Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Yes,” said Piggy. “Oh, how lovely! I adore Olga. Will she let me sit next her?”

  “Eh?” said Mrs. Antrobus.

  “Lunch on Sunday, mamma, with Olga Bracely,” screamed Goosie.

  “But she’s not here,” said Mrs. Antrobus.

  “No, but she’s coming, mamma,” shouted Piggy. “Come along, Goosie. There’s Mrs. Boucher. We’ll tell her about poor Mrs. Lucas.”

  Mrs. Boucher’s bath-chair was stationed opposite the butcher’s, where her husband was ordering the joint for Sunday. Piggy and Goosie had poured the tale of Lucia’s comparative poverty into her ear, before Georgie got to her. Here, however, it had a different reception, and Georgie found himself the hero of the hour.

  “An immense fortune. I call it an immense fortune,” said Mrs. Boucher, emphatically, as Georgie approached. “Good morning, Mr. Georgie, I’ve heard your news, and I hope Mrs. Lucas will use it well. Brompton Square, too! I had an aunt who lived there once, my mother’s sister, you understand, not my father’s, and she used to say that she would sooner live in Brompton Square than in Buckingham Palace. What will they do with it, do you suppose? It must be worth its weight in gold. What a strange coincidence that Mr. Lucas’s aunt and mine should both have lived there! Any more news?”

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

  “Well, that’s a bit of news!” said Mrs. Boucher, as her husband came out of the butcher’s shop. “Jacob, Olga’s coming down to-morrow, so Mr. Georgie says. That’ll make you happy! You’re madly in love with Olga, Jacob, so don’t deny it. You’re an old flirt, Jacob, that’s what you are. I shan’t get much of your attention till Olga goes away again. I should be ashamed at your age, I should. And young enough to be your daughter or mine either. And three thousand a year, Mr. Georgie says. I call it an immense fortune. That’s Mrs. Lucas, you know. I thought perhaps two. I’m astounded. Why, when old Mrs. Toppington — not the wife of the young Mr. Toppington who married the niece of the man who invented laughing gas — but of his father, or perhaps his uncle, I can’t be quite sure which, but when old Mr. Toppington died, he left his son or nephew, whichever it was, a sum that brought him in just about that, and he was considered a very rich man. He had the house just beyond the church at Scroby Windham where my father was rector, and he built the new wing with the billiard-room—”

  Georgie knew he would never get through his morning’s work if he listened to everything that Mrs. Boucher had to say about young Mr. Toppington, and broke in.

  “And she wants you and the colonel to lunch with her on Sunday,” he said. “She told me to ask all her old friends.”

  “Well, I do call that kind,” said Mrs. Boucher, “and of course we’ll go. . . . Jacob, the joint. We shan’t want the joint. I was going to give you a veal cutlet in the evening, so what’s the good of a joint? Just a bit of steak for the servants, a nice piece. Well, that will be a treat, to lunch with our dear Olga! Quite a party, I daresay.”

  Mrs. Quantock’s chicken, already countermanded, came in nicely for Georgie’s dinner for Olga on Saturday, and by the time all his errands were done the morning was gone, without any practise at his piano, or work in his garden, or a single stitch in his new piece of embroidery. Fresh amazements awaited him when he made his fatigued return to his house. For Foljambe told him that Lucia, had sent her maid to borrow his manual on Auction Bridge. He was too tired to puzzle over that now, but it was strange that Lucia, who despised any form of cards as only fit for those who had not the intelligence to talk or to listen, should have done that. Cards came next to cross-word puzzles in Lucia’s index of inanities. What did it mean?

  Neither Lucia nor Pepino were seen in public at all till Sunday morning, though Daisy Quantock had caught sight of Pepino on his arrival on Friday afternoon, walking bowed with grief and with a faltering gait through the little paved garden in front of The Hurst, to his door. Lucia opened it for him, and they both shook their heads sadly and passed inside. But it was believed that they never came out the whole of Saturday, and their first appearance was at church on Sunday, though indeed, Lucia could hardly be said to have appeared, so impenetrable was her black veil. But that, so to speak, was the end of all mourning (besides, everybody knew that she was dining with Olga that night), and at the end of the service, she put up her veil, and held a sort of little reception standing in the porch, and shaking hands with all her friends as they went out. It was generally felt that this signified her re-entry into Riseholme life.

