To-day, the last of August, Pepino had been allowed for the first time
to go out and have a half-hour’s quiet strolling in the garden and sit
in the sun. His illness which had caused Lucia to recall herself had
been serious, and for a few days he had been dangerously ill with
pneumonia. After turning a bad corner he had made satisfactory progress.
Lucia, who for these weeks had been wholly admirable, would have gone
out with him now, but the doctor, after his visit, had said he wanted to
have a talk with her, and for twenty minutes or so they had held
colloquy in the music-room. Then, on his departure, she sat there a few
minutes more, arranged her ideas, and went out to join Pepino.
“Such a good cheering talk, _caro_,” she said. “There never was such a
perfect convalescer--my dear, what a word--as you. You’re a
prize-patient. All you’ve got to do is to go on exactly as you’re going,
doing a little more, and a little more every day, and in a month’s time
you’ll be ever so strong again. Such a good constitution.”
“And no sea-voyage?” asked Pepino. The dread prospect had been dangled
before him at one time.
“Not unless they think a month or two on the Riviera in the winter might
be advisable. Then the sea voyage from Dover to Calais, but no more than
that. Now I know what you’re thinking about. You told me that we
couldn’t manage Aix this August because of expense, so how are we to
manage two months of Cannes?”
Lucia paused a moment.
“That delicious story of dear Marcia’s,” she said, “about those cousins
of hers who had to retrench. After talking everything over they decided
that all the retrenchment they could possibly make was to have no coffee
after lunch. But we can manage better than that....”
Lucia paused again. Pepino had had enough of movement under his own
steam, and they had seated themselves in the sunny little arbour by the
sundial, which had so many appropriate mottoes carved on it.
“The doctor told me too that it would be most unwise of you to attempt
to live in London for any solid period,” she said. “Fogs, sunlessness,
damp darkness: all bad. And I know again what’s in your kind head. You
think I adore London, and can spend a month or two there in the autumn,
and in the spring, coming down here for week-ends. But I haven’t the
slightest intention of doing anything of the kind. I’m not going to be
up there alone. Besides, where are the dibs, as that sweet little Alf
said, where are the dibs to come from for our Riviera?”
“Let the house for the winter then?” said Pepino.
“Excellent idea, if we could be certain of letting it. But we can’t be
certain of letting it, and all the time a stream of rates and taxes, and
caretakers. It would be wretched to be always anxious about it, and
always counting the dibs. I’ve been going into what we spent there this
summer, _caro_, and it staggered me. What I vote for, is to sell it. I’m
not going to use it without you, and you’re not going to use it at all.
You know how I looked forward to being there for your sake, your club,
the Reading Room at the British Museum, the Astronomer Royal, but now
that’s all kaput, as Tony says. We’ll bring down here anything that’s
particularly connected with dear Auntie: her portrait by Sargent, of
course, though Sargents are fetching immense prices; or the walnut
bureau, or the Chippendale chairs or that little worsted rug in her
bedroom; but I vote for selling it all, freehold, furniture, everything.
As if I couldn’t go up to Claridge’s now and then, when I want to have a
luncheon-party or two of all our friends! And then we shall have no more
anxieties, and if they say you must get away from the cold and the damp,
we shall know we’re doing nothing on the margin of our means. That would
be hateful: we mustn’t do that.”
“But you’ll never be able to be content with Riseholme again,” said
Pepino. “After your balls and your parties and all that, what will you
find to do here?”
Lucia turned her gimlet-eye on him.
“I shall be a great fool if I don’t find something to do,” she said.
“Was I so idle and unoccupied before we went to London? Good gracious, I
was always worked to death here. Don’t you bother your head about that,
Pepino, for if you do it will show you don’t understand me at all. And
our dear Riseholme, let me tell you, has got very slack and inert in our
absence, and I feel very guilty about that. There’s nothing going on:
there’s none of the old fizz and bubble and Excelsior there used to be.
They’re vegetating, they’re dry-rotting, and Georgie’s getting fat.
