“Aggie dear, as soon as you get home, put down Wednesday for dining with me,” she said, “and if there’s an engagement there already, as there’s sure to be, cross it out and have pseudo-influenza. Marcelle—Marcelle Periscope is coming, but I didn’t ask the lion-cub. A lion-cub: so quaint of him—and who else was there last night? Dear me, I get so mixed up with all the people one runs across.”
Lucia, of course, never got mixed up at all: there was no one so clear-headed, but she had to spin things out a little, for Pepino was rather late ringing up. The coffee-equipage had been set before her, and she kept drawing away the spirit-lamp in an absent manner just before it boiled, for they must still be sitting in the dining-room when he rang up. But even as she lamented her muddled memory, the tinkle of the telephone bell sounded. She rapidly rehearsed in her mind what she was going to say.
“Ah, that telephone,” she said, rising hastily, so as to get to it before one of the servants came back. “I often tell Pepino I shall cut it out of the house, for one never gets a moment’s peace. Yes, yes, who is it?”
Lucia listened for a second, and then gave a curtsey.
“Oh, is it you, ma’am?” she said, holding the mouthpiece a little obliquely. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Lucas.”
A rather gruff noise, clearly Pepino’s voice, came from the instrument, but she trusted it was inaudible to the others, and she soon broke in again talking very rapidly.
“Oh, that is kind of you, your Highness,” she said. “It would be too delightful. To-morrow: charmed. Delighted.”
She replaced the mouthpiece, and instantly began to talk again from the point at which she had left off.
“Yes, and of course Herbert Alton was there,” she said. “His show opens in a fortnight, and how we shall all meet there at the private view and laugh at each other’s caricatures! What is it that Rousseau—is it Rousseau?—says, about our not being wholly grieved at the misfortunes of our friends? So true! Bertie is rather wicked sometimes though, but still one forgives him everything. Ah, the coffee is boiling at last.”
Pepino, as Lucia had foreseen, rang up again almost immediately, and she told him he had missed the most charming little lunch party, because he would go to his club. Her guests, of course, were burning to know to whom she had curtsied, but Lucia gave no information on the point. Adele Brixton and Aggie presently went off to a matinee, but Stephen remained behind. That looked rather well, Lucia thought, for she had noticed that often a handsome and tolerably young man lingered with the hostess when other guests had gone. There was something rather chic about it; if it happened very constantly, or if at another house they came together or went away together, people would begin to talk, quite pleasantly of course, about his devotion to her. Georgie had been just such a cavaliere servente. Stephen, for his part, was quite unconscious of any such scintillations in Lucia’s mind: he merely knew that it was certainly convenient for an unattached man to have a very pleasant house always to go to, where he would be sure of hearing things that interested Hermione.
“Delicious little lunch party,” he said. “What a charming woman Lady Brixton is.”
“Dear Adele,” said Lucia dreamily. “Charming, isn’t she? How pleased she was at the thought of meeting Alf! Do look in after dinner that night, Stephen. I wish I could ask you to dine, but I expect to be crammed as it is. Dine on Wednesday, though: let me see, Marcelle comes that night. What a rush next week will be!”
Stephen waited for her to allude to the voice to which she had curtsied, but he waited in vain.
CHAPTER VII
This delicious little luncheon-party had violently excited Adele Brixton: she was thrilled to the marrow at Lucia’s curtsey to the telephone.
“My dear, she’s marvellous,” she said to Aggie. “She’s a study. She’s cosmic. The telephone, the curtsey! I’ve never seen the like. But why in the name of wonder didn’t she tell us who the Highness was? She wasn’t shy of talking about the other folk she’d met. Alf and Marcelle and Marcia and Bertie. But she made a mistake over Bertie. She shouldn’t have said ‘Bertie.’ I’ve known Herbert Alton for years, and never has anybody called him anything but Herbert. ‘Bertie’ was a mistake, but don’t tell her. I adore your Lucia. She’ll go far, mark my words, and I bet you she’s talking of me as Adele this moment. Don’t you see how wonderful she is? I’ve been a climber myself and I know. But I was a snail compared to her.”
