Britannia Mews

by Margery Sharp

  And now, as Lauderdale had foretold, the Mews showed its more amiable side. In no other society could his domestication with Adelaide have caused so little stir: a state of affairs that in Kensington, in Surbiton, in Farnham, would have led to complete ostracizing raised not an eyebrow in Britannia Mews. There was a certain amount of comment; a certain amount of ribaldry, Adelaide suspected, at the Cock; women looked more curiously at her as she passed; but in general her new situation put her on slightly better terms with her neighbours. It was felt that she had come down off her high horse. As for Lauderdale, the fact that he had given Mrs. Mounsey a beating (which was known almost immediately after the event, since the Blazer had been listening on the steps) won him universal respect.

  Between him and Adelaide, relations became increasingly delightful.

  They were so peculiarly well suited to each other; as though each, starting out from the same point, had described half the perimeter of a circle to meet at the point opposite, their common upper-middle-class tradition suppled and broadened by experiences the same in kind if differing in detail. Both knew what was implied by “church parade,” “tea on the terrace,” a “drawing-room” or a “small-and-early”; both knew also the remedy for a black eye, and the price of gin. Nor did Lauderdale, as Henry Lambert had done, despise what he had lost; he shared Adelaide’s nostalgia for it. With her, he would have returned if he could. But in the meantime they found considerable satisfaction in applying to the very different life in Britannia Mews the surface conventions of life in Kensington. Gilbert went off to address envelopes as he might have gone off to the City, with The Times under his arm; lunched off pease-pudding at a cook-shop (as though at Simpson’s), and returned to afternoon tea. They dined at seven—“We don’t pretend to be fashionable!” said Adelaide, with only the least touch of mockery.

  Inevitably, they returned to the question of marriage, because to get married would have been so natural. They felt so like a husband and wife it was hard to realize that Lauderdale had a wife already.

  “At least, I suppose I have,” he said one day, with a flash of hope. “Adelaide, can it be possible that I am a widower?”

  “It’s possible,” said Adelaide practically, “but I should think extremely unlikely. Surely some one would have let you know?”

  “They wouldn’t know where to get hold of me. They’d put a notice in The Times, but I haven’t been reading The Times for years. However, Milly had an excellent constitution; and she can’t be much over thirty.”

  “I think you were very careless not to come to some arrangement,” said Adelaide disapprovingly. “There’s her point of view as well. She may be wondering if she’s a widow.”

  “She may be hoping she’s a widow,” agreed Gilbert, without resentment. “Still, I don’t see what’s to be done. There might be some point in letting her know I was dead, but there’s none in letting her know I’m alive. I don’t think she’d divorce me.”

  “I’m quite sure she wouldn’t,” said Adelaide. “No nice woman would.”

  “Unless of course she wants to marry someone else, too. Even so—I tell you frankly, Adelaide, I’ve a possibly fatuous conviction that once Milly got hold of me again, she’d want to hang on. And when I think of all the business of tracking her down—she went to India, good God!—and then getting the lawyers on to it, or perhaps having her refuse to see a lawyer, and then the whole thing beginning all over again—it doesn’t seem worth it.”

  “Which brings us back to where we started,” said Adelaide. “Dear me, Gilbert, there seems nothing to be done.”

  “Of course, if I die you can put a notice in the Times of India. Milly’d be certain to see that.”

  “Assuming that she’s still in India.”

  “Well, she’s not in the London directory. My dear, does our situation trouble you very much?”

  Adelaide shook her head. Strangely enough, it troubled her hardly at all: her life with Gilbert was so perfectly satisfying she felt married to him, even if she were not. What, after all, made a marriage? Community of interest, complete mutual trust, the accepting of both as permanent; by these high standards she and Gilbert were as thoroughly married as any couple in England. In her relation to him, for the first time in her life, she had pierced below appearances to reality. She said thoughtfully:—

  “No, Gilbert, it doesn’t trouble me. That is, I’m not in the least unhappy about it. I don’t feel guilty. Do you?”

  “Not in the least. However, at the end of seven years, Milly and I could presume each other dead. I wonder if she knows?”