There’s never any news. All that happens is that Daisy slashes a
golf-ball about the Green for practice in the morning, and then goes
down to the links in the afternoon, and positively the only news next
day is whether she has been round under a thousand strokes, whatever
that means.”
Lucia gave a little indulgent sigh.
“Dear Daisy has ideas sometimes,” she said, “and I don’t deny that. She
had the idea of ouija, she had the idea of the Museum, and though she
said that came from Abfou, she had the idea of Abfou. Also she had the
idea of golf. But she doesn’t carry her ideas out in a vivid manner
that excites interest and keeps people on the boil. On the boil! That’s
what we all ought to be, with a thousand things to do that seem
immensely important and which are important because they seem so. You
want a certain touch to give importance to things, which dear Daisy
hasn’t got. Whatever poor Daisy does seems trivial. But they shall see
that I’ve come home. What does it matter to me whether it’s Marcia’s
ball, or playing Alf’s accompaniments, or playing golf with Daisy, or
playing duets with poor dear Georgie, whose fingers have all become
thumbs, so long as I find it thrilling? If I find it dull, _caro_, I
shall be, as Adele once said, a bloody fool. Dear Adele, she has always
that little vein of coarseness.”
Lucia encountered more opposition from Pepino than she anticipated, for
he had taken a huge pride in her triumphant summer campaign in London,
and though at times he had felt bewildered and buffeted in this high
gale of social activity, and had, so to speak, to close his streaming
eyes and hold his hat on, he gloried in the incessant and tireless
blowing of it, which stripped the choicest fruits from the trees. He
thought they could manage, without encroaching on financial margins, to
keep the house open for another year yet, anyhow: he acknowledged that
he had been unduly pessimistic about going to Aix, he even alluded to
the memories of Aunt Amy which were twined about 25 Brompton Square, and
which he would be so sorry to sever. But Lucia, in that talk with his
doctor, had made up her mind: she rejected at once the idea of pursuing
her victorious career in London if all the time she would have to be
careful and thrifty, and if, far more importantly, she would be leaving
Pepino down at Riseholme. That was not to be thought of: affection no
less than decency made it impossible, and so having made up her mind,
she set about the attainment of her object with all her usual energy.
She knew, too, the value of incessant attack: smash little Alf, for
instance, when he had landed a useful blow on his opponent’s face, did
not wait for him to recover, but instantly followed it up with another
and yet another till his victim collapsed and was counted out. Lucia
behaved in precisely the same way with Pepino: she produced rows of
figures to show they were living beyond their means: she quoted (or
invented) something the Prime Minister had said about the probability of
an increase in income-tax: she assumed that they would go to the Riviera
for certain, and was appalled at the price of tickets in the Blue Train,
and of the tariff at hotels.
“And with all our friends in London, Pepino,” she said in the decisive
round of these combats, “who are longing to come down to Riseholme and
spend a week with us, our expenses here will go up. You mustn’t forget
that. We shall be having a succession of visitors in October, and indeed
till we go south. Then there’s the meadow at the bottom of the garden:
you’ve not bought that yet, and on that I really have set my heart. A
spring garden there. A profusion of daffodils, and a paved walk. You
promised me that. I described what it would be like to Tony, and he is
wildly jealous. I’m sure I don’t wonder. Your new telescope too. I
insist on that telescope, and I’m sure I don’t know where the money’s to
come from. My dear old piano also: it’s on its very last legs, and won’t
last much longer, and I know you don’t expect me to live, literally keep
alive, without a good piano in the house.”
Pepino was weakening. Even when he was perfectly well and strong he was
no match for her, and this rain of blows was visibly staggering him.
“I don’t want to urge you, _caro_,” she continued. “You know I never
urge you to do what you don’t feel is best.”
“But you are urging me,” said Pepino.
“Only to do what you feel is best. As for the memories of Aunt Amy in
Brompton Square, you must not allow false sentiment to come in. You
never saw her there since you were a boy, and if you brought down here
her portrait, and the wool-work rug which you remember her putting over
her knees, I should say, without urging you, mind, that that was
ample.... What a sweet morning! Come to the end of the garden and
imagine what the meadow will look like with a paved walk and a blaze of
daffodils.... The Chippendale chairs, I think I should sell.”
