by E. F. Benson
“But perhaps there is something in it,” said Tony. “I really think I had better not go in.”
“Tony, trust me. Lucia has no more idea of keeping a real lover than of keeping a chimpanzee. She’s as chaste as snow, a kiss would scorch her. Besides, she hasn’t time. She asked Stephen there in order to show him to me, and to show him to you. It’s the most wonderful plan; and it’s wonderful of me to have understood it so quickly. You must go in: there’s nothing private of any kind: indeed, she thirsts for publicity.”
Her confidence inspired confidence, and Tony was naturally consumed with curiosity. He got out, told Adele’s chauffeur to drive on, and went upstairs. Stephen was no longer sitting in the chair next to Lucia, but on the sofa at the other side of the tea-table. This rather looked as if Adele was right: it was consistent anyhow with their being lovers in public, but certainly not lovers in private.
“Dear Lord Tony,” said Lucia — this appellation was a halfway house between Lord Limpsfield and Tony, and she left out the “Lord” except to him— “how nice of you to drop in. You have just missed Adele. Stephen, you know Lord Limpsfield?”
Lucia gave him his tea, and presently getting up, reseated herself negligently on the sofa beside Stephen. She was a shade too close at first, and edged slightly away.
“Wonderful play of Tchekov’s the other day,” she said. “Such a strange, unhappy atmosphere. We came out, didn’t we, Stephen, feeling as if we had been in some remote dream. I saw you there, Lord Tony, with Adele who had been lunching with me.”
Tony knew that: was not that the birthday of the Luciaphils?
“It was a dream I wasn’t sorry to wake from,” he said. “I found it a boring dream.”
“Ah, how can you say so? Such an experience! I felt as if the woe of a thousand years had come upon me, some old anguish which I had forgotten. With the effect, too, that I wanted to live more fully and vividly than ever, till the dusk closed round.”
Stephen waved his hands, as he edged a little further away from Lucia. There was something strange about Lucia to-day. In those few minutes when they had been alone she had been quite normal, but both before, when Adele was here, and now after Lord Limpfield’s entry, she seemed to be implying a certain intimacy, to which he felt he ought to respond.
“Morbid fancies, Lucia,” he said, “I shan’t let you go to a Tchekov play again.”
“Horrid boy,” said Lucia daringly. “But that’s the way with all you men. You want women to be gay and bright and thoughtless, and have no other ideas except to amuse you. I shan’t ever talk to either of you again about my real feelings. We will talk about the trial to-day. My entire sympathies are with Babs, Lord Tony. I’m sure yours are too.”
Lord Limpsfield left Stephen there when he took his leave, after a quarter of an hour’s lighter conversation, and as nobody else dropped in, Lucia only asked her lover to dine on two or three nights the next week, to meet her at the private view of Herbert Alton’s Exhibition next morning, and let him go in a slightly bewildered frame of mind.
Stephen walked slowly up the Brompton Road, looking into the shop windows, and puzzling this out. She had held his hand oddly, she had sat close to him on the sofa, she had waved a dozen of those little signals of intimacy which gave colour to a supposition which, though it did not actually make his blood run cold, certainly did not make it run hot. . . . He and Lucia were excellent friends, they had many tastes in common, but Stephen knew that he would sooner never see her again than have an intrigue with her. He was no hand, to begin with, at amorous adventures, and even if he had been he could not conceive a woman more ill-adapted to dally with than Lucia. “Galahad and Artemis would make a better job of it than Lucia and me,” he muttered to himself, turning hastily away from a window full of dainty underclothing for ladies. In vain he searched the blameless records of his intercourse with Lucia: he could not accuse himself of thought, word or deed which could possibly have given rise to any disordered fancy of hers that he observed her with a lascivious eye.
“God knows I am innocent,” he said to himself, and froze with horror at the sudden sight of a large news-board on which was printed in large capitals “Babs wants Woof-dog on the hearthrug.”
