The manoeuvres of the next week became so bewilderingly complicated
that by Wednesday Georgie was almost thinking of going away to the
seaside with Foljambe and Dicky in sheer despair, and in after years he
could not without great mental effort succeed in straightening it all
out, and the effort caused quite a buzzing in his head.... That Sunday
evening Lucia sent an invitation to Lady Ambermere for "dinner and
tableaux," to which Lady Ambermere's "people" replied by telephone on
Monday afternoon that her ladyship was sorry to be unable. Lucia
therefore gave up the idea of a dinner-party, and reverted to her
original scheme of an evening party like Olga's got up on the spur of
the moment, with great care and most anxious preparation. The
rehearsals for the impromptu tableaux meantime went steadily forward
behind closed doors, and Georgie wrestled with twenty bars of the music
of the "Awakening of Brunnhilde." Lucia intended to ask nobody until
Friday evening, and Olga should see what sort of party Riseholme could
raise at a moment's notice.
Early on Tuesday morning the devil entered into Daisy Quantock,
probably by means of subconscious telepathy, and she proceeded to go
round the green at the morning parliament, and ask everybody to come in
for a good romp on Saturday evening, and they all accepted. Georgie,
Lucia and Olga were absentees, and so, making a house-to-house
visitation she went first to Georgie. He with secret knowledge of the
tableaux (indeed he was stitching himself a robe to be worn by King
Cophetua at the time and hastily bundling it under the table) regretted
that he was already engaged. This was rather mysterious, but he might
have planned, for all Mrs Quantock knew, an evening when he would be
"busy indoors," and since those evenings were never to be pried upon,
she asked no questions, but went off to Lucia's to give her invitation
there. There again she was met with a similarly mysterious refusal.
Lucia much regretted that she and Peppino were unable to come, and she
hoped Daisy would have a lovely party. Even as she spoke, she heard her
telephone bell ringing, and hurried off to find that Georgie, faithful
lieutenant, was acquainting her with the fact that Mrs Quantock was
planning a party for Saturday; he did not know how far she had got. At
that moment she had got just half-way to Old Place, walking at unusual
speed. Lucia grasped the situation with amazing quickness, and cutting
off Georgie with a snap, she abandoned all idea of her party being
impromptu, and rang up Olga. She would secure her anyhow....
The telephone was in the hall, and Olga, with her hat on, was just
preparing to go out, when the bell sounded. The words of grateful
acceptance were on her very lips when her front-door bell rang too,
very long and insistently and had hardly left off when it began again.
Olga opened the door herself and there was Mrs Quantock on the doorstep
with her invitation for Saturday night. She was obliged to refuse, but
promised to look in, if she was not very late in getting away from Mrs
Lucas's (and pop went the cat out of the bag). Another romp would be
lovely.
Already the evils of decentralisation and overlapping were becoming
manifest. Lucia rang up house after house, only to find that its
inhabitants were already engaged. She had got Olga and Georgie, and
could begin the good work of education and the crushing of rivalry, not
by force but by pure and refined example, but Mrs Quantock had got
everybody else. In the old days this could never have happened for
everything devolved round one central body. Now with the appearance of
this other great star, all the known laws of gravity and attraction
were upset.
Georgie, again summoned to the telephone, recommended an appeal to Mrs
Quantock's better nature, which Lucia rejected, doubting whether she
had one.
"But what about the tableaux?" asked Georgie. "We three can't very well
do tableaux for Miss Olga to look at."
Then Lucia showed herself truly great.
"The merit of the tableaux does not consist in the number of the
audience," she said.
She paused a moment.
"Have you got the Cophetua-robe to set properly?" she asked.
"Oh, it'll do," said Georgie dejectedly.
On Tuesday afternoon Olga rang up Lucia again to say that her husband
was arriving that day, so might she bring him on Saturday? To this
Lucia cordially assented, but she felt that a husband and wife sitting
together and looking at another husband and wife doing tableaux would
be an unusual entertainment, and not characteristic of Riseholme's
best. She began to waver about the tableaux and to consider dinner
instead. She also wondered whether she had been wronging dear Daisy,
and whether she had a better nature after all. Perhaps Georgie might
ascertain.
