“Alas no, I can’t. I can’t come. Will you really go alone?”
“Yes, I want to go to the women’s shops,” said Alvina.
“You want to! All right then! And you will come home at tea-time, yes?”
As soon as Alvina had gone out Ciccio put away his mandoline and lit a cigarette. Then after a while he hailed Geoffrey, and the two young men sallied forth. Alvina, emerging from a draper’s shop in Rotherhampton Broadway, found them loitering on the pavement outside. And they strolled along with her. So she went into a shop that sold ladies’ underwear, leaving them on the pavement. She stayed as long as she could. But there they were when she came out. They had endless lounging patience.
“I thought you would be gone on,” she said.
“No hurry,” said Ciccio, and he took away her parcels from her, as if he had a right. She wished he wouldn’t tilt the flap of his black hat over one eye, and she wished there wasn’t quite so much waist-line in the cut of his coat, and that he didn’t smoke cigarettes against the end of his nose in the street. But wishing wouldn’t alter him. He strayed alongside as if he half belonged, and half didn’t — most irritating.
She wasted as much time as possible in the shops, then they took the tram home again. Ciccio paid the three fares, laying his hand restrainingly on Gigi’s hand, when Gigi’s hand sought pence in his trouser pocket, and throwing his arm over his friend’s shoulder, in affectionate but vulgar triumph, when the fares were paid. Alvina was on her high horse.
They tried to talk to her, they tried to ingratiate themselves — but she wasn’t having any. She talked with icy pleasantness. And so the teatime passed, and the time after tea. The performance went rather mechanically, at the theatre, and the supper at home, with bottled beer and boiled ham, was a conventionally cheerful affair. Even Madame was a little afraid of Alvina this evening.
“I am tired, I shall go early to my room,” said Alvina.
“Yes, I think we are all tired,” said Madame.
“Why is it?” said Max metaphysically — ”why is it that two merry evenings never follow one behind the other.”
“Max, beer makes thee a farceur of a fine quality,” said Madame. Alvina rose.
“Please don’t get up,” she said to the others. “I have my key and can see quite well,” she said. “Good-night all.”
They rose and bowed their good-nights. But Ciccio, with an obstinate and ugly little smile on his face, followed her.
“Please don’t come,” she said, turning at the street door. But obstinately he lounged into the street with her. He followed her to her door.
“Did you bring the flash-light?” she said. “The stair is so dark.”
He looked at her, and turned as if to get the light. Quickly she opened the house-door and slipped inside, shutting it sharply in his face. He stood for some moments looking at the door, and an ugly little look mounted his straight nose. He too turned indoors.
Alvina hurried to bed and slept well. And the next day the same, she was all icy pleasantness. The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras were a little bit put out by her. She was a spoke in their wheel, a scotch to their facility. She made them irritable. And that evening — it was Friday — Ciccio did not rise to accompany her to her house. And she knew they were relieved that she had gone.
That did not please her. The next day, which was Saturday, the last and greatest day of the week, she found herself again somewhat of an outsider in the troupe. The tribe had assembled in its old unison. She was the intruder, the interloper. And Ciccio never looked at her, only showed her the half-averted side of his cheek, on which was a slightly jeering, ugly look.
“Will you go to Woodhouse tomorrow?” Madame asked her, rather coolly. They none of them called her Allaye any more.
“I’d better fetch some things, hadn’t I?” said Alvina.
“Certainly, if you think you will stay with us.”
This was a nasty slap in the face for her. But:
“I want to,” she said.
“Yes! Then you will go to Woodhouse tomorrow, and come to Mansfield on Monday morning? Like that shall it be? You will stay one night at Woodhouse?”
Through Alvina’s mind flitted the rapid thought — ”They want an evening without me.” Her pride mounted obstinately. She very nearly said — ”I may stay in Woodhouse altogether.” But she held her tongue.
