Works of E F Benson Read online

  Already, though Lady Ambermere’s motor had not yet completely vanished up the street, Riseholme was gently closing in round him, in order to discover by discreet questions (as in the game of Clumps) what he and she had been talking about. There was Colonel Boucher with his two snorting bull-dogs closing in from one side, and Mrs Weston in her bath-chair being wheeled relentlessly towards him from another, and the two Miss Antrobuses sitting playfully in the stocks, on the third, and Peppino at close range on the fourth. Everyone knew, too, that he did not lunch till half past one, and there was really no reason why he should not stop and chat as usual. But with the eye of the true general, he saw that he could most easily break the surrounding cordon by going off in the direction of Colonel Boucher, because Colonel Boucher always said “Haw, hum, by Jove,” before he descended into coherent speech, and thus Georgie could forestall him with “Good morning, Colonel,” and pass on before he got to business. He did not like passing close to those slobbering bull-dogs, but something had to be done … Next moment he was clear and saw that the other spies by their original impetus were still converging on each other and walked briskly down towards Lucia’s house, to listen for any familiar noises out of the Mozart trio. The noises were there, and the soft pedal was down just as he expected, so, that business being off his mind, he continued his walk for a few hundred yards more, meaning to make a short circuit through fields, cross the bridge, over the happy stream that flowed into the Avon, and regain his house by the door at the bottom of the garden. Then he would sit and think … the Guru, Olga Bracely … What if he asked Olga Bracely and her husband to dine, and persuaded Mrs Quantock to let the Guru come? That would be three men and one woman, and Hermy and Ursy would make all square. Six for dinner was the utmost that Foljambe permitted.

  He had come to the stile that led into the fields, and sat there for a moment. Lucia’s tentative melodies were still faintly audible, but soon they stopped, and he guessed that she was looking out of the window. She was too great to take part in the morning spying that went on round about the Green, but she often saw a good deal from her window. He wondered what Mrs Quantock was meaning to do. Apparently she had not promised the Guru for the garden-party, or else Lady Ambermere would not have said that Lucia did not know whether he was coming or not. Perhaps Mrs Quantock was going to run him herself, and grant him neither to Lucia nor Georgie. In that case he would certainly ask Olga Bracely and her husband to dine, and should he or should he not ask Lucia?

  The red star had risen in Riseholme: Bolshevism was treading in its peaceful air, and if Mrs Quantock was going to secrete her Guru, and set up her own standard on the strength of him, Georgie felt much inclined to ask Olga Bracely to dinner, without saying anything whatever to Lucia about it, and just see what would happen next. Georgie was a Bartlett on his mother’s side, and he played the piano better than Lucia, and he had twenty-four hours’ leisure every day, which he could devote to being king of Riseholme…. His nature flared up, burning with a red revolutionary flame, that was fed by his secret knowledge about Olga Bracely. Why should Lucia rule everyone with her rod of iron? Why, and again why?

  Suddenly he heard his name called in the familiar alto, and there was Lucia in her Shakespeare’s garden.

  “Georgino! Georgino mio!” she cried. “Gino!”

  Out of mere habit Georgie got down from his stile, and tripped up the road towards her. The manly seething of his soul’s insurrection rebuked him, but unfortunately his legs and his voice surrendered. Habit was strong….

  “Amica!” he answered. “Buon Giorno.” (“And why do I say it in Italian?” he vainly asked himself.)

  “Geordie, come and have ickle talk,” she said. “Me want ‘oo wise man to advise ickle Lucia.”

  “What ‘oo want?” asked Georgie, now quite quelled for the moment.

  “Lots-things. Here’s pwetty flower for button-holie. Now tell me about black man. Him no snakes have? Why Mrs Quantock say she thinks he no come to poo’ Lucia’s party-garden?”

  “Oh, did she?” asked Georgie relapsing into the vernacular.

  “Yes, oh, and by the way there’s a parcel come which I think must be the Mozart trio. Will you come over tomorrow morning and read it with me? Yes? About half-past eleven, then. But never mind that.”

