Chapter ONE
Though
the sun was hot on this July morning Mrs Lucas preferred to cover
the
half-mile that lay between the station and her house on her own
brisk
feet, and sent on her maid and her luggage in the fly that her
husband had ordered to meet her. After those four hours in the
train
a short walk would be pleasant, but, though she veiled it from her
conscious mind, another motive, sub-consciously engineered,
prompted
her action. It would, of course, be universally known to all her
friends in Riseholme that she was arriving today by the 12.26, and
at
that hour the village street would be sure to be full of them. They
would see the fly with luggage draw up at the door of The Hurst,
and
nobody except her maid would get out.That
would be an interesting thing for them: it would cause one of those
little thrills of pleasant excitement and conjectural exercise
which
supplied Riseholme with its emotional daily bread. They would all
wonder what had happened to her, whether she had been taken ill at
the very last moment before leaving town and with her well-known
fortitude and consideration for the feelings of others, had sent
her
maid on to assure her husband that he need not be anxious. That
would
clearly be Mrs Quantock's suggestion, for Mrs Quantock's mind,
devoted as it was now to the study of Christian Science, and the
determination to deny the existence of pain, disease and death as
regards herself, was always full of the gloomiest views as regards
her friends, and on the slightest excuse, pictured that they, poor
blind things, were suffering from false claims. Indeed, given that
the fly had already arrived at The Hurst, and that its arrival had
at
this moment been seen by or reported to Daisy Quantock, the chances
were vastly in favour of that lady's having already started in to
give Mrs Lucas absent treatment. Very likely Georgie Pillson had
also
seen the anticlimax of the fly's arrival, but he would hazard a
much
more probable though erroneous solution of her absence. He would
certainly guess that she had sent on her maid with her luggage to
the
station in order to take a seat for her, while she herself,
oblivious
of the passage of time, was spending her last half hour in
contemplation of the Italian masterpieces at the National Gallery,
or
the Greek bronzes at the British Museum. Certainly she would not be
at the Royal Academy, for the culture of Riseholme, led by herself,
rejected as valueless all artistic efforts later than the death of
Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a great deal of what went before. Her
husband with his firm grasp of the obvious, on the other hand,
would
be disappointingly capable even before her maid confirmed his
conjecture, of concluding that she had merely walked from the
station.The
motive, then, that made her send her cab on, though subconsciously
generated, soon penetrated into her consciousness, and these
guesses
at what other people would think when they saw it arrive without
her,
sprang from the dramatic element that formed so large a part of her
mentality, and made her always take, as by right divine, the
leading
part in the histrionic entertainments with which the cultured of
Riseholme beguiled or rather strenuously occupied such moments as
could be spared from their studies of art and literature, and their
social engagements. Indeed she did not usually stop at taking the
leading part, but, if possible, doubled another character with it,
as
well as being stage-manager and adapter, if not designer of
scenery.
Whatever she did—and really she did an incredible deal—she did it
with all the might of her dramatic perception, did it in fact with
such earnestness that she had no time to have an eye to the gallery
at all, she simply contemplated herself and her own vigorous
accomplishment. When she played the piano as she frequently did,
(reserving an hour for practice every day), she cared not in the
smallest degree for what anybody who passed down the road outside
her
house might be thinking of the roulades that poured from her open
window: she was simply Emmeline Lucas, absorbed in glorious Bach or
dainty Scarletti, or noble Beethoven. The latter perhaps was her
favorite composer, and many were the evenings when with lights
quenched and only the soft effulgence of the moon pouring in
through
the uncurtained windows, she sat with her profile, cameo-like (or
like perhaps to the head on a postage stamp) against the dark oak
walls of her music-room, and entranced herself and her listeners,
if
there were people to dinner, with the exquisite pathos of the first
movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Devotedly as she worshipped the
Master, whose picture hung above her Steinway Grand, she could
never
bring herself to believe that the two succeeding movements were on
the same sublime level as the first, and besides they "went"
very much faster. But she had seriously thought, as she came down
in
the train today and planned her fresh activities at home of trying
to
master them, so that she could get through their intricacies with
tolerable accuracy. Until then, she would assuredly stop at the end
of the first movement in these moonlit seances, and say that the
other two were more like morning and afternoon. Then with a sigh
she
would softly shut the piano lid, and perhaps wiping a little
genuine
moisture from her eyes, would turn on the electric light and taking
up a book from the table, in which a paper-knife marked the extent
of
her penetration, say:"Georgie,
you must really promise me to read this life of Antonino Caporelli
the moment I have finished it. I never understood the rise of the
Venetian School before. As I read I can smell the salt tide
creeping
up over the lagoon, and see the campanile of dear Torcello."And
Georgie would put down the tambour on which he was working his copy
of an Italian cope and sigh too."You
are too wonderful!" he would say. "How do you find time for
everything?"She
rejoined with the apophthegm that made the rounds of Riseholme next
day."My
dear, it is just busy people that have time for everything."It
might be thought that even such activities as have here been
indicated would be enough to occupy anyone so busily that he would
positively not have time for more, but such was far from being the
case with Mrs Lucas. Just as the painter Rubens amused himself with
being the ambassador to the Court of St. James—a sufficient career
in itself for most busy men—so Mrs Lucas amused herself, in the
intervals of her pursuit of Art for Art's sake, with being not only
an ambassador but a monarch. Riseholme might perhaps according to
the
crude materialism of maps, be included in the kingdom of Great
Britain, but in a more real and inward sense it formed a complete
kingdom of its own, and its queen was undoubtedly Mrs Lucas, who
ruled it with a secure autocracy pleasant to contemplate at a time
when thrones were toppling, and imperial crowns whirling like dead
leaves down the autumn winds. The ruler of Riseholme, happier than
he
of Russia, had no need to fear the finger of Bolshevism writing on
the wall, for there was not in the whole of that vat which seethed
so
pleasantly with culture, one bubble of revolutionary ferment. Here
there was neither poverty nor discontent nor muttered menace of any
upheaval: Mrs Lucas, busy and serene, worked harder than any of her
subjects, and exercised an autocratic control over a nominal
democracy.Something
of the consciousness of her sovereignty was in her mind, as she
turned the last hot corner of the road and came in sight of the
village street that constituted her kingdom. Indeed it belonged to
her, as treasure trove belongs to the Crown, for it was she who had
been the first to begin the transformation of this remote
Elizabethan
village into the palace of culture that was now reared on the spot
where ten years ago an agricultural population had led bovine and
unilluminated lives in their cottages of grey stone or brick and
timber. Before that, while her husband was amassing a fortune,
comfortable in amount and respectable in origin, at the Bar, she
had
merely held up a small dim lamp of culture in Onslow Gardens. But
both her ambition and his had been to bask and be busy in artistic
realms of their own when the materialistic needs were provided for
by
sound investments, and so when there were the requisite thousands
of
pounds in secure securities she had easily persuaded him to buy
three
of these cottages that stood together in a low two-storied block.
Then, by judicious removal of partition-walls, she had, with the
aid
of a sympathetic architect, transmuted them into a most comfortable
dwelling, subsequently building on to them a new wing, that ran at
right angles at the back, which was, if anything, a shade more
inexorably Elizabethan than the stem onto which it was grafted, for
here was situated the famous smoking-parlour, with rushes on the
floor, and a dresser ranged with pewter tankards, and leaded
lattice-windows of glass so antique that it was practically
impossible to see out of them. It had a huge open fireplace framed
in
oak-beams with a seat on each side of the iron-backed hearth within
the chimney, and a genuine spit hung over the middle of the fire.