Aggie Sandeman was rather vexed at not being asked to the Alf party.
“You needn’t tell me how wonderful she is,” she observed with some asperity. “It’s not two months since she came to London first, and she didn’t know a soul. She dined with me the first night she came up, and since then she has annexed every single person she met at my house.”
“She would,” said Adele appreciatively. “And who was the man who looked as if he had been labelled ‘Man’ by mistake when he was born, and ought to have been labelled ‘Lady’? I never saw such a perfect lady, though I only know him as Stephen at present. She just said, ‘Stephen, do you know Lady Brixton?’”
“Stephen Merriall,” said Aggie. “Just one of the men who go out to tea every day—one of the unattached.”
“Well then, she’s going to attach him,” said Adele. “Dear me, aren’t I poisonous, when I’m going to her house to meet Alf next week! But I don’t feel poisonous; I feel wildly interested: I adore her. Here we are at the theatre: what a bore! And there’s Tony Limpsfield. Tony, come and help me out. We’ve been lunching with the most marvellous—”
“I expect you mean Lucia,” said Tony. “I spent Sunday with her at Riseholme.”
“She curtsied to the telephone,” began Adele.
“Who was at the other end?” asked Tony eagerly.
“That’s what she didn’t say,” said Adele.
“Why not?” asked Tony.
Adele stepped briskly out of her car, followed by Aggie.
“I can’t make out,” she said. “Oh, do you know Mrs. Sandeman?”
“Yes, of course,” said Tony. “And it couldn’t have been Princess Isabel.”
“Why not? She met her at Marcia’s last night.”
“Yes, but the Princess fled from her. She fled from her at Riseholme too, and said she would never go to her house. It can’t have been she. But she got hold of that boxer—”
“Alf Watson,” said Adele. “She called him Alf, and I’m going to meet him at her house on Thursday.”
“Then it’s very unkind of you to crab her, Adele,” said Tony.
“I’m not: I’m simply wildly interested. Anyhow, what about you? You spent a Sunday with her at Riseholme.”
“And she calls you Tony,” said Aggie vituperatively, still thinking about the Alf party.
“No, does she really?” said Tony. “But after all, I call her Lucia when she’s not there. The bell’s gone, by the way: the curtain will be up.”
Adele hurried in.
“Come to my box, Tony,” she said, “after the first act. I haven’t been so interested in anything for years.”
Adele paid no attention whatever to the gloomy play of Tchekov’s. Her whole mind was concentrated on Lucia, and soon she leaned across to Aggie, and whispered: “I believe it was Pepino who rang her up.”
Aggie knitted her brows for a moment.
“Couldn’t have been,” she said. “He rang her up directly afterwards.”
Adele’s face fell. Not being able to think as far ahead as Lucia she didn’t see the answer to that, and relapsed into Lucian meditation, till the moment the curtain fell, when Tony Limpsfield slid into their box.
“I don’t know what the play has been about,” he said, “but I must tell you why she was at Marcia’s last night. Some women chucked Marcia during the afternoon and made her thirteen—”
“Marcia would like that,” said Aggie.
Tony took no notice of this silly joke.
“So she rang up everybody in town—” he continued.
“Except m
e,” said Aggie bitterly.
“Oh, never mind that,” said Tony. “She rang up everybody, and couldn’t get hold of anyone. Then she rang up Lucia.”
“Who instantly said she was disengaged, and rang me up to go to the theatre with Pepino,” said Aggie. “I suspected something of the sort, but I wanted to see the play, and I wasn’t going to cut off my nose to spite Lucia’s face.”
“Besides, she would have got someone else, or sent Pepino to the play alone,” said Tony. “And you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick, Aggie. Nobody wants to spite Lucia. We all want her to have the most glorious time.”
“Aggie’s vexed because she thinks she invented Lucia,” observed Adele. “That’s the wrong attitude altogether. Tell me about Pep.”
