The Lost Girl, D. H. Lawrence [spicy books to read txt] 📗

thoroughly, and threw away the wash water and rinsed the wash-bowls with fresh water, scrupulously. Then she dressed herself in her black dress once more, did her hair, and went downstairs.

But she could not sew—and she could not settle down. It was Saturday evening, and her father had opened the shop, Miss Pinnegar had gone to Knarborough. She would be back at nine o'clock. Alvina set about to make a mock woodcock, or a mock something or other, with cheese and an egg and bits of toast. Her eyes were dilated and as if amused, mocking, her face quivered a little with irony that was not all enjoyable.

"I'm glad you've come," said Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar entered. "The supper's just done. I'll ask father if he'll close the shop."

Of course James would not close the shop, though he was merely wasting light. He nipped in to eat his supper, and started out again with a mouthful the moment he heard the ping of the bell. He kept his customers chatting as long as he could. His love for conversation had degenerated into a spasmodic passion for chatter.

Alvina looked across at Miss Pinnegar, as the two sat at the meagre supper-table. Her eyes were dilated and arched with a mocking, almost satanic look.

"I've made up my mind about Albert Witham," said Alvina. Miss
Pinnegar looked at her.

"Which way?" she asked, demurely, but a little sharp.

"It's all off," said Alvina, breaking into a nervous laugh.

"Why? What has happened?"

"Nothing has happened. I can't stand him."

"Why?—suddenly—" said Miss Pinnegar.

"It's not sudden," laughed Alvina. "Not at all. I can't stand him. I never could. And I won't try. There! Isn't that plain?" And she went off into her hurried laugh, partly at herself, partly at Arthur, partly at Albert, partly at Miss Pinnegar.

"Oh, well, if you're so sure—" said Miss Pinnegar rather bitingly.

"I am quite sure—" said Alvina. "I'm quite certain."

"Cock-sure people are often most mistaken," said Miss Pinnegar.

"I'd rather have my own mistakes than somebody else's rights," said
Alvina.

"Then don't expect anybody to pay for your mistakes," said Miss
Pinnegar.

"It would be all the same if I did," said Alvina.

When she lay in bed, she stared at the light of the street-lamp on the wall. She was thinking busily: but heaven knows what she was thinking. She had sharpened the edge of her temper. She was waiting till tomorrow. She was waiting till she saw Albert Witham. She wanted to finish off with him. She was keen to cut clean through any correspondence with him. She stared for many hours at the light of the street-lamp, and there was a narrowed look in her eyes.

The next day she did not go to Morning Service, but stayed at home to cook the dinner. In the evening she sat in her place in the choir. In the Withams' pew sat Lottie and Albert—no Arthur. Albert kept glancing up. Alvina could not bear the sight of him—she simply could not bear the sight of him. Yet in her low, sweet voice she sang the alto to the hymns, right to the vesper:

    "Lord keep us safe this night
    Secure from all our fears,
    May angels guard us while we sleep
    Till morning light appears—"

As she sang her alto, and as the soft and emotional harmony of the vesper swelled luxuriously through the chapel, she was peeping over her folded hands at Lottie's hat. She could not bear Lottie's hats. There was something aggressive and vulgar about them. And she simply detested the look of the back of Albert's head, as he too stooped to the vesper prayer. It looked mean and rather common. She remembered Arthur had the same look, bending to prayer. There!—why had she not seen it before! That petty, vulgar little look! How could she have thought twice of Arthur. She had made a fool of herself, as usual. Him and his little leg. She grimaced round the chapel, waiting for people to bob up their heads and take their departure.

At the gate Albert was waiting for her. He came forward lifting his hat with a smiling and familiar "Good evening!"

"Good evening," she murmured.

"It's ages since I've seen you," he said. "And I've looked out for you everywhere."

It was raining a little. She put up her umbrella.

"You'll take a little stroll. The rain isn't much," he said.

"No, thank you," she said. "I must go home."

"Why, what's your hurry! Walk as far as Beeby Bridge. Go on."

"No, thank you."

"How's that? What makes you refuse?"

"I don't want to."

He paused and looked down at her. The cold and supercilious look of anger, a little spiteful, came into his face.

"Do you mean because of the rain?" he said.

"No. I hope you don't mind. But I don't want to take any more walks.
I don't mean anything by them."

"Oh, as for that," he said, taking the words out of her mouth. "Why should you mean anything by them!" He smiled down on her.

She looked him straight in the face.

"But I'd rather not take any more walks, thank you—none at all," she said, looking him full in the eyes.

"You wouldn't!" he replied, stiffening.

"Yes. I'm quite sure," she said.

"As sure as all that, are you!" he said, with a sneering grimace. He stood eyeing her insolently up and down.

"Good-night," she said. His sneering made her furious. Putting her umbrella between him and her, she walked off.

"Good-night then," he replied, unseen by her. But his voice was sneering and impotent.

She went home quivering. But her soul was burning with satisfaction.
She had shaken them off.

Later she wondered if she had been unkind to him. But it was done—and done for ever. Vogue la galère.

CHAPTER VI HOUGHTON'S LAST ENDEAVOUR

The trouble with her ship was that it would not sail. It rode water-logged in the rotting port of home. All very well to have wild, reckless moods of irony and independence, if you have to pay for them by withering dustily on the shelf.