He knew he had no taste for gallantry, and he felt morally certain that Lucia hadn’t either. . . . What then could she mean by those little tweaks and pressures? Conning them over for the second time, it struck him more forcibly than before that she had only indulged in these little licentiousnesses when there was someone else present. Little as he knew of the ways of lovers, he always imagined that they exchanged such tokens chiefly in private, and in public only when their passions had to find a small safety-valve. Again, if she had had designs on his virtue, she would surely, having got him alone, have given a message to her servants that she was out and not have had Lord Limpsfield admitted. . . . He felt sure she was up to something, but to his dull male sense, it was at present wrapped in mystery. He did not want to give up all those charming hospitalities of hers, but he must needs be very circumspect.
It was, however, without much misgiving that he awaited her next morning at the doors of the little Rutland Gallery, for he felt safe in so public a place as a private view. Only a few early visitors had come in when Lucia arrived, and as she passed the turnstile showing the two cards of invitation for herself and Pepino, impersonated by Stephen, she asked for hers back, saying that she was only going to make a short visit now and would return later. She had not yet seen the caricature of herself and Pepino, for which Bertie Alton (she still stuck to this little mistake) had accepted a commission, and she made her way at once to Numbers 39 and 40, which her catalogue told her were of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas. Subjoined to their names were the captions, and she read with excitement that Pepino was supposed to be saying “At whatever personal inconvenience I must live up to Lucia,” while below Number 40 was the enticing little legend “Oh, these duchesses! They give one no peace!” . . . And there was Pepino, in the knee-breeches of levee dress, tripping over his sword which had got entangled with his legs, and a cocked-hat on the back of his head, with his eyes very much apart, and no nose, and a small agonized hole in his face for a mouth. . . . And there was she with a pile of opened letters on the floor, and a pile of unopened letters on the table. There was not much of her face to be seen, for she was talking into a telephone, but her skirt was very short, and so was her hair, and there was a wealth of weary resignation in the limpness of her carriage.
Lucia examined them both carefully, and then gave a long sigh of perfect happiness. That was her irrepressible comment: she could not have imagined anything more ideal. Then she gave a little peal of laughter.
“Look, Stephen,” she said. “Bobbie — I mean Bertie — really is too wicked for anything! Really, outrageous! I am furious with him, and yet I can’t help laughing. Poor Pepino, and poor me! Marcia will adore it. She always says she can never get hold of me nowadays.”
Lucia gave a swift scrutiny to the rest of the collection, so as to be able to recognise them all without reference to her catalogue, when she came back, as she intended to do later in the morning. There was hardly anyone here at present, but the place would certainly be crowded an hour before lunch time, and she proposed to make a soi-disant first visit then, and know at once whom all the caricatures represented (for Bertie in his enthusiasm for caricature sometimes omitted likenesses), and go into peals of laughter at those of herself and Pepino, and say she must buy them, which of course she had already done. Stephen remained behind, for Hermione was going to say a good deal about the exhibition, but promised to wait till Lucia came back. She had not shown the smallest sign of amorousness this morning. His apprehensions were considerably relieved, and it looked as if no storm of emotion was likely to be required of him.
“Hundreds of things to do!” she said. “Let me see, half-past eleven, twelve — yes, I shall be back soon after twelve, and we’ll have a real look at them. And you’ll lunch? Just a few peo
ple coming.”
Before Lucia got back, the gallery had got thick with visitors, and Hermione was busy noting those whom he saw chatting with friends or looking lovely, or being very pleased with the new house in Park Lane, or receiving congratulations on the engagement of a daughter. There was no doubt which of the pictures excited most interest, and soon there was a regular queue waiting to look at Numbers 39 and 40. People stood in front of them regarding them gravely and consulting their catalogues and then bursting into loud cracks of laughter and looking again till the growing weight of the queue dislodged them. One of those who lingered longest and stood her ground best was Adele, who, when she was eventually shoved on, ran round to the tail of the queue and herself shoved till she got opposite again. She saw Stephen.
“Ah, then Lucia won’t be far off,” she observed archly. “Doesn’t she adore it? Where is Lucia?”
“She’s been, but she’s coming back,” he said. “I expect her every minute. Ah! there she is.”