  Hardly less conspicuous a figure was Georgie. Though Robert had been so sarcastic about his Oxford trousers, he had made up his mind to get it over, and after church he walked twice round the green quite slowly and talked to everybody, standing a little away so that they should get a complete view. The odious Piggy, it is true, burst into a squeal of laughter and cried, “Oh, Mr. Georgie, I see you’ve gone into long frocks,” and her mother put up her ear-trumpet as she approached as if to give a greater keenness to her general perceptions. But apart from the jarring incident of Piggy, Georgie was pleased with his trousers’ reception. They were beautifully cut too, and fell in charming lines, and the sensation they created was quite a respectful one. But it had been an anxious morning, and he was pleased when it was over.

  And such a talk he had had with Olga last night, when she dined alone with him, and sat so long with her elbows on the table that Foljambe looked in three times in order to clear away. Her own adventures, she said, didn’t matter; she could tell Georgie about the American tour and the Australian tour, and the coming season in London any time at leisure. What she had to know about with the utmost detail was exactly everything that had happened at Riseholme since she had left it a year ago.

  “Good heavens!” she said. “To think that I once thought that it was a quiet back-watery place where I could rest and do nothing but study. But it’s a whirl! There’s always something wildly exciting going on. Oh, what fools people are not to take an interest in what they call little things. Now go on about Lucia. It’s his aunt, isn’t it, and mad?”

  “Yes, and Pepino’s been left her house in Brompton Square,” began Georgie.

  “No! That’s where I’ve taken a house for the season. What number?”

  “Twenty-five,” said Georgie.

  “Twenty-five?” said Olga. “Why, that’s just where the curve begins. And a big—”

  “Music-room built out at the back,” said Georgie.

  “I’m almost exactly opposite. But mine’s a small one. Just room for my husband and me, and one spare room. Go on quickly.”

  “And about three thousand a year and some pearls,” said Georgie. “And the house is full of beautiful furniture.”

  “And will they sell it?”

  “Nothing settled,” said Georgie.

  “That means you think they won’t. Do you think that they’ll settle altogether in London?”

  “No, I don’t think that,” said Georgie very carefully.

  “You are tactful. Lucia has told you all about it, but has also said firmly that nothing’s settled. So I won’t pump you. And I met Colonel Boucher on my way here. Why only one bull-dog?”

  “Because the other always growled so frightfully at Mrs. Boucher. He gave it away to his brother.”

  “And Daisy Quantock? Is it still spiritualism?”

  “No; that’s over, though I rather think it’s coming back. After that it was sour milk, and now it’s raw vegetables. You’ll see to-morrow at dinner. She brings them in a paper bag. Carrots and turnips and celery. Raw. But perhaps she may not. Every now and then she eats like anybody else.”

  “And Piggie and Goosie?”

  “Just the same. But Mrs. Antrobus has got a new ear-trumpet. But what I want to know is, why did Lucia send across for my manual on Auction Bridge? She thinks all card-games imbecile.”

  “Oh, Georgie, that’s easy!” said Olga. “Why, of course, Brompton Square, though nothing’s settled. Parties, you know, when she wa
nts people who like to play Bridge.”

  Georgie became deeply thoughtful.

  “It might be that,” he said. “But it would be tremendously thorough.”

  “How else can you account for it? By the way, I’ve had a listening-in put up at Old Place.”

  “I know. I saw them at it yesterday. But don’t turn it on to-morrow night. Lucia hates it. She only heard it once, and that time it was a lecture on pyorrhea. Now tell me about yourself. And shall we go into the drawing-room? Foljambe’s getting restless.”

  Olga allowed herself to be weaned from subjects so much more entrancing to her, and told him of the huge success of the American tour, and spoke of the eight weeks’ season which was to begin at Covent Garden in the middle of May. But it all led back to Riseholme.

  “I’m singing twice a week,” she said. “Brunnhilde and Lucrezia and Salome. Oh, my dear, how I love it! But I shall come down here every single week-end. To go back to Lucia: do you suppose she’ll settle in London for the season? I believe that’s the idea. Fresh worlds to conquer.”

  Georgie was silent a moment.

  “I think you may be right about the Auction Bridge,” he said at length. “And that would account for Stravinski too.”

  “What’s that?” said Olga greedily.

  “Why, she played me a bit of Stravinski yesterday morning,” said Georgie. “And before she never would listen to anything modern. It all fits in.”

