Lucia Victrix

by E. F. Benson

  ‘But how tarsome,’ said Georgie. ‘What am I to do?’

  ‘Well, sir, there’s Miss Poppit’s mother you might get hold of. She is Mrs Wyse now. Lately married. A beautiful wedding. The house you want is her property.’

  ‘I know,’ broke in Lucia ‘Sables and a Rolls-Royce Mr Wyse has a monocle.’

  ‘Ah, if you know the lady, madam, that will be all right, and I can give you her address. Starling Cottage, Porpoise Street. I will write it down for you.’

  ‘Georgie, Porpoise Street!’ whispered Lucia in an entranced aside ‘Com’ e bello e molto characteristuoso!’

  While this was being done, Diva suddenly blew in, beginning to speak before she was wholly inside the office. A short tempestuous interlude ensued.

  ‘– morning, Mr Woolgar,’ said Diva, ‘and I’ve let Wasters, so you can cross it off your books: such a fine morning.’

  ‘Indeed, madam,’ said Mr Woolgar. ‘Very satisfactory. And I hope your dear little canary is better.’

  ‘Still alive and in less pain, thank you, pip,’ said Diva, and plunged through the excavations outside sooner than waste time in going round.

  Mr Woolgar apparently understood that ‘pip’ was not a salutation but a disease of canaries, and did not say ‘So long’ or ‘Pip pip’. Calm returned again.

  ‘I’ll ring up Mrs Wyse to say you will call, madam,’ he said. ‘Let me see: what name? It has escaped me for the moment.’

  As he had never known it, it was difficult to see how it could have escaped.

  ‘Mrs Lucas and Mr Pillson,’ said Lucia. ‘Where is Porpoise Street?’

  ‘Two minutes’ walk from here, madam. As if you were going up to Mallards, but first turning to the right just short of it.’

  ‘Many thanks,’ said Lucia, ‘I know Mallards.’

  ‘The best house in Tilling, madam,’ said Mr Woolgar, ‘if you were wanting something larger than Mallards Cottage. It is on our books, too.’

  The pride of proprietorship tempted Lucia for a moment to say ‘I’ve got it already,’ but she refrained. The complications which might have ensued, had she asked the price of it, were endless …

  ‘A great many houses to let in Tilling,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, madam, a rare lot of letting goes on about this time of year,’ said Mr Woolgar, ‘but they’re all snapped up very quickly. Many ladies in Tilling like a little change in the summer.’

  It was impossible (since time was so precious, and Georgie so feverishly apprehensive, after this warning, that somebody else would secure Mallards Cottage before him, although the owner was safe in the sand-dunes for the present) to walk round the excavations in the street, and like Diva they made an intrepid short cut among gas-pipes and water-mains and braziers and bricks to the other side. A sad splash of mud hurled itself against Georgie’s fawn-coloured trousers as he stepped in a puddle, which was very tarsome, but it was useless to attempt to brush it off till it was dry. As they went up the now familiar street towards Mallards they saw quaint Irene leaning out of the upper window of a small house, trying to take down a board that hung outside it which advertised that this house, too, was to let: the fact of her removing it seemed to indicate that from this moment it was to let no longer. Just as they passed, the board, which was painted in the most amazing colours, slipped from her hand and crashed on to the pavement, narrowly missing Diva who simultaneously popped out of the front door. It broke into splinters at her feet, and she gave a shrill cry of dismay. Then perceiving Irene she called up, ‘No harm done, dear,’ and Irene, in a voice of fury, cried, ‘No harm? My beautiful board’s broken to smithereens. Why didn’t you catch it, silly?’

  A snort of infinite contempt was the only proper reply, and Diva trundled swiftly away into the High Street again.

  ‘But it’s like a game of general post, Georgie,’ said Lucia excitedly, ‘and we’re playing too. Are they all letting their houses to each other? Is that it?’

  ‘I don’t care whom they’re letting them to,’ said Georgie, ‘so long as I get Mallards Cottage. Look at this tarsome mud on my trousers, and I daren’t try to brush it off. What will Mrs Wyse think? Here’s Porpoise Street anyhow, and there’s Starling Cottage. Elizabethan again.’

