The Lost Girl · Chapter 5 (1/5)

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-glass. 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 workroom 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 nobody, 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 boardinghouse for the better classes, 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 classes. The shop should be turned into an elegant hall-entrance, carpeted, with a hall-porter and a wide plate-glass 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 backyard. This loggia would give a wonderful outlook to the southwest 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 shillings 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, assumed that his house should be entirely nonalcoholic. 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 nobody 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-butter for fourpence, and cake for sixpence, and apricots or pineapple for ninepence, and ham-and-tongue for a shilling, 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 shilling, 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 shillings.” Through his mind flitted the idea of 1/11½⁠—but he rejected it. “You don’t realize that I’m catering for a higher class of custom⁠—”

“But there isn’t any higher class in Woodhouse, father,” said Alvina, unable to restrain a laugh.

“If you create a supply you create a demand,” he retorted.

“But how can you create a supply of better class people?” asked Alvina mockingly.

James took on his refined, abstracted look, as if he were preoccupied on higher planes. It was the look of an obstinate little boy who poses on the side of the angels⁠—or so the women saw it.

Miss Pinnegar was prepared to combat him now by sheer weight of opposition. She would pitch her dead negative will obstinately against him. She would not speak to him, she would not observe his presence, she was stone deaf and stone blind: there was no James. This nettled him. And she miscalculated him. He merely took another circuit, and rose another flight higher on the spiral of his spiritual egotism. He believed himself finely and sacredly in the right, that he was frustrated by lower beings, above whom it was his duty to rise, to soar. So he soared to serene heights, and his Private Hotel seemed a celestial injunction, an erection on a higher plane.

He saw the architect: and then, with his plans and schemes, he saw the builder and contractor. The builder gave an estimate of six or seven hundred⁠—but James had better see the plumber and fitter who was going to instal the new hot water and sanitary system. James was a little dashed. He had calculated much less. Having only a few hundred pounds in possession after Throttle-Ha’penny, he was prepared to mortgage Manchester House if he could keep in hand a sufficent sum of money for the running of his establishment for a year. He knew he would have to sacrifice Miss Pinnegar’s workroom. He knew, and he feared Miss Pinnegar’s violent and unmitigated hostility. Still⁠—his obstinate spirit rose⁠—he was quite prepared to risk everything on this last throw.

Miss Allsop, daughter of the builder, called to see Alvina. The Allsops were great chapel people, and Cassie Allsop was one of the old maids. She was thin and nipped and wistful looking, about forty-two years old. In private, she was tyrannously exacting with the servants, and spiteful, rather mean with her motherless nieces. But in public she had this nipped, wistful look.

Alvina was surprised by this visit. When she found Miss Allsop at the back door, all her inherent hostility awoke.

“Oh, is it you, Miss Allsop! Will you come in.”

They sat in the middle room, the common living room of the house.

“I called,” said Miss Allsop, coming to the point at once, and speaking in her Sunday-schoolteacher voice, “to ask you if you know about this Private Hotel scheme of your father’s?”

“Yes,” said Alvina.

“Oh, you do! Well, we wondered. Mr. Houghton came to father about the building alterations yesterday. They’ll be awfully expensive.”

“Will they?” said Alvina, making big, mocking eyes.

“Yes, very. What do you think of the scheme?”

“I?⁠—well⁠—!” Alvina hesitated, then broke into a laugh. “To tell the truth I haven’t thought much about it at all.”

“Well I think you should,” said Miss Allsop severely. “Father’s sure it won’t pay⁠—and it will cost I don’t know how much. It is bound to be a dead loss. And your father’s getting on. You’ll be left stranded in the world without a penny to bless yourself with. I think it’s an awful outlook for you.”

“Do you?” said Alvina.

Here she was, with a bang, planked upon the shelf among the old maids.

“Oh, I do. Sincerely! I should do all I could to prevent him, if I were you.”

Miss Allsop took her departure. Alvina felt herself jolted in her mood. An old maid along with Cassie Allsop!⁠—and James Houghton fooling about with the last bit of money, mortgaging Manchester House up to the hilt. Alvina sank in a kind of weary mortification, in which her peculiar obstinacy persisted devilishly and spitefully. “Oh well, so be it,” said her spirit vindictively. “Let the meagre, mean, despicable fate fulfil itself.” Her old anger against her father arose again.

