put the question implied that Alvina did not and could not love him — because Miss Frost could not. Alvina lifted her large, blue eyes, confused, half-tender towards her governess, half shining with unconscious derision.
“I don’t really know,” she said, laughing hurriedly. “I don’t really.” Miss Frost scrutinized her, and replied with a meaningful: “Well —!”
To Miss Frost it was clear as daylight. To Alvina not so. In her periods of lucidity, when she saw as clear as daylight also, she certainly did not love the little man. She felt him a terrible outsider, an inferior, to tell the truth. She wondered how he could have the slightest attraction for her. In fact she could not understand it at all. She was as free of him as if he had never existed. The square green emerald on her finger was almost nonsensical. She was quite, quite sure of herself.
And then, most irritating, a complete volte face in her feelings. The clear-as-daylight mood disappeared as daylight is bound to disappear. She found herself in a night where the little man loomed large, terribly large, potent and magical, while Miss Frost had dwindled to nothingness. At such times she wished with all her force that she could travel like a cablegram to Australia. She felt it was the only way. She felt the dark, passionate receptivity of Alexander overwhelmed her, enveloped her even from the Antipodes. She felt herself going distracted — she felt she was going out of her mind. For she could not act.
Her mother and Miss Frost were fixed in one line. Her father said: “Well, of course, you’ll do as you think best. There’s a great risk in going so far — a great risk. You would be entirely unprotected.”
“I don’t mind being unprotected,” said Alvina perversely. “Because you don’t understand what it means,” said her father.
He looked at her quickly. Perhaps he understood her better than the others.
“Personally,” said Miss Pinnegar, speaking of Alexander, “I don’t care for him. But every one has their own taste.”
Alvina felt she was being overborne, and that she was letting herself be overborne. She was half relieved. She seemed to nestle into the well-known surety of Woodhouse. The other unknown had frightened her.
Miss Frost now took a definite line.
“I feel you don’t love him, dear. I’m almost sure you don’t. So now you have to choose. Your mother dreads your going — she dreads it. I am certain you would never see her again. She says she can’t bear it — she can’t bear the thought of you out there with Alexander. It makes her shudder. She suffers dreadfully, you know. So you will have to choose, dear. You will have to choose for the best.”
Alvina was made stubborn by pressure. She herself had come fully to believe that she did not love him. She was quite sure she did not love him. But out of a certain perversity, she wanted to go.
Came his letter from Sydney, and one from his parents to her and one to her parents. All seemed straightforward — not very cordial, but sufficiently. Over Alexander’s letter Miss Frost shed bitter tears. To her it seemed so shallow and heartless, with terms of endearment stuck in like exclamation marks. He seemed to have no thought, no feeling for the girl herself. All he wanted was to hurry her out there. He did not even mention the grief of her parting from her English parents and friends: not a word. Just a rush to get her out there, winding up with “And now, dear, I shall not be myself till I see you here in Sydney — Your ever-loving Alexander.” A selfish, sensual creature, who would forget the dear little Vina in three months, if she did not turn up, and who would neglect her in six months, if she did. Probably Miss Frost was right.
Alvina knew the tears she was costing all round. She went upstairs and looked at his photograph — his dark and impertinent muzzle. Who was he, after all? She did not know him. With cold eyes she looked at him, and found him repugnant.
She went across to her governess’s room, and found Miss Frost in a strange mood of trepidation.
“Don’t trust me, dear, don’t trust what I say,” poor Miss Frost ejaculated hurriedly, even wildly. “Don’t notice what I have said. Act for yourself, dear. Act for yourself entirely. I am sure I am wrong in trying to influence you. I know I am wrong. It is wrong and foolish of me. Act just for yourself, dear — the rest doesn’t matter. The rest doesn’t matter. Don’t take any notice of what I have said. I know I am wrong.”
For the first time in her life Alvina saw her beloved governess flustered, the beautiful white hair looking a little draggled, the grey, nearsighted eyes, so deep and kind behind the gold-rimmed glasses, now distracted and scared. Alvina immediately burst into tears and flung herself into the arms of Miss Frost. Miss Frost also cried as if her heart would break, catching her indrawn breath with a strange sound of anguish, forlornness, the terrible crying of a woman with a loving heart, whose heart has never been able to relax. Alvina was hushed. In a second, she became the elder of the two. The terrible poignancy of the woman of fifty-two, who now at last had broken down, silenced the girl of twenty-three, and roused all her passionate tenderness. The terrible sound of “Never now, never now — it is too late,” which seemed to ring in the curious, indrawn cries of the elder woman, filled the girl with a deep wisdom. She knew the same would ring in her mother’s dying cry. Married or unmarried, it was the same — the same anguish, realized in all its pain after the age of fifty — the loss in never having been able to relax, to submit.
Alvina felt very strong and rich in the fact of her youth. For her it was not too late. For Miss Frost it was for ever too late.
“I don’t want to go, dear,” said Alvina to the elder woman. “I know I don’t care for him. He is nothing to me.”
Miss Frost became gradually silent, and turned aside her face. After this there was a hush in the house. Alvina announced her intention of breaking off her engagement. Her mother kissed her, and cried, and said, with the selfishness of an invalid:
“I couldn’t have parted with you, I couldn’t.” Whilst the father said: “I think you are wise, Vina. I have thought a lot about it.”
So Alvina packed up his ring and his letters and little presents, and posted them over the seas. She was relieved, really: as if she had escaped some very trying ordeal. For some days she went about happily, in pure relief. She loved everybody. She was charming and sunny and gentle with everybody, particularly with Miss Frost, whom she loved with a deep, tender, rather sore love. Poor Miss Frost seemed to have lost a part of her confidence, to have taken on a new wistfulness, a new silence and remoteness. It was as if she found her busy contact with life a strain now. Perhaps she was getting old. Perhaps her proud heart had given way.
Alvina had kept a little photograph of the man. She would often go and look at it. Love? — no, it was not love! It was something more primitive still. It was curiosity, deep, radical, burning curiosity. How she looked and looked at his dark, impertinent-seeming face. A flicker of derision came into her eyes. Yet still she looked.
In the same manner she would look into the faces of the young men of Woodhouse. But she never found there what she found in her photograph. They all seemed like blank sheets of paper in comparison. There was a curious pale surface-look in the faces of the young men of Woodhouse: or, if there was some underneath suggestive power, it was a little abject or humiliating, inferior, common. They were all either blank or common.
Chapter 3
The Maternity Nurse
