Lucia’s guests went off by the early train next morning and she was
left, like Marius among the ruins of Carthage. But, unlike that
weak-hearted senator, she had no intention of mourning; her first
function was to rebuild, and presently she became aware that the work of
rebuilding had to begin from its very foundations. There was as
background the fact that her week-end party had not been a triumphant
success, for she had been speaking in London of Riseholme being such a
queer dear old-fashioned little place, where everybody adored her, and
where Olga kept incessantly running in to sing acts and acts of the most
renowned operas in her music-room; she had also represented Princess
Isabel as being a dear and intimate friend, and these two cronies of
hers had politely but firmly refused all invitations to pop in. Lady
Ambermere, it is true, had popped in, but nobody had seemed the least
impressed with her, and Lucia had really been very glad when after
Sophy’s painful remarks about Pug, she had popped out, leaving that
astonished post-cubist free to inquire who that crashing old hag was. Of
course all this could be quickly lived down again when she got to
London, but it certainly did require obliteration.
What gave her more pause for thought was the effect that her week-end
had produced on Riseholme. Lucia knew that all Riseholme knew that Olga
and the Princess had lunched off cold lamb with Georgie, and had never
been near The Hurst, and Riseholme, if she knew Riseholme at all, would
have something to talk about there. Riseholme knew also that Lucia and
her party had shrieked with laughter at the Museum, while the Princess
had politely signed her name in the visitors book after reverently
viewing her great-aunt’s mittens. But what else had been happening,
whether Olga was here still, what Daisy and her ouija board had been up
to, who had dined (if anyone except Georgie) at Olga’s last night, Lucia
was at present ignorant, and all that she had to find out, for she had a
presentiment that nobody would pop in and tell her. Above all, what was
Riseholme saying about her? How were they taking it all?
Lucia had determined to devote this day to her old friends, and she rang
up Daisy and asked her and Robert to lunch. Daisy regretted that she was
engaged, and rang off with such precipitation that (so it was easy to
guess) she dropped the receiver on the floor, said “Drat,” and replaced
it. Lucia then rang up Mrs. Boucher and asked her and the colonel to
lunch. Mrs. Boucher with great emphasis said that she had got friends to
lunch. Of course that might mean that Daisy Quantock was lunching there;
indeed it seemed a very natural explanation, but somehow it was far from
satisfying Lucia.
She sat down to think, and the unwelcome result of thought was a faint
suspicion that just as she had decided to ignore Riseholme while her
smart party from London was with her, Riseholme was malignant enough to
retaliate. It was very base, it was very childish, but there was that
possibility. She resolved to put a playful face on it and rang up
Georgie. From the extraordinary celerity with which he answered, she
wondered whether he was expecting a call from her or another.
“Georgino mio!” she said.
The eagerness with which Georgie had said, “Yes. Who is it?” seemed to
die out of his voice.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said. “Good morning.”
Lucia was not discouraged.
“Me coming round to have good long chat,” she said. “All my tiresome
guests have gone, Georgie, and I’m staying till _domani_. So lovely to
be here again.”
“_Si_,” said Georgie; just “‘_si_’.”
The faint suspicion became a shade more definite.
“Coming at once then,” said Lucia.
Lucia set forth and emerging on to the Green, was in time to see Daisy
Quantock hurry out of Georgie’s house and bolt into her own like a plump
little redfaced rabbit. Somehow that was slightly disconcerting: it
required very little inductive reasoning to form the theory that Daisy
had popped in to tell Georgie that Lucia had asked her to lunch, and
that she had refused. Daisy must have been present also when Lucia rang
Georgie up and instead of waiting to join in the good long chat had
scuttled home again. A slight effort therefore was needed to keep
herself up to the gay playful level and be quite unconscious that
anything unpropitious could possibly have occurred. She found Georgie
with his sewing in the little room which he called his study because he
did his embroidery there. He seemed somehow to Lucia to be encased in a
thin covering of ice, and she directed her full effulgence to the task
of melting it.
“Now that is nice!” she said. “And we’ll have a good gossip. So lovely
to be in Riseholme again. And isn’t it naughty of me? I was almost glad
when I saw the last of my guests off this morning, and promised myself a
real Riseholme day. Such dears all of them, too, and tremendously in the
movement; such arguments and discussions as we had! All day yesterday I
was occupied, talks with one, strolls with another, and all the time I
was longing to trot round and see you and Daisy and all the rest. Any
news, Georgie? What did you do with yourself yesterday?”
