Chapter the Third — In Lonsdale Mews
§ 1
After a month of deep mourning, Christina Alberta put aside her long skirts and returned to the more kilt-like garments to which she was accustomed. She had not been inactive while her father had conducted his business settlement with Mr. Sam Widgery, and she had worked out a scheme of living that seemed to promise quite a happy life for her father and herself. She fell in with the Boarding House idea and with the project of beginning at Tunbridge Wells. She ceased to struggle with the fact that he continued to call it quietly but insistently Tumbridge Wells; it seemed to her upon reflection that Tumbridge was really the place he, at any rate, was going to live at. That gentle departure from exactitude was quite of a piece with his general habit of living a little askew from actual things.
But she impressed upon him the view that since their lives were to be migratory henceforth, and since there were a certain number of books, unsaleable articles of furniture that Mrs. Widgery would not take over at a valuation, a number of curiosities—for example, a piece of shell which he believed to be a fragment of a Great Auk’s Egg, a Rosicrucian regalia, and a mummified hawk from Egypt which had prophetic qualities, to consider—there must be a sort of permanent headquarters in London, at which these objects could be stored and to which he and she could return from the various Boarding Houses round and about the earth. And, pursuant to this suggestion, she made inquiries and worked out an admirable project for sharing some accommodation with two little friends of hers who practised art, literature, and picturesque economies in a converted mews in Chelsea. In fact, she made arrangements with them. She told Mr. Preemby she had made these arrangements according to his instructions, and after a time it did come to seem to him that he had given her the instructions upon which she acted.
Lonsdale Mews opens out of Lonsdale Road, Chelsea; and there is quite a noble entrance with large stucco pillars on either side and an arch over, on which is a design in relievo of Neptune and sea-horses and the words “Lonsdale Mews.” Inside there had once been stables and coach-houses, and over each a bedroom and a sitting-room, which was also, in the more prolific past, generally used as a bedroom, and a cupboard and a landing and so forth, the little home of the coachman (and his wife and family) attached to the genteel carriage and horses below. But the advancement of science and the progress of invention have abolished gentility, and so reduced the number of coachmen and carriages in the world that Lonsdale Mews has had to accept other tenants; and being too narrow down the centre for the coming and going of automobiles without a great deal of bashing of mudguards and radiators, has had to paint itself up attractively and fall back upon art and the intelligenzia.
Christina Alberta’s two young friends were in possession of one of these perverted coachmen’s homes, and as they were very inadequately prepared to pay the rent—it was a quite aristocratic rent—they were extremely glad to welcome Mr. Preemby and particularly Christina Alberta as co-tenants. Mr. Preemby was to have the big room downstairs and there he was to arrange his books and his surplus furnishings and ornaments and curious objects, and have a sofa that could be made into an apparent bed when he wanted to sleep in London. And Christina Alberta was to have a little bedroom for herself behind this wherein a breezy decorative scheme of orange and bright blue more than made up for a certain absence of daylight and fresh air. But when the two young friends had a party or when Mr. Preemby was away they were to have the use of the big downstairs room, and in the case of a party Christina Alberta’s room was to be a ladies’ cloak-room.
The lessors were to retain the use of the upstairs rooms and in the matter of the kitchen all things therein were to be held in common. None of this agreement was put into writing and many issues were left over frankly for future controversy. “We are to be the pigs that pay the rent,” said Christina Alberta; that was the general idea. “Much we’ll work out,” said Mr. Harold Crumb. “Much will work itself out. It’s no good being too definite.” What was definite was that Mr. Preemby was to pay the rent.
Mr. Harold Crumb was a red-haired young man, a shock-headed young man with a rampant profile, dressed in a blue overall, frayed grey trousers and slippers. He had large freckled hands and he did Black and White, which Mr. Preemby had supposed to be a whisky but discovered was an art. Harold lived by attempting to sell drawings for advertisements and pictured jokes for the weekly papers. His expression was lofty and his voice constrained and it seemed to Mr. Preemby that he was suffered rather than met by Mr. Crumb. With Christina Alberta Mr. Crumb seemed to be on terms of tacit friendship and no word passed between them. He lifted his hand and twiddled his fingers at her—with a kind of melancholy.
Mrs. Crumb was more effusive. She embraced Christina Alberta warmly and answered to the name of “Fay.” Then she turned to Mr. Preemby and shook hands with him quite normally. She was a slender young lady with carelessly bobbed corn-coloured hair, pale-grey eyes and an absent-minded face. She also was dressed in a blue overall, she wore oyster-coloured stockings and slippers and possibly other things, and her business in life, Mr. Preemby learnt, was to review books for various newspapers and write romantic fiction for bookstall magazines. Her right forefinger had that indelible inkiness which only the habitual use of an incontinent fountain-pen can give. There was a big screen in the downstairs room Mr. Preemby was to have that Mr. Crumb had made and Mrs. Crumb had covered with the bright mendacious wrappers of the books she had reviewed. This exercised Mr. Preemby the more because several of the wrappers were manifestly upside down, and he could not understand whether this was due to art, carelessness or some serious mental lapse.