  She fixed him with her ready, birdy eye.

  “Daisy asked me to ask him,” she said, “and so to oblige poor Daisy I did. And now she says she doesn’t know if he’ll come. What does that mean? Is it possible that she wants to keep him to herself? She has done that sort of thing before, you know.”

  This probably represented Lucia’s statement of the said case about the Welsh attorney, and Georgie taking it as such felt rather embarrassed. Also that bird-like eye seemed to gimlet its way into his very soul, and divine the secret disloyalty that he had been contemplating. If she had continued to look into him, he might not only have confessed to the gloomiest suspicions about Mrs Quantock, but have let go of his secret about Olga Bracely also, and suggested the possibility of her and her husband being brought to the garden-party. But the eye at this moment unscrewed itself from him again and travelled up the road.

  “There’s the Guru,” she said. “Now we will see!”

  Georgie, faint with emotion, peered out between the form of the peacock and the pine-apple on the yew-hedge, and saw what followed. Lucia went straight up to the Guru, bowed and smiled and clearly introduced herself. In another moment he was showing his white teeth and salaaming, and together they walked back to The Hurst, where Georgie palpitated behind the yew-hedge. Together they entered and Lucia’s eye wore its most benignant aspect.

  “I want to introduce to you, Guru,” she said without a stumble, “a great friend of mine. This is Mr Pillson, Guru; Guru, Mr Pillson. The Guru is coming to tiffin with me, Georgie. Cannot I persuade you to stop?”

  “Delighted!” said Georgie. “We met before in a sort of way, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, indeed. So pleased,” said the Guru.

  “Let us go in,” said Lucia, “It is close on lunch-time.”

  Georgie followed, after a great many bowings and politenesses from the Guru. He was not sure if he had the makings of a Bolshevist. Lucia was so marvellously efficient.

  CHAPTER FIVE.

  One of Lucia’s greatnesses lay in the fact that when she found anybody out in some act of atrocious meanness, she never indulged in any idle threats of revenge: it was sufficient that she knew, and would take suitable steps on the earliest occasion. Consequently when it appeared, from the artless conversation of the Guru at lunch that the perfidious Mrs Quantock had not even asked him whether he would like to go to Lucia’s garden party or not (pending her own decision as to what she was meaning to do with him) Lucia received the information with the utmost good-humour, merely saying, “No doubt dear Mrs Quantock forgot to tell you,” and did not announce acts of reprisal, such as striking Daisy off the list of her habitual guests for a week or two, just to give her a lesson. She even, before they sat down to lunch, telephoned over to that thwarted woman to say that she had met the Guru in the street, and they had both felt that there was some wonderful bond of sympathy between them, so he had come back with her, and they were just sitting down to tiffin. She was pleased with the word “tiffin,” and also liked explaining to Daisy what it meant.

  Tiffin was a great success, and there was no need for the Guru to visit the kitchen in order to make something that could be eaten without struggle. He talked quite freely about his mission here, and Lucia and Georgie and Peppino who had come in rather late, for he had been obliged to go back to the market-gardener’s about the bulbs, listened entranced.

  “Yes, it was when I went to my friend who keeps the book-shop,” he said, “that I knew there was English lady who wanted Guru, and I knew I was called to her. No luggage, no anything at all: as I am. Such a kind lady, too, and she will get on well, but she will find some of the postures difficult, for she is what you call globe, round.”
r />   “Was that postures when I saw her standing on one leg in the garden?” asked Georgie, “and when she sat down and tried to hold her toes?”

  “Yes, indeed, quite so, and difficult for globe. But she has white soul.”

  He looked round with a smile.

  “I see many white souls here,” he said. “It is happy place, when there are white souls, for to them I am sent.”

  This was sufficient: in another minute Lucia, Georgie and Peppino were all accepted as pupils, and presently they went out into the garden, where the Guru sat on the ground in a most complicated attitude which was obviously quite out of reach of Mrs Quantock.

