Britannia Mews Read online

  3

  Thus Lauderdale became known throughout the Mews as “Mr. Lambert.” Newcomers naturally accepted this title without question; Mr. and Mrs. Lambert, leaders of the respectable element, were looked up to by all.

  “Do you mind, dear?” asked Adelaide, rather anxiously.

  “Not in the least,” Lauderdale assured her. “It gives me a certain feeling of security.”

  “Do you mean—from Milly?”

  “From my whole past. I always wanted to make a fresh start with you, my dear.”

  “It may lead to complications.”

  “I don’t see why. I haven’t a bank account, and no one is likely to leave me any money. In fact, it will avoid complications. If we were in America, I could even more accurately call myself Henry Lambert II.”

  “Not Henry, Gilbert. I won’t have that.”

  “Just as you like. Dear me,” said Gilbert, “I’m getting rather deeply into Henry’s debt.”

  He showed no embarrassment about referring to his predecessor, and though Adelaide did not guess it, this was a definite policy on his part; he did not wish the ghost of Henry Lambert to lurk hidden and unmentionable in the depths of her mind. Adelaide was nothing if not plainspoken about him, unlike most women she could not sentimentalize the dead; on the other hand, she did not nag his memory.

  “We were both to blame,” she said, “and we were both unhappy. I used to think I could never forgive him, but I have; and it’s a great relief.”

  One day she showed Gilbert the collection of puppets. The wicker basket was still there, still under the table, still an inconvenience; Adelaide longed to get rid of it. But Gilbert, as the puppets were lifted out, astonished her by his enthusiasm.

  “My dear Adelaide, they’re superb!”

  “Really?” Adelaide surveyed the creatures with a mixed expression; she had never got over her dislike of them, but if Gilbert considered they had merit, she was perfectly prepared to agree. “I know Henry said they were the best work he ever did: he made them when he was in France. Are they really worth anything?”

  “In cash, I don’t know how you’d set a price. They must be unique. But they ought to be shown.”

  Gilbert lifted the Marquise by her slender waist; she dropped amorously against his arm—just as she had done against Henry’s. Adelaide sniffed.

  “They’re supposed to be characters from Molière—but we did Molière at school, and it wasn’t anything like that.”

  Gilbert laughed absently.

  “It wouldn’t be, my dear. But—good Lord!—in a proper puppet theatre, they’d make a sensation. They’ve got to be shown, and I’ve got to learn how to handle ’em.”

  “Gilbert!” Adelaide stared at him in alarm: there was a look in his eye, a look of rapt preoccupation, which she instinctively mistrusted. “Gilbert, for heaven’s sake don’t you begin wasting your time on them!”

  “It wouldn’t be waste. We’d make money out of it.”

  “But they’re just for children!”

  “Not these.”

  “And there aren’t any puppet theatres!”

  “Then we’ll start one. We could fix one up in the coach-house.”

  “You’re mad,” said Adelaide patiently. “If they were for children, you might get some engagements at parties, as Old Bert used to, but you say yourself they’re not.”

  “Can Old Bert handle puppets?”

  “He has a Punch and Judy.”

  “That’s not the same thing.… Who was it told me he was a puppet-master?”

  “Oh, dear, I don’t suppose any one did,” cried Adelaide. “They’ve just started you imagining things.…”

  “Mr. Bly!” exclaimed Gilbert. “I’ll bring him round to-morrow night.”

  4

  Adelaide simply could not understand it. The sight of the puppets threw Mr. Bly too into a state of high excitement. He pronounced them priceless, unique, superlative: he and Gilbert squatted by the basket exchanging an antiphon of praise. “If you don’t clear them away I can’t get dinner,” said Adelaide sharply; whereupon the two men carried them all down to the coach-house and stayed there till she had to go and call them up. Mr. Bly returned almost solemnized; a vista, he told Adelaide, was opening before him: at last he had found material worthy of his own surpassing skill (there was no false modesty about Mr. Bly), he had found in Gilbert a worthy heir to his art, he would not go down to the grave (as he had sometimes feared) leaving the world his creditor.

