Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  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.

  CHAPTER XI.

  Lucia made no allusion whatever to her athletic triumph in the afternoon when Georgie appeared. That was not her way: she just triumphed, and left other people to talk about it. But her principles did not prevent her speaking about golf in the abstract.

  “We must get more businesslike when you and I are on the Committee, Georgie,” she said. “We must have competitions and handicaps, and I will give a small silver cup, the President’s cup, to be competed for. There’s no organisation at present, you see: great fun, but no organisation. We shall have to put our heads together over that. And foursomes: I have been reading about foursomes, when two people on one side hit the ball in turn. Pepino, I’m sure, would give a little cup for foursomes, the Lucas cup. . . . And you’ve brought the planchette? You must teach me how to use it. What a good employment for winter evenings, Georgie. And we must have some bridge tournaments. Wet afternoons, you know, and then tea, and then some more bridge. But we will talk about all that presently, only I warn you I shall expect you to get up all sorts of diversions for Pepino.”

  Lucia gave a little sigh.

  “Pepino adored London,” she said, “and we must cheer him up, Georgie, and not let him feel dull. You must think of lots of little diversions: little pleasant bustling things for these long evenings: music, and bridge, and some planchette. Then I shall get up some Shakespeare readings, selections from plays, with a small part for Pepino and another for poor Daisy. I foresee already that I shall have a very busy autumn. But you must all be very kind and come here for our little entertainments. Madness for Pepino to go out after sunset. Now let us get to our planchette. How I do chatter, Georgie!”

  Georgie explained the technique of planchette, how important it was not to push, but on the other hand not to resist its independent motions. As he spoke Lucia glanced over the directions for planchette which he had brought with him.

  “We may not get anything,” he said. “Abfou was very disappointing sometimes. We can go on talking: indeed, it is better not to attend to what it does.”

  “I see,” said Lucia, “let us go on talking then. How late you are, Georgie. I expected you half an hour ago. Oh, you said you might be detained by a Museum Committee meeting.”

  “Yes, we settled to shut the Museum up for the winter,” he said. “Just an oil-stove or two to keep it dry. I wanted — and so did Mrs. Boucher, I know — to ask you—”

  He stopped, for Planchette had already begun to throb in a very extraordinary manner.

  “I believe something is going to happen,” he said.

  “No! How interesting!” said Lucia. “What do we do?”

  “Nothing,” said Georgie. “Just let it do what it likes. Let’s concentrate: that means thinking of nothing at all.”

  Georgie of course had noticed and inwardly applauded the lofty reticence which Lucia had shown about Daisy’s disaster this afternoon. But he had the strongest suspicion of her wish to weedj, and he fully expected that if Abfou ‘came through’ and talked anything but Arabic, he would express his scorn of Daisy’s golf. There would be scathing remarks, corresponding to ‘snob’ and those rude things about Lucia’s shingling of her hair, and then he would feel that Lucia had pushed. She might say she hadn’t, just as Daisy said she hadn’t, but it would be very unconvincing if Abfou talked about golf. He hoped it wouldn’t happen, for the very appositeness of Abfou’s remarks before had strangely shaken his faith in Abfou. He had been willing to believe that it was Daisy’s subconscious self that had inspired Abfou — or at any rate he tried to believe it — but it had been impossible to dissociate the complete Daisy from these violent criticisms.

  Planchette began to move.

  “Probably it’s Arabic,” sai
d Georgie. “You never quite know. Empty your mind of everything, Lucia.”

  She did not answer, and he looked up at her. She had that far-away expression which he associated with renderings of the Moonlight Sonata. Then her eyes closed.

  Planchette was moving quietly and steadily along. When it came near the edge of the paper, it ran back and began again, and Georgie felt quite sure he wasn’t pushing: he only wanted it not to waste its energy on the tablecloth. Once he felt almost certain that it traced out the word ‘drive,’ but one couldn’t be sure. And was that ‘committee’? His heart rather sank: it would be such a pity if Abfou was only talking about the golf-club which no doubt was filling Lucia’s subconscious as well as conscious mind. . . . Then suddenly he got rather alarmed, for Lucia’s head was sunk forward, and she breathed with strange rapidity.

  “Lucia!” he said sharply.

  Lucia lifted her head, and Planchette stopped.

  “Dear me, I felt quite dreamy,” she said. “Let us go on talking, Georgie. Lady Ambermere this morning: I wish you could have seen her.”

