Then all retired to dress for the great scene. Alvina practised the music Madame carried with her. If Madame found a good pianist, she welcomed the accompaniment: if not, she dispensed with it.
“Am I all right?” said a smirking voice.
And there was Kishwégin, dusky, coy, with long black hair and a short chamois dress, gaiters and moccasins and bare arms: so coy, and so smirking. Alvina burst out laughing.
“But shan’t I do?” protested Mr. May, hurt.
“Yes, you’re wonderful,” said Alvina, choking. “But I must laugh.”
“But why? Tell me why?” asked Mr. May anxiously “Is it my appearance you laugh at, or is it only me? If it’s me I don’t mind. But if it’s my appearance, tell me so.”
Here an appalling figure of Ciccio in war-paint strolled on to the stage. He was naked to the waist, wore scalp-fringed trousers, was dusky-red-skinned, had long black hair and eagle’s feathers — only two feathers — and a face wonderfully and terribly painted with white, red, yellow, and black lines. He was evidently pleased with himself. His curious soft slouch, and curious way of lifting his lip from his white teeth, in a sort of smile, was very convincing.
“You haven’t got the girdle,” he said, touching Mr. May’s plump waist — ”and some flowers in your hair.”
Mr. May here gave a sharp cry and a jump. A bear on its hind legs, slow, shambling, rolling its loose shoulders, was stretching a paw towards him. The bear dropped heavily on four paws again, and a laugh came from its muzzle.
“You won’t have to dance,” said Geoffrey out of the bear.
“Come and put in the flowers,” said Mr. May anxiously, to Alvina.
In the dressing-room, the dividing-curtain was drawn. Max, in deerskin trousers but with unpainted torso looked very white and strange as he put the last touches of war-paint on Louis’ face. He glanced round at Alvina, then went on with his work. There was a sort of nobility about his erect white form and stiffly-carried head, the semi-luminous brown hair. He seemed curiously superior.
Alvina adjusted the maidenly Mr. May. Louis arose, a brave like Ciccio, in war-paint even more hideous. Max slipped on a tattered hunting-shirt and cartridge belt. His face was a little darkened. He was the white prisoner.
They arranged the scenery, while Alvina watched. It was soon done. A back cloth of tree-trunks and dark forest: a wigwam, a fire, and a cradle hanging from a pole. As they worked, Alvina tried in vain to dissociate the two braves from their war-paint. The lines were drawn so cleverly that the grimace of ferocity was fixed and horrible, so that even in the quiet work of scene-shifting Louis’ stiffish, female grace seemed full of latent cruelty, whilst Ciccio’s more muscular slouch made her feel slue would not trust him for one single moment. Awful things men were, savage, cruel, underneath their civilization.
The scene had its beauty. It began with Kishwégin alone at the door of the wigwam, cooking, listening, giving an occasional push to the hanging cradle, and, if only Madame were taking the part, crooning an Indian cradle-song. Enter the brave Louis with his white prisoner, Max, who has his hands bound to his side. Kishwégin gravely salutes her husband — the bound prisoner is seated by the fire — Kishwégin serves food, and asks permission to feed the prisoner. The brave Louis, hearing a sound, starts up with his bow and arrow. There is a dumb scene of sympathy between Kishwégin and the prisoner — the prisoner wants his bonds cut. Re-enter the brave Louis — he is angry with Kishwégin — enter the brave Ciccio hauling a bear, apparently dead. Kishwégin examines the bear, Ciccio examines the prisoner. Ciccio tortures the prisoner, makes him stand, makes him caper unwillingly. Kishwégin swings the cradle and croons. The men rise once more and bend over the prisoner. As they do so, there is a muffled roar. The bear is sitting up. Louis swings round, and at the same moment the bear strikes him down. Ciccio springs forward and stabs the bear, then closes with it. Kishwégin runs and cuts the prisoner’s bonds. He rises, and stands trying to lift his numbed and powerless arms, while the bear slowly crushes Ciccio, and Kishwégin kneels over her husband. The bear drops Ciccio lifeless, and turns to Kishwégin. At that moment Max manages to kill the bear — he takes Kishwégin by the hand and kneels with her beside the dead Louis.
