The Lost Girl

by D. H. Lawrence

  CHAPTER III

  THE MATERNITY NURSE

  Of course Alvina made everybody pay for her mood of submission andsweetness. In a month's time she was quite intolerable.

  "I can't stay here all my life," she declared, stretching her eyesin a way that irritated the other inmates of Manchester Houseextremely. "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'mburied 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 tryingthem all.

  "But what do you want, dear?" asked Miss Frost, knitting her darkbrows in agitation.

  "I want to go away," said Alvina bluntly.

  Miss Frost gave a slight gesture with her right hand, of helplessimpatience. 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 getout 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 arude laugh. "Australia isn't the only other place besidesWoodhouse."

  Miss Pinnegar was naturally offended. But the curious insolencewhich sometimes came out in the girl was inherited direct from herfather.

  "You see, dear," said Miss Frost, agitated: "if you knew what youwanted, 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-ageddisapproving woman, and looked at her charge. She believed thatAlvina was just speaking at random. Yet she dared not check her, inher present mood.

  Alvina was indeed speaking at random. She had never thought of beinga nurse--the idea had never entered her head. If it had she wouldcertainly never have entertained it. But she had heard Alexanderspeak of Nurse This and Sister That. And so she had rapped out herdeclaration. And having rapped it out, she prepared herself to stickto it. Nothing like leaping before you look.

  "A nurse!" repeated Miss Frost. "But do you feel yourself fitted tobe a nurse? Do you think you could bear it?"

  "Yes, I'm sure I could," retorted Alvina. "I want to be a maternitynurse--" She looked strangely, even outrageously, at her governess."I want to be a maternity nurse. Then I shouldn't have to attendoperations." And she laughed quickly.

  Miss Frost's right hand beat like a wounded bird. It was reminiscentof the way she beat time, insistently, when she was giving musiclessons, sitting close beside her pupils at the piano. Now it beatwithout time or reason. Alvina smiled brightly and cruelly.

  "Whatever put such an idea into your head, Vina?" asked poor MissFrost.

  "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 downon the street. The bright, arch look was still on her face. But herheart was sore. She wanted to cry, and fling herself on the breastof 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 tobreak down, to burst into tears and tenderness and reconciliation.But no--she did not break down. She persisted. They all waited forthe old loving Vina to be herself again. But the new andrecalcitrant Vina still shone hard. She found a copy of _TheLancet_, and saw an advertisement of a home in Islington wherematernity nurses would be fully trained and equipped in six months'time. The fee was sixty guineas. Alvina declared her intention ofdeparting to this training home. She had two hundred pounds of herown, 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 indelicatestep to take. Which it was. And which, in her curious perverseness,Alvina must have intended it to be. Mrs. Houghton assumed a remoteair of silence, as if she did not hear any more, did not belong. Shelapsed far away. She was really very weak. Miss Pinnegar said: "Wellreally, if she wants to do it, why, she might as well try." And, asoften with Miss Pinnegar, this speech seemed to contain a veiledthreat.

  "A maternity nurse!" said James Houghton. "A maternity nurse! Whatexactly do you mean by a maternity nurse?"

  "A trained mid-wife," said Miss Pinnegar curtly. "That's it, isn'tit? 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 tohis forehead, and making his long fleece of painfully thin hairuncover his baldness. "I can't understand that any young girl ofany--any upbringing, any upbringing whatever, should want to choosesuch 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 talkswith Dr. Fordham. Dr. Fordham didn't approve, certainly hedidn't--but neither did he see any great harm in it. At that time itwas rather the thing for young ladies to enter the nursingprofession, if their hopes had been blighted or checked in anotherdirection! And so, enquiries were made. Enquiries were made.

  The upshot was, that Alvina was to go to Islington for her sixmonths' training. There was a great bustle, preparing her nursingoutfit. Instead of a trousseau, nurse's uniforms in fineblue-and-white stripe, with great white aprons. Instead of a wreathof orange blossom, a rather chic nurse's bonnet of blue silk, andfor a trailing veil, a blue silk fall.

