beginning it wasn’t so bad. But presently this Mr. Teddy was pitching
Christina Alberta about, throwing her over his shoulder, taking hold
of her, bending her backward, holding her almost upside down, both
legs in the air and her hands dragging on the ground. And she was red
and excited and seemed to like these violent familiarities. There was
a kind of undesirable suitability between them for such purposes. She
and Teddy looked into each other’s eyes with a sort of intimacy and yet
with a sort of fierce defiance. At one point in the extraordinary dance
she had to smack his face, a good hard smack, nicely timed. She did it
with a spirit that made every one applaud. Whereupon he smiled and took
her nice little neck in his hands and strangled her with great realism.
Then the gramophone had its death rattle and the dance was over.
Mr. Preemby’s throat had not troubled him much since dinner, but now he
said “h’rrmp” repeatedly.
They wanted Christina Alberta, bright and panting and shock-headed, to
repeat the performance, but she wouldn’t. She had had a glimpse of the
solemn dismay and perplexity upon her Daddy’s face.
The people from the studio next door were the next to give a display:
they obliged with an imitation of a Russian imitation of a peasant
dance from Saratoff. There was a gramophone record that was not quite
the proper music, but it would do. That dance really amused Mr.
Preemby. The young man went down quite close to the floor and kicked
out his feet with the greatest agility and the girl was as wooden as
a doll. Every one clapped hands in time to the music, and so did Mr.
Preemby.
And then came a further irruption. Five people in fancy dress demanding
beer. They impressed Mr. Preemby as strange and bright-coloured, but
totally uninteresting. One wore a red coxcomb and was dressed as a
jester in cap and bells. The others just wore tights and bright things
that signified nothing at all. They had been at some party given by
somebody or other for the “Young people.” They announced with shouts,
“They shut down at midnight. Yes, they shut down at midnight. When the
young people go to bed.”
It was only too manifest that No. 8 Lonsdale Mews meant to do nothing
of the sort.
Beer. Mr. Preemby declined. The last of the beer. Cigarettes. Much
smoke. The last of the whisky. More gramophone, more dancing and Harold
Crumb’s voice loose again in recitation. Beer or whisky had thickened
it. But there were countervailing noises. Movement. A circle was
cleared. Not more dancing! No. Feats of strength and dexterity with
chairs, performed chiefly by Teddy Winterton, the gramophone owner, and
Harold. This stunting stopped presently and the company flowed back
towards the middle of the room. Talk Mr. Preemby could not follow;
phrases he could not understand. Nobody taking the slightest notice of
him.
A sense of weariness and futility and desolation came upon him. How
differently were the evenings of the past spent by the good wise people
of the lost Atlantis! Philosophical discourse they had, the lute, the
lyre. Elevated thoughts.
He caught sight of Mrs. Crumb yawning furtively. Suddenly, stupendously
he yawned. And yawned again.
“Yaaw,” he said to Paul Lambone who was at his side.
“Proyawaw--Prolly thiswe sitting on my beawawd.”
“You live here?” said Mr. Lambone.
“Come to-day. Christina Albyawawawter arranged it.”
“The devil she did!” said Mr. Lambone, and looked across the studio at
her. For some moments he seemed lost in thought.
“Very remarkable young woman that daughter of yours,” he said. “Makes
me feel old-fashioned.”
He looked at the wrist-watch he wore, “Half-past one,” he said. “I’ll
start the Go....”
§ 7
Mr. Preemby heard a few sentences of the parting between Teddy
Winterton and Christina Alberta. “Yes or no?” said Teddy.
“_No_,” said Christina Alberta with emphasis.
“Not a bit of it,” said Teddy.
“I don’t want to,” she said.
“But you _do_.”
“Oh, go to the devil!”
“Not as if there were risks.”
“I shan’t come. It’s preposterous.”
“I shall wait all the same.”
“You may wait.”
“Little Chrissy Hesitation. Anything to please you.”
§ 8
It took until past two o’clock for the Go Paul Lambone had started to
remove the last of the company.
“All hands to the bedmaking,” cried Fay. “It isn’t always like this,
Mr. Preemby.”
“Confess I feel tired,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had a long day of it.”
Christina Alberta regarded him with belated compunction. “It just
happened like this,” she said.
“Not used to such late hours,” said Mr. Preemby, sitting on his bed
when at last it was made, and he did a yawn that almost dislocated his
jaw.