Georgie was roused from a little fatigued nap by the telephone, for he
had fallen asleep over King Cophetua's robe. Lucia explained the
situation and delicately suggested that it would be so easy for him to
"pop in" to dear Daisy's, and be very diplomatic. There was nobody like
Georgie for tact. So with a heavy yawn he popped in.
"You've come about this business on Saturday," said Daisy unerringly.
"Haven't you?"
Georgie remembered his character for tact.
"How wonderful of you to guess that!" he said. "I thought we might see
if we couldn't arrange something, if we put our heads together. It's
such a pity to split up. We--I mean Lucia has got Miss Olga and her
husband coming, and----"
"And I've got everybody else," said Daisy brightly. "And Miss Bracely
is coming over here, if she gets away early. Probably with such a small
party she will."
"Oh, I shouldn't count on that," said he. "We are having some tableaux,
and they always take longer than you think. Dear me, I shouldn't have
said that, as they were to be impromptu, but I really believe my head
is going. You know how thorough Lucia is; she is taking a great deal of
trouble about them."
"I hadn't heard about that," said Mrs Quantock.
She thought a moment.
"Well; I don't want to spoil Lucia's evening," she said, "for I'm sure
nothing could be so ridiculous as three people doing tableaux for two
others. And on the other hand, I don't want her to spoil mine, for
what's to prevent her going on with the tableaux till church-time next
morning if she wishes to keep Miss Bracely away from my house? I'm sure
after the way she behaved about my Guru---- Well, never mind that. How
would it be if we had the tableaux first at Lucia's, and then came on
here? If Lucia cares to suggest that to me, and my guests consent, I
don't mind doing that."
By six o'clock on Tuesday evening therefore all the telephone bells of
Riseholme were merrily ringing again. Mrs Quantock stipulated that
Lucia's party should end at 10.45 precisely, if it didn't end before,
and that everyone should then be free to flock across to her house. She
proposed a romp that should even outshine Olga's, and was deep in the
study of a manual of "Round Games," which included "Hunt the
Slipper."...
Georgie and Peppino took turns at the telephone, ringing up all Mrs
Quantock's guests, and informing them of the double pleasure which
awaited them on Saturday. Since Georgie had let out the secret of the
impromptu tableaux to Mrs Quantock there was no reason why the rest of
Riseholme should not learn of this firsthand from The Hurst, instead of
second-hand (with promises not to repeat it) from Mrs Quantock. It
appeared that she had a better nature than Lucia credited her with,
but to expect her not to tell everybody about the tableaux would be
putting virtue to an unfair test.
"So that's all settled," said Georgie, as he returned with the last
acceptance, "and how fortunately it has happened after all. But what a
day it has been. Nothing but telephoning from morning till night. If we
go on like this the company will pay a dividend this year, and return
us some of our own pennies."
Lucia had got a quantity of pearl beads and was stringing them for the
tableau of Mary Queen of Scots.
"Now that everyone knows," she said, "we might allow ourselves a little
more elaboration in our preparations. There is an Elizabethan axe at
the Ambermere Arms which I might borrow for Peppino. Then about the
Brunnhilde tableau. It is dawn, is it not? We might have the stage
quite dark when the curtain goes up, and turn up a lamp very slowly
behind the scene, so that it shines on my face. A lamp being turned up
very slowly is wonderfully effective. It produces a perfect illusion.
Could you manage that with one hand and play the music of the awakening
with the other, Georgino?"
"I'm quite sure I couldn't," said he.
"Well then Peppino must do it before he comes on. We will have movement
in this tableau; I think that will be quite a new idea. Peppino shall
come in--just two steps--when he has turned the lamp up, and he will
take off my shield and armour----"
"But the music will never last out," cried Georgie. "I shall have to
start earlier."