“Well, I was very busy too,” said Georgie. “Quite a rush. I had two
guests at lunch, and then I had tea at Olga’s----”
“Is she here still?” asked Lucia. She did not intend to ask that, but
she simply could not help it.
“Oh yes. She’s going to stop here two or three days, as she doesn’t sing
in London again till Thursday.”
Lucia longed to ask if the Princess was remaining as well, but she had
self control enough not to. Perhaps it would come out some other way....
“Dear Olga,” said Lucia effusively. “I reckon her quite a Riseholmite.”
“Oh quite,” said Georgie, who was determined not to let his ice melt.
“Yes: I had tea at Olga’s, and we had the most wonderful weedj. Just she
and the Princess and Daisy and I.”
Lucia gave her silvery peal of laughter. It sounded as if it had
“turned” a little in this hot weather, or got a little tarnished.
“Dear Daisy!” she said. “Is she not priceless? How she adores her
conjuring tricks and hocus-pocuses! Tell me all about it. An Egyptian
guide: Abfou, was it not?”
Georgie thought it might be wiser not to tell Lucia all that Abfou had
vouchsafed, unless she really insisted, for Abfou had written the most
sarcastic things about her in perfect English at top-speed. He had
called her a snob again, and said she was too grand now for her old
friends, and had been really rude about her shingled hair.
“Yes, Abfou,” he said. “Abfou was in great form, and Olga has
telegraphed for a planchette. Abfou said she was most psychical, and had
great mediumistic gifts. Well, that went on a long time.”
“What else did Abfou say?” asked Lucia, fixing Georgie with her
penetrating eye.
“Oh, he talked about Riseholme affairs,” said Georgie. “He knew the
Princess had been to the Museum, for he had seen her there. It was he,
you know, who suggested the Museum. He kept writing Museum, though we
thought it was ‘Mouse’ at first.”
Lucia felt perfectly certain in her own mind that Abfou had been saying
things about her. But perhaps, as it was Daisy who had been operating,
it was better not to ask what they were. Ignorance was not bliss, but
knowledge might be even less blissful. And Georgie was not thawing: he
was polite, he was reserved, but so far from chatting, he was talking
with great care. She must get him in a more confidential mood.
“That reminds me,” she said. “Pepino and I haven’t given you anything
for the Museum yet. I must send you the Elizabethan spit from my
music-room. They say it is the most perfect spit in existence. I don’t
know what Pepino didn’t pay for it.”
“How kind of you,” said Georgie. “I will tell the committee of your
offer. Olga gave us a most magnificent present yesterday: the manuscript
of ‘Lucrezia,’ which Cortese had given her. I took it to the Museum
directly after breakfast, and put it in the glass case opposite the
door.”
Again Lucia longed to be as sarcastic as Abfou, and asked whether a
committee meeting had been held to settle if this should be accepted.
Probably Georgie had some perception of that, for he went on in a great
hurry.
“Well, the weedj lasted so long that I had only just time to get home to
dress for dinner and go back to Olga’s,” he said.
“Who was there?” asked Lucia.
“Colonel and Mrs. Boucher, that’s all,” said Georgie. “And after dinner
Olga sang too divinely. I played her accompaniments. A lot of Schubert
songs.”
Lucia was beginning to feel sick with envy. She pictured to herself the
glory of having taken her party across to Olga’s after dinner last
night, of having played the accompaniments instead of Georgie (who was
a miserable accompanist), of having been persuaded afterward to give
them the little morsel of Stravinski, which she had got by heart. How
brilliant it would all have been; what a sumptuous paragraph Hermione
would have written about her week-end! Instead of which Olga had sung to
those old Bouchers, neither of whom knew one note from another, nor
cared the least for the distinction of hearing the prima-donna sing in
her own house. The bitterness of it could not be suppressed.
“Dear old Schubert songs!” she said with extraordinary acidity. “Such
sweet old-fashioned things. ‘Wiedmung,’ I suppose.”
“No, that’s by Schumann,” said Georgie, who was nettled by her tone,
though he guessed what she was suffering.