Here, though in the rest of the house she had for the sake of
convenience allowed the installation of electric light, there was
no
such concession made, and sconces on the walls held dim iron lamps,
so that only those of the most acute vision were able to read. Even
then reading was difficult, for the book-stand on the table
contained
nothing but a few crabbed black-letter volumes dating from not
later
than the early seventeenth century, and you had to be in a
frantically Elizabethan frame of mind to be at ease there. But Mrs
Lucas often spent some of her rare leisure moments in the
smoking-parlour, playing on the virginal that stood in the window,
or
kippering herself in the fumes of the wood-fire as with streaming
eyes she deciphered an Elzevir Horace rather late for inclusion
under
the rule, but an undoubted bargain.The
house stood at the end of the village that was nearest the station,
and thus, when the panorama of her kingdom opened before her, she
had
but a few steps further to go. A yew-hedge, bought entire from a
neighboring farm, and transplanted with solid lumps of earth and
indignant snails around its roots, separated the small oblong of
garden from the road, and cast monstrous shadows of the shapes into
which it was cut, across the little lawns inside. Here, as was only
right and proper, there was not a flower to be found save such as
were mentioned in the plays of Shakespeare; indeed it was called
Shakespeare's garden, and the bed that ran below the windows of the
dining room was Ophelia's border, for it consisted solely of those
flowers which that distraught maiden distributed to her friends
when
she should have been in a lunatic asylum. Mrs Lucas often reflected
how lucky it was that such institutions were unknown in Elizabeth's
day, or that, if known, Shakespeare artistically ignored their
existence. Pansies, naturally, formed the chief decoration—though
there were some very flourishing plants of rue. Mrs Lucas always
wore
a little bunch of them when in flower, to inspire her thoughts, and
found them wonderfully efficacious. Round the sundial, which was
set
in the middle of one of the squares of grass between which a path
of
broken paving-stone led to the front door, was a circular border,
now, in July, sadly vacant, for it harboured only the
spring-flowers
enumerated by Perdita. But the first day every year when Perdita's
border put forth its earliest blossom was a delicious anniversary,
and the news of it spread like wild-fire through Mrs Lucas's
kingdom,
and her subjects were very joyful, and came to salute the violet or
daffodil, or whatever it was.The
three cottages dexterously transformed into The Hurst, presented a
charmingly irregular and picturesque front. Two were of the grey
stone of the district and the middle one, to the door of which led
the paved path, of brick and timber; latticed windows with stone
mullions gave little light to the room within, and certain new
windows had been added; these could be detected by the observant
eye
for they had a markedly older appearance than the rest. The
front-door, similarly, seemed as if it must have been made years
before the house, the fact being that the one which Mrs Lucas had
found there was too dilapidated to be of the slightest service in
keeping out wind or wet or undesired callers. She had therefore
caused to be constructed an even older one made from the oak-planks
of a dismantled barn, and had it studded with large iron nails of
antique pattern made by the village blacksmith. He had arranged
some
of them to look as if they spelled A.D. 1603. Over the door hung an
inn-sign, and into the space where once the sign had swung was now
inserted a lantern, in which was ensconced, well hidden from view
by
its patinated glass sides, an electric light. This was one of the
necessary concessions to modern convenience, for no lamp nurtured
on
oil would pierce those genuinely opaque panes, and illuminate the
path to the gate. Better to have an electric light than cause your
guests to plunge into Perdita's border. By the side of this
fortress-door hung a heavy iron bell-pull, ending in a mermaid.
When
first Mrs Lucas had that installed, it was a bell-pull in the sense
that an extremely athletic man could, if he used both hands and
planted his feet firmly, cause it to move, so that a huge bronze
bell
swung in the servants' passage and eventually gave tongue (if the
athlete continued pulling) with vibrations so sonorous that the
white-wash from the ceiling fell down in flakes. She had therefore
made another concession to the frailty of the present generation
and
the inconveniences of having whitewash falling into salads and
puddings on their way to the dining room, and now at the back of
the
mermaid's tail was a potent little bone button, coloured black and
practically invisible, and thus the bell-pull had been converted
into
an electric bell-push. In this way visitors could make their advent
known without violent exertion, the mermaid lost no visible whit of
her Elizabethan virginity, and the spirit of Shakespeare wandering
in
his garden would not notice any anachronism. He could not in fact,
for there was none to notice.Though
Mrs Lucas's parents had bestowed the name of Emmeline on her, it
was
not to be wondered at that she was always known among the more
intimate of her subjects as Lucia, pronounced, of course, in the
Italian mode—La Lucia, the wife of Lucas; and it was as "Lucia
mia" that her husband hailed her as he met her at the door of
The Hurst.He
had been watching for her arrival from the panes of the parlour
while
he meditated upon one of the little prose poems which formed so
delectable a contribution to the culture of Riseholme, for though,
as
had been hinted, he had in practical life a firm grasp of the
obvious, there were windows in his soul which looked out onto vague
and ethereal prospects which so far from being obvious were only
dimly intelligible. In form these odes were cast in the loose
rhythms
