§ 3
When Christina Alberta got down to Woodford Wells it seemed to her that the laundry was just a little smaller than it used to be and that a slight tarnish had fallen upon the bright blue delivery vans. The swastika upon them had been covered over by paper bills in red lettering saying: “Under Entirely New Management. Address all Communications to the Managing Director Samuel Widgery Esq. By Order.”
She went up the garden path to the door that had been home to her for nearly all her life, and it was opened to her by Sam Widgery himself, who had seen her coming. “So you came down,” he said, and seemed to hesitate about admitting her. He was a tallish, stooping man with a large bare pock-marked face, a dropping nether lip, a large nose that snored occasionally when he breathed, and furtive very small brown eyes. He was clad in dark grey ill-fitting garments, with a frayed collar and a very worn made-up black satin tie. His waistcoat was mainly unbuttoned and he fidgeted with his hands. He looked at Christina Alberta as though he found her more formidable than he had thought her.
“Did you see Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, coming straight to the point.
He compressed his mouth and shook his head from side to side as though he recalled painful things.
“Was he bad? Was he queer or—dreadful?”
“Not too loud, my dear,” he said in his husky whispering voice. “We don’t want every one to hear about your trouble. Come in here where we can talk properly.”
He led the way into the little living-room in which her father had so recently planned the conditions for the conversion of the laundry into a limited company. The familiar furniture had been rearranged rather amazingly, and a large, dark bureau had been placed under the window. With discreet gestures, Sam Widgery closed the door and came towards her. “Sit down, Chrissie,” he said, “and don’t get excited. I was afraid you might come rushing down here. But of course I was bound to write to you.”
“Did you see him?” she repeated.
“Mad as a hatter,” he said. “They say he made a riot at the Rubicon Restaurant. Wanted to give a great banquet there to all the beggars in London.”
“Did you see him? Was he well? Was he unhappy? What have they done with him?”
“You mustn’t pelt me with questions, Chrissie. You mustn’t let your mind go on at such a pace. I told you in my letter I went up and saw him. They called him out and he came to me in a little room.”
“Where was it? Where was this workhouse?”
“There you go again. Just sit down and take things quietly, my girl. I can’t answer all these questions at once.”
“Where was it you saw him? Was it at Gifford Street?”
“Yes. Where else could it be? They was waiting to remove him.”
“Where?”
“Some asylum I suppose?”
“Cummerdown Hill?”
“Come to think of it, it was Cummerdown Hill. Yes—they said Cummerdown Hill. He came out. He looked much as usual, but more vacant perhaps, until he set eyes on me and then he gave a sort of start and said, ‘Don’t know you,’ he said. Like that.”
“Well, that wasn’t mad. Did he look mad? I suppose he didn’t want to talk to you—after all the disagreeable things that have been said.”
“Very likely. Any’ow I said to him, ‘What! don’t know me?’ I said; ‘not know old Sam Widgery what you planted your laundry on?’ Just like that—joking at him like. Quite kindly but—humorous. ‘I don’t know you,’ he says and tried to go. ‘Hold hard!’ I said and took him by the arm. ‘You’re a base, complaining scoundrel,’ he says to me and sort of tried to push me away. ‘You’d rewin any laundry!’ he says—him to me, what was in the laundry business a dozen years before he married your poor mother. ‘Any ’ow I haven’t your complaint,’ I says, ‘Mr. Albert Edward Preemby.’ He sort of stiffened. ‘Sargum,’ he says, ‘if you please....’”
“Sargon,” Christina Alberta corrected.
“Maybe. It sounded like ‘Sargum.’ And ‘Sargum’ he would have it. Mad as a hatter on that. I tried to talk but what was the good of talking? I couldn’t get anything plain or straight out of him at all. Started threatening me with the bastinado—whatever that may be. I asked him to be decent with his language. ‘I’ve ’ad enough’ I says to the attendant at last and the attendant took him away. And so we’re quit of him, Chrissie.”
“Quit of him!”
“Quit of him. What can anyone do?”
“Everything. Did he look very unhappy? Did he look frightened or ill-treated?”
“Why should he? They’re taking proper care of him and he’s out of harm’s way.”