  “We’re going to start stringing them at once,” added Gilbert. “How long will it take, Bly?”

  “Weeks,” replied Mr. Bly gravely. “Possibly months. And before you are competent to manipulate them—I dare say several years.”

  Adelaide was glad to hear it. She thought that as a hobby, and kept within bounds, Gilbert’s interest in the puppets might even be tolerable. A hobby was a domesticating influence on a man, and though Gilbert had so far shown himself domesticated by nature, one could not have too many safeguards. She said more amiably:—

  “I suppose they are very nice. My husband always thought a great deal of them.”

  “I don’t wonder,” said Mr. Bly—naturally glancing at Gilbert, and then, as a thought struck him, glancing away again. “What’s their provenance?”

  “French,” said Gilbert. “They were made in Paris.”

  “One sees the Gallic touch. The wit, the workmanship. And we’ll advertise them as French, of course; it’ll attract the snobs. Le Petit Guignol perhaps; or Le Guignol de Molière.” Mr. Bly leaned back, replete with steak-and-kidney pudding, and sketched a proscenium-arch in the air. “For the opening, it would be nice to give a little performance at the French Embassy.”

  Adelaide laughed.

  “It’s surely too soon to approach the Ambassador yet, Mr. Bly? If you won’t be ready for several years?”

  “When we are, we’ll send you to plead for us,” said Mr. Bly courteously, “for such distinction could not fail.”

  From that moment Adelaide began to like him rather better; and if she sometimes referred to him, to Gilbert, as a “blarneying old rogue,” his elaborate compliments continued to amuse and please her. For they were sincere; Mr. Bly on his side developed a deep admiration for Adelaide, setting her in a class by herself as neither charmer nor hellcat, but an experienced woman who could cook. He also admired her appearance, which reminded him, he said, of the Duchess of Connaught’s.

  Regarding the relation between her and Gilbert, Mr. Bly proved himself a model of tact, simply assuming that they were married to each other, and taking the latter’s new nomenclature in his stride. “It’s done again and again,” he assured Gilbert, “in the best families, when there’s no male heir, it’s a matter of course. I simply mention it, my dear fellow, in case you mean to retain your professional name at the Club.” Gilbert said he might as well, but Mr. Bly did not always remember; however, since several other habitués used more than one name, his lapses drew no comment.

  Mr. Bly, in fact, gradually became a good deal confused as to who Gilbert really was. Adelaide’s references to her husband, meaning Henry, were often applied by him to Gilbert, producing the hazy impression that they had been married for many years. A separation, perhaps, thought Mr. Bly, also common in the best families, followed by a reuniting … happy pair to have discovered their error before it was too late! His shrivelled face lit with benevolence whenever he regarded them; he warmed himself at their domestic glow.

  In the first flow of enthusiasm Mr. Bly appeared nearly every night, discreetly bringing his own supper (pease-pudding wrapped in newsprint) and the two men spent hours together in the coach-house, sometimes under Adelaide’s eye, sometimes alone; but both she and Gilbert missed their quiet evenings, and soon, on a hint from the latter, Mr. Bly appeared only once a week. Gilbert’s progress in his new art was steady rather than rapid; Adelaide, no longer fearing any violent upheaval in the smooth tenor of their life, grew to tolerate the puppets as she had grown t
o tolerate Mrs. Mounsey and the Blazer. They were a nice hobby for Gilbert; and Mr. Bly slipped into the position of family friend.

  Another friend, an older one, reappeared. Old Bert got wind of the new activities, and came sidling back to the coach-house to offer professional advice. Adelaide found Mr. Bly and Gilbert inclined to snub him, and laid herself out to be pleasant to the old man; she was touched by the alacrity with which he met her advances. But he at least had no doubts as to Gilbert’s identity; this obviously wasn’t the man he’d helped the Crowner sit on; and Adelaide sometimes caught his rheumy eye fixed on her in a very withdrawn and considerate look. She found herself attaching an absurd importance to his judgement, and grew impatient waiting for it; but at last the Old ’Un made up his mind. In the midst of a heated discussion as to whether the Camargo should or should not rise upon her points, Old Bert shuffled deliberately across the floor and applied his lips to Adelaide’s ear. “Second time lucky!” snorted Old Bert; and the pronouncement (which threw Mr. Bly into renewed mental confusion) pleased both Adelaide and Gilbert equally.