“We’ll have something to eat,” she told Mr. Preemby, and then they could settle up things. But she had a surprisingly rapid articulation and it sounded like, “We’ll ’f sum t’eat ’n’ then we’ll set lup thins.” It took ten or twelve seconds to come through to Mr. Preemby’s understanding. Meanwhile she had turned to Christina Alberta. “’Dabit ’f work to do,” she explained. “Bres no’ clear’ d’way. Late las’ ni’. You be’r loo’ roun’ he’ while Nolly gessomeat an’ Ikn do ’p stairs fore you see’t.”
“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, understanding perfectly. Mr. Preemby was left stunned, with his lips moving slowly. “So long,” said Harold, and took some money out of a black Wedgwood tea-pot and went and fell over things in the passage, and presently went out into the wide world while Fay vanished upstairs.
“She’s gone upstairs,” said Mr. Preemby, interpreting slowly, “to do their rooms. And he’s gone to get some meat. It’s a nice large room, Christina Alberta—and quite well lit. Quite.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Mew before,” said Mr. Preemby, approaching a group of attractive drawings on the wall.
“In a what, Daddy?”
“In a Mew. Or in a Studjo.... I suppose these are Originals.”
Christina Alberta awaited his reaction to the drawings with a slight anxiety.
“Looks like a lot of fruit and human legs and things,” said Mr. Preemby. “Wonder what they mean? Summer Night it says, and that’s Passion in Solitude. Don’t quite see it, but I suppose it’s symbolical or something.” He turned his round blue eyes to the room generally. “I could get a mahogany cabinet for my Curiosities and have it against the wall there—I’d like the sort with glass doors so that people could see the things—and if there was some shelves put across that place, it would hold most of my books. There’ll have to be a bed somewhere, Christina Alberta.”
“They’ve got a sofa upstairs,” said Christina Alberta, “with an end that pulls down.”
“Might go there.”
“Or under the window.”
“Of course there’s my clothes,” said Mr. Preemby. “I almost wish I hadn’t practically promised Sam Widgery your mother’s wardrobe. Rosewood it is. It has a lot of room in it and it might have gone against that bit of wall there. The trunk will make a sort of seat if we get the corners mended. Wonder how that screen would look the other way up. Books might go behind it. These easels and things I suppose they’ll take upstairs.... We’ll get things settled all right.”
Christina Alberta turned about with arms akimbo to follow his proposals. She perceived that they threatened a considerable disturbance of the æsthetic balance of the studio. She’d just thought of a little bed-sofa affair with a bright rug over it. Silly of her to forget the baggage. But in the end perhaps it might be possible to arrest a lot of his gear in the passage. The passage was so choked already that a little more in it hardly seemed to matter. He could go out and get what things he wanted when he wanted them. She had a momentary anticipation of him in his shirt and braces, routing in trunks.
“Of course,” said Mr. Preemby, “when you said you’d got two little friends in a Studjo, I thought they were two girls. I didn’t think they were a married couple.”
“They aren’t so fearfully married,” said Christina Alberta.
“No,” said Mr. Preemby, and was restrained by modesty from further speech for some seconds. “Of course,” he said, “if presently a Family came along—well, we’d have to move out, Christina Alberta.”
“Never meet families half-way,” said Christina Alberta. “It isn’t very likely anyhow. You trust Fay.”
“You never know,” said Mr. Preemby rather weakly, and showed a tendency to drift back to those ambiguous drawings.
“About time we had a look at the upstairs rooms, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, and went out into the passage to call “Fay!”
The answer came remotely. “Lo?”
“Read-dee?”
“Not yet.”
Christina Alberta found her Daddy back in the illustrated corner with his head on one side like an inquiring sparrow. For some time nothing was said. “Of course,” he remarked at last; “it’s Art.” He turned away with his face pursed up beneath the moustache, humming faintly. She perceived it was just as much Art as he could stand.
He ran his hand over the wall and turned intelligent eyes to Christina Alberta. “It’s just canvas,” he said; “what you pack things in. With sort of dabs of gold paint. I don’t think I’ve ever seen walls that wasn’t either done with paper or distemper before. I suppose really one might put all sorts of things on walls, cloth, bed-ticking, tarpaulin. Odd how one doesn’t think of things.”