The Lost Girl

by D. H. Lawrence

  CHAPTER XII

  ALLAYE ALSO IS ENGAGED

  Alvina found it pleasant to be respected as she was respected inLancaster. It is not only the prophet who hath honour _save_ in hisown country: it is every one with individuality. In this northerntown Alvina found that her individuality really told. Already shebelonged to the revered caste of medicine-men. And into the bargainshe was a personality, a person.

  Well and good. She was not going to cheapen herself. She felt thateven in the eyes of the natives--the well-to-do part, at least--shelost a _little_ of her distinction when she was engaged to Dr.Mitchell. The engagement had been announced in _The Times_, _TheMorning Post_, _The Manchester Guardian_, and the local _News_. Nofear about its being known. And it cast a slight slur of vulgarfamiliarity over her. In Woodhouse, she knew, it elevated her in thecommon esteem tremendously. But she was no longer in Woodhouse. Shewas in Lancaster. And in Lancaster her engagement pigeonholed her.Apart from Dr. Mitchell she had a magic potentiality. Connected withhim, she was a known and labelled quantity.

  This she gathered from her contact with the local gentry. The matronwas a woman of family, who somehow managed, in her big, white,frilled cap, to be distinguished like an abbess of old. The reallytoney women of the place came to take tea in her room, and theselittle teas in the hospital were like a little elegant femaleconspiracy. There was a slight flavour of art and literature about.The matron had known Walter Pater, in the somewhat remote past.

  Alvina was admitted to these teas with the few women who formed thetoney intellectual elite of this northern town. There was a certainfreemasonry in the matron's room. The matron, a lady-doctor, aclergyman's daughter, and the wives of two industrial magnates ofthe place, these five, and then Alvina, formed the little group.They did not meet a great deal outside the hospital. But they alwaysmet with that curious female freemasonry which can form a law untoitself even among most conventional women. They talked as they wouldnever talk before men, or before feminine outsiders. They threwaside the whole vestment of convention. They discussed plainly thethings they thought about--even the most secret--and they were quitecalm about the things they did--even the most impossible. Alvinafelt that her transgression was a very mild affair, and that herengagement was really _infra dig_.

  "And are you going to marry him?" asked Mrs. Tuke, with a long, coollook.

  "I can't _imagine_ myself--" said Alvina.

  "Oh, but so many things happen outside one's imagination. That'swhere your body has you. I can't _imagine_ that I'm going to have achild--" She lowered her eyelids wearily and sardonically over herlarge eyes.

  Mrs. Tuke was the wife of the son of a local manufacturer. She wasabout twenty-eight years old, pale, with great dark-grey eyes and anarched nose and black hair, very like a head on one of the lovelySyracusan coins. The odd look of a smile which wasn't a smile, atthe corners of the mouth, the arched nose, and the slowness of thebig, full, classic eyes gave her the dangerous Greek look of theSyracusan women of the past: the dangerous, heavily-civilized womenof old Sicily: those who laughed about the latomia.

  "But do you think you can have a child without wanting it _at all_?"asked Alvina.

  "Oh, but there isn't _one bit_ of me wants it, not _one bit_. My_flesh_ doesn't want it. And my mind doesn't--yet there it is!" Shespread her fine hands with a flicker of inevitability.

  "Something must want it," said Alvina.

  "Oh!" said Mrs. Tuke. "The universe is one big machine, and we'rejust part of it." She flicked out her grey silk handkerchief, anddabbed her nose, watching with big, black-grey eyes the fresh faceof Alvina.

  "There's not _one bit_ of me concerned in having this child," shepersisted to Alvina. "My flesh isn't concerned, and my mind isn't.And _yet_!--_le voila!_--I'm just _plante_. I can't _imagine_ why Imarried Tommy. And yet--I did--!" She shook her head as if it wasall just beyond her, and the pseudo-smile at the corners of herageless mouth deepened.

  Alvina was to nurse Mrs. Tuke. The baby was expected at the end ofAugust. But already the middle of September was here, and the babyhad not arrived.

