LITMIR.BIZ

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had said, and here was the answer to the back-biting suggestion, vividly put forward by Mrs Weston on the green that morning, that the explanation was that Lucia and Peppino did not know Italian. They could not reasonably be expected to know Neapolitan dialect; the language of Dante satisfied their humble needs. They found it difficult to understand Cortese when he spoke English, but that did not imply that they did not know English. Dante’s tongue and Shakespeare’s tongue sufficed them….

      “And what were the words of the libretto like?” asked Georgie.

      Lucia fixed him with her beady eyes, ready and eager to show how delighted she was to bestow approbation wherever it was deserved.

      “Wonderful!” she said. “I felt, and so did Peppino, that the words were as utterly wasted on that formless music as was poor Miss Bracely’s voice. How did it go, Peppino? Let me think!”

      Lucia raised her head again with the far-away look.

      “Amore misterio!” she said. “Amore profondo! Amore profondo del vasto mar.” “Ah, there was our poor bella lingua again. I wonder who wrote the libretto.”

      “Mr Cortese wrote the libretto,” said Georgie.

      Lucia did not hesitate for a moment, but gave her silvery laugh.

      “Oh, dear me, no,” she said. “If you had heard him talk you would know he could not have. Well, have we not had enough of Mr Cortese and his works? Any news? What did you do last night, when Peppino and I were in our purgatorio?”

      Georgie was almost equally glad to get off the subject of Italian. The less said in or of Italian the better.

      “I was dining with Mrs Quantock,” he said. “She had a very interesting Russian woman staying with her, Princess Popoffski.”

      Lucia laughed again.

      “Dear Daisy!” she said. “Tell me about the Russian princess. Was she a Guru? Dear me, how easily some people are taken in! The Guru! Well, we were all in the same boat there. We took the Guru on poor Daisy’s valuation, and I still believe he had very remarkable gifts, curry-cook or not. But Princess Popoffski now—”

      “We had a seance,” said Georgie.

      “Indeed! And Princess Popoffski was the medium?”

      Georgie grew a little dignified.

      “It is no use adopting that tone, cara,” he said, relapsing into Italian. “You were not there; you were having your purgatory at Olga’s. It was very remarkable. We touched hands all round the table; there was no possibility of fraud.”

      Lucia’s views on psychic phenomena were clearly known to Riseholme; those who produced them were fraudulent, those who were taken in by them were dupes. Consequently there was irony in the baby-talk of her reply.

      “Me dood!” she said. “Me very dood, and listen carefully. Tell Lucia!”

      Georgie recounted the experiences. The table had rocked and tapped out names. The table had whirled round, though it was a very heavy table. Georgie had been told that he had two sisters, one of whom in Latin was a bear.

      “How did the table know that?” he asked. “Ursa, a bear, you know. And then, while we were sitting there, the Princess went off into a trance. She said there was a beautiful spirit present, who blessed us all. She called Mrs Quantock Margarita, which, as you may know, is the Italian for Daisy.”

      Lucia smiled.

      “Thank you for explaining, Georgino,” she said.

      There was no mistaking the irony of that, and Georgie thought he would be ironical too.

      “I didn’t know if you knew,” he said. “I thought it might be Neapolitan dialect.”

      “Pray, go on!” said Lucia, breathing through her nose.

      “And she said I was Georgie,” said Georgie, “but that there was another Georgie not far off. That was odd, because Olga’s house, with Mr Shuttleworth, were so close. And then the Princess went into very deep trance, and the spirit that was there took possession of her.”

      “And who was that?” asked Lucia.

      “His name was Amadeo. She spoke in Amadeo’s voice, indeed it was Amadeo who was speaking. He was a Florentine and knew Dante quite well. He materialised; I saw him.”

      A bright glorious vision flashed upon Lucia. The Dante-class might not, even though it was clearly understood that Cortese spoke unintelligible Neapolitan, be a complete success, if the only attraction was that she herself taught Dante, but it would be quite a different proposition if Princess Popoffski, controlled by Amadeo, Dante’s friend, was present. They might read a Canto first, and then hold a seance of which Amadeo—via Princess Popoffski—would take charge. While this was simmering in her mind, it was important to drop all irony and be extremely sympathetic.

      “Georgino! How wonderful!” she said. “As you know, I am sceptical by nature, and want all evidence carefully sifted. I daresay I am too critical, and that is a fault. But fancy getting in touch with a friend of Dante’s! What would one not give? Tell me: what is this Princess like? Is she the sort of person one could ask to dinner?”

      Georgie was still sore over the irony to which he had been treated. He had, moreover, the solid fact behind him that Daisy Quantock (Margarita) had declared that in no circumstances would she permit Lucia to annex her Princess. She had forgiven Lucia for annexing the Guru (and considering that she had only annexed a curry-cook, it was not so difficult) but she was quite determined to run her Princess herself.

      “Yes, you might ask her,” he said. If irony was going about, there was no reason why he should not have a share.

      Lucia bounced from her seat, as if it had been a spring cushion.

      “We will have a little party,” she said. “We three, and dear Daisy and her husband and the Princess. I think that will be enough; psychics hate a crowd, because it disturbs the influences. Mind! I do not say I believe in her power yet, but I am quite open-minded; I should like to be convinced. Let me see! We are doing nothing tomorrow. Let us have our little dinner tomorrow. I will send a line to dear Daisy at once, and say how enormously your account of the seance has interested me. I should like dear Daisy to have something to console her for that terrible fiasco about her Guru. And then, Georgino mio, I will listen to your Debussy. Do not expect anything; if it seems to me formless, I shall say so. But if it seems to me promising, I shall be equally frank. Perhaps it is great; I cannot tell you about that till I have heard it. Let me write my note first.”

      That was soon done, and Lucia, having sent it by hand, came into the music-room, and drew down the blinds over the window through which the autumn sun was streaming. Very little art, as she had once said, would “stand” daylight; only Shakespeare or Dante or Beethoven and perhaps Bach, could compete with the sun.

      Georgie, for his part, would have liked rather more light, but after all Debussy wrote such very odd chords and sequences that it was not necessary to wear his spectacles.

      Lucia sat in a high chair near the piano, with her chin in her hand, tremendously erect.

      Georgie took off his rings and laid them on the candle-bracket, and ran his hands nimbly over the piano.

      “Poissons d’or,” he said. “Goldfish!”

      “Yes; Pesci d’oro,” said Lucia, explaining it to Peppino.

      Lucia’s face changed as the elusive music proceeded. The far-away look died away, and became puzzled; her chin came out of her hand, and the hand it came out of covered her eyes.

      Before Georgie had got to the end the answer to her note came, and she sat with it in her hand, which, released from covering her eyes, tried to beat time. On the last note she got up with a regretful sigh.

      “Is it finished?” she asked. “And yet I feel inclined to say ‘When is it going to begin?’ I haven’t been fed; I haven’t drank in anything. Yes,

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