"Yes, perhaps that would be better," said Lucia calmly. "That real
piece of chain-armour too, I am glad I remembered Peppino had that.
Marshall is cleaning it now, and it will give a far finer effect than
the tawdry stuff they use in opera. Then I sit up very slowly, and wave
first my right arm and then my left, and then both. I should like to
practise that now on the sofa!"
Lucia had just lain down, when the telephone sounded again and Georgie
got up.
"That's to announce a dividend," he said, and tripped into the hall.
"Is that Mrs Lucas'?" said a voice he knew.
"Yes, Miss Olga," he said, "and this is me."
"Oh, Mr Georgie, how fortunate," she said. "You can give my message now
to Mrs Lucas, can't you? I'm a perfect fool, you know, and horribly
forgetful."
"What's the matter?" asked Georgie faintly.
"It's about Saturday. I've just remembered that Georgie and I--not you,
you know--are going away for the weekend. Will you tell Mrs Lucas how
sorry I am?"
Georgie went back to the music room, where Lucia had just got both her
arms waving. But at the sight of his face she dropped them and took a
firm hold of herself.
"Well, what is it?" she said.
Georgie gave the message, and she got off the sofa, rising to her feet,
while her mind rose to the occasion.
"I am sorry that Miss Bracely will not see our tableaux," she said.
"But as she was not acting in them I do not know that it makes much
difference."
A deadly flatness, although Olga's absence made no difference,
descended on the three. Lucia did not resume her arm-work, for after
all these years her acting might be supposed to be good enough for
Riseholme without further practice, and nothing more was heard of the
borrowing of the axe from the Ambermere Arms. But having begun to
thread her pearl-beads, she finished them; Georgie, however, cared no
longer whether the gold border of King Cophetua's mantle went quite
round the back or not, and having tacked on the piece he was working
at, rolled it up. It was just going to be an ordinary party, after all.
His cup was empty.
But Lucia's was not yet quite full, for at this moment Miss Lyall's
pony hip-bath stopped at the gate, and a small stableboy presented a
note, which required an answer. In spite of all Lucia's self-control,
the immediate answer it got was a flush of heightened colour.
"Mere impertinence," she said. "I will read it aloud."
"Dear Mrs Lucas,
"I was in Riseholme this morning, and learn from Mrs
Weston that Miss Bracely will be at your house on
Saturday night. So I shall be enchanted to come to
dinner after all. You must know that I make a rule of
not going out in the evening, except for some special
reason, but it would be a great pleasure to hear her
sing again. I wonder if you would have dinner at 7:30
instead of 8, as I do not like being out very late."
There was a short pause.
_"Caro,"_ said Lucia, trembling violently, "perhaps you would
kindly tell Miss Lyall that I do not expect Miss Bracely on Saturday,
and that I do not expect Lady Ambermere either."
"My dear--" he began.
"I will do it myself then," she said.
It was as Georgie walked home after the delivery of this message that
he wanted to fly away and be at rest with Foljambe and Dicky. He had
been frantically excited ever since Sunday at the idea of doing
tableaux before Olga, and today in especial had been a mere feverish
hash of telephoning and sewing which all ended in nothing at all, for
neither tableaux nor romps seemed to hold the least attraction for him
now that Olga was not going to be there. And then all at once it dawned
on him that he must be in love with Olga, for why else should her
presence or absence make such an astounding difference to him? He
stopped dead opposite Mrs Quantock's mulberry tree.
"More misery! More unhappiness!" he said to himself. Really if life at
Riseholme was to become a series of agitated days ending in devastating
discoveries, the sooner he went away with Foljambe and Dicky the
better. He did not quite know what it was like to be in love, for the
nearest he had previously ever got to it was when he saw Olga awake on
the mountain-top and felt that he had missed his vocation in not being
Siegfried, but from that he guessed. This time, too, it was about Olga,
not about her as framed in the romance of legend and song, but of her
as she appeared at Riseholme, taking as she did now, an ecstatic
interest in the affairs of the place. So short a time ago, when she
contemplated coming here first, she had spoken of it as a lazy
backwater. Now she knew better than that, for she could listen to Mrs
Weston far longer than anybody else, and ask for more histories when
even she had run dry. And yet Lucia seemed hardly to interest her at
all. Georgie wondered why that was.
