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

the housewife chuntering.

"Oh my lawk, come in nurse! What a day! Doctor's not been yet. And he's bound to come now I've just cleaned up, trapesin' wi' his gret feet. He's got the biggest understandin's of any man i' Lancaster. My husband says they're the best pair o' pasties i' th' kingdom. An' he does make such a mess, for he never stops to wipe his feet on th' mat, marches straight up your clean stairs—"

"Why don't you tell him to wipe his feet?" said Alvina.

"Oh my word! Fancy me telling him! He'd jump down my throat with both feet afore I'd opened my mouth. He's not to be spoken to, he isn't. He's my-lord, he is. You mustn't look, or you're done for."

Alvina laughed. She knew they all liked him for browbeating them, and having a heart over and above.

Sometimes he was given a good hit—though nearly always by a man. It happened he was in a workman's house when the man was at dinner.

"Canna yer gi'e a man summat better nor this 'ere pap, Missis?" said the hairy husband, turning up his nose at the rice pudding.

"Oh go on," cried the wife. "I hadna time for owt else." Dr.
Mitchell was just stooping his handsome figure in the doorway.

"Rice pudding!" he exclaimed largely. "You couldn't have anything more wholesome and nourishing. I have a rice pudding every day of my life—every day of my life, I do."

The man was eating his pudding and pearling his big moustache copiously with it. He did not answer.

"Do you doctor!" cried the woman. "And never no different."

"Never," said the doctor.

"Fancy that! You're that fond of them?"

"I find they agree with me. They are light and digestible. And my stomach is as weak as a baby's."

The labourer wiped his big moustache on his sleeve.

"Mine isna, tha sees," he said, "so pap's no use. 'S watter ter me. I want ter feel as I've had summat: a bit o' suetty dumplin' an' a pint o' hale, summat ter fill th' hole up. An' tha'd be th' same if tha did my work."

"If I did your work," sneered the doctor. "Why I do ten times the work that any one of you does. It's just the work that has ruined my digestion, the never getting a quiet meal, and never a whole night's rest. When do you think I can sit at table and digest my dinner? I have to be off looking after people like you—"

"Eh, tha can ta'e th' titty-bottle wi' thee," said the labourer.

But Dr. Mitchell was furious for weeks over this. It put him in a black rage to have his great manliness insulted. Alvina was quietly amused.

The doctor began by being rather lordly and condescending with her. But luckily she felt she knew her work at least as well as he knew it. She smiled and let him condescend. Certainly she neither feared nor even admired him. To tell the truth, she rather disliked him: the great, red-faced bachelor of fifty-three, with his bald spot and his stomach as weak as a baby's, and his mouthing imperiousness and his good heart which was as selfish as it could be. Nothing can be more cocksuredly selfish than a good heart which believes in its own beneficence. He was a little too much the teetotaller on the one hand to be so largely manly on the other. Alvina preferred the labourers with their awful long moustaches that got full of food. And he was a little too loud-mouthedly lordly to be in human good taste.

As a matter of fact, he was conscious of the fact that he had risen to be a gentleman. Now if a man is conscious of being a gentleman, he is bound to be a little less than a man. But if he is gnawed with anxiety lest he may not be a gentleman, he is only pitiable. There is a third case, however. If a man must loftily, by his manner, assert that he is now a gentleman, he shows himself a clown. For Alvina, poor Dr. Mitchell fell into this third category, of clowns. She tolerated him good-humouredly, as women so often tolerate ninnies and poseurs. She smiled to herself when she saw his large and important presence on the board. She smiled when she saw him at a sale, buying the grandest pieces of antique furniture. She smiled when he talked of going up to Scotland, for grouse shooting, or of snatching an hour on Sunday morning, for golf. And she talked him over, with quiet, delicate malice, with the matron. He was no favourite at the hospital.

Gradually Dr. Mitchell's manner changed towards her. From his imperious condescension he took to a tone of uneasy equality. This did not suit him. Dr. Mitchell had no equals: he had only the vast stratum of inferiors, towards whom he exercised his quite profitable beneficence—it brought him in about two thousand a year: and then his superiors, people who had been born with money. It was the tradesmen and professionals who had started at the bottom and clambered to the motor-car footing, who distressed him. And therefore, whilst he treated Alvina on this uneasy tradesman footing, he felt himself in a false position.

She kept her attitude of quiet amusement, and little by little he sank. From being a lofty creature soaring over her head, he was now like a big fish poking its nose above water and making eyes at her. He treated her with rather presuming deference.

"You look tired this morning," he barked at her one hot day.

"I think it's thunder," she said.

"Thunder! Work, you mean," and he gave a slight smile. "I'm going to drive you back."

"Oh no, thanks, don't trouble! I've got to call on the way."

"Where have you got to call?"

She told him.

"Very well. That takes you no more than five minutes. I'll wait for you. Now take your cloak."

She was surprised. Yet, like other women, she submitted.

As they drove he saw a man with a barrow of cucumbers. He stopped the car and leaned towards the man.

"Take that barrow-load of poison and bury it!" he shouted, in his strong voice. The busy street hesitated.

"What's that, mister?" replied the mystified hawker.

Dr. Mitchell pointed to the green pile of cucumbers.

"Take that barrow-load of poison, and bury it," he called, "before you do anybody any more harm with it."

