The Lost Girl Part 7

"I shall never feel anything any more," she said in her abrupt way to Miss Frost's friend, another woman of over fifty.

"Nonsense, child!" expostulated Mrs. Lawson gently.

"I shan't! I shall never have a heart to feel anything any more,"

said Alvina, with a strange, distraught roll of the eyes.

"Not like this, child. But you'll feel other things--"

"I haven't the heart," persisted Alvina.

"Not yet," said Mrs. Lawson gently. "You can't expect--But time--time brings back--"

"Oh well--but I don't believe it," said Alvina.

People thought her rather hard. To one of her gossips Miss Pinnegar confessed:

"I thought she'd have felt it more. She cared more for her than she did for her own mother--and her mother knew it. Mrs. Houghton complained bitterly, sometimes, that _she_ had _no_ love. They were everything to one another, Miss Frost and Alvina. I should have thought she'd have felt it more. But you never know. A good thing if she doesn't, really."

Miss Pinnegar herself did not care one little bit that Miss Frost was dead. She did not feel herself implicated.

The nearest relatives came down, and everything was settled. The will was found, just a brief line on a piece of notepaper expressing a wish that Alvina should have everything. Alvina herself told the verbal requests. All was quietly fulfilled.

As it might well be. For there was nothing to leave. Just sixty-three pounds in the bank--no more: then the clothes, piano, books and music. Miss Frost's brother had these latter, at his own request: the books and music, and the piano. Alvina inherited the few simple trinkets, and about forty-five pounds in money.

"Poor Miss Frost," cried Mrs. Lawson, weeping rather bitterly--"she saved nothing for herself. You can see why she never wanted to grow old, so that she couldn't work. You can see. It's a shame, it's a shame, one of the best women that ever trod earth."

Manchester House settled down to its deeper silence, its darker gloom. Miss Frost was irreparably gone. With her, the reality went out of the house. It seemed to be silently waiting to disappear. And Alvina and Miss Pinnegar might move about and talk in vain. They could never remove the sense of waiting to finish: it was all just waiting to finish. And the three, James and Alvina and Miss Pinnegar, waited lingering through the months, for the house to come to an end. With Miss Frost its spirit pa.s.sed away: it was no more.

Dark, empty-feeling, it seemed all the time like a house just before a sale.

CHAPTER V

THE BEAU

Throttle-Ha'penny worked fitfully through the winter, and in the spring broke down. By this time James Houghton had a pathetic, childish look which touched the hearts of Alvina and Miss Pinnegar.

They began to treat him with a certain feminine indulgence, as he fluttered round, agitated and bewildered. He was like a bird that has flown into a room and is exhausted, enfeebled by its attempts to fly through the false freedom of the window-gla.s.s. Sometimes he would sit moping in a corner, with his head under his wing. But Miss Pinnegar chased him forth, like the stealthy cat she was, chased him up to the work-room to consider some detail of work, chased him into the shop to turn over the old debris of the stock. At one time he showed the alarming symptom of brooding over his wife's death. Miss Pinnegar was thoroughly scared. But she was not inventive. It was left to Alvina to suggest: "Why doesn't father let the shop, and some of the house?"

Let the shop! Let the last inch of frontage on the street! James thought of it. Let the shop! Permit the name of Houghton to disappear from the list of tradesmen? Withdraw? Disappear? Become a nameless n.o.body, occupying obscure premises?

He thought about it. And thinking about it, became so indignant at the thought that he pulled his scattered energies together within his frail frame. And then he came out with the most original of all his schemes.

Manchester House was to be fitted up as a boarding-house for the better cla.s.ses, and was to make a fortune catering for the needs of these gentry, who had now nowhere to go. Yes, Manchester House should be fitted up as a sort of quiet family hotel for the better cla.s.ses. The shop should be turned into an elegant hall-entrance, carpeted, with a hall-porter and a wide plate-gla.s.s door, round-arched, in the round arch of which the words: "Manchester House" should appear large and distinguished, making an arch also, whilst underneath, more refined and smaller, should show the words: "Private Hotel." James was to be proprietor and secretary, keeping the books and attending to correspondence: Miss Pinnegar was to be manageress, superintending the servants and directing the house, whilst Alvina was to occupy the equivocal position of "hostess." She was to shake hands with the guests: she was to play the piano, and she was to nurse the sick. For in the prospectus James would include: "Trained nurse always on the premises."

"Why!" cried Miss Pinnegar, for once brutally and angrily hostile to him: "You'll make it sound like a private lunatic asylum."

