§ 7
Christina Alberta’s first evening at the Petunia Boarding House has been described with some particularity because it is a sample of all the still and uneventful evenings that seemed to lie before Mr. Preemby there. It impressed her as an unfathomable enormity of uneventfulness in which nothing harmful or disturbing could conceivably occur to him. The last remote possibility of imaginative disturbance seemed to remove itself next day when Mrs. Bone announced to the whiskered gentleman’s wife that she and her husband were off to Bath on the morrow: they were in luck it seemed; they had got the exact rooms for the winter in the exact boarding house they had always had their eyes on. “Tunbridge seems so bleak,” she said. “After Burmah.”
The dinner was like the previous dinner; the Birds of Passage had gone and Mr. Preemby astonished himself, Christina Alberta, the chubby maid and the assembled company by demanding whether it was possible to send out (h’rrmp) for a bottle or flask of Chianti. “It’s an Italian wine,” said Mr. Preemby to inform and help the chubby maid in her inquiries. But there was no Chianti on the wine-list supplied, and after a conversation markedly reminiscent of that of the Birds of Passage overnight, the Preemby table was stocked with a bottle of Australian Burgundy and, at Christina Alberta’s request, a bottle of mineral water.
After this display of initiative, self-assertion and social derring-do, Mr. Preemby did little but h’rrmp throughout the rest of the meal.
The subsequent life of the drawing-room was also vacantly similar to the previous evening. Christina Alberta got her possibly illegal cigarette in the lounge, indeed she smoked two, and Miss Margaret Rewster looked at her through the bead curtain near the office and Miss Emily had a sniff from the landing upstairs, though nothing was said. And then Mr. Preemby followed Major Bone into the smoking-room to gather whatever further information he could about the temple decorations and religious customs of the peoples of further India. He was inclined to think Major Bone rather biased by evangelical prejudice. But Major Bone was not even indignant about Eastern religions that night. He wanted to talk about Bath, and he talked about Bath. He told Mr. Preemby in very great detail about a remarkable occurrence at Bath. He had met a gentleman named Bone, a gentleman much of his own age and appearance, a Captain Bone who had also once been in Burmah. He detailed various extremely dramatic conversations between himself and the other Bone, occasionally going back and correcting himself. They had made the most elaborate comparison of their genealogies, and it did not appear that they were even remotely related. “Most curious coincidence that has ever occurred to me,” said Major Bone. “In Bath. In nineteen-eh-nine.”
In the drawing-room Patience prevailed and Mrs. Bone was talking about Bath. The cheerful wife of the whiskered gentleman said “Deavning” to Christina Alberta quite suddenly.
“Oh! Good evening,” said Christina Alberta.
“You had a walk to-day?”
“We’ve been to see the Toad Rock and the High Rock and Eridge Park.”
“Quite a nice walk,” said the cheerful lady, and restored her attention to Mrs. Bone. Christina Alberta gathered she was to be noticed, but not made a pet of.
There was nothing for it but to go through the Tatlers and Sketches again. This time the pictures were exhausted, but there were reviews of books and one or two short stories. Christina Alberta read them all.
When she went to say good night to her Daddy she had come to a decision. “Daddy,” she said, “on Thursday, that’s the day after to-morrow, I must go back to London. There are some lectures beginning.”
Mr. Preemby made no effective opposition.
The third evening was in countenance like the second except that the Bones had gone and that Christina Alberta was sustained by the thought that next day she would pass from the vacuities of Tunbridge to the tangled riddles of London. And there was a Bird of Passage present, an untidy young man of the student type with a lot of hair imperfectly controlled by unguents whose motor bicycle had broken down just outside Tunbridge Wells. He lived somewhere away in the north, it seemed, in Northumberland; he would have to wait in Tunbridge for two or three days while some broken part of his machine was replaced from Coventry; he had taken refuge in the Petunia Boarding House and it was jolly hard luck on him. He couldn’t budget for a trip to London; he would just have to sit down in Tunbridge. He was a Cambridge undergraduate and a geologist; he had a bag of specimens on his machine. These facts he conveyed across the width of the room to Mr. Preemby in the course of a rather one-sided conversation.
From the first Christina Alberta did not like this young gentleman from Cambridge. He was like a younger, cruder Teddy Winterton, with impudent bad manners instead of impudent good manners, and with neither bodily grace nor good looks. And while he spoke to Mr. Preemby he glanced at her. But she had no inkling of the part he might play in the life of her Daddy and herself.
When she and her Daddy went into the lounge for coffee and her cigarette, the young man came and placed himself at an adjacent table and initiated some more conversation. Was Tunbridge Wells an amusing place? Was there any chance of his getting any golf or tennis?
“There are a number of delightful walks,” said Mr. Preemby.
“Not much fun alone,” said the young man.
“There are the pleasures of observation,” said Mr. Preemby.
“All this country has been pretty well worked over,” said the young man of science. “Is there a Museum here?”
Mr. Preemby did not know.
“There ought to be a Museum in every town.”
Presently the coffee and the cigarettes were finished. This evening Mr. Preemby was for the drawing-room. Major Bone had gone, the smoking-room had no attractions, and Mr. Preemby had exchanged a few amiable words with the gentleman with whiskers and hoped to follow them up. Christina Alberta went with him. At the sight of the old Tatlers and Sketches she remembered she had bought a book in the High Street that day, a second-hand copy of Rousseau’s Confessions. She went off to get it. She found the young gentleman from Cambridge still sitting in the lounge smoking cigarettes.
“Pretty gloomy here,” he said.
“Oh! I don’t know,” said Christina Alberta with an open mind, pausing before him.
“Nothing much doing—what?”
“It’s not a Gala Night.”
“I’m stranded.”
“You must bear up.”
“S’pose you wouldn’t be disposed to come out for a bit and forage around for some fun?” said the young man from Cambridge, taking his courage in both hands.
“Sorry,” said Christina Alberta conclusively, and turned to go on.
“No offence?” said the young man from Cambridge.
“Nice of you to think of me,” said Christina Alberta who would rather have been thought utterly shameless than the least bit prudish. “Good hunting.”
And the young man from Cambridge perceived that he was dismissed.
Christina Alberta went into the drawing-room for another tremendous bout of nothingness. But anyhow she had got Rousseau to read, and to-morrow she would be in London.
About the Rousseau—? She had always wanted to know how she stood towards Rousseau.
He carried her on to ten o’clock. But she didn’t think much of Rousseau. He ought to have known a few of the New Hope Club girls. They’d have shown him.