Britannia Mews Read online

  The effect on the inhabitants of the Mews was nil. No fresh paint appeared in emulation. On the other hand, the stone through the Lamberts’ window was probably an accident. Fortunately Adelaide did not expect to regenerate the Mews by her example. Her cynicism was developing rapidly.

  One great advantage was the acquisition of the coach-house. It took all Henry’s artistic paraphernalia and left Adelaide a clear field—except, that is, for the big wicker basket. She tried to carry it down herself one morning when Henry was out, but on the steep iron steps it was too much for her; she couldn’t empty it first, because it was stapled and locked, and her husband returned to find her still regarding it with an air of annoyance.

  “Henry, this must go in the coach-house,” she said at once.

  To her surprise, he objected that it would not be safe.

  “What is in it that’s so valuable, Henry?”

  “Relics,” said he curtly. “Leave it alone, dear.”

  “You make me feel like Bluebeard’s wife!” said Adelaide, laughing; and for the moment let the matter drop. She felt she was being immensely understanding and tactful, enjoyed the sensation, and at the same time planned to make him move it next day, after showing her what was inside. But next day seemed to offer no opportunity, nor the day after, and the basket stayed where it was, continually getting in Adelaide’s way. It took up so much room: its corners, even when she pushed it under the table, stuck out, and once she caught and tore her dress on a broken withy. However, it would have taken up just as much room in the coach-house, where Henry needed space. The coach-house was Adelaide’s pride, and when Henry had set up his easel there she went to Liberty’s and bought a large Turkish lamp to hang from the beam. “What the deuce is that for?” demanded Henry. “To make it look like a studio,” explained Adelaide simply. She would have bought some draperies as well, but though she still had quite a large part left of her last year’s allowance, the draperies at Liberty’s were so very expensive. For food she had already learned to shop in Paddington, where everything struck her as remarkably cheap.

  The studio being completed, the next step was obviously for Henry to paint a picture in it—his Academy picture, in fact. Adelaide knew that pictures in the Academy often sold for hundreds of pounds; if Henry’s fetched only two or three, that would enable them to move. When she broached this plan to Henry, however, he looked grave.

  “Big pictures take time, my dear girl. Also daylight.”

  Adelaide waited. It seemed to her that he had plenty of time, and the month was still May.

  “My damned drawing-lessons,” explained Henry.

  “Only four afternoons a week, darling!”

  He explained further. A big picture, a masterpiece (for why mince words?), absorbed all a man’s energies. He had to live with it, brood over it, think of nothing else. How could he do this when his thoughts were continually interrupted and his time broken in upon by lessons to silly girls? “You don’t know what a nuisance they are,” said Henry Lambert sincerely. “They put me out for the whole day.”

  “Very well,” said Adelaide. “Give them up.”

  She spoke the more readily because the lessons were an object of mild jealousy to her; however slightingly her husband talked of Miss Drew and Miss Pomfret and Miss Ocock, Adelaide still disliked thinking of the hours he spent at their sides. But she was also certain that the step would be justified by its results. She was pleased to see Henry look at her with flattering surprise.

  “My dearest girl, what should we live on?”

  “My hundred a year,” replied Adelaide promptly. “We can easily live on that—here. How long would the picture take?”

  “Perhaps six months. Adelaide, do you really mean that?”

  “Why not? I haven’t married a great artist to have him waste his time on schoolgirls. Why do you look at me so?”

  “I’m just realizing what a bold woman you are.”

  Her boldness won. Henry gave up all his pupils except Miss Ocock; he said he did not wish to have to ask his wife for tobacco-money—though as Adelaide pointed out, her money was now his. She still kept control of it, however, going each month to the bank to cash a cheque for eight pounds, and thus sparing Henry all financial worries. The sum proved ample, moreover, for there was at least this to be said for life in Britannia Mews: it was dirt cheap. A family of four might spend on food and firing perhaps fourteen shillings a week; a penny paper of fish made a supper, milk was fourpence a quart, potatoes a halfpenny a pound, pickles and jam sold by the ha’porth; and yet these piecemeal dealings were in themselves an extravagance. Adelaide, buying her commodities by the pound, kept house for less than the women who ran out twice and thrice a day for a three-farthing pinch of tea; and found forty shillings a week to be wealth, in Britannia Mews.

