The Lost Girl Part 58

"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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, 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--he, 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--sh.e.l.l-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 _idee 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.

"a.s.sez eloigne!" 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?"