After all, they were very common people. They ought to be glad to have her. Look how Madame snapped up that brooch! And look what an uncouth lout Ciccio was! After all, she was demeaning herself shamefully staying with them in common, sordid lodgings. After all, she had been bred up differently from that. They had horribly low standards — such low standards — not only of morality, but of life altogether. Really, she had come down in the world, conforming to such standards of life. She evoked the images of her mother and Miss Frost: ladies, and noble women both. Whatever could she be thinking of herself!
However, there was time for her to retrace her steps. She had not given herself away. Except to Ciccio. And her heart burned when she thought of him, partly with anger and mortification, partly, alas, with undeniable and unsatisfied love. Let her bridle as she might, her heart burned, and she wanted to look at him, she wanted him to notice her. And instinct told her that he might ignore her for ever. She went to her room an unhappy woman, and wept and fretted till morning, chafing between humiliation and yearning.
CHAPTER X
THE FALL OF MANCHESTER HOUSE
Alvina rose chastened and wistful. As she was doing her hair, she heard the plaintive nasal sound of Ciccio’s mandoline. She looked down the mixed vista of back-yards and little gardens, and was able to catch sight of a portion of Ciccio, who was sitting on a box in the blue-brick yard of his house, bare-headed and in his shirt-sleeves, twitching away at the wailing mandoline. It was not a warm morning, but there was a streak of sunshine. Alvina had noticed that Ciccio did not seem to feel the cold, unless it were a wind or a driving rain. He was playing the wildly-yearning Neapolitan songs, of which Alvina knew nothing. But, although she only saw a section of him, the glimpse of his head was enough to rouse in her that overwhelming fascination, which came and went in spells. His remoteness, his southernness, something velvety and dark. So easily she might miss him altogether! Within a hair’s-breadth she had let him disappear.
She hurried down. Geoffrey opened the door to her. She smiled at him in a quick, luminous smile, a magic change in her.
“I could hear Ciccio playing,” she said.
Geoffrey spread his rather thick lips in a smile, and jerked his head in the direction of the back door, with a deep, intimate look into Alvina’s eyes, as if to say his friend was love-sick.
“Shall I go through?” said Alvina.
Geoffrey laid his large hand on her shoulder for a moment, looked into her eyes, and nodded. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, with a rather flat, handsome face, well-coloured, and with the look of the Alpine ox about him, slow, eternal, even a little mysterious. Alvina was startled by the deep, mysterious look in his dark-fringed ox-eyes. The odd arch of his eyebrows made him suddenly seem not quite human to her. She smiled to him again, startled. But he only inclined his head, and with his heavy hand on her shoulder gently impelled her towards Ciccio.
When she came out at the back she smiled straight into Ciccio’s face, with her sudden, luminous smile. His hand on the mandoline trembled into silence. He sat looking at her with an instant re-establishment of knowledge. And yet she shrank from the long, inscrutable gaze of his black-set, tawny eyes. She resented him a little. And yet she went forward to him and stood so that her dress touched him. And still he gazed up at her, with the heavy, unspeaking look, that seemed to bear her down: he seemed like some creature that was watching her for his purposes. She looked aside at the black garden, which had a wiry gooseberry bush.
“You will come with me to Woodhouse?” she said.
He did not answer till she turned to him again. Then, as she met his eyes,
<
br /> “To Woodhouse?” he said, watching her, to fix her.
“Yes,” she said, a little pale at the lips.
And she saw his eternal smile of triumph slowly growing round his mouth. She wanted to cover his mouth with her hand. She preferred his tawny eyes with their black brows and lashes. His eyes watched her as a cat watches a bird, but without the white gleam of ferocity. In his eyes was a deep, deep sun-warmth, something fathomless, deepening black and abysmal, but somehow sweet to her.
“Will you?” she repeated.
But his eyes had already begun to glimmer their consent. He turned aside his face, as if unwilling to give a straight answer.
“Yes,” he said.
“Play something to me,” she cried.
He lifted his face to her, and shook his head slightly.
“Yes do,” she said, looking down on him.
