Lucia Rising

by E. F. Benson

  ‘Dear Georgie,’ she said, ‘no one would be more delighted than I if my Guru consented to take you as a pupil. But you can't tell what he will do; as he said to me to-day, apropos of myself “I cannot come unless I be sent.” Was not that wonderful? He knew at once he had been sent to me.’

  By this time Georgie was quite determined to have the Guru. The measure of his determination may be gauged from the fact that he forgot all about Lucia's garden-party.

  ‘But he called me his friend,’ he said. ‘He told me I had a clear white soul.’

  ‘Yes; but that is his attitude towards everybody,’ said Mrs Quantock. ‘His religion makes it impossible for him to think ill of anybody.’

  ‘But he didn't say that to Rush,’ cried Georgie, ‘when he asked for some brandy, to be put down to you.’

  Mrs Quantock's expression changed for a moment, but that moment was too short for Georgie to notice it. Her face instantly cleared again.

  ‘Naturally he cannot go about saying that sort of thing,’ she observed. ‘Common people – he is of the highest caste – would not understand him.’

  Georgie made the direct appeal.

  ‘Please ask him to teach me,’ he said.

  For a moment Mrs Quantock did not answer, but cocked her head sideways in the direction of the pear-tree, where a thrush was singing. It fluted but a couple of repeated phrases, and then was silent again.

  Mrs Quantock gave a gasp and a smile to the pear-tree.

  ‘Thank you, little brother,’ she said.

  She turned to Georgie again.

  ‘That comes out of St Francis,’ she said, ‘but Yoga embraces all that is true in every religion. Well, I will ask my Guru whether he will take you as a pupil, but I can't answer for what he will say.’

  ‘What does he – what does he charge for his lessons?’ asked Georgie.

  The Christian-Science smile illuminated her face again.

  ‘The word “money” never passes his lips,’ she said. ‘I don't think he really knows what it means. He proposed to sit on the village green with a beggar's bowl, but of course I would not permit that; for the present I just give him all he wants. No doubt when he goes away – which I hope will not be for many weeks yet, though no one can tell when he has another call – I shall slip something suitably generous into his hand, but I don't think about that. Must you be going? Good-night, dear Georgie! Peace! Om!’

  His last backward glance as he went out of the front-door revealed her standing on one leg again, just as he had seen her first. He remembered a print of a fakir at Benares, standing in just that attitude; and if the stream that flowed into the Avon could be construed into the Ganges, and the garden into the burning-ghaut, and the swooping swallows into the kites, and the neat parlourmaid who showed him out into a Brahmin, and the Chinese gong that was so prominent an object in the hall into a piece of Benares brass-ware, he could almost have fancied himself as standing on the brink of the sacred river. The marigolds in the garden required no transmutation… Georgie had quite ‘to pull himself together’, as he stepped round Mrs Quantock's mulberry-tree, and ten paces later round his own, before he could recapture his normal evening mood on those occasions when he was going to dine alone. Usually these evenings were very pleasant and much occupied, for they did not occur very often in the whirl of Riseholme life, and it was not more than once a week that he spent a solitary evening, and even then, if he got tired of his own company, there were half a dozen houses, easy of access, where after throwing on his military cloak, he could spend a postprandial hour. But oftener than not when these occasions occurred, he would be quite busy at home, dusting a little china, and rearranging ornaments on his shelves, and, after putting his rings and handkerchief in the candle-bracket of his piano, spending a serious hour (with the soft-pedal down, for fear of irritating Robert) in reading his share of such duets as he would be likely to be called upon to play with his Queen during the next day or two. Though he read music much better than she did, he used to ‘go over’ his part alone first, and let it be understood that he had not seen it before. But then he was sure that she had done precisely the same, so they started fair. Such things whiled away very pleasantly the hours till eleven, when he went to bed, and it was seldom that he had to put out Patience-cards to tide him over the slow minutes.

  But every now and then – and to-night was one of the ‘nows’ – there occurred evenings when he never went out to dinner, even if he was asked, because he ‘was busy indoors’. They occurred about once a month, these evenings when he was ‘busy indoors’, and even an invitation from his Queen would not interrupt them. A faint suspicion of what Georgie was ‘busy indoors’ about had long ago become public property in Riseholme, but though none of Georgie's friends talked about the nature of his engagements to anyone else, everybody else knew. His business indoors, in fact, was a perfect secret, simply because everybody was quite aware what it was.

