Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Then, again, there was the rockery she had told Simkinson to build, which he had neglected for cross-word puzzles, and though Daisy had been working six or eight hours a day in her garden ever since, she had not found time to touch a stone of it, and the fragments lying like a moraine on the path by the potting-shed still rendered any approach to the latter a mountaineering feat. They consisted of fragments of mediæval masonry, from the site of the ancient abbey, finials and crockets and pieces of mullioned windows which had been turned up when a new siding of the railway had been made, and everyone almost had got some with the exception of Mrs. Boucher, who called them rubbish. Then there were some fossils, ammonites and spar and curious flints with holes in them and bits of talc, for Lucia one year had commandeered them all into the study of geology and they had got hammers and whacked away at the face of an old quarry, detaching these petrified relics and hitting themselves over the fingers in the process. It was that year that the Roman camp outside the village had been put under the plough and Riseholme had followed it like a bevy of rooks, and Georgie had got several trays full of fragments of iridescent glass, and Colonel Boucher had collected bits of Samian ware, and Mrs. Antrobus had found a bronze fibula or safety-pin. Daisy had got some chunks of Roman brickwork, and a section of Roman drainpipe, which now figured among the materials for her rockery; and she had bought, for about their weight in gold, quite a dozen bronze coins. These, of course, would not be placed in the rockery, but she had put them somewhere very carefully, and had subsequently forgotten where that was. Now as these archæological associations came into her mind from the contemplation of the materials for the rockery, she suddenly thought she remembered that she had put them at the back of the drawer in her card-table.

  The sight of these antique fragments disgusted Daisy; they littered the path, and she could not imagine them built up into a rockery that should have the smallest claim to be an attractive object. How could the juxtaposition of a stone mullion, a drain-pipe and an ammonite present a pleasant appearance? Besides, who was to juxtapose them? She could not keep pace with the other needs of the garden, let alone a rockery, and where, after all, was the rockery to stand? The asparagus-bed seemed the only place, and she preferred asparagus.

  Robert was bawling out from the dining-room window that lunch was ready, and as she retraced her steps to the house, she thought that perhaps it would be better to eat humble pie and get Simkinson to return. It was clear to Daisy that if she was to do her duty as medium between ancient Egypt and the world of to-day, the garden would deteriorate even more rapidly than it was doing already, and no doubt Robert would consent to eat the humble pie for her, and tell Simkinson that they couldn’t get on without him, and that when she had said he was lazy, she had meant industrious, or whatever else was necessary.

  Robert was in a very good temper that day because Roumanian oils which were the main source of his fortunes had announced a higher dividend than usual, and he promised to seek out Simkinson and explain what lazy meant, and if he didn’t understand to soothe his injured feelings with a small tip.

  “And tell him he needn’t make a rockery at all,” said Daisy. “He always hated the idea of a rockery. He can dig a pit and bury the fossils and the architectural fragments and everything. That will be the easiest way of disposing of them.”

  “And what is he to do with the earth he takes out of the pit, my dear?” asked Robert.

  “Put it back, I suppose,” said Daisy rather sharply. Robert was so pleased at having ‘caught’ her, that he did not even explain that she had been caught. . . .

  After lunch Daisy found the coins; it was odd that, having forgotten where she had put them for so long, she should suddenly remember, and she was inclined to attribute this inspiration to Abfou. The difficulty was to know what, having found them, to do with them next. Some of them obviously bore signs of once having had profiles of Roman emperors stamped on them, and she was sure she had heard that some Roman coins were of great value, and probably these were the ones. Perhaps when she sent the Arabic script to the British Museum she might send these too for identification. . . . And then she dropped them all on the floor as the great idea struck her.

  She flew into the garden, calling to Georgie, who was putting up croquet-hoops.

  “Georgie, I’ve got it!” she cried. “It’s as plain as plain. What Abfou wants us to do is to start a Riseholme Museum. He wrote Riseholme Museum quite distinctly. Think how it would pay too, when we’re overrun with American tourists in the summer! They would all come to see it. A shilling admission I should put it at, and sixpence for the catalogue.”

