Alvina sat down and covered her face, trembling.
“I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!” she moaned. “I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you come with me. I have money. You come with me, to my place in the mountains, to my uncle’s house. Fine house, you like it. Come with me, Allaye.”
She could not look at him.
“Why do you want me?” she said.
“Why I want you?” He gave a curious laugh, almost of ridicule. “I don’t know that. You ask me another, eh?”
She was silent, sitting looking downwards.
“I can’t, I think,” she said abstractedly, looking up at him.
He smiled, a fine, subtle smile, like a demon’s, but inexpressibly gentle. He made her shiver as if she was mesmerized. And he was reaching forward to her as a snake reaches, nor could she recoil.
“You come, Allaye,” he said softly, with his foreign intonation. “You come. You come to Italy with me. Yes?” He put his hand on her, and she started as if she had been struck. But his hands, with the soft, powerful clasp, only closed her faster.
“Yes?” he said. “Yes? All right, eh? All right!”—he had a strange mesmeric power over her, as if he possessed the sensual secrets, and she was to be subjected.
“I can’t,” she moaned, trying to struggle. But she was powerless.
Dark and insidious he was: he had no regard for her. How could a man’s movements be so soft and gentle, and yet so inhumanly regardless! He had no regard for her. Why didn’t she revolt? Why couldn’t she? She was as if bewitched. She couldn’t fight against her bewitchment. Why? Because he seemed to her beautiful, so beautiful. And this left her numb, submissive. Why must she see him beautiful? Why was she will-less? She felt herself like one of the old sacred prostitutes: a sacred prostitute.
In the morning, very early, they left for Scarborough, leaving a letter for the sleeping Tommy. In Scarborough they went to the registrar’s office: they could be married in a fortnight’s time. And so the fortnight passed, and she was under his spell. Only she knew it. She felt extinguished. Ciccio talked to her: but only ordinary things. There was no wonderful intimacy of speech, such as she had always imagined, and always craved for. No. He loved her—but it was in a dark, mesmeric way, which did not let her be herself. His love did not stimulate her or excite her. It extinguished her. She had to be the quiescent, obscure woman: she felt as if she were veiled. Her thoughts were dim, in the dim back regions of consciousness—yet, somewhere, she almost exulted. Atavism! Mrs. Tuke’s word would play in her mind. Was it atavism, this sinking into extinction under the spell of Ciccio? Was it atavism, this strange, sleep-like submission to his being? Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was. But it was also heavy and sweet and rich. Somewhere, she was content. Somewhere even she was vastly proud of the dark veiled eternal loneliness she felt, under his shadow.
And so it had to be. She shuddered when she touched him, because he was so beautiful, and she was so submitted. She quivered when he moved as if she were his shadow. Yet her mind remained distantly clear. She would criticize him, find fault with him, the things he did. But ultimately she could find no fault with him. She had lost the power. She didn’t care. She had lost the power to care about his faults. Strange, sweet, poisonous indifference! She was drugged. And she knew it. Would she ever wake out of her dark, warm coma? She shuddered, and hoped not. Mrs. Tuke would say atavism. Atavism! The word recurred curiously.
But under all her questionings she felt well; a nonchalance deep as sleep, a passivity and indifference so dark and sweet she felt it must be evil. Evil! She was evil. And yet she had no power to be otherwise. They were legally married. And she was glad. She was relieved by knowing she could not escape. She was Mrs. Marasca. What was the good of trying to be Miss Houghton any longer? Marasca, the bitter cherry. Some dark poison fruit she had eaten. How glad she was she had eaten it! How beautiful he was! And no one saw it but herself. For her it was so potent it made her tremble when she noticed him. His beauty, his dark shadow. Ciccio really was much handsomer since his marriage. He seemed to emerge. Before, he had seemed to make himself invisible in the streets, in England, altogether. But now something unfolded in him, he was a potent, glamorous presence, people turned to watch him. There was a certain dark, leopard-like pride in the air about him, something that the English people watched.
He wanted to go to Italy. And now it was his will which counted. Alvina, as his wife, must submit. He took her to London the day after the marriage. He wanted to get away to Italy. He did not like being in England, a foreigner, amid the beginnings of the spy craze.
In London they stayed at his cousin’s house. His cousin kept a restaurant in Battersea, and was a flourishing London Italian, a real London product with all the good English virtues of cleanliness and honesty added to an Italian shrewdness. His name was Giuseppe Califano, and he was pale, and he had four children of whom he was very proud. He received Alvina with an affable respect, as if she were an asset in the family, but as if he were a little uneasy and disapproving. She had come down, in marrying Ciccio. She had lost caste. He rather seemed to exult over her degradation. For he was a northernized Italian, he had accepted English standards. His children were English brats. He almost patronized Alvina.
But then a long, slow look from her remote blue eyes brought him up sharp, and he envied Ciccio suddenly, he was
