Britannia Mews Page 11

  2

  Adelaide reported this visit only briefly to her husband, and he showed little interest in it. “I suppose she didn’t leave another twenty quid?” he asked. He spoke jokingly, of course, but the remark jarred, and Adelaide did not even reply.

  Their conversation was increasingly liable to these sudden breaks; for Henry’s chastened mood did not endure. He kept his promise not to get drunk, but Adelaide sometimes suspected that he was not quite sober; in her inexperience she couldn’t tell whether he were or not, and feared to attack on what might be mistaken grounds. Men could be irritable, or morose, without being intoxicated; possibly Henry was irritable and morose for the very reason that he was reforming. So Adelaide ignored her husband’s ill-humour; but her own temper became strained, she found she had a sharp tongue which needed constant control if peace were to be kept; and Henry gave her no assistance. He ceased to praise her looks, or her housewifery, and went down each morning to the studio with the dogged air of a man under compulsion. Once or twice he went out to a music hall by himself, and once or twice, seized by a malicious humour, spent the evening at home reading aloud to Adelaide in French, so rapidly that she could not follow. “Enjoy our domestic evening?” enquired Henry, at the end; “Very much,” replied Adelaide calmly.

  They were heading for an open quarrel, which all Adelaide’s efforts could no more than postpone, and it occurred about a fortnight after Mrs. Culver’s visit. The occasion was slight enough: Adelaide went in to the studio and found Henry not at his easel, but adding the last touches, in paint, to a puppet’s head. It was not made of composition, like those of the puppets in the basket: it was carved out of wood, and very skilfully: one saw the bones of a long narrow skull, lantern jaws, lips drawn back over a gap-toothed mouth; the complexion was yellowish. Mr. Lambert was regarding it with complacency.

  “What a hateful thing!” said Adelaide at once.

  “It’s meant to be. It’s a Hangman,” said Henry Lambert. “And don’t despise it, my love, for it’s a commission.”

  She stared incredulously.

  “Do you expect me to believe that?”

  “As you like. The fact remains that it’s a commission from the Old ’Un, who is paying me a shilling for it. His old Hangman was chewed up by Dog Toby.”

  Adelaide sat down on the stool and laughed.

  “A commission from a Punch and Judy man!” she exclaimed bitterly. “We’re going up in the world!”

  “With a little persuasion he might even offer me regular employ. He needs an assistant to push the barrow. On a profit-sharing basis, of course: I should insist on at least forty per cent.”

  “You’re impossible,” said Adelaide.

  She spoke without thinking; and in the same instant realized that what she said was true. It meant the collapse of all her hopes, the failure of her life; but it was true. He was impossible. It was impossible that she should ever make anything of him. What had begun as a trifling bicker became all at once a crisis of the most fundamental importance. Adelaide looked at her husband—aware that she was seeing him at his best, sober, a job of work almost completed—and admitted defeat. She said:—

  “I wish to God I’d never married you.”

  Henry picked up a brush and slightly thickened the Hangman’s eyebrows. He seemed quite unmoved.

  “You would do it,” he pointed out. “I tried hard enough to stop you.”

  “I must have been mad.”

  “That’s what I thought. I was never so astonished in my life.”

  It took Adelaide a few seconds to realize the implications of this remark. The buffet to her pride and love, so rude, so unexpected, left her momentarily shaken. Her voice trembled slightly as she said:—

  “Henry, do you mean—didn’t you expect me to marry you?”

  “Of course not. Good God, if every girl I kissed expected to marry me—”

  “Every girl!” A wave of colour rose over Adelaide’s throat. “Does that mean you made love to all your pupils?”

  “Unless they were positively repulsive.”

  “Did you—did you make love to Miss Ocock?”

  He grinned.

  “I tried to. She saw through me soon enough. It was only you, my little innocent, who took me seriously.”

