Lucia in London

by E. F. Benson

“What has happened?” asked Lucia in a strangled voice.

“Another tyre gone, ma’am,” said the chauffeur. “Never knew such a thing.”

Lucia looked at her clock. It was ten already, and she ought now to be in Brompton Square. There was no further wheel that could be put on, and the tyre had to be taken off and mended. The minutes passed like seconds.... Lucia, outwardly composed, sat on a rug at the edge of the road, and tried unsuccessfully not to curse Almighty Providence. The moon rose, like a gelatine lozenge.

She began to count the hours that intervened between the tragic present and, say, four o’clock in the morning, and she determined that whatever further disasters might befall, she would go to Whitby House, even if it was in a dustman’s cart, so long as there was a chance of a single guest being left there. She would go....

And all the time, if she had only known it, the stars were fighting not against her but for her. The tyre was mended, and she got to Brompton Square at exactly a quarter past eleven. Cupboards were torn open, drawers ransacked, her goaded maid burst into tears. Aunt Amy’s pearls were clasped round her neck, Pepino’s hair in the shrine of gold sausage that had once been Beethoven’s was pinned on, and at five minutes past twelve she hurried up the great stairs at Whitby House. Precisely as she came to the door of the ballroom there emerged the head of the procession going down to supper. Marcia for a moment stared at her as if she was a ghost, but Lucia was so busy curtseying that she gave no thought to that. Seven times in rapid succession did she curtsey. It almost became a habit, and she nearly curtseyed to Adele who (so like Adele) followed immediately after.

“Just up from Riseholme, dearest Adele,” she said. “I felt quite rested—— How are you, Lord Tony?—— and so I made a little effort. Pepino urged me to come. How nice to see your Excellency! Millie! Dearest Olga! What a lot of friends! How is poor Princess Isabel? Marcia looked so handsome. Brilliant! Such a delicious drive: I felt I had to pop in....”

CHAPTER IX

POOR Pepino’s cold next day, instead of being better, was a good deal worse. He had aches and pains, and felt feverish, and sent for the doctor, who peremptorily ordered him to go to bed. There was nothing in the least to cause alarm, but it would be the height of folly to go to any week-end party at all. Bed.

Pepino telegraphed to Lady Brixton with many regrets for the unavoidable, and rang up Lucia. The state of his voice made it difficult to catch what he said, but she quite understood that there was nothing to be anxious about, and that he hoped she would go to Adele’s without him. Her voice on the other hand was marvellously distinct, and he heard a great deal about the misfortunes which had come to so brilliant a conclusion last night. There followed a string of seven christian names, and Lucia said a flashlight photograph had been permitted during supper. She thought she was in it, though rather in the background.

Lucia was very sorry for Pepino’s indisposition, but, as ordered, had no anxiety about him. She felt too, that he wouldn’t personally miss very much by being prevented from coming to Adele’s party, for it was to be a very large party, and Pepino—bless him—occasionally got a little dazed at these brilliant gatherings. He did not grasp who people were with the speed and certainty which were needful, and he had been known to grasp the hand of an eminent author and tell him how much he had admired his fine picture at the Academy. (Lucia constantly did that sort of thing herself, but then she got herself out of the holes she had herself digged with so brilliant a manœuvre that it didn’t matter, whereas Pepino was only dazed the more by his misfortunes.) Moreover she knew that Pepino’s presence somehow hampered her style: she could not be the brilliant mondaine, when his patient but proud eye was on her, with quite the dash that was hers when he was not there. There was always the sense that he knew her best in her Riseholme incarnation, in her duets with Georgie, and her rendering of the slow movement of the Moonlight Sonata, and her grabbing of all Daisy’s little stunts. She electrified him as the superb butterfly, but the electrification was accompanied by slight shocks and surprises. When she referred by her christian name to some woman with whom her only bond was that she had refused to dine at Brompton Square, that puzzled Pepino.... In the autumn she must be a little more serious, have some quiet dinner parties of ordinary people, for really up till now there had scarcely been an “ordinary” person at Brompton Square at all, such noble lions of every species had been entrapped there. And Adele’s party was to be of a very leonine kind; the smart world was to be there, and some highbrows and some politicians, and she was aware that she herself would have to do her very best, and be allusive, and pretend to know what she didn’t know, and seem to swim in very distinguished currents. Dear Pepino wasn’t up to that sort of thing, he couldn’t grapple with it, and she grappled with it best without him.... At the moment of that vainglorious thought it is probable that Nemesis fixed her inexorable eye on Lucia.