She kissed the tips of her fingers in a manner so hopelessly final that there was nothing to do but go away.
Then, with poor generalship, Lucia altered her tactics, and went up to the village green, where Piggy was telling Georgie about the script signed Annabel. This was repeated again for Lucia's benefit.
‘Wasn't it too lovely?’ said Piggy. ‘So Annabel's my guide, and she writes a hand quite unlike mine.’
Lucia gave a little scream, and put her fingers to her ears.
‘Gracious me!’ she said. ‘What has come over Riseholme? Wherever I go I hear nothing but talk of séances, and spirits, and automatic writing. Such a pack of nonsense, my dear Piggy. I wonder at a sensible girl like you.’
Mrs Weston, propelled by the Colonel, whirled up in her bath-chair.
‘The “Palmist's Manual” is too wonderful,’ she said, ‘and Jacob and I sat up over it till I don't know what hour. There's a break in his line of life, just at the right place, when he was so ill in Egypt, which is most remarkable, and when Tommy Luton brought round my bath-chair this morning – I had it at the garden-door, because the gravel's just laid at my frontdoor, and the wheels sink so far into it – “Tommy,” I said, “let me look at your hand a moment,” and there, on his line of fate, was that little cross that means a bereavement. It came just right, didn't it, Jacob? when he was thirteen, for he's fourteen this year, and Mrs Luton died just a year ago. Of course, I didn't tell Tommy that, for I only told him to wash his hands, but it was most curious. And has your planchette come yet, Mr Georgie? I shall be most curious to see what it writes, so if you've got an evening free any night soon just come round for a bit of dinner, and we'll make an evening of it, with table-turning, and planchette and palmistry. Now tell me all about the séance the first night. I wish I could have been present at a real séance, but of course Mrs Quantock can't find room for everybody, and I'm sure it was most kind of her to let the Colonel and me come in yesterday afternoon. We were thrilled with it, and who knows but that the Princess didn't write the “Palmist's Manual”, for on the title-page it say it's by “P.”, and that might be Popoffski as easily as not or perhaps Princess.’
This allusion to there not being room for everybody was agony to Lucia. She laughed in her most silvery manner.
‘Or perhaps Pepino,’ she said. ‘I must ask mio caro if he wrote it. Or does it stand for Pillson? Georgino, are you the author of the “Palmist's Manual”! Ecco! I believe it was you.’
This was not quite wise, for no one detested irony more than Mrs Weston, or was sharper to detect it. Lucia should never have been ironical just then, nor, indeed, have dropped into Italian.
‘No!’ she said, ‘I'm sure it was neither il Signor Pepino nor il Signor Pillson who wrote it. I believe it was the Principessa. So ecco! And did we not have a delicious evening at Miss Bracely's the other night? Such lovely singing, and so interesting to know that Signor Cortese made it all up. And those lovely words, for though I didn't understand much of them, they sounded so exquisite. And fancy Miss Bracely talking Italian so beautifully when we none of us knew she talked it at all.’
Mrs Weston's amiable face was crimson with suppressed emotion, of which these few words were only the most insignificant leakage, and a very awkward pause succeeded, which was luckily broken by everybody beginning to talk again very fast and brightly. Then Mrs Weston's bath-chair scudded away, Piggy slipped across to the stocks where Goosie was sitting with a large sheet of foolscap, in case her hand twitched for automatic script, and Lucia turned to Georgie, who alone was left.
‘Poor Daisy!’ she said. ‘I dropped in just now, and really I found her very odd and strange. What with her crazes for Christian Science, and Uric Acid and Gurus and Mediums, one wonders if she is quite sane. So sad! I should be dreadfully sorry if she had some mental collapse: that sort of thing is always so painful. But I know of a first-rate place for rest-cures: I think it would be wise if I just casually dropped the name of it to Mr Robert, in case. And this last craze seems so terribly infectious. Fancy Mrs Weston studying palmistry! It is too comical but I hope I did not hurt her feelings by suggesting that Pepino and you wrote the Manual. It is dangerous to make little jokes to poor Mrs Weston.’