Lucia knew he was right, but had to uphold her own unfortunate mistake.
“Schubert, I think,” she said. “Not that it matters. And so, as dear old
Pepys said, and so to bed?”
Georgie was certainly enjoying himself.
“Oh no, we didn’t go to bed till terribly late,” he said. “But you would
have hated to be there, for what we did next. We turned on the
gramophone----”
Lucia gave a little wince. Her views about gramophones as being a
profane parody of music, were well known.
“Yes, I should have run away then,” she said.
“We turned on the gramophone and danced!” said Georgie firmly.
This was the worst she had heard yet. Again she pictured what yesterday
evening might have been. The idea of having popped in with her party
after dinner, to hear Olga sing, and then dance impromptu with a
prima-donna and a princess.... It was agonizing: it was intolerable.
She gave a dreadful little titter.
“How very droll!” she said. “I can hardly imagine it. Mrs. Boucher in
her bath-chair must have been an unwieldy partner, Georgie. Are you not
very stiff this morning?”
“No, Mrs. Boucher didn’t dance,” said Georgie with fearful literalness.
“She looked on and wound up the gramophone. Just we four danced: Olga
and the Princess and Colonel Boucher and I.”
Lucia made a great effort with herself. She knew quite well that Georgie
knew how she would have given anything to have brought her party across,
and it only made matters worse (if they could be made worse) to be
sarcastic about it and pretend to find it all ridiculous. Olga certainly
had left her and her friends alone, just as she herself had left
Riseholme alone, in this matter of her week-end party. Yet it was unwise
to be withering about Colonel Boucher’s dancing. She had made it clear
that she was busy with her party, and but for this unfortunate accident
of Olga’s coming down, nothing else could have happened in Riseholme
that day except by her dispensing. It was unfortunate, but it must be
lived down, and if dear old Riseholme was offended with her, Riseholme
must be propitiated.
“Great fun it must have been,” she said. “How delicious a little
impromptu thing like that is! And singing too: well, you had a nice
evening, Georgie. And now let us make some delicious little plan for
to-day. Pop in presently and have ’ickle music and bit of lunch.”
“I’m afraid I’ve just promised to lunch with Daisy,” said he.
This again was rather ominous, for there could be no doubt that Daisy,
having said she was engaged, had popped in here to effect an
engagement.
“How gay!” said Lucia. “Come and dine this evening then! Really,
Georgie, you are busier than any of us in London.”
“Too tarsome,” said Georgie, “because Olga’s coming in here.”
“And the Princess?” asked Lucia before she could stop herself.
“No, she went away this morning,” said Georgie.
That was something, anyhow, thought Lucia. One distinguished person had
gone away from Riseholme. She waited, in slowly diminishing confidence,
for Georgie to ask her to dine with him instead. Perhaps he would ask
Pepino too, but if not, Pepino would be quite happy with his telescope
and his cross-words all by himself. But it was odd and distasteful to
wait to be asked to dinner by anybody in Riseholme instead of everyone
wanting to be asked by her.
“She went away by the ten-thirty,” said Georgie, after an awful pause.
Lucia had already learned certain lessons in London. If you get a
snub--and this seemed very like a snub--the only possible course was to
be unaware of it. So, though the thought of being snubbed by Georgie
nearly made her swoon, she was unaware of it.
“Such a good train,” she said, magnificently disregarding the well-known
fact that it stopped at every station, and crawled in between.
“Excellent,” said Georgie with conviction. He had not the slightest
intention of asking Lucia to dine, for he wanted his tête-à-tête with
Olga. There would be such a lot to talk over, and besides it would be
tiresome to have Lucia there, for she would be sure to gabble away about
her wonderful life in London, and her music-room and her Chippendale
chairs, and generally to lay down the law. She must be punished too, for
her loathsome conduct in disregarding her old friends when she had her
party from London, and be made to learn that her old friends were being
much smarter than she was.
Lucia kept her end up nobly.
“Well, Georgie, I must trot away,” she said. “Such a lot of people to
see. Look in, if you’ve got a spare minute. I’m off again to-morrow.
Such a whirl of things in London this week.”
