Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The clock struck noon: she had meditated for a full half-hour, and now she rose.

  ‘I can only think of influenza,’ she said to herself. ‘But I shall consult Georgie. A man might see it from another angle.’

  He came at once to her SOS.

  ‘Georgino mio,’ began Lucia, but then suddenly corrected herself. ‘Georgie,’ she said. ‘Something very disagreeable. The Contessa Thingummy is coming to the Wyses tomorrow, and he’s asked me if he may bring her to our musica. I had to say yes; no way out of it.’

  Georgie was often very perceptive. He saw what this meant at once.

  ‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘Can’t you put it off? Sprain your thumb.’

  The man’s angle was not being of much use so far.

  ‘Not a bit of good,’ she said. ‘She’ll be here about a week, and naturally I have to avoid meeting her altogether. The only thing I can think of is influenza.’

  Georgie never smoked in the morning, but the situation seemed to call for a cigarette.

  ‘That would do it,’ he said. ‘Rather a bore for you, but you could live in the secret garden a good deal. It’s not overlooked.’

  He stopped: the unusual tobacco had stimulated his perceptive powers.

  ‘But what about me?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Lucia.

  ‘You’re not looking far enough,’ said Georgie. ‘You’re not taking the long view which you so often talk to me about. I can’t have influenza too, it would be too suspicious. So I’m bound to meet the Faraglione and she’ll see in a minute I can’t talk Italian.’

  ‘Well?’ said Lucia in a very selfish manner, as if he didn’t matter at all.

  ‘Oh, I’m not thinking about myself only,’ said Georgie in self-defence. ‘Not so at all. It’ll react on you. You and I are supposed to talk Italian together, and when it’s obvious I can’t say more than three things in it, the fat’s in the fire, however much influenza you have. How are you going to be supposed to jabber away in Italian to me when it’s seen that I can’t understand a word of it?’

  Here indeed was the male angle, and an extremely awkward angle it was. For a moment Lucia covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Georgie, what are we to do?’ she asked in a stricken voice.

  Georgie was a little ruffled at having been considered of such absolute unimportance until he pointed out to Lucia that her fate was involved with his, and it pleased him to echo her words.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ he said stiffly.

  Lucia hastened to smooth his smart.

  ‘My dear, I’m so glad I thought of consulting you,’ she said. ‘I knew it would take a man’s mind to see all round the question, and how right you are! I never thought of that.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Georgie. ‘It’s evident you haven’t grasped the situation at all.’

  She paced up and down the garden-room in silence, recoiling once from the window, as she saw Elizabeth go by and kiss her hand with that awful hyena grin of hers.

  ‘Georgie, ‘oo not cross with poor Lucia?’ she said, resorting to the less dangerous lingo which they used in happier days. This softened Georgie.

  ‘I was rather,’ said Georgie, ‘but never mind that now. What am I to do? Che faro, in fact.’

  Lucia shuddered.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t talk Italian,’ she said. ‘It’s that we’ve got to avoid. It’s odd that we have to break ourselves of the habit of doing something we can’t do . . . And you can’t have influenza too. It would be too suspicious if you began simultaneously with me to-morrow. I’ve often wondered, now I come to think of it, if that woman, that Mapp, hasn’t suspected that our Italian was a fake, and if we both had influenza exactly as the Faraglione arrived, she might easily put two and two together. Her mind is horrid enough for anything.’

  ‘I know she suspects,’ said Georgie. ‘She said some word in Italian to me the other day, which meant paper-knife, and she looked surprised when I didn’t understand, and said it in English. Of course, she had looked it out in a dictionary: it was a trap.’

  A flood of horrid light burst in on Lucia.

  ‘Georgie,’ she cried. ‘She tried me with the same word. I’ve forgotten it again, but it did mean paper-knife. I didn’t know it either, though I pretended it was her pronunciation that puzzled me. There’s no end to her craftiness. But I’ll get the better of her yet. I think you’ll have to go away, while the Faraglione is here and I have influenza.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go away,’ began Georgie. ‘Surely we can think of—’

  Lucia paid no heed to this attempt at protest: it is doubtful if she even heard it, for the spark was lit now, and it went roaring through her fertile brain like a prairie fire in a high gale.

