Britannia Mews Page 13

  “Are you turning me out of your bed?”

  “No, of course not,” said Adelaide.

  But her body moved with anxiety, with the reverse of desire, as she spoke. The physical contact of her husband was now odious to her: she hated and dreaded the nights when he was sober enough to undress and go to bed. Then she lay close against the wall, rigid, listening to his raucous breathing: if he woke she herself feigned sleep; sometimes she crept out and passed the night in the living-room. But she said calmly:—

  “If you don’t want to, don’t. I simply thought it might be convenient. And you often come in so late—”

  Henry looked round with his usual grin. They were standing in the coach-house, the studio, under the Turkish lamp Adelaide had bought at Liberty’s.

  “It’s very nice down here. It’s a very good plan, my dear, to give your husband a bachelor’s liberty. Some people might call it unconventional …”

  Adelaide pretended not to understand. Part of what he implied she did not understand; but from her old life rose a disturbing echo. They occupy separate rooms … It was the most damning thing that could be said about any married couple. She thought quickly, But who will know? Not the Culvers, not the Hambros, no one who subscribed to her own creed of appearances. What the Mews said of her she did not care. With a brisk, matter-of-fact air she set about making up the bed.

  Yet this relief in turn brought its dangers. Now, in the quiet of the room she could call her own, in the period before she slept, her thoughts turned uncontrollably to her home. So she thought of Platt’s End, the house she had only twice entered; but she remembered perfectly the drawing-room with the bow-window, she knew by heart all the objects with which it was now furnished; she could walk in spirit from room to room and recognize all she found there. (“You can have the corner room,” said Mrs. Culver. “Or the one at the back, with the pretty view.”) Nostalgia tortured her. Again and again she thought, If only I were there! It was not for her mother, for her father or Treff, that she so longed; it was for a life of order and uprightness. The afternoon calls she had once despised now appeared in their true light, as knots in the fabric of respectable society; she saw that it was well to move constantly among one’s equals, for it proclaimed one’s fearlessness of their judgment. To have nothing to conceal! There were hours when Adelaide envied her cousin Alice, blameless under the eyes of Surbiton; and presently she began to indulge herself in a dangerous fantasy. She lay with closed eyes and imagined she was at Platt’s End in body as well as spirit, in the room with the pretty view: she pretended that when she woke it would be to go down to the sunny breakfast-room and find a letter from Alice on her plate. It was an invitation; but she could not accept it, for she was going to a garden-party; and at the garden-party everyone knew who she was, Miss Culver from Platt’s End.…

  Once or twice, breaking in on this dream, she thought she heard voices from the studio below. She shut her ears to them; or if they sounded through her sleep, the woman’s voice was Alice’s.

  It was from these dreams that the climax and disaster of her life with Henry arose.

  2

  As time passed they invaded her waking as well as her sleeping hours; they drove her to make hopeless plans. Since pride forbade her to return alone, she must find a means of taking Henry with her. Her standards fell; she fancied that as the wife of an art-master—of a professional man—she could re-establish herself; and since it was out of the question that he could be employed by any reputable art-school, Adelaide hit on the idea that he might set up for himself. The coach-house had room for half a dozen pupils; easels were cheap, plaster casts not prohibitive; moreover the whole enterprise would carry on under Adelaide’s direct supervision. Not only could she keep an eye on Henry, but young ladies would find a chaperone on the premises. To the two fundamental weaknesses of this scheme—the character of Britannia Mews and the character of Henry Lambert—Adelaide shut her eyes; her mind was working in a fever. She set to. Without consulting her husband she drew up an advertisement and copied it a hundred times on good quality, gilt-edged cards, which she meant to drop herself, after dark, through the letter-boxes of Chester and Bedford Streets.

  Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lambert

  have pleasure in announcing that their drawing-classes will reopen on October 1st at Studio No. 2, Britannia Mews, Albion Place. Hours, 2 to 6 P.M., or by arrangement. Terms, two guineas the course of six lessons. Individual tuition, drawing from the antique, water-colour and freehand a speciality. All information from Mrs. Henry Lambert, Studio 2, Britannia Mews.