He raised his eyes as he muttered these desolated syllables and there
was Olga just letting herself out of the front garden of the Old Place.
Georgie's first impulse was to affect not to see her, and turn into his
bachelor house, but she had certainly seen him, and made so shrill and
piercing a whistle on her fingers that, pretend as he would not to have
seen her, it was ludicrous to appear not to have heard her. She
beckoned to him.
"Georgie, the most awful thing has happened," she said, as they came
within speaking distance. "Oh, I called you Georgie by mistake then.
When one once does that, one must go on doing it on purpose. Guess!"
she said in the best Riseholme manner.
"You can come to Lucia's party after all," said he.
"No, I can't. Well, you'll never guess because you move in such high
circles, so I'll tell you. Mrs Weston's Elizabeth is going to be
married to Colonel Boucher's Atkinson. I don't know his Christian name,
nor her surname, but they're the ones!"
"You don't say so!" said Georgie, stung for a moment out of his own
troubles. "But will they both leave? What will either of the others do?
Mrs Weston can't have a manservant, and how on earth is she to get on
without Elizabeth? Besides----"
A faint flush mounted to his cheek.
"I know. You mean babies," said Olga ruthlessly. "Didn't you?"
"Yes," said Georgie.
"Then why not say so? You and I were babies once, though no one is old
enough to remember that, and we shouldn't have liked our parents and
friends to have blushed when they mentioned us. Georgie, you are a
prude."
"No, I'm not," said Georgie, remembering he was probably in love with a
married woman.
"It doesn't matter whether you are or not. Now there's only one thing
that can happen to Mrs Weston and the Colonel. They must marry each
other too. Then Atkinson can continue to be Colonel Boucher's man and
Elizabeth the parlour-maid, unless she is busy with what made you
blush. Then they can get help in; you will lend them Foljambe, for
instance. It's time you began to be of some good in your wicked selfish
life. So that's settled. It only remains for us to make them marry each
other."
"Aren't you getting on rather fast?" asked Georgie.
"I'm not getting on at all at present I'm only talking. Come into my
house instantly, and we'll drink vermouth. Vermouth always makes me
brilliant unless it makes me idiotic, but we'll hope for the best."
Presently they were seated in Olga's music-room, with a bottle of
vermouth between them.
"Now drink fair, Georgie," she said, "and as you drink tell me all
about the young people's emotional history."
"Atkinson and Elizabeth?" asked Georgie.
"No, my dear; Colonel Boucher and Mrs Weston. They have an emotional
history. I am sure you all thought they were going to marry each other
once. And they constantly dine together tete-a-tete. Now that's a very
good start. Are you quite sure he hasn't got a wife and family in Egypt,
or she a husband and family somewhere else? I don't want to rake up
family skeletons."
"I've never heard of them," said Georgie.
"Then we'll take them as non-existent. You certainly would have heard
of them if there were any, and very likely if there weren't. And they
both like eating, drinking and the latest intelligence. Don't they?"
"Yes. But----"
"But what? What more do you or they want? Isn't that a better start for
married life than many people get?"
"But aren't they rather old?" asked Georgie.
"Not much older than you and me, and if it wasn't that I've got my own
Georgie, I would soon have somebody else's. Do you know who I mean?"
"No!" said Georgie firmly. Though all this came at the end of a most
harrowing day, it or the vermouth exhilarated him.
"Then I'll tell you just what Mrs Weston told me. 'He's always been
devoted to Lucia,' said Mrs Weston, 'and he has never looked at anybody
else. There was Piggy Antrobus----' Now do you know who I mean?"
Georgie suddenly giggled.
"Yes," he said.