  The door was of old oak, without a handle, but with a bobbin in the strictest style, and there was a thickly patinated green bronze chain hanging close by, which Georgie rightly guessed to be the bell-pull, and so he pulled it. A large bronze bell, which he had not perceived, hanging close to his head, thereupon broke into a clamour that might have been heard not only in the house but all over Tilling, and startled him terribly. Then bobbins and gadgets were manipulated from within and they were shown into a room in which two very diverse tastes were clearly exhibited. Oak beams crossed the ceiling, oak beams made a criss-cross on the walls: there was a large open fireplace of grey Dutch bricks, and on each side of the grate an ingle-nook with a section of another oak beam to sit down upon. The windows were latticed and had antique levers for their control: there was a refectory-table and a spice-chest and some pewter mugs and a Bible-box and a coffin-stool. All this was one taste, and then came in another, for the room was full of beautiful objects of a very different sort. The refectory-table was covered with photographs in silver frames: one was of a man in uniform and many decorations signed ‘Cecco Faraglione’, another of a lady in Court dress with a quantity of plumes on her head signed ‘Amelia Faraglione’. Another was of the King of Italy, another of a man in a frock-coat signed ‘Wyse’. In front of these, rather prominent, was an open purple morocco box in which reposed the riband and cross of a Member of the Order of the British Empire. There was a cabinet of china in one corner with a malachite vase above it: there was an occasional table with a marble mosaic top: there was a satinwood piano draped with a piece of embroidery: a palm-tree: a green velvet sofa over the end of which lay a sable coat, and all these things spoke of post-Elizabethan refinements.

  Long before Lucia had time to admire them all, there came a jingling from a door over which hung a curtain of reeds and beads, and Mrs Wyse entered.

  ‘So sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs Lucas,’ she said, ‘but they thought I was in the garden, and I was in my boudoir all the time. And you must excuse my deshabille, just my shopping-frock. And Mr Pillson, isn’t it? So pleased. Pray be seated.’

  She heaved the sable coat off the end of the sofa on to the window-seat.

  ‘We’ve just been to see the house-agent,’ said Georgie in a great hurry, as he turned his muddied leg away from the light, ‘and he told us that you might help me.’

  ‘Most happy I am sure, if I can. Pray tell me,’ said Mrs Wyse, in apparent unconsciousness of what she could possibly help him about.

  ‘Mallards Cottage,’ said Georgie. ‘There seems to be no chance of getting hold of Miss Poppit and we’ve got to leave before she comes back from her sun-bath. I so much want to take it for August and September.’

  Mrs Wyse made a little cooing sound.

  ‘Dear Isabel!’ she said. ‘My daughter. Out in the sand-dunes all morning! What if a tramp came along? I say to her. But no use: she calls it the Browning Society, and she must not miss a meeting. So quick and clever! Browning, not the poet but the action of the sun.’

  ‘Most amusing!’ said Georgie. ‘With regard to Mallards Cottage –’

  ‘The little house is mine, as no doubt Mr Woolgar told you,’ said Mrs Wyse, forgetting she had been in complete ignorance of these manoeuvres, ‘but you must certainly come and see over it, before anything is settled … Ah, here is Mr Wyse. Algernon: Mrs Lucas and Mr Pillson. Mr Pillson wants to take Mallards Cottage.’

  Lucia thought she had never seen anyone so perfectly correct and polite as Mr Wyse. He gave little bows and smiles to each as he spoke to them, and that in no condescending manner, nor yet cringingly, but as one consorting with his high-bred equals.

  ‘From your beautiful Riseholme, I understand,’ he said to Lucia (bowing to Riseholme as well). ‘And we a
re all encouraging ourselves to hope that for two months at the least the charm of our picturesque – do you not find it so? – little Tilling will give Susan and myself the inestimable pleasure of being your neighbours. We shall look forward to August with keen anticipation. Remind me, dear Susan, to tell Amelia what is in store for us.’ He bowed to August, Susan and Amelia and continued – ‘And now I hear that Mr Pillson’ (he bowed to Georgie and observed the drying spot of mud) ‘is “after” as they say, after Mallards Cottage. This will indeed be a summer for Tilling.’