This was rather stupid of Stephen. He ought to have guessed that Lucia’s second appearance was officially intended to be her first. He grasped that when she squeezed her way through the crowd and greeted him as if they had not met before that morning.
“And dearest Adele,” she said. “What a crush! Tell me quickly, where are the caricatures of Pepino and me? I’m dying to see them; and when I see them no doubt I shall wish I was dead.”
The light of Luciaphilism came into Adele’s intelligent eyes.
“We’ll look for them together,” she said. “Ah thirty-nine and forty. They must be somewhere just ahead.”
Lucia exerted a steady indefatigable pressure on those in front, and presently came into range.
“Well, I never!” she said. “Oh, but so like Pepino! How could Bertie have told he got his sword entangled just like that? And look what he says. . . . Oh, and then Me! Just because I met him at Marcia’s party and people were wanting to know when I had an evening free! Of all the impertinences! How I shall scold him!”
Lucia did it quite admirably in blissful unconsciousness that Adele knew she had been here before. She laughed, she looked again and laughed again (“Mrs. Lucas and Lady Brixton in fits of merriment over the cartoon of Mr. Lucas and herself,” thought Hermione.)
“Ah, and there’s Lord Hurtacombe,” she said. “I’m sure that’s Lord Hurtacombe, though you can’t see much of him, and, look, Olga surely, is it not? How does he do it?”
That was a very clever identification for one who had not previously studied the catalogue, for Olga’s face consisted entirely of a large open mouth and the tip of a chin, it might have been the face of anybody yawning. Her arms were stretched wide, and she towered above a small man in shorts.
“The last scene in Siegfried, I’m sure,” said Lucia. “What does the catalogue say, Stephen? Yes, I am right. ‘Siegfried! Brunnhilde!’ How wicked, is it not? But killing! Who could be cross with him?”
This was all splendid stuff for Luciaphils; it was amazing how at a first glance she recognised everybody. The gallery, too, was full of dears and darlings of a few weeks’ standing, and she completed a little dinner-party for next Tuesday long before she had made the circuit. All the time she kept Stephen by her side, looked over his catalogue, put a hand on his arm to direct his attention to some picture, took a speck of alien material off his sleeve, and all the time the entranced Adele felt increasingly certain that she had plumbed the depth of the adorable situation. Her sole anxiety was as to whether Stephen would plumb it too. He might — though he didn’t look like it — welcome these little tokens of intimacy as indicating something more, and when they were alone attempt to kiss her, and that would ruin the whole exquisite design. Luckily his demeanour was not that of a favoured swain; it was, on the other hand, more the demeanour of a swain who feared to be favoured, and if that shy thing took fright, the situation would be equally ruined. . . . To think that the most perfect piece of Luciaphilism was dependent on the just perceptions of Stephen! As the three made their slow progress, listening to Lucia’s brilliant identifications, Adele willed Stephen to understand; she projected a perfect torrent of suggestion towards his mind. He must, he should understand. . . .
Fervent desire, so every psychist affirms, is never barren. It conveys something of its yearning to the consciousness to which it is directed, and there began to break on the dull male mind what had been so obvious to the finer feminine sense of Adele. Once again, and in the blaze of publicity, Lucia was full of touches and tweaks, and the significance of them dawned, like some pale, austere sunrise, on his darkened senses. The situation was revealed, and he saw it was one with which he could easily deal. His gloomy apprehensions brightened, and he perceived that there would be no need, when he went to stay at Riseholme next, to lock his bedroom-door, a practice which was abhorrent to him, for fear of fire suddenly breaking out in the house. Last night he had had a miserable dream about what had happened when he failed to lock his door at The Hurst, but now he dismissed its haunting. These little intimacies of Lucia’s were purely a public performance.
“Lucia, we must be off,” he said loudly and confidently. “Pepino will wonder where we are.”
Lucia sighed.
“He always bullies me like that, Adele,” she said. “I must go: au revoir, dear. Tuesday next: just a few intimes.”
