Books: Queen Lucia

E >> E. F. Benson >> Queen Lucia

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"My dear, you acted for the best," said he. "So did I when I didn't
tell you about 'Todd's News.' Secrecy even from each other was more
prudent, until it became impossible. And I think we should be wise to
let it be understood that we hear from the Princess now and then.
Perhaps in a few months she might even visit us again. It--it would be
humorous to be behind the scenes, so to speak, and observe the
credulity of the others."

Daisy broke into a broad grin.

"I will certainly ask dear Lucia to a seance, if we do," she said.
"Dear me! How late it is: there was such a long wait between the
tableaux. But we must keep our eyes on Georgie, and be careful how we
answer his impertinent questions. He is sure to ask some. About getting
that woman down again, Robert. It might be fool-hardy, for we've had an
escape, and shouldn't put our heads into the same noose again. On the
other hand, it would disarm suspicion for ever, if, after a few months,
I asked her to spend a few days of holiday here. You said it was a fine
only, not imprisonment?"

The week was a busy one: Georgie in particular never had a moment to
himself. The Hurst, so lately a desert, suddenly began to rejoice with
joy and singing and broke out into all manner of edifying gaieties.
Lucia, capricious queen, quite forgot all the vitriolic things she had
said to him, and gave him to understand that he was just as high in
favour as ever before, and he was as busy with his duties as ever he
had been. Whether he would have fallen into his old place so readily if
he had been a free agent, was a question that did not arise, for though
it was Lucia who employed him, it was Olga who drove him there. But he
had his consolation, for Lucia's noble forgiveness of all the
disloyalties against her, included Olga's as well, and out of all the
dinners and music parties, and recitations from Peppino's new book of
prose poems which was already in proof, and was read to select
audiences from end to end, there was none to which Olga was not bidden,
and none at which she failed to appear. Lucia even overlooked the fact
that she had sung in the carols on Christmas night, though she had
herself declared that it was the voice of the red-haired boy which was
so peculiarly painful to her. Georgie's picture of her (she never knew
that Olga had really commissioned it) hung at the side of the piano in
the music room, where the print of Beethoven had hung before, and it
gave her the acutest gratification. It represented her sitting, with
eyes cast down at her piano, and was indeed much on the same scheme as
the yet unfinished one of Olga, which had been postponed in its favour,
but there was no time for Georgie to think out another position, and
his hand was in with regard to the perspective of pianos. So there it
hung with its title, "The Moonlight Sonata," painted in gilt letters on
its frame, and Lucia, though she continued to say that he had made her
far, far too young, could not but consider that he had caught her
expression exactly....

So Riseholme flocked back to The Hurst like sheep that have been
astray, for it was certain to find Olga there, even as it had turned
there, deeply breathing, to the classes of the Guru. It had to sit
through the prose-poems of Peppino, it had to listen to the old, old
tunes and sigh at the end, but Olga mingled her sighs with theirs, and
often after a suitable pause Lucia would say winningly to Olga:

"One little song, Miss Bracely. Just a stanza? Or am I trespassing too
much on your good-nature? Where is your accompanist? I declare I am
jealous of him: I shall pop into his place some day! Georgino, Miss
Bracely is going to sing us something. Is not that a treat? Sh-sh,
please, ladies and gentlemen."

And she rustled to her place, and sat with the farthest-away expression
ever seen on mortal face, while she trespassed on Miss Bracely's
good-nature.

Then Georgie had the other picture to finish, which he hoped to get
ready in time to be a New Year's present, since Olga had insisted on
Lucia's being done first. He had certainly secured an admirable
likeness of her, and there was in it just all that his stippled, fussy
representation of Lucia lacked. "Bleak December" and "Yellow Daffodils"
and the rest of the series lacked it, too: for once he had done
something in the doing of which he had forgotten himself. It was by no
means a work of genius, for Georgie was not possessed of one grain of
that, and the talent it displayed was by no means of a high order, but
it had something of the naturalness of a flower that grew from the
earth which nourished it.