  Her boldness won. It never occurred to her that she might be not only bold, but rash, in taking from a man of Henry’s temperament his only regular employment; as always at this time, Adelaide believed all her actions to be dictated by pure reason. They spent a wonderful morning buying an enormous canvas and a great new collection of paints: Adelaide would have bought new brushes and a new palette as well, but Henry preferred his old ones. In any case, he said, there were preliminary studies to be made, a month’s hard work before he even prepared his canvas; and he completed the happiest day of Adelaide’s life by making a sketch of her smiling profile, and scribbling below, “Head of Pharaoh’s Daughter.”

  CHAPTER II

  1

  This was the period of their honeymoon; and as their married life arranged itself it began to seem as though Adelaide’s programme of regular meals and refined companionship was indeed what Henry Lambert required. Sober, industrious, he worked at the studies of his masterpiece, destroying almost as many as he made, but still working, while Adelaide cleaned her house above, ran down to pose for him, and ran up again to cook the dinner. It was the Vie de Bohème of romance, marred only by two things: the squalid background of the Mews, and the fact that a Vie de Bohème did not really suit Adelaide’s temperament.

  She had married her husband for love, but her love was not physically passionate: the amorous relation, which may dominate a woman’s life and put her wholly in the power of husband or lover, had almost no influence upon Adelaide. She remained in her own possession—desiring above all things stability, social standing, a settled future; she was businesslike and economical; she had in fact gambled on Henry Lambert’s future as a man of her own class might gamble on the Stock Exchange. Debt was particularly abhorrent to her. All these traits made up a character as alien from Bohemianism as it was possible to be; and so long as the opposite traits continued to appear in her husband, she could not be perfectly content.

  Henry was always ready, for example, to take her to a theatre or music-hall after the day’s work; but though Adelaide enjoyed these outings, she felt they could not afford them. Where did the money come from? She suspected that Henry was simply spending Mrs. Culver’s twenty pounds, which she had at once handed over to him. He was spending it on both of them; but to go to a music-hall four times in one week was more than Adelaide desired. Henry, on the other hand, appeared to need constant entertainment, a quiet evening at home simply made him restless: he would neither read nor be read to, and when Adelaide suggested that he should read aloud to her, while she did some sewing, inexplicably remarked that he hadn’t come to that yet. He was restless even in his love-making—often being more demonstrative in public than Adelaide liked (he would put his arm round her in the theatre, or even kiss her) and then relapsing into casualness at home. It never struck Adelaide that they were perhaps too much together, for she had been brought up in the belief that a husband and wife should be self-sufficient; she was glad Henry didn’t go to work because it meant she could keep a constant eye on him. Constantly, steadily, remorselessly, she applied her wifely pressure, striving to mould him to her own standards; she knew instinctively that one of them had to change ways, and she, Adel
aide, obviously could not, since hers were the right ones.

  On one point at least Adelaide soon decided that she had humoured Henry long enough: the big wicker basket was a continual nuisance, and she still did not know what was inside it. One day immediately after breakfast, therefore, before Henry went down to the studio, she dragged it out and with a mixture of playfulness and severity announced that if he didn’t open it then and there, she would break in with a poker.

  To her surprise, he turned and grasped her wrist.

  “If you do any damage, Adelaide—”

  “Damage to what?” she demanded impatiently. “Is it full of Crown Jewels? I warn you, Henry, I’m going to open it, because otherwise I can’t move it, and it’s in my way.”

  “You mean you’re simply inquisitive.”

