The Lost Girl by D. H. Lawrence (best books for students to read txt) 📕

They sat down to their tea and toast and marmalade, during this harangue. Miss Pinnegar was always like a douche of cold water to Alvina, bringing her back to consciousness after a delicious excitement. In a minute Madame and Ciccio and all seemed to become unreal—the actual unrealities: while the ragged dithering pictures of the film were actual, real as the day. And Alvina was always put out when this happened. She really hated Miss Pinnegar. Yet she had nothing to answer. They were unreal, Madame and Ciccio and the rest. Ciccio was just a fantasy blown in on the wind, to blow away again. The real, permanent thing was Woodhouse, the semper idem Knarborough Road, and the unchangeable grubby gloom of Manchester House, with the stuffy, padding Miss Pinnegar, and her father, whose fingers, whose very soul seemed dirty with pennies. These were the solid, permanent fact. These were life itself. And Ciccio, splashing up on his bay horse and green cloth, he was a mountebank and an extraneous nonentity, a coloured old rag blown down the Knarborough Road into Limbo. Into Limbo. Whilst Miss Pinnegar and her father sat frowsily on for ever, eating their toast and cutting off the crust, and sipping their third cup of tea. They would never blow away—never, never. Woodhouse was there to eternity. And the Natcha-Kee-Tawara Troupe was blowing like a rag of old paper into Limbo. Nothingness! Poor Madame! Poor gallant histrionic Madame! The frowsy Miss Pinnegar could crumple her up and throw her down the utilitarian drain, and have done with her. Whilst Miss Pinnegar lived on for ever.

This put Alvina into a sharp temper.

"Miss Pinnegar," she said. "I do think you go on in the most unattractive way sometimes. You're a regular spoil-sport."

"Well," said Miss Pinnegar tartly. "I don't approve of your way of sport, I'm afraid."

"You can't disapprove of it as much as I hate your spoil-sport existence," said Alvina in a flare.

"Alvina, are you mad!" said her father.

"Wonder I'm not," said Alvina, "considering what my life is."

Madame did not pick up her spirits, after her cold. For two days she lay in bed, attended by Mrs. Rollings and Alvina and the young men. But she was most careful never to give any room for scandal. The young men might not approach her save in the presence of some third party. And then it was strictly a visit of ceremony or business.

"Oh, your Woodhouse, how glad I shall be when I have left it," she said to Alvina. "I feel it is unlucky for me."

"Do you?" said Alvina. "But if you'd had this bad cold in some places, you might have been much worse, don't you think."

"Oh my dear!" cried Madame. "Do you think I could confuse you in my dislike of this Woodhouse? Oh no! You are not Woodhouse. On the contrary, I think it is unkind for you also, this place. You look—also—what shall I say—thin, not very happy."

It was a note of interrogation.

"I'm sure I dislike Woodhouse much more than you can," replied
Alvina.

"I am sure. Yes! I am sure. I see it. Why don't you go away? Why don't you marry?"

"Nobody wants to marry me," said Alvina.

Madame looked at her searchingly, with shrewd black eyes under her arched eyebrows.

"How!" she exclaimed. "How don't they? You are not bad looking, only a little too thin—too haggard—"

She watched Alvina. Alvina laughed uncomfortably.

"Is there nobody?" persisted Madame.

"Not now," said Alvina. "Absolutely nobody." She looked with a confused laugh into Madame's strict black eyes. "You see I didn't care for the Woodhouse young men, either. I couldn't."

Madame nodded slowly up and down. A secret satisfaction came over her pallid, waxy countenance, in which her black eyes were like twin swift extraneous creatures: oddly like two bright little dark animals in the snow.

"Sure!" she said, sapient. "Sure! How could you? But there are other men besides these here—" She waved her hand to the window.

"I don't meet them, do I?" said Alvina.

"No, not often. But sometimes! sometimes!"

There was a silence between the two women, very pregnant.

"Englishwomen," said Madame, "are so practical. Why are they?"

"I suppose they can't help it," said Alvina. "But they're not half so practical and clever as you, Madame."

"Oh la—la! I am practical differently. I am practical impractically—" she stumbled over the words. "But your Sue now, in Jude the Obscure—is it not an interesting book? And is she not always too practically practical. If she had been impractically practical she could have been quite happy. Do you know what I mean?—no. But she is ridiculous. Sue: so Anna Karénine. Ridiculous both. Don't you think?"

"Why?" said Alvina.

"Why did they both make everybody unhappy, when they had the man they wanted, and enough money? I think they are both so silly. If they had been beaten, they would have lost all their practical ideas and troubles, merely forgot them, and been happy enough. I am a woman who says it. Such ideas they have are not tragical. No, not at all. They are nonsense, you see, nonsense. That is all. Nonsense. Sue and Anna, they are—non-sensical. That is all. No tragedy whatsoever. Nonsense. I am a woman. I know men also. And I know nonsense when I see it. Englishwomen are all nonsense: the worst women in the world for nonsense."

"Well, I am English," said Alvina.

"Yes, my dear, you are English. But you are not necessarily so non-sensical. Why are you at all?"

"Nonsensical?" laughed Alvina. "But I don't know what you call my nonsense."

"Ah," said Madame wearily. "They never understand. But I like you, my dear. I am an old woman—"

"Younger than I," said Alvina.

"Younger than you, because I am practical from the heart, and not only from the head. You are not practical from the heart. And yet you have a heart."

"But all Englishwomen have good hearts," protested Alvina.

"No! No!" objected Madame. "They are all ve-ry kind, and ve-ry practical with their kindness. But they have no heart in all their kindness. It is all head, all head: the kindness of the head."