  At this disingenuous and able production Adelaide worked in secret until the hundred cards were finished, and then she showed them to Henry.

  He had come up from the coach-house about noon, dressed but unshaven, with a bilious look that should have warned her. But Adelaide was too fevered to notice: she at once took a card from the neat stack on the table and put it into his hand. He glanced at it, turned it over, glanced with equal attention, or indifference, at the blank reverse, and threw it down.

  “Read it, Henry!” cried Adelaide impatiently. “See what it says!”

  “I can’t, without a magnifying glass.”

  “I had to write small, to get it on the card. Do you think it’s too small?” Adelaide picked up a card herself and scrutinized it anxiously. “Henry, I’m sure you can read it perfectly well!”

  She gave him more of them, a handful, and this time he brought his vague attention to bear. But he did not seem to understand, he said stupidly:—

  “What’s it all about?”

  “It’s a—a prospectus. I thought you could take pupils again—here, in the studio. I’d look after them. All you’d have to do would be to walk round and criticize. You wouldn’t have to go out to give lessons, they’d come to you. It would be so easy, Henry—”

  “You’re out of your mind. No one would come here.”

  “But they might,” pleaded Adelaide. “We could try. I might lower the prices—”

  “No one would come here. If they did, I couldn’t teach ’em. I’ve had enough of it. If I ever see another fool with a drawing-board I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

  With a gesture at once weak and violent he struck at the stack of cards and sent them scattering over the floor; he trod them underfoot as he turned and walked towards the door. Adelaide ran after him and caught him by the arm.

  “Please listen, Henry. We must do something. We can’t go on like this for ever—”

  He thrust past her, knocking away her hand; but on the tiny balcony they were still close together, almost breast to breast. Adelaide hurried on:—

  “You say I’ve grown hard, Henry, but I’ve had to, or I couldn’t endure this life. If only you’ll try again I’ll be different. I’ll believe in you. And why shouldn’t you try? You’re young, we’re both young, there are so many years before us! Are we never to hold up our heads again? Why, when my mother writes to me I can’t even answer—”

  “The more fool you,” said Henry Lambert. “If you weren’t a proud bloody fool you’d get money out of her.”

  Without the least consciousness of what she did, in a purely physical reaction, Adelaide pushed him away from her. His balance was none too good, he was standing with his back to the top-most stair; he fell headlong on the cobbles a dozen feet below.

  3

  Britannia Mews was never over-anxious to call in the police; but when a man had his neck broken it recognized the necessity. Who ran for the constable Adelaide never knew; he seemed to appear within a few seconds, while she was still kneeling beside her husband’s body. And as rapidly, the Mews filled. All around her faces like the faces in a nightmare pressed and muttered, none approaching too closely, but hemming her in. She felt their hungry excitement breathe upon her like the fumes of an evil spirit; their eyes watched her every movement, sucking at her, avid to miss no least detail. Violence, a violent death, stirred them like beauty. Adelaide shut her eyes; there were no tears
under the lids, and in her numbed brain rose the first coherent thought: It would look better if I were crying …

  A hand, heavy but not rough, fell on her shoulder; the constable was helping her to her feet. Adelaide saw that he looked at her with surprise: he had not expected to find her so respectable. She thought, I am not crying, but I am a respectable woman. I am a lady. And again her clever brain warned her: If you are a lady, what are you doing here? You are just a respectable woman.…

  “Now then,” said the constable. “This your husband?”

  “Yes,” said Adelaide.

  “Name?”

  “Mrs. Lambert. Mrs. Henry Lambert.”

  The constable stooped over Henry Lambert’s body, while the spectators pressed closer. Now that Adelaide had given her name, had accepted so to speak responsibility, they grew more bold. They could even afford to show compassion, someone carried out a chair for Adelaide to sit on, and she accepted it, though she would have preferred to stand, because she feared to antagonize the oaf or slattern who had brought it. Already she was wondering who had been in the Mews below when Henry fell, and how much they had seen; she could not trust in the common front they usually presented to the Law, because she wasn’t one of them.…

  The constable straightened his back and looked at her uneasily.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Yes,” said Adelaide.

