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THE LOST GIRL
“Yes, so it will. But for the present it’s there. Don’t you
think you ought to thank me?”
He recoiled a little.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m very much obliged.”
“You ought to be more than that,” she said.
He did not answer, but looked her up and down.
“We’ll be going down,” he said. “We s’ll have folks talking.”
Suddenly she began to laugh. It seemed so comical. What
a position! The candle shook as she laughed. What a man, answering her like a little automaton! Seriously, quite seriously
he said it to her – ”We s’ll have folks talking!” She laughed in
a breathless, hurried way, as they tramped downstairs.
At the bottom of the stairs Calladine, the caretaker, met
them. He was a tall thin man with a black moustache – about
fi fty years old. “Have you done for tonight, all of you?” he said,
grinning in echo to Alvina’s still fl uttering laughter.
“That’s a nice rotten pair of steps you’ve got up there for
a deathtrap,” said Arthur angrily. “Come down on top of me,
and I’m lucky I haven’t got my leg broken. It is near enough.”
“Come down with you, did they?” said Calladine good-humouredly. “I never knowed ’em come down wi’ me.”
“You ought to, then. My leg’s as near broke as it can be.”
“What, have you hurt yourself?”
“I should think I have. Look here – ” And he began to pull
up his trouser leg. But Alvina had given the candle to Calladine, and fl ed. She had a last view of Arthur stooping over
his precious leg, while Calladine stooped his length and held
down the candle.
121
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
When she got home she took off her dress and washed herself hard and washed the stained sleeve, thoroughly, thoroughly, and threw away the wash water and rinsed the wash-bowls
with fresh water, scrupulously. Then she dressed herself in her
black dress once more, did her hair, and went downstairs.
But she could not sew – and she could not settle down. It
was Saturday evening, and her father had opened the shop,
Miss Pinnegar had gone to Knarborough. She would be back
at nine o’clock. Alvina set about to make a mock woodcock, or
a mock something or other, with cheese and an egg and bits
of toast. Her eyes were dilated and as if amused, mocking, her
face quivered a little with irony that was not all enjoyable.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Alvina, as Miss Pinnegar entered. “The supper’s just done. I’ll ask father if he’ll close the
shop.”
Of course James would not close the shop, though he was
merely wasting light. He nipped in to eat his supper, and started out again with a mouthful the moment he heard the ping
of the bell. He kept his customers chatting as long as he could.
His love for conversation had degenerated into a spasmodic
passion for chatter.
Alvina looked across at Miss Pinnegar, as the two sat at the
meagre supper-table. Her eyes were dilated and arched with
a mocking, almost satanic look.
“I’ve made up my mind about Albert Witham,” said Alvina.
Miss Pinnegar looked at her.
“Which way?” she asked, demurely, but a little sharp.
“It’s all off,” said Alvina, breaking into a nervous laugh.
“Why? What has happened?”
122
THE LOST GIRL
“Nothing has happened. I can’t stand him.”
“Why? – suddenly – ” said Miss Pinnegar.
“It’s not sudden,” laughed Alvina. “Not at all. I can’t stand
him. I never could. And I won’t try. There! Isn’t that plain?”
And she went off into her hurried laugh, partly at herself,
partly at Arthur, partly at Albert, partly at Miss Pinnegar.
“Oh, well, if you’re so sure – ” said Miss Pinnegar rather
bitingly.
“I am quite sure – ” said Alvina. “I’m quite certain.”
“Cock-sure people are often most mistaken,” said Miss Pinnegar. “I’d rather have my own mistakes than somebody else’s
rights,” said Alvina.
“Then don’t expect anybody to pay for your mistakes,” said
Miss Pinnegar.
“It would be all the same if I did,” said Alvina.
When she lay in bed, she stared at the light of the streetlamp on the wall. She was thinking busily: but heaven knows
what she was thinking. She had sharpened the edge of her
temper. She was waiting till tomorrow. She was waiting till she
saw Albert Witham. She wanted to fi nish off with him. She was
keen to cut clean through any correspondence with him. She
stared for many hours at the light of the street-lamp, and there
was a narrowed look in her eyes.
