“Yes, she’s got will,” said Marcia. “She determined to come to my ball, and she came. I allow I gave her the chance.”
“Those are the chances that come to gifted people,” said Adele. “They don’t come to ordinary people.”
“Suppose I flirted violently with her lover?” said Marcia.
Adele’s eyes grew bright with thought.
“I can’t imagine what she would do,” she said. “But I’m sure she would do something that scored. Otherwise she wouldn’t be Lucia. But you mustn’t do it.”
“Just one evening,” said Marcia. “Just for an hour or two. It’s not poaching, you see, because her lover isn’t her lover. He’s just a stunt.”
Adele wavered.
“It would be wonderful to know what she would do,” she said. “And it’s true that he’s only a stunt. Perhaps for an hour or two to-morrow, and then give him back.”
Adele did not expect any of her guests till teatime, and Marcia and she both retired for after-lunch siestas. Adele had been down here for the last four or five days, driving up to Marcia’s ball and back in the very early morning, and had three days before settled everything in connection with her party, assigning rooms, discussing questions of high importance with her chef, and arranging to meet as many trains as possible. It so happened, therefore, that Stephen Merriall, since the house was full, was to occupy the spacious dressing-room, furnished as a bedroom, next Lucia’s room, which had been originally allotted to Pepino. Adele had told her butler that Mr. Lucas was not coming, but that his room would be occupied by Mr. Merriall, thought no more about it, and omitted to substitute a new card on his door. These two rooms were half way down a long corridor of bedrooms and bathrooms that ran the whole length of the house, a spacious oak-boarded corridor, rather dark, with the broad staircase coming up at the end of it. Below was the suite of public rooms, a library at the end, a big music-room, a long gallery of a drawing-room, and the dining-room. These all opened on to a paved terrace overlooking the gardens and tennis courts, and it was here, with the shadow of the house lying coolly across it, that her guests began to assemble. In ones and twos they gathered, some motoring down from London, others arriving by train, and it was not till there were some dozen of them, among whom were the most fervent Luciaphils, that the object of their devotion, attended by her lover, made her appearance, evidently at the top of her form.
“Dearest Adele,” she said. “How delicious to get into the cool country again. Marcia dear! Such adventures I had on my way up to your ball: two burst tyres: I thought I should never get there. How are you, your Excellency? I saw you at the Duchess’s, but couldn’t get a word with you. Aggie darling! Ah, Lord Tony! Yes, a cup of tea would be delicious; no sugar, Stephen, thanks.”
Lucia had not noticed quite everybody. There were one or two people rather retired from the tea-table, but they did not seem to be of much importance, and certainly the Prime Minister was not among them. Stephen hovered, loverlike, just behind her chair, and she turned to the Italian ambassador.
“I was afraid of a motor accident all the way down,” she said, “because last night I dreamed I broke a looking-glass. Quaint things dreams are, though really the psycho-analysts who interpret them are quainter. I went to a meeting at Sophy’s, dear Sophy Alingsby, the other day—your Excellency I am sure knows Sophy Alingsby—and heard a lecture on it. Let me see: boiled rabbit, if you dream of boiled rabbit—”
Lucia suddenly became aware of a sort of tension. Just a tension. She looked quickly round, and recognised one of the men she had not paid much attention to. She sprang from her chair.
“Professor Bonstetter,” she said. “How are you? I know you won’t remember me, but I did have the honour of shaking hands with you after your enthralling lecture the other day. Do come and tell his Excellency and me a little more about it. There were so many questions I longed to ask you.”
Adele wanted to applaud, but she had to be content with catching Marcia’s eye. Was Lucia great, or was she not? Stephen too: how exactly right she was to hand him her empty cup when she had finished with it, without a word, and how perfectly he took it!” More?” he said, and Lucia just shook her head without withdrawing her attention from Professor Bonstetter. Then the Prime Minister arrived, and she said how lovely Chequers must be looking. She did not annex him, she just hovered and hinted, and made no direct suggestion, and sure enough, within five minutes he had asked her if she knew Chequers. Of course she did, but only as a tourist—and so one thing led on to another. It would be a nice break in her long drive down to Riseholme on Tuesday to lunch at Chequers, and not more than forty miles out of her way.
