Lucia dropped her voice as she spoke to him, and put in a good deal of Italian for fear she might be overheard.
‘Non cognosce anybody?’ she asked. ‘I tablini, I mean. And are we all to sit in the aula, while the salone is being got ready?’
‘Si,’ said Georgie. ‘There's a fire. When you go out, keep them there. I domestichi are making salone ready.'
‘Molto bene. Then Pepino and you and I just steal away. La lampa is acting beautifully. We tried it over several times.’
‘Everybody's tummin’,’ said Georgie, varying the cipher.
‘Me so nervosa!’ said Lucia. ‘Fancy me doing Brünnhilde before opera-Brünnhilde. Me can't bear it.’
Georgie knew that Lucia had been thrilled and delighted to know that Olga so much wanted to come in after dinner and see the tableaux, and he found it quite easy to induce Lucia to nerve herself up to an ordeal so passionately desired. Indeed he himself was hardly less excited at the thought of being King Cophetua…
At that moment, even as the crackers were being handed round, the sound of the carol-singers was heard from outside, and Lucia had to wince as ‘Good King Wenceslas looked out’. When the Page and the King sang their speeches, the other voices grew soft, so that the effect was of a solo voice accompanied. When the Page sang, Lucia shuddered.
‘That's the small red-haired boy who nearly deafens me in church,’ she whispered to Georgie. ‘Don't you hope his voice will crack soon?’
She said this very discreetly, so as not to hurt Mrs Rumbold's feelings, for she trained the choir. Everyone knew that the King was Mr Rumbold, and said ‘Charming’ to each other, after he had sung.
‘I liked that boy's voice, too,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘Henry Luton used to have a lovely voice, but this one's struck me as better trained even than Henry Luton‘s. Great credit to you, Mrs Rumbold.’
The grey suspicious mouse suddenly gave a shrill cackle of a laugh, quite inexplicable. Then Georgie guessed.
He got up.
‘Now nobody must move,’ he said, ‘because we haven't drunk “Absent friends” yet. I'm just going out to see that the singers have a bit of supper in the kitchen before they go on.’
His trembling legs would scarcely carry him to the door, and he ran out. There were half a dozen little choir-boys, four men, and one tall cloaked woman…
‘Divine!’ he said to Olga. ‘Aunt Jane thought your voice very well-trained. Come in soon, won't you?’
‘Yes! All flourishing?’
‘Swimming,’ said Georgie. ‘Lucia hoped your voice would crack soon. But it's all being lovely.’
He explained about food in the kitchen, and hurried back to his guests. There was the riddle of the Quantocks to solve: there were the tableaux imminent: there was the little red-haired boy coming in soon. What a Christmas night!
Soon after Georgie's hall began to fill up with guests, and yet not a word was said about tableaux. It grew so full that nobody could have said for certain whether Lucia and Pepino and he were there or not. Olga certainly was; there was no mistaking that fact. And then Foljambe opened the drawing-room door and sounded a gong…
The lamp behaved perfectly, and an hour later one Brünnhilde was being extremely kind to the other as they sat together.
‘If you really want to know my view, dear Miss Bracely,’ said Lucia, ‘it's just that. You must be Brünnhilde for the time being. Singing, of course, as you say, helps it out: you can express so much by singing. You are so lucky there. I am bound to say I had qualms when Pepino – or was it Georgie? – suggested we should do Brünnhilde and Siegfried. I said it would be so terribly difficult. Slow: it has to be slow, and to keep gestures slow when you cannot make them mere illustrations of what you say – well, I am sure it is very kind of you to be so flattering about it – but it is difficult to do that.’
‘And you thought them all out for yourself?’ said Olga. ‘Marvellous!’
‘Ah, if I had ever seen you do it,’ said Lucia, ‘I am sure I should have picked up some hints! And King Cophetua! Won't you give me a little word for our dear King Cophetua? I was so glad, after the strain of Brünnhilde, to have my back to the audience. Even then there is the difficulty to keeping quite still, but I am sure you know that better than I do, from having done Brünnhilde yourself. Georgie was very much impressed by your performance of it. And Mary Queen of Scots now! The shrinking of the flesh, and the resignation of the spirit! That is what I tried to express. You must come and help me next time I attempt this sort of thing again. That will not be quite soon, I am afraid, for Pepino and I are thinking of going to the Riviera for a little holiday.’