  The Tukes were not very rich--the young ones, that is. Tommy wantedto compose music, so he lived on what his father gave him. Hisfather gave him a little house outside the town, a house furnishedwith expensive bits of old furniture, in a way that the townspeoplethought insane. But there you are--Effie would insist on dabbing arare bit of yellow brocade on the wall, instead of a picture, and inpainting apple-green shelves in the recesses of the whitewashed wallof the dining-room. Then she enamelled the hall-furniture yellow,and decorated it with curious green and lavender lines and flowers,and had unearthly cushions and Sardinian pottery with unspeakablepeaked griffins.

  What were you to make of such a woman! Alvina slept in her housethese days, instead of at the hospital. For Effie was a very badsleeper. She would sit up in bed, the two glossy black plaitshanging beside her white, arch face, wrapping loosely round her herdressing-gown of a sort of plumbago-coloured, dark-grey silk linedwith fine silk of metallic blue, and there, ivory and jet-black andgrey like black-lead, she would sit in the white bedclothesflicking her handkerchief and revealing a flicker of kingfisher-bluesilk and white silk night dress, complaining of her neuritis nerveand her own impossible condition, and begging Alvina to stay withher another half-hour, and suddenly studying the big, blood-redstone on her finger as if she was reading something in it.

  "I believe I shall be like the woman in the _Cent Nouvelles_ andcarry my child for five years. Do you know that story? She said thateating a parsley leaf on which bits of snow were sticking startedthe child in her. It might just as well--"

  Alvina would laugh and get tired. There was about her a kind of halfbitter sanity and nonchalance which the nervous woman liked.

  One night as they were sitting thus in the bedroom, at nearly eleveno'clock, they started and listened. Dogs in the distance had alsostarted to yelp. A mandoline was wailing its vibration in the nightoutside, rapidly, delicately quivering. Alvina went pale. She knewit was Ciccio. She had seen him lurking in the streets of the town,but had never spoken to him.

  "What's this?" cried Mrs. Tuke, cocking her head on one side."Music! A mandoline! How extraordinary! Do you think it's aserenade?--" And she lifted her brows archly.

  "I should think it is," said Alvina.

  "How extraordinary! What a moment to choose to serenade the lady!_Isn't_ it like life--! I _must_ look at it--"

  She got out of bed with some difficulty, wrapped her dressing-gownround her, pushed her feet into slippers, and went to the window.She opened the sash. It was a lovely moonlight night of September.Below lay the little front garden, with its short drive and its irongates that closed on the high-road. From the shadow of the high-roadcame the noise of the mandoline.

  "Hello, Tommy!" called Mrs. Tuke to her husband, whom she saw on thedrive below her. "How's your musical ear--?"

  "All right. Doesn't it disturb you?" came the man's voice from themoonlight below.

  "Not a bit. I like it. I'm waiting for the voice. '_O Richard, O monroi!_'--"

  But the music had stopped.

  "There!" cried Mrs. Tuke. "You've frightened him off! And we'redying to be serenaded, aren't we, nurse?" She turned to Alvina. "Dogive me my fur, will you? Thanks so much. Won't you open the otherwindow and look out there--?"

  Alvina went to the second window. She stood looking out.

  "Do play again!" Mrs. Tuke called into the night. "Do singsomething." And with her white arm she reached for a glory rose thathung in the moonlight from the wall, and with a flash of her whitearm she flung it toward the garden wall--ineffectually, of course.

  "Won't you play again?" she called into the night, to the unseen."Tommy, go indoors, the bird won't sing when you're about."

  "It's an Italian by the sound of him. Nothing I hate more thanemotional Italian music. Perfectly nauseating."

  "Never mind, dear. I know it sounds as if all their insides werecoming out of their mouth. But we want to be s
erenaded, don't we,nurse?--"

  Alvina stood at her window, but did not answer.

  "Ah-h?" came the odd query from Mrs. Tuke. "Don't you like it?"

  "Yes," said Alvina. "Very much."

  "And aren't you dying for the song?"

  "Quite."

  "There!" cried Mrs. Tuke, into the moonlight. "Una canzonebella-bella--molto bella--"

  She pronounced her syllables one by one, calling into the night. Itsounded comical. There came a rude laugh from the drive below.

  "Go indoors, Tommy! He won't sing if you're there. Nothing will singif you're there," called the young woman.

  They heard a footstep on the gravel, and then the slam of the halldoor.