  Well and good! Alvina expected to become frightened, as the timedrew near. But no, she wasn't a bit frightened. Miss Frost watchedher 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 ofsuch a creature. Alvina remained bright and ready, the half-hilariousclang 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 herdestination--and as she drove, she looked out of the window. Horrid,vast, stony, dilapidated, crumbly-stuccoed streets and squares ofIslington, grey, grey, greyer by far than Woodhouse, andinterminable. How exceedingly sordid and disgusting! But instead ofbeing repelled and heartbroken, Alvina enjoyed it. She felt hertrunk rumble on the top of the cab, and still she looked out on theghastly dilapidated flat facades of Islington, and still she smiledbrightly, as if there were some charm in it all. Perhaps for herthere was a charm in it all. Perhaps it acted like a tonic on thelittle devil in her breast. Perhaps if she had seen tufts ofsnowdrops--it was February--and yew-hedges and cottage windows, shewould have broken down. As it was, she just enjoyed it. She enjoyedglimpsing in through uncurtained windows, into sordid rooms wherehuman beings moved as if sordidly unaware. She enjoyed the smell ofa toasted bloater, rather burnt. So common! so indescribably common!And she detested bloaters, because of the hairy feel of the spinesin her mouth. But to smell them like this, to know that she was inthe region of "penny beef-steaks," gave her a perverse pleasure.

  The cab stopped at a yellow house at the corner of a square wheresome shabby bare trees were flecked with bits of blown paper, bitsof paper and refuse cluttered inside the round railings of eachtree. She went up some dirty-yellowish steps, and rang the"Patients'" bell, because she knew she ought not to ring the"Tradesmen's." A servant, not exactly dirty, but unattractive, lether into a hall painted a dull drab, and floored with cocoa-matting,otherwise bare. Then up bare stairs to a room whe
re a stout, pale,common woman with two warts on her face, was drinking tea. It wasthree o'clock. This was the matron. The matron soon deposited her ina bedroom, not very small, but bare and hard and dusty-seeming, andthere left her. Alvina sat down on her chair, looked at her boxopposite her, looked round the uninviting room, and smiled toherself. Then she rose and went to the window: a very dirty window,looking down into a sort of well of an area, with other wellsranging along, and straight opposite like a reflection another solidrange of back-premises, with iron stair-ways and horrid little doorsand washing and little W. C.'s and people creeping up and down likevermin. Alvina shivered a little, but still smiled. Then slowly shebegan to take off her hat. She put it down on the drab-painted chestof drawers.

  Presently the servant came in with a tray, set it down, lit a nakedgas-jet, which roared faintly, and drew down a crackly dark-greenblind, which showed a tendency to fly back again alertly to theceiling.

  "Thank you," said Alvina, and the girl departed.

  Then Miss Houghton drank her black tea and ate her bread andmargarine.

  Surely enough books have been written about heroines in similarcircumstances. There is no need to go into the details of Alvina'ssix months in Islington.

  The food was objectionable--yet Alvina got fat on it. The air wasfilthy--and yet never had her colour been so warm and fresh, herskin so soft. Her companions were almost without exception vulgarand coarse--yet never had she got on so well with women of her ownage--or older than herself. She was ready with a laugh and a word,and though she was unable to venture on indecencies herself, yet shehad an amazing faculty for _looking_ knowing and indecent beyondwords, rolling her eyes and pitching her eyebrows in a certainway--oh, it was quite sufficient for her companions! And yet, ifthey had ever actually demanded a dirty story or a really openindecency from her, she would have been floored.

  But she enjoyed it. Amazing how she enjoyed it. She did not care_how_ revolting and indecent these nurses were--she put on a look asif she were in with it all, and it all passed off as easy aswinking. She swung her haunches and arched her eyes with the bestof them. And they behaved as if she were exactly one of themselves.And yet, with the curious cold tact of women, they left her alone,one and all, in private: just ignored her.

  It is truly incredible how Alvina became blooming and bouncing atthis time. Nothing shocked her, nothing upset her. She was alwaysready with her hard, nurse's laugh and her nurse's quips. No one wasbetter than she at _double-entendres._ No one could better give thenurse's leer. She had it all in a fortnight. And never once did shefeel anything but exhilarated and in full swing. It seemed to hershe had not a moment's time to brood or reflect about things--shewas too much in the swing. Every moment, in the swing, living, oractive in full swing. When she got into bed she went to sleep. Whenshe awoke, it was morning, and she got up. As soon as she was up anddressed she had somebody to answer, something to say, something todo. Time passed like an express train--and she seemed to have knownno other life than this.

  Not far away was a lying-in hospital. A dreadful place it was. Thereshe had to go, right off, and help with cases. There she had toattend lectures and demonstrations. There she met the doctors andstudents. Well, a pretty lot they were, one way and another. Whenshe had put on flesh and become pink and bouncing she was just theirsort: just their very ticket. Her voice had the right twang, hereyes the right roll, her haunches the right swing. She seemedaltogether just the ticket. And yet she wasn't.