of Walt Whitman, but their smooth suavity and their contents bore
no
resemblance whatever to the productions of that barbaric bard,
whose
works were quite unknown in Riseholme. Already a couple of volumes
of
these prose-poems had been published, not of course in the hard
business-like establishment of London, but at "Ye Sign of ye
Daffodil," on the village green, where type was set up by hand,
and very little, but that of the best, was printed. The press had
only been recently started at Mr Lucas's expense, but it had put
forth a reprint of Shakespeare's sonnets already, as well as his
own
poems. They were printed in blunt type on thick yellowish paper,
the
edges of which seemed as if they had been cut by the forefinger of
an
impatient reader, so ragged and irregular were they, and they were
bound in vellum, the titles of these two slim flowers of poetry,
"Flotsam" and "Jetsam," were printed in black
letter type and the covers were further adorned with a sort of
embossed seal and with antique looking tapes so that you could tie
it
all up with two bows when you had finished with Mr Lucas's
"Flotsam"
for the time being, and turned to untie the "Jetsam."Today
the prose-poem of "Loneliness" had not been getting on very
well, and Philip Lucas was glad to hear the click of the
garden-gate,
which showed that his loneliness was over for the present, and
looking up he saw his wife's figure waveringly presented to his
eyes
through the twisted and knotty glass of the parlour window, which
had
taken so long to collect, but which now completely replaced the
plain, commonplace unrefracting stuff which was there before. He
jumped up with an alacrity remarkable in so solid and
well-furnished
a person, and had thrown open the nail-studded front-door before
Lucia had traversed the path of broken paving-stones, for she had
lingered for a sad moment at Perdita's empty border."Lucia
mia!" he
exclaimed. "Ben
arrivata! So you
walked from the station?""Si,
Peppino, mio caro,"
she said. "Sta
bene?"He
kissed her and relapsed into Shakespeare's tongue, for their
Italian,
though firm and perfect as far as it went, could not be considered
as
going far, and was useless for conversational purposes, unless they
merely wanted to greet each other, or to know the time. But it was
interesting to talk Italian, however little way it went."Molto
bene," said
he, "and it's delightful to have you home again. And how was
London?" he asked in the sort of tone in which he might have
enquired after the health of a poor relation, who was not likely to
recover. She smiled rather sadly."Terrifically
busy about nothing," she said. "All this fortnight I have
scarcely had a moment to myself. Lunches, dinners, parties of all
kinds; I could not go to half the gatherings I was bidden to. Dear
good South Kensington! Chelsea too!""Carissima,
when London does manage to catch you, it is no wonder it makes the
most of you," he said. "You mustn't blame London for that.""No,
dear, I don't. Everyone was tremendously kind and hospitable; they
all did their best. If I blame anyone, I blame myself. But I think
this Riseholme life with its finish and its exquisiteness spoils
one
for other places. London is like a railway-junction: it has no true
life of its own. There is no delicacy, no appreciation of fine
shades. Individualism has no existence there; everyone gabbles
together, gabbles and gobbles: am not I naughty? If there is a
concert in a private house—you know my views about music and the
impossibility of hearing music at all if you are stuck in the
middle
of a row of people—even then, the moment it is over you are whisked
away to supper, or somebody wants to have a few words. There is
always a crowd, there is always food, you cannot be alone, and it
is
only in loneliness, as Goethe says, that your perceptions put forth
their flowers. No one in London has time to listen: they are all
thinking about who is there and who isn't there, and what is the
next
thing. The exquisite present, as you put it in one of your poems,
has
no existence there: it is always the feverish future.""Delicious
phrase! I should have stolen that gem for my poor poems, if you had
discovered it before."She
was too much used to this incense to do more than sniff it in
unconsciously, and she went on with her tremendous
indictment."It
isn't that I find fault with London for being so busy," she said
with strict impartiality, "for if being busy was a crime, I am
sure there are few of us here who would escape hanging. But take my
life here, or yours for that matter. Well, mine if you like. Often
and often I am alone from breakfast till lunch-time, but in those
hours I get through more that is worth doing than London gets
through
in a day and a night. I have an hour at my music not looking about
and wondering who my neighbours are, but learning, studying,
drinking
in divine melody. Then I have my letters to write, and you know
what
that means, and I still have time for an hour's reading so that
when
you come to tell me lunch is ready, you will find that I have been
wandering through Venetian churches or sitting in that little dark
room at Weimar, or was it Leipsic? How would those same hours have
passed in London?"Sitting
perhaps for half an hour in the Park, with dearest Aggie pointing
out
to me, with thrills of breathless excitement, a woman who was in
the
divorce court, or a coroneted bankrupt. Then she would drag me off
to
some terrible private view full of the same people all staring at
and
gabbling to each other, or looking at pictures that made poor me
gasp
and shudder. No, I am thankful to be back at my own sweet Riseholme
again. I can work and think here."She
looked round the panelled entrance-hall with a glow of warm content
at being at home again that quite eclipsed the mere physical heat
produced by her walk from the station. Wherever her eyes fell,
those
sharp dark eyes that resembled buttons covered with shiny American
cloth, they saw nothing that jarred, as so much in London jarred.
