Britannia Mews Page 12

“If you will not, I shall,” said Adelaide.

  At that he dropped her wrist and tried to laugh.

  “Do I oppose you? Wouldn’t dare. Do whatever you damn well like. Go home to Mother. Go home, with your black eye …”

  Adelaide looked at herself in the mirror. At some point, though she did not remember it, she must have received a blow. Her right eye was already discoloured, the flesh of her cheek felt bruised. For some moments she stared at her reflection unrecognizingly; then she perceived with great clearness the woman she had become.

  She was no more fitted, now, for the life she had known than was Henry himself. She was no longer Adelaide Culver. She had been battered, toughened, into Henry Lambert’s wife.

  “Very well,” said Adelaide to her reflection. “But when I am ready, I shall go.”

  CHAPTER V

  1

  In a curious way, once Adelaide accepted the fact that her husband drank, life became easier. There was at least, in Britannia Mews, no need for concealment. Most of the men there drank, and a good number of the women; it was a perpetual wonder to Adelaide, as she heard their feet slip and stumble on the steep iron steps, that there were no fatalities from broken necks. Henry was cleverer than most: she quite often saw him, at the foot of their stair, stand eyeing the gradient, pulling himself together, before tackling the ascent: he came up hand over hand on the rail, keeping his gaze fixed on the door above. He was less noisy than most; he did not shout at Adelaide when he came in, or push the furniture over. Taking Henry in the setting of Britannia Mews, Adelaide had little cause for shame. Moreover, once all pretence at painting was given up, she had not to waste time posing as Pharaoh’s daughter; she could devote herself to housekeeping, for which her budget of twenty-five shillings a week was perfectly adequate. She became a clever marketer at stalls and small shops; she became a clever cook. One part of her original programme, at least, was achieved: she provided regular and nourishing meals. If Henry were not there to eat them, Adelaide ate alone; with a certain grim determination she looked after herself. She ate well; she kept up an immaculate standard of personal cleanliness; she never went into the Mews without putting on hat and gloves. These were her defences, which she unconsciously feared to relax. Her character was hardening like a tree’s bark.

  Henry noticed the change in her almost before she did herself. Coming in one afternoon from the Cock, swaying a little in the doorway, he found her finishing a cup of coffee and reading The Times. (She had suddenly begun to take The Times; it was another of her defences.) He looked at the cleared table and frowned.

  “You didn’t wait for me?”

  “No,” said Adelaide. “Do you want anything?”

  “Certainly I do. I want my lunch.”

  She silently went to the stove, and helped him from a casserole, and laid a place at the table.

  “A wife,” observed Henry sulkily, “usually waits for her husband.”

  “If I waited for you, I should miss half my meals.”

  He sat down and began to eat. Adelaide saw at once that he did not want the food, he had demanded it as a gesture. He said:—

  “You’ve changed, Addie. You’re getting damned hard. It doesn’t become a woman …”

  “Would you rather find me in tears?”

  He did not answer. Adelaide refilled her coffee-cup. She could now consider him without emotion. It was a capacity which had grown very steadily, and which (like her acceptance of Henry’s insobriety) brought a certain peace of mind. It gave her control of a situation which only a few months earlier would have reduced her to despair. It enabled her to talk to her husband, when he was in a state to be talked to, in an easy, almost social tone that put him at a disadvantage. She now said casually:—

  “Shall you be in this afternoon, Henry? Because I’m having tea with Alice.”

  2

  The employment of her niece as a decoy-duck had always been part of Mrs. Culver’s design; as soon as Alice returned from Somerset she was admitted to a family council and instructed to write to her cousin inviting her to tea at Swan and Edgar’s; Adelaide read the note a good deal more calmly than Alice had written it, and accepted because it would have been cowardly not to do so. When the two young women met that afternoon it was Adelaide whose calm carried them through the first moments of greeting, as it was Adelaide who ordered tea. Alice was decidedly flustered. Shocked as she was by Adelaide’s dreadful conduct, hurt by the withholding of Adelaide’s confidence, she could not help regarding her with a troubled admiration.

