Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Come too,” said Georgie.

  “Certainly not,” said Daisy. “If Lucia doesn’t choose to tell me she’s going away, the only dignified thing to do is to behave as if I knew nothing whatever about it. I’m sure I hope she’ll have a very pleasant drive. That’s all I can say about it; I take no further interest in her movements. Besides, I’m very busy: I’ve got to finish weeding my garden, for I’ve not been able to touch it these last days, and then my Planchette arrived this morning. And a Ouija board.”

  “What’s that?” said Georgie.

  “A sort of Planchette, but much more — much more powerful. Only it takes longer, as it points at letters instead of writing,” said Daisy. “I shall begin with Planchette and take it up seriously, because I know I’m very psychic, and there’ll be a little time for it now that we shan’t be trapesing round all day in ruffs and stomachers over those May-Day revels. Perhaps there’ll be May-Day revels in Brompton Square for a change. I shouldn’t wonder: nothing would surprise me about Lucia now. And it’s my opinion we shall get on very well without her.”

  Georgie felt he must stick up for her: she was catching it so frightfully hot all round.

  “After all, it isn’t criminal to spend a few weeks in London,” he observed.

  “Whoever said it was?” said Daisy. “I’m all for everybody doing exactly as they like. I just shrug my shoulders.”

  She heaved up her round little shoulders with an effort.

  “Georgie, how do you think she’ll begin up there?” she said. “There’s that cousin of hers with whom she stayed sometimes, Aggie Sandeman, and then, of course, there’s Olga Bracely. Will she just pick up acquaintances, and pick up more from them, like one of those charity snowballs? Will she be presented? Not that I take the slightest interest in it.”

  Georgie looked at his watch and rose.

  “I do,” he said. “I’m thrilled about it. I expect she’ll manage. After all, we none of us wanted to have May Day revels last year but she got us to. She’s got drive.”

  “I should call it push,” said Daisy. “Come back and tell me exactly what’s happened.”

  “Any message?” asked Georgie.

  “Certainly not,” said Daisy again, and began untying the string of the parcel that held the instruments of divination.

  Georgie went quickly down the road (for he saw Lucia’s motor already at the door) and up the paved walk that led past the sundial, round which was the circular flower-border known as Perdita’s border, for it contained only the flowers that Perdita gathered. To-day it was all a-bloom with daffodils and violets and primroses, and it was strange to think that Lucia would not go gassing on about Perdita’s border, as she always did at this time of the year, but would have to be content with whatever flowers there happened to be in Brompton Square: a few sooty crocuses perhaps and a periwinkle. . . . She was waiting for him, kissed her hand through the window, and opened the door.

  “Now for little chat,” she said, adjusting a very smart hat, which Georgie was sure he had never seen before. There was no trace of mourning about it: it looked in the highest spirits. So, too, did Lucia.

  “Sit down, Georgie,” she said, “and cheer me up. Poor Lucia feels ever so sad at going away.”

  “It is rather sudden,” he said. “Nobody dreamed you were off to-day, at least until they saw The Times this morning.”

  Lucia gave a little sigh.

  “I know,” she said, “but Pepino thought that was the best plan. He said that if Riseholme knew when I was going, you’d all have had little dinners and lunches for us, and I should have been completely worn out with your kindness and hospitality. And there was so much to do, and we weren’t feeling much like gaiety. Seen anybody this morning? Any news?”

  “I saw Daisy,” said Georgie.

  “And told her?”

  “No, it was she who saw it in The Times first, and sent it round to me,” said Georgie. “She’s got a Ouija board, by the way. It came this morning.”

  “That’s nice,” said Lucia. “I shall think of Riseholme as being ever so busy. And everybody must come up and stay with me, and you first of all. When will you be able to come?”

  “Whenever you ask me,” said Georgie.

  “Then you must give me a day or two to settle down, and I’ll write to you. You’ll be popping across though every moment of the day to see Olga.”

  “She’s in Paris,” said Georgie.

  “No! What a disappointment! I had already written her a card, asking her to dine with us the day after tomorrow, which I was taking up to London to post there.”

  “She may be back by then,” said Georgie.

