The Lost Girl Part 41

"But is it the same?" cried Alvina.

"Of cauce!" cried Mr. May. "Of _cauce_ it's the same."

Alvina laughed, a little heartlessly, into his pallid, stricken eyes.

"But what will you do?" she asked.

"I shall have to look for something else," said the injured but dauntless little man. "There's nothing _else_, is there?"

"Wouldn't you stay on?" she asked.

"I wouldn't think of it. I wouldn't think of it." He turtled like an injured pigeon.

"Well," she said, looking laconically into his face: "It's between you and father--"

"Of _cauce_!" he said. "Naturally! Where else--!" But his tone was a little spiteful, as if he had rested his last hopes on Alvina.

Alvina went away. She mentioned the coming change to Miss Pinnegar.

"Well," said Miss Pinnegar, judicious but aloof, "it's a move in the right direction. But I doubt if it'll do any good."

"Do you?" said Alvina. "Why?"

"I don't believe in the place, and I never did," declared Miss Pinnegar. "I don't believe any good will come of it."

"But why?" persisted Alvina. "What makes you feel so sure about it?"

"I don't know. But that's how I feel. And I have from the first. It was wrong from the first. It was wrong to begin it."

"But why?" insisted Alvina, laughing.

"Your father had no business to be led into it. He'd no business to touch this show business. It isn't like him. It doesn't belong to him. He's gone against his own nature and his own life."

"Oh but," said Alvina, "father was a showman even in the shop. He always was. Mother said he was like a showman in a booth."

Miss Pinnegar was taken aback.

"Well!" she said sharply. "If _that's_ what you've seen in him!"--there was a pause. "And in that case," she continued tartly, "I think some of the showman has come out in his daughter! or show-woman!--which doesn't improve it, to my idea."

"Why is it any worse?" said Alvina. "I enjoy it--and so does father."

"No," cried Miss Pinnegar. "There you're wrong! There you make a mistake. It's all against his better nature."

"Really!" said Alvina, in surprise. "What a new idea! But which is father's better nature?"

"You may not know it," said Miss Pinnegar coldly, "and if so, I can never tell you. But that doesn't alter it." She lapsed into dead silence for a moment. Then suddenly she broke out, vicious and cold: "He'll go on till he's killed himself, and _then_ he'll know."

The little adverb _then_ came whistling across the s.p.a.ce like a bullet. It made Alvina pause. Was her father going to die? She reflected. Well, all men must die.

She forgot the question in others that occupied her. First, could she bear it, when the Endeavour was turned into another cheap and nasty film-shop? The strange figures of the artistes pa.s.sing under her observation had really entertained her, week by week. Some weeks they had bored her, some weeks she had detested them, but there was always a chance in the coming week. Think of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras!

She thought too much of the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. She knew it. And she tried to force her mind to the contemplation of the new state of things, when she banged at the piano to a set of dithering and boring pictures. There would be her father, herself, and Mr. May--or a new operator, a new manager. The new manager!--she thought of him for a moment--and thought of the mechanical factory-faced persons who _managed_ Wright's and the Woodhouse Empire.

But her mind fell away from this barren study. She was obsessed by the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras. They seemed to have fascinated her. Which of them it was, or what it was that had cast the spell over her, she did not know. But she was as if hypnotized. She longed to be with them. Her soul gravitated towards them all the time.

Monday pa.s.sed, and Ciccio did not come: Tuesday pa.s.sed: and Wednesday. In her soul she was sceptical of their keeping their promise--either Madame or Ciccio. Why should they keep their promise? She knew what these nomadic artistes were. And her soul was stubborn within her.

On Wednesday night there was another sensation at the Endeavour. Mr.

May found James Houghton fainting in the box-office after the performance had begun. What to do? He could not interrupt Alvina, nor the performance. He sent the chocolate-and-orange boy across to the Pear Tree for brandy.

James revived. "I'm all right," he said, in a brittle fas.h.i.+on. "I'm all right. Don't bother." So he sat with his head on his hand in the box-office, and Mr. May had to leave him to operate the film.

When the interval arrived, Mr. May hurried to the box-office, a narrow hole that James could just sit in, and there he found the invalid in the same posture, semi-conscious. He gave him more brandy.

"I'm all right, I tell you," said James, his eyes flaring. "Leave me alone." But he looked anything but all right.

Mr. May hurried for Alvina. When the daughter entered the ticket place, her father was again in a state of torpor.

"Father," she said, shaking his shoulder gently. "What's the matter."

He murmured something, but was incoherent. She looked at his face.

It was grey and blank.

"We shall have to get him home," she said. "We shall have to get a cab."

"Give him a little brandy," said Mr. May.

The boy was sent for the cab, James swallowed a spoonful of brandy.

He came to himself irritably.

"What? What," he said. "I won't have all this fuss. Go on with the performance, there's no need to bother about me." His eye was wild.

"You must go home, father," said Alvina.

"Leave me alone! Will you leave me alone! Hectored by women all my life--hectored by women--first one, then another. I won't stand it--I won't stand it--" He looked at Alvina with a look of frenzy as he lapsed again, fell with his head on his hands on his ticket-board. Alvina looked at Mr. May.

"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 pa.s.sage.

"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 cab-man, who had James in his arms.

"Can you manage?" cried Alvina, showing a light.

"He doesn't weigh much," said the man.