“You’re sure he looked—serene?”
“Bit jaded perhaps. That’s his own internal workings I expect. But he’s where he ought to be, Chrissie. I feel that. What we’ve got to do, from what Mr. Punter says, is to let well alone. There he is with everything he wants, living on the ratepayers’ money. We’ve got ourselves to consider. We’ve got to think of that crazy preference-share idea he’s saddled the laundry with. That’s urgent. It’s a charge of nearly five hundred a year as things are, nearly ten pound a week. There isn’t a laundry in London could stand it.”
“I shall have to see my Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. “I don’t believe he is so comfortable. I’ve heard horrid stories of asylums. Anyhow, I ought to go right away and see him.”
“Can’t do that, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery, shaking his large grey face slowly from side to side and watching her as he spoke. “They don’t have visitors running in and out of these mad-houses just whenever they want to. Wouldn’t do, you know. The poor creatures have to be kept quiet and not excited. I daresay I could give you a letter for next visiting day——”
“You! Give me a letter!”
Mr. Widgery shrugged his shoulders. “It would help you to get in. But you won’t make anything of him, Chrissie, even if you see him. And you’ll have to wait for a visiting day. You must do that.”
“I want to see him.”
“Very likely. But regulations are regulations. Meanwhile there’s all this business muddle we got to put straight. While he’s in that asylum I think what I ought to do is to give you ’n allowance, five pounds a week say, and keep back the rest until we’re able to get something settled up. Or four. Or perhaps as you want it—not a definite sum. I don’t know. I haven’t thought it out yet. You can’t possibly want to do with all that ten pounds a week with him off your hands. Then we’ll be able to see where we stand and everything will be all right again.”
He paused and scratched his cheek and watched her with his little sidelong eyes. “See?” he said as if to stimulate her to speech.
Christina Alberta looked at him in a silence that became painful. Then she stood up and regarded him—her arms akimbo and her face alight.
“I see now,” she said. “You damned old Rascal!”
Mr. Widgery had nice old-fashioned ideas about young ladies and ladylike language. He was taken aback. “Now!” he said. “Now!”
“Always I should think,” said Christina Alberta.
“You mustn’t say things like that, Chrissie. You mustn’t use words like that. You mustn’t get wrong ideas about all this. What d’you mean? Old rascal! Something old rascal! Why? I’m only doing what I got to do. You aren’t really of age yet, you’re just a mere child legally speaking, and it falls to me naturally, me, his nearest relative so to speak, to make such arrangements as have to be made about his affairs. That’s all. You mustn’t get wrong ideas about it all and you mustn’t get excited. See?”
“I called you,” said Christina Alberta, “a damned old Rascal.”
He did not meet her eye. He spoke as if he appealed to the bureau.
“And does it do you any good to use such horrible expressions? And does it do me any harm? And does it alter the fact that whether I like it or not, I’ve got to look after his property now and see about it and see you don’t get into any trouble or mischief? All me and your aunt have been thinking about is just what’s right and proper to be done for you. And then you turn on me like a serpent and use language——!”
Words failed Mr. Widgery, and still seeking sympathy from the bureau, he shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands.
“You’re no relation of his,” said Christina Alberta. “I guessed when I read your letter that this was the sort of thing you’d be up to. You’re glad to have him out of the way because he was such a one for punctual payments. You think I’m all alone; you think I’m just a girl and that you can do what you like now with me. You’ve made a mistake. I’ll make you pay up every penny that’s due on the laundry and I’ll see you do it more punctually than ever. And why didn’t you do something to get him out as soon as you heard they’d taken him?”
“Now don’t you go getting excited, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery. “Even if I ain’t a blood relation of his, I am of yours. I’m your next-of-kin and your best friend and I got to think what’s got to be done about you. I got to act for you. In spite of bad language and everything. I tell you he’s right and safe where he is and I’m not going to have anything done to disturb him. Nothing at all. There he is and there he’s going to stay, and I’m going to act as Mr. Punter advised me to act. I’m going to keep back his dividends as they fall due, and pay you what I think proper to pay you for your keep and so on and charge it to him, and I’m going to see you live an orderly sort of life in future now too, same as my poor cousin Christina would have wanted you to do. You’ve been knocking about the world in a perfectly scandalous way and learning to curse and swear. It can’t go on. That’s how things are, Chrissie, and the sooner you see them the right way round the better.”
