The Lost Girl Part 53

At length Alvina was called down to dinner. The young men were at table, talking as young men do, not very interestingly. After the meal, Ciccio sat and tw.a.n.ged his mandoline, making its crying noise vibrate through the house.

"I shall go and look at the town," said Alvina.

"And who shall go with you?" asked Madame.

"I will go alone," said Alvina, "unless you will come, Madame."

"Alas no, I can't. I can't come. Will you really go alone?"

"Yes, I want to go to the women's shops," said Alvina.

"You want to! All right then! And you will come home at tea-time, yes?"

As soon as Alvina had gone out Ciccio put away his mandoline and lit a cigarette. Then after a while he hailed Geoffrey, and the two young men sallied forth. Alvina, emerging from a draper's shop in Rotherhampton Broadway, found them loitering on the pavement outside. And they strolled along with her. So she went into a shop that sold ladies' underwear, leaving them on the pavement. She stayed as long as she could. But there they were when she came out.

They had endless lounging patience.

"I thought you would be gone on," she said.

"No hurry," said Ciccio, and he took away her parcels from her, as if he had a right. She wished he wouldn't tilt the flap of his black hat over one eye, and she wished there wasn't quite so much waist-line in the cut of his coat, and that he didn't smoke cigarettes against the end of his nose in the street. But wishing wouldn't alter him. He strayed alongside as if he half belonged, and half didn't--most irritating.

She wasted as much time as possible in the shops, then they took the tram home again. Ciccio paid the three fares, laying his hand restrainingly on Gigi's hand, when Gigi's hand sought pence in his trouser pocket, and throwing his arm over his friend's shoulder, in affectionate but vulgar triumph, when the fares were paid. Alvina was on her high horse.

They tried to talk to her, they tried to ingratiate themselves--but she wasn't having any. She talked with icy pleasantness. And so the tea-time pa.s.sed, and the time after tea. The performance went rather mechanically, at the theatre, and the supper at home, with bottled beer and boiled ham, was a conventionally cheerful affair. Even Madame was a little afraid of Alvina this evening.

"I am tired, I shall go early to my room," said Alvina.

"Yes, I think we are all tired," said Madame.

"Why is it?" said Max metaphysically--"why is it that two merry evenings never follow one behind the other."

"Max, beer makes thee a _farceur_ of a fine quality," said Madame.

Alvina rose.

"Please don't get up," she said to the others. "I have my key and can see quite well," she said. "Good-night all."

They rose and bowed their good-nights. But Ciccio, with an obstinate and ugly little smile on his face, followed her.

"Please don't come," she said, turning at the street door. But obstinately he lounged into the street with her. He followed her to her door.

"Did you bring the flash-light?" she said. "The stair is so dark."

He looked at her, and turned as if to get the light. Quickly she opened the house-door and slipped inside, shutting it sharply in his face. He stood for some moments looking at the door, and an ugly little look mounted his straight nose. He too turned indoors.

Alvina hurried to bed and slept well. And the next day the same, she was all icy pleasantness. The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were a little bit put out by her. She was a spoke in their wheel, a scotch to their facility. She made them irritable. And that evening--it was Friday--Ciccio did not rise to accompany her to her house. And she knew they were relieved that she had gone.

That did not please her. The next day, which was Sat.u.r.day, the last and greatest day of the week, she found herself again somewhat of an outsider in the troupe. The tribe had a.s.sembled in its old unison.

She was the intruder, the interloper. And Ciccio never looked at her, only showed her the half-averted side of his cheek, on which was a slightly jeering, ugly look.

"Will you go to Woodhouse tomorrow?" Madame asked her, rather coolly. They none of them called her Allaye any more.

"I'd better fetch some things, hadn't I?" said Alvina.

"Certainly, if you think you will stay with us."

This was a nasty slap in the face for her. But:

"I want to," she said.

"Yes! Then you will go to Woodhouse tomorrow, and come to Mansfield on Monday morning? Like that shall it be? You will stay one night at Woodhouse?"

Through Alvina's mind flitted the rapid thought--"They want an evening without me." Her pride mounted obstinately. She very nearly said--"I may stay in Woodhouse altogether." But she held her tongue.

After all, they were very common people. They ought to be glad to have her. Look how Madame snapped up that brooch! And look what an uncouth lout Ciccio was! After all, she was demeaning herself shamefully staying with them in common, sordid lodgings. After all, she had been bred up differently from that. They had horribly low standards--such low standards--not only of morality, but of life altogether. Really, she had come down in the world, conforming to such standards of life. She evoked the images of her mother and Miss Frost: ladies, and n.o.ble women both. Whatever could she be thinking of herself!

However, there was time for her to retrace her steps. She had not given herself away. Except to Ciccio. And her heart burned when she thought of him, partly with anger and mortification, partly, alas, with undeniable and unsatisfied love. Let her bridle as she might, her heart burned, and she wanted to look at him, she wanted him to notice her. And instinct told her that he might ignore her for ever.

She went to her room an unhappy woman, and wept and fretted till morning, chafing between humiliation and yearning.

CHAPTER X

THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE

Alvina rose chastened and wistful. As she was doing her hair, she heard the plaintive nasal sound of Ciccio's mandoline. She looked down the mixed vista of back-yards and little gardens, and was able to catch sight of a portion of Ciccio, who was sitting on a box in the blue-brick yard of his house, bare-headed and in his shirt-sleeves, twitching away at the wailing mandoline. It was not a warm morning, but there was a streak of sunshine. Alvina had noticed that Ciccio did not seem to feel the cold, unless it were a wind or a driving rain. He was playing the wildly-yearning Neapolitan songs, of which Alvina knew nothing. But, although she only saw a section of him, the glimpse of his head was enough to rouse in her that overwhelming fascination, which came and went in spells. His remoteness, his southernness, something velvety and dark. So easily she might miss him altogether! Within a hair's-breadth she had let him disappear.

She hurried down. Geoffrey opened the door to her. She smiled at him in a quick, luminous smile, a magic change in her.

"I could hear Ciccio playing," she said.

Geoffrey spread his rather thick lips in a smile, and jerked his head in the direction of the back door, with a deep, intimate look into Alvina's eyes, as if to say his friend was lovesick.

"Shall I go through?" said Alvina.

Geoffrey laid his large hand on her shoulder for a moment, looked into her eyes, and nodded. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, with a rather flat, handsome face, well-coloured, and with the look of the Alpine ox about him, slow, eternal, even a little mysterious. Alvina was startled by the deep, mysterious look in his dark-fringed ox-eyes. The odd arch of his eyebrows made him suddenly seem not quite human to her. She smiled to him again, startled. But he only inclined his head, and with his heavy hand on her shoulder gently impelled her towards Ciccio.

When she came out at the back she smiled straight into Ciccio's face, with her sudden, luminous smile. His hand on the mandoline trembled into silence. He sat looking at her with an instant re-establishment of knowledge. And yet she shrank from the long, inscrutable gaze of his black-set, tawny eyes. She resented him a little. And yet she went forward to him and stood so that her dress touched him. And still he gazed up at her, with the heavy, unspeaking look, that seemed to bear her down: he seemed like some creature that was watching her for his purposes. She looked aside at the black garden, which had a wiry goose-berry bush.

"You will come with me to Woodhouse?" she said.

He did not answer till she turned to him again. Then, as she met his eyes,

"To Woodhouse?" he said, watching her, to fix her.

"Yes," she said, a little pale at the lips.

And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his mouth. She wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred his tawny eyes with their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched her as a cat watches a bird, but without the white gleam of ferocity. In his eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth, something fathomless, deepening black and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.