  “I don’t know how you dared!” breathed Alice.

  Adelaide smiled. As Alice sat there staring, her two little front teeth more in evidence than usual—looking prettier than usual, too, with a diamond engagement ring on her finger, and all the force of public approval at her back—the adjective that rose in Adelaide’s mind was “half-baked.” Alice looked half-baked; she hadn’t been through anything, she didn’t know anything; she was still, in essence, the little girl of Kensington Gardens. Adelaide felt an extraordinary sense of intellectual, almost moral, superiority. The idea that Alice had come to lecture her, or in any way influence her, was so ludicrous that she felt it must be at once disposed of.

  “Alice, I’m very glad to see you,” said Adelaide deliberately. “I shall always be glad to see you. But if Mamma has sent you to persuade me to leave Henry, you had better know at once that it’s a waste of time.”

  Alice looked very uncomfortable.

  “I don’t expect Mamma to understand,” went on Adelaide, more kindly, “but how would you feel if as soon as you got married to Mr. Baker, your family decided you ought to leave him?”

  “Freddy’s different,” said Alice quickly. “I know what you mean, dear; but you must admit Freddy’s quite different.”

  “He’s not nearly so clever as Henry.” (Adelaide paused, in momentary surprise at the warmth, the naturalness of her tone. It seemed that the impulse to defend one’s husband could co-exist with the most bitter knowledge of his deficiencies.) “He is not original. He’s simply and exactly the sort of young man one’s parents like. I was wrong to compare them,” said Adelaide loftily. “What I meant was, as you’re going to be married yourself, you surely realize that a wife’s place is with her husband.”

  “If he can support her,” put in Alice rashly.

  Adelaide withered her with a look. (This was how Alice afterwards described the incident to Freddy Baker; and indeed there had been something in Adelaide’s expression that almost frightened her. “She looked at me as though she hated me,” said poor Alice. “She really did, Freddy.” “Nonsense,” said Mr. Baker robustly. But he was not displeased. From all he had heard, Alice’s cousin was a most undesirable connection; he thought the sooner Alice dropped her the better.)

  “If any one has said that Henry can’t support me,” said Adelaide flatly, “it’s a lie. Now tell me about Somerset.”

  Rather nervously at first, but with growing confidence, Alice did so. Somerset had been wonderful; all the Bakers were so kind, and there were so many of them, she and Freddy already had more invitations than they could manage; and if they waited to be married till the following August, two more Bakers, an Indian civil servant and his wife, would be there to swell the throng. “Of course you’ll wait,” said Adelaide blandly. “Oh, I expect so,” said Alice, and chattered on. She was delighted to find Adelaide so sympathetic a listener; actually the latter was employing a technique learned in dealing with Mrs. Culver, that of encouraging the opposition to expend its energy on a side-issue. In describing her trousseau Alice quite forgot her original mission, and Adelaide, as she had enjoyed hearing about Platt’s End, genuinely enjoyed hearing about her cousin’s frocks. She still felt superior. What she didn’t realize was that Alice had in fact influenced her—though not in the direction intended. The commiseration in Alice’s first manner (which Adelaide had so quickly removed) was a foretaste of the commiseration which lay in wait at Platt’s End and Kensington; and sitti
ng there in the beautifully clean tea-room, out of sight and smell of Britannia Mews, Adelaide felt she could more easily bear life with Henry than life in the family bosom. This feeling was real. There was also the fact that in imposing on Alice a totally false picture of her marriage, Adelaide had also, for all practical purposes, imposed it on herself. Every word she now spoke would have to be eaten before she could make a first move towards Farnham; she was pushing a door shut which one part of her longed to leave open; and before the meeting ended, she had slammed it.

  “When are you coming to see us, dear?” asked Alice.

  And Adelaide answered deliberately:—

  “After you have been to see me.”

