by E. F. Benson
“Yes, dear Princess Isabel,” said Lucia, “I heard she had come down. Is she here still?”
“No. She and Mrs. Shuttleworth have just gone. A motor drive, I understand, before tea. I suggested, of course, a visit to the Hall, where I would have been delighted to entertain them. Where did they lunch?”
“At Georgie Pillsons,” said Lucia bitterly.
“Indeed. I wonder why Mr. Pillson did not let me know. Did you lunch there too?”
“No. I have a party in my own house. Some friends from London, Lord Limpsfield, Mrs. Garroby-Ashton—”
“Indeed!” said Lady Ambermere. “I had meant to return to the Hall for tea, but I will change my plans and have a cup of tea with you, Mrs. Lucas. Perhaps you would ask Mrs. Shuttleworth and her distinguished guest to drop in. I will present you to her. You have a pretty little garden, I remember. Quaint. You are at liberty to say that I am taking tea with you. But stay! If they have gone out for a drive, they will not be back quite yet. It does not matter: we will sit in your garden.”
Now in the ordinary way this would have been a most honourable event, but to-day, though Lady Ambermere had not changed, her value had. If only Olga had not come down bringing her whom Lucia could almost refer to as that infernal Princess, it would have been rich, it would have been glorious, to have Lady Ambermere dropping in to tea. Even now she would be better than nothing, thought Lucia, and after inspecting the visitors’ book of the Museum, where Olga and the Princess had inscribed their names, and where now Lady Ambermere wrote hers, very close to the last one, so as to convey the impression that they were one party, they left the place.
Outside was drawn up Lady Ambermere’s car, with her companion, the meek Miss Lyall, sitting on the front seat nursing Lady Ambermere’s stertorous pug.
“Let me see,” said she. “How had we best arrange? A walk would be good for Pug before he has his tea. Pug takes lukewarm milk with a biscuit broken up into it. Please put Pug on his leash, Miss Lyall, and we will all walk across the Green to Mrs. Lucas’s little house. The motor shall go round by the road and wait for us there. That is Mrs. Shuttleworth’s little house, is it not? So you might kindly step in there, Mrs. Lucas, and leave a message for them about tea, stating that I shall be there. We will walk slowly and you will soon catch us up.”
The speech was thoroughly Ambermerian: everybody in Riseholme had a ‘little house’ compared with the Hall: everybody had a ‘little garden.’ Equally Ambermerian was her complete confidence that her wish was everybody else’s pleasure, and Lucia dismally reflected that she, for her part, had never failed to indicate that it was. But just now, though Lady Ambermere was so conspicuously second-best, and though she was like a small luggage-engine with a Roman nose and a fat dog, the wretched Lucia badly wanted somebody to ‘drop in,’ and by so doing give her some sort of status — alas, that one so lately the Queen of Riseholme should desire it — in the sight of her guests. She could say what a bore Lady Ambermere was the moment she had gone.
Wretched also was her errand: she knew that Olga and the infernal Princess were to have a ouija with Daisy and Georgie, and that her invitation would be futile, and as for that foolish old woman’s suggestion that her presence at The Hurst would prove an attraction to Olga, she was aware that if anything was needful to make Olga refuse to come, it would be that Lady Ambermere was there. Olga had dined at The Hall once, and had been induced to sing, while her hostess played Patience and talked to Pug.
Lucia had a thought: not a very bright one, but comparatively so. She might write her name in the Princess’s book: that would be something. So, when her ring was answered, and she ascertained, as she already knew, that Olga was out, and left the hopeless invitation that she and her guest would come to tea, where they would meet Lady Ambermere, she asked for the Princess’s book.
Olga’s parlourmaid looked puzzled.
“Would that be the book of cross-word puzzles, ma’am?” she asked. “I don’t think her Highness brought any other book, and that she’s taken with her for her drive.”
Lucia trudged sadly away. Halfway across the Green she saw Georgie and Daisy Quantock with a large sort of drawing-board under her arm coming briskly in her direction. She knew where they were going, and she pulled her shattered forces together.
