by E. F. Benson
‘No, that was given up,’ said Georgie. ‘I opposed it throughout on the committee. I said that even if we could get a bear at all, it wouldn’t be baited if it didn’t get angry –’
Lucia interrupted.
‘And that if it did get angry it would be awful,’ she put in.
‘Yes. How did you know I said that?’ asked Georgie. ‘Rather neat, wasn’t it?’
‘Very neat indeed, caro,’ said she. ‘I knew you said it because Daisy told me she had said it herself.’
‘What a cheat!’ said Georgie indignantly.
Lucia looked at him wistfully.
‘Ah, you mustn’t think hardly of poor dear Daisy,’ she said. ‘Cheat is too strong a word. Just a little envious, perhaps, of bright clever things that other people say, not being very quick herself.’
‘Anyhow, I shall tell her that I know she has bagged my joke,’ said he.
‘My dear, not worth while. You’ll make quantities of others. All so trivial, Georgie, not worth noticing. Beneath you.’
Lucia leaned forward with her elbows on the table, quite in the old braced way, instead of drooping.
‘But we’ve got far more important things to talk about than Daisy’s little pilferings,’ she said. ‘Where shall I begin?’
‘From the beginning,’ said Georgie greedily. He had not felt so keen about the affairs of daily life since Lucia had buried herself in her bereavement.
‘Well, the real beginning was this morning,’ she said, ‘when I saw something in The Times.’
‘More than I did,’ said Georgie. ‘Was it about Riseholme or the fête? Daisy said she was going to write a letter to The Times about it?’
‘I must have missed that,’ said Lucia, ‘unless by any chance they didn’t put it in. No, not about the fête, nor about Riseholme. Very much not about Riseholme. Georgie, do you remember a woman who stayed at the Ambermere Arms one summer called Miss Mapp?’
Georgie concentrated.
‘I remember the name, because she was rather globular, like a map of the world,’ he said. ‘Oh, wait a moment: something’s coming back to me. Large, with a great smile. Teeth.’
‘Yes, that’s the one,’ cried Lucia. ‘There’s telepathy going on, Georgie. We’re suggesting to each other … Rather like a hyena, a handsome hyena. Not hungry now but might be.’
‘Yes. And talked about a place called Tilling, where she had a Queen Anne house. We rather despised her for that. Oh, yes, and she came to a garden-party of mine. And I know when it was, too. It was that summer when you invented saying “Au reservoir” instead of “Au revoir”. We all said it for about a week and then got tired of it. Miss Mapp came here just about then, because she picked it up at my garden-party. She stopped quite to the end, eating quantities of red-currant fool, and saying that she had inherited a recipe from her grandmother which she would send me. She did, too, and my cook said it was rubbish. Yes: it was the au reservoir year, because she said au reservoir to everyone as they left, and told me she would take it back to Tilling. That’s the one. Why?’
‘Georgie, your memory’s marvellous,’ said Lucia. ‘Now about the advertisement I saw in The Times. Miss Mapp is letting her Queen Anne house called Mallards, h. & c. and old-world garden, for August and September. I want you to drive over with me to-morrow and see it. I think that very likely, if it’s at all what I hope, I shall take it.’
‘No!’ cried Georgie. ‘Why of course I’ll drive there with you to-morrow. What fun! But it will be too awful if you go away for two months. What shall I do? First there’s Olga not coming back for a year, and now you’re thinking of going away, and there’ll be nothing left for me except my croquet and being Drake.’
Lucia gave him one of those glances behind which lurked so much purpose, which no doubt would be disclosed at the proper time. The bees were astir once more in the hive, and presently they would stream out for swarmings or stingings or honey-harvesting … It was delightful to see her looking like that again.
‘Georgie, I want change,’ she said, ‘and though I’m much touched at the idea of your missing me, I think I must have it. I want to get roused up again and shaken and made to tick. Change of air, change of scene, change of people. I don’t suppose anyone alive has been more immersed than I in the spacious days of Elizabeth, or more devoted to Shakespearian tradition and environment – perhaps I ought to except Sir Sidney Lee, isn’t it? – than I, but I want for the present anyhow to get away from it, especially when poor Daisy is intending to make this deplorable public parody of all that I have held sacred so long.’
