The Lost Girl Part 42

"Tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu!" went Miss Pinnegar's tongue, in a rapid tut-tut of distress. "What have I said, now," she exclaimed. "What have I said all along?"

James was laid on the sofa. His eyes were half-shut. They made him drink brandy, the boy was sent for the doctor, Alvina's bed was warmed. The sick man was got to bed. And then started another vigil.

Alvina sat up in the sick room. James started and muttered, but did not regain consciousness. Dawn came, and he was the same. Pneumonia and pleurisy and a touch of meningitis. Alvina drank her tea, took a little breakfast, and went to bed at about nine o'clock in the morning, leaving James in charge of Miss Pinnegar. Time was all deranged.

Miss Pinnegar was a nervous nurse. She sat in horror and apprehension, her eyebrows raised, starting and looking at James in terror whenever he made a noise. She hurried to him and did what she could. But one would have said she was repulsed, she found her task unconsciously repugnant.

During the course of the morning Mrs. Rollings came up and said that the Italian from last week had come, and could he speak to Miss Houghton.

"Tell him she's resting, and Mr. Houghton is seriously ill," said Miss Pinnegar sharply.

When Alvina came downstairs at about four in the afternoon she found a package: a comb of carved bone, and a message from Madame: "To Miss Houghton, with kindest greetings and most sincere thanks from Kishwegin."

The comb with its carved, beast-faced serpent was her portion.

Alvina asked if there had been any other message. None.

Mr. May came in, and stayed for a dismal half-hour. Then Alvina went back to her nursing. The patient was no better, still unconscious.

Miss Pinnegar came down, red eyed and sullen looking. The condition of James gave little room for hope.

In the early morning he died. Alvina called Mrs. Rollings, and they composed the body. It was still only five o'clock, and not light.

Alvina went to lie down in her father's little, rather chilly chamber at the end of the corridor. She tried to sleep, but could not. At half-past seven she arose, and started the business of the new day. The doctor came--she went to the registrar--and so on.

Mr. May came. It was decided to keep open the theatre. He would find some one else for the piano, some one else to issue the tickets.

In the afternoon arrived Frederick Houghton, James's cousin and nearest relative. He was a middle-aged, blond, florid, church-going draper from Knarborough, well-to-do and very _bourgeois_. He tried to talk to Alvina in a fatherly fas.h.i.+on, or a friendly, or a helpful fas.h.i.+on. But Alvina could not listen to him. He got on her nerves.

Hearing the gate bang, she rose and hurried to the window. She was in the drawing-room with her cousin, to give the interview its proper air of solemnity. She saw Ciccio rearing his yellow bicycle against the wall, and going with his head forward along the narrow, dark way of the back yard, to the scullery door.

"Excuse me a minute," she said to her cousin, who looked up irritably as she left the room.

She was just in time to open the door as Ciccio tapped. She stood on the doorstep above him. He looked up, with a faint smile, from under his black lashes.

"How nice of you to come," she said. But her face was blanched and tired, without expression. Only her large eyes looked blue in their tiredness, as she glanced down at Ciccio. He seemed to her far away.

"Madame asks how is Mr. Houghton," he said.

"Father! He died this morning," she said quietly.

"He died!" exclaimed the Italian, a flash of fear and dismay going over his face.

"Yes--this morning." She had neither tears nor emotion, but just looked down on him abstractedly, from her height on the kitchen step. He dropped his eyes and looked at his feet. Then he lifted his eyes again, and looked at her. She looked back at him, as from across a distance. So they watched each other, as strangers across a wide, abstract distance.

He turned and looked down the dark yard, towards the gate where he could just see the pale grey tire of his bicycle, and the yellow mud-guard. He seemed to be reflecting. If he went now, he went for ever. Involuntarily he turned and lifted his face again towards Alvina, as if studying her curiously. She remained there on the doorstep, neutral, blanched, with wide, still, neutral eyes. She did not seem to see him. He studied her with alert, yellow-dusky, inscrutable eyes, until she met his look. And then he gave the faintest gesture with his head, as of summons towards him. Her soul started, and died in her. And again he gave the slight, almost imperceptible jerk of the head, backwards and sideways, as if summoning her towards him. His face too was closed and expressionless. But in his eyes, which kept hers, there was a dark flicker of ascendancy. He was going to triumph over her. She knew it. And her soul sank as if it sank out of her body. It sank away out of her body, left her there powerless, soulless.

