‘You'll make a better hand at it, I'll be bound,’ said Mr Stratton obsequiously. ‘They say Mrs Quantock putts very nicely when she gets near the hole, but it takes her so many strokes to get there. She's lost the hole, in a manner of speaking, before she has a chance of winning it.’
Lucia thought hard for a minute.
‘I must see about joining at once,’ she said. ‘Who – who are the committee?’
‘Well, we are going to reconstitute it next October, he said, ‘seeing that the ladies and gentlemen of Riseholme are joining. We should like to have one of you ladies as President, and one of the gentlemen on the committee.’
Lucia made no hesitation about this.
‘I should be delighted,’ she said, ‘if the present committee did me the honour to ask me. And how about Mr Pillson? I would sound him if you like. But we must say nothing about it, till your committee meets.’
That was beautifully settled then; Mr Stratton knew how gratified the committee would be, and Lucia, long before Georgie and Daisy returned, had bought four clubs, and was having a lesson from a small wiry caddie.
Every morning while Daisy was swanking away on the green, teaching Georgie and Piggy and Goosie how to play, Lucia went surreptitiously down the hill and learned, while after tea she humbly took her place in Daisy's class and observed Daisy doing everything all wrong. She putted away at her clock-golf, she bought a beautiful book with pictures and studied them, and all the time she said nothing whatever about it. In her heart she utterly despised golf, but golf just now was the stunt, and she had to get hold of Riseholme again…
Georgie popped in one morning after she had come back from her lesson, and found her in the act of holing out from the very longest of the stations.
‘My dear, what a beautiful putt!’ he said. ‘I believe you're getting quite keen on it.’
‘Indeed I am,’ said she. ‘It's great fun. I go down sometimes to the links and knock the ball about. Be very kind to me this afternoon and come round with me.’
Georgie readily promised to do so.
‘Of course I will,’ he said, ‘and I should be delighted to give you a hint or two, if I can. I won two holes from Daisy yesterday.’
‘How clever of you, Georgie! Any news?’
Georgie said the sound that is spelt ‘Tut.’
‘I quite forgot,’ he said. ‘I came round to tell you. Neither Mrs Boucher nor Daisy nor I know what to do.’
(That's the Museum committee, thought Lucia.)
‘What is it, Georgie?’ she said. ‘See if poor Lucia can help.’
‘Well,’ said Georgie, ‘you know Pug?’
‘That mangy little thing of Lady Ambermere's?’ asked Lucia.
‘Yes. Pug died, I don't know what of–’
‘Cream, I should think,’ said Lucia. ‘And cake.’
‘Well, it may have been. Anyhow, Lady Ambermere had him stuffed, and while I was out this morning, she left him in a glass case at my house, as a present for the Museum. There he is lying on a blue cushion, with one ear cocked, and a great watery eye, and the end of his horrid tongue between his lips.’
‘No!’ said Lucia.
‘I assure you. And we don't know what to do. We can't put him in the Museum, can we? And we're afraid she'll take the mittens away if we don't. But, how can we refuse? She wrote me a note about “her precious Pug”.’
Lucia remembered how they had refused an Elizabethan spit, though they had subsequently accepted it. But she was not going to remind Georgie of that. She wanted to get a better footing in the Museum than an Elizabethan spit had given her.
‘What a dreadful thing!’ she said. ‘And so you came to see if your poor old Lucia could help you.’
‘Well, we all wondered if you might be able to think of something,’ said he.
Lucia enjoyed this: the Museum was wanting her… She fixed Georgie with her eye.
‘Perhaps I can get you out of your hole,’ she said. ‘What I imagine is, Georgie, that you want me to take that awful Pug back to her. I see what's happened. She had him stuffed, and then found he was too dreadful an object to keep, and so thought she'd be generous to the Museum. We – I should say “you”, for I've got nothing to do with it – you don't care about the Museum being made a dump for all the rubbish that people don't want in their houses. Do you?’
‘No, certainly not,’ said Georgie. (Did Lucia mean anything by that? Apparently she did.) She became brisk and voluble.