Lucia swallowed three or four strawberries as if they had been pills and took a gulp of water.
‘I don’t think I could bear to be here for all the rehearsals,’ she said; ‘to look out from the rue and honeysuckle of my sweet garden and see her on her palfrey addressing her lieges of Riseholme, and making them walk in procession in front of her. It did occur to me this morning that I might intervene, take the part of the Queen myself, and make a pageant such as I had planned in those happy days, which would have done honour to the great age and credit to Riseholme, but it would spoil the dream of Daisy’s life, and one must be kind. I wash my hands of it all, though of course I shall allow her to dress here, and the procession to start from my house. She wanted that, and she shall have it, but of course she must state on the programmes that the procession starts from Mrs Philip Lucas’s house. It would be too much that the visitors, if there are any, should think that my beautiful Hurst belongs to Daisy. And, as I said, I shall be happy to coach her, and see if I can do anything with her. But I won’t be here for the fête, and I must be somewhere and that’s why I’m thinking of Tilling.’
They had moved into the music-room where the bust of Shakespeare stood among its vases of flowers, and the picture of Lucia by Tancred Sigismund, looking like a chessboard with some arms and legs and eyes sticking out of it, hung on the wall. There were Georgie’s sketches there, and the piano was open, and Beethoven’s Days of Boyhood was lying on the table with the paper-knife stuck between its leaves, and there was animation about the room once more.
Lucia seated herself in the chair that might so easily have come from Anne Hathaway’s cottage, though there was no particular reason for supposing that it did.
‘Georgie, I am beginning to feel alive again,’ she said. ‘Do you remember what wonderful Alfred says in Maud? “My life hath crept so long on a broken wing.” That’s what my life has been doing, but now I’m not going to creep any more. And just for the time, as I say, I’m “off” the age of Elizabeth, partly poor Daisy’s fault, no doubt. But there were other ages, Georgie, the age of Pericles, for instance. Fancy sitting at Socrates’s feet or Plato’s, and hearing them talk while the sun set over Salamis or Pentelicus. I must rub up my Greek, Georgie. I used to know a little Greek at one time, and if I ever manage any tableaux again, we must have the death of Agamemnon. And then there’s the age of Anne. What a wonderful time, Pope and Addison! So civilized, so cultivated. Their routs and their tea-parties and rapes of the lock. With all the greatness and splendour of the Elizabethan age, there must have been a certain coarseness and crudity about them. No one reveres it more than I, but it is a mistake to remain in the same waters too long. There comes a tide in the affairs of men, which, if you don’t nip it in the bud, leads on to boredom.’
‘My dear, is that yours?’ said Georgie. ‘And absolutely impromptu like that! You’re too brilliant.’
It was not quite impromptu, for Lucia had thought of it in her bath. But it would be meticulous to explain that.
‘Wicked of me, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘But it expresses my feelings just now. I do want a change, and my happening to see this notice of Miss Mapp’s in The Times seems a very remarkable coincidence. Almost as if it was sent: what they call a leading. Anyhow, you and I will drive over to Tilling to-morrow and see it. Let us make a jaunt of it, Georgie, for it’s a long way, and stay the night at an inn there. Then we shall have p
lenty of time to see the place.’
This was rather a daring project, and Georgie was not quite sure if it was proper. But he knew himself well enough to be certain that no passionate impulse of his would cause Lucia to regret that she had made so intimate a proposal.
‘That’ll be the greatest fun,’ he said. ‘I shall take my painting things. I haven’t sketched for weeks.’
‘Cattivo ragazzo!’ said Lucia. ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’
‘Nothing. There’s been no one to play the piano with, and no one, who knows, to show my sketches to. Hours of croquet, just killing the time. Being Drake. How that fête bores me!’
‘’Oo poor thing!’ said Lucia, using again the baby-talk in which she and Georgie used so often to indulge. ‘But me’s back again now, and me will scold ’oo vewy vewy much if ’oo does not do your lessons.’
‘And me vewy glad to be scolded again,’ said Georgie. ‘Me idle boy! Dear me, how nice it all is!’ he exclaimed enthusiastically.
The clock on the old oak dresser struck ten, and Lucia jumped up.
