Queen Lucia | Page 6

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 occurreded 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