‘Of course, if you asked my opinion,’ said Lucia, ‘I should say that there has been a little too much dumping done already. But that is not the point, is it? And it's not my business either. Anyhow, you don't want any more rubbish to be dumped. As for withdrawing the mittens – only lent, are they? – she won't do anything of the kind. She likes taking people over and showing them. Yes, Georgie, I'll help you: tell Mrs Boucher and Daisy that I'll help you. I'll drive over this afternoon – no, I won't, for I'm going to have a lovely game of golf with you – I'll drive over to-morrow and take Pug back, with the committee's regrets that they are not taxidermists. Or, if you like, I'll do it on my own authority. How odd to be afraid of poor old Lady Ambermere! Never mind: I'm not. How all you people bully me into doing just what you want! I always was Rise-holme's slave. Put Pug's case in a nice piece of brown paper, Georgie, for I don't want to see the horrid little abortion, and don't think anything more about it. Now let's have a good little putting match till lunch-time.’
Georgie was nowhere in the good little putting match, and he was even less anywhere when it came to their game in the afternoon. Lucia made magnificent swipes from the tee, the least of which, if she happened to hit it, must have gone well over a hundred yards, whereas Daisy considered eighty yards from the tee a most respectable shot, and was positively pleased if she went into a bunker at a greater distance than that, and said the bunker ought to be put further off for the sake of the longer hitters. And when Lucia came near the green, she gave a smart little dig with her mashie, and, when this remarkable stroke came off, though she certainly hit the ground, the ball went beautifully, whereas when Daisy hit the ground the ball didn't go at all. All the time she was light-hearted and talkative, and even up to the moment of striking, would be saying ‘Now 'oo naughty ickle ball: Lucia's going to give you such a spank!’ whereas when Daisy was playing, her opponent and the caddies had all to be dumb and turned to stone, while she drew a long breath and waved her club with a pendulum-like movement over the ball.
‘But you're marvellous,’ said Georgie as, three down, he stood on the fourth tee, and watched Lucia's ball sail away over a sheep that looked quite small in the distance. ‘It's only three weeks or so since you began to play at all. You are clever! I believe you'd nearly beat Daisy.’
‘Georgie, I'm afraid you're a flatterer,’ said Lucia. ‘Now give your ball a good bang, and then there's something I want to talk to you about.’
‘Let's see; it's slow back, isn't it?’ said Georgie. ‘Or is it quick back? I believe Daisy says sometimes one and sometimes the other.’
Daisy and Piggy, starting before them, were playing in a parallel and opposite direction. Daisy had no luck with her first shot, and very little with her second. Lucia just got out of the way of her third and Daisy hurried by them.
‘Such a slice!’ she said. ‘How are you getting on, Lucia? How many have you played to get there?’
‘One at present, dear,’ said Lucia. ‘But isn't it difficult?’
Daisy's face fell.
‘One?’ she said.
Lucia kissed her hand.
‘That's all,’ she said. ‘And has Georgie told you that I'll manage about Pug for you?’
Daisy looked round severely. She had begun to address her ball and nobody must talk.
Lucia watched Daisy do it again, and rejoined Georgie who was in a ‘tarsome’ place, and tufts of grass flew in the air.
‘Georgie, I had a little talk with Mr Stratton the other day,’ she said. ‘There's a new g
olf committee being elected in October, and they would so like to have you on it. Now be good-natured and say you will.’
Georgie had no intention of saying anything else.
‘And they want poor little me to be President,’ said Lucia. ‘So shall I send Mr Stratton a line and say we will? It would be kind, Georgie. Oh, by the way, do come and dine to-night. Pepino – so much better, thanks – Pepino told me to ask you. He would enjoy it. Just one of our dear little evenings again.’
Lucia, in fact, was bringing her batteries into action, and Georgie was the immediate though not the ultimate objective. He longed to be on the golf committee, he was intensely grateful for the promised removal of Pug, and it was much more amusing to play golf with Lucia than to be dragooned round by Daisy who told him after every stroke what he ought to have done and could never do it herself. A game should not be a lecture.
Lucia thought it was time to confide in him about the abandoning of Brompton Square. Georgie would love knowing what nobody else knew yet. She waited till he had failed to hole a short putt, and gave him the subsequent one, which Daisy never did.