“Night,” said Fay, yawning also.
“We’ll turn in,” said Harold. “So long, Mr. Preemby.” The yawning
seized upon Harold also. What a face he had!
“Goo-i.”
“Gawooi-i.”
The door closed upon them.
There was much to say to Christina Alberta, but it was too late and Mr.
Preemby was too weary to say it now And also he had no idea what it was
he ought to say.
A casual remark fell out, “I liked that man with the white hair,” he
said.
“Did you?” said Christina Alberta absently.
“He was intelligent. He took a great interest in the Lost Atlantis.”
“He’s stone deaf,” said Christina Alberta, “and he’s ashamed of
it--poor dear.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Preemby.
“All this is going to be rather noisy for you, Daddy,” she said, coming
to what she had in mind.
“It _is_ a bit ramshackle,” said Mr. Preemby.
“We ought to go to Tunbridge Wells quite soon and look round there.”
“To-morrow,” said Mr. Preemby.
“Not to-morrow.”
“Why not?”
“The next day,” said Christina Alberta. “I’m not quite sure about
to-morrow. I’d sort of half promised to go somewhere else--. But it
doesn’t matter very much really.”
“I’d like to go to Tumbridge Wells to-morrow,” said Mr. Preemby.
“Why not?” said Christina Alberta as if to herself, and hesitated.
Se walked to the door and came back. “Good night, little Daddy,” she
said.
“Are we going then? To-morrow?”
“No.... Yes.... I don’t know. I _had_ planned to do something
to-morrow. Important in a kind of way.... We’ll go to-morrow, Daddy.”
She walked away from him with her arms akimbo and stared at those queer
pictures.
She spun round on her feet. “I can’t go to-morrow,” she said.
“Yes, I will,” she contradicted.
“Oh, hell!” she cried, in a most unaccountable and unladylike way. “I
don’t know what to _do_!”
Mr. Preemby looked at her with grave and weary eyes. This was a new
Christina Alberta to him. She ought not to swear. She did _not_ ought
to swear. She’d caught it up from these people. She didn’t know what it
meant. He must talk to her--to-morrow. About that and one or two other
things. But Heavens! how tired he was!
“You--” He yawned. “You must take care of yourself, Christina Alberta,”
he said.
“I’ll do that all right, Daddy. Trust me.”
She came and sat down beside him on his little half-fictitious bed. “We
can’t decide to-night, Daddy. We’re too tired. We’ll settle to-morrow.
Have to see what the weather’s like for one thing. Wouldn’t do to
walk about Tunbridge if it was wet. We’ll decide about everything
to-morrow--when our heads are cool. Why! you dear little Daddy! It’s
just upon half-past two.”
She put her arm round his shoulders and kissed him on the top of his
head and the lobe of his ear. He loved her to touch him and kiss him.
He did not understand in the least how much he loved her to kiss him.
“Dear _tired_ little Daddy,” she said in her softest voice: “You are
ever so kind to me. Good night.”
She had gone.
For some time Mr. Preemby sat quite motionless in a state of almost
immobile thought.
The floor of the studio was littered with burnt matches and cigarette
ends and the air smelt of stale smoke and beer. On the blue-painted
table stood an empty beer-bottle and two or three glasses containing
dregs of beer and cigarette ash.
It was all very different from Woodford Wells,--very different indeed.
But it was Experience.
Mr. Preemby bestirred himself to undress.
That night-shirt of Saxony flannel had still to be unpacked.
§ 9
In the morning Christina Alberta was still restless and quite undecided
about going to Tunbridge Wells, though the weather was perfectly fine.
About half-past eleven she disappeared, and after a light lunch with
Fay--Harold was out also--it became evident to Mr. Preemby that the
visit to Tunbridge Wells was postponed for the day. So he went to
South Kensington to look at the Museums there. He did not go into them
actually, he just looked at them and at the colleges and buildings
generally. It was a preliminary reconnaissance.
The Museums were quite good to look at. Larger, more extensive, than
the British Museum. Probably they contained--all sorts of things.
Christina Alberta reappeared in the studio about half-past six
looking very bright and exalted. There was something about her subtly
triumphant.
She offered no explanation of her disappearance. She was full of the
visit to Tunbridge on the morrow. They must catch a train soon after
nine and have a good long day. She was unusually affectionate to her
Daddy.