Lucia, instead of proceeding to see lots of people, went back to her
house and saw Pepino. He was sitting in the garden in very old clothes,
smoking a pipe, and thoroughly enjoying the complete absence of anything
to do. He was aware that officially he loved the bustle of London, but
it was extremely pleasant to sit in his garden and smoke a pipe, and
above all to be rid of those rather hectic people who had talked quite
incessantly from morning till night all Sunday. He had given up the
cross-word, and was thinking over the material for a sonnet on
Tranquillity, when Lucia came out to him.
“I was wondering, Pepino,” she said, “if it would not be pleasanter to
go up to town this afternoon. We should get the cool of the evening for
our drive, and really, now all our guests have gone, and we are going
to-morrow, these hours will be rather tedious. We are spoilt, _caro_,
you and I, by our full life up there, where any moment the telephone
bell may ring with some delightful invitation. Of course in August we
will be here, and settle down to our quaint old life again, but these
little odds and ends of time, you know.”
Pepino was reasonably astonished. Half an hour ago Lucia had set out,
burning with enthusiasm to pick up the “old threads,” and now all she
seemed to want to do was to drop the old threads as quickly as possible.
Though he knew himself to be incapable of following the swift and antic
movements of Lucia’s mind, he was capable of putting two and two
together. He had been faintly conscious all yesterday that matters were
not going precisely as Lucia wished, and knew that her efforts to entice
Olga and her guest to the house had been as barren as a fig-tree, but
there must have been something more than that. Though not an imaginative
man (except in thinking that words rhymed when they did not), it
occurred to him that Riseholme was irritated with Lucia, and was
indicating it in some unusual manner.
“Why, my dear, I thought you were going to have people to lunch and
dinner,” he said, “and see about sending the spit to the Museum, and be
tremendously busy all day.”
Lucia pulled herself together. She had a momentary impulse to confide in
Pepino and tell him all the ominous happenings of the last hour, how
Daisy had said she was engaged for lunch and Mrs. Boucher had friends to
lunch, and Georgie had Olga to dinner and had not asked her, and how the
munificent gift of the spit was to be considered by the Museum committee
before they accepted it. But to have done that would be to acknowledge
not one snub but many snubs, which was contrary to the whole principle
of successful attainment. Never must she confess, even to Pepino, that
the wheels of her chariot seemed to drive heavily, or that Riseholme was
not at the moment agape to receive the signs of her favour. She must not
even confess it to herself, and she made a rapid and complete _volte
face_.
“It shall be as you like, _caro_,” she said. “You would prefer to spend
a quiet day here, so you shall. As for me, you’ve never known me yet
otherwise than busy, have you? I have a stack of letters to write, and
there’s my piano looking, oh, so reproachfully at me, for I haven’t
touched the dear keys since I came, and I must just glance through
‘Henry VIII,’ as we’re going to see it to-morrow. I shall be busy
enough, and you will have your day in the sun and the air. I only
thought you might prefer to run up to town to-day, instead of waiting
till to-morrow. Now don’t keep me chatting here any longer.”
Lucia proved her quality on that dismal day. She played her piano with
all her usual concentration, she read “Henry VIII,” she wrote her
letters, and it was not till the _Evening Gazette_ came in that she
allowed herself a moment’s relaxation. Hurriedly she turned the pages,
stopping neither for cross-word nor record of international interests,
till she came to Hermione’s column. She had feared (and with a gasp of
relief she saw how unfounded her fears had been) that Hermione would
have devoted his picturesque pen to Olga and the Princess, and given her
and her party only the fag-end of his last paragraph, but she had
disquieted herself in vain. Olga had taken no notice of him, and now
(what could be fairer?) he took no notice of Olga. He just mentioned
that she had a “pretty little cottage” at Riseholme, where she came
occasionally for week-ends, and there were three long sumptuous
paragraphs about The Hurst, and Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas who had Lord
Limpsfield and the wife of the member, Mrs. Garroby-Ashton, and Mrs.
Alingsby staying with them. Lady Ambermere and her party from the Hall
had come to tea, and it was all glorious and distinguished. Hermione had
proved himself a true friend, and there was not a word about Olga and
the Princess going to lunch with Georgie, or about Daisy and her absurd
weedj.... Lucia read the luscious lines through twice, and then, as she
often did, sent her copy across to Georgie, in order to help him to
readjust values. Almost simultaneously Daisy sent de Vere across to him
with her copy, and Mrs. Boucher did the same, calling attention to the
obnoxious paragraphs with blue and red pencil respectively, and a great
many exclamation marks in both cases.