Georgie quite agreed with that, but did not think it necessary to say in what sense he agreed with it. Every day now Lucia was pouring floods of light on a quite new side of her character, which had been undeveloped, like the print from some photographic plate lying in the dark, so long as she was undisputed mistress of Riseholme. But, so it struck him now, since the advent of Olga she had shown a critical, ironical standpoint, which previously she had reserved for Londoners. At every turn she had to criticize and condemn where once she would only have praised. So few months ago, there had been that marvellous Hitum garden-party, when Olga had sung, long after Lady Ambermere had gone away. That was her garden-party; the splendour and success of it had been hers, and no one had been allowed to forget that until Olga came back again. But the moment that happened, and she began to sing on her own account (which after all, so Georgie thought, she had a perfect right to do), the whole aspect of affairs was changed. She romped, and Riseholme did not like romps: she sang in church, and that was theatrical: she gave a party with the Spanish Quartet, and Brinton was publicly credited by Lucia with the performance. Then on the top had come Mrs Quantock and her Princess, and, lo! it would be kind to remember the name of an establishment for rest-cures, in the hope of saving poor Daisy's sanity. Then again Colonel Boucher and Mrs Weston were intending to get married, and consulted a Palmist's Manual, so they, too, helped to develop the print that had lain so long in the dark.
‘Poor thing!’ said Lucia, ‘it is dreadful to have no sense of humour, and I'm sure I hope that Colonel Boucher will thoroughly understand that she has none before he speaks the fatal words. But then he has none either, and I have often noticed that two people without any sense of humour find each other most witty and amusing. A sense of humour, I expect, is not a very common gift; Miss Bracely has none at all, for I do not call romping humour. And as for poor Daisy, what can rival her solemnity in sitting night after night round a table with someone who may or may not be a Russian princess – Russia, of course, is a very large place, and one does not know how many princesses there may be there – and thrilling over a pot of luminous paint, or a false nose, and calling it Amadeo, the friend of Dante?’
This was too much for Georgie.
‘But you asked Mrs Quantock and the Princess to dine with you,’ he said, ‘and hoped there would be a séance afterwards. You wouldn't have done that if you thought it was only a false nose and a pot of luminous paint.’
‘I may have been impulsive,’ said Lucia, speaking very rapidly. ‘I daresay I am impulsive, and if my impulses lie in the direction of extending such poor hospitality as I can offer to my friends, and their friends, I am not ashamed of them. Far otherwise. But when I see and observe the awful effects of this so-called spiritualism on people whom I should have thought sensible and well-balanced – I do not include poor dear Daisy among them – then I am only thankful that my impulses did not happen to lead me into countenancing such piffle, as your sister so truly observed about poor Daisy's Guru.’
They had come opposite Georgie's house, and suddenly his drawing-room window was thrown open. Olga's head looked out.
‘Don't have a fit, Georgie, to find me here, she said. ‘Good morning, Mrs Lucas: you were behind the mulberry, and I didn't see you. But something's happened to my kitchen range, and I can't have lunch at home. Do give me some. I've brought my crystal, and we'll gaze and gaze. I can see nothing at present except my own nose and the window. Are you psychical, Mrs Lucas?’
This was the last straw: all Lucia's grievances flocked together like swallows for their flight, and on the top came this open annexation of Georgie. There was Olga, sitting in his window, all unasked, and demanding lunch, with her silly, ridiculous crystal in her hand, wondering if Lucia was psychical.
/> The silver laugh was a little shrill. It started a full tone above its normal pitch.
‘No, dear Miss Bracely,’ she said. ‘I am afraid I am much too commonplace and matter-of-fact to care about such things. It is a great loss, I know, and deprives me of the pleasant society of Russian princesses. But we are all made differently: that is very lucky. I must get home, Georgie.’
It certainly seemed very lucky that everyone was not precisely like Lucia at that moment, or there would have been quarrelling.
She walked quickly off, and Georgie entered his house. Lucia had really been remarkably rude, and, if allusion was made to it, he was ready to confess that she seemed a little worried. Friendship would allow that, and candour demanded it. But no allusion of any sort was made. There was a certain flush on Olga's face, and she explained that she had been sitting over the fire.