  “Planchette has been writing,” said Georgie.

  “No!” said Lucia. “Has it? May we look?”

  Georgie lifted the machine. There was no Arabic at all, nor was it Abfou’s writing, which in quaint little ways resembled Daisy’s when he wrote quickly.

  “Vittoria,” he read. “I am Vittoria.”

  “Georgie, how silly,” said Lucia, “or is it the Queen?”

  “Let’s see what she says,” said Georgie. “I am Vittoria. I come to Riseholme. For proof, there is a dog and a Vecchia—”

  “That’s Italian,” said Lucia excitedly. “You see, Vittoria is Italian. Vecchia means — let me see; yes, of course, it means ‘old woman’. ‘A dog, and an old woman who is angry.’ O Georgie, you did that! You were thinking about Pug and Lady Ambermere.”

  “I swear I wasn’t,” said Georgie. “It never entered my head. Let’s see what else. ‘And Vittoria comes to tell you of fire and water, of fire and water. The strong elements that burn and soak. Fire and water and moonlight.’”

  “O Georgie, what gibberish,” said Lucia. “It’s as silly as Abfou. What does it mean? Moonlight! I suppose you would say I pushed and was thinking of the Moonlight Sonata.”

  That base thought had occurred to Georgie’s mind, but where did fire and water come in? Suddenly a stupendous interpretation struck him.

  “It’s most extraordinary!” he said. “We had a Museum Committee meeting just now, and Mrs. Boucher said the place was streaming wet. We settled to get some oil-stoves to keep it dry. There’s fire and water for you!” Georgie had mentioned this fact about the Museum Committee, but so casually that he had quite forgotten he had done so. Lucia did not remind him of it.

  “Well, I do call that remarkable!” she said. “But I daresay it’s only a coincidence.”

  “I don’t think so at all,” said Georgie. “I think it’s most curious, for I wasn’t thinking about that a bit. What else does it say? ‘Vittoria bids you keep love and loyalty alive in your hearts. Vittoria has suffered, and bids you be kind to the suffering.’”

  “That’s curious!” said Lucia. “That might apply to Pepino, mightn’t it? . . . O Georgie, why, of course, that was in both of our minds: we had just been talking about it. I don’t say you pushed intentionally, and you mustn’t say I did, but that might easily have come from us.”

  “I think it’s very strange,” said Georgie. “And then, what came over you, Lucia? You looked only half-conscious. I believe it was what the planchette directions call light hypnosis.”

  “No!” said Lucia. “Light hypnosis, that means half-asleep, doesn’t it? I did feel drowsy.”

  “It’s a condition of trance,” said Georgie. “Let’s try again.”

  Lucia seemed reluctant.

  “I think I won’t, Georgie,” she said. “It is so strange. I’m not sure that I like it.”

  “It can’t hurt you if you approach it in the right spirit,” said Georgie, quoting from the directions.

  “Not again this evening, Georgie,” said she. “Tomorrow perhaps. It is interesting, it is curious, and somehow I don’t think Vittoria would hurt us. She seems kind. There’s something noble, indeed, about her message.”

  “Much nobler than Abfou,” said Georgie, “and much more powerful. Why, she came through at once, without pages of scribbles first! I never felt quite certain that Abfou’s scribbles were Arabic.”

  Lucia gave a little indulgent smile.

  “There didn’t seem much evidence for it from what you told me,” she said. “All you could be certain of was that they weren’t English.”

  Georgie left his planchette with Lucia, in case she would consent to sit again to-morrow, and hurried back, it is unnecessary to state, not to his own house, but to Daisy’s. Vittoria was worth two of Abfou, he thought . . . that communication about fire and water, that kindness to the suffering, and, hardly less, the keeping of loyalty alive. That made him feel rather guilty, for certainly loyalty to Lucia had flickered somewhat in consequence of her behaviour during the summer.

  He gave a short account of these remarkable proceedings (omitting the loyalty) to Daisy, who took a superior and scornful attitude.

  “Vittoria, indeed!” she said, “and Vecchia. Isn’t that Lucia all over, lugging in easy Italian like that? And Pug and the angry old lady. Glorifying herself, I call it. Why, that wasn’t even subconscious: her mind was full of it.”

  “But how about the fire and water?” asked Georgie. “It does apply to the damp in the Museum and the oil-stoves.”