  Lucia rose and went to her writing table, on which, as Georgie was thrilled to observe, was a whole pile of stamped and directed envelopes.

  “I think I won’t chance it,” said Lucia, “for I had enclosed another card for Signor Cortese which I wanted her to forward, asking him for the same night. He composed ‘Lucrezia’ you know, which I see is coming out in London in the first week of the Opera Season, with her, of course, in the name-part. But it will be safer to ask them when I know she is back.”

  Georgie longed to know to whom all the other invitations were addressed. He saw that the top one was directed to an M. P., and guessed that it was for the member for the Riseholme district, who had lunched at The Hurst during the last election.

  “And what are you going to do to-night?” he asked.

  “Dining with dear Aggie Sandeman. I threw myself on her mercy, for the servants won’t have settled in, and I hoped we should have just a little quiet evening with her. But it seems that she’s got a large dinner-party on. Not what I should have chosen, but there’s no help for it now. Oh, Georgie, to think of you in dear old quiet Riseholme and poor Pepino and me gabbling and gobbling at a huge dinner-party.”

  She looked wistfully round the room.

  “Good-bye, dear music-room,” she said, kissing her hand in all directions. “How glad I shall be to get back! Oh, Georgie, your Manual on Auction Bridge got packed by mistake. So sorry. I’ll send it back. Come in and play the piano sometimes, and then it won’t feel lonely. We must be off, or Pepino will get fussing. Say goodbye to everyone for us, and explain. And Perdita’s border! Will sweet Perdita forgive me for leaving all her lovely flowers and running away to London? After all, Georgie, Shakespeare wrote ‘The Winter’s Tale’ in London, did he not? Lovely daffies! And violets dim. Let me give you ‘ickle violet, Georgie, to remind you of poor Lucia tramping about in long unlovely streets, as Tennyson said.”

  Lucia, so Georgie felt, wanted no more comments or questions about her departure, and went on drivelling like this till she was safely in the motor. She had expected Pepino to be waiting for her and beginning to fuss, but so far from his fussing he was not there at all. So she got in a fuss instead.

  “Georgino, will you run back and shout for Pepino?” she said. “We shall be so late, and tell him that I am sitting in the motor waiting. Ah, there he is! Pepino, where have you been? Do get in and let us start, for there are Piggie and Goosie running across the green, and we shall never get off if we have to begin kissing everybody. Give them my love, Georgie, and say how sorry we were just to miss them. Shut the door quickly, Pepino, and tell him to drive on.”

  The motor purred and started. Lucia was gone. “She had a bad conscience too,” thought Georgie, as Piggy and Goosie gambolled up rather out of breath with pretty playful cries, “and I’m sure I don’t wonder.”

  The news that she had gone of course now spread rapidly, and by lunch time Riseholme had made up its mind what to do, and that was hermetically to close its lips for ever on the subject of Lucia. You might think what you pleased, for it was a free country, but silence was best. But this counsel of perfection was not easy to practice next day when the evening paper came. There, for all the world to read were two quite long paragraphs, in “Five o’clock Chit-Chat,” over the renowned signature of Hermione, entirely about Lucia and 25 Br
ompton Square, and there for all the world to see was the reproduction of one of her most elegant photographs, in which she gazed dreamily outwards and a little upwards, with her fingers still pressed on the last chord of (probably) the Moonlight Sonata. . . . She had come up, so Hermione told countless readers, from her Elizabethan country seat at Riseholme (where she was a neighbour of Miss Olga Bracely) and was settling for the season in the beautiful little house in Brompton Square, which was the freehold property of her husband, and had just come to him on the death of his aunt. It was a veritable treasure house of exquisite furniture, with a charming music-room where Lucia had given Hermione a cup of tea from her marvellous Worcester tea service. . . . (At this point Daisy, whose hands were trembling with passion, exclaimed in a loud and injured voice, “The very day she arrived!”) Mrs. Lucas (one of the Warwickshire Smythes by birth) was, as all the world knew, a most accomplished musician and Shakespearean scholar, and had made Riseholme a centre of culture and art. But nobody would suspect the blue stocking in the brilliant, beautiful and witty hostess whose presence would lend an added gaiety to the London season.

