Lucia Victrix

by E. F. Benson

Georgie, worked to the bone with playing duets, with consulting Foljambe as to questions of linen and plate (for it appeared that Isabel Poppit, in pursuance of the simple life, slept between blankets in the back-yard, and ate uncooked vegetables out of a wooden bowl like a dog), with learning Vanderbilt conventions, with taking part in Royal processions across the Green, with packing his bibelots and sending them to the bank, with sketching, so that he might be in good form when he began to paint at Tilling with a view to exhibiting in the Art Society, wondered what was the true source of these stupendous activities of Lucia’s, whether she was getting fit, getting in training, so to speak, for a campaign at Tilling. Somehow it seemed likely, for she would hardly think it worth while to run the affairs of Riseholme with such energy, when she was about to disappear from it for three months. Or was she intending to let Riseholme see how dreadfully flat everything would become when she left them? Very likely both these purposes were at work; it was like her to kill two birds with one stone. Indeed, she was perhaps killing three birds with one stone, for multifarious as were the interests in which she was engaged there was one, now looming large in Riseholme, namely the Elizabethan fête, of which she seemed strangely unconscious. Her drive, her powers of instilling her friends with her own fervour, never touched that: she did not seem to know that a fête was being contemplated at all, though now a day seldom passed without a procession of some sort crossing the green or a Morris-dance getting entangled with the choristers practising madrigals, or a crowd of soldiers and courtiers being assembled near the front entrance of the Ambermere Arms, while Daisy harangued them from a chair put on the top of a table, pausing occasionally because she forgot her words, or in order to allow them to throw up their hats and cry ‘God Save the Queen’s Grace’, ‘To hell with Spain’, and other suitable ejaculations. Daisy, occasionally now in full dress, ruff and pearls and all, came across to the gate of the Hurst, to wait for the procession to join her, and Lucia sitting in Perdita’s garden would talk to her about Tilling or the importance of being prudent if you were vulnerable at contract, apparently unaware that Daisy was dressed up at all. Once Lucia came out of the Ambermere Arms when Daisy was actually mounting the palfrey that drew the milk-cart for a full-dress rehearsal, and she seemed to be positively palfrey-blind. She merely said ‘Don’t forget that you and Robert are dining with me to-night. Half-past seven, so that we shall get a good evening’s bridge,’ and went on her way … Or she would be passing the pond on which the framework of the Golden Hind was already constructed, and on which Georgie was even then kneeling down to receive the accolade amid the faint cheers of Piggy and Goosie, and she just waved her hand to Georgie and said: ‘Musica after lunch, Georgie?’ She made no sarcastic comments to anybody, and did not know that they were doing anything out of the ordinary.

  Under this pointed unconsciousness of hers, a species of blight spread over the scheme to which Riseholme ought to have been devoting its most enthusiastic energies. The courtiers were late for rehearsals, they did not even remove their cigarettes when they bent to kiss the Queen’s hand, Piggy and Goosie made steps of Morris-dances when they ought to have been holding up Elizabeth’s train, and Georgie snatched up a cushion, when the accolade was imminent, to protect his shoulder. The choir-boys droned their way through madrigals, sucking peppermints, there was no life, no keenness about it all, because Lucia, who was used to inspire all Riseholme’s activities, was unaware that anything was going on.

  One morning when only a fortnight of July was still to run, Drake was engaged on his croquet-lawn tapping the balls about and trying to tame his white satin shoes which hurt terribly. From the garden next door came the familiar accents of the Queen’s speech to her troops.

  ‘And though I am only a weak woman,’ declaimed Daisy who was determined to go through the speech without referring to her book. ‘Though I am only a weak woman, a weak woman –’ she repeated.

  ‘Yet I have the heart of a Prince,’ shouted Drake with the friendly intention of prompting her.

  ‘Thank you, Georgie. Or ought it to be Princess, do you think?’

  ‘No: Prince,’ said Georgie.

  ‘Prince,’ cried Daisy. ‘Though I am only a weak woman, yet I have the heart of a Prince … Let me see … Prince.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Georgie,’ said Daisy in her ordinary voice. ‘Do stop your croquet a minute and come to the paling. I want to talk.’

  ‘I’m trying to get used to these shoes,’ said Georgie. ‘They hurt frightfully. I shall have to take them to Tilling and wear them there. Oh, I haven’t told you, Lady Brixton came down yesterday evening –’

  ‘I know that,’ said Daisy.