  “I wonder if Abfou meant that,” said Georgie.

  “He said it,” said Daisy. “You can’t deny that!”

  “But what should we put in the Museum?” asked he.

  “My dear, we should fill it with antiquities and things which none of us want in our houses. There are those beautiful fragments of the Abbey which I’ve got, and which are simply wasted in my garden with no one to see them, and my drainpipe. I would present them all to the Museum, and the fossils, and perhaps some of my coins. And my Roman brick-work.”

  Georgie paused with a hoop in his hand.

  “That is an idea,” he said. “And I’ve got all those lovely pieces of iridescent glass, which are always tumbling about. I would give them.”

  “And Colonel Boucher’s Samian ware,” cried Daisy. “He was saying only the other day how he hated it, but didn’t quite want to throw it away. It will be a question of what we leave out, not of what we put in. Besides, I’m sure that’s what Abfou meant. We must form a committee at once. You and Mrs. Boucher and I, I should think, would be enough. Large committees are a great mistake.”

  “Not Lucia?” asked Georgie, with lingering loyalty.

  “No. Certainly not,” said Daisy. “She would only send us orders from London, as to what we were to do and want us to undo all we had done when she came back, besides saying she had thought of it, and making herself President!”

  “There’s something in that,” said Georgie.

  “Of course there is, there’s sense,” said Daisy. “Now I shall go straight and see Mrs. Boucher.”

  Georgie dealt a few smart blows with his mallet to the hoop he was putting in place.

  “I shall come too,” he said. “Riseholme Museum! I believe Abfou did mean that. We shall be busy again.”

  CHAPTER IV.

  The committee met that very afternoon, and the next morning and the next afternoon, and the scheme quickly took shape. Robert, rolling in golden billows of Roumanian oil, was called in as financial adviser, and after calculation, the scheme strongly recommended itself to him. All the summer the town was thronged with visitors, and inquiring American minds would hardly leave unvisited the Museum at so Elizabethan a place.

  “I don’t know what you’ll have in your Museum,” he said, “but I expect they’ll go to look, and even if they don’t find much they’ll have paid their shillings. And if Mrs. Boucher thinks her husband will let you have that big tithe-barn of his, at a small rent, I daresay you’ll have a paying proposition.”

  The question of funds therefore in order to convert the tithe barn into a museum was instantly gone into. Robert professed himself perfectly ready to equip the tithe-barn with all necessary furniture and decoration, if he might collar the whole of the receipts, but his willingness to take all financial responsibilities made the committee think that they would like to have a share in them, since so shrewd a business man clearly saw the probability of making something out of it. Up till then, the sordid question of money had not really occurred to them: there was to be a museum which would make them busy again, and the committee was to run it. They were quite willing to devote practically the whole of their time to it, for Riseholme was one of those happy places where the proverb that Time is money was a flat fallacy, for nobody had ever earned a penny with it. But since Robert’s financial judgment argued that the museum would be a profitable inve
stment, the committee naturally wished to have a hand in it, and the three members each subscribed fifty pounds, and co-opted Robert to join the board and supply the rest. Profits (if any) would be divided up between the members of the committee in proportion to their subscriptions. The financial Robert would see to all that, and the rest of them could turn their attention to the provision of curiosities.

