by E. F. Benson
Pepino, was weakening. Even when he was perfectly well and strong he was no match for her, and this rain of blows was visibly staggering him.
“I don’t want to urge you, caro,” she continued. “You know I never urge you to do what you don’t feel is best.”
“But you are urging me,” said Pepino.
“Only to do what you feel is best. As for the memories of Aunt Amy in Brompton Square, you must not allow false sentiment to come in. You never saw her there since you were a boy, and if you brought down here her portrait, and the wool-work rug which you remember her putting over her knees, I should say, without urging you, mind, that that was ample… What a sweet morning! Come to the end of the garden and imagine what the meadow will look like with a paved walk and a blaze of daffodils… The Chippendale chairs, I think I should sell.”
Lucia did not really want Aunt Amy’s portrait either, for she was aware she had said a good deal from time to time about Aunt Amy’s pearls, which were there, a little collar of very little seeds, faultlessly portrayed. But then Georgie had seen them on that night at the Opera, and Lucia felt that she knew Riseholme very poorly if it was not perfectly acquainted by now with the nature and minuteness of Aunt Amy’s pearls. The pearls had better be sold too, and also, she thought, her own portrait by Sigismund, for the post-cubists were not making much of a mark.
The determining factor in her mind, over this abandonment of her London career, to which in a few days, by incessant battering, she had got Pepino to consent, was Pepino himself. He could not be with her in London, and she could not leave him week after week (for nothing less than that, if you were to make any solid progress in London, was any good) alone in Riseholme. But a large factor, also, was the discovery of how little at present she counted for in Riseholme, and that could not be tolerated. Riseholme had deposed her, Riseholme was not intending to be managed by her from Brompton Square. The throne was vacant, for poor Daisy, and for the matter of that poor Georgie were not the sort of people who could occupy thrones at all. She longed to queen it there again, and though she was aware that her utmost energies would be required, what were energies for except to get you what you wanted?
Just now she was nothing in Riseholme: they had been sorry for her because Pepino had been so ill, but as his steady convalescence proceeded, and she began to ring people up, and pop in, and make plans for them, she became aware that she mattered no more than Piggie and Goosie… There on the Green, as she saw from the window of her hall, was Daisy, whirling her arms madly, and hitting a ball with a stick which had a steel blade at the end, and Georgie, she was rather horrified to observe, was there too, trying to do the same. Was Daisy reaping the reward of her persistence, and getting somebody interested in golf? And, good heavens, there were Piggie and Goosie also smacking away. Riseholme was clearly devoting itself to golf.
“I shall have to take to golf,” thought Lucia. “What a bore! Such a foolish game.”
At this moment a small white ball bounded over her yew-hedge, and tapped smartly against the front door.
“What an immense distance to have hit a ball,” she thought. “I wonder which of them did that?”
It was soon clear, for Daisy came tripping through the garden after it, and Lucia, all smiles, went out to meet her.
“Good morning, dear Daisy,” she said. “Did you hit that ball that immense distance? How wonderful! No harm done at all. But what a splendid player you must be!”
“So sorry,” panted Daisy, “but I thought I would have a hit with a driver. Very wrong of me; I had no idea it would go so far or so crooked.”
“A marvellous shot,” said Lucia. “I remember how beautifully you putted. And this is all part of golf too? Do let me see you do it again.”
Daisy could not reproduce that particular masterpiece, but she sent the ball high in the air, or skimming along the ground, and explained that one was a lofted shot, and the other a wind-cheater.
“I like the wind-cheater best,” said Lucia. “Do let me see if I can do that.”
She missed the ball once or twice, and then made a lovely wind-cheater, only this time Daisy called it a top. Daisy had three clubs, two of which she put down when she used the third, and then forgot about them, so that they had to go back for them… . And up came Georgie, who was making wind-cheaters too.
“Good-morning, Lucia,” he said. “It’s so tarsome not to be able to hit the ball, but it’s great fun if you do. Have you put down your clock-golf yet? There, didn’t that go?”