“Dearest Daisy, not set eyes on you!” she said. “A few friends from London, how it ties one! But I shall pop in to-morrow, for I stop till Tuesday. Going to have a ouija party with dear Piggie and Goosie? Wish I could come, but Lady Ambermere has quartered herself on me for tea, and I must run on and catch her up. Just been to your delicious Museum. Wonderful mittens! Wonderful everything. Pepino and I will look out something for it!”
“Very kind,” said Daisy. It was as if the North Pole had spoken.
Pug and Miss Lyall and Lady Ambermere and her two depressed guests had been admitted to The Hurst before Lucia caught them up, and she found them all seated stonily in the music-room, where Stephen Merriall had been finishing his official correspondence. Well Lucia knew what he had been writing about: there might perhaps be a line or two about The Hurst, and the party week-ending there, but that, she was afraid, would form a mere little postscript to more exalted paragraphs. She hastily introduced him to Lady Ambermere and Miss Lyall, but she had no idea who Lady Ambermere’s guests were, and suspected they were poor relations, for Lady Ambermere introduced them to nobody.
Pug gave a series of wheezy barks.
“Clever little man,” said Lady Ambermere. “He is asking for his tea. He barks four times like that for his tea.”
“And he shall have it,” said Lucia. “Where are the others, Stephen?”
Mr. Merriall exerted himself a little on hearing Lady Ambermere’s name: he would put in a sentence about her. . . .
“Lord Limpsfield and Mrs. Garroby-Ashton have gone to play golf,” he said. “Barbarously energetic of them, is it not, Lady Ambermere? What a sweet little dog.”
“Pug does not like strangers,” said Lady Ambermere. “And I am disappointed not to see Lord Limpsfield. Do we expect Mrs. Shuttleworth and the Princess?”
“I left the message,” said Lucia.
Lady Ambermere’s eyes finished looking at Mr. Merriall and proceeded slowly round the room.
“What is that curious picture?” she said. “I am completely puzzled.”
Lucia gave her bright laugh: it was being an awful afternoon, but she had to keep her flag flying.
“Striking, is it not?” she said. “Dear Benjy Sigismund insisted on painting me. Such a lot of sittings.”
Lady Ambermere looked from one to the other.
“I do not see any resemblance,” she said. “It appears to me to resemble nothing. Ah, here is tea. A little lukewarm milk for Pug, Miss Lyall. Mix a little hot water with it, it does not suit him to have it quite cold. And I should like to see Mr. Georgie Pillson. No doubt he could be told that I am here.”
This was really rather desperate: Lucia could not produce Olga or the Princess, or Lord Limpsfield or Mrs. Garroby-Ashton for Lady Ambermere, and she knew she could not produce Georgie, for by that time he would be at Olga’s. All that was left for her was to be able to tell Lord Limpsfield and Mrs. Garroby-Ashton when they returned that they had missed Lady Ambermere. As for Riseholme . . . but it was better not to think how she stood with regard to Riseholme, which, yesterday, she had settled to be of no account at all. If only, before coming down, she had asked them all to lunch and tea and dinner. . . .
The message came back that Mr. Pillson had gone to tea with Mrs. Shuttleworth. Five minutes later came regrets from Olga that she had friends with her, and could not come to tea. Lady Ambermere ate seed cake in silence. Mrs. Alingsby meantime had been spending the afternoon in her bedroom, and she now appeared in a chintz wrapper and morocco slippers. Her hair fell over her eyes like that of an Aberdeen terrier, and she gave a shrill scream when she saw Pug.
“I can’t bear dogs,” she said. “Take that dog away, dear Lucia. Burn
it, drown it! You told me you hadn’t got any dogs.”
Lady Ambermere turned on her a face that should have instantly petrified her, if she had had any proper feeling. Never had Pug been so blasphemed. She rose as she swallowed the last mouthful of seed cake.
“We are inconveniencing your guests, Mrs. Lucas,” she said. “Pug and I will be off. Miss Lyall, Pug’s leash. We must be getting back to the Hall. I shall look in at Mrs. Shuttleworth’s, and sign my name in the Princess’s book. Good-bye, Mrs. Lucas. Thank you for my tea.”
She pointedly ignored Mrs. Alingsby, and headed the gloomy frieze that defiled through the door. The sole bright spot was that she would find only a book of cross-word puzzles to write her name in.
CHAPTER VI.
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 red-faced 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 ask 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 afterwards 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.”