People dispersed and strolled on the terrace, and gathered again, and some went off to their rooms. Lucia had one little turn up and down with the Ambassador, and spoke with great tact of Mussolini, and another with Lord Tony, and not for a long time did she let Stephen join her. But then they wandered off into the garden, and were seen standing very close together and arguing publicly about a flower, and Lucia seeing they were observed, called to Adele to know if it wasn’t Dropmore Borage. They came back very soon, and Stephen went up to his room while Lucia remained downstairs. Adele showed her the library and the music-room, and the long drawing-room, and then vanished. Lucia gravitated to the music-room, opened the piano, and began the slow movement of the Moonlight Sonata.
About half way through it, she became aware that somebody had come into the room. But her eyes were fixed dreamily on the usual point at the edge of the ceiling, and her fingers faultlessly doled out the slow triplets. She gave a little sigh when she had finished, pressed her fingers to her eyes, and slowly awoke, as from some melodious anæsthetic.
It was a man who had come in and who had seated himself not far from the key-board.
“Charming!” he said. “Thank you.”
Lucia didn’t remember seeing him on the terrace: perhaps he had only just arrived. She had a vague idea, however, that whether on the terrace or elsewhere, she had seen him before. She gave a pretty little start. “Ah, had no idea I had an audience,” she said. “I should never have ventured to go on playing. So dreadfully out of practice.”
“Please have a little more practice then,” said the polite stranger.
She ran her hands, butterfly fashion, over the keys.
“A little morsel of Stravinski?” she said.
It was in the middle of the morsel that Adele came in and found Lucia playing Stravinski to Mr. Greatorex. The position seemed to be away, away beyond her orbit altogether, and she merely waited with undiminished faith in Lucia, to see what would happen when Lucia became aware to whom she was playing… It was a longish morsel, too: more like a meal than a morsel, and it was also remarkably like a muddle. Finally, Lucia made an optimistic attempt at the double chromatic scale in divergent directions which brought it to an end, and laughed gaily.
“My poor fingers,” she said. “Delicious piano, dear Adele. I love a Bechstein; that was a little morsel of Stravinski. Hectic perhaps, do you think? But so true to the modern idea: little feverish excursions: little bits of tunes, and nothing worked out. But I always say that there is something in Stravinski, if you study him. How I worked at that little piece, and I’m afraid it’s far from perfect yet.”
Lucia played one more little run with her right hand, while she cudgelled her brain to remember where she had seen this man before, and turned round on the music-stool. She felt sure he was an artist of some kind, and she did not want to ask Adele to introduce him, for that would look as if she did not know everybody. She tried pictures next.
“In Art I always think that the Stravinski school is represented by the Post-Cubists,” she said. “They give us pattern in lines, just as Stravinski gives us patterns in notes, and the modern poet patterns in words. At Sophy Alingsby’s the other night we had a feast of patterns. Dear Sophy—what a curious mixture of tastes! She cares only for the ultra-primitive in music, and the ultra-modern in Art. Just before you
came in, Adele, I was trying to remember the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight, those triplets though they look easy have to be kept so level. And yet Sophy considers Beethoven a positive decadent. I ought to have taken her to Diva’s little concert—Diva Dalrymple—for I assure you really that Stravinski sounded classical compared to the rest of the programme. It was very creditably played, too. Mr.—” what was his name?—”Mr Greatorex.”
She had actually said the word before her brain made the connection. She gave her little peal of laughter.
“Ah, you wicked people,” she cried. “A plot: clearly a plot. Mr. Greatorex, how could you? Adele told you to come in here when she heard me begin my little strummings, and told you to sit down and encourage me. Don’t deny it, Adele! I know it was like that. I shall tell everybody how unkind you’ve been, unless Mr. Greatorex sits down instantly and magically restores to life what I have just murdered.”
