Britannia Mews Read online

  “So I come after the removal-man?” said Mr. Lambert.

  “You come the same day,” corrected Adelaide. “I’m supposed to be going by the early train, while Mamma sees the things off here and comes down with Papa in the afternoon. So you see I shall have my bags, and I shall just tell the cab to drive to Britannia Mews. And you’ll be waiting for me. Oh, Henry!”

  “My darling?”

  “It is an adventure, isn’t it?”

  “It is indeed. Adelaide—if you change your mind—if you tell the cab to drive to the station—”

  “I shan’t,” said she. “Dearest, I must run back, or they’ll miss me. Till Wednesday!”

  “Till Wednesday,” repeated Mr. Lambert.

  They kissed—in the street, under the lamp-post—and she hurried away.

  CHAPTER VII

  1

  They were married on the first Wednesday in May, at half-past eleven, before the Paddington Registrar, their witnesses being two respectable elderly women brought in from the next room, which they had apparently been cleaning—they whipped off their aprons as they came in. The ceremony itself struck Adelaide as uncommonly short: she and Mr. Lambert in turn declared that they knew no lawful impediment why they should not be joined in matrimony, and called on the two charwomen to witness that they took each other as husband and wife; and that was all. They were married—even before Henry put the ring on her finger. For a moment it seemed so unlikely that Adelaide stood waiting—waiting, unconsciously, for the loud thump of the Mendelssohn march, without which no wedding in her experience had ever been legalized. But there was no music, naturally.… She felt Henry’s hand slip under her arm, and saw the Registrar waiting for them to go away.

  “I trust you will be very happy together,” he said courteously. “Never less happy than you are to-day.”

  They shook hands with him. Henry paid, and shook hands again. The two charwomen re-tied their aprons. That was all, it was over.

  2

  “Well, Mrs. Lambert?” said Henry, as they emerged onto the pavement. “How do you feel?”

  “Rather queer,” confessed Adelaide.

  “That’s all right, all brides feel queer. We’ll go and have lunch at the Café Royal.”

  Divining, from his brusqueness, that Henry was feeling rather queer also, Adelaide made no demur, though she would not have chosen the Café Royal herself. They went there in a cab, and Henry ordered champagne; even so they found a peculiar difficulty in talking to each other. There ought to have been a train to catch; perhaps no part of a honeymoon is more helpful than the preliminary journey, of which the incidents naturally supply material for light conversation. What were they to do after lunch? Adelaide knew quite well what she wanted to do: she wanted to get back to Britannia Mews and start turning out. But this was hardly a suitable occupation for one’s wedding-day, and when Henry suggested that they should take a hansom and drive down to Richmond she gladly agreed. The brisk motion, the fresh air, the dash of the whole proceeding, raised their spirits; walking on the terrace above the river as the evening fell they captured for the first time a proper loving intimacy. Adelaide felt her hand pressed closer within Henry’s arm; they began to walk more slowly, to pause and glance at each other; as speech came more freely they had less need of it. Below them swans still showed white on the darkening water, but night had begun to be imminent, and still they lingered; presently the paths were quite deserted save for themselves and one very old man, stooped like Time over a book he could not see to read.

  “Adelaide,” said Henry, “don’t let’s go back. We can’t go back to that place. Not to-night.”

  “But … Henry! Where can we stay?”

  “Let’s go to the Star and Garter.”

  “With no luggage? Won’t they think it very queer?”

  “Damn it, I’ve our marriage lines in my pocket. You can borrow from the chambermaid. Don’t let’s spoil it, my darling.”

  Adelaide had no wish to. She would have wished to stay there for ever, in the enchantment of the river. The Star and Garter was the next best thing—and the chambermaid was very obliging. Almost too obliging, thought Adelaide; and as though by chance, when Henry emptied his pockets, she picked up her marriage certificate and dropped it on the dressing-table in a prominent place.

