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

difference to him. He is like a boy. Call him ‘Guru.’”
    “Guru,—” began Georgie.
    “Yes, my friend.”
    “I am very glad you are well,” said Georgie wildly. He was greatly impressed, but much embarrassed. Also it was so hard to talk at a second-story window with any sense of ease, especially when you had to address a total stranger of extraordinary sanctity from Benares.
    Luckily Mrs Quantock came to the assistance of his embarrassment.
    “Guru dear, are you coming down to see us?” she asked.
    “Beloved lady, no!” said the level voice. “It is laid on me to wait here. It is the time of calm and prayer when it is good to be alone. I will come down when the guides bid me. But teach our dear friend what I have taught you. Surely before long I will grasp his earthly hand, but not now. Peace! Peace! and Light!”
    “Have you got some Guides as well?” asked Georgie when the Guru disappeared from the window. “And are they Indians too?”
    “Oh, those are his spiritual guides,” said Mrs Quantock, “He sees them and talks to them, but they are not in the body.”
    She gave a happy sigh.
    “I never have felt anything like it,” she said. “He has brought such an atmosphere into the house that even Robert feels it, and doesn’t mind being turned out of his dressing-room. There, he has shut the window. Isn’t it all marvellous?”
    Georgie had not seen anything particularly marvellous yet, except the phenomenon of Mrs Quantock standing on one leg in the middle of the lawn, but presumably her emotion communicated itself to him by the subtle infection of the spirit.
    “And what does he do?” he asked.
    “My dear, it is not what he does, but what he is,” said she. “Why, even my little bald account of him to Lucia has made her ask him to her garden-party. Of course I can’t tell whether he will go or not. He seems so very much—how shall I say it?—so very much sent to Me. But I shall of course ask him whether he will consent. Trances and meditation all day! And in the intervals such serenity and sweetness. You know, for instance, how tiresome Robert is about his food. Well, last night the mutton, I am bound to say, was a little underdone, and Robert was beginning to throw it about his plate in the way he has. Well, my Guru got up and just said, ‘Show me the way to kitchen’—he leaves out little words sometimes, because they don’t matter—and I took him down, and he said ‘Peace!’ He told me to leave him there, and in ten minutes he was up again with a little plate of curry and rice and what had been underdone mutton, and you never ate anything so good. Robert had most of it and I had the rest, and my Guru was so pleased at seeing Robert pleased. He said Robert had a pure white soul, just like you, only I wasn’t to tell him, because for him the Way ordained that he must find it out for himself. And today before lunch again, the Guru went down in the kitchen, and my cook told me he only took a pinch of pepper and a tomato and a little bit of mutton fat and a sardine and a bit of cheese, and he brought up a dish that you never saw equalled. Delicious! I shouldn’t a bit wonder if Robert began breathing-exercises soon. There is one that makes you lean and young and exercises the liver.”
    This sounded very entrancing.
    “Can’t you teach me that?” asked Georgie eagerly. He had been rather distressed about his increasing plumpness for a year past, and about his increasing age for longer than that. As for his liver he always had to be careful.
    She shook her head.
    “You cannot practise it except under tuition from an expert,” she said.
    Georgie rapidly considered what Hermy’s and Ursy’s comments would be if, when they arrived tomorrow, he was found doing exercises under the tuition of a Guru. Hermy, when she was not otter-hunting, could be very sarcastic, and he had a clear month of Hermy in front of him, without any otter-hunting, which, so she had informed him, was not