  “One foot on one thigh, other foot on other thigh,” he explained. “And the head and back straight: it is good to meditate so.”

  Lucia tried to imagine meditating so, but felt that any meditation so would certainly be on the subject of broken bones.

  “Shall I be able to do that?” she asked. “And what will be the effect?”

  “You will be light and active, dear lady, and ah — here is other dear lady come to join us.”

  Mrs Quantock had certainly made one of her diplomatic errors on this occasion. She had acquiesced on the telephone in her Guru going to tiffin with Lucia, but about the middle of her lunch, she had been unable to resist the desire to know what was happening at The Hurst. She could not bear the thought that Lucia and her Guru were together now, and her own note, saying that it was uncertain whether the Guru would come to the garden party or not filled her with the most uneasy apprehensions. She would sooner have acquiesced in her Guru going to fifty garden-parties, where all was public, and she could keep an eye and a control on him, rather than that Lucia should have “enticed him in,” — that was her phrase — like this to tiffin. The only consolation was that her own lunch had been practically inedible, and Robert had languished lamentably for the Guru to return, and save his stomach. She had left him glowering over a little mud and water called coffee. Robert, at any rate, would welcome the return of the Guru.

  She waddled across the lawn to where this harmonious party was sitting, and at that moment Lucia began to feel vindictive. The calm of victory which had permeated her when she brought the Guru in to lunch, without any bother at all, was troubled and broken up, and darling Daisy’s note, containing the outrageous falsity that the Guru would not certainly accept an invitation which had never been permitted to reach him at all, assumed a more sinister aspect. Clearly now Daisy had intended to keep him to herself, a fact that she already suspected and had made a hostile invasion.

  “Guru, dear, you naughty thing,” said Mrs Quantock playfully, after the usual salutations had passed, “why did you not tell your Chela you would not be home for tiffin?”

  The Guru had unwound his legs, and stood up.

  “But see, beloved lady,” he said, “how pleasant we all are! Take not too much thought, when it is only white souls who are together.”

  Mrs Quantock patted his shoulder.

  “It is all good and kind Om,” she said. “I send out my message of love. There!”

  It was necessary to descend from these high altitudes, and Lucia proceeded to do so, as in a parachute that dropped swiftly at first, and then floated in still air.

  “And we’re making such a lovely plan, dear Daisy,” she said. “The Guru is going to teach us all. Classes! Aren’t you?”

  He held his hands up to his head, palms outwards, and closed his eyes.

  “I seem to feel call,” he said. “I am sent. Surely the Guides tell me there is a sending of me. What you call classes? Yes? I teach: you learn. We all learn…. I leave all to you. I will walk a little way off to arbour, and meditate, and then when you have arranged, you will tell Guru, who is your servant. Salaam! Om!”

  With the Guru in her own house, and with every intention to annex him, it was no wonder that Lucia took the part of chairman in this meeting that was to settle the details of the esoteric brotherhood that was to be formed in Riseholme. Had not Mrs Quantock been actually present, Lucia in revenge for her outrageous conduct about the garden-party invitation would probably have left her out of the classes altogether, but with her sitting firm and square in a basket chair, that creaked querulously as she moved, she could not be completely ignored. But Lucia took the lead throughout, and suggested straightaway that the smoking-parlour would be the most convenient place to hold the classes in.

  “I should not think of invading your house, dear Daisy,” she said, “and here is the smoking-parlour which no one ever sits in, so quiet and peaceful. Yes. Shall we consider that settled, then?”

  She turned briskly to Mrs Quantock.

  “And now where shall the Guru stay?” she said. “It would be too bad, dear Daisy, if we are all to profit by his classes, that you should have all the trouble and expense of entertaining him, for in your sweet little house he must be a great inconvenience, and I think you said that your husband had given up his dressing room to him.”

  Mrs Quantock made a desperate effort to retain her property.

