Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Well?” she said.

  “In Brompton Square,” said George. “And three thousand a year!”

  “No!” said Daisy.

  CHAPTER II.

  This simple word ‘No’ connoted a great deal in the Riseholme vernacular. It was used, of course, as a mere negative, without emphasis, and if you wanted to give weight to your negative you added ‘Certainly not.’ But when you used the word ‘No’ with emphasis, as Daisy had used it from her bedroom window to Georgie, it was not a negative at all, and its signification briefly put was “I never heard anything so marvellous, and it thrills me through and through. Please go on at once, and tell me a great deal more, and then let us talk it all over.”

  On that occasion Georgie did not go on at once, for having made his climax he, with supreme art, shut the window and drew down the blind, leaving Daisy to lie awake half the night and ponder over this remarkable news, and wonder what Pepino and Lucia would do with all that money. She arrived at several conclusions: she guessed that they would buy the meadow beyond the garden, and have a new telescope, but the building of a library did not occur to her. Before she went to sleep an even more important problem presented itself, and she scribbled a note to Georgie to be taken across in the morning early, in which she wrote, “And did she say anything about the house? What’s going to happen to it? And you didn’t tell me the number,” exactly as she would have continued the conversation if he had not shut his window so quickly and drawn down the blind, ringing down the curtain on his magnificent climax.

  Foljambe brought up this note with Georgie’s early morning tea and the glass of very hot water which sometimes he drank instead of it if he suspected an error of diet the night before, and the little glass gallipot of Kruschen salts, which occasionally he added to the hot water or the tea. Georgie was very sleepy, and, only half awake, turned round in bed, so that Foljambe should not see the place where he wore the toupée, and smothered a snore, for he would not like her to think that he snored. But when she said “Telegram for you, sir,” Georgie sat up at once in his pink silk pyjamas.

  “No!” he said with emphasis.

  He tore the envelope open, and a whole sheaf of sheets fell out. The moment he set eyes on the first words, he knew so well from whom it came that he did not even trouble to look at the last sheet where it would be signed.

  Beloved Georgie (it ran),

  I rang you up till I lost my temper and so send this. Most expensive, but terribly important. I arrived in London yesterday and shall come down for week-end to Riseholme. Shall dine with you Saturday all alone to hear about everything. Come to lunch and dinner Sunday, and ask everybody to one or other, particularly Lucia. Am bringing cook, but order sufficient food for Sunday. Wonderful American and Australian tour, and I’m taking house in London for season. Shall motor down. Bless you.

  Olga.

  Georgie sprang out of bed, merely glancing through Daisy’s pencilled note and throwing it away. There was nothing to be said to it in any case, since he had been told not to divulge the project with regard to the house in Brompton Square, and he didn’t know the number. But in Olga’s telegram there was enough to make anybody busy for the day, for he had to ask all her friends to lunch or dinner on Sunday, order the necessary food, and arrange a little meal for Olga and himself to-morrow night. He scarcely knew what he was drinking, tea or hot water or Kruschen salts, so excited was he. He foresaw too, that there would be call for the most skilled diplomacy with regard to Lucia. She must certainly be asked first, and some urging might be required to make her consent to come at all, either to lunch or dinner, even if due regard was paid to her deep mourning, and the festivity limited to one or two guests of her own selection. Yet somehow Georgie felt that she would stretch a point and be persuaded, for everybody else would be going some time on Sunday to Olga’s, and it would be tiresome for her to explain again and again in the days that followed that she had been asked and had not felt up to it. And if she didn’t explain carefully every time, Riseholme would be sure to think she hadn’t been asked. ‘A little diplomacy’ thought George, as he trotted across to her house after breakfast with no hat, but a fur tippet round his neck.

  He was shown into the music-room, while her maid went to fetch her. The piano was open, so she had evidently been practising, and there was a copy of the Mozart duet which she had read so skilfully last night on the music-rest. For the moment Georgie thought he must have forgotten to take his copy away with him, but then looking at it more carefully he saw that there were pencilled marks for the fingering scribbled over the more difficult passages in the treble, which certainly he had never put there. At the moment he saw Lucia through the window coming up the garden, and he hastily took a chair far away from the piano and buried himself in The Times.