  Georgie, during this pretty speech which Mr Wyse delivered in the most finished manner, was taking notes of his costume and appearance. His clean-shaven face, with abundant grey hair brushed back from his forehead, was that of an actor who has seen his best days, but who has given command performances at Windsor. He wore a brown velveteen coat, a Byronic collar and a tie strictured with a cameo-ring: he wore brown knickerbockers and stockings to match, he wore neat golfing shoes. He looked as if he might be going to play golf, but somehow it didn’t seem likely …

  Georgie and Lucia made polite deprecating murmurs.

  ‘I was telling Mr Pillson’ he must certainly see over it first,’ said Mrs Wyse. ‘There are the keys of the cottage in my boudoir, if you’ll kindly fetch them, Algernon. And the Royce is at the door, I see, so if Mrs Lucas will allow us, we will all drive up there together, and show her and Mr Pillson what there is.’

  While Algernon was gone, Mrs Wyse picked up the photograph signed Amelia Faraglione.

  ‘You recognize, no doubt, the family likeness,’ she said to Lucia. ‘My husband’s sister Amelia who married the Conte di Faraglione, of the old Neapolitan nobility. That is he.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Lucia. ‘And so like Mr Wyse. And that Order? What is that?’

  Mrs Wyse hastily shut the morocco box.

  ‘So like servants to leave that about,’ she said. ‘But they seem proud of it. Graciously bestowed upon me. Member of the British Empire. Ah, here is Algernon with the keys. I was showing Mrs Lucas, dear, the photograph of Amelia. She recognized the likeness at once. Now let us all pack in. A warm morning, is it not? I don’t think I shall need my furs.’

  The total distance to be traversed was not more than a hundred yards, but Porpoise Street was very steep, and the cobbles which must be crossed very unpleasant to walk on, so Mrs Wyse explained. They had to wait some little while at the corner, twenty yards away from where they started, for a van was coming down the street from the direction of Mallards, and the Royce could not possibly pass it, and then they came under fire of the windows of Miss Mapp’s garden-room. As usual at this hour she was sitting there with the morning paper in her hand in which she could immerse herself if anybody passed whom she did not wish to see, but was otherwise intent on the movements of the street.

  Diva Plaistow had looked in with the news that she had seen Lucia and Georgie at the house-agents’, and that her canary still lived. Miss Mapp professed her delight to hear about the canary, but was secretly distrustful of whether Diva had seen the visitors or not. Diva was so imaginative; to have seen a man and a woman who were strangers was quite enough to make her believe she had seen Them. Then the Royce heaved into sight round the corner below, and Miss Mapp became much excited.

  ‘I think, Diva,’ she said, ‘that this is Mrs Lucas’s beautiful car coming. Probably she is going to call on me about something she wants to know. If you sit at the piano you will see her as she gets out. Then we shall know whether you really –’

  The car came slowly up, barked loudly and instead of stopping at the front door of Mallards, turned up the street in the direction of Mallards Cottage. Simultaneously Miss Mapp caught sight of that odious chauffeur of Mrs Wyse’s. She could not see more than people’s knees in the car itself (that was the one disadvantage of the garden-room window being so high above the street), but there were several pairs of them.

  ‘No, it’s only Susan’s great lumbering bus,’ she said, ‘filling up the street as usual. Probably she has found out that Mrs Lucas is staying at the Trader’s Arms, and has gone to leave cards. Such a woman to shove herself in where she’s not wanted I never saw. Luckily I told Mrs Lucas what a dreadful snob she was.’

  ‘A disappointment to you, dear, when you thought Mrs Lucas was coming to call,’ said Diva. ‘But I did see them this morning at Woolgar’s and it’s no use saying I didn’t!’

  Miss Mapp uttered a shrill cry.

  ‘Diva, they’ve stopped at Mallards Cottage. They’re getting out. Susan first – so like her – and … it’s Them. She’s got hold of them somehow … There’s Mr Wyse with the keys, bowing … They’re going in … I was right, then, when I saw them peering in through the windows yesterday. Mr Pillson’s come to see the house, and the Wyses have got hold of them. You may wager they know by now about the Count and Countess Faradiddleone, and the Order of the British Empire. I really didn’t think Mrs Lucas would be so easily taken in. However, it’s no business of mine.’

  There could not have been a better reason for Miss Mapp being violently interested in all that happened. Then an idea struck her and the agitated creases in her face faded out.