The Princess's visit came to an end next day, and all the world knew that she was going back to London by the 11.00 a.m. express. Lady Ambermere was quite aware of it, and drove in with Pug and Miss Lyall, meaning to give her a lift to the station, leaving Mrs Quantock, if she wanted to see her guest off, to follow in the fly which no doubt had been ordered. But Daisy had no intention of permitting this sort of thing, and drove calmly along with her dear friend in Georgie's motor, leaving the baffled Lady Ambermere to follow or not as she liked. She did like, though not much, and found herself on the platform among a perfect crowd of Riseholmites who had strolled down to the station on this lovely morning to see if parcels had come. Lady Ambermere took very little notice of them, but managed that Pug should give his paw to the Princess as she took her seat, and waved her hand to Mrs Quantock's dear friend, as the train slid out of the station.
‘The late lord had some Russian relations,’ she said majestically. ‘How did you get to know her?’
‘I met her at Tsarkoe Selo,’ was on the tip of Mrs Quantock's tongue, but she was afraid that Lady Ambermere might not understand, and ask her when she had been there. It was grievous work making jokes to Lady Ambermere…
The train sped on to London, and the Princess opened the envelope which her hostess had given her, and found that that was all right. Her hostess had also provided her with an admirable lunch, which her secretary took out of a Gladstone bag. When that was finished, she wanted her cigarettes, and as she looked for these, and even after she had found them, she continued to search for something else. There was the music box there, and some curious pieces of elastic, and the violin was in its case, and there was a white mask. But she still continued to search…
About the same time as she gave up the search, Mrs Quantock wandered upstairs to the Princess's room. A less highly vitalized nature than hers would have been in a stupor of content, but she was more in a frenzy of content than a stupor. How fine that frenzy was may be judged from the fact that perhaps the smallest ingredient in it was her utter defeat of Lucia. She cared comparatively little for that glorious achievement, and she was not sure that when her dear friend came back again, as she had arranged to do on her next holiday, that she would not ask Lucia to come to a séance. Indeed she had little but pity for the vanquished, so great were the spoils. Never had Rise-holme risen to such a pitch of enthusiasm, and with good cause had it done so now, for of all the wonderful and exciting things that had ever happened there these séances were the most delirious. And, better even than the excitement of Riseholme, was the cause of its excitement, for spiritualism and the truth of inexplicable psychic phenomena had flashed upon them all. Tableaux, romps, Yoga, the ‘Moonlight Sonata’, Shakespeare, Christian Science, Olga herself, Uric Acid, Elizabethan furniture, the engagement of Colonel Boucher and Mrs Weston, all these tremendous interests had paled like fire in the sunlight before the revelation that had now dawned. By practice and patience, by zealous concentration on crystals and palms, by the waiting for automatic script to develop, you attained to the highest mysteries, and could evoke Cardinal Newman, or Pocky…
There was the bed in which the Sibyl had slept: there was the fresh vase of flowers, difficult to procure in November, but still attainable, which she loved to have standing near her. There was the chest of drawers in which she had put her clothes, and Mrs Quantock pulled them open one by one, finding fresh emanations and vibrations everywhere. The lowest one stuck a little, and she had to use force to it.
The smile was struck from her face, as it flew open. Inside it were billows of the finest possible muslin. Fold after fold of it she drew out, and with it there came a pair of false eye-brows. She recognized them at once as being Amadeo's. The muslin belonged to Pocky as well.
She needed but a moment's concentrated thought, and in swift succession rejected two courses of action that suggested themselves. The first was to use the muslin herself: it would help in summer garments for years. The chief reason against that was that she was a little old for muslin. The second course was to send the whole paraphernalia back to her dear friend, with or without comment. But that would be tantamount to a direct accusation of fraud. Never any more, if she did that, could she dispense her dear friend to Riseholme like an expensive drug. She would not so utterly burn her boats. There remained only one judicious course of action, and she got to work.