And he bent his head to the mandoline, and suddenly began to sing a Neapolitan song, in a faint, compressed head-voice, looking up at her again as his lips moved, looking straight into her face with a curious mocking caress as the muted voix blanche came through his lips at her, amid the louder quavering of the mandoline. The sound penetrated her like a thread of fire, hurting, but delicious, the high thread of his voice. She could see the Adam’s apple move in his throat, his brows tilted as he looked along his lashes at her all the time. Here was the strange sphinx singing again, and herself between its paws! She seemed almost to melt into his power.
Madame intervened to save her.
“What, serenade before breakfast! You have strong stomachs, I say. Eggs and ham are more the question, hein? Come, you smell them, don’t you?”
A flicker of contempt and derision went over Ciccio’s face as he broke off and looked aside.
“I prefer the serenade,” said Alvina. “I’ve had ham and eggs before.”
“You do, hein? Well — always, you won’t. And now you must eat the ham and eggs, however. Yes? Isn’t it so?”
Ciccio rose to his feet, and looked at Alvina: as he would have looked at Gigi, had Gigi been there. His eyes said unspeakable things about Madame. Alvina flashed a laugh, suddenly. And a good-humoured, half-mocking smile came over his face too.
They turned to follow Madame into the house. And as Alvina went before him, she felt his fingers stroke the nape of her neck, and pass in a soft touch right down her back. She started as if some unseen creature had stroked her with its paw, and she glanced swiftly round, to see the face of Ciccio mischievous behind her shoulder.
“Now I think,” said Madame, “that today we all take the same train. We go by the Great Central as far as the junction, together. Then you, Allaye, go on to Knarborough, and we leave you until tomorrow. And now there is not much time.”
“I am going to Woodhouse,” said Ciccio in French.
“You also! By the train, or the bicycle?”
“Train,” said Ciccio.
“Waste so much money?”
Ciccio raised his shoulders slightly.
When breakfast was over, and Alvina had gone to her room, Geoffrey went out into the back yard, where the bicycles stood.
“Cic’,” he said. “I should like to go with thee to Woodhouse. Come on bicycle with me.”
Ciccio shook his head.
“I’m going in train with her,” he said.
Geoffrey darkened with his heavy anger.
“I would like to see how it is, there, chez elle,” he said.
“Ask her,” said Ciccio.
Geoffrey watched him suddenly.
“Thou forsakest me,” he said. “I would like to see it, there.”
“Ask her,” repeated Ciccio. “Then come on bicycle.”
“You’re content to leave me,” muttered Geoffrey.
Ciccio touched his friend on his broad cheek, and smiled at him with affection.
“I don’t leave thee, Gigi. I asked thy advice. You said, Go. But come. Go and ask her, and then come. Come on bicycle, eh? Ask her! Go on! Go and ask her.”
Alvina was surprised to hear a tap at her door, and Gigi’s voice, in his strong foreign accent:
“Mees Houghton, I carry your bag.”
She opened her door in surprise. She was all ready.
“There it is,” she said, smiling at him.
But he confronted her like a powerful ox, full of dangerous force. Her smile had reassured him.
“Na, Allaye,” he said, “tell me something.”
“What?” laughed Alvina.
“Can I come to Woodhouse?”
“When?”
“Today. Can I come on bicycle, to tea, eh? At your house with you and Ciccio? Eh?”
He was smiling with a thick, doubtful, half sullen smile.
“Do!” said Alvina.
He looked at her with his large, dark-blue eyes.
“Really, eh?” he said, holding out his large hand.
She shook hands with him warmly.
“Yes, really!” she said. “I wish you would.”
“Good,” he said, a broad smile on his thick mouth. And all the time he watched her curiously, from his large eyes.
“Ciccio — a good chap, eh?” he said.
“Is he?” laughed Alvina.
“Ha-a — !” Gigi shook his head solemnly. “The best!” He made such solemn eyes, Alvina laughed. He laughed too, and picked up her bag as if it were a bubble.
“Na Cic’ — ” he said, as he saw Ciccio in the street. “Sommes d’accord.”
“Ben!” said Ciccio, holding out his hand for the bag. “Donne.”