Harold was out for the evening and Fay had some reviewing to do, so
they had quite a quiet and domestic evening. Mr. Preemby read with a
varying attention a nice deep confusing book he had found in the room
upstairs called _Fantasia of the Unconscious_ about the Lost Atlantis
and similar things.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
_The Petunia Boarding House_
§ 1
Most places in the world have sister cities and twins and parallels,
but Tunbridge Wells is Tunbridge Wells, and there is nothing really
like it upon our planet. Not that it is in any way strange or
fantastic, but because of its brightly delicate distinction. It is
clean and open, and just pleasantly absurd. It is not more than
thirty miles from London, as the crow flies, but the North Downs six
miles away dismiss with a serene and gracious gesture all thoughts of
London from the mind. It is away from the main line out of London,
inconvenient for season-ticket holders; there is no direct route for
the hurrying motorist over those saving Downs; to Dover and Kent
generally he goes to the east of it, and to Brighton he goes to the
west--if he survive the hills of Westerham and Sevenoaks. Rich men’s
estates encircle it with accessible parks. Eridge, Bayham, Penshurst
Park, Knole and the like protect it from overmuch breeding of little
villa residences. There it lies, on a rare piece of rocky soil, dry
underfoot, airy and wholesome, with its friendly Common in the midst of
it; its Spa of evil-tasting beneficent waters as the Stuart princesses
drank them, its Pantiles and its Pump Room, much as Dr. Johnson knew
the place. Mount Sion and Mount Ephraim, Beulah Road and something
evangelical in the air, remind the light-minded visitor that London in
the past was a Puritan city. Many a serious liver has been touched
and found grace at Tunbridge Wells. Many a light liver has found fresh
strength there. And thither came Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta
seeking a boarding house--and they could have sought it in no more
favourable locality.
They set about the search in a systematic way as became a couple, one
of whom had been partially trained for sociological research at the
London School of Economics and partially trained for business at the
Tomlinson School. Mr. Preemby had been for beginning with a general
look-round, just walking round and looking quietly at things for a bit,
but Christina Alberta consulted all the agents in order, and bought
a map and guide to the town and sat down on a seat on the Common and
planned the operations that led quite readily and easily to the Petunia
Boarding House.
In the guide Mr. Preemby read with approval some very promising words.
“Listen to this, my dear,” he said. “H’rrmp. ‘General Characteristics.
Emphasis might very well be laid on the character enjoyed by Tunbridge
Wells as a magnet for high-class residents and visitors. The town is
never overrun with trippers, nor are its streets ever defiled by the
vulgar or the inane. Its inhabitants are composed, for the most part,
of well-to-do people who naturally create a social atmosphere tinged by
culture and refinement.’”
“_Tinged_ is a jolly good word for it, I expect,” said Christina
Alberta.
“I think my instinct has guided me aright to this place,” said Mr.
Preemby.
The Petunia Boarding House looks obliquely upon the Common from where
Petunia Road runs into the quaint and pleasant High Street. It has
not the towering magnificence of the Wellington, the Royal Mount
Ephraim, the Marlborough, or their fellows, which face the sun so
bravely from the hill-crest above the Common, but it is a house of
dignified comfort. The steps, the portico, the ample hall, the name in
letters of gold on black, made Mr. Preemby say h’rrmp several times.
An excessively chubby maid in a very, very tight black dress and a cap
and apron, came and looked at Mr. and Miss Preemby with a distraught
evasive expression, answered some preliminary questions incoherently,
and said she would call Miss Emily Rewster--Miss Margaret was out.
Thereupon Miss Emily Rewster, who had been hovering attentively behind
a bead curtain, thrust it aside and came ingratiatingly into the
foreground. She was a little high-coloured old lady, with an air of
genteel _savoir-faire_; she had a lace cap and wore a great deal of
lace and several flounces, and she had the most frankly dyed chestnut
hair that Christina Alberta had ever seen. “Was it just for a week or
so Mr. Preemby wanted to come, or something--perheps--more permanent?”
Explanations were exchanged. Mr. Preemby was to be “more permanent”;
Christina Alberta intermittent--and rather a difficulty. The existence
of headquarters in Chelsea was revealed discreetly, but not the fact
that they were in a Mews.
Miss Emily Rewster thought Christina Alberta could be fitted in if she
wasn’t too particular about having the same room, or exactly the same
sort of room every time she came. “We have to menage,” said Miss Emily
Rewster.