  "Now!" cried Mrs. Tuke.

  They waited. And sure enough, came the fine tinkle of the mandoline,and after a few moments, the song. It was one of the well-knownNeapolitan songs, and Ciccio sang it as it should be sung.

  Mrs. Tuke went across to Alvina.

  "Doesn't he put his _bowels_ into it--?" she said, laying her handon her own full figure, and rolling her eyes mockingly. "I'm _sure_it's more effective than senna-pods."

  Then she returned to her own window, huddled her furs over herbreast, and rested her white elbows in the moonlight.

  "Torn' a Surrientu Fammi campar--"

  The song suddenly ended, in a clamorous, animal sort of yearning.Mrs. Tuke was quite still, resting her chin on her fingers. Alvinaalso was still. Then Mrs. Tuke slowly reached for the rose-buds onthe old wall.

  "Molto bella!" she cried, half ironically. "Molto bella! Je vousenvoie une rose--" And she threw the roses out on to the drive. Aman's figure was seen hovering outside the gate, on the high-road."Entrez!" called Mrs. Tuke. "Entrez! Prenez votre rose. Come in andtake your rose."

  The man's voice called something from the distance.

  "What?" cried Mrs. Tuke.

  "Je ne peux pas entrer."

  "Vous ne pouvez pas entrer? Pourquoi alors! La porte n'est pasfermee a clef. Entrez donc!"

  "Non. On n'entre pas--" called the well-known voice of Ciccio.

  "Quoi faire, alors! Alvina, take him the rose to the gate, will you?Yes do! Their singing is horrible, I think. I can't go down to him.But do take him the roses, and see what he looks like. Yes do!" Mrs.Tuke's eyes were arched and excited. Alvina looked at her slowly.Alvina also was smiling to herself.

  She went slowly down the stairs and out of the front door. From abush at the side she pulled two sweet-smelling roses. Then in thedrive she picked up Effie's flowers. Ciccio was standing outside thegate.

  "Allaye!" he said, in a soft, yearning voice.

  "Mrs. Tuke sent you these roses," said Alvina, putting the flowersthrough the bars of the gate.

  "Allaye!" he said, caressing her hand, kissing it with a soft,passionate, yearning mouth. Alvina shivered. Quickly he opened thegate and drew her through. He drew her into the shadow of the wall,and put his arms round her, lifting her from her feet withpassionate yearning.

  "Allaye!" he said. "I love you, Allaye, my beautiful, Allaye. I loveyou, Allaye!" He held her fast to his breast and began to walk awaywith her. His throbbing, muscular power seemed completely to envelopher. He was just walking away with her down the road, clinging fastto her, enveloping her.

  "Nurse! Nurse! I can't see you! Nurse!--" came the long call of Mrs.Tuke through the night. Dogs began to bark.

  "Put me down," murmured Alvina. "Put me down, Ciccio."

  "Come with me to Italy. Come with me to Italy, Allaye. I can't go toItaly by myself, Allaye. Come with me, be married to me--Allaye,Allaye--"

  His voice was a strange, hoarse whisper just above her face, hestill held her in his throbbing, heavy embrace.

  "Yes--yes!" she whispered. "Yes--yes! But put me down, Ciccio. Putme down."

  "Come to Italy with me, Allaye. Come with me," he still reiterated,in a voice hoarse with pain and yearning.

  "Nurse! Nurse! Wherever are you? Nurse! I want you," sang theuneasy, querulous voice of Mrs. Tuke.

  "Do put me down!" murmured Alvina, stirring in his arms.

  He slowly relaxed his clasp, and she slid down like rain to earth.But still he clung to her.

  "Come with me, Allaye! Come with me to Italy!" he said.

  She saw his face, beautiful, non-human in the moonlight, and sheshuddered slightly.

  "Yes!" she said. "I will come. But let me go now. Where is yourmandoline?"

  He turned round and looked up the road.

  "Nurse! You absolutely _must_ come. I can't bear it," cried thestrange voice of Mrs. Tuke.

  Alvina slipped from the man, who was a little bewildered, andthrough the gate into the drive.

  "You must come!" came the voice in pain from the upper window.

