Britannia Mews

by Margery Sharp

  “Now what are you going to do with me?” asked Mr. Lambert lightly.

  He sounded—how odd!—genuinely puzzled. Adelaide almost laughed aloud. For it was obvious what she was going to do with him: she was going to marry him. Her upbringing had at least freed her from all perplexities as to conduct: if one did certain things, certain other things followed; if you let a man kiss you, you subsequently married him—which was why girls had to be so careful. But if Mr. Lambert did not know this, if he were still in doubt, so much the better—Adelaide did not wish him to be too sure of her.

  With equal lightness she said gaily:—

  “Shall I expose you to Mamma?”

  “No, don’t do that,” said Mr. Lambert hastily. But he looked relieved.

  “Then talk to me,” said Adelaide. “Tell me all you’ve ever done. Tell me all I don’t know about you.”

  “Or you tell me?” suggested Mr. Lambert hopefully.

  “Oh, I’ve nothing to tell!” cried Adelaide. “Girls never have. Even Treff, going away to school, has a more exciting time than I do. Where were you at school?”

  “Rugby.”

  Her instant of relief was so brief that she hardly noticed it; but her subconscious mind docketed the fact under the heading Information for Papa.

  “Where was your home?”

  “In Cornwall.”

  “Why, Mamma comes from Cornwall!” exclaimed Adelaide. “She was a Trefusis. Do you know Bude?”

  But Mr. Lambert, it seemed, did not wish to talk about his childhood—naturally enough, for he had been orphaned very young, and his early memories were all sad ones. With sympathetic tact Adelaide changed the subject, hurrying him on to Paris and the beginning of his artistic career; and in Paris Mr. Lambert was perfectly at ease. What a fascinating picture he drew of hard work and frugal living, innocent gaiety and idyllic friendships! Adelaide could have listened for ever. An hour passed in a flash; when the clock struck four she could hardly credit it.

  “Damn, I’ve got to go,” said Mr. Lambert. “I’ve another lesson at half-past. It won’t be so enjoyable as this one.”

  Adelaide laughed back. She loved his conscientiousness, and the lightness with which he wore it.

  “I’ve enjoyed it too,” she said demurely.

  Mr. Lambert put his arm round her and kissed her again.

  “Aren’t you glad I didn’t pay any attention to that note?”

  She stared. They were so close that she could look straight into his eyes—brown eyes, flecked round the pupil with tiny motes of amber.

  “But you didn’t get the note!”

  “I did. There’s another confession. Johnny caught me just as I was starting. When I knew Miss Hambro wouldn’t be here, and I thought you might—nothing would have kept me away. Do you forgive me?”

  Of course Adelaide forgave him. Indeed, nothing could have been more welcome than this evidence that Mr. Lambert had fallen in love with her before she fell in love with Mr. Lambert: it made it all so much more proper. But her practical brain saw certain difficulties.

  “But we can’t go on pretending you didn’t get it,” she pointed out, “because Johnny will have told Mrs. Hambro, and she’ll tell Mamma.”

  “Then don’t tell Mrs. Culver I came.”

  “Rose saw you in the hall.”

  Already they were accomplices. Without even considering the matter, Adelaide realised that the time was not yet come for Mr. Lambert to declare himself. He hadn’t even proposed.… She stood looking at him enquiringly; and Mr. Lambert suddenly grinned.

  “You can say I insisted on coming because I didn’t want to lose my fee. I’ll leave you some evidence.…”

  He seized chalk and paper, and with incredible rapidity, within ten minutes, executed two sketches of the drawing-room, one competent and almost detailed, the other in Adelaide’s wavering amateurish style; and they were taken from opposite sides of the room.

  “Now show those to Mamma!” said Mr. Lambert.

  He kissed her again, and was gone.