  “I’m not. Though I admit I should like to know what’s inside. And if it’s anything you value, Henry, I should have thought you’d like to show me.…”

  For a moment he looked at her with a curious expression; then taking a key from his pocket, knelt and unfastened the staples. Adelaide, now strung to a high pitch of expectation, waited eagerly while the lid was thrown back; below lay a packing-layer of faded cotton, and under that a row of narrow bundles, each rolled in the same faded stuff. Henry picked a couple out, shook off the wrappings, and revealed a pair of large—dolls. One was dressed like a Harlequin, one like a Sorcerer: from their hands and feet, from their heads, depended long threads; they were so jointed that they fell this way and that in Henry’s hands.

  “Dolls!” cried Adelaide disgustedly. “My dear boy, is that all you’ve been making such a fuss about?”

  “They are not dolls, they’re puppets,” corrected Henry Lambert. He lifted out a long, slender court lady, elaborately dressed in the style of Louis XIV: her carved face was a mask of the most sophisticated and exquisite vice. He let her flexible waist droop back over his hand: she appeared to abandon herself, still coldly, to a lover. “They are also works of art,” said Mr. Lambert, “created by your husband. Like ’em?”

  “Not particularly,” said Adelaide.

  “They are, perhaps, caviare to the general. Here’s her Abbé.”

  The Abbé, also, long and slim, in black, seemed to throw a knowing glance as Henry twitched his strings. Adelaide was forced to admit that they were wonderfully lifelike: however carelessly laid down they at once fell into the most natural positions; they ogled each other, or sulked apart. But for some reason she did not like them. She did not like even La Camargo, in a froth of white ballet-skirts, nor the fresh-faced ingénue in pink chintz. They formed a little world, an elegant and artificial little world, which she instinctively repudiated. Moreover, they represented such a shocking waste of time.

  “They must have taken months,” she said rebukingly.

  “Two years, if you want to know. The best years of my life.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” cried Adelaide, really annoyed. “A man doesn’t spend the best years of his life making wooden dolls!”

  “His best years are when he’s doing his best work. These, my dear Adelaide, are my claim to fame. They have been much praised.”

  “In Paris, I suppose, where people admire such foolishness.” (Where people call on a divorced woman, thought Adelaide, on a sudden memory.) “What are they good for?”

  “Well, when I die, they ought to go to a museum,” said Henry.

  Adelaide looked at him to see whether he were serious, decided that he couldn’t be, and then, another thought striking her, picked up the Camargo. The tulle dress, garlanded with tiny roses, was too exquisitely sewn to be the work of any male hands.

  “Henry, who dressed them for you?”

  “The daughter of my master. La fille de mon maïtre—dans le jardin de sa tante.”

  Adelaide threw the puppet down—Camargo doubling at the waist in a magnificent curtsey—and thrust the Abbé aside with her foot. She thought she was being mocked; yet, as he sometimes did, Henry had told her the exact truth.…

  2

  In a garden outside Paris, a French garden planted with a quincunx of lime-trees, how many hours had not he sat watching while Angélique stitched! The daughter of an old man who made puppets, as his father before him, and his grandfather before that: half-craftsman, half-artist, of whom young Henry Lambert, for the sake of the daughter’s eyes, took lessons in puppet-making. But if he came for the sake of Angélique, he remained for the sake of M. Théodore’s surpassing skill; he made her his mistress almost absent-mindedly, because she seemed to wish it. What was important was that he became M. Théodore’s apprentice, and in the art and craft of puppetry found the release of his talent. “The pupil surpasses his teacher,” said old M. Théodore. All morning the two men worked together—and Angélique never asked why, nor what their elaborate productions were good for; she adored her lover for making her father so happy. Was not that a good in itself? But they did not work aimlessly, they had an end in view, which was to complete a set of all Molière’s characters; and they achieved it. “And now?” said M. Théodore. “Now we give an exhibition,” said Henry Lambert, “so that you may win the fame you deserve”; and they packed all the puppets into a fiacre (Henry riding on the box) and drove into Paris to the studio of a fashionable artist whom neither of them knew. But when he saw what they brought, when he looked into the old man’s eyes, he put his studio at their disposal, for that was how things happened, in Paris, in those days. Moreover, the guignol has a long and honourable French history. Tout Paris came to admire—tout Paris, in those days, as small as a village—and Mme. la Comtesse de Noailles, addressing M. Théodore as “mon ami,” told him he had carried into their materialistic age the traditions of a finer epoch. She would have bought La Camargo; but both Henry and M. Théodore, flown with glory, announced that none of the puppets was for sale. They were to be a gift to the French nation. This admirable sentiment set the crown on their success; and they had their hour.

