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.