Part 18 (2/2)
”I know. You mean babies,” said Olga ruthlessly. ”Didn't you?”
”Yes,” said Georgie.
”Then why not say so? You and I were babies once, though no one is old enough to remember that, and we shouldn't have liked our parents and friends to have blushed when they mentioned us. Georgie, you are a prude.”
”No, I'm not,” said Georgie, remembering he was probably in love with a married woman.
”It doesn't matter whether you are or not. Now there's only one thing that can happen to Mrs Weston and the Colonel. They must marry each other too. Then Atkinson can continue to be Colonel Boucher's man and Elizabeth the parlour-maid, unless she is busy with what made you blush. Then they can get help in; you will lend them Foljambe, for instance. It's time you began to be of some good in your wicked selfish life. So that's settled. It only remains for us to make them marry each other.”
”Aren't you getting on rather fast?” asked Georgie.
”I'm not getting on at all at present I'm only talking. Come into my house instantly, and we'll drink vermouth. Vermouth always makes me brilliant unless it makes me idiotic, but we'll hope for the best.”
Presently they were seated in Olga's music-room, with a bottle of vermouth between them.
”Now drink fair, Georgie,” she said, ”and as you drink tell me all about the young people's emotional history.”
”Atkinson and Elizabeth?” asked Georgie.
”No, my dear; Colonel Boucher and Mrs Weston. They have an emotional history. I am sure you all thought they were going to marry each other once. And they constantly dine together tete-a-tete. Now that's a very good start. Are you quite sure he hasn't got a wife and family in Egypt, or she a husband and family somewhere else? I don't want to rake up family skeletons.”
”I've never heard of them,” said Georgie.
”Then we'll take them as non-existent. You certainly would have heard of them if there were any, and very likely if there weren't. And they both like eating, drinking and the latest intelligence. Don't they?”
”Yes. But--”
”But what? What more do you or they want? Isn't that a better start for married life than many people get?”
”But aren't they rather old?” asked Georgie.
”Not much older than you and me, and if it wasn't that I've got my own Georgie, I would soon have somebody else's. Do you know who I mean?”
”No!” said Georgie firmly. Though all this came at the end of a most harrowing day, it or the vermouth exhilarated him.
”Then I'll tell you just what Mrs Weston told me. 'He's always been devoted to Lucia,' said Mrs Weston, 'and he has never looked at anybody else. There was Piggy Antrobus--' Now do you know who I mean?”
Georgie suddenly giggled.
”Yes,” he said.
”Then don't talk about yourself so much, my dear, and let us get to the point. Now this afternoon I dropped in to see Mrs Weston and as she was telling me about the tragedy, she said by accident (just as I called you Georgie just now by accident) 'And I don't know what Jacob will do without Atkinson.' Now is or is not Colonel Boucher's name Jacob? There you are then! That's one side of the question. She called him Jacob by accident and so she'll call him Jacob on purpose before very long.”
Olga nodded her head up and down in precise reproduction of Mrs Weston.
”I'd hardly got out of the house,” she said in exact imitation of Mrs Weston's voice, ”before I met Colonel Boucher. It would have been about three o'clock-no it couldn't have been three, because I had got back home and was standing in the hall when it struck three, and my clock's a shade fast if anything. Well; Colonel Boucher said to me, 'Haw, hum, quite a domestic crisis, by Jove.' And so I pretended I didn't know, and he told me all about it. So I said 'Well, it is a domestic crisis, and you'll lose Atkinson.' 'Haw, hum,' said he, 'and poor Jane, I should say, Mrs Weston, will lose Elizabeth.' There!”
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