On the last day of the year he was putting a few final touches to it,
little high reflected lights on the black keys, little blacknesses of
shadow in the moulding of the panel behind his hand. He had finished
with her altogether, and now she sat in the window-seat, looking out,
and playing with the blind-tassel. He had been so much absorbed in his
work that he had scarcely noticed that she had been rather unusually
silent.

"I've got a piece of news for you," she said at length.

Georgie held his breath, as he drew a very thin line of body-colour
along the edge of Ab.

"No! What is it?" he said. "Is it about the Princess?"

Olga seemed to hail this as a diversion.

"Ah, let's talk about that for a minute," she said. "What you ought to
have done was to order another copy of 'Todd's News' at once."

"I know I ought, but I couldn't get one when I thought of it
afterwards. That was tarsome. But I feel sure there was something about
her in it."

"And you can't get anything out of the Quantocks?"

"No, though I've laid plenty of traps for them. There's an
understanding between them now. They both know something. When I lay a
trap, it isn't any use: they look at the trap, and then they look at
each other afterwards."

"What sort of traps?"

"Oh, anything. I say suddenly, 'What a bore it is that there are so
many frauds among mediums, especially paid ones.' You see, I don't
believe for a moment that these seances were held for nothing, though
we didn't pay for going to them. And then Robert says that he would
never trust a paid medium, and she looks at him approvingly, and says
'Dear Princess'! The other day--it was a very good trap--I said, 'Is it
true that the Princess is coming to stay with Lady Ambermere?' It
wasn't a lie: I only asked."

"And then?" said Olga.

"Robert gave an awful twitch, not a jump exactly, but a twitch. But she
was on the spot and said, 'Ah, that would be nice. I wonder if it's
true. The Princess didn't mention it in her last letter.' And then he
looked at her approvingly. There is something there, no one shall
convince me otherwise."

Olga suddenly burst out laughing.

"What's the matter?" asked Georgie.

"Oh, it's all so delicious!" she said. "I never knew before how
terribly interesting little things were. It's all wildly exciting, and
there are fifty things going on just as exciting. Is it all of you who
take such a tremendous interest in them that makes them so absorbing,
or is it that they are absorbing in themselves, and ordinary dull
people, not Riseholmites, don't see how exciting they are? Tommy
Luton's measles: the Quantocks' secret: Elizabeth's lover! And to think
that I believed I was coming to a backwater."

Georgie held up his picture and half closed his eyes. "I believe it's
finished," he said. "I shall have it framed, and put it in my
drawing-room."

This was a trap, and Olga fell into it.

"Yes, it will look nice there," she said. "Really, Georgie, it is very
clever of you."

He began washing his brushes.

"And what was your news?" he said.

She got up from her seat.

"I forgot all about it, with talking of the Quantocks' secret," she
said. "That just shows you: I completely forgot, Georgie. I've just
accepted an offer to sing in America, a four months' engagement, at
fifty thousand million pounds a night. A penny less, and I wouldn't
have gone. But I really can't refuse. It's all been very sudden, but
they want to produce Lucretia there before it appears in England. Then
I come back, and sing in London all the summer. Oh, me!"

There was dead silence, while Georgie dried his brushes.

"When do you go?" he asked.

"In about a fortnight."

"Oh," said he.

She moved down the room to the piano and shut it without speaking,
while he folded the paper round his finished picture.

"Why don't you come, too?" she said at length. "It would do you no end
of good, for you would get out of this darling two-penny place which
will all go inside a nut-shell. There are big things in the world,
Georgie: seas, continents, people, movements, emotions. I told my
Georgie I was going to ask you, and he thoroughly approves. We both
like you, you know. It would be lovely if you would come. Come for a
couple of months, anyhow: of course you'll be our guest, please."

The world, at that moment, had grown absolutely black to him, and it
was by that that he knew who, for him, was the light of it. He shook
his head.

"Why can't you come?" she said.

He looked at her straight in the face.

"Because I adore you," he said.

Chapter SIXTEEN

The glad word went round Riseholme one March morning that the earliest
flower in Perdita's garden was in bloom. The day was one of those
glories of the English spring-time, with large white clouds blown
across wide spaces of blue sky by the southwest wind, and with swift
shadows that bowled across the green below them. Parliament was in full
conclave that day, and in the elms the rooks were busy.

