“Quite sufficient, thank you,” said Alvina.
“Oh! Well! Well now!—” He fidgeted a little. “You see, we are all old neighbours and connected with your father for many years. We—that is the persons interested, and myself—would not like to think that you were driven out of Woodhouse—er—er—destitute. If—er—we could come to some composition—make some arrangement that would be agreeable to you, and would, in some measure, secure you a means of livelihood—”
He watched Alvina with sharp blue eyes. Alvina looked back at him, still vacantly.
“No—thanks awfully!” she said. “But don’t bother. I’m going away.”
“With the travelling theatrical company?”
“Yes.”
The lawyer studied his fingernails intensely.
“Well,” he said, feeling with a fingertip an imaginary roughness of one nail-edge. “Well, in that case—In that case—Supposing you have made an irrevocable decision—”
He looked up at her sharply. She nodded slowly, like a porcelain mandarin.
“In that case,” he said, “we must proceed with the valuation and the preparation for the sale.”
“Yes,” she said faintly.
“You realize,” he said, “that everything in Manchester House, except your private personal property, and that of Miss Pinnegar, belongs to the claimants, your father’s creditors, and may not be removed from the house.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And it will be necessary to make an account of everything in the house. So if you and Miss Pinnegar will put your possessions strictly apart—But I shall see Miss Pinnegar during the course of the day. Would you ask her to call about seven—I think she is free then—”
Alvina sat trembling.
“I shall pack my things today,” she said.
“Of course,” said the lawyer, “any little things to which you may be attached the claimants would no doubt wish you to regard as your own. For anything of greater value—your piano, for example—I should have to make a personal request—”
“Oh, I don’t want anything—” said Alvina.
“No? Well! You will see. You will be here a few days?”
“No,” said Alvina. “I’m going away today.”
“Today! Is that also irrevocable?”
“Yes. I must go this afternoon.”
“On account of your engagement? May I ask where your company is performing this week? Far away?”
“Mansfield!”
“Oh! Well then, in case I particularly wished to see you, you could come over?”
“If necessary,” said Alvina. “But I don’t want to come to Woodhouse unless it is necessary. Can’t we write?”
“Yes—certainly! Certainly!—most things! Certainly! And now—”
He went into certain technical matters, and Alvina signed some documents. At last she was free to go. She had been almost an hour in the room.
“Well, good morning, Miss Houghton. You will hear from me, and I from you. I wish you a pleasant experience in your new occupation. You are not leaving Woodhouse forever.”
“Goodbye!” she said. And she hurried to the road.
Try as she might, she felt as if she had had a blow which knocked her down. She felt she had had a blow.
At the lawyer’s gate she stood a minute. There, across a little hollow, rose the cemetery hill. There were her graves: her mother’s, Miss Frost’s, her father’s. Looking, she made out the white cross at Miss Frost’s grave, the grey stone at her parents’. Then she turned slowly, under the church wall, back to Manchester House.
She felt humiliated. She felt she did not want to see anybody at all. She did not want to see Miss Pinnegar, nor the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: and least of all, Ciccio. She felt strange in Woodhouse, almost as if the ground had risen from under her feet and hit her over the mouth. The fact that Manchester House and its very furniture was under seal to be sold on behalf of her father’s creditors made her feel as if all her Woodhouse life had suddenly gone smash. She loathed the thought of Manchester House. She loathed staying another minute in it.
And yet she did not want to go to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras either. The church clock above her clanged eleven. She ought to take the twelve-forty train to Mansfield. Yet instead of going home she turned off down the alley towards the fields and the brook.
How many times had she gone that road! How many times had she seen Miss Frost bravely striding home that way, from her music-pupils. How many years had she noticed a particular wild cherry-tree come into blossom, a particular bit of blackthorn scatter its whiteness in among the pleached twigs of a hawthorn hedge. How often, how many springs had Miss Frost come home with a bit of this blackthorn in her hand!
Alvina did not want to go to Mansfield that afternoon. She felt insulted. She knew she would be much cheaper in Madame’s eyes. She knew her own position with the troupe would be humiliating. It would be openly a little humiliating. But it would be much more maddeningly humiliating to stay in Woodhouse and experience the full flavour of Woodhouse’s calculated benevolence. She hardly knew which was worse: the cool look of insolent half-contempt, half-satisfaction with which Madame would receive the news of her financial downfall, or the officious patronage which she would meet from the Woodhouse magnates. She knew exactly how Madame’s black eyes would shine, how her mouth would curl with a sneering, slightly triumphant smile, as she heard the news. And she could hear the bullying tone in which Henry Wagstaff would dictate the Woodhouse benevolence to her. She wanted to go away from them all—from them all—forever.
Even from Ciccio. For she felt he insulted her too. Subtly, they all did it. They had regard for her possibilities as an heiress. Five hundred, even two hundred pounds would have made all the difference. Useless to deny it. Even to Ciccio. Ciccio would have had a lifelong respect for her, if she had come with even so paltry a sum as two hundred pounds. Now she had nothing, he would coolly withhold this respect. She felt he might jeer at her. And she could not get away from this feeling.
Mercifully she had the bit of ready
