This little speech had been carefully prepared, for Lucia felt that if she announced the full extent of their plan, Riseholme would suffer a terrible blow. It must be broken to Riseholme by degrees: Riseholme must first be told that they were to be up in town for a week or two, pending the sale of the house. Subsequently Riseholme would hear that they were not going to sell the house.
She looked round to see how this section of Riseholme took it. A chorus of the emphatic ‘No’ burst from Georgie, Mrs. Quantock and Olga, who, of course, had fully discussed this disclosure already; even Robert, very busy with his dinner, said ‘No’ and went on gobbling.
“So sweet of you all to say ‘No,’” said Lucia, who know perfectly well that the emphatic interjection meant only surprise, and the desire to hear more, not the denial that such a thing was possible, “but there it is. Pepino and I have talked it over—non e vero, carissimo—and we feel that there is a sort of call to us to go to London. Dearest Aunt Amy, you know, and all her beautiful furniture! She never would have a stick of it sold, and that seems to point to the fact that she expected Pepino and me not to wholly desert the dear old family home. Aunt Amy was born there, eighty-three years ago.”
“My dear! How it takes one back!” said Georgie.
“Doesn’t it?” said Olga.
Lucia had now, so to speak, developed her full horsepower. Pepino’s presence stoked her, Robert was stoking himself and might be disregarded, while Olga and Georgie were hanging on her words.
“But it isn’t the past only that we are thinking of,” she said, “but the present and the future. Of course our spiritual home is here—like Lord Haldane and Germany—and oh, how much we have learned at Riseholme, its lovely seriousness and its gaiety, its culture, its absorption in all that is worthy in art and literature, its old customs, its simplicity.”
“Yes,” said Olga. (She had meant long ago to tell Lucia that she had taken a house in Brompton Square exactly opposite Lucia’s, but who could interrupt the splendour that was pouring out on them?) Lucia fumbled for a moment at the brooch containing Beethoven’s hair. She had a feeling that the pin had come undone. “Dear Miss Olga,” she said, “how good of you to take an interest, you with your great mission of melody in the world, in our little affairs! I am encouraged. Well, Pepino and I feel—don’t we? sposo mio—that now that this opportunity has come to us, of perhaps having a little salon in London, we ought to take it. There are modern movements in the world we really know nothing about. We want to educate ourselves. We want to know what the cosmopolitan mind is thinking about. Of course we’re old, but it is never too late to learn. How we shall treasure all we are lucky enough to glean, and bring it back to our dear Riseholme.”
There was a slight and muffled thud on the ground, and Lucia’s fingers went back where the brooch should have been.
“Georgino, my brooch, the Beethoven brooch,” she said; “it has fallen.”
Georgie stooped rather stiffly to pick it up: that work with the garden roller had found out his lumbar muscles. Olga rose.
“Too thrilling, Mrs. Lucas!” she said. “You must tell me much more. Shall we go? And how lovely for me: I have just taken a house in Brompton Square for the season.”
“No!” said Lucie. “Which?”
“Oh, one of the little ones,” said Olga. “Just opposite yours. Forty-two A.”
“Such dear little houses!” said Lucia. “I have a music-room. Always yours to practise in.”
“Capital good dinner,” said Robert, who had not spoken for a long time.
Lucia put an arm round Daisy Quantock’s ample waist, and thus tactfully avoided the question of precedence. Daisy, of course, was far, far the elder, but then Lucia was Lucia.
“Delicious indeed,” she said. “Georgie, bring the Beethoven with you.”
“And don’t be long,” said Olga.
Georgie had no use for the society of his own sex unless they were young, which made him feel young too, or much older than himself, which had the same result. But Pepino had an unpleasant habit of saying to him ‘When we come to our age’ (which was an unreasonable assumption of juvenility), and Robert of sipping port with the sound of many waters for an indefinite period. So when Georgie had let Robert have two good glasses, he broke up this symposium and trundled them away into the drawing-room, only pausing to snatch up his embroidery tambour, on which he was working at what had been originally intended for a bedspread, but was getting so lovely that he now thought of putting it when finished on the top of his piano. He noticed that Lucia had brought a portfolio of music, and peeping inside saw the morsel of Stravinski…
And then, as he came within range of the conversation of the ladies, he nearly fell down from sheer shock.
