‘But aren't they rather old?’ asked Georgie.
‘Not much older than you and me, and if it wasn't that I've got my own Georgie, I would soon have somebody else's. Do you know whom I mean?’
‘No!’ said Georgie firmly. Though all this came at the end of a most harrowing day, it and the vermouth exhilarated him.
‘Then I'll tell you just what Mrs Weston told me. “He's always been devoted to her,” she said, “and he has never looked at anybody else. There was Piggy Antrobus –” Now do you know whom I mean?’
Georgie suddenly giggled.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Then don't talk about yourself so much, my dear, and let us get to the point. Now this afternoon I dropped in to see Mrs Weston, and as she was telling me about the tragedy, she said by accident (just as I called you Georgie just now by accident), “And I don't know what Jacob will do without Atkinson.” Now is or is not Colonel Boucher's name Jacob? There you are, then! That's one side of the question. She called him Jacob by accident, and so she'll call him Jacob on purpose before very long.’
Olga nodded her head up and down in precise reproduction of Mrs Weston.
‘I'd hardly got out of the house,’ she said in precise imitation of Mrs Weston's voice, ‘before I met Colonel Boucher. It would have been about three o'clock – no, it couldn't have been three, because I had got back home and was standing in the hall when it struck three, and my clock's a shade fast if anything. Well, Colonel Boucher said to me “Haw, hum, quite a domestic crisis, by Jove!” And so I pretended I didn't know and he told me all about it. So I said “Well, it is a domestic crisis, and you'll lose Atkinson.” “Haw, hum,” said he, “and poor Jane – I should say Mrs Weston – will lose Elizabeth.” There!’
She got up and lit a cigarette.
‘Oh, Georgie, do you grasp the inwardness of that!’ she said. ‘Their dear old hearts were laid bare by the trouble that had come upon them, and each of them spoke of the other as each felt of the other. Probably neither of them had said Jacob or Jane in the whole course of their lives. But the angel of the Lord descended and troubled the waters. If you think that's profane, have some more vermouth. It's making me brilliant, though you wouldn't have thought it. Now listen!’
She sat down again close to him, her face brimming with a humorous enthusiasm. Humour in Riseholme was apt to be a little unkind: if you mentioned the absurdities of your friends there was just a speck of malice in your wit. But with her there was none of that. She imitated Mrs Weston with the most ruthless fidelity, and yet it was kindly to the bottom. She liked her for talking in that emphatic voice and being so particular as to what time it was.
‘Now, first of all, you are coming to dine with me to-night,’ she said.
‘Oh, I'm afraid that to-night –’ began Georgie, shrinking from any further complications. He really must have a quiet evening and go to bed very early.
‘What are you afraid of to-night?’ she asked. ‘You're only going to wash your hair. You can do that to-morrow. So you and I, that's two, and Mrs Weston and Colonel Jacob, that's four, which is enough, and I don't believe there's anything to eat in the house. But there's something to drink, which is my point. Not for you and me, mind; we've got to keep our heads and be clever. Don't have any more vermouth. But Jane and Jacob are going to have quantities of champagne. Not tipsy, you understand, but at their best, and unguardedly appreciative of each other and us. And when they go away they will exchange a word or two at Mrs Weston's door, and she will ask him in. And then they'll settle to marry each other. And when they wake up to-morrow morning they will both wonder how they could possibly, and faintly ask themselves what everybody else will say. And then they'll thank God and Olga and Georgie that they did, and live happily for an extraordinary number of years. My dear, how infinitely happier they will be together than they are being now. Funny old dears! Each at its own fireside, saying that it's too old, bless them! And you and I will sing “The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden”, and in the middle our angel-voices will crack, and we will sob into our handkerchief, and the Voice will be left breathing deeply all by itself like the Guru. Why did you never tell me about the Guru? Mrs Weston's a better friend to us than you are, and I must ring for my cook – no, I'll telephone first to Jacob and Jane and see what there is to eat afterwards. Then you will sit here quietly, and I will tell you what your part is.’