The next day she did not go to Morning Service, but
stayed at home to cook the dinner. In the evening she sat in
her place in the choir. In the Withams’ pew sat Louie and Albert – no Arthur. Albert kept glancing up. Alvina could not
bear the sight of him – she simply could not bear the sight
123
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
of him. Yet in her low, sweet voice she sang the alto to the
hymns, right to the vesper:
“Lord keep us safe this night Secure from all our fears, May
angels guard us while we sleep Till morning light appears – ”
As she sang her alto, and as the soft and emotional harmony of the vesper swelled luxuriously through the chapel, she
was peeping over her folded hands at Lottie’s hat. She could
not bear Lottie’s hats. There was something aggressive and
vulgar about them. And she simply detested the look of the
back of Albert’s head, as he too stooped to the vesper prayer.
It looked mean and rather common. She remembered Arthur
had the same look, bending to prayer. There! – why had she
not seen it before! That petty, vulgar little look! How could she
have thought twice of Arthur. She had made a fool of herself,
as usual. Him and his little leg. She grimaced round the chapel, waiting for people to bob up their heads and take their
departure.
At the gate Albert was waiting for her. He came forward
lifting his hat with a smiling and familiar “Good evening!”
“Good evening,” she murmured.
“It’s ages since I’ve seen you,” he said. “And I’ve looked out
for you everywhere.”
It was raining a little. She put up her umbrella.
“You’ll take a little stroll. The rain isn’t much,” he said.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I must go home.”
“Why, what’s your hurry! Walk as far as Beeby Bridge. Go on.”
“No, thank you.”
“How’s that? What makes you refuse?”
“I don’t want to.”
124
THE LOST GIRL
He paused and looked down at her. The cold and supercilious look of anger, a little spiteful, came into his face.
“Do you mean because of the rain?” he said.
“No. I hope you don’t mind. But I don’t want to take any
more walks. I don’t mean anything by them.”
“Oh, as for that,” he said, taking the words out of her mouth.
“Why should you mean anything by them!” He smiled down
on her. She looked him straight in the face.
“But I’d rather not take any more walks, thank you – none
at all,” she said, looking him full in the eyes.
“You wouldn’t!” he replied, stiffening.
“Yes. I’m quite sure,” she said.
“As sure as all that, are you!” he said, with a sneering grimace. He stood eyeing her insolently up and down.
“Good-night,” she said. His sneering made her furious. Putting her umbrella between him and her, she walked off.
“Good-night then,” he replied, unseen by her. But his voice
was sneering and impotent.
She went home quivering. But her soul was burning with
satisfaction. She had shaken them off.
Later she wondered if she had been unkind to him. But it
was done – and done for ever. Vogue la galère.
CHAPTER VI
HOUGHTON’S LAST
ENDEAVOUR
The trouble with her ship was that it would not sail. It rode
waterlogged in the rotting port of home. All very well to have
wild, reckless moods of irony and independence, if you have to
pay for them by withering dustily on the shelf.
Alvina fell again into humility and fear: she began to show
symptoms of her mother’s heart trouble. For day followed day,
month followed month, season after season went by, and she
grubbed away like a housemaid in Manchester House, she
hurried round doing the shopping, she sang in the choir on
Sundays, she attended the various chapel events, she went out
to visit friends, and laughed and talked and played games. But
all the time, what was there actually in her life? Not much. She
was withering towards old-maiddom. Already in her twentyeighth year, she spent her days grubbing in the house, whilst
her father became an elderly, frail man still too lively in mind
and spirit. Miss Pinnegar began to grow grey and elderly too,
money became scarcer and scarcer, there was a black day ahead
when her father would die and the home be broken up, and
she would have to tackle life as a worker.
126
THE LOST GIRL
There lay the only alternative: in work. She might slave
her days away teaching the piano, as Miss Frost had done: she
might fi nd a subordinate post as nurse: she might sit in the
cash-desk of some shop. Some work of some sort would be
found for her. And she would sink into the routine of her job,
as did so many women, and grow old and die, chattering and
fl uttering. She would have what is called her independence.
But, seriously faced with that treasure, and without the option
of refusing it, strange how hideous she found it.
Work! – a job! More even than she rebelled against the
Withams did she rebel against a job. Albert Witham was distasteful to her – or rather, he was not exactly distasteful, he
was chiefl y incongruous. She could never get over the feeling
that he was mouthing and smiling at her through the glass
wall of an aquarium, he being on the watery side. Whether
she would ever be able to take to his strange and dishuman
element, who knows? Anyway it would be some sort of an adventure: better than a job. She rebelled with all her backbone
against the word job. Even the substitutes, employment or work,
were detestable, unbearable. Emphatically, she did not want
to work for a wage. It was too humiliating. Could anything be
more infra dig than the performing of a set of special actions
day in day out, for a life-time, in order to receive some shillings every seventh day. Shameful! A condition of shame. The
most vulgar, sordid and humiliating of all forms of slavery: so
mechanical. Far better be a slave outright, in contact with all
the whims and impulses of a human being, than serve some
mechanical routine of modern work.