  There was evidently to be no lack of them, for everyone in Riseholme had stores of miscellaneous antiquities and “specimens” of various kinds which encumbered their houses and required a deal of dusting, but which couldn’t quite be thrown away. A very few striking objects were only lent: among these were Daisy’s box of coins, and Mrs. Antrobus’s fibula, but the most of them, like Georgie’s glass and Colonel Boucher’s pieces of Samian ware, were fervently bestowed. Objects of all sorts poured in, the greater portion of a spinning-wheel, an Elizabethan pestle and mortar, no end of Roman tiles, a large wooden post unhesitatingly called a whipping-post, some indecipherable documents on parchment with seals attached, belonging to the vicar, an ordnance map of the district, numerous collections of fossils and of carved stones from the site of the abbey, ancient quilts, a baby’s cradle, worm-eaten enough to be Anglo-Saxon, queer-shaped bottles, a tiger-ware jug, fire-irons too ponderous for use, and (by special vote of the Parish Council) the stocks which had hitherto stood at the edge of the pond on the green. All Riseholme was busy again, for fossils had to be sorted out (it was early realised that even a museum could have too many ammonites), curtains had to be stitched for the windows, labels to be written, Samian ware to be pieced together, cases arranged, a catalogue prepared. The period of flatness consequent on Lucia’s desertion had passed off, and what had certainly added zest to industry was the thought that Lucia had nothing to do with the museum. When next she deigned to visit her discarded kingdom, she would find how busily and successfully and originally they had got on without her, and that there was no place for her on the committee, and probably none in the museum for the Elizabethan turnspit which so often made the chimney of her music-room to smoke.

  Riseholme, indeed, was busier than ever, for not only had it the museum feverishly to occupy it so that it might be open for the tourist season this year, and, if possible, before Lucia came down for one of her promised weekends, but it was immersed in a wave of psychical experiments. Daisy Quantock had been perfectly honest in acknowledging that the idea of the museum was not hers at all, but Abfou’s, her Egyptian guide. She had, it is true, been as ingenious as Joseph in interpreting Abfou’s directions, but it was Abfou to whom all credit was due, and who evidently took such a deep interest in the affairs of Riseholme. She even offered to present the museum with the sheet of foolscap on which the words ‘Riseholme Museum’ (not mouse) were written, but the general feeling of the committee, while thanking her for her munificence, was that it would not be tactful to display it, since the same Sibylline sheet contained those sarcastic remarks about Lucia. It was proved also that Abfou had meant the Museum to be started, for subsequently he several times said, “Much pleased with your plans for the Museum. Abfou approves.” So everybody else wanted to get into touch with Abfou too, and no less than four planchettes or ouija-boards were immediately ordered by various members of Riseholme society. At present Abfou did not manifest himself to any of them, except in what was possibly Arabic script (for it certainly bore a strong resemblance to his earlier efforts of communication with Daisy), and while she encouraged the scribes to persevere in the hope that he might soon regale them with English, she was not really very anxious that he should. With her he was getting Englisher and Englisher every day, and had not Simkinson, after having had the true meaning of the word ‘lazy’ carefully explained to him, consented to manage her garden again, it certainly would have degenerated into primeval jungle, for she absolutely had not a minute to attend to it.

  Simkinson, however, was quite genial.

  “Oh yes, ma’am, very pleased to come back,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to get on long without me, and I want no explanations. Now let’s have a look round and see what you’ve been doing. Why, whatever’s happened to my mulberry tree?”

  That was Simkinson’s way: he always talked of ‘my flowers’ and ‘my asparagus’ when he meant hers.

  “I’ve been pruning its roots,” she said.

  “Well, ma’am, you’ve done your best to do it in,” said Simkinson. “I don’t think it’s dead though, I daresay it’ll pull round.”

  Abfou had been understood to say it was dead, but perhaps he meant something else, thought Daisy, and they went on to the small circular bed below the dining-room windows.

  “Phlox,” said Daisy hopefully.

  “Broccoli,” said Simkinson examining the young green sprouts. “And the long bed there. I sowed a lot of annuals there, and I don’t see a sign of anything coming up.”

  He fixed her with a merry eye.

  “I believe you’ve been weeding, ma’am,” he said. “I shall have to get you a lot of young plants if you want a bit of colour there. It’s too late for me to put my seeds in again.”

  Daisy rather wished she hadn’t come out with him, and changed the subject to something more cheerful.

  “Well, I shan’t want the rockery,” she said. “You needn’t bother about that. All these stones will be carted away in a day or two.”

