The Lost Girl · Chapter 10 (2/5)

“You’re a lost girl!” cried Miss Pinnegar.

“Am I really?” laughed Alvina. It sounded funny.

“Yes, you’re a lost girl,” sobbed Miss Pinnegar, on a final note of despair.

“I like being lost,” said Alvina.

Miss Pinnegar wept herself into silence. She looked huddled and forlorn. Alvina went to her and laid her hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t fret, Miss Pinnegar,” she said. “Don’t be silly. I love to be with Ciccio and Madame. Perhaps in the end I shall marry him. But if I don’t⁠—” her hand suddenly gripped Miss Pinnegar’s heavy arm till it hurt⁠—“I wouldn’t lose a minute of him, no, not for anything would I.”

Poor Miss Pinnegar dwindled, convinced.

“You make it hard for me, in Woodhouse,” she said, hopeless.

“Never mind,” said Alvina, kissing her. “Woodhouse isn’t heaven and earth.”

“It’s been my home for forty years.”

“It’s been mine for thirty. That’s why I’m glad to leave it.” There was a pause.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Miss Pinnegar, “about opening a little business in Tamworth. You know the Watsons are there.”

“I believe you’d be happy,” said Alvina.

Miss Pinnegar pulled herself together. She had energy and courage still.

“I don’t want to stay here, anyhow,” she said. “Woodhouse has nothing for me any more.”

“Of course it hasn’t,” said Alvina. “I think you’d be happier away from it.”

“Yes⁠—probably I should⁠—now!”

None the less, poor Miss Pinnegar was grey-haired, she was almost a dumpy, odd old woman.

They went downstairs. Miss Pinnegar put on the kettle.

“Would you like to see the house?” said Alvina to Ciccio.

He nodded. And she took him from room to room. His eyes looked quickly and curiously over everything, noticing things, but without criticism.

“This was my mother’s little sitting-room,” she said. “She sat here for years, in this chair.”

“Always here?” he said, looking into Alvina’s face.

“Yes. She was ill with her heart. This is another photograph of her. I’m not like her.”

“Who is that?” he asked, pointing to a photograph of the handsome, white-haired Miss Frost.

“That was Miss Frost, my governess. She lived here till she died. I loved her⁠—she meant everything to me.”

“She also dead⁠—?”

“Yes, five years ago.”

They went to the drawing-room. He laid his hand on the keys of the piano, sounding a chord.

“Play,” she said.

He shook his head, smiling slightly. But he wished her to play. She sat and played one of Kishwégin’s pieces. He listened, faintly smiling.

“Fine piano⁠—eh?” he said, looking into her face.

“I like the tone,” she said.

“Is it yours?”

“The piano? Yes. I suppose everything is mine⁠—in name at least. I don’t know how father’s affairs are really.”

He looked at her, and again his eye wandered over the room. He saw a little coloured portrait of a child with a fleece of brownish-gold hair and surprised eyes, in a pale-blue stiff frock with a broad dark-blue sash.

“You?” he said.

“Do you recognize me?” she said. “Aren’t I comical?”

She took him upstairs⁠—first to the monumental bedroom.

“This was mother’s room,” she said. “Now it is mine.”

He looked at her, then at the things in the room, then out of the window, then at her again. She flushed, and hurried to show him his room, and the bathroom. Then she went downstairs.

He kept glancing up at the height of the ceilings, the size of the rooms, taking in the size and proportion of the house, and the quality of the fittings.

“It is a big house,” he said. “Yours?”

“Mine in name,” said Alvina. “Father left all to me⁠—and his debts as well, you see.”

“Much debts?”

“Oh yes! I don’t quite know how much. But perhaps more debts than there is property. I shall go and see the lawyer in the morning. Perhaps there will be nothing at all left for me, when everything is paid.”

She had stopped on the stairs, telling him this, turning round to him, who was on the steps above. He looked down on her, calculating. Then he smiled sourly.