‘Oh, but how selfish!’ said Olga. ‘You mustn't do that!’
Lucia gave the silvery laugh.
‘You are all very tiresome about my going to the Riviera,’ she said. ‘But I don't promise that I shall give it up yet. We shall see! Gracious! How late it is. We must have sat very long over dinner. Why were not you asked to dinner, I wonder! I shall scold Georgie for not asking you! Ah, there is dear Mrs Weston going away. I must say good-night to her. She would think it very strange if I did not. Colonel Boucher too! Oh, they are coming this way to save us the trouble of moving.’
A general move was certainly taking place, not in the direction of the door, but to where Olga and Lucia were sitting.
‘It's snowing,’ said Piggy excitedly to Olga. ‘Will you mark my footsteps well, my page?’
‘Piggy, you – you Goosie,’ said Olga hurriedly. ‘Goosie, weren't the tableaux lovely?’
‘And the carols,’ said Goosie. ‘I adored the carols. I guessed. Did you guess, Mrs Lucas?’
Olga resorted to the mean trick of treading on Goosie's foot, and apologizing. That was cowardly, because it was sure to come out sometime. And Goosie again trod on dangerous ground by saying that if the Page had trodden like that, there was no need for any footsteps to be marked by the King.
It was snowing fast, and Mrs Weston's wheels left a deep track, but in spite of that Daisy and Robert had not gone fifty yards from the door when they came to a full stop.
‘Now what is it?’ said Daisy. ‘Out with it. Why did you talk about the discovery of muslin?’
‘I only said that we were fortunate in a medium, whom, after all, you picked up at a vegetarian restaurant,’ said he. ‘I suppose I may indulge in general conversation. If it comes to that, why did you talk about exposure in the papers?’
‘General conversation,’ said Mrs Quantock, all in one word. ‘So that's all, is it?’
‘Yes,’ said Robert. ‘You may know something, and –’
‘Now don't put it all on me,’ said Daisy. ‘If you want to know what I think, it is that you've got some secret.’
‘And if you want to know what I think,’ he retorted, ‘it is that I know you have.’
Daisy hesitated a moment: the snow was white on her shoulder, and she shook her cloak.
‘I hate concealment,’ she said. ‘I found yards and yards of muslin and a pair of Amadeo's eye-brows in that woman's bedroom the very day she went away!’
‘And she was fined last Thursday for holding a séance, at which a detective was present,’ said Robert. ‘15, Gerald Street. He seized Amadeo or Cardinal Newman by the throat, and it was that woman.’
She looked hastily round.
‘When you thought that the chimney was on fire, I was burning muslin,’ she said.
‘When you thought the chimney was on fire, I was burning every copy of Todd's News,’ said he. ‘Also a copy of the Daily Mirror, which contained the case. It belonged to the Colonel. I stole it.’
She put her hand through his arm.
‘Let's get home,’ she said. ‘We must talk it over. No one knows one word, except you and me?’
‘Not one, my dear!’ said Robert cordially. ‘But there are suspicions. Georgie suspects, for instance. He saw me buy all the copies of Todd's News; at least he was hanging about. Tonight he was clearly on the track of something, though he
gave us a very tolerable dinner.’
They went into Robert's study: it was cold, but neither felt it, for they glowed with excitement and enterprise.
‘That was a wonderful stroke of yours, Robert,’ said she. ‘It was masterly: it saved the situation. The Daily Mirror, too; how right you were to steal it. An inquisitive paper, I always thought. Yes, Georgie suspects something, but luckily he doesn't know what he suspects.’
‘That's why we both said we had just heard from that woman,’ said Robert.
‘Of course. You haven't got a copy of Todd's News have you?’
‘No; at least I burnt every page of the police-reports,’ said he. ‘It was safer.’