It was wonderful how well the men played their different parts. But Mr. May was a little too frisky as Kishwégin. However, it would do.
Ciccio got dressed as soon as possible, to go and look at the horses hired for the afternoon procession. Alvina accompanied him, Mr. May and the others were busy.
“You know I think it’s quite wonderful, your scene,” she said to Ciccio.
He turned and looked down at her. His yellow, dusky-set eyes rested on her good-naturedly, without seeing her, his lip curled in a self-conscious, contemptuous sort of smile.
“Not without Madame,” he said, with the slow, half-sneering, stupid smile. “Without Madame — ” he lifted his shoulders and spread his hands and tilted his brows — ”fool’s play, you know.”
“No,” said Alvina. “I think Mr. May is good, considering. What does Madame _do?_” she asked a little jealously.
“Do?” He looked down at her with the same long, half-sardonic look of his yellow eyes, like a cat looking casually at a bird which flutters past. And again he made his shrugging motion. “She does it all, really. The others — they are nothing — what they are Madame has made them. And now they think they’ve done it all, you see. You see, that’s it.”
“But how has Madame made it all? Thought it out, you mean?”
“Thought it out, yes. And then done it. You should see her dance — ah! You should see her dance round the bear, when I bring him in! Ah, a beautiful thing, you know. She claps her hand — ” And Ciccio stood still in the street, with his hat cocked a little on one side, rather common-looking, and he smiled along his fine nose at Alvina, and he clapped his hands lightly, and he tilted his eyebrows and his eyelids as if facially he were imitating a dance, and all the time his lips smiled stupidly. As he gave a little assertive shake of his head, finishing, there came a great yell of laughter from the opposite pavement, where a gang of pottery lasses, in aprons all spattered with grey clay, and hair and boots and skin spattered with pallid spots, had stood to watch. The girls opposite shrieked again, for all the world like a gang of grey baboons. Ciccio turned round and looked at them with a sneer along his nose. They yelled the louder. And he was horribly uncomfortable, walking there beside Alvina with his rather small and effeminately-shod feet.
“How stupid they are,” said Alvina. “I’ve got used to them.”
“They should be — ” he lifted his hand with a sharp, vicious movement — ”smacked” he concluded, lowering his hand again. “Who is going to do it?” said Alvina.
He gave a Neapolitan grimace, and twiddled the fingers of one hand outspread in the air, as if to say: “There you are! You’ve got to thank the fools who’ve failed to do it.”
“Why do you all love Madame so much?” Alvina asked.
“How, love?” he said, making a little grimace. “We like her — we love her — as if she were a mother. You say love — ” He raised his shoulders slightly, with a shrug. And all the time he looked down at Alvina from under his dusky eye-lashes, as if watching her sideways, and his mouth had the peculiar, stupid, self-conscious, half-jeering smile. Alvina was a little bit annoyed. But she felt that a great instinctive good-naturedness came out of him, he was self-conscious and constrained, knowing she did not follow his language of gesture. For him, it was not yet quite natural to express himself in speech. Gesture and grimace were instantaneous, and spoke worlds of things, if you would but accept them.
But certainly he was stupid, in her sense of the word. She could hear Mr. May’s verdict of him: “Like a child, you know, just as charming and just as tiresome and just as stupid.”
“Where is your home?” she asked him.
“In Italy.” She felt a fool.
“Which part?” she insisted.
“Naples,�
�� he said, looking down at her sideways, searchingly. “It must be lovely,” she said.
“Ha — !” He threw his head on one side and spread out his hands, as if to say — ”What do you want, if you don’t find Naples lovely.”
“I should like to see it. But I shouldn’t like to die,” she said. “What?”
“They say ‘See Naples and die,’“ she laughed.
He opened his mouth, and understood. Then he smiled at her directly.
“You know what that means?” he said cutely. “It means see Naples and die afterwards. Don’t die before you’ve seen it.” He smiled with a knowing smile.
“I see! I see!” she cried. “I never thought of that.”
He was pleased with her surprise and amusement.
“Ah Naples!” he said. “She is lovely — ” He spread his hand across the air in front of him — ”The sea — and Posilippo — and Sorrento — and Capri — Ah-h! You’ve never been out of England?”
“No,” she said. “I should love to go.”