  4

  For some time afterwards Adelaide stood just as he left her, the two sketches still in her hand; presently she sank down on the nearest chair, and there for half an hour gave herself up to delicious reverie. At last she had something to think about—moments to live over, memories to sort and examine, glimpses of the future as yet scarcely formed but promising inexhaustible pleasures. A whole panorama of bliss seemed to burst on her at once: her thoughts swung between the minutest details, like the smear of chalk left on her hand by Mr. Lambert’s, and plans for the future embracing tens of years. Her body shared in her happiness; she sighed, and the breath rose gently, enjoyably to her parted lips—moved a little in the chair, and felt the plush caress her shoulders. “Henry,” she said aloud; and on that name the needle of her spirit at last found its north.

  While it might fairly be said that Nature abhors a vacuum, therefore Adelaide fell in love with the drawing-master, her love was none the less true, complete—making her happy, making her vulnerable; and altering for ever the whole course of her life.

  CHAPTER III

  1

  Alice Hambro ran down the top flight of stairs from the night-nursery, looked over the banisters, and saw Johnny eating an orange on the landing below.

  “Johnny!” she called. (The Hambros were always calling to each other up and down stairs. It was a family habit.) “Johnny, is Mamma ready?”

  “She’s ready, but she’s tying up Jimmy’s knee.”

  “What’s Jimmy done to his knee?”

  “Fell down the cellar steps.”

  “You boys!” wailed Alice, picking up her blue tulle skirts and running down to join him. “You always pick the most inconvenient times.… Where did you get that orange?”

  “Off the sideboard.”

  “Well, don’t leave peel on the stairs. Is Papa ready?”

  “He’s been ready. Now he’s taken his coat off again.”

  “What I suffer in this house!” complained Alice desperately. “What I suffer—!”

  She flew down the last flight, across the hall, into her father’s study. She wasn’t really suffering: she was extremely happy. This was the first party she had been to since her cold of the month before, her new dress suited her perfectly, the troublesomeness of the children simply added to the excitement. She couldn’t keep still, she had to run, so she ran into her father’s study.

  “Papa, we shan’t be a minute!”

  “Don’t hurry on my account,” said Mr. Hambro calmly. “I’m just settling down again.”

  “Papa, you mustn’t! Do you like my frock? Jimmy has just hurt his knee,” reported Alice rapidly; and flew off again up to her mother’s room. Jimmy was seated on the edge of the big bed, his right leg extended stiffly before him, while Mrs. Hambro bathed it. She had a bath towel spread over her evening dress but was otherwise quite ready, even to the jet butterfly on top of her elaborate coiffure.

  “Is it bad, and what was he doing in the cellar?” demanded Alice.

  “He was looking for a hammer, dear.”

  “A hammer! At this time of night!” Alice sat down on the opposite side of the bed and automatically (as she always did in any spare moments before a party) waved her hands above her head so that the blood should run down and leave them lily-white. “Really, Mamma, if I’d been spoiled as they are—”

  “You look like a beetle,” observed James.

  “Hold the bandage, dear,” said Mrs. Hambro.

  Alice leaned over and laid a finger on the lint while her mother safety-pinned it in place. Nurse ought to be doing this, thought Alice; and then remembered that the twins were having a feud with her—something about putty in their beds. Jimmy hoisted himself to his feet and hobbled from the room; they heard him limp upstairs till he reached the second landing, where a fight broke out, presumably with Johnny over the orange.

  “Goodness,” said Alice. But she had already forgotten him as she watched Mrs. Hambro sit before
the dressing-table and apply a light film of violet powder. To see her mother do this gave Alice a pleasant feeling of eldest-daughter intimacy: she herself was allowed no more aid to beauty than a piece of chamois leather rubbed over the nose. It was believed to take the shine off. Alice looked at the big glass powder-bowl, and thought that when she was married she would have one exactly the same.

  “I suppose Adelaide will be there?” said Mrs. Hambro.

  “Oh, I hope so. I want to see her particularly.”

  “She’s been looking brighter these last weeks.”

  “She’s been going regular walks, in the Gardens. Mamma, when the Culvers moved, didn’t they take a big box of toys out of the nursery—things Treff wouldn’t give up?”

  “They may have. I remember your father saying he’d seen the Crystal Palace dismantled with less fuss.”