  It would be useless to say she was not shocked. She was profoundlyand awfully shocked. Her whole state was perhaps largely the resultof shock: a sort of play-acting based on hysteria. But the dreadfulthings she saw in the lying-in hospital, and afterwards, went deep,and finished her youth and her tutelage for ever. How many infernosdeeper than Miss Frost could ever know, did she not travel? theinferno of the human animal, the human organism in its convulsions,the human social beast in its abjection and its degradation.

  For in her latter half she had to visit the slum cases. And suchcases! A woman lying on a bare, filthy floor, a few old coats thrownover her, and vermin crawling everywhere, in spite of sanitaryinspectors. But what did the woman, the sufferer, herself care! Sheground her teeth and screamed and yelled with pains. In her calmperiods she lay stupid and indifferent--or she cursed a little. Butabject, stupid indifference was the bottom of it all: abject, brutalindifference to everything--yes, everything. Just a piece of femalefunctioning, no more.

  Alvina was supposed to receive a certain fee for these cases sheattended in their homes. A small proportion of her fee she kept forherself, the rest she handed over to the Home. That was theagreement. She received her grudged fee callously, threatened andexacted it when it was not forthcoming. Ha!--if they didn't have topay you at all, these slum-people, they would treat you with morecontempt than if you were one of themselves. It was one of thehardest lessons Alvina had to learn--to bully these people, in theirown hovels, into some sort of obedience to her commands, and somesort of respect for her presence. She had to fight tooth and nailfor this end. And in a week she was as hard and callous to them asthey to her. And so her work was well done. She did not hate them.There they were. They had a certain life, and you had to take themat their own worth in their own way. What else! If one should begentle, one was gentle. The difficulty did not lie there. Thedifficulty lay in being sufficiently rough and hard: that was thetrouble. It cost a great struggle to be hard and callous enough.Glad she would have been to be allowed to treat them quietly andgently, with consideration. But pah--it was not their line. Theywanted to be callous, and if you were not callous to match, theymade a fool of you and prevented your doing your work.

  Was Alvina her own real self all this time? The mighty questionarises upon us, what is one's own real self? It certainly is notwhat we think we are and ought to be. Alvina had been bred to thinkof herself as a delicate, tender, chaste creature with unselfishinclinations and a pure, "high" mind. Well, so she was, in themore-or-less exhausted part of herself. But high-mindedness hadreally come to an end with James Houghton, had really reached thepoint, not only of pathetic, but of dry and anti-human, repulsivequixotry. In Alvina high-mindedness was already stretched beyond thebreaking point. Being a woman of some flexibility of temper,wrought through generations to a fine, pliant hardness, she flewback. She went right back on high-mindedness. Did she thereby betrayit?

  We think not. If we turn over the head of the penny and look at thetail, we don't thereby deny or betray the head. We do but adjust itto its own complement. And so with high-mindedness. It is but oneside of the medal--the crowned reverse. On the obverse the threelegs still go kicking the soft-footed spin of the universe, thedolphin flirts and the crab leers.

  So Alvina spun her medal, and her medal came down tails. Heads ortails? Heads for generations. Then tails. See the poetic justice.

  Now Alvina decided to accept the decision of her fate. Or rather,being sufficiently a woman, she didn't decide anything. She _was_her own fate. She went through her training experiences like anotherbeing. She was not herself, said Everybody. When she came home toWoodhouse at Easter, in her bonnet and cloak, everybody was simplyknocked out. Imagine that this frail, pallid, diffident girl, soladylike, was now a rather fat, warm-coloured young woman, strappingand strong-looking, and with a certain bounce. Imagine her mother'sstartled, almost expiring:

  "Why, Vina dear!"

  Vina laughed. She knew how they were all feeling.

  "At least it agrees with your _health_," said her father,sarcastically, to which Miss Pinnegar answered:

  "Well, that's a good deal."

  But Miss Frost said nothing the first day. Only the second day, atbreakfast, as Alvina ate rather rapidly and rather well, thewhite-haired woman said quietly, with a tinge of cold contempt:

  "How changed you are, dear!"

  "Am I?" laughed Alvina. "Oh, not really." And she gave the arch lookwith her eyes, which made Miss Frost shudder.

  Inwardly, Miss Frost shuddered, and ab
stained from questioning.Alvina was always speaking of the doctors: Doctor Young and DoctorHeadley and Doctor James. She spoke of theatres and music-halls withthese young men, and the jolly good time she had with them. And herblue-grey eyes seemed to have become harder and greyer, lightersomehow. In her wistfulness and her tender pathos, Alvina's eyeswould deepen their blue, so beautiful. And now, in her floridity,they were bright and arch and light-grey. The deep, tender, floweryblue was gone for ever. They were luminous and crystalline, like theeyes of a changeling.