  June had been a very busy time, not ‘indoors’, but with other engagements, and as Georgie went up to his bedroom, having been told by Foljambe that the hair-dresser was waiting for him, and had been waiting ‘this last ten minutes’, he glanced at his hair in the Cromwellian mirror that hung on the stairs, and was quite conscious that it was time he submitted himself to Mr Holroyd's ministrations. There was certainly an undergrowth of grey hair visible beneath his chestnut crop, that should have been attended to at least a fortnight ago. Also there was a certain added thinness in the locks that crossed his head. Mr Holroyd had alluded to that before, and had suggested a certain remedy, not in the least inconvenient, unless Georgie purposed to be athletic, without a cap, in a high wind, and even then not necessarily so. But as he had no intention of being athletic anywhere, with or without a cap, he determined as he went up the stairs that he would follow Mr Holroyd's advice. Mr Holroyd's procedure, even without this added formula, entailed sitting ‘till it dried’, and after that he would have dinner, and then Mr Holroyd would begin again. He was a very clever person with regard to the face and the hands and the feet. Georgie had been conscious of walking a little lamely lately; he had been even more conscious of the need of hot wet towels on his face and the ‘tap-tap’ of Mr Holroyd's fingers, and stretchings of Mr Holroyd's thumb across rather slack surfaces of cheek and chin. In the interval between the hair and the face, Mr Holroyd should have a good dinner downstairs with Foljambe and the cook. And to-morrow morning, when he met Hermy and Ursy, Georgie would be just as spick and span and young as ever, if not more so.

  Georgie (happy innocent!) was completely unaware that the whole of Riseholme knew that the smooth chestnut locks which covered the top of his head were trained like the tendrils of a grape-vine from their roots, and flowed like a river over a bare bed, and consequently when Mr Holroyd explained the proposed innovation, a little central wig, the edges of which would mingle in the most natural manner with his own hair, it seemed to Georgie that nobody would know the difference. In addition he would be spared those risky moments when he had to take off his hat to a friend in a high wind, for there was always the danger of his hair blowing away from the top of his head, and hanging down, like the tresses of a Rhine-maiden, over one shoulder. So Mr Holroyd was commissioned to put that little affair in hand at once, and when the greyness had been attended to, Georgie sat down to dinner while ‘it’ dried. After that came hot towels and tappings on his face, and other ministrations, and when about half-past ten he came downstairs again for a short practice at the bass part of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, ingeniously arranged for two performers on the piano, he looked with sincere satisfaction at his rosy face in the Cromwellian mirror, and his shoes felt quite comfortable again, and his nails shone like pink stars as his hands dashed wildly about the piano in the quicker passages. But all the time the thought of the Guru next door, under whose tuition he might be able to regain his youth without recourse to those expensive subterfuges (for the price of the undetectable toupet astonished him), sang in his head with a melody more haunt
ing than Beethoven's. What he would have liked best of all would have been to have the Guru all to himself, so that he should remain perpetually young, while all the rest of Riseholme (including Hermy and Ursy) grew old. Then, indeed, he would be king of the place, instead of serving the interests of its queen.

  He rose with a little sigh, and after adjusting the strip of flannel over the keys, shut his piano, and busied himself for a little with a soft duster over his cabinet of bibelots, which not even Foljambe was allowed to touch. It was generally understood that he had inherited them (though the inheritance had chiefly passed to him through the medium of curiosity shops), and there were several pieces of considerable value among them. There was a gold Louis XVI snuff-box, a miniature by Karl Huth, a silver toy porringer of the time of Queen Anne, a piece of Bow china, and an enamelled cigarette case by Fabergé. But to-night his handling of them was not so dainty and delicate as usual, and he actually dropped the porringer on the floor as he was dusting it, for his mind still occupied itself with the Guru and the practices that led to permanent youth. How quick Lucia had been to snap him up for her garden-party! Yet perhaps she would not get him, for he might say he was not sent. But surely he would be sent to Georgie, whom he knew, the moment he set eyes on him, to have a clear white soul…