  “Glad of that, ma’am. I’ll be able to get to my potting-shed again. Well, I’ll try to put you to rights. I’d best pull up the broccoli first, you won’t want it under your windows, will you? You stick to rolling the lawn, ma’am, if you want to garden. You won’t do any harm then.”

  It was rather dreadful being put in one’s place like this, but Daisy did not dare risk a second quarrel, and the sight of Georgie at the dining-room window (he had come across to ‘weedj,’ as the psychical processes, whether ouija or planchette, were now called) was rather a relief. Weeding, after all, was unimportant compared with weedjing.

  “And I don’t believe I ever told you what Olga wrote about,” said Georgie, as soon as she was within range. “We’ve talked of nothing but museum. Oh, and Mrs. Boucher’s planchette has come. But it broke in the post, and she’s gumming it together.”

  “I doubt if it will act,” said Daisy. “But what did Olga say? It quite went out of my head to ask you.”

  “It’s too heavenly of her,” said he. “She’s asked me to go up and stay with her for the first night of the opera. She’s singing Lucrezia, and has got a stall for me.”

  “No!” said Daisy, making a trial trip over the blotting-paper to see if the pencil was sharp. “That will be an event! I suppose you’re going.”

  “Just about,” said Georgie. “It’s going to be broadcasted, too, and I shall be listening to the original.”

  “How interesting!” said Daisy. “And there you’ll be in Brompton Square, just opposite Lucia. Oh, you heard from her? What did she say?”

  “Apparently she’s getting on marvellously,” said Georgie. “Not a moment to spare. Just what she likes.”

  Daisy pushed the planchette aside. There would be time for that when she had had a little talk about Lucia.

  “And are you going to stay with her too?” she asked

  Georgie was quite determined not to be ill-natured. He had taken no part (or very little) in this trampling on Lucia’s majesty, which had been so merrily going on.

  “I should love to, if she would ask me,” he observed. “She only says she’s going to. Of course, I shall go to see her.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Daisy savagely. “If she asked me fifty times I should say ‘no’ fifty times. What’s happened is that she’s dropped us. I wouldn’t have her on our museum committee if — if she gave her pearls to it and said they belonged to Queen Elizabeth. I wonder you haven’t got more spirit.”

  “I’ve got plenty of spirit,” said Georgie, “and I allow I did feel rather hurt at her letter. But then, after all, what does it matter?”

  �
��Of course it doesn’t if you’re going to stay with Olga,” said Daisy. “How she’ll hate you for that!”

  “Well, I can’t help it,” he said. “Lucia hasn’t asked me and Olga has. She’s twice reminded Olga that she may use her music-room to practise in whenever she likes. Isn’t that kind? She would love to be able to say that Olga’s always practising in her music-room. But aren’t we ill-natured? Let’s weedj instead.”

  Georgie found, when he arrived next afternoon in Brompton Square, that Olga had already had her early dinner, and that he was to dine alone at seven and follow her to the opera house.

  “I’m on the point of collapse from sheer nerves,” she said. “I always am before I sing, and then out of desperation I pull myself together. If — I say ‘if’ — I survive till midnight, we’re going to have a little party here. Cortese is coming, and Princess Isabel, and one or two other people. Georgie, it’s very daring of you to come here, you know, because my husband’s away, and I’m an unprotected female alone with Don Juan. How’s Riseholme? Talk to me about Riseholme. Are you engaged to Piggy yet? And is it broccoli or phlox in Daisy’s round bed? Your letter was so mysterious too. I know nothing about the Museum yet. What Museum? Are you going to kill and stuff Lucia and put her in the hall? You simply alluded to the Museum as if I knew all about it. If you don’t talk to me, I shall scream.”

  Georgie flung himself into the task, delighted to be thought capable of doing anything for Olga. He described at great length and with much emphasis the whole of the history of Riseholme from the first epiphany of Arabic and Abfou on the planchette-board down to the return of Simkinson. Olga lost herself in these chronicles, and when her maid came in to tell her it was time to start, she got up quite cheerfully.