  ‘You must go away to-morrow,’ she said. ‘Far better than influenza, and you must stop away till I send you a telegram, that the Faraglione has left. It will be very dull for me because I shall be entirely confined to the house and garden all the time you are gone. I think the garden will be safe. I cannot remember that it is overlooked from any other house and I shall do a lot of reading, though even the piano won’t be possible . . . Georgie, I see it all. You have not been looking very well lately (my dear, you’re the picture of health really, I have never seen you looking younger or better) and so you will have gone off to have a week at Folkestone or Littlestone, whichever you prefer. Sea air; you needn’t bathe. And you can take my car, for I shan’t be able to use it, and why not take Foljambe as well to valet you, as you often do when you go for a jaunt? She’ll have her Cadman: we may as well make other people happy, Georgie, as it all seems to fit in so beautifully. And one thing more: this little jaunt of yours is entirely undertaken for my sake, and I must insist on paying it all. Go to a nice hotel and make yourself thoroughly comfortable; half a bottle of champagne whenever you want it in the evening, and what extras you like, and I will telephone to you to say when you can come back. You must start to-morrow morning before the Faraglione gets here.’

  Georgie knew it was useless to protest when Lucia got that loud, inspired, gabbling ring in her voice; she would cut through any opposition, as a steam saw buzzes through the most solid oak board till, amid a fountain of flying sawdust, it has sliced its way. He did not want to go away, but when Lucia exhibited that calibre of determination that he should, it was better to yield at once than to collapse later in a state of wretched exhaustion. Besides, there were bright points in her scheme. Foljambe would be delighted at the plan, for it would give her and Cadman leisure to enjoy each other’s society; and it would not be disagreeable to stay for a week at some hotel in Folkestone and observe the cargoes of travellers from abroad arriving at the port after a billowy passage. Then he might find some bibelots in the shops, and he would listen to a municipal band, and have a bathroom next his bedroom, and do some sketches, and sit in a lounge in a series of those suits which had so justly earned him the title of the best-dressed man in Tilling. He would have a fine Rolls-Royce in the hotel garage, and a smart chauffeur coming to ask for orders every morning, and he would be seen, an interesting and opulent figure, drinking his half-bottle of champagne every evening and he would possibly pick up an agreeable aquaintance or two. He had no hesitation whatever in accepting Lucia’s proposal to stand the charges of this expedition, for, as she had most truly said, it was undertaken in her interests, and naturally she paid (besides, she was quite rich) for its equipment.

  The main lines of this defensive campaign being thus laid down, Lucia, with her Napoleonic eye for detail, plunged into minor matters. She did not, of course, credit ‘that Mapp’ with having procured the visit of the Faraglione, but a child could see that if she herself met the Faraglione during her stay here the grimmest exposure of her ignorance of the language she talked in such admired snippets must inevitably follow. ‘That Mapp’ would pounce on this, and it was idle to deny that she would score heavily and horribly. But Georgie’s absence (cheap at the cost)
and her own invisibility by reason of influenza made a seemingly unassailable position and it was with a keen sense of exhilaration in the coming contest that she surveyed the arena.

  Lucia sent for the trusty Grosvenor and confided in her sufficiently to make her a conspirator. She told her that she had a great mass of arrears to do in reading and writing, and that for the next week she intended to devote herself to them, and lead the life of a hermit. She wanted no callers, and did not mean to see anyone, and the easiest excuse was to say that she had influenza. No doubt there would be many inquiries, and so day by day she would issue to Grosvenor her own official bulletin. Then she told Cadman that Mr Georgie was far from well, and she had bundled him off with the car to Folkestone for about a week: he and Foljambe would accompany him. Then she made a careful survey of the house and garden to ascertain what freedom of movement she could have during her illness. Playing the piano, except very carefully with the soft pedal down, would be risky, but by a judicious adjustment of the curtains in the garden-room window, she could refresh herself with very satisfactory glances at the world outside. The garden, she was pleased to notice, was quite safe, thanks to its encompassing walls, from any prying eyes in the houses round: the top of the church tower alone overlooked it, and that might be disregarded, for only tourists ascended it.