  Adelaide smiled.

  “You may be quite certain of this, my dear—if she needs to know, some one will tell her.”

  So the question of their marriage was shelved, with, on Adelaide’s part at least, a rather remarkable large-mindedness. In a peculiar way she felt it less important to be married to Gilbert, because she had been married already, to Henry; she was a married woman. The ring on her finger, legitimately placed there, gave her a feeling of respectability. Adelaide was quite struck by the fact that the initials engraved inside, A, L., corresponded so neatly, so providentially, with her new status; it looked almost as though Providence shared her point of view.

  2

  In time, Adelaide came to know quite a lot about Milly, and even to feel that she understood her rather better than did Lauderdale.

  “I married so young,” he once said, “I didn’t know what I was doing. It sounds absurd when a man says that, but it can quite well happen. Milly was pretty and well-bred, and had a good deal of money, and when she said she’d marry me I couldn’t believe my luck.”

  “I’m surprised that her family let her,” said Adelaide.

  “She was twenty-five, and her own mistress. Her people were Army, mine were Church; they couldn’t make me out an adventurer. And if a girl makes up her mind to marry any one, she’ll do it.”

  Who should know this better than Adelaide? Out of her own memories she said, almost anxiously:—

  “But you were in love with her, Gilbert?”

  “Of course I was. My dear, what a generous nature you have!”

  “Then why weren’t you happy?”

  “I found I didn’t like her,” said Gilbert simply. “She had a mean and petty mind. She disliked everything she didn’t understand, and she understood practically nothing. We got along for two years, and then she did something I couldn’t stomach. Do you want to know what it was?”

  “If you want to tell me.”

  “I want to justify myself to you. Milly was a great snob; we used to give pretentious dinner-parties. At one of them, as a great feather, she got a Dowager Countess of Thingmajig. The old girl started talking about burglaries, said she’d had a diamond star stolen only the previous week. Milly, not to be outdone, said she’d lost a diamond ring. So she had; but she’d found it again exactly where she’d put it down, in the bedroom. The Dowager was extremely interested, in fact this was the only topic she did show any interest in, and wanted particulars. Milly, not to look a fool, said she suspected one of the maids. By this time the whole table was listening. Another woman there, who came to the house a lot, asked was it Blandford. That was a maid Milly’d just dismissed, she was always dismissing maids; Milly said, ‘I’m afraid so.’ She had the ring on her hand all the time. If any one asked me why I left my wife, that’s what I’d have to tell them. Does it seem to you an adequate reason?”

  Adelaide considered. To some women the ugly little incident would have seemed trivial enough; women did such things, she was aware, more often than men, and thought less of them; she knew, too, to what straits a hostess might be reduced to keep the conversation alive. But her judgment was not deflected.

  “It was adequate, because it shows so much else.”

  “It shows she had an odious nature.”

  “And that you didn’t love her. If you’d loved her, you’d have … glossed it over. Why do you look at me like that?”

  “Be
cause first you wanted me to be in love with the woman, and now you’re pleased that I wasn’t.”

  Adelaide smiled, as though admitting her own lack of logic.

  “Did you leave at once?”