  ‘– and she thinks that her brother will take my house for a couple of months, as long as I don’t leave any servants. He’ll be here for the fête, if he does, so I wonder if you could put me up. How’s Robert’s cold?’

  ‘Worse,’ she said. ‘I’m worse too. I can’t remember half of what I knew by heart a week ago. Isn’t there some memory-system?’

  ‘Lots, I believe,’ said Georgie. ‘But it’s rather late. They don’t improve your memory all in a minute. I really think you had better read your speech to the troops, as if it was the opening of Parliament.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Daisy, taking off her ruff. ‘I’ll learn it if it costs me the last breath of blood in my body – I mean drop.’

  ‘Well it will be very awkward if you forget it all,’ said Georgie. ‘We can’t cheer nothing at all. Such a pity, because your voice carries perfectly now. I could hear you while I was breakfasting.’

  ‘And it’s not only that,’ said Daisy. ‘There’s no life in the thing. It doesn’t look as if it was happening.’

  ‘No, that’s true,’ said Georgie. ‘These tarsome shoes of mine are real enough, though!’

  ‘I begin to think we ought to have had a producer,’ said Daisy. ‘But it was so much finer to do it all ourselves, like – like Oberammergau. Does Lucia ever say anything about it? I think it’s too mean for words of her to take no interest in it.’

  ‘Well, you must remember that you asked her only to be my wife,’ said Georgie. ‘Naturally she wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘She ought to help us instead of going about as if we were all invisible,’ exclaimed Daisy.

  ‘My dear, she did offer to help you. At least, I told you ages ago, that I felt sure she would if you asked her to.’

  ‘I feel inclined to chuck the whole thing,’ said Daisy.

  ‘But you can’t. Masses of tickets have been sold. And who’s to pay for the Golden Hind and the roast sheep and all the costumes?’ asked Georgie. ‘Not to mention all our trouble. Why not ask her to help, if you want her to?’

  ‘Georgie, will you ask her?’ said Daisy.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Georgie very firmly. ‘You’ve been managing it from the first. It’s your show. If I were you, I would ask her at once. She’ll be over here in a few minutes, as we’re going to have a music. Pop in.’

  A melodious cry of ‘Georgino mio!’ resounded from the open window of Georgie’s drawing-room, and he hobbled away down the garden walk. Ever since that beautiful understanding they had arrived at, that both of them shrank, as from a cup of hemlock, from the idea of marriage, they had talked Italian or baby-language to a surprising extent from mere lightness of heart.

  ‘Me tummin’,’ he called. ‘’Oo very good girl, Lucia. ’Oo molto punctuale.’

  (He was not sure about that last word, nor was Lucia, but she understood it.)

  ‘Georgino! Che curiose scalpe!’ said Lucia, leaning out of the window.

  ‘Don’t be so cattiva. They are cattivo enough,’ said Georgie. ‘But Drake did have shoes exactly like these.’

  The mere mention of Drake naturally caused Lucia to talk about something else. She did not understand any allusion to Drake.

  ‘Now for a good practice,’ she said, as Georgie limped into the drawing-room. ‘Foljambe beamed at me. How happy
it all is! I hope you said you were at home to nobody. Let us begin at once. Can you manage the sostenuto pedal in those odd shoes?’

  Foljambe entered.

  ‘Mrs Quantock, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Daisy darling,’ said Lucia effusively. ‘Come to hear our little practice? We must play our best, Georgino.’

  Daisy was still in queenly costume, except for the ruff. Lucia seemed as usual to be quite unconscious of it.

  ‘Lucia, before you begin –’ said Daisy.

  ‘So much better than interrupting,’ said Lucia. ‘Thank you, dear. Yes?’

  ‘About this fête. Oh, for gracious’ sake don’t go on seeming to know nothing about it. I tell you there is to be one. And it’s all nohow. Can’t you help us?’