  Adelaide began to cry. It was the first time she had cried since her marriage, and the tears surprised even herself, for she had thought she was beyond them; now they flowed uncontrollably, washing away all her pride. Henry at once walked towards the door, but she put out her hand and caught him. She began to plead.

  “Henry, how can you talk so heartlessly to me? Henry, don’t go! How can you go and leave me with—with such thoughts? I won’t mind about the other women, they’re nothing, if you’ll only tell me it was me you really loved!”

  Henry groaned impatiently.

  “My God, of course it’s you I really love! Haven’t I married you?”

  “But that first afternoon,” persisted Adelaide, “when Alice had a cold and you came although you’d been put off—that was because you were in love with me? I want the truth, Henry!”

  “All right, you shall have it. You had it then, it was what you told your mother: I came because I didn’t see why I should lose my fee.”

  Staring at him in the blankest dismay, Adelaide was silent. In an irritated voice Mr. Lambert added abruptly:—

  “I told too much truth that afternoon. I told the truth about your horrible drawings. My gorge suddenly rose, and what little honesty I had came out in me. Then I had to smoothe you down somehow, I couldn’t afford to lose two pupils, and this is what came of it. There you are, my girl: if you find truth bitter, don’t ask for it.”

  He was standing close to her, speaking into her face: Adelaide suddenly realized—realized actually with hope and relief—that he was not quite sober after all.

  “Why, you’ve been drinking …,” she said thankfully.

  “In vino veritas,” said Henry Lambert.

  CHAPTER IV

  1

  The results of this crisis were deep rather than apparent. That same evening Henry was remorseful again, told Adelaide he could not remember a word he had said, and asked her forgiveness. She forgave him—what else could she do?—and they drifted back into their old ways. But truth, that dangerous commodity, has a way of sticking: Adelaide never again cherished any illusion as to the basis of her marriage. Truth had not blinded her; on the contrary, as her spirit grew accustomed to this new and penetrating light she saw very plainly that it was she, and not Henry, who was responsible for their present pass. What she had taken for diffidence, or chivalry, had been the wriggling of a hooked fish; she even saw that she had in a sense blackmailed him into marrying her, that innocence and trust can blackmail as ruthlessly as greed or hate. She saw that she had made an enormous mistake. But trying to disentangle its root, Adelaide came back again to a fault not of her own, but of Henry’s: his love-making had been not only irresponsible, but mercenary. This she could not forgive. She did not try to; she simply ceased to love him. At the same time, taking their marriage as a fact, and pride, not love, for the base of existence, Adelaide determined to make of it the best she could, and at least to keep up appearances.

  With great common sense, she at once lowered her standards. Perhaps naturally, as soon as she lost her love for her husband she also lost her belief in his genius, and no longer saw in him a future P.R.A. What she now aimed at was some sort of permanent mastership, in a school or at one of the London Polytechnics. (No private pupils.) She forced Henry to visit, and leave his name with, several scholastic agencies; and it was about this time that she answered an advertisement in the paper, enclosing a postal order for half a crown. A day or two later there arrived a small package containing a bottle of colourless, odourless liquid (as guaranteed) described simply on the label as Drinknomor. She managed to slip a teaspoonful in her husband’s coffee for three mornings in succession, without appreciable effect; then Henry found the bottle.<
br />
  Adelaide looked at him defiantly. There was no need for words: the situation was obvious.

  “How much have you given me?” he asked.

  “You can see for yourself.”

  “Well, is this the first bottle?”

  “Yes,” said Adelaide, and could not suppress a flicker of hope. “Henry, have you—have you noticed anything?”

  “I’ve noticed the coffee was rather worse than usual. I suppose this is the answer.” He uncorked the bottle and sniffed. “Colourless and odourless,” he agreed, quite amiably. “My dear girl, if you’d only told me in advance, I could have saved you half a crown.”

  “Do you mean, Henry, you’ve tried it before?”

  “It has been tried on me. Without, I assure you, the least result. So I’ll get rid of it for you.”

