Lucia in London

by E. F. Benson

Lucia visited the Museum next, and arranged the spit in an empty and prominent place between Daisy’s fossils and Colonel Boucher’s fragments of Samian ware. She attended the morning parliament on the Green, and walked beside Mrs. Boucher’s bath-chair. She shouted into Mrs. Antrobus’s ear-trumpet, she dallied with Piggy and Goosie, and never so much as mentioned a duchess. All her thoughts seemed wrapped up in Riseholme; just one tiresome visit lay in front of her, and then, oh, the joy of settling down here again! Even Mrs. Boucher felt disarmed; little as she would have thought it, there was something in Lucia beyond mere snobbery.

Georgie popped in that afternoon about tea time. The afternoon was rather chilly, and Lucia had a fire lit in the grate of the music room, which, now that the spit had been removed, burned beautifully. Pepino, drowsy with his cold, sat by it, while the other two played duets. Already Lucia had taken down Sigismund’s portrait and installed Georgie’s water-colours again by the piano. They had had a fine tussle over the Mozart duet, and Georgie had promised to practise it, and Lucia had promised to practise it, and she had called him an idle boy, and he had called her a lazy girl, quite in the old style, while Pepino dozed. Just then the evening post came in, with the evening paper, and Lucia picked up the latter to see what Hermione had said about her departure from London. Even as she turned back the page her eye fell on two or three letters which had been forwarded from Brompton Square. The top one was a large square envelope, the sort of fine thick envelope that contained a rich card of invitation, and she opened it. Next moment she sprang from her seat.

“Pepino, dear,” she cried. “Marcia! Her ball. Marcia’s ball to-night!”

Pepino roused himself a little.

“Ball? What ball?” he said. “No ball. Riseholme.”

Lucia pushed by Georgie on the treble music stool, without seeming to notice that he was there.

“No dear, of course you won’t go,” she said. “But do you know, I think I shall go up and pop in for an hour. Georgie will come to dine with you, won’t you, Georgie, and you’ll go to bed early. Half past six! Yes, I can be in town by ten. That will be heaps of time. I shall dress at Brompton Square. Just a sandwich to take with me and eat it in the car.”

She wheeled round to Georgie, pressing the bell in her circumvolution.

“Marcia Whitby,” she said. “Winding up the season. So easy to pop up there, and dear Marcia would be hurt if I didn’t come. Let me see, shall I come back to-morrow, Pepino? Perhaps it would be simpler if I stayed up there and sent the car back. Then you could come up in comfort next day, and we would go on to Adele’s together. I have a host of things to do in London to-morrow. That party at Aggie’s. I will telephone to Aggie to say that I can come after all. My maid, my chauffeur,” she said to the butler, rather in the style of Shylock. “I want my maid and my chauffeur and my car. Let him have his dinner quickly—no, he can get his dinner at Brompton Square. Tell him to come round at once.”

Georgie sat positively aghast, for Lucia ran on like a thing demented. Mozart, ouija, putting, the Elizabethan spit, all the simple joys of Riseholme fizzle out like damp fireworks. Gone, too, utterly gone was her need of complete rest; she had never been so full of raw, blatant, savage vitality.