Alvina fell again into humility and fear: she began to show symptoms of her mother's heart trouble. For day followed day, month followed month, season after season went by, and she grubbed away like a housemaid in Manchester House, she hurried round doing the shopping, she sang in the choir on Sundays, she attended the various chapel events, she went out to visit friends, and laughed and talked and played games. But all the time, what was there actually in her life? Not much. She was withering towards old-maiddom. Already in her twenty-eighth year, she spent her days grubbing in the house, whilst her father became an elderly, frail man still too lively in mind and spirit. Miss Pinnegar began to grow grey and elderly too, money became scarcer and scarcer, there was a black day ahead when her father would die and the home be broken up, and she would have to tackle life as a worker.

There lay the only alternative: in work. She might slave her days away teaching the piano, as Miss Frost had done: she might find a subordinate post as nurse: she might sit in the cash-desk of some shop. Some work of some sort would be found for her. And she would sink into the routine of her job, as did so many women, and grow old and die, chattering and fluttering. She would have what is called her independence. But, seriously faced with that treasure, and without the option of refusing it, strange how hideous she found it.

Work!—a job! More even than she rebelled against the Withams did she rebel against a job. Albert Witham was distasteful to her—or rather, he was not exactly distasteful, he was chiefly incongruous. She could never get over the feeling that he was mouthing and smiling at her through the glass wall of an aquarium, he being on the watery side. Whether she would ever be able to take to his strange and dishuman element, who knows? Anyway it would be some sort of an adventure: better than a job. She rebelled with all her backbone against the word job. Even the substitutes, employment or work, were detestable, unbearable. Emphatically, she did not want to work for a wage. It was too humiliating. Could anything be more infra dig than the performing of a set of special actions day in day out, for a life-time, in order to receive some shillings every seventh day. Shameful! A condition of shame. The most vulgar, sordid and humiliating of all forms of slavery: so mechanical. Far better be a slave outright, in contact with all the whims and impulses of a human being, than serve some mechanical routine of modern work.

She trembled with anger, impotence, and fear. For months, the thought of Albert was a torment to her. She might have married him. He would have been strange, a strange fish. But were it not better to take the strange leap, over into his element, than to condemn oneself to the routine of a job? He would have been curious and dishuman. But after all, it would have been an experience. In a way, she liked him. There was something odd and integral about him, which she liked. He was not a liar. In his own line, he was honest and direct. Then he would take her to South Africa: a whole new milieu. And perhaps she would have children. She shivered a little. No, not his children! He seemed so curiously cold-blooded. And yet, why not? Why not his curious, pale, half cold-blooded children, like little fishes of her own? Why not? Everything was possible: and even desirable, once one could see the strangeness of it. Once she could plunge through the wall of the aquarium! Once she could kiss him!

Therefore Miss Pinnegar's quiet harping on the string was unbearable.

"I can't understand that you disliked Mr. Witham so much?" said Miss
Pinnegar.

"We never can understand those things," said Alvina. "I can't understand why I dislike tapioca and arrowroot—but I do."

"That's different," said Miss Pinnegar shortly.

"It's no more easy to understand," said Alvina.

"Because there's no need to understand it," said Miss Pinnegar.

"And is there need to understand the other?"

"Certainly. I can see nothing wrong with him," said Miss Pinnegar.

Alvina went away in silence. This was in the first months after she had given Albert his dismissal. He was at Oxford again—would not return to Woodhouse till Christmas. Between her and the Woodhouse Withams there was a decided coldness. They never looked at her now—nor she at them.

None the less, as Christmas drew near Alvina worked up her feelings. Perhaps she would be reconciled to him. She would slip across and smile to him. She would take the plunge, once and for all—and kiss him and marry him and bear the little half-fishes, his children. She worked herself into quite a fever of anticipation.

But when she saw him, the first evening, sitting stiff and staring flatly in front of him in Chapel, staring away from everything in the world, at heaven knows what—just as fishes stare—then his dishumanness came over her again like an arrest, and arrested all her flights of fancy. He stared flatly in front of him, and flatly set a wall of oblivion between him and her. She trembled and let be.

After Christmas, however, she had nothing at all to think forward to. And it was then she seemed to shrink: she seemed positively to shrink.

"You never spoke to Mr. Witham?" Miss Pinnegar asked.

"He never spoke to me," replied Alvina.

"He raised his hat to me."

"You ought to have married him, Miss Pinnegar," said Alvina. "He would have been right for you." And she laughed rather mockingly.

"There is no need to make provision for me," said Miss Pinnegar.

And after this, she was a long time before she forgave Alvina, and was really friendly again. Perhaps she would never have forgiven her if she had not found her weeping rather bitterly in her mother's abandoned sitting-room.

Now so far, the story of Alvina is commonplace enough. It is more or less the story of thousands of girls. They all find work. It is the ordinary solution of everything. And if we were dealing with an ordinary girl we should have to carry on mildly and dully down the long years of employment; or, at the best, marriage with some dull school-teacher or office-clerk.

But we protest that Alvina is not ordinary. Ordinary people, ordinary fates. But extraordinary people, extraordinary fates.