The Lost Girl Part 78

He turned immediately, with his cap in his hand, and followed. In the hall he p.r.i.c.ked up his ears as he took the mandoline from the chest. He could hear the stifled cries and exclamations from Mrs.

Tuke. At the same moment the door of the study opened, and the musician, a burly fellow with troubled hair, came out.

"Is that Mrs. Tuke?" he snapped anxiously.

"Yes. The pains have begun," said Alvina.

"Oh G.o.d! And have you left her!" He was quite irascible.

"Only for a minute," said Alvina.

But with a _Pf_! of angry indignation, he was climbing the stairs.

"She is going to have a child," said Alvina to Ciccio. "I shall have to go back to her." And she held out her hand.

He did not take her hand, but looked down into her face with the same slightly distorted look of overwhelming yearning, yearning heavy and unbearable, in which he was carried towards her as on a flood.

"Allaye!" he said, with a faint lift of the lip that showed his teeth, like a pained animal: a curious sort of smile. He could not go away.

"I shall have to go back to her," she said.

"Shall you come with me to Italy, Allaye?"

"Yes. Where is Madame?"

"Gone! Gigi--all gone."

"Gone where?"

"Gone back to France--called up."

"And Madame and Louis and Max?"

"Switzerland."

He stood helplessly looking at her.

"Well, I must go," she said.

He watched her with his yellow eyes, from under his long black lashes, like some chained animal, haunted by doom. She turned and left him standing.

She found Mrs. Tuke wildly clutching the edge of the sheets, and crying: "No, Tommy dear. I'm awfully fond of you, you know I am. But go away. Oh G.o.d, go away. And put a s.p.a.ce between us. Put a s.p.a.ce between us!" she almost shrieked.

He pushed up his hair. He had been working on a big choral work which he was composing, and by this time he was almost demented.

"Can't you stand my presence!" he shouted, and dashed downstairs.

"Nurse!" cried Effie. "It's _no use_ trying to get a grip on life.

You're just at the mercy of _Forces_," she shrieked angrily.

"Why not?" said Alvina. "There are good life-forces. Even the will of G.o.d is a life-force."

"You don't understand! I want to be _myself_. And I'm _not_ myself.

I'm just torn to pieces by _Forces_. It's horrible--"

"Well, it's not my fault. I didn't make the universe," said Alvina.

"If you have to be torn to pieces by forces, well, you have. Other forces will put you together again."

"I don't want them to. I want to be myself. I don't want to be nailed together like a chair, with a hammer. I want to be myself."

"You won't be nailed together like a chair. You should have faith in life."

"But I hate life. It's nothing but a ma.s.s of forces. _I_ am intelligent. Life isn't intelligent. Look at it at this moment. Do you call this intelligent? Oh--Oh! It's horrible! Oh--!" She was wild and sweating with her pains. Tommy flounced out downstairs, beside himself. He was heard talking to some one in the moonlight outside. To Ciccio. He had already telephoned wildly for the doctor.

But the doctor had replied that Nurse would ring him up.

The moment Mrs. Tuke recovered her breath she began again.

"I hate life, and faith, and such things. Faith is only fear. And life is a ma.s.s of unintelligent forces to which intelligent beings are submitted. Prost.i.tuted. Oh--oh!!--prost.i.tuted--"

"Perhaps life itself is something bigger than intelligence," said Alvina.

"Bigger than intelligence!" shrieked Effie. "_Nothing_ is bigger than intelligence. Your man is a hefty brute. His yellow eyes _aren't_ intelligent. They're _animal_--"

"No," said Alvina. "Something else. I wish he didn't attract me--"

"There! Because you're not content to be at the mercy of _Forces_!"

cried Effie. "I'm not. I'm not. I want to be myself. And so forces tear me to pieces! Tear me to pie--eee--Oh-h-h! No!--"

Downstairs Tommy had walked Ciccio back into the house again, and the two men were drinking port in the study, discussing Italy, for which Tommy had a great sentimental affection, though he hated all Italian music after the younger Scarlatti. They drank port all through the night, Tommy being strictly forbidden to interfere upstairs, or even to fetch the doctor. They drank three and a half bottles of port, and were discovered in the morning by Alvina fast asleep in the study, with the electric light still burning. Tommy slept with his fair and ruffled head hanging over the edge of the couch like some great loose fruit, Ciccio was on the floor, face downwards, his face in his folded arms.

Alvina had a great difficulty in waking the inert Ciccio. In the end, she had to leave him and rouse Tommy first: who in rousing fell off the sofa with a crash which woke him disagreeably. So that he turned on Alvina in a fury, and asked her what the h.e.l.l she thought she was doing. In answer to which Alvina held up a finger warningly, and Tommy, suddenly remembering, fell back as if he had been struck.

"She is sleeping now," said Alvina.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" he cried.

"It isn't born yet," she said.

"Oh G.o.d, it's an accursed fugue!" cried the bemused Tommy. After which they proceeded to wake Ciccio, who was like the dead doll in Petrushka, all loose and floppy. When he was awake, however, he smiled at Alvina, and said: "Allaye!"

The dark, waking smile upset her badly.

CHAPTER XIII

THE WEDDED WIFE