  Miss Frost shuddered, and abstained from question. She wanted, she_needed_ to ask of her charge: "Alvina, have you betrayed yourselfwith any of these young men?" But coldly her heart abstained fromasking--or even from seriously thinking. She left the matteruntouched for the moment. She was already too much shocked.

  Certainly Alvina represented the young doctors as very nice, butrather fast young fellows. "My word, you have to have your witsabout you with them!" Imagine such a speech from a girl tenderlynurtured: a speech uttered in her own home, and accompanied by aflorid laugh, which would lead a chaste, generous woman like MissFrost to imagine--well, she merely abstained from imagininganything. She had that strength of mind. She never for one momentattempted to answer the question to herself, as to whether Alvinahad betrayed herself with any of these young doctors, or not. Thequestion remained stated, but completely unanswered--coldly awaitingits answer. Only when Miss Frost kissed Alvina good-bye at thestation, tears came to her eyes, and she said hurriedly, in a lowvoice:

  "Remember we are all praying for you, dear!"

  "No, don't do that!" cried Alvina involuntarily, without knowingwhat she said.

  And then the train moved out, and she saw her darling standing thereon the station, the pale, well-modelled face looking out from behindthe gold-rimmed spectacles, wistfully, the strong, rather stoutfigure standing very still and unchangeable, under its coat andskirt of dark purple, the white hair glistening under the foldeddark hat. Alvina threw herself down on the seat of her carriage. Sheloved her darling. She would love her through eternity. She knew shewas right--amply and beautifully right, her darling, her belovedMiss Frost. Eternally and gloriously right.

  And yet--and yet--it was a right which was fulfilled. There wereother rights. There was another side to the medal. Purity andhigh-mindedness--the beautiful, but unbearable tyranny. Thebeautiful, unbearable tyranny of Miss Frost! It was time now forMiss Frost to die. It was time for that perfected flower to begathered to immortality. A lovely _immortel_. But an obstruction toother, purple and carmine blossoms which were in bud on the stem. Alovely edelweiss--but time it was gathered into eternity.Black-purple and red anemones were due, real Adonis blood, andstrange individual orchids, spotted and fantastic. Time for MissFrost to die. She, Alvina, who loved her as no one else would everlove her, with that love which goes to the core of the universe,knew that it was time for her darling to be folded, oh, so gentlyand softly, into immortality. Mortality was busy with the day afterher day. It was time for Miss Frost to die. As Alvina sat motionlessin the train, running from Woodhouse to Tibshelf, it decided itselfin her.

  She was glad to be back in Islington, among all the horrors of herconfinement cases. The doctors she knew hailed her. On the whole,these young men had not any too deep respect for the nurses as awhole. Why drag in respect? Human functions were too obviouslyestablished to make any great fuss about. And so the doctors puttheir arms round Alvina's waist, because she was plump, and theykissed her face, because the skin was soft. And she laughed andsquirmed a little, so that they felt all the more her warmth andsoftness under their arm's pressure.

  "It's no use, you know," she said, laughing rather breathless, butlooking into their eyes with a curious definite look of unchangeableresistance. This only piqued them.

  "What's no use?" they asked.

  She shook her head slightly.

  "It isn't any use your behaving like that with me," she said, withthe same challenging definiteness, finality: a flat negative.

  "Who're you telling?" they said.

  For she did not at all forbid them to "behave like that." Not in theleast. She almost encouraged them. She laughed and arched her eyesand flirted. But her backbone became only the stronger and firmer.Soft and supple as she was, her backbone never yielded for aninstant. It could not. She had to confess that she liked the youngdoctors. They were alert, their faces were clean and bright-looking.She liked the sort of intimacy with them, when they kissed her andwrestled with her in the empty laboratories or corridors--often inthe intervals of most critical and appalling cases. She liked theirarm round her waist, the kisses as she reached back her face,straining away, the sometimes desperate struggles. They tookunpardonable liberties. They pinched her haunches and attacked herin unheard-of ways. Sometimes her blood really came up in the fight,and she felt as if, with her hands, she could tear any man, any malecreature, limb from limb. A super-human, voltaic force filled her.For a moment she surged in massive, inhuman, female strength. Themen always wilted. And invariably, when they wilted, she touchedthem with a sudden gentle touch, pitying. So that she alwaysremained friends with them. When her curious Amazonic power left heragain, and she was just a mere woman, she made shy eyes at them oncemore, and treated them with the inevitable female-to-male homage.