"Then don't talk about yourself so much, my dear, and let us get to the
point. Now this afternoon I dropped in to see Mrs Weston and as she was
telling me about the tragedy, she said by accident (just as I called
you Georgie just now by accident) 'And I don't know what Jacob will do
without Atkinson.' Now is or is not Colonel Boucher's name Jacob? There
you are then! That's one side of the question. She called him Jacob by
accident and so she'll call him Jacob on purpose before very long."
Olga nodded her head up and down in precise reproduction of Mrs Weston.
"I'd hardly got out of the house," she said in exact imitation of Mrs
Weston's voice, "before I met Colonel Boucher. It would have been about
three o'clock--no it couldn't have been three, because I had got back
home and was standing in the hall when it struck three, and my clock's
a shade fast if anything. Well; Colonel Boucher said to me, 'Haw, hum,
quite a domestic crisis, by Jove.' And so I pretended I didn't know,
and he told me all about it. So I said 'Well, it is a domestic crisis,
and you'll lose Atkinson.' 'Haw, hum,' said he, 'and poor Jane, I
should say, Mrs Weston, will lose Elizabeth.' There!"
She got up and lit a cigarette.
"Oh, Georgie, do you grasp the inwardness of that?" she said. "Their
dear old hearts were laid bare by the trouble that had come upon them,
and each of them spoke of the other, as each felt for the other.
Probably neither of them had said Jacob or Jane in the whole course of
their lives. But the Angel of the Lord descended and troubled the
waters. If you think that's profane, have some more vermouth. It's
making me brilliant, though you wouldn't have thought it. Now listen!"
She sat down again close to him, her face brimming with a humorous
enthusiasm. Humour in Riseholme was apt to be a little unkind; if you
mentioned the absurdities of your friends, there was just a speck of
malice in your wit. But with her there was none of that, she gave an
imitation of Mrs Weston with the most ruthless fidelity, and yet it was
kindly to the bottom. She liked her for talking in that emphatic voice
and being so particular as to what time it was. "Now first of all you
are coming to dine with me tonight," said Olga.
"Oh, I'm afraid that tonight----" began Georgie, shrinking from any
further complications. He really must have a quiet evening, and go to
bed very early.
"What are you afraid of tonight?" she asked. "You're only going to wash
your hair. You can do that tomorrow. So you and I, that's two, and Mrs
Weston and Colonel Jacob, that's four, which is enough, and I don't
believe there's anything to eat in the house. But there's something to
drink, which is my point. Not for you and me, mind; we've got to keep
our heads and be clever. Don't have any more vermouth. But Jane and
Jacob are going to have quantities of champagne. Not tipsy, you
understand, but at their best, and unguardedly appreciative of each
other and us. And when they go away, they will exchange a chaste kiss
at Mrs Weston's door, and she will ask him in. No! I think she'll ask
him in first. And when they wake up tomorrow morning, they will both
wonder how they could possibly, and jointly ask themselves what
everybody else will say. And then they'll thank God and Olga and
Georgie that they did, and live happily for an extraordinary number of
years. My dear, how infinitely happier they will be together than they
are being now. Funny old dears! Each at its own fireside, saying that
it's too old, bless them! And you and I will sing 'Voice that breathed
o'er Eden' and in the middle our angel-voices will crack, and we will
sob into our handkerchief, and Eden will be left breathing deeply all
by itself like the Guru. Why did you never tell me about the Guru? Mrs
Weston's a better friend to me than you are, and I must ring for my
cook--no I'll telephone first to Jacob and Jane--and see what there is
to eat afterwards. You will sit here quietly, and when I have finished
I will tell you what your part is."
During dinner, according to Olga's plan of campaign, the conversation
was to be general, because she hated to have two conversations going on
when only four people were present, since she found that she always
wanted to join in the other one. This was the main principle she
inculcated on Georgie, stamping it on his memory by a simile of
peculiar vividness. "Imagine there is an Elizabethan spittoon in the
middle of the table," she said, "and keep on firmly spitting into it. I
want you when there's any pause to spit about two things, one, how
dreadfully unhappy both Jacob and Jane will be without their paragons,
the other, how pleasant is conversation and companionship. I shall be
chaffing you, mind, all the time and saying _you_ must get
married. After dinner I shall probably stroll in the garden with Jacob.