Lucia did not really want Aunt Amy’s portrait either, for she was aware
she had said a good deal from time to time about Aunt Amy’s pearls,
which were there, a little collar of very little seeds, faultlessly
portrayed. But then Georgie had seen them on the night at the Opera, and
Lucia felt that she knew Riseholme very poorly if it was not perfectly
acquainted by now with the nature and minuteness of Aunt Amy’s pearls.
The pearls had better be sold too, and also, she thought, her own
portrait by Sigismund, for the post-cubists were not making much of a
mark.
The determining factor in her mind, over this abandonment of her London
career, to which in a few days, by incessant battering, she had got
Pepino to consent, was Pepino himself. He could not be with her in
London, and she could not leave him week after week (for nothing less
than that, if you were to make any solid progress in London, was any
good) alone in Riseholme. But a large factor, also, was the discovery of
how little at present she counted for in Riseholme, and that could not
be tolerated. Riseholme had deposed her, Riseholme was not intending to
be managed by her from Brompton Square. The throne was vacant, for poor
Daisy, and for the matter of that poor Georgie, were not the sort of
people who could occupy thrones at all. She longed to queen it there
again, and though she was aware that her utmost energies would be
required, what were energies for except to get you what you wanted?
Just now she was nothing in Riseholme: they had been sorry for her
because Pepino had been so ill, but as his steady convalescence
proceeded, and she began to ring people up, and pop in, and make plans
for them, she became aware that she mattered no more than Piggy and
Goosie.... There on the Green, as she saw from the window of her hall,
was Daisy, whirling her arms madly, and hitting a ball with a stick
which had a steel blade at the end, and Georgie, she was rather
horrified to observe, was there too, trying to do the same. Was Daisy
reaping the reward of her persistence, and getting somebody interested
in golf? And, good heavens, there were Piggy and Goosie also smacking
away. Riseholme was clearly devoting itself to golf.
“I shall have to take to golf,” thought Lucia. “What a bore! Such a
foolish game.”
At this moment a small white ball bounded over her yew-hedge, and tapped
smartly against the front door.
“What an immense distance to have hit a ball,” she thought. “I wonder
which of them did that?”
It was soon clear, for Daisy came tripping through the garden after it,
and Lucia, all smiles, went out to meet her.
“Good morning, dear Daisy,” she said. “Did you hit that ball that
immense distance? How wonderful! No harm done at all. But what a
splendid player you must be!”
“So sorry,” panted Daisy, “but I thought I would have a hit with a
driver. Very wrong of me; I had no idea it would go so far or so
crooked.”
“A marvellous shot,” said Lucia. “I remember how beautifully you putted.
And this is all part of golf too? Do let me see you do it again.”
Daisy could not reproduce that particular masterpiece, but she sent the
ball high in the air, or skimming along the ground, and explained that
one was a lofted shot, and the other a wind-cheater.
“I like the wind-cheater best,” said Lucia. “Do let me see if I can do
that.”
She missed the ball once or twice, and then made a lovely wind-cheater,
only this time Daisy called it a top. Daisy had three clubs, two of
which she put down when she used the third, and then forgot about them,
so that they had to go back for them.... And up came Georgie, who was
making wind-cheaters too.
“Good morning, Lucia,” he said. “It’s so tarsome not to be able to hit
the ball, but it’s great fun if you do. Have you put down your
clock-golf yet? There, didn’t that go?”
Lucia had forgotten all about the clock-golf. It was somewhere in what
was called the “game-cupboard,” which contained bowls (as being
Elizabethan) and some old tennis rackets, and a cricket bat Pepino had
used at school.
“I’ll put it down this afternoon,” she said. “Come in after lunch,
Georgie, and play a game with me. You too, Daisy.”
“Thanks, but Georgie and I were going to have a real round on the
links,” said Daisy, in a rather superior manner.