It had been a cold morning, clear and frosty, and she had caused a good fire to be lit in the Princess's bedroom for her to dress by. It still prospered in the grate, and Mrs Quantock, having shut the door and locked it, put on to it the false eyebrows, which as they turned to ash, flew up the chimney. Then she fed it with muslin: yards and yards of muslin she poured on to it; never had there been so much muslin, nor any so exquisitely fine. It went to her heart to burn it, but this was no time for minor considerations: every atom of that evidence must be purged by fire. It was impossible that the Princess should write to her dear friend and say that she had left some eye-brows and a hundred yards of finest muslin behind her, for, knowing what she did, it would be to her interest as well as Mrs Quantock's that those properties should vanish as if they had never been. Up the chimney in sheets of flame went this delightful fabric: sometimes it roared there, as if it had set the chimney on fire, and she had to pause, shielding her scorched face, until the hollow rumbling had died down. But at last the holocaust was over, and she unlocked the door again. No one knew but she, and no one should ever know. The Guru had turned out to be a curry-cook, but no intruding Hermy had been here this time. As long as crystals fascinated and automatic writing flourished, the secret of the muslin and the eyebrows should repose in one bosom alone. All Riseholme had been electrified by spiritualism, and, even now, the séances had been cheap at the price. The only insulated bit of Rise-holme was Lucia, and luckily she had been permitted no lot or part in those manifestations.
She had hardly got downstairs when Robert came in from the green, where he had been recounting the experiences of the last séance.
‘Looked as if there was a chimney on fire,’ he said. ‘I wish it was the kitchen chimney. Then, perhaps, the beef mightn't be so raw as it was yesterday.’
Thus is comedy intertwined with tragedy!
14
Georgie was very busily engaged during the first weeks of December on a water-colour sketch of Olga sitting at her piano and singing. The difficulty of it was such that at times he almost despaired of accomplishing it, for the problem of how to draw her face with her mouth wide open and yet retain the likeness seemed almost insoluble. Often he sat in front of his looking-glass with his mouth open, and diligently drew his own face, in order to arrive at the principles of the changes of line which took place. Certainly the shape of a person's face when his mouth was wide open altered so completely that you would have thought him quite unrecognizable, however skilfully the artist reproduced his elongated countenance, and yet Georgie could easily recognize that face in the glass as his. Forehead, eyes and cheek-bones alone retained their wonted aspect: even the nose seemed to lengthen if you opened your mouth very wide… Then how, again, was he to indicate that she was singin
g and not yawning or preparing a sneeze? His most successful sketch at present looked precisely as if she was yawning, and made Georgie's jaws long to yawn too. Perhaps the shape of the mouth in the two positions was really the same, and it was only the sound that led you to suppose that an open-mouthed person was singing. Possibly the piano would supply the necessary suggestion: Olga would not sit down at the piano merely to yawn or sneeze, for she could do that anywhere.
Then a brilliant idea struck him: he would introduce a shaded lamp standing on the piano, and thus her face would be in red shadow. Naturally this entailed fresh problems with regard to light, but light seemed to present less difficulty than likeness. Besides, he could make her dress and the keys of the piano very like indeed. But when he came to painting again he despaired. There must be red shadow on her face, and yellow light on her hands and on her green dress, and presently the whole thing looked not so much like Olga singing by lamplight, as a lobster salad spread out in the sunlight. The more he painted, the more vividly did the lettuce leaves and the dressing and the lobster emerge from the paper. So he took away the lamp, and shut Olga's mouth, and there she would be at her piano just going to sing.
These artistic agonies had rewards which more than compensated for them, for regularly now he took his drawing-board and his paint-box across to her house, and sat with her while she practised. There were none of love's lilies lonely or yawning York now, for she was very busy learning her part in Lucrezia, spending a solid two hours at it every morning, and Georgie began to perceive what sort of work it implied to produce the spontaneous ease with which Brünnhilde hailed the sun. More astounding, too, was the fact that this mere learning of notes was but the preliminary to what she called ‘real work’. By and by, when she had got through the mere mechanical part of it, she would have to study… Then when her practice was over, she would indulgently sit with her head in profile against a dark background, and Georgie would suck one end of his brush and bite the other, and wonder whether he would ever produce anything which he could dare offer her. By professional poring on her face, he grew not to admire only but to adore it, by daily contact with her there began to dawn on him the April-mind which illuminated it.