Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  She fairly gasped at the amazing appropriateness of a message that had been received only ten minutes ago. Marcia Whitby hoped that she could dine that evening: the message was to be delivered as soon as she arrived. Obviously it was a last moment invitation: somebody had thrown her over, and perhaps that made them thirteen. There was no great compliment in it, for Marcia, so Lucia conjectured, had already tried high and low to get another woman, and now in despair she tried Lucia. . . . Of course there were the tickets for ‘Henry VIII,’ and it was a first night, but perhaps she could get somebody to go with Pepino. . . . Ah, she remembered Aggie Sanderson lamenting that she had been able to secure a seat! Without a pause she rang up the Duchess of Whitby, and expressed her eager delight at coming to dine to-night. So lucky, so charmed. Then having committed herself, she rang up Aggie and hoped for the best, and Aggie jumped at the idea of a ticket for Henry VIII, and then she told Pepino all about it.

  “Caro, I had to be kind,” she said, tripping off into the music-room where he was at tea. “Poor Marcia Whitby in despair.”

  “Dear me, what has happened?” asked Pepino.

  “One short, one woman short, evidently, for her dinner to-night: besought me to go. But you shall have your play all the same, and a dear sweet woman to take to it. Guess! No. I’ll tell you: Aggie. She was longing to go, and so it’s a kindness all round. You will have somebody more exciting to talk to than your poor old sposa, and dearest Aggie will get her play, and Marcia will be ever so grateful to me. I shall miss the play, but I will go another night unless you tell me it is no good. . . .”

  Of course the Evening Gazette would contain no further news of the chatelaine at The Hurst, but Lucia turned to Hermione’s column with a certain eagerness, for there might be something about the duchess’s dinner this evening. Hermione did not seem to have heard of it, but if Hermione came to lunch to-morrow, he would hear of it then. She rang him up. . . .

  Lucia’s kindness to Marcia Whitby met with all sorts of rewards. She got there, as was her custom in London, rather early, so that she could hear the names of all the guests as they arrived, and Marcia, feeling thoroughly warm-hearted to her, for she had tried dozens of women to turn her party from thirteen into fourteen, called her Lucia instead of Mrs. Lucas. It was no difficulty to Lucia to reciprocate this intimacy in a natural manner, for she had alluded to the duchess as Marcia behind her back, for weeks, and now the syllables tripped to her tongue with the familiarity of custom.

  “Sweet of you to ask me, dear Marcia,” she said. “Pepino and I only arrived from Riseholme an hour or two ago, and he took Aggie Sandeman to the theatre instead of me. Such a lovely Sunday at Riseholme: you must spare a week-end and come down and vegetate. Olga Shuttleworth was there with Princess Isabel, and she sang too divinely on Sunday evening, and then, would you believe it, we turned on the gramophone and danced.”

  “What a coincidence!” said Marcia, “because I’ve got a small dance to-night, and Princess Isabel is coming. But not nearly so chic as your dance at Riseholme.”

  She moved towards the door to receive the guests who were beginning to arrive, and Lucia with ears open for distinguished names, had just a moment’s qualm for having given the impression which she meant to give, that she had been dancing to Olga’s gramophone. It was no more than momentary, and presently the Princess arrived, and was led round by her hostess, to receive curtsies.

  “And of course you know Mrs. Lucas,” said Marcia. “She’s been telling me about your dancing to the gramophone at her house on Sunday.”

  Lucia recovered from her curtsey.

  “No, dear Marcia,” she said. “It was at Olga’s, in fact—”

  The Princess fixed her with a royal eye before she passed on, as if she seemed to understand.