He looked down into her eyes. It was his instinct to say at once he would take her.
“You’ve seen nothing — nothing,” he said to her.
“But if Naples is so lovely, how could you leave it?” she asked. “What?”
She repeated her question. For answer, he looked at her, held out his hand, and rubbing the ball of his thumb across the tips of his fingers, said, with a fine, handsome smile:
“Pennies! Money! You can’t earn money in Naples. Ah, Naples is beautiful, but she is poor. You live in the sun, and you earn fourteen, fifteen pence a day — ”
“Not enough,” she said.
He put his head on one side and tilted his brows, as if to say “What are you to do?” And the smile on his mouth was sad, fine, and charming. There was an indefinable air of sadness or wistfulness about him, something so robust and fragile at the same time, that she was drawn in a strange way.
“But you’ll go back?” she said.
“Where?”
“To Italy. To Naples.”
“Yes, I shall go back to Italy,” he said, as if unwilling to commit himself. “But perhaps I shan’t go back to Naples.”
“Never?”
“Ah, never! I don’t say never. I shall go to Naples, to see my mother’s sister. But I shan’t go to live — ”
“Have you a mother and father?”
“I? No! I have a brother and two sisters — in America. Parents, none. They are dead.”
“And you wander about the world — ” she said.
He looked at her, and made a slight, sad gesture, indifferent also. “But you have Madame for a mother,” she said.
He made another gesture this time: pressed down the corners of his mouth as if he didn’t like it. Then he turned with the slow, fine smile.
“Does a man want two mothers? Eh?” he said, as if he posed a conundrum.
“I shouldn’t think so,” laughed Alvina.
He glanced at her to see what she meant, what she understood. “My mother is dead, see!” he said. “Frenchwomen — Frenchwomen they have their babies till they are a hundred — ”
“What do you mean?” said Alvina, laughing.
“A Frenchman is a little man when he’s seven years old — and if his mother comes, he is a little baby boy when he’s seventy. Do you know that?”
“I _didn’t_ know it,” said Alvina.
“But now — you do,” he said, lurching round a corner with her.
They had come to the stables. Three of the horses were there, including the thoroughbred Ciccio was going to ride. He stood and examined the beasts critically. Then he spoke to them with strange sounds, patted them, stroked them down, felt them, slid his hand down them, over them, under them, and felt their legs.
Then, he looked up from stooping there under the horses, with a long, slow look of his yellow eyes, at Alvina. She felt unconsciously flattered. His long, yellow look lingered, holding her eyes. She wondered what he was thinking. Yet he never spoke. He turned again to the horses. They seemed to understand him, to prick up alert.
“This is mine,” he said, with his hand on the neck of the old thoroughbred. It was a bay with a white blaze.
“I think he’s nice,” she said. “He seems so sensitive.”
“In England,” he answered suddenly, “horses live a long time, because they _don’t_ live — never alive — see? In England railway-engines are alive, and horses go on wheels.” He smiled into her eyes as if she understood. She was a trifle nervous as he smiled at her from out of the stable, so yellow-eyed and half-mysterious, derisive. Her impulse was to turn and go away from the stable. But a deeper impulse made her smile into his face, as she said to him:
“They like you to touch them.”
“Who?” His eyes kept hers. Curious how dark they seemed, with only a yellow ring of pupil. He was looking right into her, beyond her usual self, impersonal.
“The horses,” she said. She was afraid of his long, cat-like look. Yet she felt convinced of his ultimate good-nature. He seemed to her to be the only passionately good-natured man she had ever seen. She watched him vaguely, with strange vague trust, implicit belief in him. In him — in what?
That afternoon the colliers trooping home in the winter afternoon were rejoiced with a spectacle: Kishwégin, in her deerskin, fringed gaiters and fringed frock of deerskin, her long hair down her back, and with marvellous cloths and trappings on her steed, riding astride on a tall white horse, followed by Max in chieftain’s robes and chieftain’s long head-dress of dyed feathers, then by the others in war-paint and feathers and brilliant Navajo blankets. They carried bows and spears. Ciccio was without his blanket, naked to the waist, in war-paint, and brandishing a long spear. He dashed up from the rear, saluted the chieftain with his arm and his spear on high as he swept past, suddenly drew up his rearing steed, and trotted slowly back again, making his horse perform its paces. He was extraordinarily velvety and alive on horseback.