  “Can you make a statement as to how it happened?”

  Adelaide moistened her lips.

  “We were standing at the top of our stairs. Number 2. He went past me to go down and missed his footing on the top step.”

  She was aware that she spoke too calmly, too lucidly; she should have wailed and lamented, thrown herself down on her husband’s dead body. From the back of the crowd rose a small impersonal whisper: “Did ’e fall or was ’e pushed?” The constable glared in the direction of the voice, saying, “Silence, there!” But he looked at Adelaide more uneasily still.

  “Is there anyone who saw it happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He turned, not very hopefully, to the spectators. Again there was a drawing-back. But at the same time the hindmost rank parted, someone was pushing through; slowly, purposefully, there emerged the huge and obscene figure of the Sow. She said:—

  “I seen it. I seen it all.”

  The constable stared at her, weighing her credit as a witness; she met his look and returned it without flinching.

  “Name?”

  “Mrs. Mounsey. Number 9, rags and old clo’.”

  “You say you saw the occurrence happen?”

  “On me oath. I was in me winder opposite, which is on the same level, and I see Mr. Lambert and Mrs. Lambert a-standing like she said. ’E pushed past ’er and missed ’is footing. I’d ’a bin down sooner, but I move ’eavy.”

  Laboriously copying this statement into his book, the constable nodded.

  “Accidental death,” added Mrs. Mounsey. “Pore soul!”

  She waddled up to Adelaide and enveloped her in a dreadful embrace. Adelaide dared not reject it; when her head was forced down upon a filthy bosom, she submitted.

  “Stunned,” explained Mrs. Mounsey, in a proprietary manner. “Stunned, that’s what she is. If you knew your duty, young man, you’d be fetching the ambulance to take ’im away. ’Oo’s the Crowner?”

  The professionalism of this question cleared the air. On the outskirts of the crowd a brisk discussion arose as to whether the coroner would be Mr. Bickford or Mr. Mayhew; the police surgeon they all knew. The constable closed his note-book and raised an authoritative voice.

  “I want someone to go to the station and tell them to send an ambulance and the surgeon. Those who have no business here will clear off. Mrs. Lambert, Ma’am, if you wish to go indoors—”

  “I’ll stay with my husband,” said Adelaide.

  She raised a face appropriately white, though less with sorrow than with nausea; already her clothes, her hair, her whole person, reeked with the horrible odour of the Sow’s unwashed flesh. But the dead weight of an immensely ponderous arm still held her as the Sow said tenderly:—

  “She didn’t ought to be left. I’ll stay ’ere too.”

  Adelaide looked quickly at the policeman’s face and read there assent to a law older than that he served: The bereaved must not be left alone.

  “You better have someone,” agreed the constable gravely. “Can you send for any relation?”

  “I have no relations,” said Adelaide.

  Even as she spoke she remembered that the whole Mews knew of Mrs. Culver’s visit. The Sow knew of it, as she knew everything: Adelaide saw pass over her face a peculiar expression of complicity and approval. She said unctuously:—

  “But she ’as friends. I’m ’er friend, ain’t I, dearie?”

  Adelaide nodded. She could do nothing else, her strength was leaving her, she felt tired and stupid. But she did not quite submit: with a last effort she raised her head and searched through the crowd for where Old Bert, too abject to approach nearer, hung on its fringe.

  “Old Bert!” called Adelaide.

  He came shambling up to her, gentle, oddly innocent, and stood obediently by her chair: humble as his own dog, he brought something of a dog’s comfort. Under Mrs. Mounsey’s malevolent stare he blinked and turned away his head, but did not budge. The constable took up his stand at the foot of the steps and withdrew into official stolidity. Of them all the dead man appeared most at ease: he lay in a relaxed and strangely natural attitude, his face hidden by his arm, as though he had flung himself down to sleep.

