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

For anything of greater value—your piano, for example—I should have to make a personal request—"

"Oh, I don't want anything—" said Alvina.

"No? Well! You will see. You will be here a few days?"

"No," said Alvina. "I'm going away today."

"Today! Is that also irrevocable?"

"Yes. I must go this afternoon."

"On account of your engagement? May I ask where your company is performing this week? Far away?"

"Mansfield!"

"Oh! Well then, in case I particularly wished to see you, you could come over?"

"If necessary," said Alvina. "But I don't want to come to Woodhouse unless it is necessary. Can't we write?"

"Yes—certainly! Certainly!—most things! Certainly! And now—"

He went into certain technical matters, and Alvina signed some documents. At last she was free to go. She had been almost an hour in the room.

"Well, good-morning, Miss Houghton. You will hear from me, and I from you. I wish you a pleasant experience in your new occupation. You are not leaving Woodhouse for ever."

"Good-bye!" she said. And she hurried to the road.

Try as she might, she felt as if she had had a blow which knocked her down. She felt she had had a blow.

At the lawyer's gate she stood a minute. There, across a little hollow, rose the cemetery hill. There were her graves: her mother's, Miss Frost's, her father's. Looking, she made out the white cross at Miss Frost's grave, the grey stone at her parents'. Then she turned slowly, under the church wall, back to Manchester House.

She felt humiliated. She felt she did not want to see anybody at all. She did not want to see Miss Pinnegar, nor the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: and least of all, Ciccio. She felt strange in Woodhouse, almost as if the ground had risen from under her feet and hit her over the mouth. The fact that Manchester House and its very furniture was under seal to be sold on behalf of her father's creditors made her feel as if all her Woodhouse life had suddenly gone smash. She loathed the thought of Manchester House. She loathed staying another minute in it.

And yet she did not want to go to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras either. The church clock above her clanged eleven. She ought to take the twelve-forty train to Mansfield. Yet instead of going home she turned off down the alley towards the fields and the brook.

How many times had she gone that road! How many times had she seen Miss Frost bravely striding home that way, from her music-pupils. How many years had she noticed a particular wild cherry-tree come into blossom, a particular bit of black-thorn scatter its whiteness in among the pleached twigs of a hawthorn hedge. How often, how many springs had Miss Frost come home with a bit of this black-thorn in her hand!

Alvina did not want to go to Mansfield that afternoon. She felt insulted. She knew she would be much cheaper in Madame's eyes. She knew her own position with the troupe would be humiliating. It would be openly a little humiliating. But it would be much more maddeningly humiliating to stay in Woodhouse and experience the full flavour of Woodhouse's calculated benevolence. She hardly knew which was worse: the cool look of insolent half-contempt, half-satisfaction with which Madame would receive the news of her financial downfall, or the officious patronage which she would meet from the Woodhouse magnates. She knew exactly how Madame's black eyes would shine, how her mouth would curl with a sneering, slightly triumphant smile, as she heard the news. And she could hear the bullying tone in which Henry Wagstaff would dictate the Woodhouse benevolence to her. She wanted to go away from them all—from them all—for ever.

Even from Ciccio. For she felt he insulted her too. Subtly, they all did it. They had regard for her possibilities as an heiress. Five hundred, even two hundred pounds would have made all the difference. Useless to deny it. Even to Ciccio. Ciccio would have had a lifelong respect for her, if she had come with even so paltry a sum as two hundred pounds. Now she had nothing, he would coolly withhold this respect. She felt he might jeer at her. And she could not get away from this feeling.

Mercifully she had the bit of ready money. And she had a few trinkets which might be sold. Nothing else. Mercifully, for the mere moment, she was independent.

Whatever else she did, she must go back and pack. She must pack her two boxes, and leave them ready. For she felt that once she had left, she could never come back to Woodhouse again. If England had cliffs all round—why, when there was nowhere else to go and no getting beyond, she could walk over one of the cliffs. Meanwhile, she had her short run before her. She banked hard on her independence.

So she turned back to the town. She would not be able to take the twelve-forty train, for it was already mid-day. But she was glad. She wanted some time to herself. She would send Ciccio on. Slowly she climbed the familiar hill—slowly—and rather bitterly. She felt her native place insulted her: and she felt the Natchas insulted her. In the midst of the insult she remained isolated upon herself, and she wished to be alone.

She found Ciccio waiting at the end of the yard: eternally waiting, it seemed. He was impatient.

"You've been a long time," he said.

"Yes," she answered.

"We shall have to make haste to catch the train."

"I can't go by this train. I shall have to come on later. You can just eat a mouthful of lunch, and go now."

They went indoors. Miss Pinnegar had not yet come down. Mrs.
Rollings was busily peeling potatoes.

"Mr. Marasca is going by the train, he'll have to have a little cold meat," said Alvina. "Would you mind putting it ready while I go upstairs?"

"Sharpses and Fullbankses sent them bills," said Mrs. Rollings. Alvina opened them, and turned pale. It was thirty pounds, the total funeral expenses. She had completely forgotten them.

"And Mr. Atterwell wants to know what you'd like put on th' headstone for your father—if you'd write it down."

"All right."

Mrs. Rollings popped on the potatoes for Miss Pinnegar's dinner, and spread the cloth for Ciccio. When he was eating, Miss Pinnegar came in. She inquired for Alvina—and went upstairs.