Lucia had forgotten all about the clock-golf. It was somewhere in what was called the “game-cupboard,” which contained bowls (as being Elizabethan) and some old tennis rackets, and a cricket bat Pepino had used at school.
“I’ll put it down this afternoon,” she said. “Come in after lunch, Georgie, and play a game with me. You too, Daisy.”
“Thanks, but Georgie and I were going to have a real round on the links,” said Daisy, in a rather superior manner.
“What fun!” said Lucia sycophantically. “I shall walk down and look at you. I think I must learn. I never saw anything so interesting as golf.”
This was gratifying: Daisy was by no means reluctant to show Lucia the way to do anything, but behind that, she was not quite sure whether she liked this sudden interest in golf. Now that practically the whole of Riseholme was taking to it, and she herself could beat them all, having had a good start, she was hoping that Lucia would despise it, and find herself left quite alone on these lovely afternoons. Everybody went down to the little nine-hole course now after lunch, the Vicar (Mr. Rushbold) and his wife, the curate, Colonel Boucher, Georgie, Mrs. Antrobus (who discarded her ear-trumpet for these athletics and never could hear you call “Fore”) and Piggie and Goosie, and often Mrs. Boucher was wheeled down in her bath-chair, and applauded the beautiful putts made on the last green. Indeed, Daisy had started instruction classes in her garden, and Riseholme stood in rows and practised swinging and keeping its eye on a particular blade of grass: golf in fact promised to make Riseholme busy and happy again just as the establishment of the Museum had done. Of course, if Lucia was wanting to learn (and not learn too much) Daisy would be very happy to instruct her, but at the back of Daisy’s mind was a strange uneasiness. She consoled herself, however, by supposing that Lucia would go back to London again in the autumn, and by giving Georgie an awful drubbing.
Lucia did not accompany them far on their round, but turned back to the little shed of a club-house, where she gathered information about the club. It was quite new, having been started only last spring by the tradesmen and townspeople of Riseholme and the neighbouring little town of Blitton. She then entered into pleasant conversation with the landlord of the Ambermere Arms, who had just finished his round and said how pleased they all were that the gentry had taken to golf.
“There’s Mrs. Quantock, ma’am,” said he. “She comes down every afternoon and practises on the Green every morning. Walking over the Green now of a morning, is to take your life in your hand. Such keenness I never saw, and she’ll never be able to hit the ball at all.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t discourage us, Mr. Stratton,” said Lucia. “I’m going to devote myself to golf this autumn.”
“You’ll make a better hand at it, I’ll be bound,” said Mr. Stratton obsequiously. “They say Mrs. Quantock putts very nicely when she gets near the hole, but it takes her so many strokes to get there. She’s lost the hole, in a manner of speaking, before she has a chance of winning it.”
Lucia thought hard for a minute.
“I must see about joining at once,” she said. “Who—who are the Committee?”
“Well, we are going to reconstitute it next October,” he said, “seeing that the ladies and gentlemen of Riseholme are joining. We should like to have one of you ladies as President, and one of the gentlemen on the Committee.”
Lucia made no hesitation about this.
“I should be delighted,” she said, “if the present Committee did
me the honour to ask me. And how about Mr. Pillson? I would sound him if you like. But we must say nothing about it, till your Committee meets.”
That was beautifully settled then; Mr. Stratton knew how gratified the Committee would be, and Lucia, long before Georgie and Daisy returned, had bought four clubs, and was having a lesson from a small wiry caddie.
Every morning while Daisy was swanking away on the Green, teaching Georgie and Piggie and Goosie how to play, Lucia went surreptitiously down the hill and learned, while after tea she humbly took her place in Daisy’s class and observed Daisy doing everything all wrong. She putted away at her clock-golf, she bought a beautiful book with pictures and studied them, and all the time she said nothing whatever about it. In her heart she utterly despised golf, but golf just now was the stunt, and she had to get hold of Riseholme again…
Georgie popped in one morning after she had come back from her lesson, and found her in the act of holing out from the very longest of the stations.
