Christina Alberta's father

by H. G. Wells

He glanced towards the pile of his Aunt Suzannah correspondence on the table and the next sheet of “copy” for Wilkins’ Weekly he had distilled therefrom. He rose from his arm-chair and went back to his work with his wisdom refreshed. He wrote: “So soon as man’s elementary needs are satisfied and he is sure of food, clothing and shelter, he comes under the sway of a greater imperative; he goes out to look for trouble. So that I would not discourage ‘Croydon’s’ desire to become a missionary in West Africa in spite of his religious doubts and his peculiar feeling about black people. Such a region as Sherborough Island will probably supply him with a good sustained, sustaining, and ennobling system of troubles. A white man who has once challenged the hostility of a West African secret society will have little leisure for morbid introspection. He will hardly have a dull moment....”

He stopped writing. “Reads a little ironical,” he said “And not quite Aunt Suzannah enough.”

He reflected. “My mind scampers off from me at times. Not in the vein to-day.”

The one thing they must never feel about Aunt Suzannah was that she could be ironical. No! it wouldn’t do. He ran his pen through the six sentences he had just written and pushed the sheet away from him. He drew another sheet towards him on which he had been composing with great difficulty a telegram to be sent next morning to “Preemby, 8 Lonsdale Mews, Chelsea.” He read over various drafts. The current form ran as follows: “Your father safe but with severe chest cold care of Roothing Maresett Cottage Dymchurch desires see you discretion very necessary return confinement fatal results best station Hythe and cab could meet you Hythe if wire in time but do not know you personally am tallish slender dark Roothing.”

Properly considered it was all right.

He tried to imagine what sort of girl this Christina Alberta Preemby would be. She would be blue-eyed of course and probably very fair; a little taller and rounder than her father, soft-voiced and rather dreamy. She would be timid and affectionate, very kind and gentle and a little incompetent. Perhaps it would be well to meet her at Hythe so soon as he knew which train she was coming by. The cab business might be a strain on her. He would have to tell her what to do. To a considerable extent now he had made himself responsible for the fortunes of both these people. And he liked to think that. He liked to think that perhaps these might become his own people, more of his own people than the Malmesburys. Because to be frank about it with himself he was a little bit of an interpolation in the Malmesbury household. They liked him; they were perfect dears to him; but they could do without him. Even that little devil Susan managed without him; she liked him and tyrannized over him but he knew he wasn’t indispensable to her. Here at last might be two people who couldn’t do without him, who might to an extraordinary extent become his people.

Of course he would have to put on a little more appearance of strength and determination than was actually his quality. He owed it to them to keep up their confidence in him so that he might be able to direct them in their difficulties.

He would say to her—what would he say to her? “I have been hasty, I know, but I know something of the strain that is put upon the sane patient in an asylum. I thought that the first thing to do was to get your father out of it. It didn’t occur to me that for a time he might have forgotten your address. Perhaps I ought to have come to you before I acted. But then how was I to know there was a you? Until he told me of your existence. In so many cases in these asylums the relatives are hostile to release. It is dreadful to admit it, but it is so.”

Then rather humorously and quite modestly he would describe the escape. He was already forgetting the uncertainties of the visiting-day conversation and the numerous accidental factors in the meeting by the culvert. But all history has this knack of eliminating unnecessary detail.

So he would make his statement. It did not occur to him that Christina Alberta might be the sort of person who interrupts speeches with elucidatory questions.