“What fun!” said Lucia sycophantically. “I shall walk down and look at
you. I think I must learn. I never saw anything so interesting as golf.”
This was gratifying: Daisy was by no means reluctant to show Lucia the
way to do anything, but behind that, she was not quite sure whether she
liked this sudden interest in golf. Now that practically the whole of
Riseholme was taking to it, and she herself could beat them all, having
had a good start, she was hoping that Lucia would despise it, and find
herself left quite alone on these lovely afternoons. Everybody went
down to the little nine-hole course now after lunch, the Vicar (Mr.
Rushbold) and his wife, the curate, Colonel Boucher, Georgie, Mrs.
Antrobus (who discarded her ear-trumpet for these athletics and never
could hear you call “Fore”), and Piggy and Goosie, and often Mrs.
Boucher was wheeled down in her bath-chair, and applauded the beautiful
putts made on the last green. Indeed, Daisy had started instruction
classes in her garden, and Riseholme stood in rows and practised
swinging and keeping its eye on a particular blade of grass: golf in
fact promised to make Riseholme busy and happy again just as the
establishment of the Museum had done. Of course, if Lucia was wanting to
learn (and not learn too much) Daisy would be very happy to instruct
her, but at the back of Daisy’s mind was a strange uneasiness. She
consoled herself, however, by supposing that Lucia would go back to
London again in the autumn, and by giving Georgie an awful drubbing.
Lucia did not accompany them far on their round, but turned back to the
little shed of a club-house, where she gathered information about the
club. It was quite new, having been started only last spring by the
tradesmen and townspeople of Riseholme and the neighbouring little town
of Blitton. She then entered into pleasant conversation with the
landlord of the Ambermere Arms, who had just finished his round and said
how pleased they all were that the gentry had taken to golf.
“There’s Mrs. Quantock, ma’am,” said he. “She comes down every afternoon
and practises on the Green every morning. Walking over the Green now of
a morning, is to take your life in your hand. Such keenness I never saw,
and she’ll never be able to hit the ball at all.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t discourage us, Mr. Stratton,” said Lucia. “I’m
going to devote myself to golf this autumn.”
“You’ll make a better hand at it, I’ll be bound,” said Mr. Stratton
obsequiously. “They say Mrs. Quantock putts very nicely when she gets
near the hole, but it takes her so many strokes to get there. She’s lost
the hole, in a manner of speaking, before she has a chance of winning
it.”
Lucia thought hard for a minute.
“I must see about joining at once,” she said. “Who--who are the
Committee?”
“Well, we are going to reconstitute it next October,” he said, “seeing
that the ladies and gentlemen of Riseholme are joining. We should like
to have one of you ladies as President, and one of the gentlemen on the
Committee.”
Lucia made no hesitation about this.
“I should be delighted,” she said, “if the present Committee did me the
honour to ask me. And how about Mr. Pillson? I would sound him if you
like. But we must say nothing about it, till your Committee meets.”
That was beautifully settled then; Mr. Stratton knew how gratified the
Committee would be, and Lucia, long before Georgie and Daisy returned,
had bought four clubs, and was having a lesson from a small wiry caddie.
Every morning while Daisy was swanking away on the Green, teaching
Georgie and Piggy and Goosie how to play, Lucia went surreptitiously
down the hill and learned, while after tea she humbly took her place in
Daisy’s class and observed Daisy doing everything all wrong. She putted
away at her clock-golf, she bought a beautiful book with pictures and
studied them, and all the time she said nothing whatever about it. In
her heart she utterly despised golf, but golf just now was the stunt,
and she had to get hold of Riseholme again....
Georgie popped in one morning after she had come back from her lesson,
and found her in the act of holing out from the very longest of the
stations.
“My dear, what a beautiful putt!” he said. “I believe you’re getting
quite keen on it.”
“Indeed I am,” said she. “It’s great fun. I go down sometimes to the
links and knock the ball about. Be very kind to me this afternoon and
come round with me.”