  “Perfect,” said Olga.

  Georgie and the Quantocks walked up together the next evening to dine with Olga, and Daisy was carrying a little paper parcel. But that proved to be a disappointment, for it did not contain carrots, but only evening shoes. Lucia and Pepino, as usual, were a little late, for it was Lucia’s habit to arrive last at any party, as befitted the Queen of Riseholme, and to make her gracious round of the guests. Everyone of course was wondering if she would wear the pearls, but again there was a disappointment, for her only ornaments were two black bangles, and the brooch of entwined sausages of gold containing a lock of Beethoven’s hair. (As a matter of fact Beethoven’s hair had fallen out some years ago, and she had replaced it with a lock of Pepino’s which was the same colour. . . . Pepino had never told anybody.) From the first it was evident that though the habiliments of woe still decked her, she had cast off the numb misery of the bereavement.

  “So kind of you to invite us,” she said to Olga, “and so good,” she added in a whisper, “for my poor Pepino. I’ve been telling him he must face the world again and not mope. Daisy, dear! Sweet to see you, and Mr. Robert. Georgie! Well, I do think this is a delicious little party.”

  Pepino followed her: it was just like the arrival of Royal Personages, and Olga had to stiffen her knees so as not to curtsey.

  Having greeted those who had the honour to meet her, Lucia became affable rather than gracious. Robert Quantock was between her and Olga at dinner, but then at dinner, everybody left Robert alone, for if disturbed over that function, he was apt to behave rather like a dog with a bone and growl. But if left alone, he was in an extremely good temper afterwards.

  “And you’re only here just for two days, Miss Olga,” she said, “at least so Georgie tells me, and he usually knows your movements. And then London, I suppose, and you’ll be busy rehearsing for the opera. I must certainly manage to be in London for a week or two this year, and come to ‘Siegried,’ and The ‘Valkyrie,’ in which, so I see in the papers, you’re singing. Georgie, you must take me up to London when the opera comes on. Or perhaps—”

  She paused a moment.

  “Pepino, shall I tell all our dear friends our little secret?” she said. “If you say ‘no,’ I shan’t. But, please, Pepino—”

  Pepino, however, had been instructed to say ‘yes,’ and accordingly did so.

  “You see, dear Miss Olga,” said Lucia, “that a little property has come to us through that grievous tragedy last week. A house has been left to Pepino in Brompton Square, all furnished, and with a beautiful music-room. So we’re thinking, as there is no immediate hurry about selling it, of spending a few weeks there this season, very quietly of course, but still perhaps entertaining a few friends. Then we shall have time to look about us, and as the house is there, why not use it in the interval? We shall go there at the end of the month.”

  This little speech had been carefully prepared, for Lucia felt that if she announced the full extent of their plan, Riseholme would suffer a terrible blow. It must be broken to Riseholme by degrees: Riseholme must first be told that they were to be up in town for a week or two, pending the sale of the house. Subsequently Riseholme would hear that they were not going to sell the house.

  She looked round to see how this section of Riseholme took it. A chorus of the emphatic ‘No’ burst from Georgie, Mrs. Quantock and Olga, who, of course, had fully discussed this disclosure already; even Robert, very busy with his dinner, said ‘No’ and went on gobbling.

  “So sweet of you all to say ‘No,’” said Lucia, who know perfectly well that the emphatic interjection meant only surprise, and the desire to hear more, not the denial that such a thing was possible, “but there it is. Pepino and I have talked it over — non e vero, carissimo — and we feel that there is a sort of call to us to go to London. Dearest Aunt Amy, you know, and all her beautiful furniture! She never would have a stick of it sold, and that seems to point to the fact that she expected Pepino and me not to wholly desert the dear old family home. Aunt Amy was born there, eighty-three years ago.”

  “My dear! How it takes one back!” said Georgie.

  “Doesn’t it?” said Olga.

  Lucia had now, so to speak, developed her full horsepower. Pepino’s presence stoked her, Robert was stoking himself and might be disregarded, while Olga and Georgie were hanging on her words.

  “But it isn’t the past only that we are thinking of,” she said, “but the present and the future. Of course our spiritual home is here — like Lord Haldane and Germany — and oh, how much we have learned at Riseholme, its lovely seriousness and its gaiety, its culture, its absorption in all that is worthy in art and literature, its old customs, its simplicity.”