“Oh, but I adore it,” Lucia was saying. “One of the most marvellous inventions of modern times. Were we not saying so last night, Pepino? And Miss Olga is telling me that everyone in London has a listening-in apparatus. Pray turn it on, Miss Olga; it will be a treat to hear it! Ah, the Beethoven brooch: thank you, Georgie—mille grazie.”
Olga turned a handle or a screw or something, and there was a short pause: the next item presumably had already been announced. And then, wonder of wonders, there came from the trumpet the first bars of the Moonlight Sonata.
Now the Moonlight Sonata (especially the first movement of it) had an almost sacred significance in Riseholme. It was Lucia’s tune, much as God Save the King is the King’s tune. Whatever musical entertainment had been going on, it was certain that if Lucia was present she would sooner or later be easily induced to play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Astonished as everybody already was at her not only countenancing but even allowing this mechanism, so lately abhorred by her, to be set to work at all, it was infinitely more amazing that she should permit it to play Her tune. But there she was composing her face to her well-known Beethoven expression, leaning a little forward, with her chin in her hand, and her eyes wearing the far-away look from which the last chord would recall her. At the end of the first movement everybody gave the little sigh which was its due, and the wistful sadness faded from their faces, and Lucia, with a gesture, hushing all attempt at comment or applause, gave a gay little smile to show she knew what was coming next. The smile broadened, as the Scherzo began, into a little ripple of laughter, the hand which had supported her chin once more sought the Beethoven brooch, and she sat eager and joyful and alert, sometimes just shaking her head in wordless criticism, and once saying “Tut-tut” when the clarity of a run did not come up to her standard, till the sonata was finished.
“A treat,” she said at the end, “really most enjoyable. That dear old tune! I thought the first movement was a little hurried: Cortot, I remember, took it a little more slowly, and a little more legato, but it was very creditably played.”
Olga at the machine, was out of sight of Lucia, and during the performance Georgie noticed that she had glanced at the Sunday paper. And now when Lucia referred to Cortot, she hurriedly chucked it into a window-seat and changed the subject.
“I ought to have stopped it,” she said, “because we needn’t go to the wireless to hear that. Do show us what you mean, Mrs. Lucas, about the first movement.”
Lucia glided to the piano.
“Just a bar or two, shall I?” she said.
Everybody gave a sympathetic murmur, and they had the first movement over again.
“Only just my impression of how Cortot plays it,” she said. “It coincides with my own view of it.”
“Don’t move,” said Olga, and everybody murmured ‘Don’t,’ or ‘Please.’ Robert said ‘Please’ long after the others, because he was drowsy. But he wanted more music, because he wished to doze a little and not to talk.
“How you all work me!” said Lucia, running her hands up and down the piano with a butterfly touch. “London will be quite a rest after Riseholme. Pepino mio, my portfolio on the top of my cloak; would you?… Pepino insisted on my bringing some music: he would not
let me start without it.” (This was a piece of picturesqueness during Pepino’s absence: it would have been more accurate to say he was sent back for it, but less picturesque.) “Thank you, carissimo. A little morsel of Stravinski; Miss Olga, I am sure, knows it by heart, and I am terrified. Georgie, would you turn over?”
The morsel of Stravinski had improved immensely since Friday: it was still very odd, very modern, but not nearly so odd as when, a few days ago, Lucia had failed to observe the change of key. But it was strange to the true Riseholmite to hear the arch-priestess of Beethoven and the foe of all modern music, which she used to account sheer Bolshevism, producing these scrannel staccato tinklings that had so often made her wince. And yet it all fitted in with her approbation of the wireless and her borrowing of Georgie’s manual on Auction Bridge. It was not the morsel of Stravinski alone that Lucia was practising (the performance though really improved might still be called practice): it was modern life, modern ideas on which she was engaged preparatory to her descent on London. Though still in harbour at Riseholme, so to speak, it was generally felt that Lucia had cast off her cable, and was preparing to put to sea.
“Very pretty: I call that very pretty. Honk!” said Robert when the morsel was finished, “I call that music.”
“Dear Mr. Robert, how sweet of you,” said Lucia, wheeling round on the music-stool. “Now positively, I will not touch another note. But may we, might we, have another little tune on your wonderful wireless, Miss Olga! Such a treat! I shall certainly have one installed at Brompton Square, and listen to it while Pepino is doing his crossword puzzles. Pepino can think of nothing else now but Auction Bridge and crossword puzzles, and interrupts me in the middle of my practice to ask for an Athenian sculptor whose name begins with P and is of ten letters.”