  They sat close together in front of the fire, and Georgie opened his errand.

  “I heard from Olga this morning,” he said, “a great long telegram. She is coming down for the week-end.”

  Lucia gave a wintry smile. She did not care for Olga’s coming down. Riseholme was quite silly about Olga.

  “That will be nice for you, Georgie,” she said.

  “She sent you a special message,” said he.

  “I am grateful for her sympathy,” said Lucia. “She might perhaps have written direct to me, but I’m sure she was full of kind intentions. As she sent the message by you verbally, will you verbally thank her? I appreciate it.”

  Even as she delivered these icy sentiments, Lucia got up rather hastily and passed behind him. Something white on the music-rest of the piano had caught her eye.

  “Don’t move, Georgie,” she said, “sit and warm yourself and light your cigarette. Anything else?”

  She walked up the room to the far end where the piano stood, and Georgie, though he was a little deaf, quite distinctly heard the rustle of paper. The most elementary rudiments of politeness forbade him to look round. Besides he knew exactly what was happening. Then there came a second rustle of paper, which he could not interpret.

  “Anything else, Georgie?” repeated Lucia, coming back to her chair.

  “Yes. But Olga’s message wasn’t quite that,” he said. “She evidently hadn’t heard of your bereavement.”

  “Odd,” said Lucia. “I should have thought perhaps that the death of Miss Amy Lucas — however, what was her message then?”

  “She wanted you very much — she said ‘particularly Lucia’ — to go to lunch or dine with her on Sunday. Pepino, too, of course.”

  “So kind of her, but naturally quite impossible,” said Lucia.

  “Oh, but you mustn’t say that,” said Georgie. “She is down for just that day, and she wants to see all her old friends. Particularly Lucia, you know. In fact she asked me to get up two little parties for her at lunch and dinner. So, of course, I came to see you first, to know which you would prefer.”

  Lucia shook her head.

  “A party!” she said. “How do you think I could?”

  “But it wouldn’t be that sort of party,” said Georgie. “Just a few of your friends. You and Pepino will have seen nobody to-night and all to-morrow. He will have told you everything by Sunday. And so bad to sit brooding.”

  The moment Lucia had said it was quite impossible she had been longing for Georgie to urge her, and had indeed been prepared to encourages him to urge her if he didn’t do so of his own accord. His last words had given her an admirable opening.

  “I wonder!” she said. “Perhaps Pepino might feel inclined to go, if there really was no party. It doesn’t do to brood: you are right, I mustn’t let him brood. Selfish of me not to think of that. Who would there be, Georgie?”

  “That’s really for you to settle,” he said.

  “You?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Georgie, thinking it unnecessary to add that Olga was dining with him on Saturday, and that he would be at lunch and dinner on Sunday. “Yes: she asked me to come.”

  “Well, then, what if you aske
d poor Daisy and her husband?” said Lucia. “It would be a treat for them. That would make six. I think six would be enough. I will do my best to persuade Pepino.”

  “Capital,” said Georgie. “And would you prefer lunch or dinner?”

  Lucia sighed.

  “I think dinner,” she said. “One feels more capable of making the necessary effort in the evening. But, of course, it is all conditional on Pepino’s feeling.”

  She glanced at the clock.

  “He will just be leaving Brompton Square,” she said. “And then, afterwards, his lawyer is coming to lunch with him and have a talk. Such a lot of business to see to.”

  Georgie suddenly remembered that he did not yet know the number of the house.

  “Indeed there must be,” he said. “Such a delightful Square, but rather noisy, I should think, at the lower end.”

  “Yes, but deliciously quiet at the top end,” said Lucia. “A curve you know, and a cul de sac. Number twenty-five is just before the beginning of the curve. And no houses at the back. Just the peaceful old churchyard — though sad for Pepino to look out on this morning — and a footpath only up to Ennismore Gardens. My music-room looks out at the back.”