Riseholme settled back into its strenuous life again when Lucia departed
next morning to resume her vapid existence in London. It was not annoyed
with her any more, because it had “larned” her, and was quite prepared
to welcome her back if (and when) she returned in a proper spirit and
behaved herself suitably. Moreover, even with its own perennial
interests to attend to, it privately missed the old Lucia, who gave them
a lead in everything, even though she domineered, and was absurd, and
pretended to know all about everything, and put her finger into every
pie within reach. But it did not miss the new shingled Lucia, the one
who had come down with a party of fresh friends, and had laughed at the
Museum, and had neglected her old friends altogether, till she found out
that Olga and a Princess were in the place: the less seen of her the
better. It was considered also that she had remained down here this
extra day in order to propitiate those whom she had treated as pariahs,
and condescend to take notice of them again, and if there was one thing
that Riseholme could not stand, and did not mean to stand from anybody,
it was condescension. It was therefore perfectly correct for Daisy and
Mrs. Boucher to say they were engaged for lunch, and for Georgie to
decline to ask her to dinner.... These three formed the committee of the
Museum, and they met that morning to audit the accounts for the week and
discuss any other business connected or unconnected with their office.
There was not, of course, with so small and intimate a body, any need to
have a chairman, and they all rapped the table when they wanted to be
listened to.
Mrs. Boucher was greedily counting the shillings which had been taken
from the till, while Georgie counted the counterfoils of the tickets.
“A hundred and twenty-three,” he said. “That’s nearly the best week
we’ve had yet.”
“And fifteen and four is nineteen,” said Mrs. Boucher, “and four is
twenty-three which makes exactly six pounds three shillings. Well, I do
call that good. And I hear we’ve had a wonderful bequest made. Most
generous of our dear Olga. I think she ought not only to be thanked, but
asked to join the committee. I always said----”
Daisy rapped the table.
“Abfou said just the same,” she interrupted. “I had a sitting this
morning, and he kept writing ‘committee.’ I brought the paper along with
me, because I was going to propose that myself. But there’s another
thing first, and that’s about Insurance. Robert told me he was insuring
the building and its contents separately for a thousand pounds each. We
shall have to pay a premium, of course. Oh, here’s Abfou’s message.
‘Committee,’ you see ‘committee’ written three times. I feel quite sure
he meant Olga.”
“He spells it with only one ‘m,’” said Georgie, “but I expect he meant
that. There’s one bit of business that comes before that, for I have
been offered another object for the Museum, and I said I would refer the
offer to the committee before I accepted it. Lucia came to see me
yesterday morning and asked----”
“The Elizabethan spit,” said Mrs. Boucher. “I don’t see what we want
with it, for my part, and if I had to say what I thought, I should thank
her most politely, and beg that she would keep it herself. Most kind of
her, I’m sure. Sorry to refuse, which was just what I said when she
asked me to lunch yesterday. There’d have been legs of cold chickens of
which her friends from London had eaten wings.”
“She asked me too,” said Daisy, “and I said ‘no.’ Did she leave this
morning?”
“Yes, about half past ten,” said Georgie. “She wanted me to ask her to
dinner last night.”
Daisy had been writing “committee” again and again on her blotting
paper. It looked very odd with two “m’s” and she would certainly have
spelt it with one herself.
“I think Abfou is right about the way to spell ‘committee,’” she said,
“and even if he weren’t, the meaning is clear enough. But about the
insurance. Robert only advises insurance against fire, for he says no
burglar in his senses----”
Mrs. Boucher rapped the table.
“But there wasn’t the manuscript of ‘Lucrezia’ then,” she said. “And I
should think that any burglar whether in his senses or out of them would
think _that_ worth taking. If it was a question of insuring an
Elizabethan spit----”
“Well, I want to know what the committee wishes me to say about that,”
said Georgie. “Oh, by the way, when we have a new edition of the
catalogue, we must bring it up to date. There’ll be the manuscript of
‘Lucrezia.’”
“And if you ask me,” said Mrs. Boucher, “she only wanted to get rid of
the spit because it makes her chimney smoke. Tell her to get her chimney
swept and keep the spit.”