  Lucia sprang from the music-stool. She had been waiting for this moment, not impatiently, but ready for it if it came, as she knew it must, without any scheming on her part. She had been watching from Perdita’s garden the straggling procession smoking cigarettes, the listless halberdiers not walking in step, the courtiers yawning in Her Majesty’s face, the languor and the looseness arising from the lack of an inspiring mind. The scene on the Golden Hind, and that of Elizabeth’s speech to her troops were equally familiar to her, for though she could not observe them from under her garden-hat close at hand, her husband had been fond of astronomy and there were telescopes great and small, which brought these scenes quite close. Moreover, she had that speech which poor Daisy found so elusive by heart. So easy to learn, just the sort of cheap bombast that Elizabeth would indulge in: she had found it in a small history of England, and had committed it to memory, just in case …

  ‘But I’ll willingly help you, dear Daisy,’ she said. ‘I seem to remember you told me something about it. You as Queen Elizabeth, was it not, a roast sheep on the Golden Hind, a speech to the troops, Morris-dances, bear-baiting, no, not bear-baiting. Isn’t it all going beautifully?’

  ‘No! It isn’t,’ said Daisy in a lamentable voice. ‘I want you to help us, will you? It’s all like dough.’

  Great was Lucia. There was no rubbing in: there was no hesitation, there was nothing but helpful sunny cordiality in response to this SOS.

  ‘How you all work me!’ she said, ‘but I’ll try to help you if I can. Georgie, we must put off our practice, and get to grips with all this, if the fête is to be a credit to Riseholme. Addio, caro Mozartino for the present. Now begin, Daisy, and tell me all the trouble.’

  For the next week Mozartino and the Symposium and contract bridge were non-existent and rehearsals went on all day. Lucia demonstrated to Daisy how to make her first appearance, and, when the trumpeters blew a fanfare, she came out of the door of the Hurst, and without the slightest hurry majestically marched down the crazy pavement. She did not fumble at the gate as Daisy always did, but with a swift imperious nod to Robert Quantock, which made him pause in the middle of a sneeze, she caused him to fly forward, open it, and kneel as she passed through. She made a wonderful curtsey to her lieges and motioned them to close up in front of her. And all this was done in the clothes of to-day, without a ruff or a pearl to help her.

  ‘Something like that, do you think, dear Daisy, for the start of the procession?’ she said to her. ‘Will you try it like that and see how it goes? And a little more briskness, gentlemen, from the halberdiers. Would you form in front of me now, while Mrs Quantock goes into the house … Ah, that has more snap, hasn’t it? Excellent. Quite like guardsmen. Piggy and Goosie, my dears, you must remember that you are Elizabethan Countesses. Very stately, please, and Countesses never giggle. Sweep two low curtsies, and while still down pick up the Queen’s train. You opened the gate very properly, Robert. Very nice indeed. Now may we have that all over again. Queen, please,’ she called to Daisy.

  Daisy came out of the house in all the panoply of Majesty, and with the idea of not hurrying came so slowly that her progress resembled that of a queen following a hearse. (‘A little quicker, dear,’ called Lucia encouragingly. ‘We’re all ready.’) Then she tripped over a piece of loose crazy pavement. Then she sneezed, for she had certainly caught Robert’s cold. Then she forgot to bow to her lieges, until they had closed up in procession in front of her, and then bobbed to their backs.

  ‘Hey ho, nonny, nonny,’ sang Lucia to start the chorus. ‘Off we go! Right, left – I beg your pardon, how stupid of me – Left, right. Crescendo, choir. Sing out, please. We’re being Merrie England. Capital!’

  Lucia walked by the side of the procession across the green, beating time with her parasol, full of encouragement and enthusiasm. Sometimes she ran on in front and observed their progress, sometimes she stood still to watch them go by.

  ‘Open out a little, halberdiers,’ she cried, ‘so that we can get a glimpse of the Queen from in front. Hey nonny! Hold that top G, choir-boys! Queen, dear, don’t attempt to keep step with the halberdiers. Much more royal to walk as you choose. The train a little higher, Piggy and Goosie. Hey nonny, nonny HEY!’

  She looked round as they got near the Golden Hind, to see if the cooks were basting the bolster that did duty for the sheep, and that Drake’s sailors were dancing their hornpipes.

  ‘Dance, please, sailors,’ she shrieked. ‘Go on basting, cooks, until the procession stops, and then begins the chorus of sailors on the last “nonny Hey”. Cooks must join in, too, or we shan’t get enough body of sound. Open out, halberdiers, leave plenty of room for the Queen to come between you. Slowly, Elizabeth! “When the storm winds blow and the surges sweep.” Louder! Are you ready, Georgie? No; don’t come off the Golden Hind. You receive the Queen on the deck. A little faster, Elizabeth, the chorus will be over before you get here.’