  So they waited; and not unobserved. There were watchers at every window, the Blazer never left her door, women moved on constant vague errands from one end of the Mews to the other. Adelaide endured their looks as she had endured everything; she sat white and rigid, a stony figure of grief. But within her bosom her heart beat with a new life: her shocked brain held only one thought. She thought: Now I can go home.

  CHAPTER VII

  1

  The Coroner’s Court had olive-green walls, panelled halfway up with newly varnished pine. The odour of varnish still hung on the air, mingling in Adelaide’s mouth with a sickening after-taste of gin. Mrs. Mounsey had been waiting for her by the Cock, glass in hand; Adelaide dared not offend the conventions of the Mews by refusing it. Someone gave Old Bert a gin as well; Mrs. Mounsey took her third. As befitted her position as chief witness and friend of the bereaved she had drawn upon all the resources of the second-hand clothes trade to appear in deep mourning: her ancient skirt, rust-coloured rather than sable, had crape about the hem; her upper part was swathed in a black opera cloak ornamented with jet, worn over a black bodice and shawl; her bonnet elaborated the sombre theme with more crape, more jet, and a broken feather. Old Bert had a bit of black round his arm. Sitting between them in the Coroner’s Court Adelaide felt her own hastily bought black dress to be insufficiently funereal. It had never occurred to her not to go into mourning, but the intricate detail by which a widow published her single-minded grief was conspicuously absent.

  Adelaide looked round the room. At the far end was a raised desk for the Coroner, below it a desk for his clerk. Between the jurors’ benches on the left and the witness-box in the centre ran a long table round which sat half a dozen men in attitudes at once alert and casual. They showed neither the uneasy importance of the jurors nor the furtive eagerness Adelaide could feel stirring the curiosity-mongers behind her. They looked—at home.

  “Newspaper chaps,” breathed Mrs. Mounsey.

  Adelaide flinched. This was a danger she had not foreseen, and instinctively she shrank back. The Sow’s evil-smelling bonnet nodded against her ear.

  “They ain’t ’ere for us, the next’s murder. But don’t you be’ave too ladylike …”

  Adelaide nodded back. The gin had gone to her head a little, with excellent results. She felt detached yet extremely lucid: for once indifferent to the Sow’s physical odiousness, and able to appr
eciate the sense of her advice. A lady, in that place, would attract attention even to an accident, even when the next was murder.… The next, thought Adelaide, with sudden resentment; remembering the sense of uniqueness and importance that surrounded a death in the Culver circles, her detachment was momentarily pierced: she felt resentful that Henry was treated so unceremoniously, given no more than a place in a series, a place on a list. But she could not pursue this thought, she had to think about herself. I am not a lady, I am a respectable woman … not too respectable even, if she were to merge into the protective background of Mrs. Mounsey and Old Bert. As though of its own accord Adelaide’s hand went up to her throat, unhooking her collar; up to her brow, loosening a strand of hair; she let her shoulders sag, her stiff back slacken. The Sow’s small eyes watched approvingly.

  Adelaide sat with bowed head, seeing nothing. She stood, as they all stood, when the Coroner entered, but she did not look at him. She did not see the jurors, their oath taken, file out of the Court and return with paler looks from viewing the body. Until her own name was called she sat blind and deaf, with only one thought in her mind to keep at bay a sensation which she feared to identify, lest it should be fear itself. The thought was a philosophical one, which had come to her before, in the church where she and Henry for the first and last time attended service together: she concentrated upon the importance of appearances.

  Then she heard her name called; Mrs. Mounsey and a police officer were helping her to her feet. She was in the witness-box, a Testament in her hand: a voice rolled out certain sonorous periods: “The evidence which you shall give at this inquest on behalf of our Sovereign Lord the King …” Another voice prompted, “Kiss the Book,” and Adelaide touched her lips to greasy leather.

  “You are Adelaide Lambert, and you identify the body of the man now lying in the Mortuary as that of your late husband Henry Lambert?”

  “Yes,” said Adelaide. Instinctively she straightened her back; on a second impulse let her shoulders droop again, and added, “Yes, sir.”