  But that was the only catastrophe, and how small a one! The Princess liked freaks, and so Marcia had asked a star of the movies and a distinguished novelist, and a woman with a skin like a kipper from having crossed the Sahara twice on foot, or having swum the Atlantic twice, or something of the sort, and a society caricaturist and a slim young gentleman with a soft voice, who turned out to be the bloodiest pugilist of the century, and the Prime Minister, two ambassadresses, and the great Mrs. Beaucourt who had just astounded the world by her scandalous volume of purely imaginary reminiscences. Each of these would furnish a brilliant centre for a dinner party, and the idea of spreading the butter as thick as that seemed to Lucia almost criminal: she herself, indeed, was the only bit of bread to be seen anywhere. Before dinner was over she had engaged both her neighbours, the pugilist and the cinema star, to dine with her on consecutive nights next week, and was mentally running through her list of friends to settle whom to group round them. Alf Watson, the pugilist, it appeared, when not engaged in knocking people out, spent his time in playing the flute to soothe his savage breast, while Marcelle Periscope when not impersonating impassioned lovers, played with his moderately tame lion-cub. Lucia begged Alf to bring his flute, and they would have some music, but did not extend her invitation to the lion-cub, which sounded slightly Bolshevistic. . . . Later in the evening she got hold of Herbert Alton, the social caricaturist, who promised to lunch on Sunday, but failed to do business with the lady from the Sahara, who was leaving next day to swim another sea, or cross another desert. Then the guests for the dance began to arrive, and Lucia, already half-intoxicated by celebrities, sank rapt in a chair at the top of the staircase and listened to the catalogue of sonorous names. Up trooped stars and garters and tiaras, and when she felt stronger, she clung firmly to Lord Limpsfield, who seemed to know everybody and raked in introductions.

  Lucia did not get home till three o’clock (for having given up her play out of kindness to Marcia, she might as well do it thoroughly), but she was busy writing invitations for her two dinner parties next week by nine in the morning. Pepino was lunching at his club, where he might meet the Astronomer Royal, and have a chat about the constellations, but he was to ring her up about a quarter past two and ascertain if she had made any engagement for him during the afternoon. The idea of this somehow occupied her brain as she filled up the cards of invitation in her small exquisite handwriting. There was a telephone in her dining-room, and she began to visualise to herself Pepino’s ringing her up, while she and the two or three friends who were lunching with her would be still at table. It would be at the end of lunch: they would be drinking their coffee, which she always made herself in a glass machine with a spirit-lamp which, when it appeared to be on the point of exploding, indicated that coffee was ready. The servants would have left the room, and she would go to the telephone herself. . . . She would hear Pepino’s voice, but nobody else would. They would not know who was at the other end, and she might easily pretend that it was not Pepino, but . . . She would give a gabbling answer, audible to her guests, but she could divert her mouth a little away so that Pepino could not make anything out of it, and then hang up the receiver again. . . . Pepino no doubt would think he had got hold of a wrong number, and presently call her up again, and she would then tell him anything there was to communicate. As she scribbled away the idea took shape and substance: there was an attraction about it, it smiled on her.

  She came to the end of her dinner-invitations grouped round the cinema-star and the fluting prize-fighter, and she considered whom to ask to meet Herbert Alton on Sunday. He was working hard, he had told her, to finish his little gallery of caricatures with which he annually regaled London, and which was to open in a fortnight. He was a licensed satirist, and all London always flocked to his show to observe with glee what he made of them all, and what witty and pungent little remarks he affixed to their monstrous effigies. It was a distinct cachet, too, to be caricatured by him, a sign that you attracted attention and were a notable figure. He might (in fact, he always did) make you a perfect guy, and his captions invariably made fun of something characteristic, but it gave you publicity. She wondered whether he would take a commission: she wondered whether he might b
e induced to do a caricature of Pepino or herself or of them both, at a handsome price, with the proviso that it was to be on view at his exhibition. That could probably be ascertained, and then she might approach the subject on Sunday. Anyhow, she would ask one or two pleasant people to meet him, and hope for the best.

  Lucia’s little lunch-party that day consisted only of four people. Lunch, Lucia considered, was for intimes: you sat with your elbows on the table, and all talked together, and learned the news, just as you did on the Green at Riseholme. There was something unwieldy about a large lunch-party; it was a distracted affair, and in the effort to assimilate more news than you could really digest, you forgot half of it. To-day, therefore, there was only Aggie Sandeman who had been to the play last night with Pepino, and was bringing her cousin Adele Brixton (whom Lucia had not yet met, but very much wanted to know), and Stephen Merriall. Lady Brixton was a lean, intelligent American of large fortune who found she got on better without her husband. But as Lord Brixton preferred living in America and she in England, satisfactory arrangements were easily made. Occasionally she had to go to see relatives in America, and he selected such periods for seeing relatives in England.