“So long as the window opens,” said Christina Alberta.
The rooms exhibited were very satisfactory, (h’rrmp) very satisfactory.
A glimpse of a bathroom was given. “You say when you want one,” said
Miss Emily Rewster. There was a dining-room with separate tables, and
there were flowers on every table, very refined and pleasant, and there
was a large drawing-room with a piano and a great number of arm-chairs
and sofas wearing flounces so like the flounces of Miss Emily Rewster,
and antimacassars so like her cap, and with so entirely her air of
accommodating receptiveness that it seemed as though they must be
at least her cousins who had joined her in the enterprise. The piano
wore a sort of lace bed-spread, and there were polished tables bearing
majolica pots of aspidistra on mats and little less serious tables for
use, and there was a low bookcase with books in it and a great heap
of illustrated papers on the top. The hall expanded at the back into
a rather modernish lounge where two ladies were having tea; and there
was also a smoking-room, where, said Miss Emily Rewster to Christina
Alberta rather coyly, “the gentlemen smoke.”
“We’ve been very full this season,” said Miss Emily Rewster, “very
full. We’ve had nearly thirty sitting at dinner. But of course the
season is drawing in now. Just at present we’re down to nine at
breakfast and seven at dinner; two gentlemen in business here. But
people come and people go. I’ve had two inquiries by post to-day. One
an invalid lady and her sister. They think of drinking the waters. And
there are Birds of Passage as well as Regulars. Just for a night or
so. Motor families. They take us _en route_. That’s where we have an
advantage in being so close to the shops.”
She beamed intimately at Mr. Preemby. “Often my sister or I pop out at
the last moment and get in things ourselves. When every one else is
busy. We don’t mind any little trouble if it makes people comfortable.”
“We’ve been on the separate table system ever since the war,” said Miss
Emily Rewster. “So much more pleasant. You can keep yourself Quate to
yourself if you wish, or you can be Friendly. People often Speak in the
Drawing-room or in the Smoking-room. And they bow. Sometimes people get
Quate friendly. Play Games. Get up Excursions together. Quate Pleasant.”
Christina Alberta asked an obvious question.
“Very pleasant people indeed,” said Miss Emily. “Very pleasant people.
A retired gentleman and his wife and her stepdaughter and two retired
maiden ladies and a gentleman and his lady who has been in a forest in
Burmah and so on.”
Christina Alberta restrained a ribald impulse to ask what a “retired
gentleman” or a “retired maiden lady” really meant.
“I’ve always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells,” said Mr. Preemby.
“_Royal_ Tunbridge Wells _if_ you please,” said Miss Emily radiantly.
“The ‘Royal’ was added in nineteen nine, you know, by gracious command
of his Majesty.”
“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Preemby with profound respect, and tried it
over; “_Royal_ Tumbridge Wells.”
“Makes it rather a mouthful,” said Christina Alberta.
“A very pleasant mouthful for Us, I can assure you,” said Miss Emily
loyally.
The Petunia Boarding House seemed so satisfactory to Mr. Preemby that
it was arranged that he should return the next day but one, bringing
with him some clothes and other luggage, and that Christina Alberta
was to come and stay with him for a few days--there was a little room
upstairs she could have--and then she would go back to London and her
studies and take her chance of coming again when there was a room for
her.
§ 2
In the train back to London Mr. Preemby rehearsed these arrangements
and made his plans.
“I shall come down here the day after to-morrow, after I have put my
collections in order at the Mew. I shall put the best things so that
they can be seen through the glass of the cabinet, but I think I shall
lock them up, and I shall bring down a few necessary books, and then
when I have quite settled in I shall go and have a good look at these
celebrated Rocks here.”
“We could come down in the morning,” said Christina Alberta, “and go
and look at them in the afternoon.”
“Not the same afternoon,” said Mr. Preemby. “No. I want my mind to
be quite fresh and open when I look at the Rocks. I think it will be
best to see them quite early--after a night’s sleep. When there are no
other visitors. I think--I think, Christina Alberta, that for the first
time I’d better go to them quite alone. Without you. Sometimes you say
things, Christina Alberta--you don’t mean to say them of course--but
they put me out....”
Christina Alberta reflected. “What do you expect to find at these
Rocks, Daddy?”
