“I’ve been pruning its roots,” she said.
“Well, ma’am, you’ve done your best to do it in,” said Simkinson. “I don’t think it’s dead though, I daresay it’ll pull round.”
Abfou had been understood to say it was dead, but perhaps he meant something else, thought Daisy, and they went on to the small circular bed below the dining-room windows.
“Phlox,” said Daisy hopefully.
“Broccoli,” said Simkinson examining the young green sprouts. “And the long bed there. I sowed a lot of annuals there, and I don’t see a sign of anything coming up.”
He fixed her with a merry eye.
“I believe you’ve been weeding, ma’am,” he said. “I shall have to get you a lot of young plants if you want a bit of colour there. It’s too late for me to put my seeds in again.”
Daisy rather wished she hadn’t come out with him, and changed the subject to something more cheerful.
“Well, I shan’t want the rockery,” she said. “You needn’t bother about that. All these stones will be carted away in a day or two.”
“Glad of that, ma’am. I’ll be able to get to my potting-shed again. Well, I’ll try to put you to rights. I’d best pull up the broccoli first, you won’t want it under your windows, will you? You stick to rolling the lawn, ma’am, if you want to garden. You won’t do any harm then.”
It was rather dreadful being put in one’s place like this, but Daisy did not dare risk a second quarrel, and the sight of Georgie at the dining-room window (he had come across to ‘weedj,’ as the psychical processes, whether ouija or planchette, were now called) was rather a relief. Weeding, after all, was unimportant compared with weedjing.
“And I don’t believe I ever told you what Olga wrote about,” said Georgie, as soon as she was within range. “We’ve talked of nothing but museum. Oh, and Mrs. Boucher’s planchette has come. But it broke in the post, and she’s gumming it together.”
“I doubt if it will act,” said Daisy. “But what did Olga say? It quite went out of my head to ask you.”
“It’s too heavenly of her,” said he. “She’s asked me to go up and stay with her for the first night of the opera. She’s singing Lucrezia, and has got a stall for me.”
“No!” said Daisy, making a trial trip over the blotting-paper to see if the pencil was sharp. “That will be an event! I suppose you’re going.”
“Just about,” said Georgie. “It’s going to be broadcasted, too, and I shall be listening to the original.”
“How interesting!” said Daisy. “And there you’ll be in Brompton Square, just opposite Lucia. Oh, you heard from her? What did she say?”
“Apparently she’s getting on marvellously,” said Georgie. “Not a moment to spare. Just what she likes.”
Daisy pushed the planchette aside. There would be time for that when she had had a little talk about Lucia.
“And are you going to stay with her too?” she asked Georgie was quite determined not to be ill-natured. He had taken no part (or very little) in this trampling on Lucia’s majesty, which had been so merrily going on.
“I should love to, if she would ask me,” he observed. “She only says she’s going to. Of course, I shall go to see her.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Daisy savagely. “If she asked me fifty times I should say ‘no’ fifty times. What’s happened is that she’s dropped us. I wouldn’t have her on our museum committee if—if she gave her pearls to it and said they belonged to Queen Elizabeth. I wonder you haven’t got more spirit.”
“I’ve got plenty of spirit,” said Georgie, “and I allow I did feel rather hurt at her letter. But then, after all, what does it matter?”
“Of course it doesn’t if you’re going to stay with Olga,” said Daisy. “How she’ll hate you for that!”
“Well, I can’t help it,” he said. “Lucia hasn’t asked me and Olga has. She’s twice reminded Olga that she may use her music-room to practise in whenever she likes. Isn’t that kind? She would love to be able to say that Olga’s always practising in her music-room. But aren’t we ill-natured? Let’s weedj instead.”
Georgie found, when he arrived next afternoon in Brompton Square, that Olga had already had her early dinner, and that he was to dine alone at seven and follow her to the opera house.
“I’m on the point of collapse from sheer nerves,” she said. “I always am before I sing, and then out of desperation I pull myself together. If—I say ‘if’—I survive till midnight, we’re going to have a little party here. Cortese is coming, and Princess Isabel, and one or two other people. Georgie, it’s very daring of you to come here, you know, because my husband’s away, and I’m an unprotected female alone with Don Juan. How’s Riseholme? Talk to me about Riseholme. Are you engaged to Piggy yet? And is it broccoli or phlox in Daisy’s round bed? Your letter was so mysterious too. I know nothing about the Museum yet. What Museum? Are you going to kill and stuff Lucia and put her in the hall? You simply alluded to the Museum as if I knew all about it. If you don’t talk to me, I shall scream.”