  The men liked her. They cocked their eyes at her, when she was notlooking, and wondered at her. They wondered over her. They had beenbeaten by her, every one of them. But they did not openly know it.They looked at her, as if she were Woman itself, some creature notquite personal. What they noticed, all of them, was the way herbrown hair looped over her ears. There was something chaste, andnoble, and war-like about it. The remote quality which hung abouther in the midst of her intimacies and her frequencies, nothing highor lofty, but something given to the struggle and as yet invinciblein the struggle, made them seek her out.

  They felt safe with her. They knew she would not let them down. Shewould not intrigue into marriage, or try and make use of them in anyway. She didn't care about them. And so, because of her isolateself-sufficiency in the fray, her wild, overweening backbone, theywere ready to attend on her and serve her. Headley in particularhoped he might overcome her. He was a well-built fellow with sandyhair and a pugnacious face. The battle-spirit was really roused inhim, and he heartily liked the woman. If he could have overcome herhe would have been mad to marry her.

  With him, she summoned up all her mettle. She had never to be offher guard for a single minute. The treacherous suddenness of hisattack--for he was treachery itself--had to be met by the voltaicsuddenness of her resistance and counter-attack. It was nothing lessthan magical the way the soft, slumbering body of the woman couldleap in one jet into terrible, overwhelming voltaic force, somethingstrange and massive, at the first treacherous touch of the man'sdetermined hand. His strength was so different from hers--quick,muscular, lambent. But hers was deep and heaving, like the strangeheaving of an earthquake, or the heave of a bull as it rises fromearth. And by sheer non-human power, electric and paralysing, shecould overcome the brawny red-headed fellow.

  He was nearly a match for her. But she did not like him. The twowere enemies--and good acquaintances. They were more or lessmatched. But as he found himself continually foiled, he becamesulky, like a bear with a sore head. And then she avoided him.

  She really liked Young and James much better. James was a quick,slender, dark-haired fellow, a gentleman, who was always trying tocatch her out with his quickness. She liked his fine, slim limbs,and his exaggerated generosity. He would ask her out to ridiculouslyexpensive suppers, and send her sweets and flowers, fabulouslyrecherche. He was always immaculately well-dressed.

  "Of course, as a lady _and_ a nurse," he said to her, "you are twosorts of women in one."

  But she was not impressed by his wisdom.

  She was most strongly inclined to Young. He was a plump young man ofmiddle height, with those blue eyes of a little boy which are soknowing: particularly of a woman's secrets. It
is a strange thingthat these childish men have such a deep, half-perverse knowledge ofthe other sex. Young was certainly innocent as far as acts went. Yethis hair was going thin at the crown already.

  He also played with her--being a doctor, and she a nurse whoencouraged it. He too touched her and kissed her: and did _not_rouse her to contest. For his touch and his kiss had that nearnessof a little boy's, which nearly melted her. She could almost havesuccumbed to him. If it had not been that with him there was noquestion of succumbing. She would have had to take him between herhands and caress and cajole him like a cherub, into a fall. Andthough she would have like to do so, yet that inflexible stiffnessof her backbone prevented her. She could not do as she liked. Therewas an inflexible fate within her, which shaped her ends.

  Sometimes she wondered to herself, over her own virginity. Was itworth much, after all, behaving as she did? Did she care about it,anyhow? Didn't she rather despise it? To sin in thought was as badas to sin in act. If the thought was the same as the act, how muchmore was her behaviour equivalent to a whole committal? She wishedshe were wholly committed. She wished she had gone the whole length.

  But sophistry and wishing did her no good. There she was, stillisolate. And still there was that in her which would preserve herintact, sophistry and deliberate intention notwithstanding. Her timewas up. She was returning to Woodhouse virgin as she had left it. Ina measure she felt herself beaten. Why? Who knows. But so it was,she felt herself beaten, condemned to go back to what she wasbefore. Fate had been too strong for her and her desires: fate whichwas not an external association of forces, but which was integral inher own nature. Her own inscrutable nature was her fate: soreagainst her will.

  It was August when she came home, in her nurse's uniform. She wasbeaten by fate, as far as chastity and virginity went. But she camehome with high material hopes. Here was James Houghton's owndaughter. She had an affluent future ahead of her. A fully-qualifiedmaternity nurse, she was going to bring all the babies of thedistrict easily and triumphantly into the world. She was going tocharge the regulation fee of two guineas a case: and even on amodest estimate of ten babies a month, she would have twentyguineas. For well-to-do mothers she would charge from three to fiveguineas. At this calculation she would make an easy three hundred ayear, without slaving either. She would be independent, she couldlaugh every one in the face.

  She bounced back into Woodhouse to make her fortune.