The Lost Girl

by D. H. Lawrence

When she went to Ossona with him, she knew everybody questioned him about her and Ciccio. She began to get the drift of the questions—which Pancrazio answered with reserve.

“And how long are they staying?”

This was an invariable, envious question. And invariably Pancrazio answered with a reserved—

“Some months. As long as they like.”

And Alvina could feel waves of black envy go out against Pancrazio, because she was domiciled with him, and because she sat with him in the flat cart, driving to Ossona.

Yet Pancrazio himself was a study. He was thin, and very shabby, and rather out of shape. Only in his yellow eyes lurked a strange sardonic fire, and a leer which puzzled her. When Ciccio happened to be out in the evening he would sit with her and tell her stories of Lord Leighton and Millais and Alma Tadema and other academicians dead and living. There would sometimes be a strange passivity on his worn face, an impassive, almost Red Indian look. And then again he would stir into a curious, arch, malevolent laugh, for all the world like a debauched old tom-cat. His narration was like this: either simple, bare, stoical, with a touch of nobility; or else satiric, malicious, with a strange, rather repellent jeering.

“Leighton—he wasn’t Lord Leighton then—he wouldn’t have me to sit for him, because my figure was too poor, he didn’t like it. He liked fair young men, with plenty of flesh. But once, when he was doing a picture—I don’t know if you know it? It is a crucifixion, with a man on a cross, and—” He described the picture. “No! Well, the model had to be tied hanging on to a wooden cross. And it made you suffer! Ah!” Here the odd, arch, diabolic yellow flare lit up through the stoicism of Pancrazio’s eyes. “Because Leighton, he was cruel to his model. He wouldn’t let you rest. ‘Damn you, you’ve got to keep still till I’ve finished with you, you devil,’ so he said. Well, for this man on the cross, he couldn’t get a model who would do it for him. They all tried it once, but they would not go again. So they said to him, he must try Califano, because Califano was the only man who would stand it. At last then he sent for me. ‘I don’t like your damned figure, Califano,’ he said to me, ‘but nobody will do this if you won’t. Now will you do it? ‘Yes!’ I said, ‘I will.’ So he tied me up on the cross. And he paid me well, so I stood it. Well, he kept me tied up, hanging you know forwards naked on this cross, for four hours. And then it was luncheon. And after luncheon he would tie me again. Well, I suffered. I suffered so much, that I must lean against the wall to support me to walk home. And in the night I could not sleep, I could cry with the pains in my arms and my ribs, I had no sleep. ‘You’ve said you’d do it, so now you must,’ he said to me. ‘And I will do it,’ I said. And so he tied me up. This cross, you know, was on a little raised place—I don’t know what you call it—”

“A platform,” suggested Alvina.

“A platform. Now one day when he came to do something to me, when I was tied up, he slipped back over this platform, and he pulled me, who was tied on the cross, with him. So we all fell down, he with the naked man on top of him, and the heavy cross on top of us both. I could not move, because I was tied. And it was so, with me on top of him, and the heavy cross, that he could not get out. So he had to lie shouting underneath me until some one came to the studio to untie me. No, we were not hurt, because the top of the cross fell so that it did not crush us. ‘Now you have had a taste of the cross,’ I said to him. ‘Yes, you devil, but I shan’t let you off,’ he said to me.

“To make the time go he would ask me questions. Once he said, ‘Now, Califano, what time is it? I give you three guesses, and if you guess right once I give you sixpence.’ So I guessed three o’clock. ‘That’s one. Now then, what time is it? ‘Again, three o’clock. ‘That’s two guesses gone, you silly devil. Now then, what time is it? ‘So now I was obstinate, and I said Three o’clock. He took out his watch. ‘Why damn you, how did you know? I give you a shilling—’ It was three o’clock, as I said, so he gave me a shilling instead of sixpence as he had said—”