And yet as he turned, with his head stretched forward, to move away: as he glanced slightly over his shoulder: she stepped down from the step, down to his level, to follow him. He went ducking along the dark yard, nearly to the gate. Near the gate, near his bicycle, was a corner made by a shed. Here he turned, lingeringly, to her, and she lingered in front of him.

Her eyes were wide and neutral and submissive, with a new, awful submission as if she had lost her soul. So she looked up at him, like a victim. There was a faint smile in his eyes. He stretched forward over her.

"You love me? Yes?--Yes?" he said, in a voice that seemed like a palpable contact on her.

"Yes," she whispered involuntarily, soulless, like a victim. He put his arm round her, subtly, and lifted her.

"Yes," he re-echoed, almost mocking in his triumph. "Yes. Yes!" And smiling, he kissed her, delicately, with a certain finesse of knowledge. She moaned in spirit, in his arms, felt herself dead, dead. And he kissed her with a finesse, a pa.s.sionate finesse which seemed like coals of fire on her head.

They heard footsteps. Miss Pinnegar was coming to look for her.

Ciccio set her down, looked long into her eyes, inscrutably, smiling, and said:

"I come tomorrow."

With which he ducked and ran out of the yard, picking up his bicycle like a feather, and, taking no notice of Miss Pinnegar, letting the yard-door bang to behind him.

"Alvina!" said Miss Pinnegar.

But Alvina did not answer. She turned, slipped past, ran indoors and upstairs to the little bare bedroom she had made her own. She locked the door and kneeled down on the floor, bowing down her head to her knees in a paroxysm on the floor. In a paroxysm--because she loved him. She doubled herself up in a paroxysm on her knees on the floor--because she loved him. It was far more like pain, like agony, than like joy. She swayed herself to and fro in a paroxysm of unbearable sensation, because she loved him.

Miss Pinnegar came and knocked at the door.

"Alvina! Alvina! Oh, you are there! Whatever are you doing? Aren't you coming down to speak to your cousin?"

"Soon," said Alvina.

And taking a pillow from the bed, she crushed it against herself and swayed herself unconsciously, in her o.r.g.a.s.m of unbearable feeling.

Right in her bowels she felt it--the terrible, unbearable feeling.

How could she bear it.

She crouched over until she became still. A moment of stillness seemed to cover her like sleep: an eternity of sleep in that one second. Then she roused and got up. She went to the mirror, still, evanescent, and tidied her hair, smoothed her face. She was so still, so remote, she felt that nothing, nothing could ever touch her.

And so she went downstairs, to that horrible cousin of her father's.

She seemed so intangible, remote and virginal, that her cousin and Miss Pinnegar both failed to make anything of her. She answered their questions simply, but did not talk. They talked to each other.

And at last the cousin went away, with a profound dislike of Miss Alvina.

She did not notice. She was only glad he was gone. And she went about for the rest of the day elusive and vague. She slept deeply that night, without dreams.

The next day was Sat.u.r.day. It came with a great storm of wind and rain and hail: a fury. Alvina looked out in dismay. She knew Ciccio would not be able to come--he could not cycle, and it was impossible to get by train and return the same day. She was almost relieved.

She was relieved by the intermission of fate, she was thankful for the day of neutrality.

In the early afternoon came a telegram: Coming both tomorrow morning deepest sympathy Madame. Tomorrow was Sunday: and the funeral was in the afternoon. Alvina felt a burning inside her, thinking of Ciccio.

She winced--and yet she wanted him to come. Terribly she wanted him to come.

She showed the telegram to Miss Pinnegar.

"Good gracious!" said the weary Miss Pinnegar. "Fancy those people.

And I warrant they'll want to be at the funeral. As if he was anything to _them_--"

"I think it's very nice of her," said Alvina.

"Oh well," said Miss Pinnegar. "If you think so. I don't fancy he would have wanted such people following, myself. And what does she mean by _both_. Who's the other?" Miss Pinnegar looked sharply at Alvina.

"Ciccio," said Alvina.