Georgie readily promised to do so.
“Of course I will,” he said, “and I should be delighted to give you a
hint or two, if I can. I won two holes from Daisy yesterday.”
“How clever of you, Georgie! Any news?”
Georgie said the sound that is spelt “Tut.”
“I quite forgot,” he said. “I came round to tell you. Neither Mrs.
Boucher nor Daisy nor I know _what_ to do.”
(“That’s the Museum Committee,” thought Lucia.)
“What is it, Georgie?” she said. “See if poor Lucia can help.”
“Well,” said Georgie, “You know Pug?”
“That mangy little thing of Lady Ambermere’s?” asked Lucia.
“Yes. Pug died, I don’t know what of----”
“Cream, I should think,” said Lucia. “And cake.”
“Well, it may have been. Anyhow, Lady Ambermere had him stuffed, and
while I was out this morning, she left him in a glass case at my house,
as a present for the Museum. There he is lying on a blue cushion, with
one ear cocked, and a great watery eye, and the end of his horrid tongue
between his lips.”
“No!” said Lucia.
“I assure you. And we don’t know what to do. We can’t put him in the
Museum, can we? And we’re afraid she’ll take the mittens away if we
don’t. But, how can we refuse? She wrote me a note about ‘her precious
Pug.’”
Lucia remembered how they had refused an Elizabethan spit, though they
had subsequently accepted it. But she was not going to remind Georgie of
that. She wanted to get a better footing in the Museum than an
Elizabethan spit had given her.
“What a dreadful thing!” she said. “And so you came to see if your poor
old Lucia could help you.”
“Well, we all wondered if you might be able to think of something,” said
he.
Lucia enjoyed this: the Museum was wanting her.... She fixed Georgie
with her eye.
“Perhaps I can get you out of your hole,” she said. “What I imagine is,
Georgie, that you want _me_ to take that awful Pug back to her. I see
what’s happened. She had him stuffed, and then found he was too dreadful
an object to keep, and so thought she’d be generous to the Museum. We--I
should say ‘you,’ for I’ve got nothing to do with it--you don’t care
about the Museum being made a dump for all the rubbish that people don’t
want in their houses. Do you?”
“No, certainly not,” said Georgie. (Did Lucia mean anything by that?
Apparently she did.) She became brisk and voluble.
“Of course, if you asked my opinion,” said Lucia, “I should say that
there has been a little too much dumping done already. But that is not
the point, is it? And it’s not my business either. Anyhow, you don’t
want any more rubbish to be dumped. As for withdrawing the mittens--only
lent, are they?--she won’t do anything of the kind. She likes taking
people over and showing them. Yes, Georgie, I’ll help you: tell Mrs.
Boucher and Daisy that I’ll help you. I’ll drive over this
afternoon--no, I won’t, for I’m going to have a lovely game of golf with
you--I’ll drive over to-morrow and take Pug back, with the Committee’s
regrets that they are not taxidermists. Or, if you like, I’ll do it on
my own authority. How odd to be afraid of poor old Lady Ambermere! Never
mind: I’m not. How all you people bully me into doing just what you
want! I always was Riseholme’s slave. Put Pug’s case in a nice piece of
brown paper, Georgie, for I don’t want to see the horrid little
abortion, and don’t think anything more about it. Now let’s have a good
little putting match till lunch-time.”
Georgie was nowhere in the good little putting-match, and he was even
less anywhere when it came to their game in the afternoon. Lucia made
magnificent swipes from the tee, the least of which, if she happened to
hit it, must have gone well over a hundred yards, whereas Daisy
considered eighty yards from the tee a most respectable shot, and was
positively pleased if she went into a bunker at a greater distance than
that, and said the bunker ought to be put further off for the sake of
the longer hitters. And when Lucia came near the green, she gave a smart
little dig with her mashie, and, when this remarkable stroke came off,
though she certainly hit the ground, the ball went beautifully, whereas
when Daisy hit the ground the ball didn’t go at all. All the time she
was light-hearted and talkative, and even up to the moment of striking,
would be saying “Now oo naughty ickle ball: Lucia’s going to give you
such a spank!” whereas when Daisy was playing, her opponent and the
caddies had all to be dumb and turned to stone, while she drew a long
breath and waved her club with a pendulum-like movement over the ball.
