Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta arrived at the studio according to plan about half-past three, but the Picton van which had started that morning with Mr. Preemby’s bags and trunks and the crates of books and curiosities and the late Mrs. Preemby’s roomy wardrobe, which had after all been rescued from the clutches of Sam Widgery, did not arrive until it was nearly six. Unfortunately the furniture dealer in Brompton Road from whom Mr. Preemby had purchased a specimen-cabinet and a long low walnut bookcase had delivered these articles the day before, and all the animosity of the modern artist towards self-assertive wood had been aroused in Harold. He and Fay and a friend or so who had dropped in, had sat up quite late painting these new pieces a deep ultramarine blue with stars and splashes of gold like the paper they put around the necks of Ayala, Tsarist and suchlike champagnes. When Mr. Preemby saw their handiwork he could scarcely believe it was the same specimen-cabinet and bookcase.
“I suppose one could get it off again,” said Mr. Preemby.
“But see how they are assimilated by the room,” said Harold in high expostulation.
“I mean if we moved at any time,” said Mr. Preemby. “I know it’s art, and it goes with the things here very nicely, but there’s neighbourhoods I wouldn’t like to move into—not with these things as they are. You don’t know what people’s imaginations are like.”
Matters went a little tediously until the arrival of the Picton van. The sofa-bed was arranged and rearranged. The bed things, blankets, sheets and pillow-cases, were to be put in a bundle on the top of Mr. Preemby’s flat trunk behind the book-wrapper screen. “We shall have to find some other place for the bottled beer,” said Harold. “It’s too hot in the kitchen and too dangerous in the passage. But I’ve an idea we might have it in the scullery under the sink, with a cloth over it and water dripping on the cloth. Evaporation. I’ll see about it.”
Mr. Preemby was surprised by a yawn. “I suppose you’d like to have some tea,” said Fay suddenly, and she and Christina Alberta prepared some.
Harold was obviously in a strained and nervous state. Mr. Preemby’s patient little figure, sitting about hands on knees, waiting for Picton’s van, looking at things with innocent eyes and saying “h’rrmp” had much the same effect of nervous dislocation upon Harold that the mild and patient camel has on a horse. Harold chafed and pranced. He walked about and went upstairs and out and returned; he smoked endless cigarettes and pressed endless cigarettes upon Mr. Preemby; he made recondite remarks in a strained voice. “All this is like something out of Dostoievsky,” he said to Mr. Preemby. “In a different scheme of colouring of course. Different, but the same. Don’t you think so, Mr. Preemby?”
Mr. Preemby nodded his head in a sympathetic, humorous, not too explicit manner. “H’rrmp,” he said. “It is a bit like that.”
“Things will work themselves out,” said Harold. “Things will work themselves out. You know that poem of Ruby Parham’s.” He cleared his throat. “It is called ‘Waiting,’” he said. “It goes like this—”
His eyes became fixed and glazed; his voice gathered volume, so that the words seemed more than life-sized.