The Lost Girl · Chapter 9 (4/6)

For the rest, she was almost driven mad by people coming to talk to her. The lawyer came, the clergyman came, her cousin came, the old, stout, prosperous tradesmen of Woodhouse came, Mr. May came, Miss Pinnegar came. And they all had schemes, and they all had advice. The chief plan was that the theatre should be sold up: and that Manchester House should be sold, reserving a lease on the top floor, where Miss Pinnegar’s workrooms were: that Miss Pinnegar and Alvina should move into a small house, Miss Pinnegar keeping the workroom, Alvina giving music-lessons: that the two women should be partners in the workshop.

There were other plans, of course. There was a faction against the chapel faction, which favoured the plan sketched out above. The theatre faction, including Mr. May and some of the more florid tradesmen, favoured the risking of everything in the Endeavour. Alvina was to be the proprietress of the Endeavour, she was to run it on some sort of successful lines, and abandon all other enterprise. Minor plans included the election of Alvina to the post of parish nurse, at six pounds a month: a small private school; a small haberdashery shop; and a position in the office of her cousin’s Knarborough business. To one and all Alvina answered with a tantalizing: “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know. I can’t say yet. I shall see. I shall see.” Till one and all became angry with her. They were all so benevolent, and all so sure that they were proposing the very best thing she could do. And they were all nettled, even indignant that she did not jump at their proposals. She listened to them all. She even invited their advice. Continually she said: “Well, what do you think of it?” And she repeated the chapel plan to the theatre group, the theatre plan to the chapel party, the nursing to the pianoforte proposers, the haberdashery shop to the private school advocates. “Tell me what you think,” she said repeatedly. And they all told her they thought their plan was best. And bit by bit she told every advocate the proposal of every other advocate “Well, Lawyer Beeby thinks⁠—” and “Well now, Mr. Clay, the minister, advises⁠—” and so on and so on, till it was all buzzing through thirty benevolent and officious heads. And thirty benevolently-officious wills were striving to plant each one its own particular scheme of benevolence. And Alvina, naive and pathetic, egged them all on in their strife, without even knowing what she was doing. One thing only was certain. Some obstinate will in her own self absolutely refused to have her mind made up. She would not have her mind made up for her, and she would not make it up for herself. And so everybody began to say “I’m getting tired of her. You talk to her, and you get no forrarder. She slips off to something else. I’m not going to bother with her any more.” In truth, Woodhouse was in a fever, for three weeks or more, arranging Alvina’s unarrangeable future for her. Offers of charity were innumerable⁠—for three weeks.

Meanwhile, the lawyer went on with the proving of the will and the drawing up of a final account of James’s property; Mr. May went on with the Endeavour, though Alvina did not go down to play; Miss Pinnegar went on with the workgirls: and Alvina went on unmaking her mind.

Ciccio did not come during the first week. Alvina had a postcard from Madame, from Cheshire: rather far off. But such was the buzz and excitement over her material future, such a fever was worked up round about her that Alvina, the petty-propertied heroine of the moment, was quite carried away in a storm of schemes and benevolent suggestions. She answered Madame’s postcard, but did not give much thought to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. As a matter of fact, she was enjoying a real moment of importance, there at the centre of Woodhouse’s rather domineering benevolence: a benevolence which she unconsciously, but systematically frustrated. All this scheming for selling out and making reservations and hanging on and fixing prices and getting private bids for Manchester House and for the Endeavour, the excitement of forming a Limited Company to run the Endeavour, of seeing a lawyer about the sale of Manchester House and the auctioneer about the sale of the furniture, of receiving men who wanted to pick up the machines upstairs cheap, and of keeping everything dangling, deciding nothing, putting everything off till she had seen somebody else, this for the moment fascinated her, went to her head. It was not until the second week had passed that her excitement began to merge into irritation, and not until the third week had gone by that she began to feel herself entangled in an asphyxiating web of indecision, and her heart began to sing because Ciccio had never turned up. Now she would have given anything to see the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras again. But she did not know where they were. Now she began to loathe the excitement of her property: doubtfully hers, every stick of it. Now she would give anything to get away from Woodhouse, from the horrible buzz and entanglement of her sordid affairs. Now again her wild recklessness came over her.

She suddenly said she was going away somewhere: she would not say where. She cashed all the money she could: a hundred-and-twenty-five pounds. She took the train to Cheshire, to the last address of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: she followed them to Stockport: and back to Chinley: and there she was stuck for the night. Next day she dashed back almost to Woodhouse, and swerved round to Sheffield. There, in that black town, thank heaven, she saw their announcement on the wall. She took a taxi to their theatre, and then on to their lodgings. The first thing she saw was Louis, in his shirtsleeves, on the landing above.