“But you’re marvellous,” said Georgie as, three down, he stood on the
fourth tee, and watched Lucia’s ball sail away over a sheep that looked
quite small in the distance. “It’s only three weeks or so since you
began to play at all. You are clever! I believe you’d nearly beat
Daisy.”
“Georgie, I’m afraid you’re a flatterer,” said Lucia. “Now give your
ball a good bang, and then there’s something I want to talk to you
about.”
“Let’s see; it’s slow back, isn’t it?” said Georgie. “Or is it quick
back? I believe Daisy says sometimes one and sometimes the other.”
Daisy and Piggy, starting before them, were playing in a parallel and
opposite direction. Daisy had no luck with her first shot, and very
little with her second. Lucia just got out of the way of her third and
Daisy hurried by them.
“Such a slice!” she said. “How are you getting on, Lucia? How many have
you played to get there?”
“One at present, dear,” said Lucia. “But isn’t it difficult?”
Daisy’s face fell.
“One?” she said.
Lucia kissed her hand.
“That’s all,” she said. “And has Georgie told you that I’ll manage about
Pug for you?”
Daisy looked round severely. She had begun to address her ball and
nobody must talk.
Lucia watched Daisy do it again, and rejoined Georgie who was in a
“tarsome” place, and tufts of grass flew in the air.
“Georgie, I had a little talk with Mr. Stratton the other day,” she
said. “There’s a new golf-committee being elected in October, and they
would so like to have you on it. Now be good-natured and say you will.”
Georgie had no intention of saying anything else.
“And they want poor little me to be President,” said Lucia. “So shall I
send Mr. Stratton a line and say we will? It would be kind, Georgie. Oh,
by the way, do come and dine to-night. Pepino--so much better,
thanks--Pepino told me to ask you. He would enjoy it. Just one of our
dear little evenings again.”
Lucia, in fact, was bringing her batteries into action, and Georgie was
the immediate though not the ultimate objective. He longed to be on the
golf-committee, he was intensely grateful for the promised removal of
Pug, and it was much more amusing to play golf with Lucia than to be
dragooned round by Daisy who told him after every stroke what he ought
to have done and could never do it herself. A game should not be a
lecture.
Lucia thought it was time to confide in him about the abandoning of
Brompton Square. Georgie would love knowing what nobody else knew yet.
She waited till he had failed to hole a short putt, and gave him the
subsequent one, which Daisy never did.
“I hope we shall have many of our little evenings, Georgie,” she said.
“We shall be here till Christmas. No, no more London for us, though it’s
a secret at present.”
“What?” said Georgie.
“Wait a moment,” said Lucia, teeing up for the last hole. “Now ickle
ballie, fly away home. There!...” and ickle ballie flew at about
right-angles to home, but ever such a long way.
She walked with him to cover-point, where he had gone too.
“Pepino must never live in London again,” she said. “All going to be
sold, Georgie. The house and the furniture and the pearls. You must put
up with your poor old Lucia at Riseholme again. Nobody knows yet but
you, but now it is all settled. Am I sorry? Yes, Georgie, course I am.
So many dear friends in London. But then there are dear friends in
Riseholme. Oh, what a beautiful bang, Georgie. You nearly hit Daisy.
Call ‘Five!’ isn’t that what they do?”
Lucia was feeling much surer of her ground. Georgie, bribed by a place
on the golf-committee and by her admiration of his golf, and by her
nobility with regard to Pug, was trotting back quick to her, and that
was something. Next morning she had a hectic interview with Lady
Ambermere....
Lady Ambermere was said to be not at home, though Lucia had seen her
majestic face at the window of the pink saloon. So she asked for Miss
Lyall, the downtrodden companion, and waited in the hall. Her chauffeur
had deposited the large brown-paper parcel with Pug inside on the
much-admired tessellated pavement.
