The Complete Mapp & Lucia

by E. F. Benson

“I believe it was her last dinner-gown with a train added,” she said. “It was a sort of brocade.”

  “Yes, and plush is a sort of velvet,” said Mrs. Boucher. “I’ve a good mind to write to The Times, and say they’re mistaken. Brocade! Bunkum! It’s pushing and shoving instead of diamonds and pearls. But I’ve had my say, and that’s all. I shouldn’t a bit wonder if we saw that the King and Queen had gone to lunch quite quietly at Brompton Square.”

  “That’s all very well,” said Daisy, “but what are we to do?”

  “Do?” said Mrs. Boucher. “There’s plenty to do in Riseholme, isn’t there? I’m sure I never suffered from lack of employment, and I should be sorry to think that I had less interests now than I had before last Wednesday week. Wednesday, or was it Thursday, when they slipped away like that? Whichever it was, it makes no difference to me, and if you’re both disengaged this evening, you and Mr. Georgie, the Colonel and I would be very glad if you would come and take your bit of dinner with us. And Mr. Quantock too, of course. But as for diamonds and pearls, well, let’s leave that alone. I shall wear my emerald tiara to-night and my ruby necklace. My sapphires have gone to be cleaned.”

  But though Riseholme was justifiably incensed over Lucia’s worldliness and all this pushing and shoving and this self-advertising publicity, it had seldom been so wildly interested. Also, after the first pangs of shame had lost their fierceness, a very different sort of emotion began to soothe the wounded hearts: it was possible to see Lucia in another light. She had stepped straight from the sheltered and cultured life of Riseholme into the great busy feverish world, and already she was making her splendid mark there. Though it might have been she who had told Hermione what to say in those fashionable paragraphs of hers (and those who knew Lucia best were surely best competent to form just conclusions about that) still Hermione had said it, and the public now knew how witty and beautiful Lucia was, and what a wonderful house she had. Then on the very night of her arrival she had been a guest at an obviously superb dinner-party, and had since been presented at Court. All this, to look at it fairly, reflected glory on Riseholme, and if it was impossible in one mood not to be ashamed of her, it was even more impossible in other moods not to be proud of her. She had come, and almost before she had seen, she was conquering. She could be viewed as a sort of ambassadress, and her conquests in that light were Riseholme’s conquests. But pride did not oust shame, nor shame pride, and shuddering anticipations as to what new enormity the daily papers might reveal were mingled with secret and delighted conjectures as to what Riseholme’s next triumph would be.

  It was not till the day after her presentation that any news came to Riseholme direct from the ambassadress’s headquarters. Every day Georgie had been expecting to hear, and in anticipation of her summons to come up and stay in the bedroom with the bathroom and sitting-room attached, had been carefully through his wardrobe, and was satisfied that he would present a creditable appearance. His small portmanteau, Foljambe declared, would be ample to hold all that he wanted, including the suit with the Oxford trousers, and his cloth-topped boots. When the long expected letter came, he therefore felt prepared to start that very afternoon, and tore it open with the most eager haste and propped it against his teapot.

  GEORGINO MIO, Such a whirl ever since we left, that I haven’t had a moment. But to-night (Oh such a relief) Pepino and I have dined alone quite à la Riseholme, and for the first time I have had half an hour’s quiet practice in my music-room, and now sit down to write to you. (You’d have scolded me if you’d heard me play, so stiff and rusty have I become.) Well, now for my little chronicles. The very first evening we were here, we went out to a big dinner at dearest Aggie’s. Some interesting people: I enjoyed a pleasant talk with the Italian Ambassador, and called on them the day after, but I had no long conversation with anyone, for Aggie kept bringing up fresh people to introduce me to, and your poor Lucia got quite confused with so many, till Pepino and I sorted them out afterwards. Everyone seemed to have heard of our coming up to town, and I assure you that ever since the tiresome telephone has been a perfect nuisance, though all so kind. Would we go to lunch one day, or would we go to dinner another, and there was a private view here, and a little music in the afternoon there: I assure you I have never been so petted and made so much of.

