Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “A treat,” she said at the end, “really most enjoyable. That dear old tune! I thought the first movement was a little hurried: Cortot, I remember, took it a little more slowly, and a little more legato, but it was very creditably played.”

  Olga at the machine, was out of sight of Lucia, and during the performance Georgie noticed that she had glanced at the Sunday paper. And now when Lucia referred to Cortot, she hurriedly chucked it into a window-seat and changed the subject.

  “I ought to have stopped it,” she said, “because we needn’t go to the wireless to hear that. Do show us what you mean, Mrs. Lucas, about the first movement.”

  Lucia glided to the piano.

  “Just a bar or two, shall I?” she said.

  Everybody gave a sympathetic murmur, and they had the first movement over again.

  “Only just my impression of how Cortot plays it,” she said. “It coincides with my own view of it.”

  “Don’t move,” said Olga, and everybody murmured ‘Don’t,’ or ‘Please.’ Robert said ‘Please’ long after the others, because he was drowsy. But he wanted more music, because he wished to doze a little and not to talk.

  “How you all work me!” said Lucia, running her hands up and down the piano with a butterfly touch. “London will be quite a rest after Riseholme. Pepino mio, my portfolio on the top of my cloak; would you? . . . Pepino insisted on my bringing some music: he would not let me start without it.” (This was a piece of picturesqueness during Pepino’s absence: it would have been more accurate to say he was sent back for it, but less picturesque.) “Thank you, carissimo. A little morsel of Stravinski; Miss Olga, I am sure, knows it by heart, and I am terrified. Georgie, would you turn over?”

  The morsel of Stravinski had improved immensely since Friday: it was still very odd, very modern, but not nearly so odd as when, a few days ago, Lucia had failed to observe the change of key. But it was strange to the true Riseholmite to hear the arch-priestess of Beethoven and the foe of all modern music, which she used to account sheer Bolshevism, producing these scrannel staccato tinklings that had so often made her wince. And yet it all fitted in with her approbation of the wireless and her borrowing of Georgie’s manual on Auction Bridge. It was not the morsel of Stravinski alone that Lucia was practising (the performance though really improved might still be called practice): it was modern life, modern ideas on which she was engaged preparatory to her descent on London. Though still in harbour at Riseholme, so to speak, it was generally felt that Lucia had cast off her cable, and was preparing to put to sea.

  “Very pretty: I call that very pretty. Honk!” said Robert when the morsel was finished, “I call that music.”

  “Dear Mr. Robert, how sweet of you,” said Lucia, wheeling round on the music-stool. “Now positively, I will not touch another note. But may we, might we, have another little tune on your wonderful wireless, Miss Olga! Such a treat! I shall certainly have one installed at Brompton Square, and listen to it while Pepino is doing his cross-word puzzles. Pepino can think of nothing else now but Auction Bridge and cross-word puzzles, and interrupts me in the middle of my practice to ask for an Athenian sculptor whose name begins with P and is of ten letters.”

  “Ah, I’ve got it,” said Pepino, “Praxiteles.”

  Lucia clapped her hands.

  “Bravo,” she said. “We shall not sit up till morning again.”

  There was a splendour in the ruthlessness with which Lucia bowled over, like ninepins, every article of her own Riseholme creed, which saw Bolshevism in all modern art, inanity in crossword puzzles and Bridge, and aimless vacuity in London. . . . Immediately after the fresh tune on the wireless began, and most unfortunately, they came in for the funeral March of a Marionette. A spasm of pain crossed Lucia’s face, and Olga abruptly turned off this sad reminder of unavailing woe.

  “Go on: I like that tune!” said the drowsy and thoughtless Robert, and a hurried buzz of conversation covered this melancholy coincidence.

  It was already late, and Lucia rose to go.

  “Delicious evening!” she said. “And lovely to think that we shall so soon be neighbours in London as well. My music-room always at your disposal. Are you coming, Georgie?”