"I can't agree with you," said Alvina.

"No. No. I don't expect it. But I don't mind. You are very kind to me, and I thank you. But it is from the head, you see. And so I thank you from the head. From the heart—no."

Madame plucked her white fingers together and laid them on her breast with a gesture of repudiation. Her black eyes stared spitefully.

"But Madame," said Alvina, nettled, "I should never be half such a good business woman as you. Isn't that from the head?"

"Ha! of course! Of course you wouldn't be a good business woman. Because you are kind from the head. I—" she tapped her forehead and shook her head—"I am not kind from the head. From the head I am business-woman, good business-woman. Of course I am a good business-woman—of course! But—" here she changed her expression, widened her eyes, and laid her hand on her breast—"when the heart speaks—then I listen with the heart. I do not listen with the head. The heart hears the heart. The head—that is another thing. But you have blue eyes, you cannot understand. Only dark eyes—" She paused and mused.

"And what about yellow eyes?" asked Alvina, laughing.

Madame darted a look at her, her lips curling with a very faint, fine smile of derision. Yet for the first time her black eyes dilated and became warm.

"Yellow eyes like Ciccio's?" she said, with her great watchful eyes and her smiling, subtle mouth. "They are the darkest of all." And she shook her head roguishly.

"Are they!" said Alvina confusedly, feeling a blush burning up her throat into her face.

"Ha—ha!" laughed Madame. "Ha-ha! I am an old woman, you see. My heart is old enough to be kind, and my head is old enough to be clever. My heart is kind to few people—very few—especially in this England. My young men know that. But perhaps to you it is kind."

"Thank you," said Alvina.

"There! From the head Thank you. It is not well done, you see. You see!"

But Alvina ran away in confusion. She felt Madame was having her on a string.

Mr. May enjoyed himself hugely playing Kishwégin. When Madame came downstairs Louis, who was a good satirical mimic, imitated him. Alvina happened to come into their sitting-room in the midst of their bursts of laughter. They all stopped and looked at her cautiously.

"Continuez! Continuez!" said Madame to Louis. And to Alvina: "Sit down, my dear, and see what a good actor we have in our Louis."

Louis glanced round, laid his head a little on one side and drew in his chin, with Mr. May's smirk exactly, and wagging his tail slightly, he commenced to play the false Kishwégin. He sidled and bridled and ejaculated with raised hands, and in the dumb show the tall Frenchman made such a ludicrous caricature of Mr. Houghton's manager that Madame wept again with laughter, whilst Max leaned back against the wall and giggled continuously like some pot involuntarily boiling. Geoffrey spread his shut fists across the table and shouted with laughter, Ciccio threw back his head and showed all his teeth in a loud laugh of delighted derision. Alvina laughed also. But she flushed. There was a certain biting, annihilating quality in Louis' derision of the absentee. And the others enjoyed it so much. At moments Alvina caught her lip between her teeth, it was so screamingly funny, and so annihilating. She laughed in spite of herself. In spite of herself she was shaken into a convulsion of laughter. Louis was masterful—he mastered her psyche. She laughed till her head lay helpless on the chair, she could not move. Helpless, inert she lay, in her orgasm of laughter. The end of Mr. May. Yet she was hurt.

And then Madame wiped her own shrewd black eyes, and nodded slow approval. Suddenly Louis started and held up a warning finger. They all at once covered their smiles and pulled themselves together. Only Alvina lay silently laughing.

"Oh, good morning, Mrs. Rollings!" they heard Mr. May's voice. "Your company is lively. Is Miss Houghton here? May I go through?"

They heard his quick little step and his quick little tap.

"Come in," called Madame.

The Natcha-Kee-Tawaras all sat with straight faces. Only poor Alvina lay back in her chair in a new weak convulsion. Mr. May glanced quickly round, and advanced to Madame.

"Oh, good-morning, Madame, so glad to see you downstairs," he said, taking her hand and bowing ceremoniously. "Excuse my intruding on your mirth!" He looked archly round. Alvina was still incompetent. She lay leaning sideways in her chair, and could not even speak to him.

"It was evidently a good joke," he said. "May I hear it too?"

"Oh," said Madame, drawling. "It was no joke. It was only Louis making a fool of himself, doing a turn."

"Must have been a good one," said Mr. May. "Can't we put it on?"

"No," drawled Madame, "it was nothing—just a non-sensical mood of the moment. Won't you sit down? You would like a little whiskey?—yes?"

Max poured out whiskey and water for Mr. May.

Alvina sat with her face averted, quiet, but unable to speak to Mr. May. Max and Louis had become polite. Geoffrey stared with his big, dark-blue eyes stolidly at the newcomer. Ciccio leaned with his arms on his knees, looking sideways under his long lashes at the inert Alvina.

"Well," said Madame, "and are you satisfied with your houses?"

"Oh yes," said Mr. May. "Quite! The two nights have been excellent.
Excellent!"

"Ah—I am glad. And Miss Houghton tells me I should not dance tomorrow, it is too soon."

"Miss Houghton knows," said Mr. May archly.

"Of course!" said Madame. "I must do as she tells me."

"Why yes, since it is for your good, and not hers."

"Of course! Of course! It is very kind of her."

"Miss Houghton is most kind—to every one," said Mr. May.

"I am sure," said Madame. "And I am very glad you have been such a good Kishwégin. That is very nice also."

"Yes," replied Mr. May. "I begin to wonder if I have mistaken my vocation. I should have been on the boards, instead of behind them."

"No doubt," said Madame. "But it is a little late—"