During dinner, according to Olga's plan of campaign, the conversation was to be general, because she hated to have two conversations going on when only four people were present, for she found that she always wanted to join in the other one. This was the main principle she inculcated on Georgie, stamping it on his memory by a simile of peculiar vividness. ‘Imagine there is an Elizabethan spittoon in the middle of the table,’ she said, ‘and keep on firmly spitting into it. I want you when there's any pause to spit about two things: one, how dreadfully unhappy both Jacob and Jane will be without their paragons; the other, how pleasant is conversation and companionship. I shall be chaffing you, mind, all the time, and saying you must get married. After dinner I shall probably stroll in the garden with Jacob. Don't come. Keep him after dinner for some little while, for there's my opportunity of talking to Jane, and give him at least three glasses of port. Gracious, it's time to dress, and the Lord prosper us.’
Georgie found himself the last to arrive, when he got back to Olga's, and all three of them shook hands rather as people shake hands before a funeral. They went in to dinner at once, and Olga instantly began.
‘How many years did you say your admirable Atkinson had been with you?’ she asked Colonel Boucher.
‘Twenty, getting on for twenty-one,’ said he. ‘Great nuisance: 'pon my word it's more than a nuisance.’
Georgie had a bright idea.
‘But what's a nuisance, Colonel?’ he asked.
‘Eh, haven't you heard? I thought it would have been all over the place by now. Atkinson's going to be married.’
‘No!’ said Georgie. ‘Whom to?’
Mrs Weston could not bear not to announce this herself.
‘To my Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘Elizabeth came to me this morning. “May I speak to you a minute, ma'am?” she said. I thought nothing more than that perhaps she had broken a teacup. “Yes,” said I quite cheerfully, “and what have you come to tell me?”’
It was getting almost too tragic, and Olga broke in: ‘Let's try to forget all about it for an hour or two,’ she said. ‘It was nice of you all to take pity on me, and come and have dinner, otherwise I should have been quite alone. If there's one thing I cannot bear, it's being alone in the evening. And to think that anybody chooses to be alone when he needn‘t! Look at that wretch there’ – she pointed to Georgie – ‘who lives all by himself instead of marrying. Liking to be alone is the worst habit I know: much worse than drink.’
‘Now do leave me alone,’ said Georgie.
‘I won't, my dear, and when dinner is over Mrs Weston and I are going to put our heads together, and when you come out we shall announce to you the name of your bride. I should put a tax of twenty shillings in the pound on all bachelors: they should all marry or starve!’
Suddenly she turned to Colonel Boucher.
‘Oh, Colonel,’ she said, ‘what have I been saying? How dreadfully stupid of me not to remember that you were a bachelor too. But I wouldn't have you starve for anything. Have some more fish instantly to show you forgive me. Georgie, change the subject – you're always talking about yourself.’
Georgie turned with admirable docility to Mrs Weston.
‘It's too miserable for you,’ he said. ‘How will you get on without Elizabeth? How long has she been with you?’
Mrs Weston went straight back to where she had left off.
‘So I said, “What have you come to tell me?” quite cheerfully, thinking it was a tea-cup. And she said, “I'm going to be married, ma'am!” and she blushed so prettily that you'd have thought she was a girl of twenty, though she was sevent
een when she came to me – no, she was just eighteen – and that's fifteen years ago, and that makes her thirty-three. “Well, Elizabeth,” I said, “you haven't told me yet who it is, but whether it's the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Prince of Wales” – for I felt I had to make a little joke like that – “I hope you'll make him as happy as you've made me all these years!”’
‘You old darling,’ said Olga; ‘I should have gone into hysterics and forbade the banns.’
‘No, Miss Bracely, you wouldn't,’ said Mrs Weston, ‘you'd have been just as thankful as me that she'd got a good husband to take care of and to be taken care of by. So then Elizabeth said “Lor, ma'am, it's none of they – not them great folks. It's the Colonel's Atkinson.” You ask the Colonel for Atkinson's character and then you'd be just as thankful as I was.’
‘The Colonel's Atkinson is a slow coach, just like Georgie,’ said Olga. ‘They've been living side by side all these years, and why couldn't the man make up his mind before? The only redeeming circumstance is that he has done it now. Our poor Georgie now –’
‘Now you're going to be rude to Colonel Boucher again,’ said Georgie. ‘Colonel, we've been asked here to be insulted.’
Colonel Boucher had nothing stronger than a mild tolerance for Georgie and rather enjoyed snubbing him.
‘Well, if you call a glass of wine and a dinner like this an insult,’ he said, ‘*pon my word I don't know what you'd call a compliment.’