  “Because I want them for the Sunday-school party. I shall ask Adelaide if I can go round and look to-morrow. Mamma, will there be dancing?”

  “Not at a musical, dear.”

  “Oh, well,” said Alice. She stretched out her feet in their blue satin slippers and danced a few steps in the air. She had pretty feet. She was pretty Alice Hambro, going to a party; she began to bounce gently up and down on her mother’s bed.

  2

  Mrs. Orton’s musical evenings were not calculated to produce such excitement generally. The majority of her guests came from old habit, and because the claret-cup was reliable, and because one didn’t have to sit in a draught; they were mostly matrons with daughters. Mrs. Orton often lamented that young men were no longer musical, by which she meant uncritical; she had come to harbour a vague, resentful suspicion that a pianist at a guinea and a soprano at two somehow corresponded to female lunch on a tray, as opposed to male joint and vegetables; men always expected more. However, as she often said, her musicals had quite a character of their own.

  “Adelaide,” said Alice softly. She felt as though she had fizzed over too soon and now gone rather flat. She wanted to whisper, to draw her cousin’s attention to an old lady opposite, an old lady whose nodding head, at first keeping time to the music, now followed a gentle rhythm of its own. But Adelaide did not hear; for once she was behaving better than her cousin—she sat utterly absorbed, wearing an expression of dreamy happiness. It was so perfect that Alice wondered if she had been practising.

  The song ended, the last song before the interval; the noise of chairs and rout-seats being pushed back almost drowned the applause. One went downstairs to the buffet-supper, and this movement and the resulting buzz of talk brought the party to life. Alice looked for Mrs. Hambro and began working towards her, pulling Adelaide by the hand; but Alice could squeeze where Adelaide could, or would, not; the cousins were separated, and in the end Adelaide was the last person to go through the door. A girl just ahead waited for her, and Adelaide recognized Miss Yates.

  “How I admire you for not crowding!” exclaimed Agatha Yates. “And how hard it is not to!”

  Adelaide smiled back. She had at that moment a curious, fleeting, but quite definite sensation of regret: she regretted that this offer of friendship—for such it was, most frankly expressed in look and tone—was no longer worth the acceptance.

  “Do you like parties?” continued Miss Yates, as they went downstairs. “I don’t, they seem such a waste of time. But Miss Hill says the more we go about and lead normal social lives, the more useful we’ll be.”

  Adelaide smiled again. All around people were offering and accepting plates of food, raising and setting down glasses, looking for somewhere to sit, chattering about the music; Adelaide stood quite still, her hands lightly clasped before her. It was the conventional attitude of the well-bred young woman—except that a supper-room called for more animation.

  “You must surely,” Miss Yates was saying, “have heard of Miss Octavia Hill?”

  “Oh, yes, slums,” said Adelaide.

  Agatha Yates groaned.

  “Please don’t call them that. They’re Courts, or Mews, or Alleys. It’s like calling people ‘the poor’ instead of by their names. That’s the whole point of our method—dealing with people individually. And it’s working.” Miss Yates’s rather plain face suddenly flushed. “You can’t imagine how glorious it is to see an idea actually work!”

  As all her friends knew, once she was embarked on a panegyric of rent collecting, nothing would stop her, and she did not stop now. But she was aware of a lack of response, and of an increasing disappointment; for she had noticed Adelaide before (at the very tea-party when Adelaide watched her with such admiration) and thought her rather intelligent and capable-looking; had actually formed the idea of inviting her to a tenants’ social. But now Miss Culver’s attention was so barely polite that Agatha began to feel rather foolish. She said abruptly:—

  “I’m keeping you from your friends. Are you staying for the rest of the concert?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Adelaide.

  “I don’t think I shall. I must find Mrs. Orton.”

  Adelaide nodded. The implications of this remark—that Miss Yates was leaving, and presumably going home, unaccompanied—did not even strike her. She was simply glad to be left alone; for even in a room containing fifty people, Adelaide at this time could easily find space to be alone with her thoughts.