  3

  Owing to this accidental circumstance Mr. Culver, hastening up from Farnham, did not find his daughter in Britannia Mews. For there was a letter from Adelaide at Platt’s End, posted the day before; the information it contained was enough to make both him and his wife forget all about his heart and send him back to London by the next train. Finding his errand fruitless, Mr. Culver spent the night at his Club and returned to Farnham in the morning; he could think of nothing else to do. And there was, after the lapse of that night, fundamentally nothing to be done; Adelaide was married. A telegram from her which arrived about lunch-time was signed ADELAIDE LAMBERT. SO VERY HAPPY, it said. PLEASE FORGIVE US. YOUR AFFECTIONATE DAUGHTER—and then that signature. Mrs. Culver looked at it for a long time, and at last said:—

  “At any rate, William, no one here knows. They don’t know the circumstances …”

  For if Adelaide were starting on a new life, so was her mother. The move had come at a most opportune moment.

  “Are you prepared to leave your daughter living with a scoundrel in squalor?” demanded Mr. Culver violently; for it was he who had gone hurrying up to London. “I must say you take the whole thing with remarkable calm. I do my best, I go up to town after them, while you stay calmly here—”

  “That is not true,” said Mrs. Culver. And it wasn’t true: she had spent most of the night in tears—and alone, in a strange house, the furniture not even properly arranged, which somehow made everything much more painful. But she knew how to face facts. “Adelaide has married Mr. Lambert, I feel it just as much as you do, only I must set about mending matters in my own way. This telegram was handed in at Richmond; they are evidently spending their honeymoon there; I shall go to Richmond myself this afternoon.”

  “And where will you look for them in Richmond?”

  “At the Star and Garter,” said Mrs. Culver confidently. “It’s the only place.”

  “And what do you propose to say when you find them?”

  “I shall tell Adelaide that she always has a home here. Married daughters often come to stay without their husbands,” said Mrs. Culver.

  She went to Richmond, and she found them: Adelaide in the first flush of happiness, Henry Lambert lover-like and debonair. Mrs. Culver observed the pretty picture, but was not touched by it. She had been deeply hurt, and even more deeply offended, and the young people’s light-heartedness annoyed her. Even Adelaide’s eager apologies showed no real sense of shame.

  “Henry’s so good, Mamma,” she said earnestly; “he’s hated to deceive you even more than I have. But you know Papa would never have given his consent, so what else could we do?”

  Mrs. Culver looked at her son-in-law’s back as he tactfully strolled apart on the terrace, and felt no more confidence in his goodness than in his ability to support a wife.

  “Where are you going to live, Adelaide? And what on?”

  “To begin with, in Henry’s old place in the Mews. And we shall live on his earnings.”

  “And on your hundred a year.”

  “Henry says I’m to keep that as a dress allowance, till he can give me more.”

  Mrs. Culver opened her bag and took out four five-pound notes.

  “This is a present from your father and myself. I expect you’ll need it.”

  “Thank you very much, Mamma. But I don’t in the least mind being poor—until Henry makes his name.”

  “I hope he will make his name, as you call it. Though I believe many artists make a name without making an income. However, you are married.” Mrs. Culver paused. “I must say, Adelaide, it surprises me that you don’t seem to realize what grief you have caused your parents.”

  “I reall
y am sorry, Mamma.”

  “You have always put yourself first—”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” asked Adelaide, a trifle restlessly.

  “Certainly not. I have devoted my whole life to you and to Treff and to your father.”

  Adelaide looked at her mother thoughtfully.

  “What did you really want to do?”

  Instead of answering, however, Mrs. Culver rather abruptly rose. It had occurred to her that Adelaide would probably be in a better frame of mind for such a conversation after a month or two in Britannia Mews.

  “I shall come and see you again in a month’s time,” she said. “I suppose you will still be in the Mews then?”

