“Why not? The sooner the better. You had better send in your resignation at once, so that you’re free.”
“Oh but is there any need? I may be transferred for war service.”
“That’s not likely. You’re our only maternity nurse—”
And so the days went by. She had tea with him practically every afternoon, and she got used to him. They discussed the furnishing—she could not help suggesting a few alterations, a few arrangements according to her idea. And he drew up a plan of a wedding tour in Scotland. Yet she was quite certain she would not marry him. The matron laughed at her certainty. “You will drift into it,” she said. “He is tying you down by too many little threads.”
“Ah, well, you’ll see!” said Alvina.
“Yes,” said the matron. “I shall see.”
And it was true that Alvina’s will was indeterminate, at this time. She was resolved not to marry. But her will, like a spring that is hitched somehow, did not fly direct against the doctor. She had sent in her resignation, as he suggested. But not that she might be free to marry him, but that she might be at liberty to flee him. So she told herself. Yet she worked into his hands.
One day she sat with the doctor in the car near the station—it was towards the end of September—held up by a squad of soldiers in khaki, who were marching off with their band wildly playing, to embark on the special troop train that was coming down from the north. The town was in great excitement. War-fever was spreading everywhere. Men were rushing to enlist—and being constantly rejected, for it was still the days of regular standards.
As the crowds surged on the pavement, as the soldiers tramped to the station, as the traffic waited, there came a certain flow in the opposite direction. The 4:15 train had come in. People were struggling along with luggage, children were running with spades and buckets, cabs were crawling along with families: it was the seaside people coming home. Alvina watched the two crowds mingle.
And as she watched she saw two men, one carrying a mandoline case and a suit-case which she knew. It was Ciccio. She did not know the other man; some theatrical individual. The two men halted almost near the car, to watch the band go by. Alvina saw Ciccio quite near to her. She would have liked to squirt water down his brown, handsome, oblivious neck. She felt she hated him. He stood there, watching the music, his lips curling in his faintly-derisive Italian manner, as he talked to the other man. His eyelashes were as long and dark as ever, his eyes had still the attractive look of being set in with a smutty finger. He had got the same brownish suit on, which she disliked, the same black hat set slightly, jauntily over one eye. He looked common: and yet with that peculiar southern aloofness which gave him a certain beauty and distinction in her eyes. She felt she hated him, rather. She felt she had been let down by him.