  He was standing by the sink; Adelaide fully expected to see him pour it away; but instead Henry raised the bottle to his lips and swallowed the lot—at least nine doses of Drinknomor at one draught. He wiped his moustache and grinned at her.

  “We’ll try an experiment, my dear: I shall now pay a visit to the Cock.…”

  At least Adelaide wasted no more half-crowns, and she was glad to save the expense. She was becoming very economical, and even encouraged Henry to neglect his painting in order to make a Black Baby and a Crocodile for Old Bert. This ancient was the only creature in the Mews for whom Adelaide felt the least trace of liking, because he always treated her with respect. For Old Bert was indeed old: too old to wonder, or judge, or criticize. He recognized only two classes of people, those good for a tanner, and those who weren’t. Adelaide’s dress and bearing were those of a lady good for a tanner; had he seen her before his booth he would have elaborated his squeakings, put new life into his Hangman. That she actually lived in Britannia Mews, the wife of a man who carved him a head for a bob, was to the Old ’Un neither here nor there. She was a lady, one of the gentry; when he saw her he touched his forehead, and Adelaide as instinctively opened her purse.

  “What’s the good of his paying me a shilling, if you give it back in sixpences?” demanded Henry Lambert reasonably.

  Adelaide did not answer; if she had, she would have said that sixpence was a cheap price at which to buy back one’s self-respect. It bought more; it bought something like friendship. She sometimes had quite long conversations with Old Bert, who in his prime had actually penetrated into drawing-rooms, entertaining children’s parties. Only once or twice, he admitted; but he alone in the Mews (except of course Henry) had any idea of the sort of home Adelaide came from. He could describe carpets, window-curtains, which she almost recognized; for if an occasion is rare it leaves a deep impression, and an evening in Queen’s Gate had left a deep impression on Old Bert. There was a piano in the room, he told Adelaide; there was a sofa covered in yellow silk; there was a wonderful great chandelier a-hanging from the ceiling. Adelaide would stand in the Mews and listen to the old man, the shabby booth tilted beside them; she felt a pang of sympathy as he stooped to its handles. It was too much for him; as Henry said, he needed an assistant.

  “Can’t you get anyone to push for you?” she asked one day.

  The ancient man raised his head and looked slowly round, his rheumy eye travelling with cool judiciousness over the dwellings of his neighbours. Two of these neighbours were visible—male, able-bodied and unemployed, they leaned against the side-door of the Cock. Old Bert took them into his survey, and allowed his gaze to travel on till it had completed the circuit of the Mews. Then he spat.

  With this judgment Adelaide thoroughly agreed. Habit had hardened her; her attitude towards her neighbours had changed from hatred to a profound contempt. The women in particular she despised for their incurable slatternliness: they did not throw off altogether the burden of housewifery, but muddled and piddled at it all day long: they never finished one job before starting the next, their washing was never properly clean, their food never properly cooked, their persons never properly dressed. Adelaide found herself able to ignore them, almost as though they were so many animals—very dirty animals, whom one naturally avoided, but otherwise took no notice of. The one exception was Mrs. Mounsey, the Sow. Her Adelaide still feared, and this was the one feeling she had in common with the rest of the Mews.

  Even the Blazer, even the bullies of the Cock, feared Mrs. Mounsey. As a rule she was not much seen, only once or twice a week she waddled by with her sack; but sometimes in the evening, when the Mews was at its liveliest, Mrs. Mounsey came out on her balcony. She stood there without speaking, merely watching; and these appearances always produced a curious tension. Voices quietened, eyes glanced furtively up, and glanced away; no one was quite easy until the Sow, her inspection over, heaved herself back within doors. Much later that evening a man or woman would be seen going quickly up her stair, the door opened a crack, something passed from hand to hand, the door closed again. “Why do they do it, Henry?” demanded Adelaide. “They give her money. Why do they do it?” “Because she knows too much about ’em,” said Henry. “Didn’t I tell you she was a witch?”