‘I hope we shall have many of our little evenings, Georgie,’ she said. ‘We shall be here till Christmas. No, no more London for us, though it's a secret at present.’
‘What?’ said Georgie.
‘Wait a moment,’ said Lucia, teeing up for the last hole. ‘Now ickle ballie, fly away home. There…!’ and ickle ballie flew about right-angles to home, but ever such a long way.
She walked with him to cover-point, where he had gone too.
‘Pepino must never live in London again,’ she said. ‘All going to be sold, Georgie. The house and the furniture and the pearls. You must put up with your poor old Lucia at Riseholme again. Nobody knows yet but you, but now it is all settled. Am I sorry? Yes, Georgie, course I am. So many dear friends in London. But then there are dear friends in Riseholme. Oh, what a beautiful bang, Georgie. You nearly hit Daisy. Call “Five!’ isn't that what they do?’
Lucia was feeling much surer of her ground. Georgie, bribed by a place on the golf committee and by her admiration of his golf, and by her nobility with regard to Pug, was trotting back quick to her, and that was something. Next morning she had a hectic interview with Lady Ambermere…
Lady Ambermere was said to be not at home, though Lucia had seen her majestic face at the window of the pink saloon. So she asked for Miss Lyall, the down-trodden companion, and waited in the hall. Her chauffeur had deposited the large brown-paper parcel with Pug inside on the much-admired tessellated pavement.
‘Oh, Miss Lyall,’ said Lucia. ‘So sad that dear Lady Ambermere is out, for I wanted to convey the grateful thanks of the Museum committee to her for her beautiful gift of poor Pug. But they feel they can't… Yes, that's Pug in the brown-paper parcel. So sweet. But will you, on Lady Ambermere's return, make it quite clear?’
Miss Lyall, looking like a mouse, considered what her duty was in this difficult situation. She felt that Lady Ambermere ought to know Lucia's mission and deal with it in person.
‘I'll see if Lady Ambermere has come in, Mrs Lucas,’ she said. ‘She may have come in. Just out in the garden, you know. Might like to know what you've brought. O dear me!’
Poor Miss Lyall scuttled away, and presently the door of the pink saloon was thrown open. After an impressive pause Lady Ambermere appeared, looking vexed. The purport of this astounding mission had evidently been conveyed to her.
‘Mrs Lucas, I believe,’ she said, just as if she wasn't sure.
Now Lucia, after all her Duchesses, was not going to stand that. Lady Ambermere might have a Roman nose, but she hadn't any manners.
‘Lady Ambermere, I presume,’ she retorted. So there they were.
Lady Ambermere glared at her in a way that should have turned her to stone. It made no impression.
‘You have come, I believe, with a message from the committee of your little Museum at Riseholme, which I may have misunderstood.’
Lucia knew she was doing what neither Mrs Boucher nor Daisy in their most courageous moments would have dared to do. As for Georgie…
‘No, Lady Ambermere,’ she said. ‘I don't think you've misunderstood it. A stuffed dog on a cushion. They felt that the Museum was not quite the place for it. I have brought it back to you with their thanks and regrets. So kind of you and – and so sorry of them. This is the parcel. That is all, I think.’
It wasn't quite all…
‘Are you aware, Mrs Lucas,’ said Lady Ambermere, ‘that the mittens of the late Queen Charlotte are my loan to your little Museum?’
Lucia put her finger to her forehead.
‘Mittens?’ she said. ‘Yes, I believe there are some mittens. I think I have seen them. No doubt those are the ones. Yes?’
That was brilliant: it implied complete indifference on the part of the committee (to which Lucia felt sure she would presently belong) as to what Lady Ambermere might think fit to do about mittens.
‘The committee shall hear from me,’ said Lady Ambermere, and walked majestically back to the pink saloon.
Lucia felt sorry for Miss Lyall: Miss Lyall would probably not have a very pleasant day, but she had no real apprehensions, so she explained to the committee, who were anxiously awaiting her return on the green, about the withdrawal of these worsted relics.
‘Bluff, just bluff,’ she said. ‘And even if it wasn't – Surely, dear Daisy, it's better to have no mittens and no Pug than both. Pug – I caught a peep of him through a hole in the brown paper – Pug would have made your Museum a laughing-stock.’