  It was an odd enough circle of which Adelaide was now the centre. Neither Old Bert nor Mr. Bly could by any stretch be called presentable, but they behaved to her with as much courtesy as she had ever received in a Kensington drawing-room; and no woman is displeased to be the sole feminine influence in the lives of three men. It was at this time that Adelaide acquired the habit of imperiousness which later generations were to consider so typically Victorian. She owed it chiefly to those typical Victorians, the Old ’Un and Mr. Bly.

  In 1893, a few days after Adelaide’s twenty-ninth birthday, Mr. Culver died.

  CHAPTER VII

  1

  The telegram, signed by Treff, arrived before Gilbert had left for the Club. Adelaide passed it over to him without speaking. She was surprised and shocked to find that she felt almost no emotion: to find that her thoughts at once turned from the fact of her father’s death to the fact that at last her return to Farnham had been made inevitable.

  “I must go at once,” she said, after a while.

  “Of course, my dear. I wish I could come with you.”

  “I wish you could. You’re always such a strength to me, it seems hard—” Adelaide broke off, and sighed. “But of course it’s impossible.”

  Gilbert reflected a moment, then came and put his arm gently round her shoulders.

  “Adelaide, why don’t you tell your people that Henry is dead, and that you have married again?”

  “Because I haven’t married again.” Adelaide smiled. “I don’t think you realize, dear, the appetite women have for marriages. They’re like detectives. My mother, my aunt, my cousin Alice—for of course they’ll be there—would want to know every detail of where and when. I should have to tell more lies than I could think of. And then about poor Henry … Gilbert, you’ll think me a coward: but all that time—I mean at the very end, at the inquest—is still so dreadful to me, I couldn’t bear to be questioned.”

  “You’ll be questioned anyway, my dear.”

  “But so very little! My mother will ask, ‘Is your husband quite well?’ and I shall say, ‘Yes, Mamma,’ and she’ll be only too glad to let the matter drop. They’ll consider he’s shown a sense of decency in not coming. If—if I do get an opportunity, perhaps I’ll tell everything; but I don’t think so. They wouldn’t understand.” Adelaide considered. “You know, Gilbert, it’s very odd: when I think about the whole thing, and how it’s arisen, I believe the only person who would understand is—Henry.”

  It was in the black dress she had bought for Henry that Adelaide went down to Farnham. With his usual care for her comfort Gilbert took her to Waterloo, and put her into a ladies’ first-class compartment, and waited by the door till the train moved out. He had nothing to say, nor had Adelaide; their silence was even painful, for each knew how the other suffered at parting—the first time they had been parted in three years. But Gilbert could not tear himself away, and Adelaide did not wish him to; only the movement of the train separated their hands.

  The other lady in the carriage, observing Adelaide’s mourning, sympathetically enquired whether she would like the window up. “No, thank you,” said Adelaide; and closed her eyes on the thought that a first-class carriage was a great equalizer: little did the lady guess that Gilbert had paused en route to pawn his overcoat because he wished to send Adelaide first-class out of his own pocket. Adelaide looked at her ticket, and hoped the weather would continue warm.

  2

  Treff was waiting for her at Farnham; but even as she hurried towards him Adelaide’s heart dropped. His whole bearing, the way he stood, was eloquent of nervousness and constraint; his voice when he spoke, to her was without warmth. She saw that he had come to meet her because he had to, because it was the proper thing; he occupied the first moments of their reunion by hurrying her into a cab. Even there he sat speechless, while Adelaide cautiously examined him: at twenty-four he still looked younger than his years; he had grown rather handsome, in a delicate and fine-drawn way; and his straight dark hair still fell untidily over his forehead.…

  “Well, Treff?”

  He turned his head and gave her a formidably reserved look. Adelaide thought, He hasn’t forgiven me. He resents even this occasion of our being brought together again. But it’s because there was never any affection between us; and why there was no affection, I don’t know. It was too late now to bridge that gap; but she felt regret. She said gently:—

  “All this must have been very dreadful for you, dear. But if you can tell me just what happened, it will spare Mamma.”