"What barrow-load of poison's that?" asked the hawker, approaching.
A crowd began to gather.

"What barrow-load of poison is that!" repeated the doctor. "Why your barrow-load of cucumbers."

"Oh," said the man, scrutinizing his cucumbers carefully. To be sure, some were a little yellow at the end. "How's that? Cumbers is right enough: fresh from market this morning."

"Fresh or not fresh," said the doctor, mouthing his words distinctly, "you might as well put poison into your stomach, as those things. Cucumbers are the worst thing you can eat."

"Oh!" said the man, stuttering. "That's 'appen for them as doesn't like them. I niver knowed a cumber do me no harm, an' I eat 'em like a happle." Whereupon the hawker took a "cumber" from his barrow, bit off the end, and chewed it till the sap squirted. "What's wrong with that?" he said, holding up the bitten cucumber.

"I'm not talking about what's wrong with that," said the doctor. "My business is what's wrong with the stomach it goes into. I'm a doctor. And I know that those things cause me half my work. They cause half the internal troubles people suffer from in summertime."

"Oh ay! That's no loss to you, is it? Me an' you's partners. More cumbers I sell, more graft for you, 'cordin' to that. What's wrong then. Cum-bers! Fine fresh Cum-berrrs! All fresh and juisty, all cheap and tasty—!" yelled the man.

"I am a doctor not only to cure illness, but to prevent it where I can. And cucumbers are poison to everybody."

"Cum-bers! Cum-bers! Fresh cumbers!" yelled the man,

Dr. Mitchell started his car.

"When will they learn intelligence?" he said to Alvina, smiling and showing his white, even teeth.

"I don't care, you know, myself," she said. "I should always let people do what they wanted—"

"Even if you knew it would do them harm?" he queried, smiling with amiable condescension.

"Yes, why not! It's their own affair. And they'll do themselves harm one way or another."

"And you wouldn't try to prevent it?"

"You might as well try to stop the sea with your fingers."

"You think so?" smiled the doctor. "I see, you are a pessimist. You are a pessimist with regard to human nature."

"Am I?" smiled Alvina, thinking the rose would smell as sweet. It seemed to please the doctor to find that Alvina was a pessimist with regard to human nature. It seemed to give her an air of distinction. In his eyes, she seemed distinguished. He was in a fair way to dote on her.

She, of course, when he began to admire her, liked him much better, and even saw graceful, boyish attractions in him. There was really something childish about him. And this something childish, since it looked up to her as if she were the saving grace, naturally flattered her and made her feel gentler towards him.

He got in the habit of picking her up in his car, when he could. And he would tap at the matron's door, smiling and showing all his beautiful teeth, just about tea-time.

"May I come in?" His voice sounded almost flirty.

"Certainly."

"I see you're having tea! Very nice, a cup of tea at this hour!"

"Have one too, doctor."

"I will with pleasure." And he sat down wreathed with smiles. Alvina rose to get a cup. "I didn't intend to disturb you, nurse," he said. "Men are always intruders," he smiled to the matron.

"Sometimes," said the matron, "women are charmed to be intruded upon."

"Oh really!" his eyes sparkled. "Perhaps you wouldn't say so, nurse?" he said, turning to Alvina. Alvina was just reaching at the cupboard. Very charming she looked, in her fresh dress and cap and soft brown hair, very attractive her figure, with its full, soft loins. She turned round to him.

"Oh yes," she said. "I quite agree with the matron."

"Oh, you do!" He did not quite know how to take it. "But you mind being disturbed at your tea, I am sure."

"No," said Alvina. "We are so used to being disturbed."

"Rather weak, doctor?" said the matron, pouring the tea.

"Very weak, please."

The doctor was a little laboured in his gallantry, but unmistakably gallant. When he was gone, the matron looked demure, and Alvina confused. Each waited for the other to speak.

"Don't you think Dr. Mitchell is quite coming out?" said Alvina.

"Quite! Quite the ladies' man! I wonder who it is can be bringing him out. A very praiseworthy work, I am sure." She looked wickedly at Alvina.

"No, don't look at me," laughed Alvina, "I know nothing about it."

"Do you think it may be me!" said the matron, mischievous.

"I'm sure of it, matron! He begins to show some taste at last."

"There now!" said the matron. "I shall put my cap straight." And she went to the mirror, fluffing her hair and settling her cap.

"There!" she said, bobbing a little curtsey to Alvina.

They both laughed, and went off to work.

But there was no mistake, Dr. Mitchell was beginning to expand. With Alvina he quite unbent, and seemed even to sun himself when she was near, to attract her attention. He smiled and smirked and became oddly self-conscious: rather uncomfortable. He liked to hang over her chair, and he made a great event of offering her a cigarette whenever they met, although he himself never smoked. He had a gold cigarette case.

One day he asked her in to see his garden. He had a pleasant old square house with a big walled garden. He showed her his flowers and his wall-fruit, and asked her to eat his strawberries. He bade her admire his asparagus. And then he gave her tea in the drawing-room, with strawberries and cream and cakes, of all of which he ate nothing. But he smiled expansively all the time. He was a made man: and now he was really letting himself go, luxuriating in everything; above all, in Alvina, who poured tea gracefully from the old Georgian tea-pot, and smiled so pleasantly above the Queen Anne tea-cups.

And she, wicked that