  Lucia rose.

  “Well, Georgie, you will be very busy this morning,” she said, “getting all the guests for Sunday, and I mustn’t keep you. But I should like to play you a morsel of Stravinski which I have been trying over. Terribly modern, of course, and it may sound hideous to you at first, and at best it’s a mere little tinkle if you compare it with the immortals. But there is something about it, and one mustn’t condemn all modern work unheard. There was a time no doubt when even Beethoven’s greatest sonatas were thought to be modern and revolutionary.”

  She led the way to the piano, where on the music-rest was the morsel of Stravinski, which explained the second and hitherto unintelligible rustle.

  “Sit by me, Georgie,” she said, “and turn over quick, when I nod. Something like this.”

  Lucia got through the first page beautifully, but then everything seemed to go wrong. Georgie had expected it all to be odd and aimless, but surely Stravinski hadn’t meant quite what Lucia was playing. Then he suddenly saw that the key had been changed, but in a very inconspicuous manner, right in the middle of a bar, and Lucia had not observed this. She went on playing with amazing agility, nodded at the end of the second page, and then luckily the piece changed back again into its original clef. Would it be wise to tell her? He thought not: next time she tried it, or the time after, she would very likely notice the change of key.

  A brilliant roulade consisting of chromatic scales in contrary directions, brought this firework to an end, and Lucia gave a little shiver.

  “I must work at it,” she said, “before I can judge of it. . . .”

  Her fingers strayed about the piano, and she paused. Then with the wistful expression Georgie knew so well, she played the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Georgie set his face also into the Beethoven-expression, and at the end gave the usual little sigh.

  “Divine,” he said. “You never played it better. Thank you, Lucia.”

  She rose.

  “You must thank immortal Beethoven,” she said.

  Georgie’s head buzzed with inductive reasoning, as he hurried about on his vicariously hospitable errands. Lucia had certainly determined to make a second home in London, for she had distinctly said ‘my music room’ when she referred to the house in Brompton Square. Also it was easy to see the significance of her deigning to touch Stravinski with even the tip of one finger. She was visualising herself in the modern world, she was going to be up-to-date: the music-room in Brompton Square was not only to echo with the first movement of the Moonlight. . . . “It’s too thrilling,” said Georgie, as, warmed with this mental activity, he quite forgot to put on his fur tippet.

  His first visit, of course, was to Daisy Quantock, but he meant to stay no longer than just to secure her and her husband for dinner on Sunday with Olga, and tell her the number of the house in Brompton Square. He found that she had dug a large trench round her mulberry tree, and was busily pruning the roots with the wood-axe by the light of Nature: in fact she had cut off all their ends, and there was a great pile of chunks of mulberry root to be transferred in the wheel-barrow, now empty of manure, to the wood-shed.

  “Twenty-five, that’s easy to remember,” she said. “And are they going to sell it?”

  “Nothing settled,” said Georgie. “My dear, you’re being rather drastic, aren’t you? Won’t it die?”

  “Not a bit,” said Daisy. “It’ll bear twice as many mulberries as before. Last year there was one. You should always prune the roots of a fruit tree that doesn’t bear. And the pearls?”

  “No news,” said Georgie, “except that they come in a portrait of the aunt by Sargent.”

  “No! By Sargent?” asked Daisy.

  “Yes. And Queen Anne furniture and Chinese Chippendale chairs,” said Georgie.

  “And how many bedrooms?” asked Daisy, wiping her axe on the grass.

  “Five spare, so I suppose that means seven,” said Georgie, “and one with a sitting-room and bathroom attached. And a beautiful music-room.”

  “Georgie, she means to live there,” said Daisy, “whether she told you or not. You don’t count the bedrooms like that in a house you’re going to sell. It isn’t done.”

  “Nothing settled, I tell you,” said Georgie. “So you’ll dine with Olga on Sunday, and now I must fly and get people to lunch with her.”

