The Lost Girl

Take a mining townlet like Woodhouse, with a population of ten thousand people, and three generations behind it. This space of three generations argues a certain well-established society. The old “County” has fled from the sight of so much disembowelled coal, to flourish on mineral rights in regions still idyllic. Remains one great and inaccessible magnate, the local coal owner: three generations old, and clambering on the bottom step of the “County,” kicking off the mass below. Rule him out.

A well established society in Woodhouse, full of fine shades, ranging from the dark of coal-dust to grit of stonemason and sawdust of timber-merchant, through the lustre of lard and butter and meat, to the perfume of the chemist and the disinfectant of the doctor, on to the serene gold-tarnish of bank-managers, cashiers for the firm, clergymen and suchlike, as far as the automobile refulgence of the general-manager of all the collieries. Here the ne plus ultra. The general manager lives in the shrubberied seclusion of the so-called Manor. The genuine Hall, abandoned by the “County,” has been taken over as offices by the firm.

Here we are then: a vast substratum of colliers; a thick sprinkling of tradespeople intermingled with small employers of labour and diversified by elementary schoolmasters and nonconformist clergy; a higher layer of bank-managers, rich millers and well-to-do ironmasters, episcopal clergy and the managers of collieries, then the rich and sticky cherry of the local coal-owner glistening over all.

But let us retreat to the early eighties, when Alvina was a baby: or even further back, to the palmy days of James Houghton. In his palmy days, James Houghton was crème de la crème of Woodhouse society. The house of Houghton had always been well-to-do: tradespeople, we must admit; but after a few generations of affluence, tradespeople acquire a distinct cachet. Now James Houghton, at the age of twenty-eight, inherited a splendid business in Manchester goods, in Woodhouse. He was a tall, thin, elegant young man with side-whiskers, genuinely refined, somewhat in the Bulwer style. He had a taste for elegant conversation and elegant literature and elegant Christianity: a tall, thin, brittle young man, rather fluttering in his manner, full of facile ideas, and with a beautiful speaking voice: most beautiful. Withal, of course, a tradesman. He courted a small, dark woman, older than himself, daughter of a Derbyshire squire. He expected to get at least ten thousand pounds with her. In which he was disappointed, for he got only eight hundred. Being of a romantic-commercial nature, he never forgave her, but always treated her with the most elegant courtesy. To see him peel and prepare an apple for her was an exquisite sight. But that peeled and quartered apple was her portion. This elegant Adam of commerce gave Eve her own back, nicely cored, and had no more to do with her. Meanwhile Alvina was born.

Before all this, however, before his marriage, James Houghton had built Manchester House. It was a vast square building⁠—vast, that is, for Woodhouse⁠—standing on the main street and high-road of the small but growing town.

And Woodhouse bought cautiously.

After the sale, however, James Houghton felt himself at liberty to plunge into an orgy of new stock. He flitted, with a tense look on his face, to Manchester. After which huge bundles, bales and boxes arrived in Woodhouse, and were dumped on the pavement of the shop. Friday evening came, and with it a revelation in Houghton’s window: the first piqués, the first strangely-woven and honeycombed toilet covers and bed quilts, the first frill-caps and aprons for maidservants: a wonder in white. That was how James advertised it. “A Wonder in White.” Who knows but that he had been reading Wilkie Collins’ famous novel!

As the nine days of the wonder-in-white passed and receded, James disappeared in the direction of London. A few Fridays later he came out with his Winter Touch. Weird and wonderful winter coats, for ladies⁠—everything James handled was for ladies, he scorned the coarser sex⁠—: weird and wonderful winter coats for ladies, of thick, black, pockmarked cloth, stood and flourished their bear-fur cuffs in the background, while tippets, boas, muffs and winter-fancies coquetted in front of the window-space. Friday-night crowds gathered outside: the gas-lamps shone their brightest: James Houghton hovered in the background like an author on his first night in the theatre. The result was a sensation. Ten villages stared and crushed round the plate glass.

“I can’t stay here all my life,” she declared, stretching her eyes in a way that irritated the other inmates of Manchester House extremely. “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’m buried 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 trying them all.

“But what do you want, dear?” asked Miss Frost, knitting her dark brows in agitation.

“I want to go away,” said Alvina bluntly.

Miss Frost gave a slight gesture with her right hand, of helpless impatience. 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 get out 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 a rude laugh. “Australia isn’t the only other place besides Woodhouse.”

Miss Pinnegar was naturally offended. But the curious insolence which sometimes came out in the girl was inherited direct from her father.

“You see, dear,” said Miss Frost, agitated: “if you knew what you wanted, it would be easier to see the way.”

“I want to be a nurse,” rapped out Alvina.

“There was a sound of revelry by night!” For Mr. May, after a long depression, was in high feather. They shouted, positively shouted over their cards, they roared with excitement, expostulation, and laughter. Miss Pinnegar sat through it all. But at one point she could bear it no longer.

The drawing-room door opened, and the dumpy, hulked, faded woman in a black serge dress stood like a rather squat avenging angel in the doorway.

“What would your father say to this?” she said sternly.

The company suspended their laughter and their cards, and looked around. Miss Pinnegar wilted and felt strange under so many eyes.

“Father!” said Alvina. “But why father?”

“You lost girl!” said Miss Pinnegar, backing out and closing the door.

Mr. May laughed so much that he knocked his whiskey over.

“There,” he cried, helpless, “look what she’s cost me!” And he went off into another paroxysm, swelling like a turkey.

Ciccio opened his mouth, laughing silently.

“Lost girl! Lost girl! How lost, when you are at home?” said Geoffrey, making large eyes and looking hither and thither as if he had lost something.

They all went off again in a muffled burst.

“No but, really,” said Mr. May, “drinking and card-playing with strange men in the drawing-room on Sunday evening, of cauce it’s scandalous. It’s terrible! I don’t know how ever you’ll be saved, after such a sin. And in Manchester House, too⁠—!” He went off into another silent, turkey-scarlet burst of mirth, wriggling in his chair and squealing faintly: “Oh, I love it, I love it! You lost girl!