  We have done a little entertaining too, already, just a few old friends like our member of Parliament, Mr. Garroby-Ashton. (“She met him once,” thought Georgie in parenthesis.) He insisted also on our going to tea with him at the House of Commons. I knew that would interest Pepino, for he’s becoming quite a politician, and so we went. Tea on the terrace, and a pleasant little chat with the Prime Minister who came and sat at our table for ever so long. How I wanted you to be there and make a sketch of the Thames: just the sort of view you do, so beautifully! Wonderful river, and I repeated to myself ‘Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.’ Then such a scurry to get back to dine somewhere or other and go to a play. Then dearest Aggie (such a good soul) had set her heart on presenting me and I couldn’t disappoint her. Did you see the description of my dress? How annoyed I was that it appeared in the papers! So vulgar all that sort of thing, and you know how I hate publicity, but they tell me I must just put up with it and not mind.

  The house is getting into order, but there are lots of little changes and furbishings up to be done before I venture to show it to anyone as critical as you, Georgino. How you would scream at the carpet in the dining-room! I know it would give you indigestion. But when I get the house straight, I shall insist on your coming, whatever your engagements are, and staying a long, long time. We will fix a date when I come down for some week-end.

  Your beloved Olga is back, but I haven’t seen her yet. I asked Signor Cortese to dine and meet her one night, and I asked her to meet him. I thought that would make a pleasant little party, but they were both engaged. I hope they have not quarrelled. Her house, just opposite mine, looks very tiny, but I daresay it is quite large enough for her and her husband. She sings at the opening night of the Opera next week, in “Lucrezia.” I must manage to go even if I can only look in for an act or two. Pepino (so extravagant of him) has taken a box for two nights in the week. It is his birthday present to me, so I couldn’t scold the dear! And after all, we shall give a great deal of pleasure to friends, by letting them have it when we do not want it ourselves.

  Love to everybody at dear Riseholme. I feel quite like an exile, and sometimes I long for its sweet peace and quietness. But there is no doubt that London suits Pepino very well, and I must make the best of this incessant hustle. I had hoped to get down for next Sunday, but Mrs. Garroby-Ashton (I hear he will certainly be raised to the peerage when the birthday honours come out) has made a point of our spending it with them… Good-night, dear Georgino.

  Me so so sleepy.

  LUCIA.

  Georgie swallowed this letter at a gulp, and then, beginning again, took it in sips. At first it gave h im an impression of someone wholly unlike her, but when sipped, every sentence seemed wonderfully characteristic. She was not adapting herself to new circumstances, she was adapting new circumstances to herself with all her old ingenuity and success, and with all her invincible energy. True, you had sometimes to read between the lines, and divide everything by about three in order to allow for exaggerations, and when Lucia spoke of not disappointing dearest Aggie, who had set her heart on presenting her at Court, or of Mrs. Garroby-Ashton making a point of her going down for the week-end which she had intended to spend at Riseholme, Georgie only had to remember how she had been forced (so she said) to be Queen at those May Day revels. By sheer power of will she had made each of them become a Robin Hood or a Maid Marian, or whatever it was, and then, when she had got them all at work she said it was she who was being worked to death over their May Day revels. They had forced her to organise them, they had insisted that she should be Queen, and lead the dances and sing louder than anybody, and be crowned and curtsied to. They had been wax in her h
ands, and now in new circumstances, Georgie felt sure that dearest Aggie had been positively forced to present her, and no doubt Mrs. Garroby-Ashton, cornered on that terrace of the House of Commons, while sweet Thames flowed softly, had had no choice but to ask her down for a Sunday. Will-power, indomitable perseverance now, as always, was getting her just precisely what she had wanted: by it she had become Queen of Riseholme, and by it she was firmly climbing away in London, and already she was saying that everybody was insisting on her dining and lunching with them, whereas it was her moral force that made them powerless in her grip. Riseholme she had no use for now: she was busy with something else; she did not care to be bothered with Georgie, and so she said it was the dining-room carpet.

  “Very well,” said Georgie bitterly. “And if she doesn’t want me, I won’t want her. So that’s that.”

