§ 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?”
“Isn’t Life a Riddle, Christina Alberta? Haven’t you noticed that? Do you think it is just nothing but studios and dances and excursions and char-à-bancs and meal-times and harvest?” he said. “Obviously there is something more in it than that. Obviously. All that is just a Veil. Outward Showing. H’rrmp. And I don’t know what is behind it, and I am just a plain boarder—in a boarding house—and my life is passing away. Very difficult. H’rrmp. Almost impossible. It worries me exceedingly. Somewhere there must be a clue.”
“But that’s how we all feel, Daddy,” cried Christina Alberta.
“Things can’t be what they seem,” said Mr. Preemby, waving his hand with a gesture of contemptuous dismissal towards Rusthall Village, public house, lamp-posts, a policeman, a dog, a grocer’s delivery van and three passing automobiles. “That at any rate is obvious. It would be too absurd. Infinite space; stars and so forth. Just for running about in—between meals....”
Now who would have thought, Christina Alberta reflected, that this sort of thing was going on in his head? Who would have thought it?
“Either I am a Reincarnation,” said Mr. Preemby, “or I am not. And if I am not, then I want to know what all this business of the world is about. Symbolical it must be, Christina Alberta. But of what?
“All those years at the Laundry I knew that that life wasn’t real. A period of rest and preparation. Your dear mother thought differently—we never discussed it, h’rrmp, but it was so.”
Christina Alberta could find no adequate comment and they went on in silence for some time. When they spoke again it was to discuss how they could get round to the High Rocks Hotel for tea.