“Now do leave me alone,” said Georgie.
“I won’t, my dear, and when dinner is over Mrs Weston and I are going to put our heads together, and when you come out we shall announce to you the name of your bride. I should put a tax of twenty shillings on the pound on all bachelors; they should all marry or starve.”
Suddenly she turned to Colonel Boucher.
“Oh, Colonel,” she said. “What have I been saying? How dreadfully stupid of me not to remember that you were a bachelor too. But I wouldn’t have you starve for anything. Have some more fish instantly to shew you forgive me. Georgie change the subject you’re always talking about yourself.”
Georgie turned with admirable docility to Mrs Weston.
“It’s too miserable for you,” he said. “How will you get on without Elizabeth? How long has she been with you?”
Mrs Weston went straight back to where she had left off.
“So I said, ‘What have you come to tell me?’ quite cheerfully, thinking it was a tea-cup. And she said, ‘I’m going to be married, ma’am,’ and she blushed so prettily that you’d have thought she was a girl of twenty, though she was seventeen when she came to me—no, she was just eighteen, and that’s fifteen years ago, and that makes her thirty-three. ‘Well, Elizabeth,’ I said, ‘you haven’t told me yet who it is, but whether it’s the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Prince of Wales—for I felt I had to make a little joke like that—I hope you’ll make him as happy as you’ve made me all these years.’”
“You old darling,” said Olga. “I should have gone into hysterics, and forbade the banns.”
“No, Miss Bracely, you wouldn’t,” said Mrs Weston, “you’d have been just as thankful as me, that she’d got a good husband to take care of and to be taken care of by, because then she said, ‘Lor ma’am, it’s none of they—not them great folks. It’s the Colonel’s Atkinson.’ You ask the Colonel for Atkinson’s character, Miss Bracely, and then you’d be just as thankful as I was.”
“The Colonel’s Atkinson is a slow coach, just like Georgie,” said Olga. “He and Elizabeth have been living side by side all these years, and why couldn’t the man make up his mind before? The only redeeming circumstance is that he has done it now. Our poor Georgie now—”
“Now you’re going to be rude to Colonel Boucher again,” said Georgie. “Colonel, we’ve been asked here to be insulted.”
Colonel Boucher had nothing stronger than a mild tolerance for Georgie and rather enjoyed snubbing him.
“Well, if you call a glass of wine and a dinner like this an insult,” he said, “’pon my word I don’t know what you’d call a compliment.”
“I know what I call a compliment,” said Olga, “and that’s your all coming to dine with me at such short notice. About Georgie’s approaching nuptials now—”
“You’re too tarsome” said he. “If you go on like that, I shan’t ask you to the wedding. Let’s talk about Elizabeth’s. When are they going to get married, Mrs Weston?”
“That’s what I said to Elizabeth. ‘Get an almanack, Elizabeth,’ said I, ‘so that you won’t choose a Sunday. Don’t say the 20th of next month without looking it out. But if the 20th isn’t a Sunday or a Friday mind, for though I don’t believe in such things, still you never know—’ There was Mrs Antrobus now,” said Mrs Weston suddenly, putting in a footnote to her speech to Elizabeth, “it was on a Friday she married, and within a year she got as deaf as you see her now. Then Mr Weston’s uncle, his uncle by marriage I should say, he was another Friday marriage and they missed their train when going off on their honeymoon, and had to stay all night where they were without a sponge or a tooth brush between them, for all their luggage was in the train being whirled away to Torquay. ‘So make it the 20th, Elizabeth,’ I said, ‘if it isn’t a Friday or a Sunday, and I shall have time to look round me, and so will the Colonel, though I don’t expect that either of us will find your equals! And don’t cry, Elizabeth,’ I said, for she was getting quite watery, ‘for if you cry about a marriage, what’ll be left for a funeral?’”
“Ha! Upon my word, I call that splendid of you,” said the Colonel. “I told Atkinson I wished I had never set eyes on him, before I wished him joy.”
Olga got up.
“Look after Colonel Boucher, Georgie,” she said, “and ring for anything you want. Look at the moon! Isn’t it heavenly. How Atkinson and Elizabeth must be enjoying it.”
The two men spent a half-hour of only moderately enjoyable conversation, for Georgie kept the grindstone of the misery of his lot without Atkinson, and the pleasure of companionship firmly to the Colonel’s nose. It was no use for him to attempt to change the subject to the approaching tableaux, to a vague rumour that Piggy had fallen face downwards in the ducking-pond, that Mrs Quantock and her husband had turned a table this afternoon with remarkable results, for it had tapped out that his name was Robert and hers Daisy. Whichever way he turned, Georgie herded him back on to the stony path that he had been bidden to take, with the result that when Georgie finally permitted him to go into the music-room, he was athirst for the more genial companionship of the ladies. Olga got up as they entered.
“Georgie’s so lazy,” she said, “that it’s no use asking him. But do let you and me have a turn up and down my garden, Colonel. There’s a divine moon and it’s quite warm.”
They stepped out into the windless night.
“Fancy it’s being October,” she said. “I don’t believe there is any winter in Riseholme, nor autumn either, for that matter. You are all so young, so deliciously young. Look at Georgie in there: he’s like a boy still, and as for Mrs Weston, she’s twenty-five: not a day older.”
“Yes, wonderful woman,” said he. “Always agreeable and lively. Handsome, too: I consider Mrs Weston a very handsome woman. Hasn’t altered an atom since I knew her.”
“That’s the wonderful thing about you all!” said she. “You are all just as brisk and young as you were ten years ago. It’s ridiculous. As for you, I’m not sure that you’re not the most ridiculous of the lot. I feel as if I had been having dinner with three delightful cousins a little younger—not much, but just a little—than myself. Gracious! How you all made me romp the other night here. What a pace you go, Colonel! What’s your walking like if you call this a stroll?”
Colonel Boucher moderated his pace. He thought Olga had been walking so quickly.
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “Certainly Riseholme is a healthy bracing place. Perhaps we do keep our youth pretty well. God bless me, but the days go by without one’s noticing them. To think that I came here with Atkinson close on ten years ago.”
This did very well for Olga: she swiftly switched off onto it.
“It’s quite horrid for you losing your servant,” she said. “Servants do become friends, don’t they, especially to anyone living alone. Georgie and Foljambe, now! But I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if Foljambe had a mistress before very long.”
“No, really? I thought you were just chaffing him at dinner. Georgie marrying, is he? His wife’ll take some of his needlework off his hands. May I—ah—may I enquire the lady’s name?”
Olga decided to play a great card. She had just found it, so to speak, in her hand, and it was most tempting. She stopped.
“But can’t you guess?” she said. “Surely I’m not absolutely on the wrong track?”
“Ah, Miss Antrobus,” said he.