“Simply nothing to say about him,” said Tony. “He has trousers and a hat, and a telescope on the roof at Riseholme, and when you talk to him you see he remembers what the leading articles in The Times said that morning. Don’t introduce irrelevant matters, Adele.”
“But husbands are relevant—all but mine,” said Adele. “Part of the picture. And what about Stephen?”
“Oh, you always see him handing buns at tea-parties. He’s irrelevant too.”
“He might not be if her husband is,” said Adele.
Tony exploded with laughter.
“You are off the track,” he said. “You’ll get nowhere if you attempt to smirch Lucia’s character. How could she have time for a lover to begin with? And you misunderstand her altogether, if you think that.”
“It would be frightfully picturesque,” said Adele.
“No, it would spoil it altogether… Oh, there’s this stupid play beginning again… Gracious heavens, look there!”
They followed his finger, and saw Lucia followed by Stephen coming up the central aisle of the stalls to two places in the front row. Just as she reached her place she turned round to survey the house, and caught sight of them. Then the lights were lowered, and her face slid into darkness.
This little colloquy in Adele’s box was really the foundation of the secret society of the Luciaphils, and the membership of the Luciaphils began swiftly to increase. Aggie Sandeman was scarcely eligible, for complete goodwill towards Lucia was a sine qua non of membership, and there was in her mind a certain asperity when she thought that it was she who had given Lucia her gambit, and that already she was beginning to be relegated to second circles in Lucia’s scale of social precedence. It was true that she had been asked to dine to meet Marcelle Periscope, but the party to meet Alf and his flute was clearly the smarter of the two. Adele, however, and Tony Limpsfield were real members, so too, when she came up a few days later, was Olga. Marcia Whitby was another who greedily followed her career, and such as these, whenever they met, gave eager news to each other about it. There was, of course, another camp, consisting of those whom Lucia bombarded with pleasant invitations, but who (at present) firmly refused them. They professed not to know her and not to take the slightest interest in her, which showed, as Adele said, a deplorable narrowness of mind. Types and striking characters like Lucia, who pursued undaunted and indefatigable their aim in life, were rare, and when they occurred should be studied with reverent affection… Sometimes one of the old and original members of the Luciaphils discovered others, and if when Lucia’s name was mentioned an eager and a kindly light shone in their eyes, and they said in a hushed whisper “Did you hear who was there on Thursday?” they thus disclosed themselves as Luciaphils… All this was gradual, but the movement went steadily on, keeping pace with her astonishing career, for the days were few on which some gratifying achievement was not recorded in the veracious columns of Hermione.
Lucia was driving home one afternoon after a day passed in the Divorce Court. She had made the acquaintance of the President not long ago, and had asked him to dinner on the evening before this trial, which was the talk of the town, was to begin, and at the third attempt had got him to give her a seat in the Court. The trial had already lasted three days, and really no one seemed to think about anything else, and the papers had been full of soulful and surprising evidence. Certainly, Babs Shyton, the lady whose husband wanted to get rid of her, had written very odd letters to Woof-dog, otherwise known as Lord Middlesex, and he to her: Lucia could not imagine writing to anybody like that, and she would have been very much surprised if anyone had written to her as Woof-dog wrote to Babs. But as the trial went on, Lucia found herself growing warm with sympathy for Babs. Her husband, Colonel Shyton, must have been an impossible person to live with, for sometimes he would lie in bed all day, get up in the evening, have breakfast at 8 p.m., lunch a little after midnight, and dine heavily at 8.30 in the morning. Surely with a husband like that, any woman would want some sort of a Woof-dog to take care of her. Both Babs and he, in the extracts from the remarkable correspondence between them which were read out in court, alluded to Colonel Shyton as the S.P., which Babs (amid loud laughter) frankly confessed meant Stinkpot; and Babs had certainly written to Woof-dog to say that she was in bed and very sleepy and cross, but wished that Woof-dog was thumping his tail on the hearthrug. That was indiscreet, but there was nothing incriminating about it, and as for the row of crosses which followed Babs’s signature, she explained quite frankly that they indicated that she was cross. There were roars of laughter again at this, and even the Judge wore a broad grin as he said that if there was any more disturbance he should clear the court. Babs had produced an excellent impression, in fact: she had looked so pretty and had answered so gaily, and the Woof-dog had been just as admirable, for he was a strong silent Englishman, and when he was asked whether he had ever kissed Babs she said “That’s a lie” in such a loud fierce voice that you felt that the jury had better believe him unless they all wanted to be knocked down. The verdict was expected next day, and Lucia meant to lose no time in asking Babs to dinner if it was in her favour.