  Lucia clapped her hands.

  ‘A moment, please,’ she said. ‘A wonderful scene. But just one suggestion. May I be Queen for a minute and show you the effect I want to get, dear Daisy? Let us go back, procession, please, twenty yards. Halberdiers still walking in front of Queen. Sailors’ chorus all over again. Off we go! Now, halberdiers, open out. Half right and left turn respectively. Two more steps and halt, making an avenue.’

  It was perfectly timed. Lucia moved forward up the avenue of halberdiers, and just as the last ‘Yo ho’ was yelled by cooks, courtiers and sailors, she stepped with indescribable majesty on to the deck of the Golden Hind. She stood there a moment quite still, and whispered to Georgie, ‘Kneel and kiss my hand, Georgie. Now, everybody together! “God save the Queen”. “Hurrah”. Hats in the air. Louder, louder! Now die away! There!’

  Lucia had been waving her own hat, and shrilly cheering herself, and now she again clapped her hands for attention, as she scrutinized the deck of the Golden Hind.

  ‘But I don’t see Drake’s wife,’ she said. ‘Drake’s wife, please.’

  Drake’s wife was certainly missing. She was also the grocer’s wife, and as she had only to come forward for one moment, curtsey and disappear, she was rather slack at her attendance of rehearsals.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Lucia. ‘I’ll take Drake’s wife, just for this rehearsal. Now we must have that over again. It’s one of the most important moments, this Queen’s entry on to the Golden Hind. We must make it rich in romance, in majesty, in spaciousness. Will the procession, please, go back, and do it over again?’

  This time poor Daisy was much too early. She got to the Golden Hind long before the cooks and the chorus were ready for her. But there was a murmur of applause when Mrs Drake (so soon to be Lady Drake) ran forward and threw herself at the Queen’s feet in an ecstasy of loyalty, and having kissed her hand walked backwards from the Presence with head bent low, as if in adoration.

  ‘Now step to the Queen’s left, Georgie,’ said Lucia, ‘and take her left hand, holding it high and lead her to the banquet. Daisy dear, you must mind your train. Piggy and Goosie will lay it down as you reach the deck, and then you must look after it yourself. If you’re not careful you’ll tread on it and fall into the Thames. You’ve got to move so that it follows you wh
en you turn round.’

  ‘May I kick it?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘No, it can be done without. You must practise that.’

  The whole company now, sailors, soldiers, courtiers and all were eager as dogs are to be taken out for a walk by their mistress, and Lucia reluctantly consented to come and look at the scene of the review at Tilbury. Possibly some little idea, she diffidently said, might occur to her; fresh eyes sometimes saw something, and if they all really wanted her she was at their disposal. So off they went to the rendezvous in front of the Ambermere Arms, and the fresh eyes perceived that according to the present grouping of soldiers and populace no spectator would see anything of the Queen at all. So that was rectified, and the mob was drilled to run into its proper places with due eagerness, and Lucia sat where the front row of spectators would be to hear the great speech. When it was over she warmly congratulated the Queen.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you liked it,’ said the Queen. ‘Is there anything that strikes you?’

  Lucia sat for a while in pensive silence.

  ‘Just one or two little tiny things, dear,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘I couldn’t hear very well. I wondered sometimes what the mob was cheering about. And would it perhaps be safer to read the speech? There was a good deal of prompting that was quite audible. Of course there are disadvantages in reading it. It won’t seem so spontaneous and inspiring if you consult a paper all the time. Still, I dare say you’ll get it quite by heart before the time comes. Indeed, the only real criticism I have to make is about your gestures, your movements. Not quite, quite majestic enough, not inspiring enough. Too much as if you were whisking flies away. More breadth!’

  Lucia sighed, she appeared to be lost in meditation.

  ‘What kind of breadth?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘So difficult to explain,’ said Lucia. ‘You must get more variety, more force, both in your gestures and your voice. You must be fierce sometimes, the great foe of Spain, you must be tender, the mother of your people. You must be a Tudor. The daughter of that glorious cad, King Hal. Coarse and kingly. Shall I show you for a moment the sort of thing I mean? So much easier to show than to explain.’