An awful flatness had succeeded Olga's departure. Riseholme naturally
took a good deal of credit for the tremendous success which had
attended the production of Lucretia, since it so rightly considered
that the real cradle of the opera was here, where she had tried it over
for the first time. Lucia seemed to remember it better than anybody,
for she remembered all sorts of things which no one else had the
faintest recollection of: how she had discussed music with Signor
Cortese, and he had asked her where she had her musical training. Such
a treat to talk Italian with a Roman--lingua Toscana in bocca
Romana--and what a wonderful evening it was. Poor Mrs Colonel
recollected very little of this, but Lucia had long been aware that
her memory was going sadly. After producing Lucretia in New York,
Olga had appeared in some of her old roles, notably in the part of
Brunnhilde, and Lucia was very reminiscent of that charming party of
Christmas Day at dear Georgino's, when they had the tableaux. Dear Olga
was so simple and unspoiled: she had come to Lucia afterwards, and asked
her to tell her how she had worked out her scheme of gestures in the
awakening, and Lucia had been very glad, very glad indeed to give her
a few hints. In fact, Lucia was quite herself: it was only her subjects
whom it had been a little hard to stir up. Georgie in particular had
been very listless and dull, and Lucia, for all her ingenuity, was at a
complete loss to find a reason for it.

But today the warm inflowing tide of spring seemed to renovate the
muddy flats, setting the weeds, that had lain dank and dispirited,
a-floating again on the return of the water. No one could quite resist
the magic of the season, and Georgie, who had intended out of mere
politeness to go to see the earliest of Perdita's stupid flowers
(having been warned of its epiphany by telephone from The Hurst) found,
when he set foot outside his house on that warm windy morning, that it
would be interesting to stroll across the green first, and see if there
was any news. All the news he had really cared about for the last two
months was news from America, of which he had a small packet done up in
a pink riband.

After getting rid of Piggy, he went to the newspaper shop, to get his
"Times," which most unaccountably had not arrived, and the sight of
"Todd's News" in its yellow cover stirred his drowsy interest. Not one
atom of light had ever been thrown on that extraordinary occurrence
when Robert bought the whole issue, and though Olga never failed to
enquire, he had not been able to give her the slightest additional
information. Occasionally he set a languid trap for one of the
Quantocks, but they never by any chance fell into it. The whole affair
must be classed with problems like the origin of evil, among the
insoluble mysteries of life.

It was possible to get letters by the second post an hour earlier than
the house-to-house delivery by calling at the office, and as Georgie
was waiting for his "Times," Mrs Quantock came hurrying out of the
post-office with a small packet in her hands, which she was opening as
she walked. She was so much absorbed by this that she did not see
Georgie at all, though she passed quite close to him, and soon after
shed a registered envelope. At that the "old familiar glamour" began to
steal over him again, and he found himself wondering with intensity
what it contained.

She was now some hundred yards in front of him, walking in the
direction of The Hurst, and there could be no doubt that she, too, was
on her way to see Perdita's first flower. He followed her going more
briskly than she and began to catch her up. Soon (this time by
accident, not in the manner in which, through eagerness she had
untidily cast the registered envelope away) she dropped a small paper,
and Georgie picked it up, meaning to give it her. It had printed matter
on the front of it, and was clearly a small pamphlet. He could not
possibly help seeing what that printed matter was, for it was in
capital letters:

INCREASE YOUR HEIGHT

Georgie quickened his step, and the old familiar glamour brightened
round him. As soon as he got within speaking distance, he called to
her, and turning round, "like a guilty thing surprised," a little box
flew out of her hand. As it fell the lid came off, and there was
scattered on the green grass a multitude of red lozenges. She gave a
cry of dismay.

"Oh! Mr Georgie, how you startled me" she said. "Do help me to pick
them up. Do you think the damp will have hurt them? Any news? I was so
wrapped up in what I was doing that I've spoken to nobody."

Georgie assisted in the recovery of the red lozenges.

"You dropped this as you walked," he said. "I picked it up in order to
give it you."

"Ah, that is kind, and did you see what it was?"

"I couldn't help seeing the outside," said Georgie.

