A Chapter in Acclimatization
His baptismal register spoke of him pessimistically as
John Henry, but he had left that behind with the other
maladies of infancy, and his friends knew him under the
front-name of Adrian. His mother lived in Bethnal Green,
which was not altogether his fault; one can discourage too
much history in one's family, but one cannot always prevent
geography. And, after all, the Bethnal Green habit has this
virtue---that it is seldom transmitted to the next
generation. Adrian lived in a roomlet which came under the
auspicious constellation of W.
How he lived was to a great extent a mystery even to
himself; his struggle for existence probably coincided in
many material details with the rather dramatic accounts he
gave of it to sympathetic acquaintances. All that is
definitely known is that he now and then emerged from the
struggle to dine at the Ritz or Carlton, correctly garbed
and with a correctly critical appetite. On these occasions
he was usually the guest of Lucas Croyden, an amiable
worldling, who had three thousand a year and a taste for
introducing impossible people to irreproachable cookery.
Like most men who combine three thousand a year with an
uncertain digestion, Lucas was a Socialist, and he argued
that you cannot hope to elevate the masses until you have
brought plovers' eggs into their lives and taught them to
appreciate the difference between coupe Jacques and
Macédoine de fruits. His friends pointed out that it was
a doubtful kindness to initiate a boy from behind a drapery
counter into the blessedness of the higher catering, to
which Lucas invariably replied that all kindnesses were
doubtful. Which was perhaps true.
It was after one of his Adrian evenings that Lucas met
his aunt, Mrs. Mebberley, at a fashionable teashop, where
the lamp of family life is still kept burning and you meet
relatives who might otherwise have slipped your memory.
“Who was that good-looking boy who was dining with you
last night?” she asked. “He looked much too nice to be
thrown away upon you.”
Susan Mebberley was a charming woman, but she was also an
aunt.
“Who are his people?” she continued, when the
protégé's name (revised version) had been given her.
“His mother lives at Beth---”
Lucas checked himself on the threshold of what was perhaps
a social indiscretion.
“Beth? Where is it? It sounds like Asia Minor. Is she
mixed up with Consular people?”
“Oh, no. Her work lies among the poor.”
This was a side-slip into truth. The mother of Adrian was
employed in a laundry.
“I see,” said Mrs. Mebberley, “mission work of some
sort. And meanwhile the boy has no one to look after him.
It's obviously my duty to see that he doesn't come to harm.
Bring him to call on me.”
“My dear Aunt Susan,” expostulated Lucas, “I really
know very little about him. He may not be at all nice, you
know, on further acquaintance.”
“He has delightful hair and a weak mouth. I shall take
him with me to Homburg or Cairo.”
“It's the maddest thing I ever heard of,” said Lucas
angrily.
“Well, there is a strong strain of madness in our family.
If you haven't noticed it yourself all your friends must
have.”
“One is so dreadfully under everybody's eyes at Homburg.
At least you might give him a preliminary trial at
Etretat.”
“And be surrounded by Americans trying to talk French?
No, thank you. I love Americans, but not when they try to
talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to
talk English. Tomorrow at five you can bring your young
friend to call on me.”
And Lucas, realizing that Susan Mebberley was a woman as
well as an aunt, saw that she would have to be allowed to
have her own way.
Adrian was duly carried abroad under the Mebberley wing;
but as a reluctant concession to sanity Homburg and other
inconveniently fashionable resorts were given a wide berth,
and the Mebberley establishment planted itself down in the
best hotel at Dohledorf, an Alpine townlet somewhere at the
back of the Engadine. It was the usual kind of resort, with
the usual type of visitors, that one finds over the greater
part of Switzerland during the summer season, but to Adrian
it was all unusual. The mountain air, the certainty of
regular and abundant meals, and in particular the social
atmosphere, affected him much as the indiscriminating
fervour of a forcing-house might affect a weed that had
strayed within its limits. He had been brought up in a world
where breakages were regarded as crimes and expiated as
such; it was something new and altogether exhilarating to
find that you were considered rather amusing if you smashed
things in the right manner and at the recognized hours.
Susan Mebberley had expressed the intention of showing
Adrian a bit of the world; the particular bit of the world
represented by Dohledorf began to be shown a good deal of
Adrian.
Lucas got occasional glimpses of the Alpine sojourn, not
from his aunt or Adrian, but from the industrious pen of
Clovis, who was also moving as a satellite in the Mebberley
constellation.
“The entertainment which Susan got up last night ended in
disaster. I thought it would. The Grobmayer child, a
particularly loathsome five-year-old, had appeared as
`Bubbles' during the early part of the evening, and been put
to bed during the interval. Adrian watched his opportunity
and kidnapped it when the nurse was downstairs, and
introduced it during the second half of the entertainment,
thinly disguised as a performing pig. It certainly looked
very like a pig, and grunted and slobbered just like the
real article; no one knew exactly what it was, but every one
said it was awfully clever, especially the Grobmayers. At
the third curtain Adrian pinched it too hard, and it yelled
`Marmar'! I am supposed to be good at descriptions, but
don't ask me to describe the sayings and doings of the
Grobmayers at that moment; it was like one of the angrier
Psalms set to Strauss's music. We have moved to an hotel
higher up the valley.”
Clovis's next letter arrived five days later, and was
written from the Hotel Steinbock.
“We left the Hotel Victoria this morning. It was fairly
comfortable and quiet---at least there was an air of repose
about it when we arrived. Before we had been in residence
twenty-four hours most of the repose had vanished `like a
dutiful bream,' as Adrian expressed it. However, nothing
unduly outrageous happened till last night, when Adrian had
a fit of insomnia and amused himself by unscrewing and
transposing all the bedroom numbers on his floor. He
transferred the bathroom label to the adjoining bedroom
door, which happened to be that of Frau Hofrath Schilling,
and this morning from seven o'clock onwards the old lady had
a stream of involuntary visitors; she was too horrified and
scandalized it seems to get up and lock her door. The
would-be bathers flew back in confusion to their rooms, and,
of course, the change of numbers led them astray again, and
the corridor gradually filled with panic-stricken, scantily
robed humans, dashing wildly about like rabbits in a
ferret-infested warren. It took nearly an hour before the
guests were all sorted into their respective rooms, and the
Frau Hofrath's condition was still causing some anxiety when
we left. Susan is beginning to look a little worried. She
can't very well turn the boy adrift, as he hasn't got any
money, and she can't send him to his people as she doesn't
know where they are. Adrian says his mother moves about a
good deal and he's lost her address. Probably, if the truth
were known, he's had a row at home. So many boys nowadays
seem to think that quarrelling with one's family is a
recognized occupation.”
Lucas's next communication from the travellers took the
form of a telegram from Mrs. Mebberley herself. It was sent
“reply prepaid,” and consisted of a single sentence: “In
Heaven's name, where is Beth?”