  “Not this minute,” said Georgie firmly.

  Lucia was not quite accustomed to this, for Georgie usually left any party when she left. She put her head in the air as she swept by him, but then relented again.

  “Dine to-morrow, then? We won’t have any music after this feast to-night,” said she forgetting that the feast had been almost completely of her own providing. “But perhaps little game of cut-throat, you and Pepino and me.”

  “Delightful,” said Georgie.

  Olga hurried back after seeing off her other guests.

  “Oh, Georgie, what richness,” she said. “By the way, of course it was Cortot who was playing the Moonlight faster than Cortot plays it.”

  Georgie put down his tambour.

  “I thought it probably would be,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing that happens to Lucia. And now we know where we are. She’s going to make a circle in London and be its centre. Too thrilling! It’s all as clear as it can be. All we don’t know about yet is the pearls.”

  “I doubt the pearls,” said Olga.

  “No, I think there are pearls,” said Georgie, after a moment’s intense concentration. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have told me they appeared in the Sargent portrait of the aunt.”

  Olga suddenly gave a wild hoot of laughter.

  “Oh, why does one ever spend a single hour away from Riseholme?” she said.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” said Georgie. “But you go off to-morrow?”

  “Yes, to Paris. My excuse is to meet my Georgie—”

  “Here he is,” said Georgie.

  “Yes, bless him. But the one who happens to be my husband. Georgie, I think I’m going to change my name and become what I really am, Mrs. George Shuttleworth. Why should singers and actresses call themselves Madame Macaroni or Signora Semolina? Yes, that’s my excuse, as I said when you interrupted me, and my reason is gowns. I’m going to have lots of new gowns.”

  “Tell me about them,” said Georgie. He loved hearing about dress.

  “I don’t know about them yet; I’m going to Paris to find out. Georgie, you’ll have to come and stay with me when I’m settled in London. And when I go to practise in Lucia’s music-room you shall play my accompaniments. And shall I be shingled?”

  Georgie’s face was suddenly immersed in concentration.

  “I wouldn’t mind betting—” he began.

  Olga again shouted with laughter.

  “If you’ll give me three to one that I don’t know what you were going to say, I’ll take it,” she said.

  “But you can’t know,” said Georgie.

  “Yes I do. You wouldn’t mind betting that Lucia will be shingled.”

  “Well, you are quick,” said Georgie admiringly.

  It was known, of course, next morning, that Lucia and Pepino were intending to spend a few weeks in London before selling the house, and who knew what that was going to mean? Already it was time to begin rehearsing for the next May Day revels, and Foljambe, that paragon of all parlour-maids, had been overhauling Georgie’s jerkin and hose and dainty little hunting boots with turn-down flaps in order to be ready. But when Georgie, dining at The Hurst next evening, said something about May Day revels (Lucia, of course, would be Queen again) as they played Cut-throat with the Manual on Auction Bridge handy for the settlement of such small disputes as might arise over the value of the different suits, she only said:

  “Those dear old customs! So quaint! And fifty to me above, Pepino, or is it a hundred? I will turn it up while you deal, Georgie!”

  This complete apathy of Lucia to May Day revels indicated one of two things, that either mourning would prevent her being Queen, or absence. In consequence of which Georgie had his jerkin folded up again and put away, for he was determined that nobody except Luci
a should drive him out to partake in such a day of purgatory as had been his last year. . . . Still, there was nothing conclusive about that: it might be mourning. But evidence accumulated that Lucia meant to make a pretty solid stay in London, for she certainly had some cards printed at ‘Ye Signe of Ye Daffodille’ on the Village Green where Pepino’s poems were on sale, with the inscription

  Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas

  request the pleasure of the company of

  at . . . . . . . . . . . . on . . . . . . . . . . . .

  25 Brompton Square.

  R.S.V.P.

