THE COMPLETE WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). Эдвард Бенсон
Again Lucia longed to be as sarcastic as Abfou, and ask whether a committee meeting had been held to settle if this should be accepted. Probably Georgie had some perception of that, for he went on in a great hurry.
"Well, the weedj lasted so long that I had only just time to get home to dress for dinner and go back to Olga's," he said.
"Who was there?" asked Lucia.
"Colonel and Mrs Boucher, that's all," said Georgie. "And after dinner Olga sang too divinely. I played her accompaniments. A lot of Schubert songs."
Lucia was beginning to feel sick with envy. She pictured to herself the glory of having taken her party across to Olga's after dinner last night, of having played the accompaniments instead of Georgie (who was a miserable accompanist), of having been persuaded afterwards to give them the little morsel of Stravinski, which she had got by heart. How brilliant it would all have been; what a sumptuous paragraph Hermione would have written about her weekend! Instead of which Olga had sung to those old Bouchers, neither of whom knew one note from another, nor cared the least for the distinction of hearing the prima-donna sing in her own house. The bitterness of it could not be suppressed.
"Dear old Schubert songs!" she said with extraordinary acidity. "Such sweet old-fashioned things. 'Wiedmung,' I suppose."
"No, that's by Schumann," said Georgie, who was nettled by her tone, though he guessed what she was suffering.
Lucia knew he was right, but had to uphold her own unfortunate mistake.
"Schubert, I think," she said. "Not that it matters. And so, as dear old Pepys said, and so to bed?"
Georgie was certainly enjoying himself.
"Oh no, we didn't go to bed till terribly late," he said. "But you would have hated to be there, for what we did next. We turned on the gramophone —"
Lucia gave a little wince. Her views about gramophones as being a profane parody of music, were well known.
"Yes, I should have run away then," she said.
"We turned on the gramophone and danced!" said Georgie firmly.
This was the worst she had heard yet. Again she pictured what yesterday evening might have been. The idea of having popped in with her party after dinner, to hear Olga sing, and then dance impromptu with a prima-donna and a princess . . . It was agonising: it was intolerable.
She gave a dreadful little titter.
"How very droll!" she said. "I can hardly imagine it. Mrs Boucher in her bath-chair must have been an unwieldy partner, Georgie. Are you not very stiff this morning?"
"No, Mrs Boucher didn't dance," said Georgie with fearful literalness. "She looked on and wound up the gramophone. Just we four danced: Olga and the Princess and Colonel Boucher and I."
Lucia made a great effort with herself. She knew quite well that Georgie knew how she would have given anything to have brought her party across, and it only made matters worse (if they could be made worse) to be sarcastic about it and pretend to find it all ridiculous. Olga certainly had left her and her friends alone, just as she herself had left Riseholme alone, in this matter of her weekend party. Yet it was unwise to be withering about Colonel Boucher's dancing. She had made it clear that she was busy with her party, and but for this unfortunate accident of Olga's coming down, nothing else could have happened in Riseholme that day except by her dispensing. It was unfortunate, but it must be lived down, and if dear old Riseholme was offended with her, Riseholme must be propitiated.
"Great fun it must have been," she said. "How delicious a little impromptu thing like that is! And singing too: well, you had a nice evening, Georgie. And now let us make some delicious little plan for today. Pop in presently and have 'ickle music and bit of lunch."
"I'm afraid I've just promised to lunch with Daisy," said he.
This again was rather ominous, for there could be no doubt that Daisy, having said she was engaged, had popped in here to effect an engagement.
"How gay!" said Lucia. "Come and dine this evening then! Really, Georgie, you are busier than any of us in London."
"Too tarsome," said Georgie, "because Olga's coming in here."
"And the Princess?" asked Lucia before she could stop herself.
"No, she went away this morning," said Georgie.
That was something, anyhow, thought Lucia. One distinguished person had gone away from Riseholme. She waited, in slowly diminishing confidence, for Georgie to ask her to dine with him instead. Perhaps he would ask Peppino too, but if not, Peppino would be quite happy with his telescope and his crosswords all by himself. But it was odd and distasteful to wait to be asked to dinner by anybody in Riseholme instead of everyone wanting to be asked by her.
"She went away by the ten-thirty," said Georgie, after an awful pause.
Lucia had already learned certain lessons in London. If you get a snub — and this seemed very like a snub — the only possible course was to be unaware of it. So, though the thought of being snubbed by Georgie nearly made her swoon, she was unaware of it.
"Such a good train," she said, magnificently disregarding the well-known fact that it stopped at every station, and crawled in between.
"Excellent," said Georgie with conviction. He had not the slightest intention of asking Lucia to dine, for he wanted his tête-à-tête with Olga. There would be such a lot to talk over, and besides it would be tiresome to have Lucia there, for she would be sure to gabble away about her wonderful life in London, and her music-room and her Chippendale chairs, and generally to lay down the law. She must be punished too, for her loathsome conduct in disregarding her old friends when she had her party from London, and be made to learn that her old friends were being much smarter than she was.
Lucia kept her end up nobly.
"Well, Georgie, I must trot away," she said. "Such a lot of people to see. Look in, if you've got a spare minute. I'm off again tomorrow. Such a whirl of things in London this week."
Lucia, instead of proceeding to see lots of people, went back to her house and saw Peppino. He was sitting in the garden in very old clothes, smoking a pipe, and thoroughly enjoying the complete absence of anything to do. He was aware that officially he loved the bustle of London, but it was extremely pleasant to sit in his garden and smoke a pipe, and above all to be rid of those rather hectic people who had talked quite incessantly from morning till night all Sunday. He had given up the crossword, and was thinking over the material for a sonnet on Tranquillity, when Lucia came out to him.
"I was wondering, Peppino," she said, "if it would not be pleasanter to go up to town this afternoon. We should get the cool of the evening for our drive, and really, now all our guests have gone, and we are going tomorrow, these hours will be rather tedious. We are spoilt, caro, you and I, by our full life up there, where any moment the telephone bell may ring with some delightful invitation. Of course in August we will be here, and settle down to our quaint old life again, but these little odds and ends of time, you know."
Peppino was reasonably astonished. Half an hour ago Lucia had set out, burning with enthusiasm to pick up the 'old threads,' and now all she seemed to want to do was to drop the old threads as quickly as possible. Though he knew himself to be incapable of following the swift and antic movements of Lucia's mind, he was capable of putting two and two together. He had been faintly conscious all yesterday that matters were not going precisely as Lucia wished, and knew that her efforts to entice Olga and her guest to the house had been as barren as a fig tree, but there must have been something more than that. Though not an imaginative man (except in thinking that words rhymed when they did not), it occurred to him that Riseholme was irritated with Lucia, and was indicating it in some unusual manner.
"Why, my dear, I thought you were going to have people in to lunch and dinner," he said, "and see about sending the spit to the Museum, and be tremendously busy all day."
Lucia pulled herself together. She had a momentary impulse to confide in Peppino and tell him all the ominous happenings of the