‘I know what I call a compliment,’ said Olga, ‘and that's your all coming to dine with me at such short notice. About Georgie's approaching nuptials now –’
‘You're too tarsome,’ said he. ‘If you go on like that I shan't ask you to the wedding. Let's talk about Elizabeth's. When are they going to get married, Mrs Weston?’
‘That's what I said to Elizabeth. “Get an almanack, Elizabeth,” I said, “so that you won't choose a Sunday. Don't say the 20th of next month without looking it out. But if the 20th isn't a Sunday, or a Friday mind, for though I don't believe in such things, still you never know –” There was Mrs Antrobus now,’ said Mrs Weston, suddenly putting in a footnote to her speech to Elizabeth, ‘it was on a Friday she married, and within a year she got as deaf as you see her now. Then Mr Weston's uncle – his uncle by marriage, I should say – his was another Friday marriage, and they missed their train when going off on their honeymoon and had to stay all night where they were without a sponge or a toothbrush between them, for all their luggage was in the train being whirled away to Torquay. “So make it the 20th, Elizabeth,” I said, “if it isn't a Friday or a Sunday, and I shall have time to look round me, and so will the Colonel, though I don't expect that either of us will find your equals! And don't cry, Elizabeth,” I said, for she was getting quite watery, “for if you cry about a marriage, what'll be left for a funeral?”’
‘Ha! upon my word, I call that splendid of you,’ said the Colonel. ‘I told Atkinson I wished I had never set eyes on him, before I wished him joy.’
Olga got up.
‘Look after Colonel Boucher, Georgie,’ she said, ‘and ring for anything you want. What a moon! Isn't it heavenly? How Atkinson and Elizabeth must be enjoying it!’
The two men spent a half-hour of only moderately enjoyable conversation, for Georgie kept the grindstone of the misery of his lot without Atkinson and the pleasures of companionship firmly to the Colonel's nose. It was no use for him to attempt to change the subject to the approaching tableaux, to a vague rumour that Piggy had fallen face-downwards in the ducking-pond, that Mrs Quantock and her husband had turned a table this afternoon with remarkable results, for it had tapped out that his name was Robert and hers Daisy. Whichever way he turned, Georgie herded him back on to the stony path that he had been bidden to take, with the result that when Georgie finally permitted him to go into the music-room he was athirst for the more genial companionship of the ladies. Olga got up as they entered.
‘Georgie's so lazy,’ she said, ‘that it's no use asking him. But do let you and me have a turn up and down my garden, Colonel. There's a divine moon and it's quite warm.’
They stepped out into the windless night.
‘Fancy its being October,’ she said. ‘I don't believe there is any winter in Riseholme, nor autumn either for that matter. You are all so young, so deliciously young. Look at Georgie in there: he's like a boy still, and as for Mrs Weston, she's twenty-five: not a day older.’
‘Yes, wonderful woman,’ said he. ‘Always agreeable and lively. Handsome too: I consider Mrs Weston a very handsome woman. Hasn't altered an atom since I knew her.’
‘That's the wonderful thing about you all,’ said she. ‘You are all just as brisk and young as you were ten years ago. It's ridiculous. As for you, I'm not sure that you're not the most ridiculous of the lot. I feel as if I had been having dinner with three delightful cousins a little younger – not much, but just a little – than myself. Gracious! How you all made me romp the other night here. What a pace you go, Colonel! What's your walking like if you call this a stroll?’
Colonel Boucher moderated his pace. He thought Olga had been walking so quickly.
‘I'm sure I'm very sorry,’ he said. ‘Certainly Riseholme is a healthy bracing place. Perhaps we do keep our youth pretty well. God bless me, but the days go by without one's noticing them. To think that I came here with Atkinson close on ten years ago.’
This did very well for Olga: she swiftly switched off on to it.
‘It's quite horrid for you losing your servants,’ she said. ‘Servants do become friends, don't they, especially to anyone living alone? Georgie and Foljambe now! But I shouldn't be a bit surprised if Foljambe had a mistress before very long.’
‘No, really? I thought you were just chaffing him at dinner. Georgie marrying, is he? His wife'll take some of his needle-work off his hands. May I – ah – may I inquire the lady's name?’
Olga decided to play a great card. She had just found it, so to speak, in her hand, and it was most tempting. She stopped.