There were bright brass jugs on the window sill, a bowl of
pot-pourri
on the black table in the centre, an oak settee by the open
fireplace, a couple of Persian rugs on the polished floor. The room
had its quaintness, too, such as she had alluded to in her
memorable
essay read before the Riseholme Literary Society, called "Humour
in Furniture," and a brass milkcan served as a receptacle for
sticks and umbrellas. Equally quaint was the dish of highly
realistic
stone fruit that stood beside the pot-pourri and the furry Japanese
spider that sprawled in a silk web over the window.Such
was the fearful verisimilitude of this that Lucia's new housemaid
had
once fled from her duties in the early morning, to seek the
assistance of the gardener in killing it. The dish of stone fruit
had
scored a similar success, for once she had said to Georgie Pillson,
"Ah, my gardener has sent in some early apples and pears, won't
you take one home with you?" It was not till the weight of the
pear (he swiftly selected the largest) betrayed the joke that he
had
any notion that they were not real ones. But then Georgie had had
his
revenge, for waiting his opportunity he had inserted a real pear
among those stony specimens and again passing through with Lucia,
he
picked it out, and with lips drawn back had snapped at it with all
the force of his jaws. For the moment she had felt quite faint at
the
thought of his teeth crashing into fragments…. These humorous
touches were altered from time to time; the spider for instance
might
be taken down and replaced by a china canary in a Chippendale cage,
and the selection of the entrance hall for those whimsicalities was
intentional, for guests found something to smile at, as they took
off
their cloaks and entered the drawing room with a topic on their
lips,
something light, something amusing about what they had seen. For
the
gong similarly was sometimes substituted a set of bells that had
once
decked the collar of the leading horse in a waggoner's team
somewhere
in Flanders; in fact when Lucia was at home there was often a new
little quaintness for quite a sequence of days, and she had held
out
hopes to the Literary Society that perhaps some day, when she was
not
so rushed, she would jot down material for a sequel to her essay,
or
write another covering a rather larger field on "The Gambits of
Conversation Derived from Furniture."On
the table there was a pile of letters waiting for Mrs Lucas, for
yesterday's post had not been forwarded her, for fear of its
missing
her—London postmen were probably very careless and
untrustworthy—and she gave a little cry of dismay as she saw the
volume of her correspondence."But
I shall be very naughty," she said "and not look at one of
them till after lunch. Take them away,
Caro, and promise
me to lock them up till then, and not give them me however much I
beg. Then I will get into the saddle again, such a dear saddle,
too,
and tackle them. I shall have a stroll in the garden till the bell
rings. What is it that Nietzsche says about the necessity to
mediterranizer
yourself every now and then? I must
Riseholme myself."Peppino
remembered the quotation, which had occurred in a review of some
work
of that celebrated author, where Lucia had also seen it, and went
back, with the force of contrast to aid him, to his prose-poem of
"Loneliness," while his wife went through the
smoking-parlour into the garden, in order to soak herself once more
in the cultured atmosphere.In
this garden behind the house there was no attempt to construct a
Shakespearian plot, for, as she so rightly observed, Shakespeare,
who
loved flowers so well, would wish her to enjoy every conceivable
horticultural treasure. But furniture played a prominent part in
the
place, and there were statues and sundials and stone-seats
scattered
about with almost too profuse a hand. Mottos also were in great
evidence, and while a sundial reminded you that "Tempus
fugit," an
enticing resting-place somewhat bewilderingly bade you to "Bide
a wee." But then again the rustic seat in the pleached alley of
laburnums had carved on its back, "Much have I travelled in the
realms of gold," so that, meditating on Keats, you could bide a
wee with a clear conscience. Indeed so copious was the wealth of
familiar and stimulating quotations that one of her subjects had
once
said that to stroll in Lucia's garden was not only to enjoy her
lovely flowers, but to spend a simultaneous half hour with the best
authors. There was a dovecote of course, but since the cats always
killed the doves, Mrs Lucas had put up round the desecrated home
several pigeons of Copenhagen china, which were both imperishable
as
regards cats, and also carried out the suggestion of humour in
furniture. The humour had attained the highest point of felicity
when
Peppino concealed a mechanical nightingale in a bush, which sang
"Jug-jug" in the most realistic manner when you pulled a
string. Georgie had not yet seen the Copenhagen pigeons, or being
rather short-sighted thought they were real. Then, oh then, Peppino
pulled the string, and for quite a long time Georgie listened
entranced to their melodious cooings. That served him out for his
"trap" about the real pear introduced among the stone
specimens. For in spite of the rarefied atmosphere of culture at
Riseholme, Riseholme knew how to "desipere
in loco," and
its strenuous culture was often refreshed by these light refined
touches.Mrs
Lucas walked quickly and decisively up and down the paths as she
waited for the summons to lunch, for the activity of her mind
reacted
on her body, making her brisk in movement. On each side of her
forehead were hard neat undulations of black hair that concealed
the
tips of her ears. She had laid aside her London hat, and carried a
red cotton Contadina's umbrella, which threw a rosy glow onto the
oval of her thin face and its colourless complexion. She bore the
weight of her forty years extremely lightly, and but for the droop
of
skin at the corners of her mouth, she might have passed as a much
younger woman. Her face was otherwise unlined and bore no trace of
the ravages of emotional living, which both ages and softens.