“Ah, I’ve got it,” said Pepino, “Praxiteles.”
Lucia clapped her hands.
“Bravo,” she said. “We shall not sit up till morning again.”
There was a splendour in the ruthlessness with which Lucia bowled over, like ninepins, every article of her own Riseholme creed, which saw Bolshevism in all modern art, inanity in crossword puzzles and Bridge, and aimless vacuity in London… Immediately after the fresh tune on the wireless began, and most unfortunately, they came in for the funeral March of a Marionette. A spasm of pain crossed Lucia’s face, and Olga abruptly turned off this sad reminder of unavailing woe.
“Go on: I like that tune!” said the drowsy and thoughtless Robert, and a hurried buzz of conversation covered this melancholy coincidence.
It was already late, and Lucia rose to go.
“Delicious evening!” she said. “And lovely to think that we shall so soon be neighbours in London as well. My music-room always at your disposal. Are you coming, Georgie?”
“Not this minute,” said Georgie firmly.
Lucia was not quite accustomed to this, for Georgie usually left any party when she left. She put her head in the air as she swept by him, but then relented again.
“Dine to-morrow, then? We won’t have any music after this feast to-night,” said she forgetting that the feast had been almost completely of her own providing. “But perhaps little game of cut-throat, you and Pepino and me.”
“Delightful,” said Georgie.
Olga hurried back after seeing off her other guests.
“Oh, Georgie, what richness,” she said. “By the way, of course it was Cortot who was playing the Moonlight faster than Cortot plays it.”
Georgie put down his tambour.
“I thought it probably would be,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing that happens to Lucia. And now we know where we are. She’s going to make a circle in London and be its centre. Too thrilling! It’s all as clear as it can be. All we don’t know about yet is the pearls.”
“I doubt the pearls,” said Olga.
“No, I think there are pearls,” said Georgie, after a moment’s intense concentration. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have told me they appeared in the Sargent portrait of the aunt.”
Olga suddenly gave a wild hoot of laughter.
“Oh, why does one ever spend a single hour away from Riseholme?” she said.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Georgie. “But you go off to-morrow?”
“Yes, to Paris. My excuse is to meet my Georgie—”
“Here he is,” said Georgie.
“Yes, bless him. But the one who happens to be my husband. Georgie, I think I’m going to change my name and become what I really am, Mrs. George Shuttleworth. Why should singers and actresses call themselves Madame Macaroni or Signora Semolina? Yes, that’s my excuse, as I said when you interrupted me, and my reason is gowns. I’m going to have lots of new gowns.”
“Tell me about them,” said Georgie. He loved hearing about dress.
“I don’t know about them yet; I’m going to Paris to find out. Georgie, you’ll have to come and stay with me when I’m settled in London. And when I go to practise in Lucia’s music-room you shall play my accompaniments. And shall I be shingled?”
Georgie’s face was suddenly immersed in concentration.
“I wouldn’t mind betting—” he began.
Olga again shouted with laughter.
“If you’ll give me three to one that I don’t know what you were going to say, I’ll take it,” she said.
“But you can’t know,” said Georgie.
“Yes I do. You wouldn’t mind betting that Lucia will be shingled.”
“Well, you are quick,” said Georgie admiringly.
It was known, of course, next morning, that Lucia and Pepino were intending to spend a few weeks in London before selling the house, and who knew what that was going to mean? Already it was time to begin rehearsing for the next May Day revels, and Foljambe, that paragon of all parlour-maids, had been overhauling Georgie’s jerkin and hose and dainty little hunting boots with turn-down flaps in order to be ready. But when Georgie, dining at The Hurst next evening, said something about May Day revels (Lucia, of course, would be Queen again) as they played Cut-throat with the Manual on Auction Bridge handy for the settlement of such small disputes as might arise over the value of the different suits, she only said: “Those dear old customs! So quaint! And fifty to me above, Pepino, or is it a hundred? I will turn it up while you deal, Georgie!”