Mr. Preemby waved his moustache and the rest of his face slowly from
side to side. “I go with an Open Mind,” he said. “Perhaps all of
Atlantis was not lost. Some of it may be hidden. There are legends
preserved by the philosopher Plato. Partly in cipher. Who knows? It may
be here. It may be in Africa. A plan. A sign. The toad rock must be
most singular. In the British Museum there is a toad rock from Central
America....”
He mused pleasantly for a time.
“I shall take a note-book,” he said, “and several coloured pencils.”
He continued to meditate. His next remark came after an interval of
three or four minutes, and was a surprise for Christina Alberta.
“I hope, my dear,” said Mr. Preemby, “that among all these artists and
people you are not getting Ram Shackle.
“I should be sorry to think you were getting Ram Shackle,” said Mr.
Preemby.
“But Daddy, what makes you think I may be getting--Ram Shackle?” asked
Christina Alberta.
“One or two little things I saw at the Mew,” said Mr. Preemby. “Just
one or two little things. You’ve got to be careful, Christina Alberta.
A girl has to take care of herself. And your friends--decidedly Ram
Shackle. Don’t mind my making a remark about them, Christina Alberta.
Just a word in season.”
Christina Alberta’s answer came after a little interval, and without
her usual confident ring. “Don’t you worry about me, Daddy,” she said.
“I’m all right.”
Mr. Preemby seemed about to change the subject. Then he remarked, “I
don’t like that feller, Teddy Winterton. He’s too familiar.”
“I don’t like him either,” said Christina Alberta. “He _is_ too
familiar.”
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Preemby. “I thought you didn’t notice,”
and relapsed into meditation.
But this sudden and unprecedented intervention in her personal affairs
made Christian Alberta thoughtful for all the rest of the way to
London. Ever and again she glanced furtively at her Daddy.
He seemed to have forgotten her.
But it was dreadfully true. Teddy Winterton had become--altogether--too
familiar.
§ 3
In all ages competent observers have noted the erratic unexpectedness
of destiny, and now Christina Alberta was to add her own small
experience to this ever accumulating testimony. It seemed to her that
in planting him out in the wholesome quiet of Royal Tunbridge Wells
she was securing for her Daddy the very best possible conditions for
a happy and harmless life. There had, indeed, been a notable change
in the little man since her mother’s death, a release of will, a new
freedom of expression, a disposition to comment and even form judgments
upon things about him. She had herself likened it to the germination
of a seed brought out of a suppressing aridity into moisture and the
light, but she had not followed up that comparison so far as to
speculate what efflorescences might arise out of this belated unfolding
of his initiatives. That here, of all places, he would meet just the
stimulus that was needed for the most fantastic expansions of his
imaginative life, that for him Tunbridge Wells should prove the way
out of this everyday world of ours into what was to be for him an
altogether more wonderful and satisfactory existence, never entered her
head.
For three days, until a fretting urgency for events carried her back
to London, she stayed in the Petunia Boarding House, and for all those
three days there was no intimation of the great change in his mind
that impended. On the whole he seemed unusually dull and quiet during
those three days. He liked Tunbridge Wells very much, he said, but he
was greatly disappointed by the High Rocks and by the Toad Rock when
he came to examine them. He even doubted whether they were not “simply
natural.” This was a terrible concession. He tried hard to believe that
the Toad Rock was like one of the big Maya carvings of a toad from
Yucatan, a cast of which he had seen in the British Museum, but it was
evident that with all the will possible he could not manage so great
an act of faith. All the decoration, he declared, all the inscription
had been obliterated, and then, making the great blonde moustache
bristle like a clothes-brush: “There never were any decorations or
inscriptions. Never.”
It was clear to Christina Alberta that he must have evolved very
extraordinary expectations, indeed, to be so much cast down. She found
herself very interested in the riddle of what was fermenting in his
mind. It seemed to her as if he had regarded Tunbridge Wells as a
sort of Poste Restante at which some letter of supreme importance had
awaited him. And there was no letter.
“But what did you expect, little Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, when
on the afternoon of the first day he took her to the Toad Rock to see
for herself how ordinary and insignificant a rock it was. “Did you
expect some wonderful carvings?”
“I expected--something for me. Something significant.”
“For you?”
“Yes, for me. And every one. About Life and the Mysteries. I had grown
a sort of feeling there would be something there. _Now_--I don’t know
where to turn.”
“But what sort of thing, what significance did you expect?”