“Oh, Miss Lyall,” said Lucia. “So sad that dear Lady Ambermere is out,
for I wanted to convey the grateful thanks of the Museum Committee to
her for her beautiful gift of poor Pug. But they feel they can’t....
Yes, that’s Pug in the brown-paper parcel. So sweet. But will you, on
Lady Ambermere’s return, make it quite clear?”
Miss Lyall, looking like a mouse, considered what her duty was in this
difficult situation. She felt that Lady Ambermere ought to know Lucia’s
mission and deal with it in person.
“I’ll see if Lady Ambermere has come in, Mrs. Lucas,” she said. “She may
have come in. Just out in the garden, you know. Might like to know what
you’ve brought. O dear me!”
Poor Miss Lyall scuttled away, and presently the door of the pink saloon
was thrown open. After an impressive pause Lady Ambermere appeared,
looking vexed. The purport of this astounding mission had evidently been
conveyed to her.
“Mrs. Lucas, I believe,” she said, just as if she wasn’t sure.
Now Lucia after all her Duchesses was not going to stand that. Lady
Ambermere might have a Roman nose, but she hadn’t any manners.
“Lady Ambermere, I presume,” she retorted. So there they were.
Lady Ambermere glared at her in a way that should have turned her to
stone. It made no impression.
“You have come, I believe, with a message from the Committee of your
little Museum at Riseholme, which I may have misunderstood.”
Lucia knew she was doing what neither Mrs. Boucher nor Daisy in their
most courageous moments would have dared to do. As for Georgie....
“No, Lady Ambermere,” she said. “I don’t think you’ve misunderstood it.
A stuffed dog on a cushion. They felt that the Museum was not quite the
place for it. I have brought it back to you with their thanks and
regrets. So kind of you and--and so sorry of them. This is the parcel.
That is all, I think.”
It wasn’t quite all....
“Are you aware, Mrs. Lucas,” said Lady Ambermere, “that the mittens of
the late Queen Charlotte are my loan to your little Museum?”
Lucia put her finger to her forehead.
“Mittens?” she said. “Yes, I believe there are some mittens. I think I
have seen them. No doubt those are the ones. Yes?”
That was brilliant: it implied complete indifference on the part of the
Committee (to which Lucia felt sure she would presently belong) as to
what Lady Ambermere might think fit to do about mittens.
“The Committee shall hear from me,” said Lady Ambermere, and walked
majestically back to the pink saloon.
Lucia felt sorry for Miss Lyall: Miss Lyall would probably not have a
very pleasant day, but she had no real apprehensions, so she explained
to the Committee, who were anxiously awaiting her return on the Green,
about the withdrawal of these worsted relics.
“Bluff, just bluff,” she said. “And even if it wasn’t---- Surely, dear
Daisy, it’s better to have no mittens and no Pug than both. Pug--I
caught a peep of him through a hole in the brown paper--Pug would have
made your Museum a laughing-stock.”
“Was she very dreadful?” asked Georgie.
Lucia gave her little silvery laugh.
“Yes, dear Georgie, quite dreadful. You would have collapsed if she had
said to you ‘Mr. Pillson, I believe.’ Wouldn’t you, Georgie? Don’t
pretend to be braver than you are.”
“Well, I think we ought all to be much obliged to you, Mrs. Lucas,” said
Mrs. Boucher. “And I’m sure we are. I should never have stood up to her
like that! And if she takes the mittens away, I should be much inclined
to put another pair in the case, for the case belongs to us and not to
her, with just the label ‘These Mittens did not belong to Queen
Charlotte, and were not presented by Lady Ambermere.’ That would serve
her out.”
Lucia laughed gaily again.
“So glad to have been of use,” she said. “And now, dear Daisy, will you
be as kind to me as Georgie was yesterday and give me a little game of
golf this afternoon? Not much fun for you, but so good for me.”