  The risk she took was enormous. She passionately did not wish Alice to come to Britannia Mews. At Britannia Mews pretence was no longer possible, Henry’s sobriety could not be relied on even for an afternoon. But the proposition followed too logically on what had gone before for Adelaide to shirk it. It was the touchstone of the whole false position on which she had taken her stand.

  Alice flushed. For a moment she looked as though she were going to cry.

  “Addie, dear, do be reasonable! You know how nervous Mamma is, she’s always afraid I’ll catch something …”

  Adelaide saw at once that she was safe. She said coldly:—

  “Does that mean you’re forbidden to visit me in my home?”

  “It’s the Mews, dear—”

  “My home,” repeated Adelaide implacably. “Please tell Aunt I quite see her point, and no doubt she’ll see mine. I hope you haven’t caught anything to-day, dear.”

  Alice lifted her head with a look of sudden anger. She had been doing her best, chiefly for the sake of a family feeling which she was quite sure her cousin did not appreciate, and she did not mean to be sneered at.

  “Addie, if you take up that attitude, we shan’t see each other at all. I hate to say it, but I must, Mamma and Papa and Freddy are all absolutely agreed. You must behave sensibly. We all want to see you—”

  “With my husband?”

  Alice’s silence was a sufficient answer, and watching her cousin’s unhappy face Adelaide suddenly thought of the twins. They got about so much.… They had seen Henry once, outside the Café Royal: had they seen him more often, and told what they had seen? It would explain much. Adelaide felt a great desire to bring the interview to an end. She stood up.

  “Then this is good-bye for some time,” she said harshly.

  “I’m sorry, Addie.”

  “So am I, but there it is. When you see Mamma, as I’ve no doubt you will, give her my love and say Henry and I wish to be left alone for at least a year. And don’t be afraid to ask me to your wedding: I promise I won’t come.”

  3

  As Adelaide walked back from Regent Street she went over this conversation very carefully in her mind. She had in the first place to prepare a version for Henry; for while she had long ceased to attribute to him any of her own pride, that pride could be buttressed by imposing on another person her chosen point of view. To present Alice as a silly little noodle—to protest that one simply couldn’t take on all those Bakers—was to establish face-saving reasons for a breach whose true grounds were humiliating. So far it was easy; but when Adelaide took up Alice’s point of view, she could not help wondering how far her cousin had been deceived. What sort of appearance had she, Adelaide, created? Not one of radiant happiness, that was impossible; but she looked well (Alice had said so), she had defined a not ungallant position; above all, hers had been throughout the dominating spirit. She could not have appeared ill-used. (Here Adelaide came very close to reading her cousin’s mind, for Alice in fact told both Mrs. Culver and Mrs. Hambro, who were waiting for her in Kensington, that Addie hadn’t changed a bit.) As for her defence of Henry, the success of that depended upon whether Alice had any other source of information. On whether, in short, the twins had talked. Adelaide had never treated them with more than a rather impatient kindness, she had no claim on their loyalty; but she thought she could trust their discretion. They got about so much, they had learned to hold their tongues.…

  In sum, then, there was ground for satisfaction. A difficult passage had been carried through. But at the back of her mind something troubled her, and as she turned into Oxford Street, on the pavement opposite Jay’s window, her own final words suddenly came back with peculiar force.

  She thought, “Why did I say a year?”

  For what could happen, in a year, to change her position? Was it possible that she still had hopes of Henry’s reform? Adelaide smiled bitterly; that hope was dead. Certainly it was better not to see her mother, when at every meeting pride impelled her to build up the wall of separation with lies, and lies, and more lies again—each lie a brick that must be laboriously displaced before communication could be re-achieved. The less she saw her mother, the better chance of her return to a daughter’s place. That was a good reason, but it was not the true one; and in a flash of lucidity Adelaide suddenly perceived that she had said “a year” because a year was the longest period of her present life that she could endure to contemplate.

  But her father and mother had been married for a quarter of a century.