127
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
She trembled with anger, impotence, and fear. For months,
the thought of Albert was a torment to her. She might have
married him. He would have been strange, a strange fi sh. But
were it not better to take the strange leap, over into his element,
than to condemn oneself to the routine of a job? He would
have been curious and dishuman. But after all, it would have
been an experience. In a way, she liked him. There was something odd and integral about him, which she liked. He was not
a liar. In his own line, he was honest and direct. Then he would
take her to South Africa: a whole new milieu. And perhaps she
would have children. She shivered a little. No, not his children! He seemed so curiously cold-blooded. And yet, why not?
Why not his curious, pale, half cold-blooded children, like little fi shes of her own? Why not? Everything was possible: and
even desirable, once one could see the strangeness of it. Once
she could plunge through the wall of the aquarium! Once she
could kiss him!
Therefore Miss Pinnegar’s quiet harping on the string was
unbearable.
“I can’t understand that you disliked Mr. Witham so
much?” said Miss Pinnegar.
“We never can understand those things,” said Alvina.
“I can’t understand why I dislike tapioca and arrowroot – but
I do.”
“That’s different,” said Miss Pinnegar shortly.
“It’s no more easy to understand,” said Alvina.
“Because there’s no need to understand it,” said Miss Pinnegar. “And is there need to understand the other?”
128
THE LOST GIRL
“Certainly. I can see nothing wrong with him,” said Miss
Pinnegar.
Alvina went away in silence. This was in the fi rst months
after she had given Albert his dismissal. He was at Oxford
again – would not return to Woodhouse till Christmas. Between her and the Woodhouse Withams there was a decided
coldness. They never looked at her now – nor she at them.
None the less, as Christmas drew near Alvina worked up
her feelings. Perhaps she would be reconciled to him. She
would slip across and smile to him. She would take the plunge,
once and for all – and kiss him and marry him and bear the
little half-fi shes, his children. She worked herself into quite
a fever of anticipation.
But when she saw him, the fi rst evening, sitting stiff and
staring fl atly in front of him in Chapel, staring away from everything in the world, at heaven knows what – just as fi shes
stare – then his dishumanness came over her again like an
arrest, and arrested all her fl ights of fancy. He stared fl atly in
front of him, and fl atly set a wall of oblivion between him and
her. She trembled and let be.
After Christmas, however, she had nothing at all to think
forward to. And it was then she seemed to shrink: she seemed
positively to shrink. “You never spoke to Mr. Witham?” Miss
Pinnegar asked.
“He never spoke to me,” replied Alvina.
“He raised his hat to me.”
“You ought to have married him, Miss Pinnegar,” said Alvina. “He would have been right for you.” And she laughed
rather mockingly.
129
DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE
“There is no need to make provision for me,” said Miss Pinnegar.
And after this, she was a long time before she forgave Alvina, and was really friendly again. Perhaps she would never
have forgiven her if she had not found her weeping rather bitterly in her mother’s abandoned sitting-room.
Now so far, the story of Alvina is commonplace enough.
It is more or less the story of thousands of girls. They all fi nd
work. It is the ordinary solution of everything. And if we
were dealing with an ordinary girl we should have to carry
on mildly and dully down the long years of employment; or,
at the best, marriage with some dull schoolteacher or offi ceclerk.
But we protest that Alvina is not ordinary. Ordinary people,
ordinary fates. But extraordinary people, extraordinary fates.
Or else no fate at all. The all-to-one-pattern modern system is
too much for most extraordinary individuals. It just kills them
off or throws them disused aside.
There have been enough stories about ordinary people.
I should think the Duke of Clarence must even have found
malmsey nauseating, when he choked and went purple and
was really asphyxiated in a butt of it. And ordinary people
are no malmsey. Just ordinary tap-water. And we have been
drenched and deluged and so nearly drowned in perpetual
fl oods of ordinariness, that tap-water tends to become a really
hateful fl uid to us. We loathe its out-of-the-tap tastelessness.
We detest ordinary people. We are in peril of our lives from
them: and in peril of our souls too, for they would damn us
one and all to the ordinary. Every individual should, by nature,
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