§ 2
It was quite interesting to be rung up by Christina Alberta and asked if she might come for tea and advice. “Come along now,” he said. “I’m probably all alone for tea.”
And as he replaced the instrument he said: “Now I wonder what the young woman has been up to! And what she wants me to do for her.”
He went back to his sitting-room and spread himself on his very nice Persian hearthrug, and regarded the pretty silver kettle that swung over his spirit lamp. “It won’t be money,” he considered. “She isn’t the sort that tries to get money....
“She’s barked her shins on something....
“Girls nowadays are a lot too plucky—they’re a lot too plucky altogether.... I hope it’s nothing serious.... She’s just a kid.”
Christina Alberta appeared in due course. Erect as ever, but nevertheless looking a little dashed and subdued.
“Uncle,” she said—for that was her theory of their relationship—“I’m in trouble. You’ve got to give me all sorts of advice.”
“Take off that brigand’s cloak,” he said, “and sit down there and make me some tea. I’ve been watching your love affair out of the corner of my eye for some time. I’m not surprised.”
Christina Alberta paused with her cloak in her hand and stared at him. “That’s nothing,” she said. “I can manage that little affair all right. Such as it is. Don’t you worry about me, in that respect. Don’t imagine things. But there is something—something different.” She threw the cloak over a chair back and came and stood by the silver tea-tray.
“You know my Daddy,” she said, arms akimbo.
“I never saw a more dissimilar parent.”
“Well—” She considered how she should put it. “He’s behaving queerly. So that people may think—people who don’t know him—that he’s going out of his mind.”
Mr. Lambone reflected. “Was it ever such a very serious mind to go out of?”
“Oh! don’t make jokes. His mind was good enough to keep him out of trouble, and now something’s happened and it isn’t. People will think—some of them think already—he is mad. They may take him away. And there’s just him and me. It’s serious, Uncle. And I don’t know what I ought to do. I don’t know enough to know. I’m scared. I’ve got no friends that I can talk to about it. None. You’d think I’d have women friends. I haven’t. I don’t get on with older women. They want to boss me. Or I think they do. And I irritate them. They know, they feel—the proper ones—that I don’t—oh! respect their standards. And the other sort just hate me. Because I’m young. The girls I know—no good for what I want just now.”
“But isn’t there a man,” said Lambone, “on whom you have a sort of claim?”
“You know who it is, I suppose?”
He was frank. “Things rather show.”
“If you know him—” She left the sentence unfinished.
“I know the young man only very incidentally,” he said.
“I go to Teddy,” said Christina Alberta without any further reservations. “I went to him as a matter of fact before I telephoned to you. He hardly listened to what I had to say. He didn’t bother.” She winced. Suddenly tears stood in her eyes. “He was just loafing about in his studio. He kissed me and tried to excite me. He would hardly listen to what I had to tell him.... That I suppose is what one gets from a lover.”
“So it’s got to that,” Paul Lambone reflected with hidden dismay, and then remarked a little belatedly: “Not every lover.”
“Mine—anyhow.”
“And you came away?”
“Well! What do you think?”
“H’m,” said Lambone. “You have barked your shins, Christina Alberta! More than I thought.”
“Oh, Hell take Teddy!” said Christina Alberta, putting it on a bit and helping herself by being noisy. “What does that matter now? I’ve done with Teddy. I was a fool. Never mind that. The thing is my Daddy. What am I to do about my Daddy?”
“Well, first you’ve got to tell me all about it,” said Lambone. “Because at present, you know, I’ve hardly got the hang of the trouble. And before you do that you sit down in that easy chair and I make the tea. No, not you. Your nerves are on edge and you’ll upset something. You’ve been having your first dose of adult worry. Sit down there and don’t say anything for a minute. I’m glad you came along to me. Very glad.... I liked that Daddy of yours really. Little innocent-eyed man he was. Blue eyes. And he was talking—what nonsense was he talking? About the Lost Atlantis. But it was quite nice nonsense.... No, don’t interrupt. Just let me recall my own impression of him until you’ve had your tea.”