“There’s a portrait of her in the music-room,” said Georgie, “by
Sigismund. It looks like nothing at all----”
“Of course everybody has a right to have their hair shingled,” said Mrs.
Boucher, “whatever their age, and there’s no law to prevent you.”
Daisy rapped the table.
“We were considering as to whether we should ask Mrs. Shuttleworth to
join the committee,” she said.
“She sang too, beautifully, on Sunday night,” said Georgie, “and what
fun we had dancing. Oh, and Lucia asked for the Princess’s book to sign
her name in, and the only book she had brought was a book of cross-word
puzzles.”
“No!” said both ladies together.
“She did, because Olga’s parlour-maid told Foljambe, and----”
“Well I never!” said Daisy. “That served her out. Did she write Lucia
across, and Pepino down?”
“I’m sure I’ve nothing to say against her,” said Mrs. Boucher, “but
people usually get what they deserve. Certainly let us have the Museum
insured if that’s the right thing to do, and as for asking Olga to be on
the committee, why we settled that hours ago, and I have nothing more to
say about the spit. Have the spit if you like, but I would no more think
of insuring it, than insuring a cold in the head. I’ve as much use for
one as the other. All that stuff too about the gracious chatelaine at
The Hurst in the _Evening Gazette_! My husband read it, and what he said
was ‘Faugh!’ ‘Tush’ and ‘faugh,’ was what he said.”
Public opinion was beginning to boil up again about Lucia, and Georgie
intervened.
“I think that’s all the business before the meeting,” he said, “and so
we accept the manuscript of ‘Lucrezia’ and decline the spit. I’m sure it
was very kind of both the donors. And Olga’s to be asked to join the
committee. Well, we have got through a good morning’s work.”
Lucia meanwhile was driving back to London, where she intended to make
herself a busy week. There would be two nights at the opera, on the
second of which Olga was singing in “The Valkyrie,” and so far from
intending to depreciate her singing, or to refrain from going, by way of
revenge for the slight she had suffered, she meant, even if Olga sang
like a screech-owl and acted like a stick, to say there had never been
so perfect a presentation of Brunnhilde. She could not conceive doing
anything so stupid as snubbing Olga because she had not come to her
house or permitted her to enter Old Place: that would have been the
height of folly.
At present, she was (or hoped to be) on the upward road, and the upward
road could only be climbed by industry and appreciation. When she got to
the top, it would be a different matter, but just now it was an asset, a
score to allude to dear Olga and the hoppings in and out that took place
all day at Riseholme: she knew too, a good deal that Olga had done on
Sunday and that would all be useful. “Always appreciate, always admire,”
thought Lucia to herself as she woke Pepino up from a profound nap on
their arrival at Brompton Square. “Be busy: work, work, work.”
She knew already that there would be hard work in front of her before
she got where she wanted to get, and she whisked off like a disturbing
fly which impeded concentration the slight disappointment which her
week-end had brought. If you meant to progress, you must never look back
(the awful example of Lot’s wife!) and never, unless you are certain it
is absolutely useless, kick down a ladder which has brought you
anywhere, or might in the future bring you anywhere. Already she had
learned a lesson about that, for if she had only told Georgie that she
had been coming down for a week-end, and had bidden him to lunch and
dinner and anything else he liked, he would certainly have got Olga to
pop in at The Hurst, or have said that he couldn’t dine with Olga on
that fateful Sunday night because he was dining with her, and then no
doubt Olga would have asked them all to come in afterward. It had been a
mistake to kick Riseholme down, a woeful mistake, and she would never do
such a thing again. It was a mistake also to be sarcastic about anybody
till you were sure they could not help you, and who could be sure of
that? Even poor dear Daisy with her ridiculous Abfou had proved such an
attraction at Old Place, that Georgie had barely time to get back and
dress for dinner, and a benignant Daisy instead of a militant and
malignant Daisy would have helped. Everything helps, thought Lucia, as
she snatched up the tablets which stood by the telephone and recorded
the ringings up that had taken place in her absence.
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 unable 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 toward 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 curtseys.
“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 visualize 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 the wrong number, and presently
call her 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 prizefighter, 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 be 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 a 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 matinée, 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.