Adele denied nothing. In fact there was no time to deny anything, for Lucia positively thrust Mr. Greatorex on to the music stood, and instantly put on her rapt musical face, chin in hand, and eyes looking dreamily upwards. There was Nemesis, you would have thought, dealing thrusts at her, but Nemesis was no match for her amazing quickness. She parried and thrust again, and here—what richness of future reminiscence—was Mr. Greatorex playing Stravinski to her, before no audience but herself and Adele who really didn’t count, for the only tune she liked was “Land of Hope and Glory”… Great was Lucia!
Adele left the two, warning them that it was getting on for dressing time, but there was some more Stravinski first, for Lucia’s sole ear. Adele had told her the direction of her room, and said her name was on the door, and Lucia found it at once. A beautiful room it was, with a bathroom on one side, and a magnificent Charles II bed draped at the back with wool-work tapestry. It was a little late for Lucia’s Elizabethan taste, and she noticed that the big wardrobe was Chippendale, which was later still. There was a Chinese paper on the wall, and fine Persian rugs on the floor, and though she could have criticised it was easy to admire. And there for herself was a very smart dress, and for decoration Aunt Amy’s pearls, and the Beethoven brooch. But she decided to avoid all possible chance of competition, and put the pearls back into her jewel-case. The Beethoven brooch, she was sure, need fear no rival.
Lucia felt that dinner, as far as she went, was a huge success. Stephen was seated just opposite her, and now and then she exchanged little distant smiles with him. Next her on one side was Lord Tony, who adored her story about Stravinski and Greatorex. She told him also what the Italian Ambassador had said about Mussolini, and the Prime Minister about Chequers: she was going to pop in to lunch on her way down to Riseholme after this delicious party. Then conversation shifted, and she turned left, and talked to the only man whose identity she had not grasped. But, as matter of public knowledge, she began about poor Babs, and her own admiration of her demeanour at that wicked trial, which had ended so disastrously. And once again there was slight tension.
Bridge and Mah-Jong followed, and rich allusive conversation and the sense, so dear to Lucia, of being in the very centre of everything that was distinguished. When the women went upstairs she hurried to her room, made a swift change into greater simplicity, and, by invitation, sought out Marcia’s room, at the far end of the passage, for a chat. Adele was there, and dear (rather common) Aggie was there, and Aggie was being just a shade sycophantic over the six rows of Whitby pearls. Lucia was glad she had limited her splendours to the Beethoven brooch.
“But why didn’t you wear your pearls, Lucia?” asked Adele. “I was hoping to see them.” (She had heard talk of Aunt Amy’s pearls, but had not noticed them on the night of Marcia’s ball.) “My little seedlings!” said Lucia. “Just seedlings, compared to Marcia’s marbles. Little trumperies!”
Aggie had seen them, and she knew Lucia did not overstate their minuteness. Like a true Luciaphil, she changed a subject that might prove embarrassing.
“Take away your baubles, Marcia,” said Aggie. “They are only diseases of a common shell fish which you eat when it’s healthy and wear when it’s got a tumour… How wretched it is to think that all of us aren’t going to meet day after day as we have been doing! There’s Adele going to America, and there’s Marcia going to Scotland—what a foul spot, Marcia, come to Marienbad instead with me. And what are you going to do, Lucia?”
“Oh, my dear, how I wanted to go to Aix or Marienbad,” she said. “But my Pepino says it’s impossible. We’ve got to stop quiet at Riseholme. Shekels, tiresome shekels.”
“There she goes, talking about Riseholme as if it was some dreadful penance to go there,” said Adele. “You adore Riseholme, Lucia, at least if you don’t, you ought to. Olga raves about it. She says she’s never really happy away from it. When are you going to ask me there?”
“Adele, as if you didn’t know that you weren’t always welcome,” said Lucia.
“Me, too,” said Marcia.