She laughed with excitement and pleasure. She seemed another woman. Madame looked up, almost annoyed, when she entered.

“I couldn’t keep away from you, Madame,” she cried.

“Evidently,” said Madame.

Madame was darning socks for the young men. She was a wonderful mother for them, sewed for them, cooked for them, looked after them most carefully. Not many minutes was Madame idle.

“Do you mind?” said Alvina.

Madame darned for some moments without answering.

“And how is everything at Woodhouse?” she asked.

“I couldn’t bear it any longer. I couldn’t bear it. So I collected all the money I could, and ran away. Nobody knows where I am.”

Madame looked up with bright, black, censorious eyes, at the flushed girl opposite. Alvina had a certain strangeness and brightness, which Madame did not know, and a frankness which the Frenchwoman mistrusted, but found disarming.

“And all the business, the will and all?” said Madame.

“They’re still fussing about it.”

“And there is some money?”

“I have got a hundred pounds here,” laughed Alvina. “What there will be when everything is settled, I don’t know. But not very much, I’m sure of that.”

“How much do you think? A thousand pounds?”

“Oh, it’s just possible, you know. But it’s just as likely there won’t be another penny⁠—”

Madame nodded slowly, as always when she did her calculations.

“And if there is nothing, what do you intend?” said Madame.

“I don’t know,” said Alvina brightly.

“And if there is something?”

“I don’t know either. But I thought, if you would let me play for you, I could keep myself for some time with my own money. You said perhaps I might be with the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. I wish you would let me.”

Madame bent her head so that nothing showed but the bright black folds of her hair. Then she looked up, with a slow, subtle, rather jeering smile.

“Ciccio didn’t come to see you, hein?”

“No,” said Alvina. “Yet he promised.”

Again Madame smiled sardonically.

“Do you call it a promise?” she said. “You are easy to be satisfied with a word. A hundred pounds? No more?”

“A hundred and twenty⁠—”

“Where is it?”

“In my bag at the station⁠—in notes. And I’ve got a little here⁠—” Alvina opened her purse, and took out some little gold and silver.

“At the station!” exclaimed Madame, smiling grimly. “Then perhaps you have nothing.”

“Oh, I think it’s quite safe, don’t you⁠—?”

“Yes⁠—maybe⁠—since it is England. And you think a hundred and twenty pounds is enough?”

“What for?”

“To satisfy Ciccio.”

“I wasn’t thinking of him,” cried Alvina.

“No?” said Madame ironically. “I can propose it to him. Wait one moment.” She went to the door and called Ciccio.

He entered, looking not very good-tempered.

“Be so good, my dear,” said Madame to him, “to go to the station and fetch Miss Houghton’s little bag. You have got the ticket, have you?” Alvina handed the luggage ticket to Madame. “Midland Railway,” said Madame. “And, Ciccio, you are listening⁠—? Mind! There is a hundred and twenty pounds of Miss Houghton’s money in the bag. You hear? Mind it is not lost.”

“It’s all I have,” said Alvina.

“For the time, for the time⁠—till the will is proved, it is all the cash she has. So mind doubly. You hear?”

“All right,” said Ciccio.

“Tell him what sort of a bag, Miss Houghton,” said Madame.

Alvina told him. He ducked and went. Madame listened for his final departure. Then she nodded sagely at Alvina.

“Take off your hat and coat, my dear. Soon we will have tea⁠—when Cic’ returns. Let him think, let him think what he likes. So much money is certain, perhaps there will be more. Let him think. It will make all the difference that there is so much cash⁠—yes, so much⁠—”

“But would it really make a difference to him?” cried Alvina.

“Oh my dear!” exclaimed Madame. “Why should it not? We are on earth, where we must eat. We are not in Paradise. If it were a thousand pounds, then he would want very badly to marry you. But a hundred and twenty is better than a blow to the eye, eh? Why sure!”

“It’s dreadful, though⁠—!” said Alvina.

“Oh la-la! Dreadful! If it was Max, who is sentimental, then no, the money is nothing. But all the others⁠—why, you see, they are men, and they know which side to butter their bread. Men are like cats, my dear, they don’t like their bread without butter. Why should they? Nor do I, nor do I.”

“Can I help with the darning?” said Alvina.

“Hein? I shall give you Ciccio’s socks, yes? He pushes holes in the toes⁠—you see?” Madame poked two fingers through the hole in the toe of a red-and-black sock, and smiled a little maliciously at Alvina.

“I don’t mind which sock I darn,” she said.

“No? You don’t? Well then, I give you another. But if you like I will speak to him⁠—”

“What to say?” asked Alvina.

“To say that you have so much money, and hope to have more. And that you like him⁠—Yes? Am I right? You like him very much?⁠—hein? Is it so?”

“And then what?” said Alvina.