Certainly there was nothing soft about her, and very little of the
signs of age, and it would have been reasonable to conjecture that
twenty years later she would look but little older than she did
today. For such emotions as she was victim of were the sterile and
ageless emotions of art; such desires as beset her were not
connected
with her affections, but her ambitions. Dynasty she had none, for
she
was childless, and thus her ambitions were limited to the
permanence
and security of her own throne as queen of Riseholme. She really
asked nothing more of life than the continuance of such harvests as
she had so plenteously reaped for these last ten years. As long as
she directed the life of Riseholme, took the lead in its culture
and
entertainment, and was the undisputed fountain-head of all its
inspirations, and from time to time refreshed her memory as to the
utter inferiority of London she wanted nothing more. But to secure
that she dedicated all that she had of ease, leisure and income.
Being practically indefatigable the loss of ease and leisure
troubled
her but little and being in extremely comfortable circumstances,
she
had no need to economise in her hospitalities. She might easily
look
forward to enjoying an unchanging middle-aged activity, while
generations of youth withered round her, and no star, remotely
rising, had as yet threatened to dim her unrivalled effulgence.
Though essentially autocratic, her subjects were allowed and even
encouraged to develop their own minds on their own lines, provided
always that those lines met at the junction where she was
station-master. With regard to religion finally, it may be briefly
said that she believed in God in much the same way as she believed
in
Australia, for she had no doubt whatever as to the existence of
either, and she went to church on Sunday in much the same spirit as
she would look at a kangaroo in the Zoological Gardens, for
kangaroos
come from Australia.A
low wall separated the far end of her garden from the meadow
outside;
beyond that lay the stream which flowed into the Avon, and it often
seemed wonderful to her that the water which wimpled by would
(unless
a cow happened to drink it) soon be stealing along past the church
at
Stratford where Shakespeare lay. Peppino had written a very moving
little prose-poem about it, for she had royally presented him with
the idea, and had suggested a beautiful analogy between the earthly
dew that refreshed the grasses, and was drawn up into the fire of
the
Sun, and Thought the spiritual dew that refreshed the mind and
thereafter, rather vaguely, was drawn up into the Full-Orbed Soul
of
the World.At
that moment Lucia's eye was attracted by an apparition on the road
which lay adjacent to the further side of the happy stream which
flowed into the Avon. There was no mistaking the identity of the
stout figure of Mrs Quantock with its short steps and its
gesticulations, but why in the name of wonder should that Christian
Scientist be walking with the draped and turbaned figure of a man
with a tropical complexion and a black beard? His robe of saffron
yellow with a violently green girdle was hitched up for ease in
walking, and unless he had chocolate coloured stockings on, Mrs
Lucas
saw human legs of the same shade. Next moment that debatable point
was set at rest for she caught sight of short pink socks in red
slippers. Even as she looked Mrs Quantock saw her (for owing to
Christian Science she had recaptured the quick vision of youth) and
waggled her hand and kissed it, and evidently called her
companion's
attention, for the next moment he was salaaming to her in some
stately Oriental manner. There was nothing to be done for the
moment
except return these salutations, as she could not yell an aside to
Mrs Quantock, screaming out "Who is that Indian"? for if
Mrs Quantock heard the Indian would hear too, but as soon as she
could, she turned back towards the house again, and when once the
lilac bushes were between her and the road she walked with more
than
her usual speed, in order to learn with the shortest possible delay
from Peppino who this fresh subject of hers could be. She knew
there
were some Indian princes in London; perhaps it was one of them, in
which case it would be necessary to read up Benares or Delhi in the
Encyclopaedia without loss of time.