  “Next day. We hadn’t any quarrel. I simply said I had to grind for an examination, and went to dig with a man I knew in the Temple. I said I could work better there. As a matter of fact I’d stopped working. I knew I should never make a success at the Bar, I’d neither the brains nor the industry; I’d a house and a wife already, the things a man works for; there was something fictitious about it all. I began to hang round with the theatrical crowd; I ran into a man I knew who’d gone on the stage and made a success of it, and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t do the same. I fancied myself in Arthur Cecil parts. One day a fellow offered me a job with a touring company, and I took it. I went and told Milly I was going on the stage.” Gilbert looked at Adelaide and laughed. “Then there was a row. At first Milly didn’t believe me. When she saw I meant it she said she’d give me six months to come to my senses, and she’d tell everyone I’d gone to Edinburgh. She thought Edinburgh sounded somehow legal and convincing. Oddly enough I did go to Edinburgh; that was where we were stranded. I got a job as scene-shifter. I got a job as conjurer’s assistant. I got back on the stage in Scenes from Shakespeare. I liked it. I liked the rag-tag and bob-tail I mixed with. They all drank more or less, and so did I. The idea of going back to Milly became simply fantastic. But I went, because I thought she’d better have a look at me. However, she was so glad to recover her property that she received me with open arms. She said very sweetly that she and her father had decided I wasn’t cut out for the Law, and I’d better chuck it. They were Army people, as I’ve said, but there was an uncle in the House, who agreed to take me on as unpaid private secretary. That meant Milly could tell her friends I was going in for politics. My penny-gaff experience came in useful, I used to touch up his speeches for him; I also used to make out his wife’s invitation cards. I’d rather address wrappers for Evans. At the end of two months I was back on tour in more Scenes from Shakespeare. That was three years ago, and I’ll spare you the rest; but I did get a letter from my father-in-law, when a manager had me up for assault and battery and the papers printed my address. He said Milly had gone to her sister-in-law in India, and I was to consider myself dead to her. Like a short-sighted ass I left it at that. And I wouldn’t give a tinker’s curse, if only it didn’t involve you.”

  As Adelaide listened to all this she sometimes had the extraordinary sense that she was hearing Henry Lambert’s side of his and her story. She hadn’t behaved as badly as Milly—or rather, she hoped her character was less unamiable; but she could perceive a similarity of outlook. “That meant Milly could tell her friends I was going in for politics”—had not she herself desired to force Henry into any occupation that would sound well to the Culvers? Had not she too been governed by the desire to keep up appearances, regardless of what lay beneath them? It seemed to Adelaide that she and Milly had committed the same great fault, of approaching marriage from the outside, accepting the outsider’s point of view, preferring, in short, appearance to reality. She would never like the woman, but she could understand her.

  3

  As a matter of fact Gilbert Lauderdale made Milly a much better husband in India than he had done in England. All Simla knew her sad and interesting story: how she had been married out of the nursery, how her husband, immersed in scientific research, had reverted immediately after the honeymoon to his bachelor habits; how she had gradually perceived herself to be no more than a burden to him and a drag upon his genius; how after long searchings of the soul she had one day met him at luncheon with the words, “Dearest, I am going to India. When you need me, send for me; I shall be waiting.” The source of this fable was necessarily Milly herself, but she had not deliberately invented it; it had simply grown, out of a word here, a hint dropped there, an after-the-ball confidence to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Macintyre. Milly’s character, which prevented her from telling the flat lie that her husband was dead, also prevented her from holding her tongue; her self-importance demanded a husband of standing; since successful Queen’s Counsel had a knack of making their names known even in India, and since the name of Lauderdale was not so known, she retrieved the situation by switching Gilbert from law to science, whose practitioners, however able, as a rule achieve fame only after death. The luncheon-table episode owed a good deal to Mrs. Macintyre, a devotee of amateur theatricals and a very sympathetic nature. This lady was undoubtedly widowed, the late Colonel Macintyre was dead as mutton under a tombstone in Umballa cemetery; and the two sisters-in-law kept house together in a very pleasant aura of mingled irreproachability and broad-mindedness. They were on the Government House list, and their many callers were chiefly male.

  It was in connection with one of these, however, a Major Philpot, that Milly Lauderdale had lately begun to reconsider her hitherto entirely agreeable situation; for rumour had it that Mrs. Philpot—poor Mrs. Philpot, whose health kept her at home—had recently passed away. No one knew where this rumour came from. The Major continued to dance, dine, ride, and picnic with no sign of mourning; but there the rumour was, and it made Milly thoughtful; and at last, at a certain dinner-party, at which Major Philpot had been put next to the Rowland girl, her thoughts took a direction which would have interested Adelaide and Gilbert very much indeed.