“My dear, what a beautiful putt!” he said. “I believe you’re getting quite keen on it.”
“Indeed I am,” said she. “It’s great fun. I go down sometimes to the links and knock the ball about. Be very kind to me this afternoon and come round with me.”
Georgie readily promised to do so.
“Of course I will,” he said, “and I should be delighted to give you a hint or two, if I can. I won two holes from Daisy yesterday.”
“How clever of you, Georgie! Any news?”
Georgie said the sound that is spelt “Tut.”
“I quite forgot,” he said. “I came round to tell you. Neither Mrs. Boucher nor Daisy nor I know what to do.”
(“That’s the Museum Committee,” thought Lucia.) “What is it, Georgie?” she said. “See if poor Lucia can help.”
“Well,” said Georgie, “You know Pug?”
“That mangy little thing of Lady Ambermere’s?” asked Lucia.
“Yes. Pug died, I don’t know what of—”
“Cream, I should think,” said Lucia. “And cake.”
“Well, it may have been. Anyhow, Lady Ambermere had him stuffed, and while I was out this morning, she left him in a glass case at my house, as a present for the Museum. There he is lying on a blue cushion, with one ear cocked, and a great watery eye, and the end of his horrid tongue between his lips.”
“No!” said Lucia.
“I assure you. And we don’t know what to do. We can’t put him in the Museum, can we? And we’re afraid she’ll take the mittens away if we don’t. But, how can we refuse? She wrote me a note about ‘her precious Pug.’”
Lucia remembered how they had refused an Elizabethan spit, though they had subsequently accepted it. But she was not going to remind Georgie of that. She wanted to get a better footing in the Museum than an Elizabethan spit had given her.
“What a dreadful thing!” she said. “And so you came to see if your poor old Lucia could help you.”
“Well, we all wondered if you might be able to think of something,” said he.
Lucia enjoyed this: the Museum was wanting her… She fixed Georgie with her eye.
“Perhaps I can get you out of your hole,” she said. “What I imagine is, Georgie, that you want me to take that awful Pug back to her. I see what’s happened. She had him stuffed, and then found he was too dreadful an object to keep, and so thought she’d be generous to the Museum. We—I should say ‘you’, for I’ve got nothing to do with it—you don’t care about the Museum being made a dump for all the rubbish that people don’t want in their houses. Do you?”
“No, certainly not,” said Georgie. (Did Lucia mean anything by that? Apparently she did.) She became brisk and voluble.
“Of course, if you asked my opinion,” said Lucia, “I should say that there has been a little too much dumping done already. But that is not the point, is it? And it’s not my business either. Anyhow, you don’t want any more rubbish to be dumped. As for withdrawing the mittens—only lent, are they?—she won’t do anything of the kind. She likes taking people over and showing them. Yes, Georgie, I’ll help you: tell Mrs. Boucher and Daisy that I’ll help you. I’ll drive over this afternoon—no, I won’t, for I’m going to have a lovely game of golf with you—I’ll drive over to-morrow and take Pug back, with the Committee’s regrets that they are not taxidermists. Or, if you like, I’ll do it on my own authority. How odd to be afraid of poor old Lady Ambermere! Never mind: I’m not. How all you people bully me into doing just what you want! I always was Riseholme’s slave. Put Pug’s case in a nice piece of brown paper, Georgie, for I don’t want to see the horrid little abortion, and don’t think anything more about it. Now let’s have a good little putting match till lunch-time.”