  Daisy knew that her position as priestess of Abfou was tottering. It was true that she had not celebrated the mysteries of late, for Riseholme (and she) had got rather tired of Abfou, but it was gall and wormwood to think that Lucia should steal (steal was the word) her invention and bring it out under the patronage of Vittoria as something quite new.

  “A pure fluke,” said Daisy. “If she’d written mutton and music, you would have found some interpretation for it. Such far-fetched nonsense!”

  Georgie was getting rather heated. He remembered how when Abfou had written ‘death’ it was held to apply to the mulberry-tree which Daisy believed she had killed by amateur root-pruning, so if it came to talking about far-fetched nonsense, he could have something to say. Besides, the mulberry-tree hadn’t died at all, so that if Abfou meant that he was wrong. But there was no good in indulging in recriminations with Daisy, not only for the sake of peace and quietness, but because Georgie could guess very well all she was feeling.

  “But she didn’t write about mutton and music,” he observed, “so we needn’t discuss that. Then there was moonlight. I don’t know what that means.”

  “I should call it moonshine,” said Daisy brightly.

  “Well, it wrote moonlight,” said Georgie. “Of course there’s the Moonlight Sonata which might have been in Lucia’s mind, but it’s all curious. And I believe Lucia was in a condition of light hypnosis—”

  “Light fiddlesticks!” said Daisy. . . . (Why hadn’t she thought of going into a condition of light hypnosis when she was Abfouing? So much more impressive!) “We can all shut our eyes and droop our heads.”

  “Well, I think it was light hypnosis,” said Georgie firmly. “It was very curious to see. I hope she’ll consent to sit again. She didn’t much want to.”

  Daisy profoundly hoped that Lucia would not consent to sit again, for she felt Abfouism slipping out of her fingers. In any case, she would instantly resuscitate Abfou, for Vittoria shouldn’t have it all her own way. She got up.

  “Georgie, why shouldn’t we see if Abfou has anything to say about it?” she asked. “After all, Abfou told us to make a museum, and that hasn’t turned out so badly. Abfou was practical; what he suggested led to something.”

  Though the notion that Daisy had thought of the museum and pushed flitted through George’s mind, there was something in what she said, for certainly Abfou had w
ritten museum (if it wasn’t ‘mouse’) and there was the Museum which had turned out so profitably for the Committee.

  “We might try,” he said.

  Daisy instantly got out her planchette, which sadly wanted dusting, and it began to move almost as soon as they laid their hands on it: Abfou was in a rather inartistic hurry. And it really wasn’t very wise of Daisy to close her eyes and snort: it was indeed light fiddlesticks to do that. It was a sheer unconvincing plagiarism from Lucia, and his distrust of Daisy and of Abfou immeasurably deepened. Furiously the pencil scribbled, going off the paper occasionally and writing on the table till Georgie could insert the paper under it: it was evident that Abfou was very indignant about something, and there was no need to inquire what that was. For some time the writing seemed to feel to Georgie like Arabic, but presently the pencil slowed down, and he thought some English was coming through. Finally Abfou gave a great scrawl, as he usually did when the message was complete, and Daisy looked dreamily up.

  “Anything?” she said.

  “It’s been writing hard,” said Georgie.

  They examined the script. It began, as he had expected, with quantities of Arabic, and then (as he had expected) dropped into English, which was quite legible.

  “Beware of charlatans,” wrote Abfou, “beware of Southern charlatans. All spirits are not true and faithful like Abfou, who instituted your Museum. False guides deceive. A warning from Abfou.”

  “Well, if that isn’t convincing, I don’t know what is,” said Daisy.

  Georgie thought it convincing too.

  The din of battle began to rise. It was known that very evening, for Colonel and Mrs. Boucher dined with Georgie, that he and Lucia (for Georgie did not give all the credit to Lucia) had received that remarkable message from Vittoria about fire and water and the dog and the angry old woman, and it was agreed that Abfou cut a very poor figure, and had a jealous temper. Why hadn’t Abfou done something better than merely warn them against Southern Charlatans?

  “If it comes to that,” said Mrs. Boucher, “Egypt is in the south, and charlatans can come from Egypt as much as from Italy. Fire and water! Very remarkable. There’s the water there now, plenty of it, and the fire will be there to-morrow. I must get out my planchette again, for I put it away. I got sick of writing nothing but Arabic, even if it was Arabic. I call it very strange. And not a word about golf from Vittoria. I consider that’s most important. If Lucia had been pushing, she’d have written about her golf with Daisy. Abfou and Vittoria! I wonder which will win.”