The Lost Girl

Alvina to the post of parish nurse, at six pounds a month: a small private school; a small haberdashery shop; and a position in the office of her cousin’s Knarborough business. To one and all Alvina answered with a tantalizing: “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know. I can’t say yet. I shall see. I shall see.” Till one and all became angry with her. They were all so benevolent, and all so sure that they were proposing the very best thing she could do. And they were all nettled, even indignant that she did not jump at their proposals. She listened to them all. She even invited their advice. Continually she said: “Well, what do you think of it?” And she repeated the chapel plan to the theatre group, the theatre plan to the chapel party, the nursing to the pianoforte proposers, the haberdashery shop to the private school advocates. “Tell me what you think,” she said repeatedly. And they all told her they thought their plan was best. And bit by bit she told every advocate the proposal of every other advocate “Well, Lawyer Beeby thinks⁠—” and “Well now, Mr. Clay, the minister, advises⁠—” and so on and so on, till it was all buzzing through thirty benevolent and officious heads. And thirty benevolently-officious wills were striving to plant each one its own particular scheme of benevolence. And Alvina, naive and pathetic, egged them all on in their strife, without even knowing what she was doing. One thing only was certain. Some obstinate will in her own self absolutely refused to have her mind made up. She would not have her mind made up for her, and she would not make it up for herself. And so everybody began to say “I’m getting tired of her. You talk to her, and you get no forrarder. She slips off to something else. I’m not going to bother with her any more.” In truth, Woodhouse was in a fever, for three weeks or more, arranging Alvina’s unarrangeable future for her. Offers of charity were innumerable⁠—for three weeks.

Meanwhile, the lawyer went on with the proving of the will and the drawing up of a final account of James’s property; Mr. May went on with the Endeavour, though Alvina did not go down to play; Miss Pinnegar went on with the workgirls: and Alvina went on unmaking her mind.

Ciccio did not come during the first week. Alvina had a postcard from Madame, from Cheshire: rather far off. But such was the buzz and excitement over her material future, such a fever was worked up round about her that Alvina, the petty-propertied heroine of the moment, was quite carried away in a storm of schemes and benevolent suggestions. She answered Madame’s postcard, but did not give much thought to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. As a matter of fact, she was enjoying a real moment of importance, there at the centre of Woodhouse’s rather domineering benevolence: a benevolence which she unconsciously, but systematically frustrated. All this scheming for selling out and making reservations and hanging on and fixing prices and getting private bids for Manchester House and for the Endeavour, the excitement of forming a Limited Company to run the Endeavour, of seeing a lawyer about the sale of Manchester House and the auctioneer about the sale of the furniture, of receiving men who wanted to pick up the machines upstairs cheap, and of keeping everything dangling, deciding nothing, putting everything off till she had seen somebody else, this for the moment fascinated her, went to her head. It was not until the second week had passed that her excitement began to merge into irritation, and not until the third week had gone by that she began to feel herself entangled in an asphyxiating web of indecision, and her heart began to sing because Ciccio had never turned up. Now she would have given anything to see the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras again. But she did not know where they were. Now she began to loathe the excitement of her property: doubtfully hers, every stick of it. Now she would give anything to get away from Woodhouse, from the horrible buzz and entanglement of her sordid affairs. Now again her wild recklessness came over her.

She suddenly said she was going away somewhere: she would not say where. She cashed all the money she could: a hundred-and-twenty-five pounds. She took the train to Cheshire, to the last address of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: she followed them to Stockport: and back to Chinley: and there she was stuck for the night. Next day she dashed back almost to Woodhouse, and swerved round to Sheffield. There, in that black town, thank heaven, she saw their announcement on the wall. She took a taxi to their theatre, and then on to their lodgings. The first thing she saw was Louis, in his shirtsleeves, on the landing above.

She laughed with excitement and pleasure. She seemed another woman. Madame looked up, almost annoyed, when she entered.

“I couldn’t keep away from you, Madame,” she cried.

“Evidently,” said Madame.

Madame was darning socks for the young men. She was a wonderful mother for them, sewed for them, cooked for them, looked after them most carefully. Not many minutes was Madame idle.

“Do you mind?” said Alvina.

Madame darned for some moments without answering.

“And how is everything at Woodhouse?” she asked.

“I couldn’t bear it any longer. I couldn’t bear it. So I collected all the money I could, and ran away. Nobody knows where I am.”

Madame looked up with bright, black, censorious eyes, at the flushed girl opposite. Alvina had a certain strangeness and brightness, which Madame did not know, and a frankness which the Frenchwoman mistrusted, but found disarming.

“And all the business, the will and all?” said Madame.

“They’re still fussing about it.”

“And there is some money?”

“I have got a hundred pounds here,” laughed Alvina. “What there will be when everything is settled, I don’t know. But not very much, I’m sure of that.”

“How much do you think? A thousand