  Then forth she went for the usual shoppings and chats in the High Street and put in some further fine work. The morning tide was already on the ebb, but by swift flirtings this way and that she managed to have a word with most of those who were coming to her po-di-mu tomorrow, and interlarded all she said to them with brilliant scraps of Italian. She just caught the Wyses as they were getting back into the Royce and said how molto amabile it was of them to give her the gran’ piacere of seeing the Contessa next evening: indeed she would be a welcome guest, and it would be another gran’ piacere to talk la bella lingua again. Georgie, alas, would not be there for he was un po’ ammalato, and was going to spend a settimana by the mare per stabilirsi. Never had she been so fluent and idiomatic, and she accepted with mille grazie Susan’s invitation to dine the evening after her music and renew the conversations to which she so much looked forward. She got almost tipsy with Italian . . . Then she flew across the street to tell the curate that she was going to shut herself up all afternoon in order to get the Bach fugue more worthy of his critical ear, she told Diva to come early to her party in order that they might have a little chat first, and she just managed by a flute-like ‘Cooee’ to arrest Elizabeth as she was on the very doorstep of Wasters. With glee she learned that Elizabeth was entertaining the Padre and his wife and Major Benjy to dinner before she brought them on to her party, and then, remembering the trap which that woman had laid for her and Georgie over the Italian paper-knife, she could not refrain from asking her to dine and play bridge on the third night of her coming illness. Of course she would be obliged to put her off, and that would be about square . . . This half-hour’s active work produced the impression that, however little pleasure Tilling anticipated from to-morrow’s po-di-mu, the musician herself looked forward to it enormously, and was thirsting to talk Italian.

  From the window of her bedroom next morning Lucia saw Georgie and Cadman and Foljambe set off for Folkestone, and it was with a Lucretian sense of pleasure in her own coming tranquillity that she contemplated the commotion and general upset of plans which was shortly to descend on Tilling. She went to the garden-room, adjusted the curtains and brewed the tempest which she now sent forth in the shape of a series of notes charged with the bitterest regrets. They were written in pencil (the consummate artist) as if from bed, and were traced in a feeble hand not like her usual firm script. ‘What a disappointment!’ she wrote to Mrs Wyse. ‘How cruel to have got the influenza — where could she have caught it? — on the very morning of her party, and what a blow not to be able to welcome the Contessa today or to dine with dear Susan tomorrow!’ There was another note to Major Benjy, and others to Diva and quaint Irene and the curate and the Padre and Elizabeth. She still hoped that possibly she might be well enough for bridge and dinner the day after tomorrow, but Elizabeth must remember how infectious influenza was, and again she herself might not be well enough. That seemed pretty safe, for Elizabeth had a frantic phobia of infection, and Wasters had reeked of carbolic all the time the jumble-sale was being held, for fear of some bit of rubbish having come in contact with tainted hands. Lucia gave these notes to Grosvenor for immediate delivery and told her that the bulletin for the day in answer to callers was that there was no anxiety, for the attack though sharp was not serious, and only demanded warmth and complete quiet. She then proceeded to get both by sitting in this warm October sun in her garden, reading Pope’s translation of the Iliad and seeing what the Greek for it was.

  Three impregnable days passed thus. From behind the adjusted curtains of the garden-room she observed the coming of many callers and Grosvenor’s admirable demeanour to them. The Royce lurched up the street, and there was Susan in her sables, and, sitting next her, a vivacious gesticulating woman with a monocle, who looked the sort of person who could talk at the most appalling rate. This without doubt was the fatal Contessa, and Lucia felt that to see her thus was like observing a lion at large from behind the bars of a comfortable cage. Miss Mapp on the second day came twice, and each time she glanced piercingly at the curtains, as if she knew that trick, and listened as if hoping to hear the sound of the piano. The Padre sent a note almost entirely in Highland dialect, the curate turned away from the door with evident relief in his face at the news he had received, and whistled the Bach fugue rather out of tune.

  On the fifth day of her illness new interests sprang up for Lucia that led her to neglect Pope’s Iliad altogether. By the first post there came a letter from Georgie, containing an enclosure which Lucia saw (with a slight misgiving) was written in Italian. She turned first to Georgie’s letter.