Don't come. Keep him after dinner for some little time, for then's my
opportunity of talking to Jane, and give him at least three glasses of
port. Gracious it's time to dress, and the Lord prosper us."
Georgie found himself the last to arrive, when he got back to Olga's
and all three of them shook hands rather as people shake hands before a
funeral. They went into dinner at once and Olga instantly began, "How
many years did you say your admirable Atkinson had been with you?" she
asked Colonel Boucher.
"Twenty; getting on for twenty-one," said he. "Great nuisance; 'pon my
word it's worse than a nuisance."
Georgie had a bright idea.
"But what's a nuisance, Colonel?" he asked.
"Eh, haven't you heard? I thought it would have been all over the place
by now. Atkinson's going to be married."
"No!" said Georgie. "Whom to?"
Mrs Weston could not bear not to announce this herself. "To my
Elizabeth," she said. "Elizabeth came to me this morning. 'May I speak
to you a minute, ma'am?' she asked, and I thought nothing more than
that perhaps she had broken a tea-cup. 'Yes,' said I quite cheerfully,
'and what have you come to tell me?'"
It was getting almost too tragic and Olga broke in.
"Let's try to forget all about it, for an hour or two," she said. "It
was nice of you all to take pity on me and come and have dinner,
otherwise I should have been quite alone. If there's one thing I cannot
bear it's being alone in the evening. And to think that anybody chooses
to be alone when he needn't! Look at that wretch there," and she
pointed to Georgie, "who lives all by himself instead of marrying.
Liking to be alone is the worst habit I know; much worse than drink."
"Now do leave me alone," said Georgie.
"I won't, my dear, and when dinner is over Mrs Weston and I are going
to put our heads together, and when you come out we shall announce to
you the name of your bride. I should put a tax of twenty shillings on
the pound on all bachelors; they should all marry or starve."
Suddenly she turned to Colonel Boucher.
"Oh, Colonel," she said. "What have I been saying? How dreadfully
stupid of me not to remember that you were a bachelor too. But I
wouldn't have you starve for anything. Have some more fish instantly to
shew you forgive me. Georgie change the subject you're always talking
about yourself."
Georgie turned with admirable docility to Mrs Weston.
"It's too miserable for you," he said. "How will you get on without
Elizabeth? How long has she been with you?"
Mrs Weston went straight back to where she had left off.
"So I said, 'What have you come to tell me?' quite cheerfully, thinking
it was a tea-cup. And she said, 'I'm going to be married, ma'am,' and she
blushed so prettily that you'd have thought she was a girl of twenty,
though she was seventeen when she came to me,--no, she was just
eighteen, and that's fifteen years ago, and that makes her
thirty-three. 'Well, Elizabeth,' I said, 'you haven't told me yet
who it is, but whether it's the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Prince
of Wales--for I felt I had to make a little joke like that--I hope
you'll make him as happy as you've made me all these years.'"
"You old darling," said Olga. "I should have gone into hysterics, and
forbade the banns."
"No, Miss Bracely, you wouldn't," said Mrs Weston, "you'd have been
just as thankful as me, that she'd got a good husband to take care of
and to be taken care of by, because then she said, 'Lor ma'am, it's
none of they--not them great folks. It's the Colonel's Atkinson.' You
ask the Colonel for Atkinson's character, Miss Bracely, and then you'd
be just as thankful as I was."
"The Colonel's Atkinson is a slow coach, just like Georgie," said Olga.
"He and Elizabeth have been living side by side all these years, and
why couldn't the man make up his mind before? The only redeeming
circumstance is that he has done it now. Our poor Georgie now--"
"Now you're going to be rude to Colonel Boucher again," said Georgie.