She looked at him a moment, wondering what was the most prudent course.
If she said nothing more, he would probably tell everybody....

"Well, then I shall let you into the whole secret," she said. "It's the
most wonderful invention, and increases your height, whatever your age
is, from two to six inches. Fancy! There are some exercises you have to
do, rather like those Yoga ones, every morning, and you eat three
lozenges a day. Quite harmless they are, and then you soon begin to
shoot up. It sounds incredible, doesn't it? but there are so many
testimonials that I can't doubt it is genuine. Here's one of a man who
grew six inches. I saw it advertised in some paper, and sent for it.
Only a guinea! What fun when Robert begins to see that I am taller than
he is! But now not a word! Don't tell dear Lucia whatever you do. She
is half a head taller than I, and it would be no fun if everybody grew
from two to six inches. You may write for them, and I'll give you the
address, but you must tell nobody."

"Too wonderful" said Georgie. "I _shall_ watch you. Here we are.
Look, there's Perdita's flower. What a beauty!"

It was not necessary to press the mermaid's tail, for Lucia had seen
them from the music-room, and they heard her high heels clacking over
the polished floor of the hall.

"Listen! No more need of high heels!" said Mrs Quantock. "And I've got
something else to tell you. Lucia may hear that. Ah, dear Lucia, what a
wonderful Perdita-blossom!"

"Is it not?" said Lucia, blowing kisses to Georgie, and giving them to
Daisy. "That shows spring is here. _Primavera!_ And Peppino's
_piccolo libro_ comes out today. I should not be a bit surprised
if you each of you found a copy of it arrived before evening. Glorious!
It's glorious!"

Surely it was no wonder that Georgie's blood began to canter along his
arteries again. There had been very pleasant exciting years before now,
requiring for their fuel no more than was ready at this moment to keep
up the fire. Mrs Quantock was on tip-toe, so to speak, to increase her
height, Peppino was just delivered of a second of these vellum volumes
with seals and tapes outside, Mrs Weston was going to become Mrs
Colonel at the end of the week, and at the same hour and church
Elizabeth was going to become Mrs Atkinson. Had these things no savour,
because----

"How is 'oo?" said Georgie, with a sudden flush of the spring-time
through him. "Me vewy well, sank 'oo and me so want to read Peppino's
bookie-bookie."

"'Oo come in," said Lucia. "Evewybody come in. Now, who's got ickle bit
news?"

Mrs Quantock had been walking on her toes all across the hall, in
anticipation of the happy time when she would be from two to six inches
taller. As the animated pamphlet said, the world assumed a totally
different aspect when you were even two inches taller. She was quite
sorry to sit down.

"Is next week very full with you, dear Lucia?" she asked.

Lucia pressed her finger to her forehead.

"Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday," she began. "No, not Tuesday, I am doing
nothing on Tuesday. You want to be the death of me between you. Why?"

"I hope that my dear friend, Princess Popoffski, will be staying with
me" said Mrs Quantock. "Do get over your prejudice against
spiritualism, and give it a chance. Come to a seance on Tuesday. You,
too, of course, Georgie: I know better than to invite Lucia without
you."

Lucia put on the far-away look which she reserved for the masterpieces
of music, and for Georgie's hopeless devotion.

"Lovely! That will be lovely!" she said. "Most interesting! I shall
come with a perfectly open mind."

Georgie scarcely lamented the annihilation of a mystery. He must surely
have imagined the mystery, for it all collapsed like a card-house, if
the Princess was coming back. The seances had been most remarkable,
too; and he would have to get out his planchette again.

"And what's going to happen on Wednesday?" he asked Lucia. "All I know
is that I've not been asked. Me's offended."

"Ickle surprise," said Lucia. "You're not engaged that evening, are
you? Nor you, dear Daisy? That's lovely. Eight o'clock? No, I think a
quarter to. That will give us more time. I shan't tell you what it is."

Mrs Quantock, grasping her lozenges, wondered how much taller she would
be by then. As Lucia played to them, she drew a lozenge out of the box
and put it into her mouth, in order to begin growing at once. It tasted
rather bitter, but not unpleasantly so.

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