  “Yes,” said Olga. (She had meant long ago to tell Lucia that she had taken a house in Brompton Square exactly opposite Lucia’s, but who could interrupt the splendour that was pouring out on them?)

  Lucia fumbled for a moment at the brooch containing Beethoven’s hair. She had a feeling that the pin had come undone. “Dear Miss Olga,” she said, “how good of you to take an interest, you with your great mission of melody in the world, in our little affairs! I am encouraged. Well, Pepino and I feel — don’t we? sposo mio — that now that this opportunity has come to us, of perhaps having a little salon in London, we ought to take it. There are modern movements in the world we really know nothing about. We want to educate ourselves. We want to know what the cosmopolitan mind is thinking about. Of course we’re old, but it is never too late to learn. How we shall treasure all we are lucky enough to glean, and bring it back to our dear Riseholme.”

  There was a slight and muffled thud on the ground, and Lucia’s fingers went back where the brooch should have been.

  “Georgino, my brooch, the Beethoven brooch,” she said; “it has fallen.”

  Georgie stooped rather stiffly to pick it up: that work with the garden roller had found out his lumbar muscles. Olga rose.

  “Too thrilling, Mrs. Lucas!” she said. “You must tell me much more. Shall we go? And how lovely for me: I have just taken a house in Brompton Square for the season.”

  “No!” said Lucie. “Which?”

  “Oh, one of the little ones,” said Olga. “Just opposite yours. Forty-two A.”

  “Such dear little houses!” said Lucia. “I have a music-room. Always yours to practise in.”

  “Capital good dinner,” said Robert, who had not spoken for a long time.

  Lucia put an arm round Daisy Quantock’s ample waist, and thus tactfully avoided the question of precedence. Da
isy, of course, was far, far the elder, but then Lucia was Lucia.

  “Delicious indeed,” she said. “Georgie, bring the Beethoven with you.”

  “And don’t be long,” said Olga.

  Georgie had no use for the society of his own sex unless they were young, which made him feel young too, or much older than himself, which had the same result. But Pepino had an unpleasant habit of saying to him ‘When we come to our age’ (which was an unreasonable assumption of juvenility), and Robert of sipping port with the sound of many waters for an indefinite period. So when Georgie had let Robert have two good glasses, he broke up this symposium and trundled them away into the drawing-room, only pausing to snatch up his embroidery tambour, on which he was working at what had been originally intended for a bedspread, but was getting so lovely that he now thought of putting it when finished on the top of his piano. He noticed that Lucia had brought a portfolio of music, and peeping inside saw the morsel of Stravinski. . . .

  And then, as he came within range of the conversation of the ladies, he nearly fell down from sheer shock.

  “Oh, but I adore it,” Lucia was saying. “One of the most marvellous inventions of modern times. Were we not saying so last night, Pepino? And Miss Olga is telling me that everyone in London has a listening-in apparatus. Pray turn it on, Miss Olga; it will be a treat to hear it! Ah, the Beethoven brooch: thank you, Georgie — mille grazie.”

  Olga turned a handle or a screw or something, and there was a short pause: the next item presumably had already been announced. And then, wonder of wonders, there came from the trumpet the first bars of the Moonlight Sonata.

  Now the Moonlight Sonata (especially the first movement of it) had an almost sacred significance in Riseholme. It was Lucia’s tune, much as God Save the King is the King’s tune. Whatever musical entertainment had been going on, it was certain that if Lucia was present she would sooner or later be easily induced to play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Astonished as everybody already was at her not only countenancing but even allowing this mechanism, so lately abhorred by her, to be set to work at all, it was infinitely more amazing that she should permit it to play Her tune. But there she was composing her face to her well-known Beethoven expression, leaning a little forward, with her chin in her hand, and her eyes wearing the far-away look from which the last chord would recall her. At the end of the first movement everybody gave the little sigh which was its due, and the wistful sadness faded from their faces, and Lucia, with a gesture, hushing all attempt at comment or applause, gave a gay little smile to show she knew what was coming next. The smile broadened, as the Scherzo began, into a little ripple of laughter, the hand which had supported her chin once more sought the Beethoven brooch, and she sat eager and joyful and alert, sometimes just shaking her head in wordless criticism, and once saying “Tut-tut” when the clarity of a run did not come up to her standard, till the sonata was finished.