  He briskly put the letter away, and began to consider what he should do with himself all day. It was warm enough to sit out and paint: in fact, he had already begun a sketch of the front of his house from the Green opposite; there was his piano if he settled to have a morning of music; there was the paper to read, there was news to collect, there was Daisy Quantock next door who would be delighted to have a sitting with the planchette, which was really beginning to write whole words instead of making meaningless dashes and scribbles, and yet none of these things which, together with plenty of conversation and a little housekeeping and manicuring, had long made life such a busy and strenuous performance, seemed to offer an adequate stimulus. And he knew well enough what rendered them devoid of tonic: it was that Lucia was not here, and however much he told himself he did not want her, he like all the rest of Riseholme was beginning to miss her dreadfully. She aggravated and exasperated them: she was a hypocrite (all that pretence of not having read the Mozart duet, and desolation at Auntie’s death), a poseuse, a sham and a snob, but there was something about her that stirred you into violent though protesting activity, and though she might infuriate you, she prevented your being dull. Georgie enjoyed painting, but he knew that the fact that he would show his sketch to Lucia gave spice to his enjoyment, and that she, though knowing no more about it than a rhinoceros, would hold it at arm’s length with her head a little on one side and her eyes slightly closed, and say: “Yes, Georgie, very nice, very nice. But have you got the value of your middle-distance quite right? And a little more depth in your distance, do you think?”

  Or if he played his piano, he knew that what inspired his nimbleness would be the prospect of playing his piece to her, and if he was practising on the sly a duet for performance with her, the knowledge that he was stealing a march on her and would astonish her (though she might suspect the cause of his facility). And as for conversation, it was useless to deny that conversation languished in Riseholme if the subject of Lucia, her feats and her frailties was tabooed.

  “We’ve got to pull ourselves together,” thought Georgie, “and start again. We must get going and learn to do without her, as she’s getting on so nicely without us. I shall go and see how the planchette is progressing.”

  Daisy was already at it, and the pencil was getting up steam. A day or two ago it had written not once only but many times a strange sort of hieroglyphic, which might easily be interpreted to be the mystic word Abfou. Daisy had therefore settled (what could be more obvious?) that the name of the control who guided these strange gyrations was Abfou, which sounded very Egyptian and antique. Therefore, she powerfully reasoned, the scribbles which could not be made to fit any known configuration of English letters might easily be Arabic. Why Abfou should write his name in English characters and his communications in Arabic was not Daisy’s concern, for who knew what were the conditions on the other side? A sheet was finished just as Georgie came in, and though it presented nothing but Arabic script, the movements of the planchette had been so swift and eager that Daisy quite forgot to ask if there was any news.

  “Abfou is getting in more direct touch with me every time I sit,” said Daisy. “I feel sure we shall have something of great importance before long. Put your hand on the planchette too, Georgie, for I have always believed that you have mediumistic powers. Concentrate first: that means you must put everything else out of your head. Let us sit for a minute or two with our eyes shut. Breathe deeply. Relax. Sometimes slight hypnosis comes on, so the book says, which means you get very drowsy.”

  There was silence for a few moments: Georgie wanted to tell Daisy about Lucia’s letter, but that would certainly interrupt Abfou, so he drew up a chair, and after laying his hand on Daisy’s closed his eyes and breathed deeply. And then suddenly the most extraordinary things began to happen.

  The planchette trembled: it vibrated like a kettle on the boil, and began to skate about the paper. He had no idea what its antic motions meant: he only knew that it was writing something, Arabic perhaps, but something firm and decided. It seemed to him that so far from aiding its movement, he almost, to be on the safe side, checked it. He opened his eyes, for it was impossible not to want to watch this manifestation of psychic force, and also he wished to be sure (though he had no real suspicions on the subject) that his collaborator was not, to put it coarsely, pushing. Exactly the same train of thought was passing in Daisy’s mind, and she opened her eyes too.

  “Georgie, my hand is positively being dragged about,” she said excitedly. “If anything, I try to resist.”

  “Mine too; so do I,” said Georgie. “It’s too wonderful. Do you suppose it’s Arabic still?”

  The pencil gave a great dash, and stopped.

