“We must get him home,” she said. She covered him up with a coat, and sat by him. The performance went on without music. At last the cab came. James, unconscious, was driven up to Woodhouse. He had to be carried indoors. Alvina hurried ahead to make a light in the dark passage.
“Father’s ill!” she announced to Miss Pinnegar.
“Didn’t I say so!” said Miss Pinnegar, starting from her chair.
The two women went out to meet the cabman, who had James in his arms.
“Can you manage?” cried Alvina, showing a light.
“He doesn’t weigh much,” said the man.
Tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu! went Miss Pinnegar’s tongue, in a rapid tut-tut of distress. “What have I said, now,” she exclaimed. “What have I said all along?”
James was laid on the sofa. His eyes were half-shut. They made him drink brandy, the boy was sent for the doctor, Alvina’s bed was warmed. The sick man was got to bed. And then started another vigil. Alvina sat up in the sick room. James started and muttered, but did not regain consciousness. Dawn came, and he was the same. Pneumonia and pleurisy and a touch of meningitis. Alvina drank her tea, took a little breakfast, and went to bed at about nine o’clock in the morning, leaving James in charge of Miss Pinnegar. Time was all deranged.
Miss Pinnegar was a nervous nurse. She sat in horror and apprehension, her eyebrows raised, starting and looking at James in terror whenever he made a noise. She hurried to him and did what she could. But one would have said she was repulsed, she found her task unconsciously repugnant.
During the course of the morning Mrs. Rollings came up and said that the Italian from last week had come, and could he speak to Miss Houghton.
“Tell him she’s resting, and Mr. Houghton is seriously ill,” said Miss Pinnegar sharply.
When Alvina came downstairs at about four in the afternoon she found a package: a comb of carved bone, and a message from Madame: “To Miss Houghton, with kindest greetings and most sincere thanks from Kishwégin.”
The comb with its carved, beast-faced serpent was her portion. Alvina asked if there had been any other message. None.
Mr. May came in, and stayed for a dismal half-hour. Then Alvina went back to her nursing. The patient was no better, still unconscious. Miss Pinnegar came down, red eyed and sullen looking. The condition of James gave little room for hope.
In the early morning he died. Alvina called Mrs. Rollings, and they composed the body. It was still only five o’clock, and not light. Alvina went to lie down in her father’s little, rather chilly chamber at the end of the corridor. She tried to sleep, but could not. At half-past seven she arose, and started the business of the new day. The doctor came—she went to the registrar—and so on.
Mr. May came. It was decided to keep open the theatre. He would find someone else for the piano, someone else to issue the tickets.
In the afternoon arrived Frederick Houghton, James’s cousin and nearest relative. He was a middle-aged, blond, florid, churchgoing draper from Knarborough, well-to-do and very bourgeois. He tried to talk to Alvina in a fatherly fashion, or a friendly, or a helpful fashion. But Alvina could not listen to him. He got on her nerves.
Hearing the gate bang, she rose and hurried to the window. She was in the drawing-room with her cousin, to give the interview its proper air of solemnity. She saw Ciccio rearing his yellow bicycle against the wall, and going with his head forward along the narrow, dark way of the back yard, to the scullery door.
“Excuse me a minute,” she said to her cousin, who looked up irritably as she left the room.
She was just in time to open the door as Ciccio tapped. She stood on the doorstep above him. He looked up, with a faint smile, from under his black lashes.
“How nice of you to come,” she said. But her face was blanched and tired, without expression. Only her large eyes looked blue in their tiredness, as she glanced down at Ciccio. He seemed to her far away.
“Madame asks how is Mr. Houghton,” he said.
“Father! He died this morning,” she said quietly.
“He died!” exclaimed the Italian, a flash of fear and dismay going over his face.
“Yes—this morning.” She had neither tears nor emotion, but just looked down on him abstractedly, from her height on the kitchen step. He dropped his eyes and looked at his feet. Then he lifted his eyes again, and looked at her. She looked back at him, as from across a distance. So they watched each other, as strangers across a wide, abstract distance.
He turned and looked down the dark yard, towards the gate where he could just see the pale grey tire of his bicycle, and the yellow mudguard. He seemed to be reflecting. If he went now, he went forever. Involuntarily he turned and lifted his face again towards Alvina, as if studying her curiously. She remained there on the doorstep, neutral, blanched, with wide, still, neutral eyes. She did not seem to see him. He studied her with alert, yellow-dusky, inscrutable eyes, until she met his look. And then he gave the faintest gesture with his head, as of summons towards him. Her soul started, and died in her. And again he gave the slight, almost imperceptible jerk of the head, backwards and sideways, as if summoning her towards him. His face too was closed and expressionless. But in his eyes, which kept hers, there was a dark flicker of ascendancy. He was going to triumph over her. She knew it. And her soul sank as if it sank out of her body. It sank away out of her body, left her there powerless, soulless.
And yet as he turned, with his head stretched forward, to move away: as he glanced slightly over his shoulder: she stepped down from the step, down to his level, to follow him. He went ducking along the dark yard,