  The clock struck eleven, and, as usual on warm nights, Georgie opened the glass door into his garden, and drew in a breath of the night air. The sky was thickly peppered with pretty stars, which Georgie, after his busy, interesting day, enjoyed looking at, though, if he had had the arrangement of them, he would certainly have put them in more definite patterns. Among them was a very red planet, and Georgie, with recollections of his classical education, easily remembered that Mars, the God of War, was symbolized in the heavens by a red star. Could that mean anything to peaceful Riseholme? Were internal warfare, revolutionary movements, possible in so serene a realm?

  4

  Pink, irascible Robert, prone to throw his food about his plate, if it did not commend itself to him, felt in an extremely good-natured mood that same night after dinner, for the Guru had again made a visit to the kitchen, with the result that instead of a slab of pale dead codfish being put before him after he had eaten some tepid soup, there appeared a delicious little fish-curry. The Guru had behaved with great tact: he had seen the storm gathering on poor Robert's face, as he sipped the cool effete concoction, and put down his spoon again with a splash in his soup-plate, and thereupon had bowed and smiled and scurried away to the kitchen to intercept the next abomination. Then, returning with the little curry, he explained that it was entirely for Robert, since those who sought after the Way did not indulge in hot sharp foods, and so he had gobbled it up to the very last morsel.

  In consequence, when the Guru salaamed very humbly, and said that with the gracious permission of beloved lady and kind master he would go and meditate in his room, and had shambled away in his red slippers, the discussion which Robert had felt himself obliged to open with his wife, on the subject of having an unknown Indian staying with them for an indefinite period, was opened in a much more amicable key than it would have been on a slice of codfish.

  ‘Well now, about this Golliwog – I should say Guru, my dear,’ he began, ‘what's going to happen?’

  Daisy Quantock drew in her breath sharply and winced at this irreverence, but quickly remembered that she must always be sending out messages of love north, east, south and west. She sent a rather spiky one in the direction of her husband, who was sitting due east, so that it probably got to him at once, and smiled the particular hard, firm smile which was an heirloom inherited from her last rule of life.

  ‘No one knows,’ she said brightly. ‘Even the Guides can't tell where and when a Guru may be called.’

  ‘Then do you propose he should stop here till he's called somewhere else?’

  She continued smiling.

  ‘I don't propose anything,’ she said. ‘It's not in my hands.’

  Under the calming influence of the fish-curry, Robert remained still placid.

  ‘He's a first-rate cook, anyhow,’ he said. ‘Can't you engage him as that? Call to the kitchen, you know.’

  ‘Darling!’ said Mrs Quantock, sending out more love. But she had a quick temper, and indeed the two were outpoured together, like hot and cold taps turned on in a bath. The pellucid stream of love served to keep her temper moderately cool.

  ‘Well, ask him,’ suggested Mr Quantock; ‘as you say, you can never tell where a Guru may be called. Give him forty pounds a year and beer money –’

  ‘Beer!’ began Mrs Quantock, when she suddenly remembered Georgie's story about Rush and the Guru and the brandy-bottle, and stopped.

  ‘Yes, dear, I said “beer”,’ remarked Robert a little irritably, ‘and in any case I insist that you dismiss your present cook. You only took her because she was a Christian Scientist, and you've left that little sheep-fold now. You used to talk about false claims, I remember. Well, her claim to be a cook is the falsest I ever heard of. I'd sooner take my chance with an itinerant organ-grinder. But that fish-curry to-night, and that other thing last night, that's what I mean by good eating.’

  The thought even of good food always calmed Robert's savage breast; it blew upon him as the wind on an Aeolian harp hung in the trees, evoking faint, sweet sounds.

  ‘I'm sure, my dear,’ he said, ‘that I will be willing to fall in with any pleasant arrangement about your Guru, but it really isn't unreasonable in me to ask what sort of arrangement you propose. I haven't a word to say against him, especially when he goes to the kitchen; I only want to know if he is going to stop here a night or two or a year or two. Talk to him about it to-morrow, with my love. I wonder if he can make bisque soup.’