"Colonel, we've been asked here to be insulted."
Colonel Boucher had nothing stronger than a mild tolerance for Georgie
and rather enjoyed snubbing him.
"Well, if you call a glass of wine and a dinner like this an insult,"
he said, "'pon my word I don't know what you'd call a compliment."
"I know what I call a compliment," said Olga, "and that's your all
coming to dine with me at such short notice. About Georgie's
approaching nuptials now--"
"You're too tarsome" said he. "If you go on like that, I shan't ask you
to the wedding. Let's talk about Elizabeth's. When are they going to
get married, Mrs Weston?"
"That's what I said to Elizabeth. 'Get an almanack, Elizabeth,' said I,
'so that you won't choose a Sunday. Don't say the 20th of next month
without looking it out. But if the 20th isn't a Sunday or a Friday
mind, for though I don't believe in such things, still you never
know--' There was Mrs Antrobus now," said Mrs Weston suddenly, putting
in a footnote to her speech to Elizabeth, "it was on a Friday she
married, and within a year she got as deaf as you see her now. Then Mr
Weston's uncle, his uncle by marriage I should say, he was another Friday
marriage and they missed their train when going off on their honeymoon,
and had to stay all night where they were without a sponge or a tooth
brush between them, for all their luggage was in the train being
whirled away to Torquay. 'So make it the 20th, Elizabeth,' I said, 'if
it isn't a Friday or a Sunday, and I shall have time to look round me,
and so will the Colonel, though I don't expect that either of us will
find your equals! And don't cry, Elizabeth,' I said, for she was
getting quite watery, 'for if you cry about a marriage, what'll be left
for a funeral?'"
"Ha! Upon my word, I call that splendid of you," said the Colonel. "I
told Atkinson I wished I had never set eyes on him, before I wished him
joy."
Olga got up.
"Look after Colonel Boucher, Georgie," she said, "and ring for anything
you want. Look at the moon! Isn't it heavenly. How Atkinson and
Elizabeth must be enjoying it."
The two men spent a half-hour of only moderately enjoyable
conversation, for Georgie kept the grindstone of the misery of his lot
without Atkinson, and the pleasure of companionship firmly to the
Colonel's nose. It was no use for him to attempt to change the subject
to the approaching tableaux, to a vague rumour that Piggy had fallen
face downwards in the ducking-pond, that Mrs Quantock and her husband
had turned a table this afternoon with remarkable results, for it had
tapped out that his name was Robert and hers Daisy. Whichever way he
turned, Georgie herded him back on to the stony path that he had been
bidden to take, with the result that when Georgie finally permitted him
to go into the music-room, he was athirst for the more genial
companionship of the ladies. Olga got up as they entered.
"Georgie's so lazy," she said, "that it's no use asking him. But do let
you and me have a turn up and down my garden, Colonel. There's a divine
moon and it's quite warm."
They stepped out into the windless night.
"Fancy it's being October," she said. "I don't believe there is any
winter in Riseholme, nor autumn either, for that matter. You are all so
young, so deliciously young. Look at Georgie in there: he's like a boy
still, and as for Mrs Weston, she's twenty-five: not a day older."
"Yes, wonderful woman," said he. "Always agreeable and lively.
Handsome, too: I consider Mrs Weston a very handsome woman. Hasn't
altered an atom since I knew her."
"That's the wonderful thing about you all!" said she. "You are all just
as brisk and young as you were ten years ago. It's ridiculous. As for
you, I'm not sure that you're not the most ridiculous of the lot. I
feel as if I had been having dinner with three delightful cousins a
little younger--not much, but just a little--than myself. Gracious! How
you all made me romp the other night here. What a pace you go, Colonel!
What's your walking like if you call this a stroll?"
Colonel Boucher moderated his pace. He thought Olga had been walking so
quickly.
"I'm very sorry," he said. "Certainly Riseholme is a healthy bracing
place. Perhaps we do keep our youth pretty well. God bless me, but the
days go by without one's noticing them. To think that I came here with
Atkinson close on ten years ago."