The court had been very hot and airless, and Lucia directed her chauffeur to drive round the park before going home. She had asked one or two people to tea at five, and one or two more at half-past, but there was time for a turn first, and, diverting her mind from the special features of the case to the general features of such cases, she thought what an amazing and incomparable publicity they gave any woman. Of course, if the verdict went against her, such publicity would be extremely disagreeable, but, given that the jury decided that there was nothing against her, Lucia could imagine being almost envious of her. She did not actually want to be placed in such a situation herself, but certainly it would convey a notoriety that could scarcely be accomplished by years of patient effort. Babs would feel that there was not a single person in any gathering who did not know who she was, and all about her, and, if she was innocent, that would be a wholly delightful result. Naturally, Lucia only envied the outcome of such an experience, not the experience itself, for it would entail a miserable life with Pepino, and she felt sure that dinner at 8.30 in the morning would be highly indigestible, but it would be wonderful to be as well-known as Babs.
Another point that had struck her, both in the trial itself and in the torrents of talk that for the last few days had been poured out over the case, was the warm sympathy of the world in general with Babs, whether guilty or innocent. “The world always loves a lover,” thought Lucia, and Woof-dog thumping his tail on the rug by her bedroom fire was a beautiful image.
Her thoughts took a more personal turn. The idea of having a real lover was, of course, absolutely abhorrent to her whole nature, and besides, she did not know whom she could get. But the reputation of having a lover was a wholly different matter, presenting no such objections or difficulties, and most decidedly it gave a woman a certain cachet, if a man was always seen about with her and was supposed to be deeply devoted to her. The idea had occurred to her vaguely before, but now it took more definite shape, and as to her choice of this sort of lover, there was no difficulty about that. Hitherto, she had done nothing to encourage the notion, beyond having Stephen a
t the house a good deal, but now she saw herself assuming an air of devoted proprietorship of him; she could see herself talking to him in a corner, and even laying her hand on his sleeve, arriving with him at an evening party, and going away with him, for Pepino hated going out after dinner…
But caution was necessary in the first steps, for it would be hard to explain to Stephen what the proposed relationship was, and she could not imagine herself saying “We are going to pretend to be lovers, but we aren’t.” It would be quite dreadful if he misunderstood, and unexpectedly imprinted on her lips or even her hand a hot lascivious kiss, but up till now he certainly had not shown the smallest desire to do anything of the sort. She would never be able to see him again if he did that, and the world would probably say that he had dropped her. But she knew she couldn’t explain the proposed position to him and he would have to guess: she could only give him a lead and must trust to his intelligence, and to the absence in him of any unsuspected amorous proclivities. She would begin gently, anyhow, and have him to dinner every day that she was at home. And really it would be very pleasant for him, for she was entertaining a great deal during this next week or two, and if he only did not yield to one of those rash and turbulent impulses of the male, all would be well. Georgie, until (so Lucia put it to herself) Olga had come between them, had done it beautifully, and Stephen was rather like Georgie. As for herself, she knew she could trust her firm slow pulses never to beat wild measures for anybody.
She reached home to find that Adele had already arrived, and pausing only to tell her servant to ring up Stephen and ask him to come round at once, she went upstairs.
“Dearest Adele,” she said, “a million pardons. I have been in the Divorce Court all day. Too thrilled. Babs, dear Babs Shyton, was wonderful. They got nothing out of her at all—”
“No: Lord Middlesex has got everything out of her already,” observed Adele.