The young woman stood speechless while Mr. Widgery unfolded his intentions.
“Where’s Mrs. Widgery?” she said at last with an effect of stupendous self-control.
“Up in the laundry seeing to things. No need to bother her. We been talking about all this, over and over, and we’re quite of one mind in the matter. It’s our right to look after you and it’s our responsibility to look after you, and we mean to do our duty by you, Chrissie, whether you like it or not.”
Unpleasant doubts assailed Christina Alberta. She was still two months short of one and twenty, and it was quite conceivable that the law gave this ugly, oily creature all sorts of preposterous powers of interference with her. Still it was her style to carry off things with a brave face.
“All this is just nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to have my Daddy put away like this without a word from me, and I’m not going to let you muddle about with his property. Everybody in the family knows you’re a crooked muddler. Mother used to say so. I’m going to see about him myself, and I’m going to have him sent off to some special sort of mental nursing place where he can have proper attention. And that’s what I came to tell you.”
Mr. Widgery’s little eyes seemed to weigh and judge her. “You’re giving yourself high and mighty airs, Chrissie,” he said, after a little pause. “You’ll do this and you’ll do that. You’ve got a sort of wrong idea of what you can do in the world. You haven’t got any money and you haven’t got any authority, and the sooner you get that into your head the better.”
That scared feeling was gaining upon Christina Alberta. In order to counteract it she deliberately lost her temper. “I’ll jolly soon show you what I can do and what you can’t,” she said with a flaming face.
“Now don’t yew go getting excited,” said Mr. Widgery. “You of all people shouldn’t get excited.”
“Excited!” said Christina Alberta; rallying for a repartee, and then struck by an ugly thought she stopped short and stared at the little bright brown eyes in the pock-marked face. Mutely they answered her mute amazed question. This was the third or fourth time he had used the word “excited” and now she knew what he was aiming at. Suddenly she realized the train of ideas that her Daddy’s extinction had set going in his head. He also had been studying the lunacy laws—and dreaming dreams.
“Exactly,” said Mr. Widgery. “You’ve always been a queerish sort of girl, Chrissie, and the rackety life you lead and now this affair has been a strain on you. Must have been. You’ve got no quiet friends but your aunt and me and no quiet place to come to but here. Don’t you go flaring out at me, Chrissie; I mean well by you. I’m not going to go paying you money to keep you up there in London. Why!—you might go gettings drugs or anything. Call me a something rascal if you like. Swear at me as though you were out of your senses; it won’t alter what I mean to do. I want you to come down here and rest your mind and nerves for a time, and let me get in some one to see you—see what ought to be done about you.... You’ll thank me for it some day.”
His big grey face seemed to expand and swim about before her eyes and the room grew small and dark.
“It’s my duty to see after you,” he said. “It can’t hurt you or anyone for us to have advice.”
In the train from Liverpool Street she had told herself she had intended to wipe the floor with Mr. Sam Widgery, but things hardly seemed to be happening like that.
“Bah!” she cried. “D’you think I’d come back here?”
“Better than being lost in London, Chrissie,” he said. “Better than being lost in London. We can’t have you wandering off in London, same as your father did.”
She felt that the time had come for her to go, but for a second or so she could not move to do so. She could not move because she feared he might do something to detain her, and if he did she did not know what she would do. Then she pulled herself up by the feet.
“Well,” she said with a step past him doorward that turned him on his heel; “I’ve told you what I think of you. I’d better be getting back to London.”
In his eyes she saw the thought of obstructing her flash into being and die. “Won’t you stay and have something,” he said, “before you go back?”
“Eat here!” she cried and got to the door.
Her hand trembled so that it was difficult to turn the handle. He stood motionless, staring at her with his lower lip dropping and an expression of doubt upon his face. It was as if he was not quite sure of himself nor of the course he meant to pursue. The course he wanted to pursue was appallingly plain.