Daisy had observed some of Lucia’s powerful strokes yesterday, and she
was rather dreading this invitation for fear it should not be, as Lucia
said, much fun for her. Luckily, she and Georgie had already arranged to
play to-day, and she had, in anticipation of the dread event, engaged
Piggy, Goosie, Mrs. Antrobus, and Colonel Boucher to play with her on
all the remaining days of that week. She meant to practise like anything
in the interval. And then, like a raven croaking disaster, the infamous
Georgie let her down.
“I’d sooner not play this afternoon,” he said. “I’d sooner just stroll
out with you.”
“Sure, Georgie?” said Lucia. “That will be nice then. Oh, how nervous I
shall be.”
Daisy made one final effort to avert her downfall, by offering, as they
went out that afternoon, to give Lucia a stroke a hole. Lucia said she
knew she could do it, but might they, just for fun, play level? And as
the round proceeded, Lucia’s kindness was almost intolerable. She could
see, she said, that Daisy was completely off her game, when Daisy wasn’t
in the least off her game: she said, “Oh, that was bad luck!” when Daisy
missed short putts: she begged her to pick her ball out of bushes and
not count it.... At half past four Riseholme knew that Daisy had halved
four holes and lost the other five. Her short reign as Queen of Golf had
come to an end.
* * * * *
The Museum Committee met after tea at Mrs. Boucher’s (Daisy did not hold
her golfing-class in the garden that day) and tact, Georgie felt, seemed
to indicate that Lucia’s name should not be suggested as a new member of
the Committee so swiftly on the heels of Daisy’s disaster. Mrs. Boucher,
privately consulted, concurred, though with some rather stinging remarks
as to Daisy’s having deceived them all about her golf, and the business
of the meeting was chiefly concerned with the proposed closing down of
the Museum for the winter. The tourist season was over, no char-a-bancs
came any more with visitors, and for three days not a soul had passed
the turnstile.
“So where’s the use,” asked Mrs. Boucher, “of paying a boy to let people
into the Museum when nobody wants to be let in? I call it throwing money
away. Far better close it till the spring, and have no more expense,
except to pay him a shilling a week to open the windows and air it, say
on Tuesday and Friday, or Wednesday and Saturday.”
“I should suggest Monday and Thursday,” said Daisy, very decisively. If
she couldn’t have it all her own way on the links, she could make
herself felt on committees.
“Very well, Monday and Thursday,” said Mrs. Boucher. “And then there’s
another thing. It’s getting so damp in there, that if you wanted a cold
bath, you might undress and stand there. The water’s pouring off the
walls. A couple of oil-stoves, I suggest, every day except when it’s
being aired. The boy will attend to them, and make it half a crown
instead of a shilling. I’m going to Blitton to-morrow, and if that’s
your wish I’ll order them. No: I’ll bring them back with me, and I’ll
have them lit to-morrow morning. But unless you want to have nothing to
show next spring but mildew, don’t let us delay about it. A crop of
mildew won’t be sufficient attraction to visitors, and there’ll be
nothing else.”
Georgie rapped the table.
“And I vote we take the manuscript of ‘Lucrezia’ out, and that one of us
keeps it till we open again,” he said.
“I should be happy to keep it,” said Daisy.
Georgie wanted it himself, but it was better not to thwart Daisy to-day.
Besides, he was in a hurry, as Lucia had asked him to bring round his
planchette and see if Abfou would not like a little attention. Nobody
had talked to Abfou for weeks.
“Very well,” he said, “and if that’s all----”
“I’m not sure I shouldn’t feel happier if it was at the bank,” said Mrs.
Boucher. “Supposing it was stolen.”
Georgie magnanimously took Daisy’s side: he knew how Daisy was feeling.
Mrs. Boucher was outvoted, and he got up.
“If that’s all then, I’ll be off,” he said.
Daisy had a sort of conviction that he was going to do something with
Lucia, perhaps have a lesson at golf.
“Come in presently?” she said.
“I can’t, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m busy till dinner.”
And of course, on her way home, she saw him hurrying across to The Hurst
with his planchette.