The Lost Girl Part 20

"What manager?" said Miss Pinnegar, short, silent, and inevitable in the doorway.

But James was in one of his abstractions, his trances.

"What manager?" persisted Miss Pinnegar.

But he still bent unknowing over his plate and gobbled his Irish stew.

"Mr. Houghton!" said Miss Pinnegar, in a sudden changed voice. She had gone a livid yellow colour. And she gave a queer, sharp little rap on the table with her hand.

James started. He looked up bewildered, as one startled out of sleep.

"Eh?" he said, gaping. "Eh?"

"Answer me," said Miss Pinnegar. "What manager?"

"Manager? Eh? Manager? What manager?"

She advanced a little nearer, menacing in her black dress. James shrank.

"What manager?" he re-echoed. "My manager. The manager of my cinema."

Miss Pinnegar looked at him, and looked at him, and did not speak.

In that moment all the anger which was due to him from all womanhood was silently discharged at him, like a black bolt of silent electricity. But Miss Pinnegar, the engine of wrath, felt she would burst.

"Cinema! Cinema! Do you mean to tell me--" but she was really suffocated, the vessels of her heart and breast were bursting. She had to lean her hand on the table.

It was a terrible moment. She looked ghastly and terrible, with her mask-like face and her stony eyes and her bluish lips. Some fearful thunderbolt seemed to fall. James withered, and was still. There was silence for minutes, a suspension.

And in those minutes, she finished with him. She finished with him for ever. When she had sufficiently recovered, she went to her chair, and sat down before her plate. And in a while she began to eat, as if she were alone.

Poor Alvina, for whom this had been a dreadful and uncalled-for moment, had looked from one to another, and had also dropped her head to her plate. James too, with bent head, had forgotten to eat.

Miss Pinnegar ate very slowly, alone.

"Don't you want your dinner, Alvina?" she said at length.

"Not as much as I did," said Alvina.

"Why not?" said Miss Pinnegar. She sounded short, almost like Miss Frost. Oddly like Miss Frost.

Alvina took up her fork and began to eat automatically.

"I always think," said Miss Pinnegar, "Irish stew is more tasty with a bit of Swede in it."

"So do I, really," said Alvina. "But Swedes aren't come yet."

"Oh! Didn't we have some on Tuesday?"

"No, they were yellow turnips--but they weren't Swedes."

"Well then, yellow turnip. I like a little yellow turnip," said Miss Pinnegar.

"I might have put some in, if I'd known," said Alvina.

"Yes. We will another time," said Miss Pinnegar.

Not another word about the cinema: not another breath. As soon as James had eaten his plum tart, he ran away.

"What can he have been doing?" said Alvina when he had gone.

"Buying a cinema show--and that man we saw is his manager. It's quite simple."

"But what are we going to do with a cinema show?" said Alvina.

"It's what is _he_ going to do. It doesn't concern me. It's no concern of mine. I shall not lend him anything, I shall not think about it, it will be the same to me as if there _were_ no cinema.

Which is all I have to say," announced Miss Pinnegar.

"But he's gone and done it," said Alvina.

"Then let him go through with it. It's no affair of mine. After all, your father's affairs don't concern me. It would be impertinent of me to introduce myself into them."

"They don't concern _me_ very much," said Alvina.

"You're different. You're his daughter. He's no connection of mine, I'm glad to say. I pity your mother."

"Oh, but he was always alike," said Alvina.

"That's where it is," said Miss Pinnegar.

There was something fatal about her feelings. Once they had gone cold, they would never warm up again. As well try to warm up a frozen mouse. It only putrifies.

But poor Miss Pinnegar after this looked older, and seemed to get a little round-backed. And the things she said reminded Alvina so often of Miss Frost.

James fluttered into conversation with his daughter the next evening, after Miss Pinnegar had retired.

"I told you I had bought a cinematograph building," said James. "We are negotiating for the machinery now: the dynamo and so on."

"But where is it to be?" asked Alvina.

"Down at Lumley. I'll take you and show you the site tomorrow. The building--it is a frame-section travelling theatre--will arrive on Thursday--next Thursday."

"But who is in with you, father?"

"I am quite alone--quite alone," said James Houghton. "I have found an excellent manager, who knows the whole business thoroughly--a Mr.

May. Very nice man. Very nice man."

"Rather short and dressed in grey?"

"Yes. And I have been thinking--if Miss Pinnegar will take the cash and issue tickets: if she will take over the ticket-office: and you will play the piano: and if Mr. May learns the control of the machine--he is having lessons now--: and if I am the indoors attendant, we shan't need any more staff."