The Lost Girl Part 47

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-cla.s.ses 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 c.o.c.ked 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, nave 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 pa.s.sed 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. n.o.body 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.