‘Georgie, ten o’clock already,’ she cried. ‘How time has flown. Now I’ll write out a telegram to be sent to Miss Mapp first thing to-morrow to say we’ll get to Tilling in the afternoon, to see her house, and then ickle musica. There was a Mozart duet we used to play. We might wrestle with it again.’
She opened the book that stood on the piano. Luckily that was the very one Georgie had been practising this morning. (So too had Lucia.)
‘That will be lovely,’ he said. ‘But you mustn’t scold me if I play vewy badly. Months since I looked at it.’
‘Me too,’ said Lucia. ‘Here we are! Shall I take the treble? It’s a little easier for my poor fingers. Now: Uno, due, tre! Off we go!’
2
They arrived at Tilling in the middle of the afternoon, entering it from the long level road that ran across the reclaimed marshland to the west. Blue was the sky overhead, complete with larks and small white clouds; the town lay basking in the hot June sunshine, and its narrow streets abounded in red-brick houses with tiled roofs, that shouted Queen Anne and George I in Lucia’s enraptured ears, and made Georgie’s fingers itch for his sketching-tools.
‘Dear Georgie, perfectly enchanting!’ exclaimed Lucia. ‘I declare I feel at home already. Look, there’s another lovely house. We must just drive to the end of this street, and then we’ll inquire where Mallards is. The people, too, I like their looks. Faces full of interest. It’s as if they expected us.’
The car had stopped to allow a dray to turn into the High Street from a steep cobbled way leading to the top of the hill. On the pavement at the corner was standing quite a group of Tillingites: there was a clergyman, there was a little round bustling woman dressed in a purple frock covered with pink roses which looked as if they were made of chintz, there was a large military-looking man with a couple of golf-clubs in his hand, and there was a hatless girl with hair closely cropped, dressed in a fisherman’s jersey and knickerbockers, who spat very neatly in the roadway.
‘We must ask where the house is,’ said Lucia, leaning out of the window of her Rolls-Royce. ‘I wonder if you would be so good as to tell me –’
The clergyman sprang forward.
‘It’ll be Miss Mapp’s house you’re seeking,’ he said in a broad Scotch accent. ‘Straight up the street, to yon corner, and it’s richt there is Mistress Mapp’s house.’
The odd-looking girl gave a short hoot of laughter, and they all stared at Lucia. The car turned with difficulty and danced slowly up the steep narrow street.
‘Georgie, he told me where it was before I asked,’ said Lucia. ‘It must be known in Tilling that I was coming. What a strange accent that clergyman had! A little tipsy, do you think, or only Scotch? The others too! All most interesting and unusual. Gracious, here’s an enormous car coming down. Can we pass, do you think?’
By means of both cars driving on to the pavement on each side of the cobbled roadway, the passage was effected, and Lucia caught sight of a large woman inside the other, who in spite of the heat of the day wore a magnificent sable cloak. A small man with a monocle sat eclipsed by her side. Then, with glimpses of more red-brick houses to right and left, the car stopped at the top of the street opposite a very dignified door. Straight in front where the street turned at a right angle, a room with a large bow-window faced them; this, though slightly separate from the house, seemed to belong to it. Georgie thought he saw a woman’s face peering out between half-drawn curtains, but it whisked itself away.
‘Georgie, a dream,’ whispered Lucia, as they stood on the doorstep waiting for their ring to be answered. ‘That wonderful chimney, do you see, all crooked. The church, the cobbles, the grass and dandelions growing in between them … Oh, is Miss Mapp in? Mrs Lucas. She expects me.’
They had hardly stepped inside, when Miss Mapp came hurrying in from a door in the direction of the bow-window where Georgie had thought he had seen a face peeping out.
‘Dear Mrs Lucas,’ she said. ‘No need for introductions, which makes it all so happy, for how well I remember you at Riseholme, your lovely Riseholme. And Mr Pillson! Your wonderful garden-party! All so vivid still. Red-letter days! Fancy your having driven all this way to see my little cottage! Tea at once, Withers, please. In the garden-room. Such a long drive, but what a heavenly day for it. I got your telegram at breakfast-time this morning. I could have clapped my hands for joy at the thought of possibly having such a tenant as Mrs Lucas of Riseholme. But let us have a cup of tea first. Your chauffeur? Of course he will have his tea here, too. Withers: Mrs Lucas’s chauffeur. Mind you take care of him.’