Crowds of excited, shouting children ran chattering along the pavements. The colliers, as they tramped grey and heavy, in an intermittent stream uphill from the low grey west, stood on the pavement in wonder as the cavalcade approached and passed, jingling the silver bells of its trappings, vibrating the wonderful colours of the barred blankets and saddle cloths, the scarlet wool of the accoutrements, the bright tips of feathers. Women shrieked as Ciccio, in his war-paint, wheeled near the pavement. Children screamed and ran. The colliers shouted. Ciccio smiled in his terrifying war-paint, brandished his spear and trotted softly, like a flower on its stem, round to the procession.
Miss Pinnegar and Alvina and James Houghton had come round into Knarborough Road to watch. It was a great moment. Looking along the road they saw all the shop-keepers at their doors, the pavements eager. And then, in the distance, the white horse jingling its trappings of scarlet hair and bells, with the dusky Kishwégin sitting on the saddle-blanket of brilliant, lurid stripes, sitting impassive and all dusky above that intermittent flashing of colour: then the chieftain, dark-faced, erect, easy, swathed in a white blanket, with scarlet and black stripes, and all his strange crest of white, tip-dyed feathers swaying down his back: as he came nearer one saw the wolfskin and the brilliant moccasins against the black sides of his horse: Louis and Geoffrey followed, lurid, horrid in the face, wearing blankets with stroke after stroke of blazing colour upon their duskiness, and sitting stern, holding their spears: lastly, Ciccio, on his bay horse with a green seat, flickering hither and thither in the rear, his feathers swaying, his horse sweating, his face ghastlily smiling in its war-paint. So they advanced down the grey pallor of Knarborough Road, in the late wintry afternoon. Somewhere the sun was setting, and far overhead was a flush of orange.
“Well I never!” murmured Miss Pinnegar. “Well I never!”
The strange savageness of the striped Navajo blankets seemed to her unsettling, advancing down Knarborough Road: she examined Kishwégin curiously.
“Can y
ou believe that that’s Mr. May — he’s exactly like a girl. Well, well — it makes you wonder what is and what isn’t. But aren’t they good? What? Most striking. Exactly like Indians. You can’t believe your eyes. My word what a terrifying race they — ” Here she uttered a scream and ran back clutching the wall as Ciccio swept past, brushing her with his horse’s tail, and actually swinging his spear so as to touch Alvina and James Houghton lightly with the butt of it. James too started with a cry, the mob at the corner screamed. But Alvina caught the slow, mischievous smile as the painted horror showed his teeth in passing; she was able to flash back an excited laugh. She felt his yellow-tawny eyes linger on her, in that one second, as if negligently.
“I call that too much!” Miss Pinnegar was crying, thoroughly upset. “Now that was unnecessary! Why it was enough to scare one to death. Besides, it’s dangerous. It ought to be put a stop to. I don’t believe in letting these show-people have liberties.”
The cavalcade was slowly passing, with its uneasy horses and its flare of striped colour and its silent riders. Ciccio was trotting softly back, on his green saddle-cloth, suave as velvet, his dusky, naked torso beautiful.
“Eh, you’d think he’d get his death,” the women in the crowd were saying.
“A proper savage one, that. Makes your blood run cold — ”
“Ay, an’ a man for all that, take’s painted face for what’s worth. A tidy man, I say.”
He did not look at Alvina. The faint, mischievous smile uncovered his teeth. He fell in suddenly behind Geoffrey, with a jerk of his steed, calling out to Geoffrey in Italian.
It was becoming cold. The cavalcade fell into a trot, Mr. May shaking rather badly. Ciccio halted, rested his lance against a lamp-post, switched his green blanket from beneath him, flung it round him as he sat, and darted off. They had all disappeared over the brow of Lumley Hill, descending. He was gone too. In the wintry twilight the crowd began, lingeringly, to turn away. And in some strange way, it manifested its disapproval of the spectacle: as grown-up men and women, they were a little bit insulted by such a show. It was an anachronism. They wanted a direct appeal to the mind. Miss Pinnegar expressed it.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 242