  “No! A lunch-party too?” asked Daisy.

  “Yes. She wants to see everybody.”

  “And five spare rooms, did you say?” asked Daisy, beginning to fill in her trench.

  Georgie hurried out of the front gate, and Daisy shovelled the earth back and hurried indoors to impart all this news to her husband. He had a little rheumatism in his shoulder, and she gave him Coué treatment before she counterordered the chicken which she had bespoken for his dinner on Sunday.

  Georgie thought it wise to go first to Olga’s house, to make sure that she had told her caretaker that she was coming down for the week-end. That was the kind of thing that prima-donnas sometimes forgot. There was a man sitting on the roof of Old Place with a coil of wire, and another sitting on the chimney. Though listening-in had not yet arrived at Riseholme, Georgie at once conjectured that Olga was installing it, and what would Lucia say? It was utterly un-Elizabethan to begin with, and though she countenanced the telephone, she had expressed herself very strongly on the subject of listening-in. She had had an unfortunate experience of it herself, for on a visit to London not long ago, her hostess had switched it on, and the company was regaled with a vivid lecture on pyorrhea by a hospital nurse. . . . Georgie, however, would see Olga before Lucia came to dinner on Sunday and would explain her abhorrence of the instrument.

  Then there was the delightful task of asking everybody to lunch. It was the hour now when Riseholme generally was popping in and out of shops, and finding out the news. It was already known that Georgie had dined with Lucia last night and that Pepino had gone to his aunt’s funeral, and everyone was agog to ascertain if anything definite had yet been ascertained about the immense fortune which had certainly come to the Lucases. . . . Mrs. Antrobus spied Georgie going into Olga’s house (for the keenness of her eyesight made up for her deafness), and there she was with her ear-trumpet adjusted, looking at the view just outside Old Place when Georgie came out. Already the popular estimate had grown like a gourd.

  “A quarter of a million, I’m told, Mr. Georgie,” said she, “and a house in Grosvenor Square, eh?”

  Before Georgie could reply, Mrs. Antrobus’s two daughters, Piggy and Goosey came bounding up hand in hand. Piggy and Goosey never walked like other people: they skipped and gambolled to show how girlish an age is thirty-four and thirty-five.

  “Oh stop, Mr. Georgie,” said Piggy. “Let us all hear. And are the pearls worth a Queen’s ransom?”

&nbs
p; “Silly thing,” said Goosie. “I don’t believe in the pearls.”

  “Well, I don’t believe in Grosvenor Square,” said Goosie. “So silly yourself!”

  When this ebullition of high spirits had subsided, and Piggy had slapped Goosie on the back of her hands, they both said “Hush!” simultaneously.

  “Well, I can’t say about the pearls,” said Georgie.

  “Eh, what can’t you say?” said Mrs. Antrobus.

  “About the pearls,” said Georgie, addressing himself to the end of Mrs. Antrobus’s trumpet. It was like the trunk of a very short elephant, and she waved it about as if asking for a bun.

  “About the pearls, mamma,” screamed Goosie and Piggy together. “Don’t interrupt Mr. Georgie.”

  “And the house isn’t in Grosvenor Square, but in Brompton Square,” said Georgie.

  “But that’s quite in the slums,” said Mrs. Antrobus. “I am disappointed.”

  “Not at all, a charming neighbourhood,” said Georgie. This was not at all what he had been looking forward to: he had expected cries of envious surprise at his news. “As for the fortune, about three thousand a year.”

  “Is that all?” said Piggy with an air of deep disgust.

  “A mere pittance to millionaires like Piggy,” said Goosie, and they slapped each other again.

  “Any more news?” asked Mrs. Antrobus.

  “Yes,” said Georgie, “Olga Bracely is coming down to-morrow—”

  “No!” said all the ladies together.

  “And her husband?” asked Piggy.

  “No,” said Georgie without emphasis. “At least she didn’t say so. But she wants all her friends to come to lunch on Sunday. So you’ll all come, will you? She told me to ask everybody.”