  Daisy Quantock carried quite a quantity of material for reflection upstairs with her, when she went to bed, pausing a moment opposite the Guru's door, from inside of which came sounds of breathing so deep that it sounded almost like snoring, but she seemed to detect a timbre of spirituality about it which convinced her that he was holding high communion with the Guides. It was round him that her thoughts centred, he the tree through the branches of which they scampered chattering.

  Her first and main interest in him was sheer Guruism, for she was one of those intensely happy people who pass through life in ecstatic pursuit of some idea which those who do not share it call a fad. Well might poor Robert remember the devastation of his home when Daisy, after the perusal of a little pamphlet which she picked up on a book-stall called ‘The Uric Acid Monthly’, came to the shattering conclusion that her buxom frame consisted almost entirely of waste-products which must be eliminated. For a greedy man the situation was frankly intolerable, for when he continued his ordinary diet (this was before the cursed advent of the Christian Science cook) she kept pointing to his well-furnished plate, and told him that every atom of that beef or mutton and potatoes turned from the moment he swallowed it into chromagens and toxins, and that his apparent appetite was merely the result of fermentation. For herself, her platter was an abominable mess of cheese and proteid-powder, and apples and salad-oil, while round her, like saucers of specimen seeds, were ranged little piles of nuts and pine-kernels, which supplied body-building material, and which she weighed out with scrupulous accuracy, in accordance with the directions of ‘The Uric Acid Monthly’. Tea and coffee were taboo, since they flooded the blood with poisons, and the kitchen boiler rumbled day and night to supply the rivers of boiling water with which (taken in sips) she inundated her system. Strange gaunt females used to come down from London, with small parcels full of tough food that tasted of travelling-bags, and contained so much nutrition that quite a few pounds of it would furnish the daily rations of an army. Luckily, even her iron constitution could not stand the strain of such ideal living for long, and her growing anaemia threatened to undermine a constitution seriously impaired by the precepts of perfect health. A course of beef-steaks and other substantial viands loaded with uric acid restored her to her
former vigour.

  Thus reinforced, she plunged with the same energy as she had devoted to repelling uric acid into the embraces of Christian Science. The inhumanity of that sect towards both herself and others took complete possession of her, and when her husband complained on a bitter January morning that his smoking-room was like an ice-house, because the housemaid had forgotten to light the fire, she had no touch of pity for him, since she knew that there was no such thing as cold or heat or pain, and therefore you could not feel cold. But now, since, according to the new creed, such things as uric acid, chromagens and purins had no existence, she could safely indulge in decent viands again. But her unhappy husband was not a real gainer in this respect, for while he ate, she brightly discoursed to him on the new creed, and asked him to recite with her the ‘True Statement of Being’. And on the top of that she dismissed the admirable cook, and engaged the miscreant from whom he suffered still, though Christian Science, which had allowed her cold to make so long a false claim on her, had followed the Uric Acid fad into the limbo of her discarded beliefs.

  But now once more she had temporarily discovered the secret of life in the teachings of her Guru, and it was, as has been mentioned, sheer Guruism that constituted the main attraction of the new creed. That then being taken for granted, she turned her mind to certain side-issues, which to a true Riseholmeite were of entrancing interest. She felt a strong suspicion that Lucia contemplated annexing her Guru altogether, for otherwise she would not have returned so enthusiastic a response to her note, nor have sent Georgie to deliver it and to profess the same violent interest in the Guru. What, then, was the correctly diabolical policy to pursue? Should Daisy Quantock refuse to take him to Mrs Lucas altogether, with a message of regret that he did not feel himself sent? If she did this, did she feel herself strong enough to throw down the gauntlet (in the shape of the Guru) and, using him as the attraction, challenge darling Lucia to mortal combat, in order to decide who should be the leader of all that was advanced and cultured in Riseholme society? Still following that ramification of this policy, should she bribe Georgie over to her own revolutionary camp, by promising him instruction from the Guru? Or following a less daring line, should she take darling Lucia and Georgie into the charmed circle, and while retaining her own right of treasure-trove, yet share it with them in some inner ring, dispensing the Guru to them if they were good, in small doses?