The Lost Girl - D. H. Lawrence (great books to read .txt) 📗

shoe. The moccasin was a little too short—just a little. But it was charming on the foot, charming.

"Yes," said Madame. "It is too short. Very well. I must find you something else."

"Please don't," said Alvina. "Please don't find me anything. I don't want anything. Please!"

"What?" said Madame, eyeing her closely. "You don't want? Why? You don't want anything from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, or from Kishwégin? Hé? From which?"

"Don't give me anything, please," said Alvina.

"All right! All right then. I won't. I won't give you anything. I can't give you anything you want from Natcha-Kee-Tawara."

And Madame busied herself again with the packing.

"I'm awfully sorry you are going," said Alvina.

"Sorry? Why? Yes, so am I sorry we shan't see you any more. Yes, so I am. But perhaps we shall see you another time—hé? I shall send you a post-card. Perhaps I shall send one of the young men on his bicycle, to bring you something which I shall buy for you. Yes? Shall I?"

"Oh! I should be awfully glad—but don't buy—" Alvina checked herself in time. "Don't buy anything. Send me a little thing from Natcha-Kee-Tawara. I love the slippers—"

"But they are too small," said Madame, who had been watching her with black eyes that read every motive. Madame too had her avaricious side, and was glad to get back the slippers. "Very well—very well, I will do that. I will send you some small thing from Natcha-Kee-Tawara, and one of the young men shall bring it. Perhaps Ciccio? Hé?"

"Thank you so much," said Alvina, holding out her hand. "Good-bye.
I'm so sorry you're going."

"Well—well! We are not going so very far. Not so very far. Perhaps we shall see each other another day. It may be. Good-bye!"

Madame took Alvina's hand, and smiled at her winsomely all at once, kindly, from her inscrutable black eyes. A sudden unusual kindness. Alvina flushed with surprise and a desire to cry.

"Yes. I am sorry you are not with Natcha-Kee-Tawara. But we shall see. Good-bye. I shall do my packing."

Alvina carried down the things she had to remove. Then she went to say good-bye to the young men, who were in various stages of their toilet. Max alone was quite presentable.

Ciccio was just putting on the outer cover of his front tire. She watched his brown thumbs press it into place. He was quick and sure, much more capable, and even masterful, than you would have supposed, seeing his tawny Mediterranean hands. He spun the wheel round, patting it lightly.

"Is it finished?"

"Yes, I think." He reached his pump and blew up the tire. She watched his softly-applied force. What physical, muscular force there was in him. Then he swung round the bicycle, and stood it again on its wheels. After which he quickly folded his tools.

"Will you come now?" she said.

He turned, rubbing his hands together, and drying them on an old cloth. He went into the house, pulled on his coat and his cap, and picked up the things from the table.

"Where are you going?" Max asked.

Ciccio jerked his head towards Alvina.

"Oh, allow me to carry them, Miss Houghton. He is not fit—" said
Max.

True, Ciccio had no collar on, and his shoes were burst.

"I don't mind," said Alvina hastily. "He knows where they go. He brought them before."

"But I will carry them. I am dressed. Allow me—" and he began to take the things. "You get dressed, Ciccio."

Ciccio looked at Alvina.

"Do you want?" he said, as if waiting for orders.

"Do let Ciccio take them," said Alvina to Max. "Thank you ever so much. But let him take them."

So Alvina marched off through the Sunday morning streets, with the Italian, who was down at heel and encumbered with an armful of sick-room apparatus. She did not know what to say, and he said nothing.

"We will go in this way," she said, suddenly opening the hall door. She had unlocked it before she went out, for that entrance was hardly ever used. So she showed the Italian into the sombre drawing-room, with its high black bookshelves with rows and rows of calf-bound volumes, its old red and flowered carpet, its grand piano littered with music. Ciccio put down the things as she directed, and stood with his cap in his hands, looking aside.

"Thank you so much," she said, lingering.

He curled his lips in a faint deprecatory smile.

"Nothing," he murmured.

His eye had wandered uncomfortably up to a portrait on the wall.

"That was my mother," said Alvina.

He glanced down at her, but did not answer.

"I am so sorry you're going away," she said nervously. She stood looking up at him with wide blue eyes.

The faint smile grew on the lower part of his face, which he kept averted. Then he looked at her.

"We have to move," he said, with his eyes watching her reservedly, his mouth twisting with a half-bashful smile.

"Do you like continually going away?" she said, her wide blue eyes fixed on his face.

He nodded slightly.

"We have to do it. I like it."

What he said meant nothing to him. He now watched her fixedly, with a slightly mocking look, and a reserve he would not relinquish.

"Do you think I shall ever see you again?" she said.

"Should you like—?" he answered, with a sly smile and a faint shrug.

"I should like awfully—" a flush grew on her cheek. She heard Miss
Pinnegar's scarcely audible step approaching.

He nodded at her slightly, watching her fixedly, turning up the corners of his eyes slyly, his nose seeming slyly to sharpen.

"All right. Next week, eh? In the morning?"

"Do!" cried Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar came through the door. He glanced quickly over his shoulder.

"Oh!" cried Miss Pinnegar. "I couldn't imagine who it was." She eyed the young fellow sharply.

"Couldn't you?" said Alvina. "We brought back these things."

"Oh yes. Well—you'd better come into the other room, to the fire," said Miss Pinnegar.

