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
Of course Alvina made everybody pay for her mood of submission and sweetness. In a month’s time she was quite intolerable.
“I 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