  Treff averted his head again and looked straight before him.

  “He’d been digging in the garden … you know about his heart. He wasn’t to take any strenuous exercise. Only he’d got awfully keen on gardening. Mother went out to call him, and he said he’d just finish the last strip. When he came up to the house he looked queer, but nothing much. He sat down, and—and just in a moment—before anyone realized—he’d popped off.”

  Adelaide was silent. The incongruous slanginess of that last phrase did not deceive her: Treff was badly shaken. But she didn’t know what to say to him, they were so far apart, like two strangers. They were separated even in their grief, for Adelaide, who had not seen her father for over seven years, and who indeed had never really known him, was painfully aware of not grieving enough. She felt sad and solemnized; but in truth the death of Mr. Culver was hardly a personal loss at all.

  After a few moments Treff said formally:—

  “And how are you, Adelaide? Getting on all right?”

  “Quite, thank you.”

  “Is—is your husband coming to the funeral?”

  “No, dear.”

  Treff nodded, as though this were what he had expected to hear, and made no further reference to his brother-in-law.

  3

  The sight of Platt’s End with the blinds down gave Adelaide another shock. She had forgotten about the blinds; in all her dreams of this house, which at one time had been so real to her, she had pictured it cheerful and welcoming, and the blank windows were like a rebuff. A strange maid, red-eyed, opened the door; no one else was in the hall. Adelaide stood like a visitor, waiting to be told what to do. “Show Mrs. Lambert to her room, please,” said Treff; and then to Adelaide, “I’ll let Mother know you’re here.” Adelaide followed the maid upstairs into the room at the back, the room with the pretty view—and at once found herself standing before her own dressing-table. She looked round: her wardrobe was there, her bureau; she recognized the new casement-cloth curtains she had machined herself during the last days in Kensington; only they weren’t new now, they were slightly faded. Every object, even the arrangement of them, was familiar; only her own face in the glass had changed.

  Adelaide took off her hat and scrutinized herself carefully. She was pale, of course, but not haggard; did not, to her own eye at least, look so very much older than the girl reflected in that mirror o
ver seven years before; but the change was there. “I look unsuitably experienced,” thought Adelaide dispassionately. She smoothed her brow, but still could not achieve a blank girlishness. “But was I ever girlish?” she wondered. “I don’t believe so. I look more like myself to-day than I did then … and Gilbert calls me ‘distinguished’ …”

  She was still staring at herself when the door opened, and in flew Alice.

  “Addie! How glad I am to see you again!”

  There was no lack of warmth about Alice. She embraced her cousin and kissed her with the greatest enthusiasm—indeed Adelaide could almost see Alice damp herself down, as she remembered the mournfulness of the occasion and drew away with a graver look. Alice too was in black, and she had been crying, but her vitality was unimpaired.

  “I’m very glad you’re here,” said Adelaide sincerely. “Treff didn’t tell me.”

  “Of course I’m here. So is Mamma. She’s with Aunt Bertha. Oh, Adelaide, isn’t it dreadful! I do so feel for you!”

  “How is Mamma?”

  “Well, she’s bearing up wonderfully. Just imagine the shock, Addie! Without any warning! Though of course we’d all known for years that Uncle Will wasn’t strong. Treff went at once and fetched the doctor and the Vicar, and Mrs. Howard stayed with Aunt Bertha all night, she didn’t leave until Mamma and I got here this morning, though of course the doctor gave Aunt Bertha a sleeping-draught. Everything was done, Addie—”

  “Even though I wasn’t here.”

  “How could you be?” cried Alice warmly. “It’s not as though Uncle had been ill first. Whatever you do, you mustn’t reproach yourself.”

  Adelaide looked at her cousin with affection. How really good Alice was! How quickly she seized on what was most painful in Adelaide’s position, and tried to put it right! Now she fell tactfully silent, but she wasn’t idle. She did Adelaide’s unpacking for her. She went and fetched her a cup of tea—and only then asked her first question.