  Alvina ran upstairs. She found Mrs. Tuke crouched in a chair, with adrawn, horrified, terrified face. As her pains suddenly gripped her,she uttered an exclamation, and pressed her clenched fists hard onher face.

  "The pains have begun," said Alvina, hurrying to her.

  "Oh, it's horrible! It's horrible! I don't want it!" cried the womanin travail. Alvina comforted her and reassured her as best shecould. And from outside, once more, came the despairing howl of theNeapolitan song, animal and inhuman on the night.

  "E tu dic' Io part', addio! T'alluntare di sta core, Nel paese del amore Tien' o cor' di non turnar' --Ma nun me lasciar'--"

  It was almost unendurable. But suddenly Mrs. Tuke became quitestill, and sat with her fists clenched on her knees, her twojet-black plaits dropping on either side of her ivory face, her bigeyes fixed staring into space. At the line--

  Ma nun me lasciar'--

  she began to murmur softly to herself--"Yes, it's dreadful! It'shorrible! I can't understand it. What does it mean, that noise? It'sas bad as these pains. What does it mean? What does he say? I canunderstand a little Italian--" She paused. And again came the suddencomplaint:

  Ma nun me lasciar'--

  "Ma nun me lasciar'--!" she murmured, repeating the music. "Thatmeans--Don't leave me! Don't leave me! But why? Why shouldn't onehuman being go away from another? What does it mean? That _awful_noise! Isn't love the most horrible thing! I think it's horrible. Itjust does one in, and turns one into a sort of howling animal. I'mhowling with one sort of pain, he's howling with another. Twohellish animals howling through the night! I'm not myself, he's nothimself. Oh, I think it's horrible. What does he look like, Nurse?Is he beautiful? Is he a great hefty brute?"

  She looked with big, slow, enigmatic eyes at Alvina.

  "He's a man I knew before," said Alvina.

  Mrs. Tuke's face woke from its half-trance.

  "Really! Oh! A man you knew before! Where?"

  "It's a long story," said Alvina. "In a travelling music-halltroupe."

  "In a travelling music-hall troupe! How extraordinary! Why, how didyou come across such an individual--?"

  Alvina explained as briefly as possible. Mrs. Tuke watched her.

  "Really!" she said. "You've done all those things!" And shescrutinized Alvina's face. "You've had some effect on him, that'sevident," she said. Then she shuddered, and dabbed her nose with herhandkerchief. "Oh, the flesh is a _beastly_ thing!" she cried. "Tomake a man howl outside there like that, because you're here. And tomake me howl because I've got a child inside me. It's unbearable!What does he look like, really?"

  "I don't know," said Alvina. "Not extraordinary. Rather a heftybrute--"

  Mrs. Tuke glanced at her, to detect the irony.

  "I should like to see him," she said. "Do you think I might?"

  "I don't know," said Alvina, non-committal.

  "Do you think he might come up? Ask him. Do let me see him."

  "Do you really want to?" said Alvina.

  "Of course--" Mrs. Tuke watched Alvina with big, dark, slow eyes.Then she dragged herself to her feet. Alvina helped her into bed.

  "Do ask him to come up for a minute," Effie said. "We'll g
ive him aglass of Tommy's famous port. Do let me see him. Yes do!" Shestretched out her long white arm to Alvina, with sudden imploring.

  Alvina laughed, and turned doubtfully away.

  The night was silent outside. But she found Ciccio leaning against agate-pillar. He started up.

  "Allaye!" he said.

  "Will you come in for a moment? I can't leave Mrs. Tuke."

  Ciccio obediently followed Alvina into the house and up the stairs,without a word. He was ushered into the bedroom. He drew back whenhe saw Effie in the bed, sitting with her long plaits and her darkeyes, and the subtle-seeming smile at the corners of her mouth.

  "Do come in!" she said. "I want to thank you for the music. Nursesays it was for her, but I enjoyed it also. Would you tell me thewords? I think it's a wonderful song."

  Ciccio hung back against the door, his head dropped, and the shy,suspicious, faintly malicious smile on his face.

  "Have a glass of port, do!" said Effie. "Nurse, give us all one. Ishould like one too. And a biscuit." Again she stretched out herlong white arm from the sudden blue lining of her wrap, suddenly, asif taken with the desire. Ciccio shifted on his feet, watchingAlvina pour out the port.