“Bad job, eh, if it is all gone⁠—!” he said.

“I don’t mind, really, if I can live,” she said.

He spread his hands, deprecating, not understanding. Then he glanced up the stairs and along the corridor again, and downstairs into the hall.

“A fine big house. Grand if it was yours,” he said.

“I wish it were,” she said rather pathetically, “if you like it so much.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Hé!” he said. “How not like it!”

“I don’t like it,” she said. “I think it’s a gloomy miserable hole. I hate it. I’ve lived here all my life and seen everything bad happen here. I hate it.”

“Why?” he said, with a curious, sarcastic intonation.

“It’s a bad job it isn’t yours, for certain,” he said, as they entered the living-room, where Miss Pinnegar sat cutting bread and butter.

“What?” said Miss Pinnegar sharply.

“The house,” said Alvina.

“Oh well, we don’t know. We’ll hope for the best,” replied Miss Pinnegar, arranging the bread and butter on the plate. Then, rather tart, she added: “It is a bad job. And a good many things are a bad job, besides that. If Miss Houghton had what she ought to have, things would be very different, I assure you.”

“Oh yes,” said Ciccio, to whom this address was directed.

“Very different indeed. If all the money hadn’t been⁠—lost⁠—in the way it has, Miss Houghton wouldn’t be playing the piano, for one thing, in a cinematograph show.”

“No, perhaps not,” said Ciccio.

“Certainly not. It’s not the right thing for her to be doing, at all!”

“You think not?” said Ciccio.

“Do you imagine it is?” said Miss Pinnegar, turning point blank on him as he sat by the fire.

He looked curiously at Miss Pinnegar, grinning slightly.

“Hé!” he said. “How do I know!”

“I should have thought it was obvious,” said Miss Pinnegar.

“Hé!” he ejaculated, not fully understanding.

“But of course those that are used to nothing better can’t see anything but what they’re used to,” she said, rising and shaking the crumbs from her black silk apron, into the fire. He watched her.

Miss Pinnegar went away into the scullery. Alvina was laying a fire in the drawing-room. She came with a dustpan to take some coal from the fire of the living-room.

“What do you want?” said Ciccio, rising. And he took the shovel from her hand.

“Big, hot fires, aren’t they?” he said, as he lifted the burning coals from the glowing mass of the grate.

“Enough,” said Alvina. “Enough! We’ll put it in the drawing-room.” He carried the shovel of flaming, smoking coals to the other room, and threw them in the grate on the sticks, watching Alvina put on more pieces of coal.

“Fine, a fire! Quick work, eh? A beautiful thing, a fire! You know what they say in my place: You can live without food, but you can’t live without fire.”

“But I thought it was always hot in Naples,” said Alvina.

“No, it isn’t. And my village, you know, when I was small boy, that was in the mountains, an hour quick train from Naples. Cold in the winter, hot in the summer⁠—”

“As cold as England?” said Alvina.

“Hé⁠—and colder. The wolves come down. You could hear them crying in the night, in the frost⁠—”

“How terrifying⁠—!” said Alvina.

“And they will kill the dogs! Always they kill the dogs. You know, they hate dogs, wolves do.” He made a queer noise, to show how wolves hate dogs. Alvina understood, and laughed.

“So should I, if I was a wolf,” she said.

“Yes⁠—eh?” His eyes gleamed on her for a moment.

“Ah but, the poor dogs! You find them bitten⁠—carried away among the trees or the stones, hard to find them, poor things, the next day.”

“How frightened they must be⁠—!” said Alvina.

“Frightened⁠—hu!” he made sudden gesticulations and ejaculations, which added volumes to his few words.

“And did you like it, your village?” she said.

He put his head on one side in deprecation.