Georgie flung himself into the task, delighted to be thought capable of doing anything for Olga. He described at great length and with much emphasis the whole of the history of Riseholme from the first epiphany of Arabic and Abfou on the planchette-board down to the return of Simkinson. Olga lost herself in these chronicles, and when her maid came in to tell her it was time to start, she got up quite cheerfully.
“And so it was broccoli,” she said. “I was afraid it was going to be phlox after all. You’re an angel, Georgie, for getting me through my bad hour. I’ll give you anything you like for the Museum. Wait for me afterwards at the stage door. We’ll drive back together.”
From the moment Olga appeared, the success of the opera was secure. Cortese, who was conducting, had made his music well; it thoroughly suited her, and she was singing and looking and acting her best. Again and again after the first act the curtain had to go up, and not until the house was satisfied could Georgie turn his glances this way and that to observe the audience. Then in the twilight of a small box on the second tier he espied a woman who was kissing her hand somewhere in his direction, and a man waving a programme, and then he suddenly focused them and saw who they were. He ran upstairs to visit them, and there was Lucia in an extraordinarily short skirt with her hair shingled, and round her neck three short rows of seed pearls.
“Georgino mio!” she cried. “This is a surprise! You came up to see our dear Olga’s triumph. I do call that loyalty. Why did you not tell me you were coming?”
“I thought I would call to-morrow,” said Georgie, with his eyes still going backwards and forwards between the shingle and the pearls and the legs.
“Ah, you are staying the night in town?” she asked. “Not going back by the midnight train? The dear old midnight train, and waking in Riseholme! At your club?”
“No, I’m staying with Olga,” said Georgie.
Lucia seemed to become slightly cataleptic for a moment, but recovered.
“No! Are you really?” she said. “I think that is unkind of you, Georgie. You might have told me you were coming.”
“But you said that the house wasn’t ready,” said he. “And she asked me.”
Lucia put on a bright smile.
“Well, you’re forgiven,” she said. “We’re all at sixes and sevens yet. And we’ve seen nothing of dearest Olga—or Mrs. Shuttleworth, I should say, for that’s on the bills. Of course we’ll drive you home, and you must come in for a chat, before Mrs. Shuttleworth gets home, and then no doubt she will be very tired and want to go to bed.”
Lucia as she spoke had been surveying the house with occasional little smiles and wagglings of her hand in vague directions.
“Ah, there’s Elsie Garroby-Ashton,” she said, “and who is that with her, Pepino? Lord Shrivenham, surely. So come back with me and have ‘ickle talk, Georgie. Oh, there’s the Italian Ambassadress. Dearest Gioconda! Such a sweet. And look at the Royal box. What a gath
ering! That’s the Royal Box, Georgie, away to the left—that large one—in the tier below. Too near the stage for my taste: so little illusion—”
Lucia suddenly rose and made a profound curtsey.
“I think she saw us, Pepino,” she said, “perhaps you had better bow. No, she’s looking somewhere else now: you did not bow quick enough. And what a party in dearest Aggie’s box. Who can that be? Oh yes, it’s Toby Limpsfield. We met him at Aggie’s, do you remember, on the first night we were up. So join us at the grand entrance, Georgie, and drive back with us. We shall be giving a lift to somebody else, I’ll be bound, but if you have your motor, it is so ill-natured not to pick up friends. I always do it: they will be calling us the ‘Lifts of London,’ as Marcia Whitby said.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Georgie. “I’m waiting for Olga, and she’s having a little party, I believe.”
“No! Is she really?” asked Lucia, with all the old Riseholme vivacity. “Who is coming?”
“Cortese, I believe,” said Georgie, thinking it might be too much for Lucia if he mentioned a princess, “and one or two of the singers.”