Arthur Witham, the plumber, came in with James Houghton to examine the house. Arthur Witham was also one of the chapel men⁠—as had been his common, interfering, uneducated father before him. The father had left each of his sons a fair little sum of money, which Arthur, the eldest, had already increased tenfold. He was sly and slow and uneducated also, and spoke with a broad accent. But he was not bad-looking, a tight fellow with big blue eyes, who aspired to keep his h’s in the right place, and would have been a gentleman if he could.

Against her usual habit, Alvina joined the plumber and her father in the scullery. Arthur Witham saluted her with some respect. She liked his blue eyes and tight figure. He was keen and sly in business, very watchful, and slow to commit himself. Now he poked and peered and crept under the sink. Alvina watched him half disappear⁠—she handed him a candle⁠—and she laughed to herself seeing his tight, well-shaped hindquarters protruding from under the sink like the wrong end of a dog from a kennel. He was keen after money, was Arthur⁠—and bossy, creeping slyly after his own self-importance and power. He wanted power⁠—and he would creep quietly after it till he got it: as much as he was capable of. His h’s were a barbed-wire fence and entanglement, preventing his unlimited progress.

He emerged from under the sink, and they went to the kitchen and afterwards upstairs. Alvina followed them persistently, but a little aloof, and silent. When the tour of inspection was almost over, she said innocently:

“Won’t it cost a great deal?”

Arthur Witham slowly shook his head. Then he looked at her. She smiled rather archly into his eyes.

“It won’t be done for nothing,” he said, looking at her again.

“We can go into that later,” said James, leading off the plumber.

“Good morning, Miss Houghton,” said Arthur Witham.

“Good morning, Mr. Witham,” replied Alvina brightly.

But she lingered in the background, and as Arthur Witham was going she heard him say: “Well, I’ll work it out, Mr. Houghton. I’ll work it out, and let you know tonight. I’ll get the figures by tonight.”

The younger man’s tone was a little offhand, just a little supercilious with her father, she thought. James’s star was setting.

In the afternoon, directly after dinner, Alvina went out. She entered the shop, where sheets of lead and tins of paint and putty stood about, varied by sheets of glass and fancy paper. Lottie Witham, Arthur’s wife, appeared. She was a woman of thirty-five, a bit of a shrew, with social ambitions and no children.

“Is Mr. Witham in?” said Alvina.

Mrs. Witham eyed her.

“I’ll see,” she answered, and she left the shop.

Presently Arthur entered, in his shirtsleeves: rather attractive-looking.

“I don’t know what you’ll think of me, and what I’ve come for,” said Alvina, with hurried amiability. Arthur lifted his blue eyes to her, and Mrs. Witham appeared in the background, in the inner doorway.

“Why, what is it?” said Arthur stolidly.

“Make it as dear as you can, for father,” said Alvina, laughing nervously.

Arthur’s blue eyes rested on her face. Mrs. Witham advanced into the shop.

“Why? What’s that for?” asked Lottie Witham shrewdly.

Alvina turned to the woman.

“Don’t say anything,” she said. “But we don’t want father to go on with this scheme. It’s bound to fail. And Miss Pinnegar and I can’t have anything to do with it anyway. I shall go away.”

“It’s bound to fail,” said Arthur Witham stolidly.

“And father has no money, I’m sure,” said Alvina.

Lottie Witham eyed the thin, nervous face of Alvina. For some reason, she liked her. And of course, Alvina was considered a lady in Woodhouse. That was what it had come to, with James’s declining fortunes: she was merely considered a lady. The consideration was no longer indisputable.

“Shall you come in a minute?” said Lottie Witham, lifting the flap of the counter. It was a rare and bold stroke on Mrs. Witham’s part. Alvina’s immediate instinct was to refuse. But she liked Arthur Witham, in his shirtsleeves.

“Well⁠—I must be back in a minute,” she said, as she entered the embrasure of the counter. She felt as if she were really venturing on new ground. She was led into the new drawing-room, done in new peacock-and-bronze brocade furniture, with gilt and brass and white walls. This was the Withams’ new house, and Lottie was proud of it. The two women had a short confidential chat. Arthur lingered in the doorway a while, then went away.

Alvina did not really like Lottie Witham. Yet the other woman was sharp and shrewd in the uptake, and for some reason she fancied Alvina. So she was invited to tea at Manchester House.