  Daisy was beginning to feel physically unwell. She hurried over the few remaining lines, and then ejaculating “Witty! Beautiful!” sent de Vere across to Georgie’s with the paper, bidding him to return it, as she hadn’t finished with it. But she thought he ought to know. . . . Georgie read it through, and with admirable self restraint, sent Foljambe back with it and a message of thanks — nothing more — to Mrs. Quantock for the loan of it. Daisy, by this time feeling better, memorised the whole of it.

  Life under the new conditions was not easy, for a mere glance at the paper might send any true Riseholmite into a paroxysm of chattering rage or a deep disgusted melancholy. The Times again recorded the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas had arrived at 25 Brompton Square, there was another terrible paragraph headed ‘Dinner,’ stating that Mrs. Sandeman entertained the following to dinner. There was an Ambassador, a Marquis, a Countess (dowager), two Viscounts with wives, a Baronet, a quantity of Honourables and Knights, and Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas. Every single person except Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas had a title. The list was too much for Mrs. Boucher, who, reading it at breakfast, suddenly exclaimed:

  “I didn’t think it of them. And it’s a poor consolation to know that they must have gone in last.”

  Then she hermetically sealed her lips again on this painful subject, and when she had finished her breakfast (her appetite had quite gone) she looked up every member of that degrading party in Colonel Boucher’s “Who’s Who.”

  The announcement that Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas had arrived at 25 Brompton Square was repeated once more, in case anybody had missed it (Riseholme had not), and Robert Quantock observed that at this rate the three thousand pounds a year would soon be gone, with nothing to show for it except a few press-cuttings. That was very clever and very withering, but anyone could be withering over such a subject. It roused, it is true, a faint and unexpressed hope that the arrival of Lucia in London had not spontaneously produced the desired effect, or why should she cause it to be repeated so often? But that brought no real comfort, and a few days afterwards, there fell a further staggering blow. There was a Court, and Mrs. Agnes Sandeman presented Mrs. Philip Lucas. Worse yet, her gown was minutely described, and her ornaments were diamonds and pearls.

  The vow of silence could no longer be observed: human nature was human nature, and Riseholme would have burst unless it had spoken, Georgie sitting in his little back parlour overlooking the garden, and lost in exasperated meditation, was roused by his name being loudly called from Daisy’s garden next door, and looking out, saw the unprecedented sight of Mrs. Boucher’s bath-chair planted on Daisy’s lawn.

  “She must have come in along the gravel path by the back-door,” he thought to himself. “I shouldn’t have thought it was wide enough.” He looked to see if his tie was straight, and then leaned out to answer.

  “Georgie, come round a minute,” called Daisy. “Have you seen it?”

  “Yes,” said Georgie, “I have. And I’ll come.”

  Mrs. Boucher was talking in her loud emphatic voice, when he arrived.

  “As for pearls,” she said, “I can’t say anything about them, not having seen them. But as for diamonds, the only diamonds she ever had was two or three little chips on the back of her wrist-watch. That I’ll swear to.”

  The two ladies took no notice of him: Daisy referred to the description of Lucia’s dress again.

  “I believe it was her last dinner-gown with a train added,” she said. “It was a sort of brocade.”

  “Yes, and plush is a sort of velvet,” said Mrs. Boucher. “I’ve a good mind to write to The Times, and say they’re mistaken. Brocade! Bunkum! It’s pushing and shoving instead of diamonds and pearls. But I’ve had my say, and that’s all. I shouldn’t a bit wonder if we saw that the King and Queen had gone to lunch quite quietly at Brompton Square.”

  “That’s all very well,” said Daisy, “but what are we to do?”

  “Do?” said Mrs. Boucher. “There’s plenty to do in Riseholme, isn’t there? I’m sure I never suffered from lack of employment, and I should be sorry to think that I had less interests now than I had before last Wednesday week. Wednesday, or was it Thursday, when they slipped away like that? Whichever it was, it makes no difference to me, and if you’re both disengaged this evening, you and Mr. Georgie, the Colonel and I would be very glad if you would come and take your bit of dinner with us. And Mr. Quantock too, of course. But as for diamonds and pearls, well, let’s leave that alone. I shall wear my emerald tiara to-night and my ruby necklace. My sapphires have gone to be cleaned.”