  “If not, of course, I’ll let you know. Would—would Papa like Henry and me to come to Platt’s End?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Culver; and went quickly on to talk about the new house, so that Adelaide had not time to grasp all the implications of that refusal, so that they could part with a decent appearance of affection. Mrs. Culver said nothing about Adelaide’s coming to Platt’s End alone. She thought, “In a month’s time …”

  4

  “Your mother doesn’t like me,” remarked Henry, as they stood in the station after seeing Mrs. Culver on her train.

  “What nonsense, Henry! Of course she does. It’s been a great shock to her, that’s all. And I must say,” added Adelaide, “considering everything, she’s been nicer than we had any right to expect.”

  “Do you realize that we ought to be taking a train ourselves? I’ve cut a drawing-lesson to-day, and I’ve two to-morrow.”

  Adelaide began to laugh.

  “Do you realize which one you’ve cut? It was mine.… But we must go back, dearest, as you say.”

  “Of course, your mother saw us here,” said Henry reflectively; “It’s going to be rather different in the Mews.”

  “It’s going to be better,” said Adelaide.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER I

  1

  The first social duty of a bride is to establish relations with her neighbours. Adelaide was thoroughly aware of the procedure, which to begin with was largely passive: after the first fortnight one sat at home every afternoon, wearing a trousseau gown and one’s best jewellery, and waited for calls. These spread over about a fortnight more, and then one called back; after which a gradual sorting-out process took place, till at the end of six months the young couple had found their feet in their proper set. In Kensington, in Bayswater, in any nice neighbourhood, this was what would have happened; only Britannia Mews was not a nice neighbourhood.

  Adelaide was very little of a fool: she had gone into the Mews as she thought with her eyes open, prepared for the worst, she would have laughed as much as Henry at the idea of calling or being called on; but she had expected to be able to ignore her surroundings. They were to live in a little world of their own, in a bubble of love and hope, whose elastic, iridescent walls no squalor could penetrate. Within a week she discovered that, while she could see or hear, such isolation was impossible.

  Within a week, she had seen sights she had never dreamed of—and they were dreamlike. At night, in the Mews: two figures, male and female, blotted in the shadow under a stair, then the woman breaking away, her bodice open on a bosom that gleamed suddenly white. Adelaide pressed her forehead against Henry’s shoulder, but she heard a door open and a voice railing. She witnessed, for the first time in her life, an exchange of blows; this was by day, outside the public-house; and a woman suckling her child at an open window leaned out to shriek abuse. Against her will she came to know her neighbours by sight and name—and by their by-names, which were more commonly employed. There was the Punch and Judy man, called “Old Bert,” or “the Old ’Un,” his lean scarecrow figure bent into a hoop from years of pushing at a booth; a wretched flea-ridden Dog Toby shivered at his heels, or slunk to piss against a door and was kicked back to his master. There was the young woman Harriet O’Keefe, whose flaming head gave her the name of “the Blazer”; she sometimes lent a hand at the Cock, and sometimes went flower-selling, but more often her trade took her out late at night. She had a daughter, a thin alley-cat of a five-year-old, in whom the mother’s fiery colouring was diluted to sandy fairness; this child Adelaide used to see long after nightfall, huddled at the foot of the iron steps that led to the Blazer’s door; but Henry told her not to pay any attention, and presently, without quite understanding how the knowledge came, Adelaide like everyone else took the child’s presence as a signal that the Blazer had a man with her.

  The Blazer and the Old ’Un were loathed by Adelaide, but not feared; there was however one woman whom she had feared at sight. This was Mrs. Mounsey, who lived directly opposite. Her person was obscene: beneath layers of dirty clothing great pendulous breasts rolled as she walked, for she sagged with fat; her features were almost Mongolian, flat, smooth and expressionless save for the malice in her tiny eyes. There was something sow-like about her, and that indeed was her name in the Mews: “the Sow.” She dealt in rags and old clothes; and the dwellers in the Mews sometimes gave her small sums of money, because they were afraid of her. “Every village has its witch,” said Henry Lambert. “The Sow is ours.” And Adelaide, as though indeed fearing the evil eye, would not descend her own steps while Mrs. Mounsey was at her window; the contact of even so much as a glance was too repugnant to her. Once, when they met squarely across the Mews, Adelaide turned back and went indoors again, and stood at the window and spied until she saw the Sow waddle away, trailing the filthy sack in which she stored her rags.