  3

  It was just three weeks since her first secret rendezvous with Mr. Lambert in Kensington Gardens. Nothing could have been simpler to arrange: “I’m going to walk as far as the Serpentine every morning after breakfast,” announced Adelaide—sitting beside Alice over their sketch-books, Mr. Lambert standing behind them—“Mamma says I need more exercise”; and next morning there was Mr. Lambert waiting for her. This happened the week after the faked drawing-lesson; Adelaide was a little surprised not to have heard from Mr. Lambert in the meantime, but she understood his delicacy; she thought he was waiting for a sign from herself. Even when she stepped quickly up to him, her face glowing, her hands (concealed in her muff) clasped over her heart, his greeting remained formal.…

  “Good morning, Miss Culver.”

  Adelaide glanced round. There was no one within earshot: her look of surprise and disappointment was so explicit that he at once corrected himself.

  “Adelaide …”

  “Henry!” cried Adelaide.

  As though something had been settled, they turned and began to walk along the Serpentine, towards the bridge. Their situation was not easy, however, and Adelaide for want of something better to say remarked that Alice’s cold was clearing up.

  “Does she often get them?” asked Mr. Lambert politely.

  “Oh, yes. At least, not very often. Henry—”

  “Adelaide?”

  She felt slightly impatient. Delicious as it was to be walking along calling each other Adelaide and Henry, it wasn’t leading anywhere. There was so much that needed clarification. She wanted their relationship to be properly established.

  “Henry,” she began tentatively, “last week—”

  “Don’t talk about it if you don’t want to,” said Mr. Lambert hastily.

  “What do you mean?” cried Adelaide.

  “Well, I didn’t know.” He paused and looked at the water. “I thought perhaps you might want to forget all about it.”

  “But I couldn’t!”

  “To ignore it, then. I mean, when you came to think it over—”

  “I’ve thought of nothing else ever since!” cried Adelaide, passionately. “It’s changed my whole life! Henry, if you mean you regret—”

  “No, no, no,” said Mr. Lambert. He laid his hand on her wrist where it disappeared inside the muff; thrust in his fingers so that they met her own in the close warmth. “I only meant, my dear, that if you had any regrets, if you were in any way angry with me, I’d behave as though it had never happened. I don’t want to take advantage of—of an hour’s light-heartedness.”

  All at once Adelaide saw what he meant: he had thought she might be simply flirting wit
h him—though he was too much of a gentleman to say so outright. She hastened to relieve him.

  “No, Henry, no,” she said anxiously. “You mustn’t think that. Though it was so—so sudden. I suppose it always is sudden. You mustn’t think I’m that sort of girl.”

  “I don’t know what sort of a girl you are,” said Mr. Lambert, almost uneasily. “I’ve never met anyone like you before.”

  This was exquisite, but Adelaide had to finish making her position plain.

  “I do know that some girls, quite nice girls, sometimes flirt with young men and don’t think anything of it. In fact,” said Adelaide honestly, “Alice says I ought to learn how to flirt, because the men expect it. At dances, you know. And indeed Alice gets on much better at dances than I do. But you mustn’t think I was just flirting with you, Henry, because I couldn’t bear it.”

  Inside the muff his fingers tightened on hers.

  “I’m sure you’ve never flirted in your life.”

  “No, I haven’t. Have you?”

  “Dozens of times.”

  Adelaide laughed.

  “I don’t mind that a bit. No girl minds how many other women a man’s admired before. In fact it makes it more flattering. Henry, when did you first begin to—to think about me?”

  Mr. Lambert reflected.

  “I believe it was the second time I saw you, when you wore a brown dress with trimming on it—”

  “Green,” corrected Adelaide. “Oh, Henry, was it as long ago as that?”

  “And when did you begin to think about me?”

  “I don’t know,” said Adelaide, apologetically. “At least, I always looked forward to the drawing-lessons, but I didn’t know why. It must have been there all the time, Henry, waiting till you—” she broke off and looked at him, smiling, delightfully sure of herself. “May I say, until you made me a declaration? And then of course I knew. But Henry, when you speak to Papa—”