"Have you had your dinner?" she said. For there was Alvina sitting writing a letter.

"I'm going by a later train," said Alvina.

"Both of you?"

"No. He's going now."

Miss Pinnegar came downstairs again, and went through to the scullery. When Alvina came down, she returned to the living room.

"Give this letter to Madame," Alvina said to Ciccio. "I shall be at the hall by seven tonight. I shall go straight there."

"Why can't you come now?" said Ciccio.

"I can't possibly," said Alvina. "The lawyer has just told me father's debts come to much more than everything is worth. Nothing is ours—not even the plate you're eating from. Everything is under seal to be sold to pay off what is owing. So I've got to get my own clothes and boots together, or they'll be sold with the rest. Mr. Beeby wants you to go round at seven this evening, Miss Pinnegar—before I forget."

"Really!" gasped Miss Pinnegar. "Really! The house and the furniture and everything got to be sold up? Then we're on the streets! I can't believe it."

"So he told me," said Alvina.

"But how positively awful," said Miss Pinnegar, sinking motionless into a chair.

"It's not more than I expected," said Alvina. "I'm putting my things into my two trunks, and I shall just ask Mrs. Slaney to store them for me. Then I've the bag I shall travel with."

"Really!" gasped Miss Pinnegar. "I can't believe it! And when have we got to get out?"

"Oh, I don't think there's a desperate hurry. They'll take an inventory of all the things, and we can live on here till they're actually ready for the sale."

"And when will that be?"

"I don't know. A week or two."

"And is the cinematograph to be sold the same?"

"Yes—everything! The piano—even mother's portrait—"

"It's impossible to believe it," said Miss Pinnegar. "It's impossible. He can never have left things so bad."

"Ciccio," said Alvina. "You'll really have to go if you are to catch the train. You'll give Madame my letter, won't you? I should hate you to miss the train. I know she can't bear me already, for all the fuss and upset I cause."

Ciccio rose slowly, wiping his mouth.

"You'll be there at seven o'clock?" he said.

"At the theatre," she replied.

And without more ado, he left.

Mrs. Rollings came in.

"You've heard?" said Miss Pinnegar dramatically.

"I heard somethink," said Mrs. Rollings.

"Sold up! Everything to be sold up. Every stick and rag! I never thought I should live to see the day," said Miss Pinnegar.

"You might almost have expected it," said Mrs. Rollings. "But you're all right, yourself, Miss Pinnegar. Your money isn't with his, is it?"

"No," said Miss Pinnegar. "What little I have put by is safe. But it's not enough to live on. It's not enough to keep me, even supposing I only live another ten years. If I only spend a pound a week, it costs fifty-two pounds a year. And for ten years, look at it, it's five hundred and twenty pounds. And you couldn't say less. And I haven't half that amount. I never had more than a wage, you know. Why, Miss Frost earned a good deal more than I do. And she didn't leave much more than fifty. Where's the money to come from—?"

"But if you've enough to start a little business—" said Alvina.

"Yes, it's what I shall have to do. It's what I shall have to do.
And then what about you? What about you?"

"Oh, don't bother about me," said Alvina.

"Yes, it's all very well, don't bother. But when you come to my age, you know you've got to bother, and bother a great deal, if you're not going to find yourself in a position you'd be sorry for. You have to bother. And you'll have to bother before you've done."

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," said Alvina.

"Ha, sufficient for a good many days, it seems to me."

Miss Pinnegar was in a real temper. To Alvina this seemed an odd way of taking it. The three women sat down to an uncomfortable dinner of cold meat and hot potatoes and warmed-up pudding.

"But whatever you do," pronounced Miss Pinnegar; "whatever you do, and however you strive, in this life, you're knocked down in the end. You're always knocked down."

"It doesn't matter," said Alvina, "if it's only in the end. It doesn't matter if you've had your life."

"You've never had your life, till you're dead," said Miss Pinnegar. "And if you work and strive, you've a right to the fruits of your work."

"It doesn't matter," said Alvina laconically, "so long as you've enjoyed working and striving."

But Miss Pinnegar was too angry to be philosophic. Alvina knew it was useless to be either angry or otherwise emotional. None the less, she also felt as if she had been knocked down. And she almost envied poor Miss Pinnegar the prospect of a little, day-by-day haberdashery shop in Tamworth. Her own problem seemed so much more menacing. "Answer or die," said the Sphinx of fate. Miss Pinnegar could answer her own fate according to its question. She could say "haberdashery shop," and her sphinx would recognize this answer as true to nature, and would be satisfied. But every individual has his own, or her own fate, and her own sphinx. Alvina's sphinx was an old, deep thoroughbred, she would take no mongrel answers. And her thoroughbred teeth were long and sharp. To Alvina, the last of the fantastic but pure-bred race of Houghton, the problem of her fate was terribly abstruse.

The only thing to do was not to solve it: to stray on, and answer fate with whatever came into one's head. No good striving with fate. Trust to a lucky shot, or take the consequences.

"Miss Pinnegar," said Alvina. "Have we any money in hand?"

"There is about twenty pounds in the bank. It's all shown in my books," said Miss Pinnegar.

"We couldn't take it, could we?"

"Every penny shows in the books."

Alvina pondered again.

"Are there more bills to come in?" she asked. "I mean my bills. Do I owe anything?"

"I don't think you do," said Miss