His baptismal register spoke of him pessimistically as John Henry, but
he had left that behind with the other maladies of infancy, and his
friends knew him under the front-name of Adrian. His mother lived in
Bethnal Green, which was not altogether his fault; one can discourage
too much history in one's family, but one cannot always prevent
geography. And, after all, the Bethnal Green habit has this
virtue--that it is seldom transmitted to the next generation. Adrian
lived in a roomlet which came under the auspicious constellation of W.
How he lived was to a great extent a mystery even to himself; his
struggle for existence probably coincided in many material details with
the rather dramatic accounts he gave of it to sympathetic
acquaintances. All that is definitely known is that he now and then
emerged from the struggle to dine at the Ritz or Carlton, correctly
garbed and with a correctly critical appetite. On these occasions he
was usually the guest of Lucas Croyden, an amiable worldling, who had
three thousand a year and a taste for introducing impossible people to
irreproachable cookery. Like most men who combine three thousand a
year with an uncertain digestion, Lucas was a Socialist, and he argued
that you cannot hope to elevate the masses until you have brought
plovers' eggs into their lives and taught them to appreciate the
difference between coupe Jacques and Macédoine de fruits. His friends
pointed out that it was a doubtful kindness to initiate a boy from
behind a drapery counter into the blessedness of the higher catering,
to which Lucas invariably replied that all kindnesses were doubtful.
Which was perhaps true.
It was after one of his Adrian evenings that Lucas met his aunt, Mrs.
Mebberley, at a fashionable tea shop, where the lamp of family life is
still kept burning and you meet relatives who might otherwise have
slipped your memory.
"Who was that good-looking boy who was dining with you last night?" she
asked. "He looked much too nice to be thrown away upon you."
Susan Mebberley was a charming woman, but she was also an aunt.
"Who are his people?" she continued, when the protégé's name (revised
version) had been given her.
"His mother lives at Beth--"
Lucas checked himself on the threshold of what was perhaps a social
indiscretion.
"Beth? Where is it? It sounds like Asia Minor. Is she mixed up with
Consular people?"
"Oh, no. Her work lies among the poor."
This was a side-slip into truth. The mother of Adrian was employed in
a laundry.
"I see," said Mrs. Mebberley, "mission work of some sort. And
meanwhile the boy has no one to look after him. It's obviously my duty
to see that he doesn't come to harm. Bring him to call on me."
"My dear Aunt Susan," expostulated Lucas, "I really know very little
about him. He may not be at all nice, you know, on further
acquaintance."
"He has delightful hair and a weak mouth. I shall take him with me to
Homburg or Cairo."
"It's the maddest thing I ever heard of," said Lucas angrily.
"Well, there is a strong strain of madness in our family. If you
haven't noticed it yourself all your friends must have."
"One is so dreadfully under everybody's eyes at Homburg. At least you
might give him a preliminary trial at Etretat."
"And be surrounded by Americans trying to talk French? No, thank you.
I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing
it is that they never try to talk English. To-morrow at five you can
bring your young friend to call on me."'
And Lucas, realizing that Susan Mebberley was a woman as well as an
aunt, saw that she would have to be allowed to have her own way.
Adrian was duly carried abroad under the Mebberley wing; but as a
reluctant concession to sanity Homburg and other inconveniently
fashionable resorts were given a wide berth, and the Mebberley
establishment planted itself down in the best hotel at Dohledorf, an
Alpine townlet somewhere at the back of the Engadine. It was the usual
kind of resort, with the usual type of visitors, that one finds over
the greater part of Switzerland during the summer season, but to Adrian
it was all unusual. The mountain air, the certainty of regular and
abundant meals, and in particular the social atmosphere, affected him
much as the indiscriminating fervour of a forcing-house might affect a
weed that had strayed within its limits. He had been brought up in a
world where breakages were regarded as crimes and expiated as such; it
was something new and altogether exhilarating to find that you were
considered rather amusing if you smashed things in the right manner and
at the recognized hours. Susan Mebberley had expressed the intention
of showing Adrian a bit of the world; the particular bit of the world
represented by Dohledorf began to be shown a good deal of Adrian.
Lucas got occasional glimpses of the Alpine sojourn, not from his aunt
or Adrian, but from the industrious pen of Clovis, who was also moving
as a satellite in the Mebberley constellation.
"The entertainment which Susan got up last night ended in disaster. I
thought it would. The Grobmayer child, a particularly loathsome
five-year-old, had appeared as 'Bubbles' during the early part of the
evening, and been put to bed during the interval. Adrian watched his
opportunity and kidnapped it when the nurse was downstairs, and
introduced it during the second half of the entertainment, thinly
disguised as a performing pig. It certainly LOOKED very like a pig, and
grunted and slobbered just like the real article; no one knew exactly
what it was, but every one said it was awfully clever, especially the
Grobmayers. At the third curtain Adrian pinched it too hard, and it
yelled 'Marmar'! I am supposed to be good at descriptions, but don't
ask me to describe the sayings and doings of the Grobmayers at that
moment; it was like one of the angrier Psalms set to Strauss's music.
We have moved to an hotel higher up the valley."
Clovis's next letter arrived five days later, and was written from the
Hotel Steinbock.
"We left the Hotel Victoria this morning. It was fairly comfortable
and quiet--at least there was an air of repose about it when we
arrived. Before we had been in residence twenty-four hours most of the
repose had vanished 'like a dutiful bream,' as Adrian expressed it.
However, nothing unduly outrageous happened till last night, when
Adrian had a fit of insomnia and amused himself by unscrewing and
transposing all the bedroom numbers on his floor. He transferred the
bathroom label to the adjoining bedroom door, which happened to be that
of Frau Hoftath Schilling, and this morning from seven o'clock onwards
the old lady had a stream of involuntary visitors; she was too
horrified and scandalized it seems to get up and lock her door. The
would-be bathers flew back in confusion to their rooms, and, of course,
the change of numbers led them astray again, and the corridor gradually
filled with panic-stricken, scantily robed humans, dashing wildly about
like rabbits in a ferret-infested warren. It took nearly an hour
before the guests were all sorted into their respective rooms, and the
Frau Hofrath's condition was still causing some anxiety when we left.
Susan is beginning to look a little worried. She can't very well turn
the boy adrift, as he hasn't got any money, and she can't send him to
his people as she doesn't know where they are. Adrian says his mother
moves about a good deal and he's lost her address. Probably, if the
truth were known, he's had a row at home. So many boys nowadays seem
to think that quarrelling with one's family is a recognized occupation."
Lucas's next communication from the travellers took the form of a
telegram from Mrs. Mebberley herself. It was sent "reply prepaid," and
consisted of a single sentence: "In Heaven's name, where is Beth?"