  Daisy Quantock had found that out, for she saw the engraved copper-plate lying on the counter, and while the shopman’s back was turned, had very cleverly read it, though it was printed the wrong way round, and was very confusing. Still she managed to do so, and the purport was plain enough: that Lucia contemplated formally asking somebody to something some time at 25 Brompton Square. “And would she,” demanded Daisy, with bitter irony, “have had cards printed like that, if they were only meaning to go up for a week or two?” And if that was not enough Georgie saw a postcard on Lucia’s writing table with “From Mrs. Philip Lucas, 25 Brompton Square, S.W.3,” plainly printed on the top.

  It was getting very clear then (and during this week Riseholme naturally thought of nothing else) that Lucia designed a longer residence in the garish metropolis than she had admitted. Since she chose to give no information on the subject, mere pride and scorn of vulgar curiosity forebade anyone to ask her, though of course it was quite proper (indeed a matter of duty) to probe the matter to the bottom by every other means in your power, and as these bits of evidence pieced themselves together, Riseholme began to take a very gloomy view of Lucia’s real nature. On the whole it was felt that Mrs. Boucher, when she paused in her bath-chair as it was being wheeled round the green, nodding her head very emphatically, and bawling into Mrs. Antrobus’s ear-trumpet, reflected public opinion.

  “She’s deserting Riseholme and all her friends,” said Mrs. Boucher, “that’s what she’s doing. She means to cut a dash in London, and lead London by the nose. There’ll be fashionable parties, you’ll see, there’ll be paragraphs, and then when the season’s over she’ll come back and swagger about them. For my part I shall take no interest in them. Perhaps she’ll bring down some of her smart friends for a Saturday till Monday. There’ll be Dukes and Duchesses at The Hurst. That’s what she’s meaning to do, I tell you, and I don’t care who hears it.”

  That was lucky, as anyone within the radius of a quarter of a mile could have heard it.

  “Well, never mind, my dear,” said Colonel Boucher, who was pushing his wife’s chair.

  “Mind? I should hope not, Jacob,” said Mrs. Boucher. “And now let us go home, or we’ll be late for lunch and that would never do, for I expect the Prince of Wales and the Lord Chancellor, and we’ll play Bridge and cross-word puzzles all afternoon.”

  Such fury and withering sarcasm, though possibly excessive, had, it was felt, a certain justification, for had not Lucia for years given little indulgent smiles when anyone referred to the cheap delights and restless apish chatterings of London? She had always come back from her visits to that truly provincial place which thought itself a centre, wearied with its false and foolish activity, its veneer of culture, its pseudo-Athenian rage for any new thing. They were all busy enough at Riseholme, but busy over worthy objects, over Beethoven and Shakespeare, over high thinking, over study of the true masterpieces. And now, the moment that Aunt Amy’s death gave her and Pepino the means to live in the fiddling little ant-hill by the Thames they were turning their backs on all that hitherto had made existence so splendid and serious a reality, and were training, positively training for frivolity by exercises in Stravinski, Auction Bridge and cross-word puzzles. Only the day before the fatal influx of fortune had come to them, Lucia, dropping in on Colonel and Mrs. Boucher about tea-time, had found them very cosily puzzling out a Children’s Cross-word in the evening paper, having given up the adult conundrum as too difficult, had pretended that even this was far beyond her poor wits, and had gone home the moment she had swallowed her tea in order to finish a canto of Dante’s Purgatorio. . . . And it was no use Lucia’s saying that they intended only to spend a week or two in Brompton Square before the house was sold: Daisy’s quickness and cleverness about the copper-plate at ‘Ye Signe of Ye Daffodille’ had made short work of that. Lucia was evidently the prey of a guilty conscience too: she meant, so Mrs. Boucher was firmly convinced, to steal away, leaving the impression she was soon coming back.

  Vigorous reflections like these came in fits and spurts from Mrs. Boucher as her husband wheeled her home for lunch.