  “No inconvenience at all,” she said, “quite the contrary in fact, dear. It is delightful having him, and Robert regards him as a most desirable inmate.”

  Lucia pressed her hand feelingly.

  “You and your husband are too unselfish,” she said. “Often have I said, ‘Daisy and Mr Robert are the most unselfish people I know.’ Haven’t I, Georgie? But we can’t permit you to be so crowded. Your only spare room, you know, and your husband’s dressing room! Georgie, I know you agree with me; we must not permit dear Daisy to be so unselfish.”

  The bird-like eye produced its compelling effect on Georgie. So short a time ago he had indulged in revolutionary ideas, and had contemplated having the Guru and Olga Bracely to dinner, without even asking Lucia: now the faint stirrings of revolt faded like snow in summer. He knew quite well what Lucia’s next proposition would be: he knew, too, that he would agree to it.

  “No, that would never do,” he said. “It is simply trespassing on Mrs Quantock’s good-nature, if she is to board and lodge him, while he teaches all of us. I wish I could take him in, but with Hermy and Ursy coming tonight, I have as little room as Mrs Quantock.”

  “He shall come here,” said Lucia brightly, as if she had just that moment thought of it. “There are Hamlet and Othello vacant” — all her rooms were named after Shakespearian plays— “and it will not be the least inconvenient. Will it, Peppino? I shall really like having him here. Shall we consider that settled, then?”

  Daisy made a perfectly futile effort to send forth a message of love to all quarters of the compass. Bitterly she repented of having ever mentioned her Guru to Lucia: it had never occurred to her that she would annex him like this. While she was cudgelling her brains as to how she could arrest this powerful offensive, Lucia went sublimely on.

  “Then there’s the question of what we shall pay him,” she said. “Dear Daisy tells us that he scarcely knows what money is, but I for one could never dream of profiting by his wisdom, if I was to pay nothing for it. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and so I suppose the teacher is. What if we pay him five shillings each a lesson: that will make a pound a lesson. Dear me! I shall be busy this August. Now how many classes shall we ask him to give us? I should say six to begin with, if everybody agrees. One every day for the next week except Sunday. That is what you all wish? Yes? Then shall we consider that settled?”

  Mrs Quantock, still impotently rebelling, resorted to the most dire weapon in her armoury, namely, sarcasm.

  “Perhaps, darling Lucia,” she said, “it would be well to ask my Guru if he has anything to say to your settlings. England is a free country still, even if you happen to have come from India.”

  Lucia had a deadlier weapon than sarcasm, which was the apparent unconsciousness of there having been any. For it is no use plunging a dagger into your enemy’s heart, if it produces no effect whatever on him. She clapped her hands together, and gave her peal of silvery laughter. />
  “What a good idea!” she said. “Then you would like me to go and tell him what we propose? Just as you like. I will trot away, shall I, and see if he agrees. Don’t think of stirring, dear Daisy, I know how you feel the heat. Sit quiet in the shade. As you know, I am a real salamander, the sun is never troppo caldo for me.”

  She tripped off to where the Guru was sitting in that wonderful position. She had read the article in the encyclopaedia about Yoga right through again this morning, and had quite made up her mind, as indeed her proceedings had just shown, that Yoga was, to put it irreverently, to be her August stunt. He was still so deep in meditation that he could only look dreamily in her direction as she approached, but then with a long sigh he got up.

  “This is beautiful place,” he said. “It is full of sweet influences and I have had high talk with Guides.”

  Lucia felt thrilled.

  “Ah, do tell me what they said to you,” she exclaimed.

  “They told me to follow where I was led: they said they would settle everything for me in wisdom and love.”

  This was most encouraging, for decidedly Lucia had been settling for him, and the opinion of the Guides was thus a direct personal testimonial. Any faint twitchings of conscience (they were of the very faintest) that she had grabbed dear Daisy’s property were once and for ever quieted, and she proceeded confidently to unfold the settlements of wisdom and love, which met with the Guru’s entire approval. He shut his eyes a moment and breathed deeply.