"Will you explain why?" answered James tartly.

For himself, he was enraptured with the scheme. He began to tot up ideas and expenses. There would be the handsome entrance and hall: there would be an extension of the kitchen and scullery: there would be an installing of new hot-water and sanitary arrangements: there would be a light lift-arrangment from the kitchen: there would be a handsome glazed balcony or loggia or terrace on the first floor at the back, over the whole length of the back-yard. This loggia would give a wonderful outlook to the south-west and the west. In the immediate foreground, to be sure, would be the yard of the livery-stables and the rather slummy dwellings of the colliers, sloping downhill. But these could be easily overlooked, for the eye would instinctively wander across the green and shallow valley, to the long upslope opposite, showing the Manor set in its clump of trees, and farms and haystacks pleasantly dotted, and moderately far off coal-mines with twinkling headstocks and narrow railwaylines crossing the arable fields, and heaps of burning slag. The balcony or covered terrace--James settled down at last to the word _terrace_--was to be one of the features of the house: _the_ feature. It was to be fitted up as a sort of elegant lounging restaurant. Elegant teas, at two-and-six per head, and elegant suppers, at five s.h.i.+llings without wine, were to be served here.

As a teetotaller and a man of ascetic views, James, in his first shallow moments, before he thought about it, a.s.sumed that his house should be entirely non-alcoholic. A temperance house! Already he winced. We all know what a provincial Temperance Hotel is. Besides, there is magic in the sound of wine. _Wines Served_. The legend attracted him immensely--as a teetotaller, it had a mysterious, hypnotic influence. He must have wines. He knew nothing about them.

But Alfred Swayn, from the Liquor Vaults, would put him in the running in five minutes.

It was most curious to see Miss Pinnegar turtle up at the mention of this scheme. When first it was disclosed to her, her colour came up like a turkey's in a flush of indignant anger.

"It's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous!" she blurted, bridling and ducking her head and turning aside, like an indignant turkey.

"Ridiculous! Why? Will you explain why!" retorted James, turtling also.

"It's absolutely ridiculous!" she repeated, unable to do more than splutter.

"Well, we'll see," said James, rising to superiority.

And again he began to dart absorbedly about, like a bird building a nest. Miss Pinnegar watched him with a sort of sullen fury. She went to the shop door to peep out after him. She saw him slip into the Liquor Vaults, and she came back to announce to Alvina:

"He's taken to drink!"

"Drink?" said Alvina.

"That's what it is," said Miss Pinnegar vindictively. "Drink!"

Alvina sank down and laughed till she was weak. It all seemed really too funny to her--too funny.

"I can't see what it is to laugh at," said Miss Pinnegar.

"Disgraceful--it's disgraceful! But I'm not going to stop to be made a fool of. I shall be no manageress, I tell you. It's absolutely ridiculous. Who does he think will come to the place? He's out of his mind--and it's drink; that's what it is! Going into the Liquor Vaults at ten o'clock in the morning! That's where he gets his ideas--out of whiskey--or brandy! But he's not going to make a fool of me--"

"Oh dear!" sighed Alvina, laughing herself into composure and a little weariness. "I know it's _perfectly_ ridiculous. We shall have to stop him."

"I've said all I can say," blurted Miss Pinnegar.

As soon as James came in to a meal, the two women attacked him.

"But father," said Alvina, "there'll be n.o.body to come."

"Plenty of people--plenty of people," said her father. "Look at The Shakespeare's Head, in Knarborough."

"Knarborough! Is this Knarborough!" blurted Miss Pinnegar. "Where are the business men here? Where are the foreigners coming here for business, where's our lace-trade and our stocking-trade?"

"There _are_ business men," said James. "And there are ladies."

"Who," retorted Miss Pinnegar, "is going to give half-a-crown for a tea? They expect tea and bread-and-b.u.t.ter for fourpence, and cake for sixpence, and apricots or pineapple for ninepence, and ham-and-tongue for a s.h.i.+lling, and fried ham and eggs and jam and cake as much as they can eat for one-and-two. If they expect a knife-and-fork tea for a s.h.i.+lling, what are you going to give them for half-a-crown?"

"I know what I shall offer," said James. "And we may make it two s.h.i.+llings." Through his mind flitted the idea of 1/11-1/2--but he rejected it. "You don't realize that I'm catering for a higher cla.s.s of custom--"

"But there _isn't_ any higher cla.s.s in Woodhouse, father," said Alvina, unable to restrain a laugh.

"If you create a supply you create a demand," he retorted.