‘Was she very dreadful?’ asked Georgie.
Lucia gave a little silvery laugh.
‘Yes, dear Georgie, quite dreadful. You would have collapsed if she had said to you “Mr Pillson, I believe”. Wouldn't you, Georgie? Don't pretend to be braver than you are.’
‘Well, I think we ought all to be much obliged to you, Mrs Lucas,’ said Mrs Boucher. ‘And I'm sure we are. I should never have stood up to her like that! And if she takes the mittens away, I should be much inclined to put another pair in the case, for the case belongs to us and not to her, with just the label “These Mittens did not belong to Queen Charlotte, and were not presented by Lady Ambermere”. That would serve her out.’
Lucia laughed gaily again.
‘So glad to have been of use,’ she said. ‘And now, dear Daisy, will you be as kind to me as Georgie was yesterday and give me a little game of golf this afternoon? Not much fun for you, but so good for me.’
Daisy had observed some of Lucia's powerful strokes yesterday, and she was rather dreading this invitation for fear it should not be, as Lucia said, much fun for her. Luckily, she and Georgie had already arranged to play to-day, and she had, in anticipation of the dread event, engaged Piggy, Goosie, Mrs Antrobus and Colonel Boucher to play with her on all the remaining days of that week. She meant to practise like anything in the interval. And then, like a raven croaking disaster, the infamous Georgie let her down.
‘I'd sooner not play this afternoon,’ he said. ‘I'd sooner just stroll out with you.’
‘Sure, Georgie?’ said Lucia. ‘That will be nice then. Oh, how nervous I shall be.’
Daisy made one final effort to avert her downfall, by offering, as they went out that afternoon, to give Lucia a stroke a hole. Lucia said she knew she could do it, but might they, just for fun, play level? And as the round proceeded, Lucia's kindness was almost intolerable. She could see, she said, that Daisy was completely off her game, when Daisy wasn't in the least off her game: she said, ‘Oh, that was bad luck!’ when Daisy missed short putts: she begged her to pick her ball out of bushes and not count it… At half-past four Riseholme knew that Daisy had halved four holes and lost the other five. Her short reign as Queen of Golf had come to an end.
The Museum committee met after tea at Mrs Boucher's (Daisy did not hold her golfing-class in the garden that day) and tact, Georgie felt, seemed to indicate that Lucia's name should not be s
uggested as a new member of the committee so swiftly on the heels of Daisy's disaster. Mrs Boucher, privately consulted, concurred, though with some rather stinging remarks as to Daisy's having deceived them all about her golf, and the business of the meeting was chiefly concerned with the proposed closing down of the Museum for the winter. The tourist season was over, no charabancs came any more with visitors, and for three days not a soul had passed the turnstile.
‘So where's the use,’ asked Mrs Boucher, ‘of paying a boy to let people into the Museum when nobody wants to be let in? I call it throwing money away. Far better close it till the spring, and have no more expense, except to pay him a shilling a week to open the windows and air it, say on Tuesday and Friday, or Wednesday and Saturday.’
‘I should suggest Monday and Thursday,’ said Daisy, very decisively. If she couldn't have it all her own way on the links, she could make herself felt on committees.
‘Very well, Monday and Thursday, said Mrs Boucher. ‘And then there's another thing. It's getting so damp in there, that if you wanted a cold bath, you might undress and stand there. The water's pouring off the walls. A couple of oil-stoves, I suggest, every day except when it's being aired. The boy will attend to them, and make it half a crown instead of a shilling. I'm going to Blitton to-morrow, and if that's your wish I'll order them. No: I'll bring them back with me, and I'll have them lit to-morrow morning. But unless you want to have nothing to show next spring but mildew, don't let us delay about it. A crop of mildew won't be sufficient attraction to visitors, and there'll be nothing else.’
Georgie rapped the table.
‘And I vote we take the manuscript of Lucrezia out, and that one of us keeps it till we open again,’ he said.
‘I should be happy to keep it,’ said Daisy.
Georgie wanted it himself, but it was better not to thwart Daisy to-day. Besides, he was in a hurry, as Lucia had asked him to bring round his planchette and see if Abfou would not like a little attention. Nobody had talked to Abfou for weeks.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘and if that's all –’