Miss Mapp took Lucia’s cloak from her, and still keeping up an effortless flow of hospitable monologue, led them through a small panelled parlour which opened on to the garden. A flight of eight steps with a canopy of wistaria overhead led to the garden-room.
‘My little plot,’ said Miss Mapp. ‘Very modest, as you see, three-quarters of an acre at the most, but well screened. My flower-beds: sweet roses, tortoiseshell butterflies. Rather a nice clematis. My Little Eden I call it, so small, but so well beloved.’
‘Enchanting!’ said Lucia, looking round the garden before mounting the steps up to the garden-room door. There was a very green and well-kept lawn, set in bright flower-beds. A trellis at one end separated it from a kitchen-garden beyond, and round the rest ran high brick walls, over which peered the roofs of other houses. In one of these walls was cut a curved archway with a della Robbia head above it.
‘Shall we just pop across the lawn,’ said Miss Mapp, pointing to this, ‘and peep in there while Withers brings our tea? Just to stretch the – the limbs, Mrs Lucas, after your long drive. There’s a wee little plot beyond there which is quite a pet of mine. And here’s sweet Puss-Cat come to welcome my friends. Lamb! Love-bird!’
Love-bird’s welcome was to dab rather crossly at the caressing hand which its mistress extended, and to trot away to ambush itself beneath some fine hollyhocks, where it regarded them with singular disfavour.
‘My little secret garden,’ continued Miss Mapp as they came to the archway. ‘When I am in here and shut the door, I mustn’t be disturbed for anything less than a telegram. A rule of the house: I am very strict about it. The tower of the church keeping watch, as I always say over my little nook, and taking care of me. Otherwise not overlooked at all. A little paved walk round it, you see, flower-beds, a pocket-handkerchief of a lawn, and in the middle a pillar with a bust of good Queen Anne. Picked it up in a shop here for a song. One of my lucky days.’
‘Oh Georgie, isn’t it too sweet?’ cried Lucia. ‘Un giardino segreto. Molto bello!’
Miss Mapp gave a little purr of ecstasy.
‘How lovely to be able to talk Italian like that,’ she said. ‘So pleased you like my little … giardino segreto, was it? Now shall we have our tea, for I’m sure you want refreshment, and see the house afterwards? Or would you prefer a little whisky and soda, M
r Pillson? I shan’t be shocked. Major Benjy – I should say Major Flint – often prefers a small whisky and soda to tea on a hot day after his game of golf, when he pops in to see me and tell me all about it.’
The intense interest in humankind, so strenuously cultivated at Riseholme, obliterated for a moment Lucia’s appreciation of the secret garden.
‘I wonder if it was he whom we saw at the corner of the High Street,’ she said. ‘A big soldier-like man, with a couple of golf-clubs.’
‘How you hit him off in a few words,’ said Miss Mapp admiringly. ‘That can be nobody else but Major Benjy. Going off no doubt by the steam-tram (most convenient, lands you close to the links) for a round of golf after tea. I told him it would be far too hot to play earlier. I said I should scold him if he was naughty and played after lunch. He served for many years in India. Hindustanee is quite a second language to him. Calls “Quai-hai” when he wants his breakfast. Volumes of wonderful diaries, which we all hope to see published some day. His house is next to mine down the street. Lots of tiger-skins. A rather impetuous bridge-player: quite wicked sometimes. You play bridge of course, Mrs Lucas. Plenty of that in Tilling. Some good players.’
They had strolled back over the lawn to the garden-room where Withers was laying tea. It was cool and spacious, one window was shaded with the big leaves of a fig-tree, through which, unseen, Miss Mapp so often peered out to see whether her gardener was idling. Over the big bow-window looking on to the street one curtain was half-drawn, a grand piano stood near it, book-cases half-lined the walls, and above them hung many water-colour sketches of the sort that proclaims a domestic origin. Their subjects also betrayed them, for there was one of the front of Miss Mapp’s house, and one of the secret garden, another of the crooked chimney, and several of the church tower looking over the house-roofs on to Miss Mapp’s lawn.
