The Lost Girl Part 38

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 Sat.u.r.day 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 l.u.s.trous. The eyes were set in so dark, that one expected them to be black and flashing. And then one met the yellow pupils, sulphureous and remote. It was like meeting a lion. His long, fine nose, his rather long, rounded chin and curling lips seemed refined through ages of forgotten culture. He was waiting: silent there, with something muscular and remote about his very droop, he was waiting. What for? Alvina could not guess. She wanted to meet his eye, to have an open understanding with him. But he would not. When she went up to talk to him, he answered in his stupid fashion, with a smile of the mouth and no change of the eyes, saying nothing at all. Obstinately he held away from her. When he was in his war-paint, for one moment she hated his muscular, handsome, downward-drooping torso: so stupid and full. The fine sharp uprightness of Max seemed much finer, clearer, more manly.

Ciccio's velvety, suave heaviness, the very heave of his muscles, so full and softly powerful, sickened her.

She flashed away angrily on her piano. Madame, who was dancing Kishwegin on the last evening, cast sharp glances at her. Alvina had avoided Madame as Ciccio had avoided Alvina--elusive and yet conscious, a distance, and yet a connection.

Madame danced beautifully. No denying it, she was an artist. She became something quite different: fresh, virginal, pristine, a magic creature flickering there. She was infinitely delicate and attractive. Her _braves_ became glamorous and heroic at once, and magically she cast her spell over them. It was all very well for Alvina to bang the piano crossly. She could not put out the glow which surrounded Kishwegin and her troupe. Ciccio was handsome now: without war-paint, and roused, fearless and at the same time suggestive, a dark, mysterious glamour on his face, pa.s.sionate 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 ma.s.sive, male strength of the creature, her quivers of triumph over the dead beast, her cruel exultation, and her fear that he was not really dead. It was a lovely sight, suggesting the world's morning, before Eve had bitten any white-fleshed apple, whilst she was still dusky, dark-eyed, and still. And then her stealthy sympathy with the white prisoner! Now indeed she was the dusky Eve tempted into knowledge. Her fascination was ruthless. She kneeled by the dead _brave_, her husband, as she had knelt by the bear: in fear and admiration and doubt and exultation. She gave him the least little push with her foot. Dead meat like the bear! And a flash of delight went over her, that changed into a sob of mortal anguish. And then, flickering, wicked, doubtful, she watched Ciccio wrestling with the bear.

She was the clue to all the action, was Kishwegin. And her dark _braves_ seemed to become darker, more secret, malevolent, burning with a cruel fire, and at the same time wistful, knowing their end.

Ciccio laughed in a strange way, as he wrestled with the bear, as he had never laughed on the previous evenings. The sound went out into the audience, a soft, malevolent, derisive sound. And when the bear was supposed to have crushed him, and he was to have fallen, he reeled out of the bear's arms and said to Madame, in his derisive voice:

"Vivo sempre, Madame." And then he fell.

Madame stopped as if shot, hearing his words: "I am still alive, Madame." She remained suspended motionless, suddenly wilted. Then all at once her hand went to her mouth with a scream:

"The Bear!"

So the scene concluded itself. But instead of the tender, half-wistful triumph of Kishwegin, a triumph electric as it should have been when she took the white man's hand and kissed it, there was a doubt, a hesitancy, a nullity, and Max did not quite know what to do.

After the performance, neither Madame nor Max dared say anything to Ciccio about his innovation into the play. Louis felt he had to speak--it was left to him.

"I say, Cic'--" he said, "why did you change the scene? It might have spoiled everything if Madame wasn't such a genius. Why did you say that?"

"Why," said Ciccio, answering Louis' French in Italian, "I am tired of being dead, you see."

Madame and Max heard in silence.

When Alvina had played _G.o.d 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.