I cause.”
Ciccio rose slowly, wiping his mouth.
“You’ll be there at seven o’clock?” he said.
“At the theatre,” she replied.
And without more ado, he left.
Mrs. Rollings came in.
“You’ve heard?” said Miss Pinnegar dramatically.
“I heard somethink,” said Mrs. Rollings.
“Sold up! Everything to be sold up. Every stick and rag! I never
thought I should live to see the day,” said Miss Pinnegar.
“You might almost have expected it,” said Mrs. Rollings. “But you’re
all right, yourself, Miss Pinnegar. Your money isn’t with his, is it?”
“No,” said Miss Pinnegar. “What little I have put by is safe. But it’s
not enough to live on. It’s not enough to keep me, even supposing I
only live another ten years. If I only spend a pound a week, it costs
fifty-two pounds a year. And for ten years, look at it, it’s five
hundred and twenty pounds. And you couldn’t say less. And I haven’t
half that amount. I never had more than a wage, you know. Why, Miss
Frost earned a good deal more than I do. And _she_ didn’t leave much
more than fifty. Where’s the money to come from—?”
“But if you’ve enough to start a little business—” said Alvina.
“Yes, it’s what I shall _have_ to do. It’s what I shall have to do. And
then what about you? What about you?”
“Oh, don’t bother about me,” said Alvina.
“Yes, it’s all very well, don’t bother. But when you come to my age,
you know you’ve _got_ to bother, and bother a great deal, if you’re not
going to find yourself in a position you’d be sorry for. You _have_ to
bother. And _you’ll_ have to bother before you’ve done.”
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said Alvina.
“Ha, sufficient for a good many days, it seems to me.”
Miss Pinnegar was in a real temper. To Alvina this seemed an odd way of
taking it. The three women sat down to an uncomfortable dinner of cold
meat and hot potatoes and warmed-up pudding.
“But whatever you do,” pronounced Miss Pinnegar; “whatever you do, and
however you strive, in this life, you’re knocked down in the end.
You’re always knocked down.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Alvina, “if it’s only in the end. It doesn’t
matter if you’ve had your life.”
“You’ve never had your life, till you’re dead,” said Miss Pinnegar.
“And if you work and strive, you’ve a right to the fruits of your
work.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Alvina laconically, “so long as you’ve
enjoyed working and striving.”
But Miss Pinnegar was too angry to be philosophic. Alvina knew it was
useless to be either angry or otherwise emotional. None the less, she
also felt as if she had been knocked down. And she almost envied poor
Miss Pinnegar the prospect of a little, day-by-day haberdashery shop in
Tamworth. Her own problem seemed so much more menacing. “Answer or
die,” said the Sphinx of fate. Miss Pinnegar could answer her own fate
according to its question. She could say “haberdashery shop,” and her
sphinx would recognize this answer as true to nature, and would be
satisfied. But every individual has his own, or her own fate, and her
own sphinx. Alvina’s sphinx was an old, deep thoroughbred, she would
take no mongrel answers. And her thoroughbred teeth were long and
sharp. To Alvina, the last of the fantastic but pure-bred race of
Houghton, the problem of her fate was terribly abstruse.
The only thing to do was not to solve it: to stray on, and answer fate
with whatever came into one’s head. No good striving with fate. Trust
to a lucky shot, or take the consequences.
“Miss Pinnegar,” said Alvina. “Have we any money in hand?”
“There is about twenty pounds in the bank. It’s all shown in my books,”
said Miss Pinnegar.
“We couldn’t take it, could we?”
“Every penny shows in the books.”
Alvina pondered again.
“Are there more bills to come in?” she asked. “I mean my bills. Do I
owe anything?”
“I don’t think you do,” said Miss Pinnegar.
“I’m going to keep the insurance money, any way. They can say what they
like. I’ve got it, and I’m going to keep it.”
“Well,” said Miss Pinnegar, “it’s not my business. But there’s Sharps
and Fullbanks to pay.”
“I’ll pay those,” said Alvina. “You tell Atterwell what to put on
father’s stone. How much does it cost?”
“Five shillings a letter, you remember.”
“Well, we’ll just put the name and the date. How much will that be?
James Houghton. Born 17th January—”
“You’ll have to put ‘Also of,’” said Miss Pinnegar.
“Also of—” said Alvina. “One—two—three—four—five—six—. Six
letters—thirty shillings. Seems an awful lot for _Also of_—”
“But you can’t leave it out,” said Miss Pinnegar. “You can’t economize
over that.”
“I begrudge it,” said Alvina.