  She explained the situation very good-naturedly to Lucia who rather rashly asked after her husband.

  “In fact,” she said, “we blow kisses to each other from the decks of Atlantic liners going in opposite directions, if it’s calm, and if it’s rough, we’re sick into the same ocean.”

  Now that would never have been said at Riseholme, or if it was, it would have been very ill thought of, and a forced smile followed by a complete change of conversation would have given it a chilly welcome. Now, out of habit, Lucia smiled a forced smile, and then remembered that you could not judge London by the chaste standards of Riseholme. She turned the forced smile into a genial one.

  “Too delicious!” she said. “I must tell Pepino that.”

  “Pep what?” asked Lady Brixton.

  This was explained; it was also explained that Aggie had been with Pepino to the play last night; in fact there was rather too much explanation going on for social ease, and Lucia thought it was time to tell them all about what she had done last night. She did this in a characteristic manner.

  “Dear Lady Brixton,” she said, “ever since you came in I’ve been wondering where I have seen you. Of course it was last night, at our darling Marcia’s dance.”

  This seemed to introduce the desirable topic, and though it was not in the least true, it was a wonderfully good shot.

  “Yes, I was there,” said Adele. “What a crush. Sheer Mormonism: one man to fifty women.”

  “How unkind of you! I dined there first; quite a small party. Princess Isabel, who had been down at our dear little Riseholme on Sunday, staying with Olga — such a coincidence—” Lucia stopped just in time; she was about to describe the impromptu dance at Olga’s on Sunday night, but remembered that Stephen knew she had not been to it. So she left the coincidence alone, and went rapidly on:

  “Dear Marcia insisted on my coming,” she said, “and so, really, like a true friend I gave up the play and went. Such an amusing little dinner. Marcelle — Marcelle Periscope, the Prime Minister and the Italian ambassadress, and Princess Isabel of course, and Alf, and a few more. There’s nobody like Marcia for getting up a wonderful unexpected little party like that. Alf was too delicious.”

  “Not Alf Watson?” asked Lady Brixton.

  “Yes, I sat next him at dinner, and he’s coming to dine with me next week, and is bringing his flute. He adores playing the flute. Can’t I persuade you to come, Lady Brixton? Thursday, let me see, is it Thursday? Yes, Thursday. No party at all, just a few old friends, and some music. I must find some duets for the piano and flute: Alf made me promise that I would play his accompaniments for him. And Dora: Dora Beaucourt. What a lurid life! And Sigismund: no, I don’t think Sigismund was there; it was at Sophy’s. Such a marvellous portrait he has done of me: is it not marvellous, Stephen? You remember it down at Riseholme. How amusing Sophy was, insisting that I should move every other picture out of my music room. I must get her to come in after dinner on Thursday; there is something primitive about the flute.” So Theocritan!

  Lucia suddenly remembered that she mustn’t kick ladders down, and turned to Aggie. Aggie had been very useful when first she came up to London, and she might quite easily be useful again, for she knew quantities of solid people, and if her parties lacked brilliance, they were highly respectable. The people whom Sophy called ‘the old crusted’ went there.

  “Aggie dear, as soon as you get home, put down Wednesday for dining with me,” she said, “and if there’s an engagement there already, as there’s sure to be, cross it out and have pseudo-influenza. Marcelle — Marcelle Periscope is coming, but I didn’t ask the lion-cub. A lion-cub: so quaint of him — and who else was there last night? Dear me, I get so mixed up with all the people one runs across.”

  Lucia, of course, never got mixed up at all: there was no one so clear-headed, but she had to spin things out a little, for Pepino was rather late ringing up. The coffee-equipage had been set before her, and she kept drawing away the spirit-lamp in an absent manner just before it boiled, for they must still be sitting in the dining-room when he rang up. But even as she lamented her muddled memory, the tinkle of the telephone bell sounded. She rapidly rehearsed in her mind what she was going to say.