"I shall go along. Good-bye!" said Ciccio, and with a slight bow to Alvina, and a still slighter to Miss Pinnegar, he was out of the room and out of the front door, as if turning tail.

"I suppose they're going this morning," said Miss Pinnegar.

CHAPTER IX ALVINA BECOMES ALLAYE

Alvina wept when the Natchas had gone. She loved them so much, she wanted to be with them. Even Ciccio she regarded as only one of the Natchas. She looked forward to his coming as to a visit from the troupe.

How dull the theatre was without them! She was tired of the Endeavour. She wished it did not exist. The rehearsal on the Monday morning bored her terribly. Her father was nervous and irritable. The previous week had tried him sorely. He had worked himself into a state of nervous apprehension such as nothing would have justified, unless perhaps, if the wooden walls of the Endeavour had burnt to the ground, with James inside victimized like another Samson. He had developed a nervous horror of all artistes. He did not feel safe for one single moment whilst he depended on a single one of them.

"We shall have to convert into all pictures," he said in a nervous fever to Mr. May. "Don't make any more engagements after the end of next month."

"Really!" said Mr. May. "Really! Have you quite decided?"

"Yes quite! Yes quite!" James fluttered. "I have written about a new machine, and the supply of films from Chanticlers."

"Really!" said Mr. May. "Oh well then, in that case—" But he was filled with dismay and chagrin.

"Of cauce," he said later to Alvina, "I can't possibly stop on if we are nothing but a picture show!" And he arched his blanched and dismal eyelids with ghastly finality.

"Why?" cried Alvina.

"Oh—why!" He was rather ironic. "Well, it's not my line at all. I'm not a film-operator!" And he put his head on one side with a grimace of contempt and superiority.

"But you are, as well," said Alvina.

"Yes, as well. But not only! You may wash the dishes in the scullery. But you're not only the char, are you?"

"But is it the same?" cried Alvina.

"Of cauce!" cried Mr. May. "Of cauce it's the same."

Alvina laughed, a little heartlessly, into his pallid, stricken eyes.

"But what will you do?" she asked.

"I shall have to look for something else," said the injured but dauntless little man. "There's nothing else, is there?"

"Wouldn't you stay on?" she asked.

"I wouldn't think of it. I wouldn't think of it." He turtled like an injured pigeon.

"Well," she said, looking laconically into his face: "It's between you and father—"

"Of cauce!" he said. "Naturally! Where else—!" But his tone was a little spiteful, as if he had rested his last hopes on Alvina.

Alvina went away. She mentioned the coming change to Miss Pinnegar.

"Well," said Miss Pinnegar, judicious but aloof, "it's a move in the right direction. But I doubt if it'll do any good."

"Do you?" said Alvina. "Why?"

"I don't believe in the place, and I never did," declared Miss
Pinnegar. "I don't believe any good will come of it."

"But why?" persisted Alvina. "What makes you feel so sure about it?"

"I don't know. But that's how I feel. And I have from the first. It was wrong from the first. It was wrong to begin it."

"But why?" insisted Alvina, laughing.

"Your father had no business to be led into it. He'd no business to touch this show business. It isn't like him. It doesn't belong to him. He's gone against his own nature and his own life."

"Oh but," said Alvina, "father was a showman even in the shop. He always was. Mother said he was like a showman in a booth."

Miss Pinnegar was taken aback.

"Well!" she said sharply. "If that's what you've seen in him!"—there was a pause. "And in that case," she continued tartly, "I think some of the showman has come out in his daughter! or show-woman!—which doesn't improve it, to my idea."

"Why is it any worse?" said Alvina. "I enjoy it—and so does father."

"No," cried Miss Pinnegar. "There you're wrong! There you make a mistake. It's all against his better nature."

"Really!" said Alvina, in surprise. "What a new idea! But which is father's better nature?"

"You may not know it," said Miss Pinnegar coldly, "and if so, I can never tell you. But that doesn't alter it." She lapsed into dead silence for a moment. Then suddenly she broke out, vicious and cold: "He'll go on till he's killed himself, and then he'll know."

The little adverb then came whistling across the space like a bullet. It made Alvina pause. Was her father going to die? She reflected. Well, all men must die.

She forgot the question in others that occupied her. First, could she bear it, when the Endeavour was turned into another cheap and nasty film-shop? The strange figures of the artistes passing under her observation had really entertained her, week by week. Some weeks they had bored her, some weeks she had detested them, but there was always a chance in the coming week. Think of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras!

She thought too much of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She knew it. And she tried to force her mind to the contemplation of the new state of things, when she banged at the piano to a set of dithering and boring pictures. There would be her father, herself, and Mr. May—or a new operator, a new manager. The new manager!—she thought of him for a moment—and thought of the mechanical factory-faced persons who managed Wright's and the Woodhouse Empire.

But her mind fell away from this barren study. She was obsessed by the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. They seemed to have fascinated her. Which of them it was, or what it was that had cast the spell over her, she did not know. But she was as if hypnotized. She longed to be with them. Her soul gravitated towards them all the time.

Monday passed, and Ciccio did not come: Tuesday passed: and Wednesday. In her soul she was sceptical of their keeping their promise—either Madame or Ciccio. Why should they keep their promise? She knew what these nomadic artistes were. And her soul was stubborn within her.

On Wednesday night there was another sensation at the Endeavour. Mr. May found James Houghton fainting in the box-office after the performance had begun. What to do? He could not interrupt Alvina, nor