“No,” he said, “because, you see⁠—hé, there is nothing to do⁠—no money⁠—work⁠—work⁠—work⁠—no life⁠—you see nothing. When I was a small boy my father, he died, and my mother comes with me to Naples. Then I go with the little boats on the sea⁠—fishing, carrying people⁠—” He flourished his hand as if to make her understand all the things that must be wordless. He smiled at her⁠—but there was a faint, poignant sadness and remoteness in him, a beauty of old fatality, and ultimate indifference to fate.

“And were you very poor?”

“Poor?⁠—why yes! Nothing. Rags⁠—no shoes⁠—bread, little fish from the sea⁠—shellfish⁠—”

His hands flickered, his eyes rested on her with a profound look of knowledge. And it seemed, in spite of all, one state was very much the same to him as another, poverty was as much life as affluence. Only he had a sort of jealous idea that it was humiliating to be poor, and so, for vanity’s sake, he would have possessions. The countless generations of civilization behind him had left him an instinct of the world’s meaninglessness. Only his little modern education made money and independence an idée fixe. Old instinct told him the world was nothing. But modern education, so shallow, was much more efficacious than instinct. It drove him to make a show of himself to the world. Alvina watching him, as if hypnotized, saw his old beauty, formed through civilization after civilization; and at the same time she saw his modern vulgarianism, and decadence.

“And when you go back, you will go back to your old village?” she said.

He made a gesture with his head and shoulders, evasive, noncommittal.

“I don’t know, you see,” he said.

“What is the name of it?”

“Pescocalascio.” He said the word subduedly, unwillingly.

“Tell me again,” said Alvina.

“Pescocalascio.”

She repeated it.

“And tell me how you spell it,” she said.

He fumbled in his pocket for a pencil and a piece of paper. She rose and brought him an old sketchbook. He wrote, slowly, but with the beautiful Italian hand, the name of his village.

“And write your name,” she said.

“Marasca Francesco,” he wrote.

“And write the name of your father and mother,” she said. He looked at her enquiringly.

“I want to see them,” she said.

“Marasca Giovanni,” he wrote, and under that “Califano Maria.”

She looked at the four names, in the graceful Italian script. And one after the other she read them out. He corrected her, smiling gravely. When she said them properly, he nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s it. You say it well.”

At that moment Miss Pinnegar came in to say Mrs. Rollings had seen another of the young men riding down the street.

“That’s Gigi! He doesn’t know how to come here,” said Ciccio, quickly taking his hat and going out to find his friend.

Geoffrey arrived, his broad face hot and perspiring.

“Couldn’t you find it?” said Alvina.

“I find the house, but I couldn’t find no door,” said Geoffrey.

They all laughed, and sat down to tea. Geoffrey and Ciccio talked to each other in French, and kept each other in countenance. Fortunately for them, Madame had seen to their table-manners. But still they were far too free and easy to suit Miss Pinnegar.

“Do you know,” said Ciccio in French to Geoffrey, “what a fine house this is?”

“No,” said Geoffrey, rolling his large eyes round the room, and speaking with his cheek stuffed out with food. “Is it?”

“Ah⁠—if it was hers, you know⁠—”

And so, after tea, Ciccio said to Alvina:

“Shall you let Geoffrey see the house?”

The tour commenced again. Geoffrey, with his thick legs planted apart, gazed round the rooms, and made his comments in French to Ciccio. When they climbed the stairs, he fingered the big, smooth mahogany bannister-rail. In the bedroom he stared almost dismayed at the colossal bed and cupboard. In the bathroom he turned on the old-fashioned, silver taps.

“Here is my room⁠—” said Ciccio in French.

“Assez éloigné!” replied Gigi. Ciccio also glanced along the corridor.

“Yes,” he said. “But an open course⁠—”

“Look, my boy⁠—if you could marry this⁠—” meaning the house.

“Ha, she doesn’t know if it hers any more! Perhaps the debts cover every bit of it.”

“Don’t say so! Na, that’s a pity, that’s a pity! La pauvre fille⁠—pauvre demoiselle!” lamented Geoffrey.

