“Ma nun me lasciar’—”
“Ma nun me lasciar’—!” she murmured, repeating the music. “That means—Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! But why? Why shouldn’t one human being go away from another? What does it mean? That awful noise! Isn’t love the most horrible thing! I think it’s horrible. It just does one in, and turns one into a sort of howling animal. I’m howling with one sort of pain, he’s howling with another. Two hellish animals howling through the night! I’m not myself, he’s not himself. Oh, I think it’s horrible. What does he look like, Nurse? Is he beautiful? Is he a great hefty brute?”
She looked with big, slow, enigmatic eyes at Alvina.
“He’s a man I knew before,” said Alvina.
Mrs. Tuke’s face woke from its half-trance.
“Really! Oh! A man you knew before! Where?”
“It’s a long story,” said Alvina. “In a travelling music-hall troupe.”
“In a travelling music-hall troupe! How extraordinary! Why, how did you come across such an individual—?”
Alvina explained as briefly as possible. Mrs. Tuke watched her.
“Really!” she said. “You’ve done all those things!” And she scrutinized Alvina’s face. “You’ve had some effect on him, that’s evident,” she said. Then she shuddered, and dabbed her nose with her handkerchief. “Oh, the flesh is a beastly thing!” she cried. “To make a man howl outside there like that, because you’re here. And to make me howl because I’ve got a child inside me. It’s unbearable! What does he look like, really?”
“I don’t know,” said Alvina. “Not extraordinary. Rather a hefty brute—”
Mrs. Tuke glanced at her, to detect the irony.
“I should like to see him,” she said. “Do you think I might?”
“I don’t know,” said Alvina, noncommittal.
“Do you think he might come up? Ask him. Do let me see him.”
“Do you really want to?” said Alvina.
“Of course—” Mrs. Tuke watched Alvina with big, dark, slow eyes. Then she dragged herself to her feet. Alvina helped her into bed.
“Do ask him to come up for a minute,” Effie said. “We’ll give him a glass of Tommy’s famous port. Do let me see him. Yes do!” She stretched out her long white arm to Alvina, with sudden imploring.
Alvina laughed, and turned doubtfully away.
The night was silent outside. But she found Ciccio leaning against a gate-pillar. He started up.
“Allaye!” he said.
“Will you come in for a moment? I can’t leave Mrs. Tuke.”
Ciccio obediently followed Alvina into the house and up the stairs, without a word. He was ushered into the bedroom. He drew back when he saw Effie in the bed, sitting with her long plaits and her dark eyes, and the subtle-seeming smile at the corners of her mouth.
“Do come in!” she said. “I want to thank you for the music. Nurse says it was for her, but I enjoyed it also. Would you tell me the words? I think it’s a wonderful song.”
Ciccio hung back against the door, his head dropped, and the shy, suspicious, faintly malicious smile on his face.
“Have a glass of port, do!” said Effie. “Nurse, give us all one. I should like one too. And a biscuit.” Again she stretched out her long white arm from the sudden blue lining of her wrap, suddenly, as if taken with the desire. Ciccio shifted on his feet, watching Alvina pour out the port.
He swallowed his in one swallow, and put aside his glass.
“Have some more!” said Effie, watching over the top of her glass.
He smiled faintly, stupidly, and shook his head.
“Won’t you? Now tell me the words of the song—”
He looked at her from out of the dusky hollows of his brow, and did not answer. The faint, stupid half-smile, half-sneer was on his lips.
“Won’t you tell them me? I understood one line—”
Ciccio smiled more pronouncedly as he watched her, but did not speak.
“I understood one line,” said Effie, making big eyes at him. “Ma non me lasciare—Don’t leave me! There, isn’t that it?”
He smiled, stirred on his feet, and nodded.
“Don’t leave me! There, I knew it was that. Why don’t you want Nurse to leave you? Do you want her to be with you every minute?”
He smiled a little contemptuously, awkwardly, and turned aside his face, glancing at Alvina. Effie’s watchful eyes caught the glance. It was swift, and full of the terrible yearning which so horrified her.
At the same moment a spasm crossed her face, her expression went blank.
“Shall we go down?” said Alvina to Ciccio.
He turned immediately, with his cap in his hand, and followed. In the hall he pricked up his ears as he took the mandolin from the chest. He could hear the stifled cries and exclamations from Mrs. Tuke. At the same moment the door of the study opened, and the musician, a burly fellow with troubled hair, came out.
“Is that Mrs. Tuke?” he snapped anxiously.
“Yes. The pains have begun,” said Alvina.
“Oh God! And have you left her!” He was quite irascible.
“Only for a minute,” said Alvina.
But with a Pf! of angry indignation, he was climbing the stairs.
“She is going to have a child,” said Alvina to Ciccio. “I shall have to go back to her.” And she held out her hand.
He did not take her hand, but looked down into her face with the same slightly distorted look of overwhelming yearning, yearning heavy and unbearable, in which he was carried towards her as on a flood.
“Allaye!” he said, with a faint lift of the lip that showed his teeth, like a pained animal: a curious sort of smile. He could not go away.
“I shall have to go back to her,” she said.
“Shall you come with me to Italy, Allaye?”
“Yes. Where is Madame?”
“Gone! Gigi—all gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Gone back to France—called up.”
“And Madame and Louis and Max?”
“Switzerland.”
He stood helplessly looking at her.
“Well, I must go,” she said.
He watched her with his yellow eyes, from under his long black lashes, like some chained animal, haunted by doom. She turned and