  Henry afterwards wondered whether the excitement had not been too much for the old man; he died very soon after. “At least he died happy,” said Angélique, walking with Henry between the trees of the quincunx. “But what will you do without him?”

  Henry looked at her as fondly as he could, but now that her father was dead, now that the idyll between workshop and garden was over, he saw her too clearly for what she was: a little, not very young bourgeoise, with rather fine eyes. Angélique met his glance and read it.

  “You will go back to England, mon cher …”

  “And you?”

  “I shall remain with my aunt. We have enough.”

  “Your father’s work is of value.”

  “I know. But I do not think we shall sell. And I think the nation may wait until I too am not here to take pleasure in them?”

  “Angélique,” said Henry—for his heart was still capable of a good movement—“if you will be my wife—”

  “No, no, no,” said she quickly. “I am seven years the older. You have made us both happy, my dear; but it is time for you to go. And the figures that you have made you must of course take with you.”

  It was for this reason that the set of Molière characters, in the basket in Britannia Mews, was not complete. And sometimes Henry Lambert felt that his heart was not quite complete either. Calm, almost casual, as his feeling for Angélique had been, it had also been sweet and untroubled. When he looked back to that French garden, he sometimes thought he had been a fool ever to leave it.

  3

  Adelaide rose. Among the puppets lounging round her feet—lounging in such easy, such lifelike attitudes—she looked for a moment out of proportion, a female Gulliver. The Abbé, leaning on his elbow, stared impertinently at her: Camargo and the Marquise put their heads together. Adelaide thrust them aside with her foot in an instinctive gesture of dislike.

  “Don’t ill-treat the piccoli,” said Henry Lambert.

  “The what?”

  “The little people.”

  “Nonsense!
” said Adelaide again. She turned and went into the bedroom and began to tidy it. Though she had had her way, she did not feel pleased: the basket’s contents were so foolish and disappointing, and Henry had behaved so foolishly about them. The best work of his life, indeed! The best years of his life! It was enough to make any wife angry. “I suppose I must take it as a joke,” thought Adelaide, “for it’s simply childish!”

  When she came back Henry had disappeared. But the room was not empty. It was full of little people. In her absence he had taken them all out, more than a dozen of them, and set them about the room, on the chairs, on the table, on the mantelshelf, so that she was ringed by their curious, staring eyes. In a fury Adelaide seized them one after the other and bundled them back into the basket, and banged down the lid.

  The hamper remained where it was, and neither Adelaide nor Henry spoke of it again. Adelaide unwillingly recognized that she Would have done better to leave it alone. The thought of the unknown seamstress disturbed her, and this had the effect of making her do violence to her own character by falling in more readily with Henry’s plans, and relaxing her training of him. They went out almost every night, and got up later in the morning; they took hansoms, and were festive. Against every instinct Adelaide forced herself to draw out ten pounds and give them to Henry to spend. She told herself that his extravagance would not matter, once they were rich—that indeed it was the foreshadowing of riches that made him extravagant. His conduct was simply a little in advance of his circumstances.

  “Happy?” asked Henry one night, as they jingled home in a hansom.

  Adelaide pressed her head against his shoulder. She was almost in his arms; the swiftly moving cab, dark and smelling of leather, enclosed them in a romantic intimacy. But Adelaide could not help thinking how absurd it was to take a hansom to Britannia Mews, when they could have walked in twenty minutes.