‘But can't you guess?’ she said. ‘Surely I'm not absolutely on the wrong tack?’
‘Ah, Miss Antrobus,’ said he. ‘The one I think they call Piggy. No, I should say there was nothing in that.’
‘Oh, that had never occurred to me,’ said she. ‘I daresay I'm quite wrong. I only judged from what I thought I noticed in poor Georgie. I daresay it's only what he should have done ten years ago, and there's but a little ember left. Let us talk about something else, though we won't go in quite yet, shall we?’
She felt quite safe in her apparent reluctance to tell him; the Riseholme gluttony for news made it imperative for him to ask more.
‘Really, I must be very dull,’ he said. ‘I I daresay an eye new to this place sees more. Who is it, Miss Bracely?’
She laughed.
‘Ah, how bad a man is at observing a man!’ she said. ‘Didn't you see him at dinner? He hardly took his eyes off her.’
She had a great and glorious reward. Colonel Boucher's face grew absolutely blank in the moonlight with sheer astonishment.
‘Well, you surprise me!’ he said. ‘Surely a fine woman, though lame, wouldn't look at a needle-woman – well, leave it at that.’
He stamped his feet, and put his hands in his pockets.
‘It's growing a bit chilly,’ he said. ‘You'll be catching cold, Miss Bracely, and what will your husband say if he finds out I've been strolling about with you out of doors after dinner?’
‘Yes, we'll go in,’ she said. ‘It is chilly. How thoughtful you are for one.’
Georgie, little knowing the cat's-paw that had been made of him, found himself being detached from Mrs Weston by the Colonel, and this suited him very well, for presently Olga said she would sing, unless anybody minded, and called on him to accompany her. She stood just behind him, leaning over him sometimes with a hand on his shoulder, and sang those ruthless simple English songs appropriate to the matter in hand. She sang, ‘I attempt from Love's Sickness to fly’
, and ‘Sally in Our Alley’ and ‘Come, live with me’, and sometimes beneath the rustle of leaves turned over she whispered to him. ‘Georgie, I'm cleverer than anybody ever was, and I shall die in the night,’ she said once. Again more enigmatically she said, ‘I've been a cad, but I'll tell you about it when they're gone. Stop behind.’ And then some whisky came in, and she insisted on the ‘young people’ having some of that; finally she saw them off at the door, and came running back to Georgie.
‘I've been a cad,’ she said, ‘because I hinted that you were in love with Mrs Weston. My dear, it was simply perfect! I believe it to have been the last straw, and if you don't forgive me you needn't. Wasn't it clever? He simply couldn't stand that, for it came on the top of your all being so young.’
‘Well, really –’ said Georgie.
‘I know. And I must be a cad again. I'm going up to my bedroom – you may come too if you like - because it commands a view of Church Road. I shouldn't sleep a wink unless I knew that he had gone in with her. It'll be precisely like Faust and Marguerite going into the house, and you and I are Mephistopheles and Martha. Come, quick!’
From the dark of her window they watched Mrs Weston's bath-chair being pushed up the lit road.
‘It's the Colonel pushing it,’ whispered Olga, squeezing him into a corner of the window. ‘Look! There's Tommy Luton on the path. Now they've stopped at her gate… I can't bear the suspense… Oh, Georgie, they've gone in! And Atkinson will stop, and so will Elizabeth, and you've promised to lend them Foljambe. Which house will they live at, do you think? Aren't you happy?’
12
The miserable Lucia started a run of extreme bad luck about this time, of which the adventure or misadventure of the Guru seemed to be the first instance; or perhaps the news of her want of recognition of the August moon, which Georgie had so carefully saluted, may have arrived at that satellite by October. For she had simply ‘cut’ the August moon…
There was the fiasco about Olga coming to the tableaux, which was the cause of her sending that very tart reply, via Miss Lyall, to Lady Ambermere's impertinence, and the very next morning, Lady Ambermere, coming again into Riseholme, perhaps for that very purpose, had behaved as Lucia had behaved to the moon, and cut her. That was irritating, but the counter-irritant to it had been that Lady Ambermere had then gone to Olga's, and been told that she was not at home, though she was very audibly practising in her music-room at the time. Upon which Lady Ambermere had said ‘Home’ to her people, and got in with such unconcern of the material world that she sat down on Pug.