“That he should tell me if he should like to marry you also⁠—quite simply. What? Yes?”

“No,” said Alvina. “Don’t say anything⁠—not yet.”

“Hé? Not yet? Not yet. All right, not yet then. You will see⁠—”

Alvina sat darning the sock and smiling at her own shamelessness. The point that amused her most of all was the fact that she was not by any means sure she wanted to marry him. There was Madame spinning her web like a plump prolific black spider. There was Ciccio, the unrestful fly. And there was herself, who didn’t know in the least what she was doing. There sat two of them, Madame and herself, darning socks in a stuffy little bedroom with a gas fire, as if they had been born to it. And after all, Woodhouse wasn’t fifty miles away.

Madame went downstairs to get tea ready. Wherever she was, she superintended the cooking and the preparation of meals for her young men, scrupulous and quick. She called Alvina downstairs. Ciccio came in with the bag.

“See, my dear, that your money is safe,” said Madame.

Alvina unfastened her bag and counted the crisp white notes.

“And now,” said Madame, “I shall lock it in my little bank, yes, where it will be safe. And I shall give you a receipt, which the young men will witness.”

The party sat down to tea, in the stuffy sitting-room.

“Now, boys,” said Madame, “what do you say? Shall Miss Houghton join the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras? Shall she be our pianist?”

The eyes of the four young men rested on Alvina. Max, as being the responsible party, looked businesslike. Louis was tender, Geoffrey round-eyed and inquisitive, Ciccio furtive.

“With great pleasure,” said Max. “But can the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras afford to pay a pianist for themselves?”

“No,” said Madame. “No. I think not. Miss Houghton will come for one month, to prove, and in that time she shall pay for herself. Yes? So she fancies it.”

“Can we pay her expenses?” said Max.

“No,” said Alvina. “Let me pay everything for myself, for a month. I should like to be with you, awfully⁠—”

She looked across with a look half mischievous, half beseeching at the erect Max. He bowed as he sat at table.

“I think we shall all be honoured,” he said.

“Certainly,” said Louis, bowing also over his teacup.

Geoffrey inclined his head, and Ciccio lowered his eyelashes in indication of agreement.

“Now then,” said Madame briskly, “we are all agreed. Tonight we will have a bottle of wine on it. Yes, gentlemen? What d’you say? Chianti⁠—hein?”

They all bowed above the table.

“And Miss Houghton shall have her professional name, eh? Because we cannot say Miss Houghton⁠—what?”

“Do call me Alvina,” said Alvina.

“Alvina⁠—Al‑vy‑na! No, excuse me, my dear, I don’t like it. I don’t like this ‘vy’ sound. Tonight we shall find a name.”

After tea they inquired for a room for Alvina. There was none in the house. But two doors away was another decent lodging-house, where a bedroom on the top floor was found for her.

“I think you are very well here,” said Madame.

“Quite nice,” said Alvina, looking round the hideous little room, and remembering her other term of probation, as a maternity nurse.

She dressed as attractively as possible, in her new dress of black voile, and imitating Madame, she put four jewelled rings on her fingers. As a rule she only wore the mourning-ring of black enamel and diamond, which had been always on Miss Frost’s finger. Now she left off this, and took four diamond rings, and one good sapphire. She looked at herself in her mirror as she had never done before, really interested in the effect she made. And in her dress she pinned a valuable old ruby brooch.

Then she went down to Madame’s house. Madame eyed her shrewdly, with just a touch of jealousy: the eternal jealousy that must exist between the plump, pale partridge of a Frenchwoman, whose black hair is so glossy and tidy, whose black eyes are so acute, whose black dress is so neat and chic, and the rather thin Englishwoman in soft voile, with soft, rather loose brown hair and demure, blue-grey eyes.

“Oh⁠—a difference⁠—what a difference! When you have a little more flesh⁠—then⁠—” Madame made a slight click with her tongue. “What a good brooch, eh?” Madame fingered the brooch. “Old paste⁠—old paste⁠—antique⁠—”

“No,” said Alvina. “They are real rubies. It was my great-grandmother’s.”

“Do you mean it? Real? Are you sure⁠—”

“I think I’m quite sure.”

Madame scrutinized the jewels with a fine eye.

“Hm!” she said. And Alvina did not know whether she was sceptical, or jealous, or admiring, or really impressed.

“And the diamonds are real?” said Madame, making Alvina hold up her hands.

“I’ve always understood so,” said Alvina.

Madame scrutinized, and slowly nodded her head. Then she looked into Alvina’s eyes, really a little jealous.

“Another four thousand francs there,” she said, nodding sagely.

“Really!” said Alvina.

“For sure. It’s enough⁠—it’s enough⁠—”

And there was a silence between the two women.