  But though Riseholme was justifiably incensed over Lucia’s worldliness and all this pushing and shoving and this self-advertising publicity, it had seldom been so wildly interested. Also, after the first pangs of shame had lost their fierceness, a very different sort of emotion began to soothe the wounded hearts: it was possible to see Lucia in another light. She had stepped straight from the sheltered and cultured life of Riseholme into the great busy feverish world, and already she was making her splendid mark there. Though it might have been she who had told Hermione what to say in those fashionable paragraphs of hers (and those who knew Lucia best were surely best competent to form just conclusions about that) still Hermione had said it, and the public now knew how witty and beautiful Lucia was, and what a wonderful house she had. Then on the very night of her arrival she had been a guest at an obviously superb dinner-party, and had since been presented at Court. All this, to look at it fairly, reflected glory on Riseholme, and if it was impossible in one mood not to be ashamed of her, it was even more impossible in other moods not to be proud of her. She had come, and almost before she had seen, she was conquering. She could be viewed as a sort of ambassadress, and her conquests in that light were Riseholme’s conquests. But pride did not oust shame, nor shame pride, and shuddering anticipations as to what new enormity the daily papers might reveal were mingled with secret and delighted conjectures as to what Riseholme’s next triumph would be.

  It was not till the day after her presentation that any news came to Riseholme direct from the ambassadress’s headquarters. Every day Georgie had been expecting to hear, and in anticipation of her summons to come up and stay in the bedroom with the bathroom and sitting-room attached, had been carefully through his wardrobe, and was satisfied that he would present a creditable appearance. His small portmanteau, Foljambe declared, would be ample to hold all that he wanted, including the suit with the Oxford trousers, and his cloth-topped boots. When the long expected letter came, he therefore felt prepared to start that very afternoon, and tore it open with the most eager haste and propped it against his teapot.

  GEORGINO MIO,

  Such a whirl ever since we left, that I haven’t had a moment. But to-night (Oh such a relief) Pepino and I have dined alone quite à la Riseholme, and for the first time I have had half an hour’s quiet practice in
my music-room, and now sit down to write to you. (You’d have scolded me if you’d heard me play, so stiff and rusty have I become.)

  Well, now for my little chronicles. The very first evening we were here, we went out to a big dinner at dearest Aggie’s. Some interesting people: I enjoyed a pleasant talk with the Italian Ambassador, and called on them the day after, but I had no long conversation with anyone, for Aggie kept bringing up fresh people to introduce me to, and your poor Lucia got quite confused with so many, till Pepino and I sorted them out afterwards. Everyone seemed to have heard of our coming up to town, and I assure you that ever since the tiresome telephone has been a perfect nuisance, though all so kind. Would we go to lunch one day, or would we go to dinner another, and there was a private view here, and a little music in the afternoon there: I assure you I have never been so petted and made so much of.

  We have done a little entertaining too, already, just a few old friends like our member of Parliament, Mr. Garroby-Ashton. (“She met him once,” thought Georgie in parenthesis.) He insisted also on our going to tea with him at the House of Commons. I knew that would interest Pepino, for he’s becoming quite a politician, and so we went. Tea on the terrace, and a pleasant little chat with the Prime Minister who came and sat at our table for ever so long. How I wanted you to be there and make a sketch of the Thames: just the sort of view you do, so beautifully! Wonderful river, and I repeated to myself ‘Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.’ Then such a scurry to get back to dine somewhere or other and go to a play. Then dearest Aggie (such a good soul) had set her heart on presenting me and I couldn’t disappoint her. Did you see the description of my dress? How annoyed I was that it appeared in the papers! So vulgar all that sort of thing, and you know how I hate publicity, but they tell me I must just put up with it and not mind.

  The house is getting into order, but there are lots of little changes and furbishings up to be done before I venture to show it to anyone as critical as you, Georgino. How you would scream at the carpet in the dining-room! I know it would give you indigestion. But when I get the house straight, I shall insist on your coming, whatever your engagements are, and staying a long, long time. We will fix a date when I come down for some week-end.