Lucia’s mouth watered, and she swallowed rapidly. That was the kind of party she longed to be asked to, for it would be so wonderful and glorious to be able casually to allude to Olga’s tiny, tiny little party after the first night of the opera, not a party at all really, just a few intimes, herself and Cortese and so on. How could she manage it, she wondered? Could she pretend not to know that there was a party, and just drop in for a moment in neighbourly fashion with enthusiastic congratulations? Or should she pretend her motor had not come, and hang about the stage-door with Georgie—Pepino could go home in the motor—and get a lift? Or should she hint very violently to Georgie how she would like to come in just for a minute. Or should she, now that she knew there was to be a party, merely assert that she had been to it? Perhaps a hint to Georgie was the best plan…
Her momentary indecision was put an end to by the appearance of Cortese threading his way among the orchestra, and the lowering of the lights. Georgie, without giving her any further opportunity, hurried back to his stall, feeling that he had had an escape, for Lucia’s beady eye had been fixing him, just in the way it always used to do when she wanted something and, in consequence, meant to get it. He felt he had been quite wrong in ever supposing that Lucia had changed. She was just precisely the same, translated into a larger sphere. She had expanded: strange though it seemed, she had only been in bud at Riseholme. “I wonder what she’ll do?” thought Georgie as he settled himself into his stall. “She wants dreadfully to come.”
The opera came to an end in a blaze of bouquets and triumph and recalls, and curtseys. It was something of an occasion, for it was the first night of the opera, and the first performance of “Lucrezia” in London, and it was late when Olga came florally out. The party, which was originally meant to be no party at all, but just a little supper with Cortese and one or two of the singers, had marvellously increased during the evening, for friends had sent round messages and congratulations, and Olga had asked them to drop in, and when she and Georgie arrived at Brompton Square, the whole of the curve at the top was packed with motors.
“Heavens, what a lot of people I seem to have asked,” she said, “but it will be great fun. There won’t be nearly enough chairs, but we’ll sit on the floor, and there won’t be nearly enough supper, but I know there’s a ham, and what can be better than a ham? Oh, Georgie, I am happy.”
Now from opposite, across the narrow space of the square, Lucia had seen the arrival of all these cars. In order to see them better she had gone on to the balcony of her drawing-room, and noted their occupants with her opera-glasses. There was Lord Limpsfield, and the Italian Ambassadress, and Mr. Garroby-Ashton, and Cortese, and some woman to whom Mr. Garroby-Ashton bowed and Mrs. Garroby-Ashton curtsied. Up they streamed. And there was the Duchess of Whitby, (Marcia, for Lucia had heard her called that) coming up the steps, and curtseying too, but as yet Olga and Georgie quite certainly had not come. It seemed strange that so many brilliant guests should arrive before their hostess, but Lucia saw at once that this was the most chic informality that it was possible to conceive. No doubt Mr. Shuttleworth was there to receive them, but how wonderful it all was!.. . And then the thought occurred to her that Olga would arrive, and with her would be Georgie, and she felt herself turning bright green all over with impotent jealousy. Georgie in that crowd! It was impossible that Georgie should be there, and not she, but that was certainly what would happen unless she thought of something. Georgie would go back to Riseholme and describe this gathering, and he would say that Lucia was not there: he supposed she had not been asked.
Lucia thought of something; she hurried downstairs and let herself out. Motors were still arriving, but perhaps she was not too late. She took up her stand in the central shadow of a gas-lamp close to Olga’s door and waited.
Up the square came yet another car, and she could see it was full of flowers. Olga stepped out, and she darted forward.
“O Mrs. Shuttleworth,” she said. “Splendid! Glorious! Marvellous! If only Beethoven was alive! I could not think of going to bed, without just popping across to thank you for a revelation! Georgie, dear! Just to shake your hand: that is all. All! I won’t detain you. I see you have a party! You wonderful Queen of Song.”
Olga at all times was good-natured. Her eye met Georgie’s for a moment.
“O, but come in,” she said. “Do come in. It isn’t a party: it’s just anybody. Georgie, be a dear, and help to carry all those flowers in. How nice of you to come across, Mrs. Lucas! I know you’ll excuse my running on ahead, because all—at least I hope all—my guests have come, and there’s no one to look after them.”