This did very well for Olga: she swiftly switched off onto it.
"It's quite horrid for you losing your servant," she said. "Servants do
become friends, don't they, especially to anyone living alone. Georgie
and Foljambe, now! But I shouldn't be a bit surprised if Foljambe had a
mistress before very long."
"No, really? I thought you were just chaffing him at dinner. Georgie
marrying, is he? His wife'll take some of his needlework off his hands.
May I--ah--may I enquire the lady's name?"
Olga decided to play a great card. She had just found it, so to speak,
in her hand, and it was most tempting. She stopped.
"But can't you guess?" she said. "Surely I'm not absolutely on the
wrong track?"
"Ah, Miss Antrobus," said he. "The one I think they call Piggy. No, I
should say there was nothing in that."
"Oh, that had never occurred to me," said she. "I daresay I'm quite
wrong. I only judged from what I thought I noticed in poor Georgie. I
daresay it's only what he should have done ten years ago, but I fancy
there's a spark alive still. Let us talk about something else, though
we won't go in quite yet, shall we?" She felt quite safe in her
apparent reluctance to tell him; the Riseholme gluttony for news made
it imperative for him to ask more.
"Really, I must be very dull," he said. "I daresay an eye new to the
place sees more. Who is it, Miss Bracely?"
She laughed.
"Ah, how bad a man is at observing a man!" she said. "Didn't you see
Georgie at dinner? He hardly took his eyes off her."
She had a great and glorious reward. Colonel Boucher's face grew
absolutely blank in the moonlight with sheer astonishment.
"Well, you surprise me," he said. "Surely a fine woman, though lame,
wouldn't look at a needle-woman--well, leave it at that."
He stamped his feet and put his hands in his pockets.
"It's growing a bit chilly," he said. "You'll be catching cold, Miss
Bracely, and what will your husband say if he finds out I've been
strolling about with you out of doors after dinner?"
"Yes, we'll go in," she said. "It is chilly. How thoughtful you are for
me."
Georgie little knowing the catspaw that had been made of him, found
himself being detached from Mrs Weston by the Colonel, and this suited
him very well, for presently Olga said she would sing, unless anybody
minded, and called on him to accompany her. She stood just behind him,
leaning over him sometimes with a hand on his shoulder, and sang three
ruthless simple English songs, appropriate to the matter in hand. She
sang, "I Attempt from Love's Sickness to Fly," and "Sally in Our
Alley," and "Come Live with Me," and sometimes beneath the rustle of
leaves turned over she whispered to him, "Georgie, I'm cleverer than
anybody ever was, and I shall die in the night," she said once. Again
more enigmatically she said, "I've been a cad, but I'll tell you about
it when they've gone. Stop behind." And then some whiskey came in, and
she insisted on the "young people" having some of that; finally she saw
them off at the door, and came running back to Georgie. "I've been a
cad," she said, "because I hinted that you were in love with Mrs
Weston. My dear, it was simply perfect! I believe it to have been the
last straw, and if you don't forgive me you needn't. Wasn't it clever?
He simply couldn't stand that, for it came on the top of your being so
young."
"Well, really--" said Georgie.
"I know. And I must be a cad again. I'm going up to my bedroom, you may
come, too, if you like, because it commands a view of Church Road. I
shouldn't sleep a wink unless I knew that he had gone in with her.
It'll be precisely like Faust and Marguerite going into the house, and
you and I are Mephistopheles and Martha. Come quick!"
From the dark of the window they watched Mrs Weston's bath-chair being
pushed up the lit road.
"It's the Colonel pushing it," whispered Olga, squeezing him into a
corner of the window. "Look! There's Tommy Luton on the path. Now
they've stopped at her gate ... I can't bear the suspense.... Oh,
Georgie, they've gone in! And Atkinson will stop, and so will
Elizabeth, and you've promised to lend them Foljambe. Which house will
they live at, do you think? Aren't you happy?"