"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 Kishwegin curiously.
"Can you _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 b.u.t.t 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 pa.s.sing; 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 pa.s.sing, 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.
"Well," she said, when she was safely back in Manchester House, with the gas lighted, and as she was pouring the boiling water into the tea-pot, "You may say what you like. It"s interesting in a way, just to show what savage Red-Indians were like. But it"s childish. It"s only childishness. I can"t understand, myself, how people can go on liking shows. Nothing happens. It"s not like the cinema, where you see it all and take it all in at once; you _know_ everything at a glance. You don"t know anything by looking at these people. You know they"re only men dressed up, for money. I can"t see why you should encourage it. I don"t hold with idle show-people, parading round, I don"t, myself. I like to go to the cinema once a week. It"s instruction, you take it all in at a glance, all you need to know, and it lasts you for a week. You can get to know everything about people"s actual lives from the cinema. I don"t see why you want people dressing up and showing off."
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 nonent.i.ty, 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."
CHAPTER VIII
CICCIO
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?"
"n.o.body 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 _n.o.body_?" persisted Madame.
"Not now," said Alvina. "Absolutely n.o.body." 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 Karenine. 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?"