‘Quite so. I cannot show you Amadeo's eye-brows for the same reason. Nor the muslin. Lovely muslin, my dear: yards of it… Now what we must do is this: We must continue to be interested in psychical things: we mustn't drop them, or seem to be put off them. I wish now I had taken you into my confidence at the beginning and told you about Amadeo's eyebrows.’
‘My dear, you acted for the best,’ said he. ‘So did I when I didn't tell you about Todd's News. Secrecy even from each other was more prudent, until it became impossible. And I think we should be wise to let it be understood that we hear from the Princess now and then. Perhaps in a few months, she might even visit us again. It – it would be humorous to be behind the scenes, so to speak, and observe the credulity of the others.’
Daisy broke into a broad grin.
‘I will certainly ask dear Lucia to a séance, if we do,’ she said. ‘Dear me! How late it is: there was such a long wait between the tableaux. But we must keep our eye on Georgie, and be careful how we answer his impertinent questions. He is sure to ask some. About asking that woman down again, Robert. It might be foolhardy, for we've had an escape, and shouldn't put our neck into the same noose again. On the other hand, it would disarm suspicion for ever if, after a few months, I asked her to spend a few days of holiday here. You said it was a fine only, not imprisonment?’
The week was a busy one; Georgie, in particular, never had a moment to himself. The Hurst, so lately a desert, suddenly began to rejoice with joy and singing, and broke out into all manner of edifying gaieties. Lucia, capricious queen, quite forgot all the vitriolic things she had said to him, and gave him to understand that he was just as high in favour as ever before, and he was as busy with his duties as ever he had been. Whether he would have fallen into his old place so readily if he had been a free agent was a question that did not arise, for though it was Lucia who employed him, it was Olga who drove him there. But he had his consolation, for Lucia's noble forgiveness of all the disloyalties against her included Olga's as well, and out of all the dinners and music parties, and recitations from Pepino's new book of prose-poems, which was already in proof, and was read to select audiences from end to end, there was none to which Olga was not bidden, and none at which she failed to appear. Lucia even over-looked the fact that she had sung in the carols on Christmas night, though she had herself declared that it was the voice of the red-haired boy which was so peculiarly painful to her. Georgie's picture of her (she never knew that Olga had really commissioned it) hung at the side of the piano in the music-room, where the print of Beethoven had hung before, and it gave her the acutest gratification. It represented her sitting, with eyes cast down at her piano, and was indeed, much on the same scheme as the yet unfinished one of Olga, which had been postponed in its favour, but there was no time for Georgie to think out another position, and his hand was ‘in’ with regard to the perspective of pianos. So there it hung, with its title, ‘The Moonlight Sonata’, printed in gilt letters on its frame, and Lucia, though she continued to say that he had made her far, far too young, could not but consider that he had caught her expression exactly…
So Riseholme flocked back to The Hurst, like sheep that have been astray, for it was certain to find Olga there, even as it had hurried there, deeply breathing, to the classes of the Guru. It had to sit through the prose-poems of Pepino, it had to listen to the old, old tunes, and sigh at the end, but Olga mingled her sighs with theirs, and often, after a suitable pause, Lucia would say winningly to Olga:
‘One little song, Miss Bracely? Just a stanza? Or am I trespassing too much on your good-nature? Where is your accompanist? I declare I am jealous of him: I shall pop into his place some day! Georgino, Miss Bracely is going to sing us something. Is not that a treat? Sh-sh, please, ladies and gentlemen.’
And she rustled to her place, and sat with the farthest-away expression ever seen on mortal face, while she trespassed on Miss Bracely's good-nature.
Then Georgie had his other picture to finish, which he hoped to get ready in time to be a New Year's present, since Olga had insisted on Lucia's being done first. He had certainly secured an admirable likeness of her, and there was in it just all that his stippled, fussy representation of Lucia lacked. ‘Bleak December’, and ‘Yellow Daffodils’, and the rest of the series lacked it too: for once he had done something in the doing of which he had forgotten himself. It was by no means a work of genius, for Georgie was not possessed of one grain of that, and the talent it displayed was by no means of a high order; but it had something of the naturalness of a flower that grew from the earth which nourished it.