  He swallowed his in one swallow, and put aside his glass.

  "Have some more!" said Effie, watching over the top of her glass.

  He smiled faintly, stupidly, and shook his head.

  "Won't you? Now tell me the words of the song--"

  He looked at her from out of the dusky hollows of his brow, and didnot answer. The faint, stupid half-smile, half-sneer was on hislips.

  "Won't you tell them me? I understood one line--"

  Ciccio smiled more pronouncedly as he watched her, but did notspeak.

  "I understood one line," said Effie, making big eyes at him. "_Manon me lasciare_--_Don't leave me!_ There, isn't that it?"

  He smiled, stirred on his feet, and nodded.

  "Don't leave me! There, I knew it was that. Why don't you want Nurseto leave you? Do you want her to be with you _every minute_?"

  He smiled a little contemptuously, awkwardly, and turned aside hisface, glancing at Alvina. Effie's watchful eyes caught the glance.It was swift, and full of the terrible yearning which so horrifiedher.

  At the same moment a spasm crossed her face, her expression wentblank.

  "Shall we go down?" said Alvina to Ciccio.

  He turned immediately, with his cap in his hand, and followed. Inthe hall he pricked up his ears as he took the mandoline from thechest. He could hear the stifled cries and exclamations from Mrs.Tuke. At the same moment the door of the study opened, and themusician, a burly fellow with troubled hair, came out.

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

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

  "Oh God! 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 haveto go back to her." And she held out her hand.

  He did not take her hand, but looked down into her face with thesame slightly distorted look of overwhelming yearning, yearningheavy and unbearable, in which he was carried towards her as on aflood.

  "Allaye!" he said, with a faint lift of the lip that showed histeeth, like a pained animal: a curious sort of smile. He could notgo 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 blacklashes, like some chained animal, haunted by doom. She turned andleft him standing.

  She found Mrs. Tuke wildly clutching the edge of the sheets, andcrying: "No, Tommy dear. I'm awfully fond of you, you know I am. Butgo away. Oh God, go away. And put a space between us. Put a spacebetween us!" she almost shrieked.

  He pushed up his hair. He had been working on a big choral workwhich 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 willof God 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. Otherforces will put you together again."

  "I don't want them to. I want to be myself. I don't want to benailed 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 inlife."

  "But I hate life. It's nothing but a mass of forces. _I_ amintelligent. Life isn't intelligent. Look at it at this moment. Doyou call this intelligent? Oh--Oh! It's horrible! Oh--!" She waswild and sweating with her pains. Tommy flounced out downstairs,beside himself. He was heard talking to some one in the moonlightoutside. 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. Andlife is a mass of unintelligent forces to which intelligent beingsare submitted. Prostituted. Oh--oh!!--prostituted--"

  "Perhaps life itself is something bigger than intelligence," saidAlvina.

  "Bigger than intelligence!" shrieked Effie. "_Nothing_ is biggerthan 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 forcestear me to pieces! Tear me to pie--eee--Oh-h-h! No!--"

  Downstairs Tommy had walked Ciccio back into the house again, andthe two men were drinking port in the study, discussing Italy, forwhich Tommy had a great sentimental affection, though he hated allItalian music after the younger Scarlatti. They drank port allthrough the night, Tommy being strictly forbidden to interfereupstairs, or even to fetch the doctor. They drank three and a halfbottles of port, and were discovered in the morning by Alvina fastasleep in the study, with the electric light still burning. Tommyslept with his fair and ruffled head hanging over the edge of thecouch like some great loose fruit, Ciccio was on the floor, facedownwards, his face in his folded arms.

  Alvina had a great difficulty in waking the inert Ciccio. In theend, she had to leave him and rouse Tommy first: who in rousing felloff the sofa with a crash which woke him disagreeably. So that heturned on Alvina in a fury, and asked her what the hell she thoughtshe 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 God, it's an accursed fugue!" cried the bemused Tommy. Afterwhich they proceeded to wake Ciccio, who was like the dead doll inPetrushka, all loose and floppy. When he was awake, however, hesmiled at Alvina, and said: "Allaye!"

  The dark, waking smile upset her badly.