  “Ah, that telephone,” she said, rising hastily, so as to get to it before one of the servants came back. “I often tell Pepino I shall cut it out of the house, for one never gets a moment’s peace. Yes, yes, who is it?”

  Lucia listened for a second, and then gave a curtsey.

  “Oh, is it you, ma’am?” she said, holding the mouthpiece a little obliquely. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Lucas.”

  A rather gruff noise, clearly Pepino’s voice, came from the instrument, but she trusted it was inaudible to the others, and she soon broke in again talking very rapidly.

  “Oh, that is kind of you, your Highness,” she said. “It would be too delightful. To-morrow: charmed. Delighted.”

  She replaced the mouthpiece, and instantly began to talk again from the point at which she had left off.

  “Yes, and of course Herbert Alton was there,” she said. “His show opens in a fortnight, and how we shall all meet there at the private view and laugh at each other’s caricatures! What is it that Rousseau — is it Rousseau? — says, about our not being wholly grieved at the misfortunes of our friends? So true! Bertie is rather wicked sometimes though, but still one forgives him everything. Ah, the coffee is boiling at last.”

  Pepino, as Lucia had foreseen, rang up again almost immediately, and she told him he had missed the most charming little lunch party, because he would go to his club. Her guests, of course, were burning to know to whom she had curtsied, but Lucia gave no information on the point. Adele Brixton and Aggie presently went off to a matinee, but Stephen remained behind. That looked rather well, Lucia thought, for she had noticed that often a handsome and tolerably young man lingered with the hostess when other guests had gone. There was something rather chic about it; if it happened very constantly, or if at another house they came together or went away together, people would begin to talk, quite pleasantly of course, about his devotion to her. Georgie had been just such a cavaliere servente. Stephen, for his part, was quite unconscious of any such scintillations in Lucia’s mind: he merely knew that it was certainly convenient for an unattached man to have a very pleasant house always to go to, where he would be sure of hearing things that interested Hermione.

  “Delicious little lunch party,” he said. “What a charming woman Lady Brixton is.”

  “Dear Adele,” said Lucia dreamily. “Charming, isn’t she? How pleased she was at the thought of meeting Alf! Do look in after dinner that night, Stephen. I wish I could ask you to dine, but I expect to be crammed as it is. Dine on Wednesday, though: let me see, Marcelle comes that night. What a rush next week will be!”


  Stephen waited for her to allude to the voice to which she had curtsied, but he waited in vain.

  CHAPTER VII.

  This delicious little luncheon-party had violently excited Adele Brixton: she was thrilled to the marrow at Lucia’s curtsey to the telephone.

  “My dear, she’s marvellous,” she said to Aggie. “She’s a study. She’s cosmic. The telephone, the curtsey! I’ve never seen the like. But why in the name of wonder didn’t she tell us who the Highness was? She wasn’t shy of talking about the other folk she’d met. Alf and Marcelle and Marcia and Bertie. But she made a mistake over Bertie. She shouldn’t have said ‘Bertie.’ I’ve known Herbert Alton for years, and never has anybody called him anything but Herbert. ‘Bertie’ was a mistake, but don’t tell her. I adore your Lucia. She’ll go far, mark my words, and I bet you she’s talking of me as Adele this moment. Don’t you see how wonderful she is? I’ve been a climber myself and I know. But I was a snail compared to her.”

  Aggie Sandeman was rather vexed at not being asked to the Alf party.

  “You needn’t tell me how wonderful she is,” she observed with some asperity. “It’s not two months since she came to London first, and she didn’t know a soul. She dined with me the first night she came up, and since then she has annexed every single person she met at my house.”

  “She would,” said Adele appreciatively. “And who was the man who looked as if he had been labelled ‘Man’ by mistake when he was born, and ought to have been labelled ‘Lady’? I never saw such a perfect lady, though I only know him as Stephen at present. She just said, ‘Stephen, do you know Lady Brixton?’”