  “It isn’t Arabic,” said Daisy as she examined the message, “at least, there’s heaps of English too.”

  “No!” said Georgie, putting on his spectacles in his excitement, and not caring whether Daisy knew he wore them or not. “I can see it looks like English, but what a difficult handwriting! Look, that’s ‘Abfou’, isn’t it? And that is ‘Abfou’ again there.”

  They bent their heads over the script.

  “There’s an ‘L,’” cried Daisy, “and there it is again. And then there’s ‘L from L.’ And then there’s ‘Dead’ repeated twice. It can’t mean that Abfou is dead, because this is positive proof that he’s alive. And then I can see ‘Mouse’?”

  “Where?” said Georgie eagerly. “And what would ‘dead mouse’ mean?”

  “There!” said Daisy pointing. “No: it isn’t ‘dead mouse.’ It’s ‘dead’ and then a lot of Arabic, and then ‘mouse.’”

  “I don’t believe it is ‘Mouse,’” said Georgie, “though of course, you know Abfou’s handwriting much better than I do. It looks to me far more like ‘Museum.’

  “Perhaps he wants me to send all the Arabic he’s written up to the British Museum,” said Daisy with a flash of genius, “so that they can read it and say what it means.”

  “But then there’s ‘Museum’ or ‘Mouse’ again there,” said Georgie, “and surely that word in front of it—It is! It’s Riseholme! Riseholme Mouse or Riseholme Museum! I don’t know what either would mean.”

  “You may depend upon it that it means something,” said Daisy, “and there’s another capital ‘L.’ Does it mean Lucia, do you think? But ‘dead’…”

  “No: dead’s got nothing to do with the ‘L,’” said Georgie. “Museum comes in between, and quantities of Arabic.”

  “I think I’ll just record the exact time; it would be more scientific,” said Daisy. “A quarter to eleven. No, that clock’s three minutes fast by the church time.”

  “No, the church time is slow,” said Georgie.

  Suddenly he jumped up.

  “I’ve got it,” he said. “Look! ‘L from L.’ That means a letter from Lucia. And it’s quite true. I heard this morning, and it’s in my pocket now.”

  “No!” said Daisy, “that’s just a sign Abfou is giving us, that he really is with us, and knows what is going on. Very evidential.”

  The absorption of them both in this script may be faintly appreciated by the fact that neither Dais
y evinced the slightest curiosity as to what Lucia said, nor Georgie the least desire to communicate it.

  “And then there’s ‘dead’,” said Georgie, looking out of the window. “I wonder what that means.”

  “I’m sure I hope it’s not Lucia,” said Daisy with stoical calmness, “but I can’t think of anybody else.”

  Georgie’s eyes wandered over the Green; Mrs. Boucher was speeding round in her bath-chair, pushed by her husband, and there was the Vicar walking very fast, and Mrs. Antrobus and Piggy and Goosey… nobody else seemed to be dead. Then his eye came back to the foreground of Daisy’s front garden.

  “What has happened to your mulberry-tree?” he said parenthetically. “Its leaves are all drooping. You ought never to have pruned its roots without knowing how to do it.”

  Daisy jumped up.

  “Georgie, you’ve got it!” she said. “It’s the mulberry-tree that’s dead. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Georgie was suitably impressed.

  “That’s very curious: very curious indeed,” he said. “Letter from Lucia, and the dead mulberry tree. I do believe there’s something in it. But let’s go on studying the script. Now I look at it again I feel certain it is Riseholme Museum, not Riseholme Mouse. The only difficulty is that there isn’t a Museum in Riseholme.”

  “There are plenty of mice,” observed Daisy, who had had some trouble with these little creatures. “Abfou may be wanting to give me advice about some kind of ancient Egyptian trap… But if you aren’t very busy this morning, Georgie, we might have another sitting and see if we get anything more definite. Let us attain collectedness as the directions advise.”

  “What’s collectedness?” asked Georgie.

  Daisy gave him the directions. Collectedness seemed to be a sort of mixture of intense concentration and complete vacuity of mind.

  “You seem to have to concentrate your mind upon nothing at all,” said he after reading it.