“Isn’t it a pity! What dost say?”

“A thousand pities! A thousand pities! Look, my boy, love needs no havings, but marriage does. Love is for all, even the grasshoppers. But marriage means a kitchen. That’s how it is. La pauvre demoiselle; c’est malheur pour elle.”

“That’s true,” said Ciccio. “Et aussi pour moi. For me as well.”

“For thee as well, cher! Perhaps⁠—” said Geoffrey, laying his arm on Ciccio’s shoulder, and giving him a sudden hug. They smiled to each other.

“Who knows!” said Ciccio.

“Who knows, truly, my Cic’.”

As they went downstairs to rejoin Alvina, whom they heard playing on the piano in the drawing-room, Geoffrey peeped once more into the big bedroom.

“Tu n’es jamais monté si haut, mon beau. Pour moi, ça serait difficile de m’élever. J’aurais bien peur, moi. Tu te trouves aussi un peu ébahi, hein? n’est-ce pas?”

“Y’a place pour trois,” said Ciccio.

“Non, je crêverais, là haut. Pas pour moi!”

And they went laughing downstairs.

Miss Pinnegar was sitting with Alvina, determined not to go to chapel this evening. She sat, rather hulked, reading a novel. Alvina flirted with the two men, played the piano to them, and suggested a game of cards.

“Oh, Alvina, you will never bring out the cards tonight!” expostulated poor Miss Pinnegar.

“But, Miss Pinnegar, it can’t possibly hurt anybody.”

“You know what I think⁠—and what your father thought⁠—and your mother and Miss Frost⁠—”

“You see I think it’s only prejudice,” said Alvina.

“Oh very well!” said Miss Pinnegar angrily.

And closing her book, she rose and went to the other room.

Alvina brought out the cards, and a little box of pence which remained from Endeavour harvests. At that moment there was a knock. It was Mr. May. Miss Pinnegar brought him in, in triumph.

“Oh!” he said. “Company! I heard you’d come, Miss Houghton, so I hastened to pay my compliments. I didn’t know you had company. How do you do, Francesco! How do you do, Geoffrey. Comment allez-vous, alors?”

“Bien!” said Geoffrey. “You are going to take a hand?”

“Cards on Sunday evening! Dear me, what a revolution! Of course, I’m not bigoted. If Miss Houghton asks me⁠—”

Miss Pinnegar looked solemnly at Alvina.

“Yes, do take a hand, Mr. May,” said Alvina.

“Thank you, I will then, if I may. Especially as I see those tempting piles of pennies and ha’pennies. Who is bank, may I ask? Is Miss Pinnegar going to play too?”

But Miss Pinnegar had turned her poor, bowed back, and departed.

“I’m afraid she’s offended,” said Alvina.

“But why? We don’t put her soul in danger, do we now? I’m a good Catholic, you know, I can’t do with these provincial little creeds. Who deals? Do you, Miss Houghton? But I’m afraid we shall have a rather dry game? What? Isn’t that your opinion?”

The other men laughed.

“If Miss Houghton would just allow me to run round and bring something in. Yes? May I? That would be so much more cheerful. What is your choice, gentlemen?”

“Beer,” said Ciccio, and Geoffrey nodded.

“Beer! Oh really! Extraor’nary! I always take a little whiskey myself. What kind of beer? Ale?⁠—or bitter? I’m afraid I’d better bring bottles. Now how can I secrete them? You haven’t a small travelling case, Miss Houghton? Then I shall look as if I’d just been taking a journey. Which I have⁠—to the Sun and back: and if that isn’t far enough, even for Miss Pinnegar and John Wesley, why, I’m sorry.”

Alvina produced the travelling case.

“Excellent!” he said. “Excellent! It will hold half-a-dozen beautifully. Now⁠—” he fell into a whisper⁠—“hadn’t I better sneak out at the front door, and so escape the clutches of the watchdog?”