  Through five courses Mrs. Lauderdale’s pale pretty face continued to turn this way and that as she shared her light, expert small-talk between the Woods-and-Forests boy on her left and the Bengal civilian on her right. (All the women were pale—except the Rowland girl, just out from Home; all the men’s faces were tanned; the contrast round the table made the Rowland girl think of almonds and raisins. She was only eighteen.) After three years in India, however, Mrs. Lauderdale knew exactly what to say to any dinner partner, from policeman to commissioner; her thoughts were quite free, and already they had leapt ahead, past the tedium of female conversation in the drawing-room, to the moment when the gentlemen joined the ladies and Tom Philpot would find himself close to her chair, which should be close to the long windows, so that a step would take them unobtrusively to the verandah.… They were to ride together next morning, but Milly made a poor and preoccupied horsewoman (the Rowland girl could flirt at a canter) and the conversation she had in mind was one which might require to be interrupted; a roomful of people in the background was a positive advantage.

  The whole manoeuvre carried through smoothly, and as Mrs. Macintyre sat down to the piano, Milly and Major Philpot slipped out.

  Mrs. Macintyre began to sing “Juanita.” The enormous Indian stars blazed like lamps. The Major’s hand under Milly’s elbow tightened. But she sighed.

  “Out of sorts, little woman?” asked the Major tenderly.

  She shook her head; then smiled whimsically.

  “I’ve food for thought, Tom—and it doesn’t agree with me.”

  “I’ll send you some chocolates from Peliti’s instead.”

  “They always agree with me. Tom.…”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “I’m wondering what I should do if Gilbert asks me for a divorce.”

  Was it imagination, or did his hand under her arm not so much tighten as stiffen? Milly saw his other hand go up and tug at his big moustache. When he spoke again all playfulness had left his voice as he said:—

  “What makes you think he may?”

  “Just—just the tone of his last letters.” (Milly had carefully built up the fiction that she heard from her husband. She often had mail from home.) “I believe as we’ve been separated so long—if we pretended he’d deserted me—”

  “Rubbish!” said the Major firmly. “I can’t believe, Milly, that any man you married would be such a cad.”

  “Perhaps not, dear.”

  “You must have mistaken him,” declared Major Philpot. “Besides—dash it all!—what the deuce does he want a divorce for?”


  These last words told Milly all she needed to know. Nor did her adroitness, or indeed her courage, fail her. She drew only one deep breath—and used it for her soft pretty laugh.

  “And what should I want a divorce for?” she asked lightly.

  “What indeed?” The Major, simple soul, smiled down at her in open relief. “You’ve all the hearts in Simla to break—and your own safe at home. If you weren’t the dearest little woman in the world, I’d say you didn’t deserve such luck.”

  “And if you weren’t—the biggest flatterer in India, I shouldn’t like you half so much!”

  At that moment, pat, came the needed interruption: a burst of clapping as Mrs. Macintyre finished her song. Milly joined in, with a humorous glance at her companion: it was an old joke that she and dear Dora always applauded each other with reciprocal enthusiasm. “Clap hard!” whispered Milly. “Come in and clap!”—and so in the neatest, smoothest way possible made the transition back to their normal relationship.

  The rumour of Major Philpot’s widowerhood was eventually confirmed by a back number of The Times. His new situation did not affect his conduct. If anything he became even more devoted to Mrs. Lauderdale. The Rowland girl married an Assistant.

  4

  So the days passed, the months passed, the year ended; for the first time Adelaide received no Christmas card from Alice. But in the following May an encounter took place which threw the latter into a great state of excitement. Alice had been in town to shop, and in particular to buy material for the children’s Sunday smocks, and on her return to Surbiton hurried straight to the Cedars without even going home first.

  “Mamma! Who on earth do you think I saw in Regent Street? Adelaide!”

  “Dear me,” observed Mrs. Hambro, more moderately. “Did you speak to her?”

  “No,” said Alice. “I would have, Mamma, because whatever Addie’s done she is my cousin, and I don’t agree with the way Aunt Bertha’s behaved, but she didn’t give me a chance. It was so odd! I was going into Liberty’s, and Addie was coming out, we met absolutely face to face! Of course I simply stared; and then before I had time to say anything she just bowed to me—actually bowed to me, Mamma, as though I were a casual acquaintance, and walked on. I was so astonished I went straight on in and bought three yards of tussore instead of three and a half, and now I believe it’s the wrong shade.”