  The most wonderful thing has happened [wrote Georgie] and you will be pleased . . . There’s a family here with whom I’ve made friends, an English father, an Italian mother and a girl with a pigtail. Listen! The mother teaches the girl Italian, and sets her little themes to write on some subject or other, and then corrects them and writes a fair copy. Well, I was sitting in the lounge this morning while the girl was having her lesson, and Mrs Brocklebank (that’s her name) asked me to suggest a subject for the theme, and I had the most marvellous idea. I said ‘Let her write a letter to an Italian Countess whom she has never seen before, and say how she regretted having been obliged to put off her musical party to which she had asked the Countess and her brother, because she had caught influenza. She was so sorry not to meet her, and she was afraid that as the Countess was only staying a week in the place, she would not have the pleasure of seeing her at all.’ Mrs B. thought that would do beautifully for a theme, and I repeated it over again to make sure. Then the girl wrote it, and Mrs B. corrected it and made a fair copy. I begged her to give it me, because I adored Italian (though I couldn’t speak it) and it was so beautifully expressed. I haven’t told this very well, because I’m in a hurry to catch the post, but I enclose Mrs B.’s Italian letter, and you just see whether it doesn’t do the trick too marvellously. I’m having quite a gay time, music and drives and seeing the Channel boat come in, and aren’t I clever?

  Your devoted,

  Georgie

  Foljambe and Cadman have had a row, but I’m afraid they’ve made it up.

  Lucia, with her misgivings turned to joyful expectation, seized and read the enclosure. Indeed it was a miraculous piece of manna to one whom the very sight of it made hungry. It might have been the result of telepathy between Mrs Brocklebank and her own subconscious self, so aptly did that lady grasp her particular unspoken need. It expressed in the most elegant idiom precisely what met the situation, and she would copy out and send it to-day, without altering a single word. And how clever of Georgie to have thought of it. He deserved all the champagne he could drink.

  Lucia used
her highest art in making a copy (on Mallard paper) of this document, as if writing hastily in a familiar medium. Occasionally she wrote a word (it did not matter what), erased it so as to render it illegible to the closest scrutiny, and then went on with Mrs Brocklebank’s manuscript; occasionally she omitted a word of it and then inserted it with suitable curves of direction above. No one receiving her transcript could imagine that it was other than her own extempore scribble. Mrs Brocklebank had said that in two or three days she hoped to be able to see her friends again, and that fitted beautifully, because in two or three days now the Contessa’s visit would have come to an end, and Lucia could get quite well at once.

  The second post arrived before Lucia had finished this thoughtful copy. There was a letter in Lady Brixton’s handwriting, and hastily scribbling the final florid salutations to the Contessa, she opened this, and thereupon forgot Georgie and Mrs Brocklebank and everything else in the presence of the tremendous question which was brought for her decision. Adele had simply fallen in love with Riseholme; she affirmed that life was no longer worth living without a house there, and, of all houses, she would like best to purchase, unfurnished, the Hurst. Failing that there was another that would do, belonging to round red little Mrs Quantock, who, she had ascertained, might consider selling it. Could darling Lucia therefore let her know with the shortest possible delay whether she would be prepared to sell the Hurst? If she had no thought of doing so Adele would begin tempting Mrs Quantock at once. But if she had, let genteel indications about price be outlined at once.

  There are certain processes of mental solidification which take place with extraordinary rapidity, because the system is already soaked and super-saturated with the issues involved. It was so now with Lucia. Instantly, on the perusal of Adele’s inquiries her own mind solidified. She had long been obliquely contemplating some such step as Adele’s letter thrust in front of her, and she was surprised to find that her decision was already made. Riseholme, once so vivid and significant, had during these weeks at Tilling been fading like an ancient photograph exposed to the sun, and all its features, foregrounds and backgrounds had grown blurred and dim. If she went back to Riseholme at the end of the month, she would find there nothing to occupy her energies, or call out her unique powers of self-assertion. She had so swept the board with her management of the Elizabethan fête that no further progress was possible. Poor dear Daisy might occasionally make some minute mutinies, but after being Drake’s wife (what a lesson for her!) there would be no real fighting spirit left in her. It was far better, while her own energies still bubbled within her, to conquer this fresh world of Tilling than to smoulder at Riseholme. Her work there was done, whereas here, as this week of influenza testified, there was a very great deal to do. Elizabeth Mapp was still in action and capable of delivering broadsides; innumerable crises might still arise, volcanoes smoked, thunder-clouds threatened, there were hostile and malignant forces to be thwarted. She had never been better occupied and diverted, the place suited her, and it bristled with opportunities. She wrote to Adele at once saying that dear as Riseholme (and especially the Hurst) was to her, she was prepared to be tempted, and indicated a sum before which she was likely to fall.