can’t stay here all my life,” she declared, stretching her eyes in a way that irritated the other inmates of Manchester House extremely. “I know I can’t. I can’t bear it. I simply can’t bear it, and there’s an end of it. I can’t, I tell you. I can’t bear it. I’m buried alive — simply buried alive. And it’s more than I can stand. It is, really.”
There was an odd clang, like a taunt, in her voice. She was trying them all.
“But what do you want, dear?” asked Miss Frost, knitting her dark brows in agitation.
“I want to go away,” said Alvina bluntly.
Miss Frost gave a slight gesture with her right hand, of helpless impatience. It was so characteristic, that Alvina almost laughed. “But where do you want to go?” asked Miss Frost.
“I don’t know. I don’t care,” said Alvina. “Anywhere, if I can get out of Woodhouse.”
“Do you wish you had gone to Australia?” put in Miss Pinnegar.
“No, I don’t wish I had gone to Australia,” retorted Alvina with a rude laugh. “Australia isn’t the only other place besides Woodhouse.”
Miss Pinnegar was naturally offended. But the curious insolence which sometimes came out in the girl was inherited direct from her father.
“You see, dear,” said Miss Frost, agitated: “if you knew what you wanted, it would be easier to see the way.”
“I want to be a nurse,” rapped out Alvina.
Miss Frost stood still, with the stillness of a middle-aged disapproving woman, and looked at her charge. She believed that Alvina was just speaking at random. Yet she dared not check her, in her present mood.
Alvina was indeed speaking at random. She had never thought of being a nurse — the idea had never entered her head. If it had she would certainly never have entertained it. But she had heard Alexander speak of Nurse This and Sister That. And so she had rapped out her declaration. And having rapped it out, she prepared herself to stick to it. Nothing like leaping before you look.
“A nurse!” repeated Miss Frost. “But do you feel yourself fitted to be a nurse? Do you think you could bear it?”
“Yes, I’m sure I could,” retorted Alvina. “I want to be a maternity nurse —” She looked strangely, even outrageously, at her governess. “I want to be a maternity nurse. Then I shouldn’t have to attend operations.” And she laughed quickly.
Miss Frost’s right hand beat like a wounded bird. It was reminiscent of the way she beat time, insistently, when she was giving music lessons, sitting close beside her pupils at the piano. Now it beat without time or reason. Alvina smiled brightly and cruelly.
“Whatever put such an idea into your head, Vina?” asked poor Miss Frost.
“I don’t know,” said Alvina, still more archly and brightly. “Of course you don’t mean it, dear,” said Miss Frost, quailing. “Yes, I do. Why should I say it if I don’t.”
Miss Frost would have done anything to escape the arch, bright, cruel eyes of her charge.
“Then we must think about it,” she said, numbly. And she went away.
Alvina floated off to her room, and sat by the window looking down on the street. The bright, arch look was still on her face. But her heart was sore. She wanted to cry, and fling herself on the breast of her darling. But she couldn’t. No, for her life she couldn’t. Some little devil sat in her breast and kept her smiling archly.
Somewhat to her amazement, he sat steadily on for days and days. Every minute she expected him to go. Every minute she expected to break down, to burst into tears and tenderness and reconciliation. But no — she did not break down. She persisted. They all waited for the old loving Vina to be herself again. But the new and recalcitrant Vina still shone hard. She found a copy of The Lancet, and saw an advertisement of a home in Islington where maternity nurses would be fully trained and equipped in six months’ time. The fee was sixty guineas. Alvina declared her intention of departing to this training home. She had two hundred pounds of her own, bequeathed by her grandfather.
In Manchester House they were all horrified — not moved with grief, this time, but shocked. It seemed such a repulsive and indelicate step to take. Which it was. And which, in her curious perverseness, Alvina must have intended it to be. Mrs. Houghton assumed a remote air of silence, as if she did not hear any more, did not belong. She lapsed far away. She was really very weak. Miss Pinnegar said: “Well, really, if she wants to do it, why, she might as well try.” And, as often with Miss Pinnegar, this speech seemed to contain a veiled threat.
“A maternity nurse!” said James Houghton. “A maternity nurse! What exactly do you mean by a maternity nurse?”
“A trained mid-wife,” said Miss Pinnegar curtly. “That’s it, isn’t it? It is as far as I can see. A trained mid-wife.”
“Yes, of course,” said Alvina brightly.
“But —!” stammered James Houghton, pushing his spectacles up on to his forehead, and making his long fleece of painfully thin hair uncover his baldness. “I can’t understand that any young girl of any — any upbringing, any upbringing whatever, should want to choose such a — such — an — occupation. I can’t understand it.”
“Can’t you?” said Alvina brightly.
“Oh, well, if she does —” said Miss Pinnegar cryptically.
Miss Frost said very little. But she had serious confidential talks with Dr. Fordham. Dr. Fordham didn’t approve, certainly he didn’t — but neither did he see any great harm in it. At that time it was rather the thing for young ladies to enter the nursing profession, if their hopes had been blighted or checked in another direction! And so, enquiries were made. Enquiries were made.
The upshot was, that Alvina was to go to Islington for her six months’ training. There was a great bustle, preparing her nursing outfit. Instead of a trousseau, nurse’s uniforms in fine blue-and-white stripe, with great white aprons. Instead of a wreath of orange blossom, a rather chic nurse’s bonnet of blue silk, and for a trailing veil, a blue silk fall.
Well and good! Alvina expected to become frightened, as the time drew neat But no, she wasn’t a bit frightened. Miss Frost watched her narrowly. Would there not be a return of the old, tender, sensitive, shrinking Vina — the exquisitely sensitive and nervous, loving girl? No, astounding as it may seem, there was no return of such a creature. Alvina remained bright and ready, the half-hilarious clang remained in her voice, taunting. She kissed them all good-bye, brightly and sprightlily, and off she set. She wasn’t nervous.
She came to St. Pancras, she got her cab, she drove off to her destination — and as she drove, she looked out of the window. Horrid, vast, stony, dilapidated, crumbly-stuccoed streets and squares of Islington, grey, grey, greyer by far than Woodhouse, and interminable. How exceedingly sordid and disgusting! But instead of being repelled and heartbroken, Alvina enjoyed it. She felt her trunk rumble on the top of the cab, and still she looked out on the ghastly dilapidated flat facades of Islington, and still she smiled brightly, as if there were some charm in it all. Perhaps for her there was a charm in it all. Perhaps it acted like a tonic on the little devil in her breast. Perhaps if she had seen tufts of snowdrops — it was February — and yew-hedges and