  Adelaide stood still on the pavement, splitting the stream of shopping women, and felt panic touch her. She had said a year; there was in truth no period to her bondage. She was caught for life, held fast by a marriage ceremony and her own stubborn pride. Only Henry’s death could absolutely free her—and the wickedness of this thought struck her like a blow. For there was nothing more wicked in the world—so all her training, all her beliefs had taught her—than for a wife to desire her husband’s death.

  She began to walk on again at extreme speed, as though to leave the thought behind her. She pushed it from her mind. But pictures formed there nevertheless—pictures of herself, widowed, unquestioningly received back into a life she should never have left. There was no shame in a widowed daughter’s going home, it was natural, it was praiseworthy; and after a year of mourning life began again. How eager they would be, the Culvers and the Hambros, to help her forget! How eagerly would she herself forget, letting her bitter pride die with the memory! “For I haven’t changed so much,” thought Adelaide piteously. “I could go back and be a girl again.…”

  There was a moisture on her cheeks; she put up her hand and found tears; she was crying, in Oxford Street. Women were beginning to look at her curiously. Adelaide wiped her eyes without pausing and hurried on. Every step she took was bringing her nearer Britannia Mews, but still she hurried. Her wickedness appalled her, she had to expiate it: she was hurrying back to Henry because only by long years of unremitting care for his welfare, by a lifetime of devotion, could she wipe out that one moment’s mortal sin.

  CHAPTER VI

  1

  The eighteen months which elapsed before Henry Lambert’s death saw a great change in the distribution of Adelaide’s natural connections. The Culvers had moved out of town already; Alice and Freddy Baker settled in the new suburb of Surbiton, and shortly after the wedding, the Hambros followed. There were several reasons for this move: the social advantages of Kensington, successfully exploited by Alice, were as yet unimportant to her little sisters; the twins, who went to St. Paul’s, were eager to make the daily journey by train; above all, Mrs. Hambro wished to be near her daughter, and Alice no less desired to have her family close at hand so that they could all run in and out. All Hambros adored running in and out, and Freddy Baker, a Hambro by nature if not by birth, was perfectly agreeable. They migrated therefore—carrying the Redan with them for totem—like a migrating tribe; they colonized Surbiton as they might have colonized Australia, and Alice at once invited two sisters-in-law from Somerset to come and reinforce the operation.

  Adelaide was thankful. Isolation was a relief to her; it was a relief to know that her family no longer had an observation post, so to speak, just on the other side of the Park. When Alice wrote giving the new addresses—for s
he could not bear to think that any member of the tribe, however depraved, should not know where the other members were—Adelaide did not answer. She had not answered the invitation to the wedding, nor sent any gift. She did not answer the rare letters from her mother. In the last of these Mrs. Culver wrote angrily: if Adelaide wished to cut herself off she might; perhaps in a year’s time she would show more sense. Adelaide tore the letter across and threw it out with the day’s rubbish. From Treff she never heard at all; without resentment she realized that it would be very awkward for him to take her part, and that he indeed had probably no inclination to do so. They were fundamentally indifferent to each other, and indifference was something Adelaide could well bear.

  So isolated, both voluntarily and by force of circumstances, Adelaide continued to keep her house and cherish her husband. She took, as she had not taken for some time, pains to be pleasant with him; and if Henry showed an increasing indifference, that was a relief too. He was drinking steadily, and Adelaide would have given much to know where he got the money; no longer from her, for on that issue she never faltered. When questioned he replied vaguely that he had a new pupil. “Where?” asked Adelaide. “Hampstead,” said Henry—and Adelaide felt he spoke at random. But he did go out every afternoon, and on the one occasion when Adelaide followed him, he did go to Hampstead. But fearing to be seen, she lost him in the High Street, and after an hour’s pointless wandering returned home unconvinced.

  He did not go out in the mornings, because he did not get up till noon. This habit, in so small an establishment, considerably inconvenienced Adelaide in her domestic duties, but she was quick to see an advantage. She bought and set up for him a bed in the coach-house below; there he could lie as long as he liked, she explained, undisturbed by her housewifery. For once Henry looked at her intelligently, his indifference pierced by something she had said. He asked sardonically:—