On the last day of the year he was putting a few final touches to it, little high reflected lights on the black keys, little blacknesses of shadow in the moulding of the panel behind her head. He had finished with her altogether, and now she sat in the window-seat, looking out, and playing with the blind-tassel. He had been so much absorbed in his work that he had scarcely noticed that she had been rather unusually silent.
‘I've got a piece of news for you,’ she said at length.
Georgie held his breath as he drew a very thin line of body-colour along the edge of A flat.
‘No! What is it?’ he said. ‘Is it about the Princess?’ Olga seemed to hail this as a diversion.
‘Ah, let's talk about that for a minute,’ she said. ‘What you ought to have done was to order another copy of Todd's News at once.’
‘I know I ought, but I couldn't get one when I thought of it afterwards. That was tarsome. But I feel sure there was something about her in it.’
‘And you can't get anything out of the Quantocks?’
‘No, though I've laid plenty of traps for them. There's an understanding between them now. They both know something. When I lay a trap, they look at each other.’
‘What sort of traps?’
‘Oh, anything. I say suddenly, “What a bore it is that there are so many frauds among mediums, especially paid ones.” You see, I don't believe for a moment that these séances were held for nothing, though we didn't pay for going to them. And then Robert says that he would never trust a paid medium, and she looks at him approvingly, and says, “Dear Princess!” The other day it was a very good trap. I said suddenly, “Is it true that the Princess is coming to stay with Lady Ambermere?” It wasn't a lie: I only asked.’
‘And then?’ said Olga.
‘Robert gave an awful twitch: not a jump exactly, but a twitch. But she was on the spot and said, “Ah, that would be nice. I wonder if it's true? The Princess didn't mention it in her last letter.” And then he looked at her approvingly. There is something there, no one shall convince me otherwise.’
Olga suddenly burst out laughing.
‘What's the matter?’ asked Georgie.
‘Oh, it's all so delicious!’ she said. ‘I never knew before how terribly interesting little things were. It's all wildly exciting, and there are fifty things going on just as exciting. Is it all of you who take such a tremendous interest in them that makes them so absorbing, or is it that they are absorbing in themselves, and ordinary dull people, not Riseholmites, don't see how exciting they are? Tommy Luton's measles; the Quantocks’ secret; Elizabeth's lover! And to think that I believed I was coming to a backwater.’
Georgie held up his picture and half closed his eyes.
> ‘I believe it's finished,’ he said. ‘I shall have it framed, and put it in my drawing-room.’
This was a trap, and Olga fell into it.
‘Yes, it will look nice there,’ she said. ‘Really, Georgie, it is very clever of you.’
He began washing his brushes.
‘And what was your news?’ he said.
She got up from her seat.
‘I forgot all about it, with talking of the Quantocks' secret,’ she said. ‘That just shows you: I completely forgot. Georgie, I've just accepted an offer to sing in America, a four months' engagement, at fifty thousand million pounds a night. A penny less, and I wouldn't have gone. But I really can't refuse. It's all been very sudden, but they want to produce Lucrezia there before it appears in England. Then I come back, and sing in London all the summer. Oh, me!’
There was dead silence, while Georgie dried his brushes.
‘When do you go?’ he asked.
‘In about a fortnight.’
‘Oh!’ said he.
She moved down the room to the piano and shut it without speaking, while he folded the paper round his finished picture.
‘Why don't you come too?’ she said at length. ‘It would do you no end of good, for you would get out of this darling twopenny place, which will all go inside a nutshell. There are big things in the world – seas, continents, people, movements, emotions. I told my Georgie I was going to ask you, and he thoroughly approves. We both like you, you know. Come for a couple of months anyhow: of course, you'll be our guest, please.’
The world at that moment had grown absolutely black to him, and it was by that that he knew who, for him, was the light of it. He shook his head.
‘Why can't you come?’ she said again.
He looked at her straight in the face.
‘Because I adore you,’ he said.
EPILOGUE OR PREFACE