  “And as for the pearls, Jacob,” she said, as she got out, hot with indignation, “if you asked me, actually asked me what I think about the pearls, I should have to tell you that I don’t believe in the pearls. There may be half a dozen seed pearls in an old pill-box: I don’t say there are not, but that’s all the pearls we shall see. Pearls!”

  CHAPTER III.

  Georgie had only just come down to breakfast and had not yet opened his Times, one morning at the end of this hectic week, when the telephone bell rang. Lucia had not been seen at all the day before and he had a distinct premonition, though he had not time to write it down, that this was she. It was: and her voice sounded very brisk and playful.

  “Is that Georgino?” she said. “Zat oo, Georgie?”

  Georgie had another premonition, stronger than the first.

  “Yes, it’s me,” he said.

  “Georgie, is oo coming round to say Ta-ta to poor Lucia and Pepino?” she said.

  (‘I knew it,’ thought Georgie.)

  “What, are you going away?” he asked.

  “Yes, I told you the other night,” said Lucia in a great hurry, “when you were doing cross-words, you and Pepino. Sure I did. Perhaps you weren’t attending. But—”

  “No, you never told me,” said Georgie firmly.

  “How cwoss oo sounds. But come round, Georgie, about eleven and have ‘ickle chat. We’re going to be very stravvy and motor up, and perhaps keep the motor for a day or two.”

  “And when are you coming back?” asked Georgie.

  “Not quite settled,” said Lucia brightly. “There’s a lot of bizz-bizz for poor Pepino. Can’t quite tell how long it will take. Eleven, then?”

  Georgie had hardly replaced the receiver when there came a series of bangs and rings at his front door, and Foljambe coming from the kitchen with his dish of bacon in one hand, turned to open it. It was only de Vere with a copy of the Times in her hand.

  “With Mrs. Quantock’s compliments,” said de Vere, “and would Mr. Pillson look at the paragraph she has marked, and send it back? Mrs. Quantock will see him whenever he comes round.”

  “That all?” said Foljambe rather crossly. “What did you want to knock the house down for then?”

  De Vere vouchsafed no reply, but turned slowly in her high-heeled shoes and regarded the prospect.

  Georgie also had come into the hall at this battering summons, and Foljambe gave him the paper. There were a large blue pencil mark and several notes of exclamation opposite a short paragraph.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas will arrive to-day from The Hurst, Riseholme, at 25 Brompton Square.”

  “No!” said Georgie. “Tell Mrs. Quantock I’ll look in after breakfast,” and he hurried back, and opened his copy of the Times to see if it were the same there. It was: there was no misprint, nor could any other interpretation be attached to it. Though he knew the fact already, print seemed to bring it home. Print also disclosed the further fact that Lucia must have settled everything at least before the morning post yesterday, or this paragraph could never have appeared to-day. He gobbled up his breakfast, burning his tongue terribly with his tea. . . .

  “It isn’t only deception,” said Daisy the moment he appeared without even greeting him, “for that we knew already, but it’s funk as well. She didn’
t dare tell us.”

  “She’s going to motor up,” said Georgie, “starting soon after eleven. She’s just asked me to come and say goodbye.”

  “That’s more deception then,” said Daisy, “for naturally, having read that, we should have imagined she was going up by the afternoon train, and gone round to say goodbye after lunch, and found her gone. If I were you, I shouldn’t dream of going to say goodbye to her after this. She’s shaking the dust of Riseholme off her London shoes. . . . But we’ll have no May Day revels if I’ve got anything to do with it.”

  “Nor me,” said Georgie. “But it’s no use being cross with her. Besides, it’s so terribly interesting. I shouldn’t wonder if she was writing some invitations on the cards you saw—”

  “No, I never saw the cards,” said Daisy, scrupulously. “Only the plate.”

  “It’s the same thing. She may be writing invitations now, to post in London.”

  “Go a little before eleven then, and see,” said Daisy. “Even if she’s not writing them then, there’ll be envelopes lying about perhaps.”