“A standing invitation to both of you always,” said Lucia. “Dear Marcia, how sweet of you to want to come! I go there on Tuesday, and there I remain. But it’s true, I do adore it. No balls, no parties, and such dear Arcadians. You couldn’t believe in them without seeing them. Life at its very simplest, dears.”
“It can’t be simpler than Scotland,” said Marcia. “In Scotland you kill birds and fish all day, and eat them at night. That’s all.”
Lucia through these months of strenuous effort had never perhaps felt herself so amply rewarded as she was at this moment. All evening she had talked in an effortless deshabille of mind to the great ones of the country, the noble, the distinguished, the accomplished, and now here she was in a duchess’s bedroom having a goodnight talk. This was nearer Nirvana than even Marcia’s ball. And the three women there seemed to be grouped round her: they waited—there was no mistaking it—listening for something from her, just as Riseholme used to wait for her lead. She felt that she was truly attaining, and put her chin in her hand and looked a little upwards.
“I shall get tremendously put in my place when I go back to Riseholme again,” she said. “I’m sure Riseholme thinks I have been wasting my time in idle frivolities. It sees perhaps in an evening paper that I have been to Aggie’s party, or Adele’s house or Marcia’s ball, and I assure you it will be very suspicious of me. Just as if I didn’t know that all these delightful things were symbols.”
Adele had got the cataleptic look of a figure in a stained glass window, so rapt she was. But she wanted to grasp this with full appreciation.
“Lucia, don’t be so dreadfully clever,” she said. “You’re talking high over my head: you’re like the whirr of an aeroplane. Explain what you mean by symbols.”
Lucia was toying with the string of Whitby pearls, which Marcia still held, with one hand. The other she laid on Adele’s knee. She felt that a high line was expected of her.
“My dear, you know,” she said. “All our runnings-about, all our gaieties are symbols of affection: we love to see each other because we partake of each other. Interesting people, distinguished people, obscure people, ordinary people, we long to bring them all into our lives in order to widen our horizons. We learn, or we try to learn of other interests beside our own. I shall have to make Riseholme understand that dear little Alf, playing the flute at my house, or half a dozen princes eating quails at Marcia’s mansion, it’s all the same, isn’t it? We get to know the point of view of prize-fighters and princes. And it seems to me, it seems to me—”
Lucia’s gaze grew a shade more lost and aloof.
“It seems to me that we extend our very souls,” she said, “by letting them flow into other lives. How badly I put it! But when Eric Greatorex—so charming of him—played those delicious pieces of Stravinski to me before dinner, I felt I was stepping over some sort of frontier into Stravinski. Eric made out my passport. A multiplication of experience: I think that is what I mean.”
None of those present could have said with any prec
ision what Lucia had meant, but the general drift seemed to be that an hour with a burglar or a cannibal was valuable for the amplification of the soul.
“Odd types too,” she said. “How good for one to be put into touch with something quite remote. Marcelle—Marcelle Periscope—you met him at my house, didn’t you, Aggie—”
“Why wasn’t I asked?” said Marcia.
Lucia gave a little quick smile, as at some sweet child’s interruption.
“Darling Marcia, why didn’t you propose yourself? Surely you know me well enough to do that. Yes, Marcelle, a cinema-artist. A fresh horizon, a fresh attitude towards life. So good for me: it helps me not to be narrow. Dio mio! how I pray I shall never be narrow. To be shocked, too! How shocking to be shocked. If you all had fifty lovers apiece, I should merely think it a privilege to know about them all.”
Marcia longed, with almost the imperativeness of a longing to sneeze, to allude directly to Stephen. She raised her eyes for a half second to Adele, the priestess of this cult in which she knew she was rapidly becoming a worshipper, but if ever an emphatic negative was wordlessly bawled at a tentative enquirer, it was bawled now. If Lucia chose to say anything about Stephen it would indeed be manna, but to ask—never! Aggie, seated sideways to them, had not seen this telegraphy, and spoke unwisely with her lips.