This complete apathy of Lucia to May Day revels indicated one of two things, that either mourning would prevent her being Queen, or absence. In consequence of which Georgie had his jerkin folded up again and put away, for he was determined that nobody except Lucia should drive him out to partake in such a day of purgatory as had been his last year… Still, there was nothing conclusive about that: it might be mourning. But evidence accumulated that Lucia meant to make a pretty solid stay in London, for she certainly had some cards printed at ‘Ye Signe of Ye Daffodille’ on the Village Green where Pepino’s poems were on sale, with the inscription
Mr. and Mrs. Philip Lucas request the pleasure of the company of
at… on…
25 Brompton Square. R.S.V.P.
Daisy Quantock had found that out, for she saw the engraved copper-plate lying on the counter, and while the shopman’s back was turned, had very cleverly read it, though it was printed the wrong way round, and was very confusing. Still she managed to do so, and the purport was plain enough: that Lucia contemplated formally asking somebody to something some time at 25 Brompton Square. “And would she,” demanded Daisy, with bitter irony, “have had cards printed like that, if they were only meaning to go up for a week or two?” And if that was not enough Georgie saw a postcard on Lucia’s writing table with “From Mrs. Philip Lucas, 25 Brompton Square, S.W.3,” plainly printed on the top.
It was getting very clear then (and during this week Riseholme naturally thought of nothing else) that Lucia designed a longer residence in the garish metropolis than she had admitted. Since she chose to give no information on the subject, mere pride and scorn of vulgar curiosity forebade anyone to ask her, though o
f course it was quite proper (indeed a matter of duty) to probe the matter to the bottom by every other means in your power, and as these bits of evidence pieced themselves together, Riseholme began to take a very gloomy view of Lucia’s real nature. On the whole it was felt that Mrs. Boucher, when she paused in her bath-chair as it was being wheeled round the green, nodding her head very emphatically, and bawling into Mrs. Antrobus’s ear-trumpet, reflected public opinion.
“She’s deserting Riseholme and all her friends,” said Mrs. Boucher, “that’s what she’s doing. She means to cut a dash in London, and lead London by the nose. There’ll be fashionable parties, you’ll see, there’ll be paragraphs, and then when the season’s over she’ll come back and swagger about them. For my part I shall take no interest in them. Perhaps she’ll bring down some of her smart friends for a Saturday till Monday. There’ll be Dukes and Duchesses at The Hurst. That’s what she’s meaning to do, I tell you, and I don’t care who hears it.”
That was lucky, as anyone within the radius of a quarter of a mile could have heard it.
“Well, never mind, my dear,” said Colonel Boucher, who was pushing his wife’s chair.
“Mind? I should hope not, Jacob,” said Mrs. Boucher. “And now let us go home, or we’ll be late for lunch and that would never do, for I expect the Prince of Wales and the Lord Chancellor, and we’ll play Bridge and crossword puzzles all afternoon.”
Such fury and withering sarcasm, though possibly excessive, had, it was felt, a certain justification, for had not Lucia for years given little indulgent smiles when anyone referred to the cheap delights and restless apish chatterings of London? She had always come back from her visits to that truly provincial place which thought itself a centre, wearied with its false and foolish activity, its veneer of culture, its pseudo-Athenian rage for any new thing. They were all busy enough at Riseholme, but busy over worthy objects, over Beethoven and Shakespeare, over high thinking, over study of the true masterpieces. And now, the moment that Aunt Amy’s death gave her and Pepino the means to live in the fiddling little ant-hill by the Thames they were turning their backs on all that hitherto had made existence so splendid and serious a reality, and were training, positively training for frivolity by exercises in Stravinski, Auction Bridge and crossword puzzles. Only the day before the fatal influx of fortune had come to them, Lucia, dropping in on Colonel and Mrs. Boucher about tea-time, had found them very cosily puzzling out a Children’s Crossword in the evening paper, having given up the adult conundrum as too difficult, had pretended that even this was far beyond her poor wits, and had gone home the moment she had swallowed her tea in order to finish a canto of Dante’s Purgatorio… . And it was no use Lucia’s saying that they intended only to spend a week or two in Brompton Square before the house was sold: Daisy’s quickness and cleverness about the copper-plate at ‘Ye Signe of Ye Daffodille’ had made short work of that. Lucia was evidently the prey of a guilty conscience too: she meant, so Mrs. Boucher was firmly convinced, to steal away, leaving the impression she was soon coming back.