  ‘Let us pop in to Mallards Cottage, Diva, while they are still there,’ she said. ‘I should hate to think that Mrs Lucas should get her ideas of the society she will meet in Tilling from poor common Susan. Probably they would like a little lunch before their long drive back to Riseholme.’

  The inspection of the cottage had taken very little time. The main point in Georgie’s mind was that Foljambe should be pleased, and there was an excellent bedroom for Foljambe, where she could sit when unoccupied. The rooms that concerned him had been viewed through the windows from the street the evening before. Consequently Miss Mapp had hardly had time to put on her garden-hat, and trip up the street with Diva, when the inspecting party came out.

  ‘Sweet Susan!’ she said. ‘I saw your car go by … Dear Mrs Lucas, good morning, I just popped across this is Mrs Plaistow – to see if you would not come and have an early lunch with me before you drive back to your lovely Riseholme. Any time would suit me, for I never have any breakfast. Twelve, half-past twelve? A little something?’

  ‘So kind of you,’ said Lucia, ‘but Mrs Wyse has just asked us to lunch with her.’

  ‘I see,’ said Miss Mapp, grinning frightfully. ‘Such a pity. I had hoped – but there it is.’

  Clearly it was incumbent on sweet Susan to ask her to join them at this early lunch, but sweet Susan showed no signs of doing anything of the sort. Off went Lucia and Georgie to the Trader’s Arms to pack their belongings and leave the rest of the morning free, and the Wyses, after vainly trying to persuade them to drive there in the Royce, got into it themselves and backed down the street till it could turn in the slightly wider space opposite Miss Mapp’s garden-room. This took a long time, and she was not able to get to her own front door till the manoeuvre was executed, for as often as she tried to get round the front of the car it took a short run forward, and it threatened to squash her flat against the wall of her own room if she tried to squeeze round behind it.

  But there were topics to gloat over which consoled her for this act of social piracy on the part of the Wyses. It was a noble stroke to have let Mallards for fifteen guineas a week without garden-produce, and an equally brilliant act to have got Diva’s house for eight with garden-produce, for Diva had some remarkably fine plum-trees, the fruit of which would be ripe during her tenancy, not to mention apples: Miss Mapp foresaw a kitchen-cupboard the doors of which could not close because of the jam-pots within. Such reflections made a happy mental background as she hurried out into the town, for there were businesses to be transacted without delay. She first went to the house-agents’ and had rather a job to convince Mr Woolgar that the letting of Mallards was due to her own advertisement in The Times, and that therefore she owed no commission to his firm, but her logic proved irresistible. Heated but refreshed by that encounter, she paid a visit to her gr
eengrocer and made a pleasant arrangement for the sale of the produce of her own kitchen-garden at Mallards during the months of August and September. This errand brought her to the east end of the High Street, and there was Georgie already established on the belvedere busy sketching the Landgate, before he went to breakfast (as those Wyses always called lunch) in Porpoise Street. Miss Mapp did not yet know whether he had taken Mallards Cottage or not, and that must be instantly ascertained.

  She leaned on the railing close beside him, and moved a little, rustled a little, till he looked up.

  ‘Oh, Mr Pillson, how ashamed of myself I am!’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t help taking a peep at your lovely little sketch. So rude of me: just like an inquisitive stranger in the street. Never meant to interrupt you, but to steal away again when I’d had my peep. Every moment’s precious to you, I know, as you’re off this afternoon after your early lunch. But I must ask you whether your hotel was comfortable. I should be miserable if I thought that I had recommended it, and that you didn’t like it.

  ‘Very comfortable indeed, thank you,’ said Georgie.

  Miss Mapp sidled up to the bench where he sat.

  ‘I will just perch here for a moment before I flit off again,’ she said, ‘if you’ll promise not to take any notice of me, but go on with your picky, as if I was not here. How well you’ve got the perspective! I always sit here for two or three minutes every morning to feast my eyes on the beauty of the outlook. What a pity you can’t stay longer here! You’ve only had a glimpse of our sweet Tilling.’

  Georgie held up his drawing.

  ‘Have I got the perspective right, do you think?’ he said. ‘Isn’t it tarsome when you mean to make a road go downhill and it will go up instead?’

  ‘No fear of that with you!’ ejaculated Miss Mapp. ‘If I was a little bolder I should ask you to send your drawing to our Art Society here. We have a little exhibition every summer. Could I persuade you?’