“Ne-ne,” said Gigi, shrugging.
Alvina found herself on the new and busy station that Sunday morning, one of the little theatrical company. It was an odd experience. They were so obviously a theatrical company — people apart from the world. Madame was darting her black eyes here and there, behind her spotted veil, and standing with the ostensible self-possession of her profession. Max was circling round with large strides, round a big black box on which the red words Natcha-Kee-Tawara showed mystic, and round the small bunch of stage fittings at the end of the platform. Louis was waiting to get the tickets, Gigi and Ciccio were bringing up the bicycles. They were a whole train of departure in themselves, busy, bustling, cheerful — and curiously apart, vagrants.
Alvina strolled away towards the half-open bookstall. Geoffrey was standing monumental between her and the company. She returned to him.
“What time shall we expect you?” she said.
He smiled at her in his broad, friendly fashion.
“Expect me to be there? Why — ” he rolled his eyes and proceeded to calculate. “At four o’clock.”
“Just about the time when we get there,” she said.
He looked at her sagely, and nodded.
They were a good-humoured company in the railway carriage. The men smoked cigarettes and tapped off the ash on the heels of their boots, Madame watched every traveller with professional curiosity. Max scrutinized the newspaper, Lloyds, and pointed out items to Louis, who read them over Max’s shoulder, Ciccio suddenly smacked Geoffrey on the thigh, and looked laughing into his face. So till they arrived at the junction. And then there was a kissing and a taking of farewells, as if the company were separating for ever. Louis darted into the refreshment bar and returned with little pies and oranges, which he deposited in the carriage, Madame presented Alvina with a packet of chocolate. And it was “Good-bye, good-bye, Allaye! Good-bye, Ciccio! Bon voyage. Have a good time, both.”
So Alvina sped on in the fast train to Knarborough with Ciccio.
“I do like them all,” she said.
He opened his mouth slightly and lifted his head up and down. She saw in the movement how affectionate he was, and in his own way, how emotional. He loved them all. She put her hand to his. He gave her hand one sudden squeeze, of physical understanding, then left it as if nothing had happened. There were other people in the carriage with them. She could not help feeling how sudden and lovely that moment’s
grasp of his hand was: so warm, so whole.
And thus they watched the Sunday morning landscape slip by, as they ran into Knarborough. They went out to a little restaurant to eat. It was one o’clock.
“Isn’t it strange, that we are travelling together like this?” she said, as she sat opposite him.
He smiled, looking into her eyes.
“You think it’s strange?” he said, showing his teeth slightly. “Don’t you?” she cried.
He gave a slight, laconic laugh.
“And I can hardly bear it that I love you so much,” she said, quavering, across the potatoes.
He glanced furtively round, to see if any one was listening, if any one might hear. He would have hated it. But no one was near. Beneath the tiny table, he took her two knees between his knees, and pressed them with a slow, immensely powerful pressure. Helplessly she put her hand across the table to him. He covered it for one moment with his hand, then ignored it. But her knees were still between the powerful, living vice of his knees.
“Eat!” he said to her, smiling, motioning to her plate. And he relaxed her.
They decided to go out to Woodhouse on the tram-car, a long hour’s ride. Sitting on the top of the covered car, in the atmosphere of strong tobacco smoke, he seemed self-conscious, withdrawn into his own cover, so obviously a dark-skinned foreigner. And Alvina, as she sat beside him, was reminded of the woman with the negro husband, down in Lumley. She understood the woman’s reserve. She herself felt, in the same way, something of an outcast, because of the man at her side. An outcast! And glad to be an outcast. She clung to Ciccio’s dark, despised foreign nature. She loved it, she worshipped it, she defied all the other world. Dark, he sat beside her, drawn in to himself, overcast by his presumed inferiority among these northern industrial people. And she was with him, on his side, outside the pale of her own people.
There were already acquaintances on the tram. She nodded in answer to their salutation, but so obviously from a distance, that they kept turning round to eye her and Ciccio. But they left her alone. The breach between her and them was established for ever — and it was her will which established it.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 251