The Complete Mapp & Lucia by E. F. Benson Read Free Book Online

in large quantities by the American tourists who swarmed there during the summer months, at a high profit to the nimble proprietor, who thereupon purchased fresh antiquities to take their places. The Ambermere Arms in fact was the antique furniture shop of the place, and did a thriving trade, for it was much more interesting to buy objects out of a real old Elizabethan inn, than out of a shop.
    Georgie had put his smart military cape over his arm for his walk, and at intervals applied his slim forefinger to one nostril, while he breathed in through the other, continuing the practice which he had observed going on in Mrs Quantock’s garden. Though it made him a little dizzy, it certainly produced a sort of lightness, but soon he remembered the letter from Mrs Quantock which Lucia had read out, warning her that these exercises ought to be taken under instruction, and so desisted. He was going to deliver Lucia’s answer at Mrs Quantock’s house, and with a view to possibly meeting the Guru, and being introduced to him, he said over to himself “Guru, Guru, Guru” instead of doing deep breathing, in order to accustom himself to the unusual syllables.
    It would, of course, have been very strange and un-Riseholme-like to have gone to a friend’s door, even though the errand was so impersonal a one as bearing somebody else’s note, without enquiring whether the friend was in, and being instantly admitted if she was, and as a matter of fact, Georgie caught a glimpse, when the knocker was answered (Mrs Quantock did not have a bell at all), through the open door of the hall, of Mrs Quantock standing in the middle of the lawn on one leg. Naturally, therefore, he ran out into the garden without any further formality. She looked like a little round fat stork, whose legs had not grown, but who preserved the habits of her kind.
    “Dear lady, I’ve brought a note for you,” he said, “it’s from Lucia.”
    The other leg went down, and she turned on him the wide firm smile that she had learned in the vanished days of Christian Science.
    “Om,” said Mrs Quantock, expelling the remainder of her breath. “Thank you, my dear Georgie. It’s extraordinary what Yoga has done for me already. Cold quite gone. If ever you feel out of sorts, or depressed or cross you can cure yourself at once. I’ve got a visitor staying with me.”
    “Have you indeed?” asked Georgie, without alluding to the thrilling excitements which had trodden so close on each other’s heels since yesterday morning when he had seen the Guru in Rush’s shop.
    “Yes; and as you’ve just come from dear Lucia’s perhaps she may have said something to you about him, for I wrote to her about him. He’s a Guru of extraordinary sanctity from Benares, and he’s teaching me the Way. You shall see him too, unless he’s meditating. I will call to him; if he’s meditating he won’t hear me, so we shan’t be interrupting him. He wouldn’t hear a railway accident if he was meditating.”
    She turned round towards the house.
    “Guru, dear!” she called.
    There was a moment’s pause, and the Indian’s face appeared at a window.
    “Beloved lady!” he said.
    “Guru dear, I want to introduce a friend of mine to you,” she said. “This is Mr Pillson, and when you know him a little better you will call him Georgie.”
    “Beloved lady, I know him very well indeed. I see into his clear white soul. Peace be unto you, my friend.”
    “Isn’t he marvellous? Fancy!” said Mrs Quantock, in an aside.
    Georgie raised his hat very politely.
    “How do you do?” he said. (After his quiet practice he would have said “How do you do Guru?” but it rhymed in a ridiculous manner and his red lips could not frame the word.) “I am always well,” said the Guru, “I am always young and well because I follow the Way.”
    “Sixty at least he tells me,” said Mrs Quantock in a hissing aside, probably audible across the channel, “and he thinks more, but the years make no