Georgie was nowhere in the good little putting-match, and he was even less anywhere when it came to their game in the afternoon. Lucia made magnificent swipes from the tee, the least of which, if she happened to hit it, must have gone well over a hundred yards, whereas Daisy considered eighty yards from the tee a most respectable shot, and was positively pleased if she went into a bunker at a greater distance than that, and said the bunker ought to be put further off for the sake of the longer hitters. And when Lucia came near the green, she gave a smart little dig with her mashie, and, when this remarkable stroke came off, though she certainly hit the ground, the ball went beautifully, whereas when Daisy hit the ground the ball didn’t go at all. All the time she was light-hearted and talkative, and even up to the moment of striking, would be saying “Now oo naughty ickle ball: Lucia’s going to give you such a spank!” whereas when Daisy was playing, her opponent and the caddies had all to be dumb and turned to stone, while she drew a long breath and waved her club with a pendulum-like movement over the ball.
“But you’re marvellous,” said Georgie as, three down, he stood on the fourth tee, and watched Lucia’s ball sail away over a sheep that looked quite small in the distance. “It’s only three weeks or so since you began to play at all. You are clever! I believe you’d nearly beat Daisy.”
“Georgie, I’m afraid you’re a flatterer,” said Lucia. “Now give your ball a good bang, and then there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Let’s see; it’s slow back, isn’t it?” said Georgie. “Or is it quick back? I believe Daisy says sometimes one and sometimes the other.”
Daisy and Piggie, starting before them, were playing in a parallel and opposite direction. Daisy had no luck with her first shot, and very little with her second. Lucia just got out of the way of her third and Daisy hurried by them.
“Such a slice!” she said. “How are you getting on, Lucia? How-many have you played to get there?”
“One at present, dear,” said Lucia. “But isn’t it difficult?”
Daisy’s face fell.
“One?” she said.
Lucia kissed her hand.
“That’s all,” she said. “And has Georgie told you that I’ll manage about Pug for you?”
Daisy looked round severely. She had begun to address her ball and nobody must talk.
Lucia watched Daisy do it again, and rejoined Georgie who was in a ‘tarsome’ place, and tufts of grass flew in the air.
“Georgie, I had a little talk with Mr. Stratton the other day,” she said. “There’s a new golf-committee being elected in October, and they would so like to have you on it. Now be good-natured and say you will.”
Georgie had no intention of saying anything else.
“And they want poor little me to be President,” said Lucia. “So shall I send Mr. Stratton a line and say we will? It would be kind, Georgie. Oh, by the way, do come and dine to-night. Pepino—so much better, thanks—Pepino told me to ask you. He would enjoy it. Just one of our dear little evenings again.”
Lucia, in fact, was bringing her batteries into action, and Georgie was the immediate though not the ultimate objective. He longed to be on the golf-committee, he was intensely grateful for the promised removal of Pug, and it was much more
amusing to play golf with Lucia than to be dragooned round by Daisy who told him after every stroke what he ought to have done and could never do it herself. A game should not be a lecture.
Lucia thought it was time to confide in him about the abandoning of Brompton Square. Georgie would love knowing what nobody else knew yet. She waited till he had failed to hole a short putt, and gave him the subsequent one, which Daisy never did.
“I hope we shall have many of our little evenings, Georgie,” she said. “We shall be here till Christmas. No, no more London for us, though it’s a secret at present.”
“What?” said Georgie.
“Wait a moment,” said Lucia, teeing up for the last hole. “Now ickle ballie, fly away home. There!…” and ickle ballie flew at about right-angles to home, but ever such a long way.
She walked with him to cover-point, where he had gone too.
“Pepino must never live in London again,” she said. “All going to be sold, Georgie. The house and the furniture and the pearls. You must put up with your poor old Lucia at Riseholme again. Nobody knows yet but you, but now it is all settled. Am I sorry? Yes, Georgie, course I am. So many dear friends in London. But then there are dear friends in Riseholme. Oh, what a beautiful bang, Georgie. You nearly hit Daisy. Call ‘Five!’ isn’t that what they do?”
Lucia was feeling much surer of her ground. Georgie, bribed by a place on the golf-committee and by her admiration of his golf, and by her nobility with regard to Pug, was trotting back quick to her, and that was something. Next morning she had a hectic interview with Lady Ambermere…