Lucia, following closely in her wake, and taking no further notice of Georgie, slipped into the little front drawing-room behind her. It was crammed, and it was such a little room. Why had she not foreseen this, why had she not sent a note across to Olga earlier in the day, asking her to treat Lucia’s house precisely as her own, and have her party in the spacious music-room? It would have been only neighbourly. But the bitterness of such regrets soon vanished in the extraordinary sweetness of the present, and she was soon in conversation with Mrs. Garroby-Ashton, and distributing little smiles and nods to all the folk with whom she had the slightest acquaintance. By the fireplace was standing the Royal lady, and that for the moment was the only chagrin, for Lucia had not the vaguest idea who she was. Then Georgie came in, looking like a flower-stall, and then came a slight second chagrin, for Olga led him up to the Royal lady, and introduced him. But that would be all right, for she could easily get Georgie to tell her who she was, without exactly asking him, and then poor Georgie made a very awkward sort of bow, and dropped a large quantity of flowers, and said ‘tarsome.’
Lucia glided away from Mrs. Garroby-Ashton and stood near the Duchess of Whitby. Marcia did not seem to recognise her at first, but that was quickly remedied, and after a little pleasant talk, Lucia asked her to lunch to meet Olga, and fixed in her mind that she must ask Olga to lunch on the same day to meet the Duchess of Whitby. Then edging a little nearer to the centre of attraction, she secured Lord Limpsfield by angling for him with the bait of dearest Aggie, to whom she must remember to telephone early next morning, to ask her to come and meet Lord Limpsfield.
That would do for the present, and Lucia abandoned herself to the joys of the moment. A move was made downstairs to supper, and Lucia, sticking like a limpet to Lord Limpsfield, was wafted in azure to Olga’s little tiny dining-room, and saw at once that there were not nearly enough seats for everybody. There were two small round tables, and that was absolutely all: the rest would have to stand and forage at the narrow buffet which ran along the wall.
“It’s musical chairs,” said Olga cheerfully, “those who are quick get seats, and the others don’t. Tony, go and sit next the Princess, and Cortese, you go the other side. We shall all get something to eat somet
ime. Georgie, go and stand by the buffet, there’s a dear, and make yourself wonderfully useful, and oh, rush upstairs first, and bring the cigarettes; they stay the pangs of hunger. Now we’re getting on beautifully. Darling Marcia, there’s just one chair let. Slip into it.”
Lucia had lingered for a moment at the door to ask Olga to lunch the day after to-morrow, and Olga said she would be delighted, so there was a wonderful little party arranged for. To complete her content it was only needful to be presented to the hitherto anonymous Princess and learn her name. By dexterously picking up her fan for her and much admiring it, as she made a low curtsey, she secured a few precious words with her, but the name was still denied her. To ask anybody what it was would faintly indicate that she didn’t know it, and that was not to be thought of.
Georgie popped in, as they all said at Riseholme, to see Lucia next morning when Olga had gone to a rehearsal at Covent Garden, and found her in her music-room, busy over Stravinski. Olga’s party had not been in The Times, which was annoying, and Lucia was still unaware what the Princess’s name was. Though the previous evening had been far the most rewarding she had yet spent, it was wiser to let Georgie suppose that such an affair was a very ordinary occurrence, and not to allude to it for some time.
“Ah, Georgino!” she said. “How nice of you to pop in. By buona fortuna I have got a spare hour this morning, before Sophy Alingsby—dear Sophy, such a brain—fetches me to go to some private view or other, so we can have a good chat. Yes, this is the music-room, and before you go, I must trot you round to see the rest of our little establishment. Not a bad room—those are the famous Chippendale chairs—as soon as we get a little more settled, I shall give an evening party or two with some music. You must come.”
“Should love to,” said Georgie.
“Such a whirl it has been, and it gets worse every day,” went on Lucia. “Sometimes Pepino and I go out together, but often he dines at one house and I at another—they do that in London, you know—and sometimes I hardly set eyes on him all day. I haven’t seen him this morning, but just now they told me he had gone out. He enjoys it so much that I do not mind how tired I get. Ah! that telephone, it never ceases ringing. Sometimes I think I will have it taken out of the house altogether, for I get no peace. Somebody always seems to be wanting Pepino or me.”