  If she spied, Adelaide was also spied upon; of all she had to endure almost the worst was the sensation of being continually watched. Whenever she walked through the Mews, eyes followed her. Women’s faces appeared in the windows, dim and pale behind the unwashed panes like fish rising against the glass of an aquarium; round the side-door of the Cock loiterers stared. Children hung over the iron railings, or ran before her, looking over their shoulders, the Old ’Un peered round his booth and ducked back again. No one addressed her, but Adelaide knew that as soon as she had passed under the archway the women would be out on their steps and the whispering would begin. She knew that she too had a name in the Mews: it was “Poker-back.”

  2

  Not all at once, of course, did this complete picture present itself. Adelaide absorbed its details swiftly enough, but still gradually. Her first great disillusionment, which occurred on the very day after their installation, had to do with something quite different.

  She had spent the morning throwing out a great quantity of rubbish (upon which the children in the Mews swooped like hawks) and in the afternoon felt she deserved a reward. There was moreover something she very much wanted to do.

  “Henry, dear, aren’t we going to the Academy?”

  “The Academy?” repeated Henry—so vaguely that Adelaide laughed.

  “My darling, it opened on Monday, and we both forgot! There’s your picture in it! ‘Moses and Pharaoh’s Daughter.’”

  For a moment he stared at her blankly; then grinned.

  “My dear, you’re a year too soon. To get a picture into the Academy it would have had to be submitted a month ago. What a little ignoramus you are!”

  “But you talked about it—” began Adelaide; and paused. In matters of art she was indeed an ignoramus; perhaps Henry had in fact been talking about the Academy of next year. Concealing her disappointment, she said, “At any rate, can’t I see it?”

  “There’s nothing to see. I haven’t started.”

  “Oh,” said Adelaide. “I thought you had …”

  “I’ve nowhere to work,” explained Henry. “You can see for yourself.”

  Of course that was the explanation. Adelaide looked round the living-room, now comparatively tidy, but certainly not large enough for the production of a picture containing several life-sized figures. (One of them to be a semi-nude.)

  “You could use the coach-house below. You could use it as a studio. H
enry, isn’t that a very good idea?”

  “It’s a good idea, but it’s six shillings a week extra.”

  “Then I’ll pay,” said Adelaide joyfully.

  She did so; she saw the landlord herself, and nothing had ever given her greater pleasure than this first assistance rendered to her husband’s genius. She cleaned and scrubbed the place out, at first with Henry’s assistance, then single-handed, for he suddenly remembered a drawing-lesson; and though her back ached and her hands grew sore Adelaide rejected other help. “Get in one of the women,” advised Henry, as he put on his coat. “I don’t know who to ask,” said Adelaide. (A week later she would simply have said nothing.) “Ask at the Cock,” called Henry, running down the stairs; but Adelaide had never entered a public-house in her life, and could not bring herself to do so. Indeed, she was at this time so filled with love and energy that the work seemed light.

  They were happy days spent scrubbing, and in their results almost miraculous. Adelaide did not stop at mere cleanliness, she painted all the furniture with white enamel, and stained the floors mahogany-colour, and hung blue casement-cloth curtains, and set her Indian shell on the mantelpiece, and a fern on the window-sill. This was in the front or living-room; of the two rooms behind one was of course the bed-chamber, and the other Adelaide converted into a bath-room. Its furniture was primitive: a hip-bath, a couple of buckets to fill it, and a dipper to bail it out. There was also a night-stool. The odious task of emptying slops called for all Adelaide’s heroism; heroically she performed it—after dark. She was indeed heroic altogether in her resolute application of Kensington standards to Britannia Mews; and fortunate in a constitution no less sound than her principles.