  “If she’s blackmailing them, they should go to the police.”

  Henry shrugged.

  “The police know too much about ’em too. Once you’re in the Sow’s clutches, it’s not so easy to get out.”

  Adelaide looked at him sharply.

  “Have you ever paid her anything?”

  “Not a penny.”

  “Then promise me, Henry, you never will. Promise me you’ll never on any account give her any money. Never!”

  He readily did so. Adelaide no longer put much faith in her husband’s promises, but she felt that this one had a chance of being kept: partly because it might after all be superfluous. For Henry was the only person in the Mews who could look upon the Sow dispassionately; his draughtsman’s eye took a detached pleasure in her enormous bulk, he more than once declared that he could make a damn fine drawing of her; and this attitude as it were insulated him from her malefic power. Adelaide had no such defence; and when Henry actually made such a drawing, from memory, superstitiously burned it.

  As for his other promises, she soon learned that Henry gave them simply to save trouble. He promised to go and see a headmaster, simply to get half a crown out of Adelaide for his fares. When she saw through this device he became more ingenious: he got two pounds from her by saying he had borrowed that sum off Miss Ocock. Adelaide in a fury of humiliation gave it him at once; then, preyed upon by doubt, posted a cheque to Miss Ocock direct, and it was not returned; as Miss Ocock’s lessons then ceased, it seemed likely that the first part of his tale was true. This dishonesty in money matters, when she first discovered it, drove Adelaide again to tears; but she could, and did, take precautions; Henry got no more money from her. But he had acquired four pounds at one stroke, and four pounds, at the Cock, went a long way: night after night Henry came home the worse for drink. Sometimes, in this state, he was amorous, and when Adelaide shut him out from her room grew loud in anger and self-pity, asking what the devil she had married him for.

  “I married you because I loved you,” said Adelaide once. “I loved you and wanted to help you. Now I see you’re past help.”

  “And you don’ love me?”

  “No.”

  He regarded her, for a moment, with a sort of surprised attention.

  “Love not stronger than death, and all that?”

  “No,” said Adelaide.

  “Damn’ shame,” said Mr. Lambert sympathetically.

  2

  There were moments when her spirit almost broke. There was one very dreadful night when a knot of fighting men burst noisily through the door of the Cock and Adelaide, drawn in spite of herself to the balcony, saw a rough circle form round two grappled figures. One was much the more powerful, a brute notorious in the Mews as a bully; and the other man was Henry.

  What followed was sheer nightmare. Adelaide heard her own voice raised in a shriek as she ran down the iron stairs, she heard
her own voice screaming abuse as she pushed between filthy shoulders, thrust with her elbows, stooped over her husband and pulled him to his feet. The other man struck at her; Adelaide twisted back, still clinging to Henry’s arm. No one helped her, but Henry was finding his feet, he was shouting too, cursing with a drink-thickened tongue; as his opponent lunged after him a woman interposed herself, giving them time to retreat. Adelaide pushed Henry against their own stair and stood at its foot while he stumbled up; but no one came any nearer. She waited perhaps half a minute, then turned her back and mounted after him, quite slowly, without once looking round till she turned to shut the door. The knot of men was still there, and the Blazer among them; and it seemed to Adelaide that the Blazer made her some sort of sign.

  Henry was leaning against the table, dishevelled but apparently not much hurt. Adelaide attempted to walk past him to the bedroom, but he reached out and caught her wrist. She could feel the dirt of the Mews still on his hand.

  “So you’re blooded,” said Henry Lambert thickly.

  “Let me go!”

  “You looked like a bloody what d’you call it—”

  “Henry,” said Adelaide curtly, “if you’re able to talk—”

  “A bloody Valkyrie—”

  “I tell you now that we are going to leave the Mews.”

  “Didn’t know you had it in you. Bloody Valkyrie!”