Lucia’s relief was hardly less than Stephen’s. He would surely not have said anything so indiscreet if he had been contemplating an indiscretion, and she had no fear that his hurry to be off was due to any passionate desire to embrace her in the privacy of her car. She believed he understood, and her belief felt justified when he proposed that the car should be opened.
Riseholme, in the last three weeks of social progress, had not occupied the front row of Lucia’s thoughts, but the second row, so to speak, had been entirely filled with it, for, as far as the future dimly outlined itself behind the present, the plan was to go down there early in August, and remain there, with a few brilliant excursions till autumn peopled London again. She had hoped for a dash to Aix, where there would be many pleasant people, but Pepino had told her summarily that the treasury would not stand it. Lucia had accepted that with the frankest good-nature: she had made quite a gay little lament about it, when she was asked what she was going to do in August. “Ah, all you lucky rich people with money to throw about; we’ve got to go and live quietly at home,” she used to say. “But I shall love it, though I shall miss you all dreadfully. Riseholme, dear Riseholme, you know, adorable, and all the delicious funny friends down there who spoil me so dreadfully. I shall have lovely tranquil days, with a trot across the Green to order fish, and a chat on the way, and my books and my piano, and a chair in the garden, and an early bed-time instead of all these late hours. An anchorite life, but if you have a week-end to spare between your Aix and your yacht and your Scotland, ah, how nice it would be if you just sent a postcard!”
Before they became anchorites, however, there was a long week-end for her and Pepino over the August bank-holiday, and Lucia looked forward to that with unusual excitement. Adele was the hostess, and the scene that immense country-house of hers in Essex. The whole world, apparently, was to be there, for Adele had said the house would be full; and it was to be a final reunion of the choicest spirits before the annual dispersion. Mrs. Garroby-Ashton had longed to be bidden, but was not, and though Lucia was sorry for dear Millicent’s disappointment, she could not but look down on it, as a sort of perch far below her that showed how dizzily she herself had gone upwards. But she had no intention of dropping good kind Millie who was hopping about below: she must certainly come to The Hurst for a Sunday: that would be nice for her, and she would learn all about Adele’s party.
There were yet ten days before that, and the morning after the triumphant affair at the Rutland Gallery, Lucia heard a faint rumour, coming from nowhere in particular, that Marcia Whitby was going to give a very small and very wonderful dance to wind up the season. She had not seen
much of Marcia lately, in other words she had seen nothing at all, and Lucia’s last three invitations to her had been declined, one through a secretary, and two through a telephone. Lucia continued, however, to talk about her with unabated familiarity and affection. The next day the rumour became slightly more solid: Adele let slip some allusion to Marcia’s ball, and hurriedly covered it up with talk of her own week-end. Lucia fixed her with a penetrating eye for a moment, but the eye failed apparently to penetrate: Adele went on gabbling about her own party, and took not the slightest notice of it.
But in truth Adele’s gabble was a frenzied and feverish manœuvre to get away from the subject of Marcia’s ball. Marcia was no true Luciaphil; instead of feeling entranced pleasure in Lucia’s successes and failures, her schemes and attainments and ambitions, she had lately been taking a high severe line about her.
“She’s beyond a joke, Adele,” she said. “I hear she’s got a scrap-book, and puts in picture post-cards and photographs of country-houses, with dates below them to indicate she has been there—”
“No!” said Adele. “How heavenly of her. I must see it, or did you make it up?”
“Indeed I didn’t,” said the injured Marcia. “And she’s got in it a picture post-card of the moat-garden at Whitby with the date of the Sunday before last, when I had a party there and didn’t ask her. Besides, she was in London at the time. And there’s one of Buckingham Palace Garden, with the date of the last garden-party. Was she asked?”
“I haven’t heard she was,” said Adele.
“Then you may be sure she wasn’t. She’s beyond a joke, I tell you, and I’m not going to ask her to my dance. I won’t, I won’t — I will not. And she asked me to dine three times last week. It isn’t fair: it’s bullying. A weak-minded person would have submitted, but I’m not weak-minded, and I won’t be bullied. I won’t be forcibly fed, and I won’t ask her to my dance. There!”