Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  They adjourned to the garden-room where two tables were set out for bridge, and till half-past six nothing momentous occurred. At that hour Elizabeth was partner to Major Benjy, and she observed with dark misgivings that when she had secured the play of the hand (at a staggering sacrifice, as it was soon to prove) he did not as usual watch her play, but got up, and standing by the fireplace indulged in some very antic movements. He bent down, apparently trying to touch his toes with his fingers and a perfect fusillade of small crackling noises from his joints (knee or hip it was impossible to tell) accompanied these athletic flexings. Then he whisked himself round to right and left as if trying to look down his back, like a parrot. This was odd and ominous conduct, this strongly suggested that he had been sucked into the callisthenic whirlpool, and what was more ominous yet was that when he sat down again he whispered to Georgie, who was at the same table, ‘That makes my ten minutes, old boy.’ Elizabeth did not like that at all. She knew now what the ten minutes must refer to, and that endearing form of address to Miss Milliner Michael-Angelo was a little worrying. The only consolation was that Georgie’s attention was diverted from the game, and that he trumped his partner’s best card. At the conclusion of the hand, Elizabeth was three tricks short of her contract, and another very puzzling surprise awaited her, for instead of Major Benjy taking her failure in very ill part, he was more than pleasant about it. What could be the matter with him?

  ‘Very well played, Miss Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘I was afraid that after my inexcusable declaration we should lose more than that.’

  Elizabeth began to feel more keenly puzzled as to why none of them had any appetites, and why they were all so pleasant to her. Were they rallying round her again, was their silence about Lucia a tactful approval of her absence? Or was there some hidden connection between their abstemiousness, their reticence and their unwontedly propitiatory attitude? If there was, it quite eluded her. Then as Diva dealt in her sloppy manner Lucia’s name came up for the first time.

  ‘Mr Georgie, you ought not to have led trumps,’ she said. ‘Lucia always says — Oh, dear me, I believe I’ve misdealt. Oh no, I haven’t. That’s all right.’

  Elizabeth pondered this as she sorted her cards. Nobody inquired what Lucia said, and Diva’s swift changing of the subject as if that name had slipped out by accident, looked as if possibly they none of them desired any allusion to be made to her. Had they done with her? she wondered. But if so, what about the callisthenics?

  She was dummy now and was absorbed in watching Major Benjy’s tragical mismanagement of the hand, for he was getting into a sadder bungle than anyone, except perhaps Lucia, could have involved himself in. Withers entered while this was going on, and gave Elizabeth a parcel. With her eye and her mind still glued to the cards, she absently unwrapped it, and took its contents from its coverings just as the last trick was being played. It was the picture she had sent to the art committee the day before and with it was a typewritten form to convey its regrets that the limited wall-space at its disposal would not permit of Miss Mapp’s picture being exhibited. This slip floated out on to the floor, and Georgie bent down and returned it to her. She handed it and the picture and the wrappings to Withers, and told her to put them in the cupboard. Then she leaned over the table to her partner, livid with mixed and uncontrollable emotions.

  ‘Dear Major Benjy, what a hash!’ she said. ‘If you had pulled out your cards at random from your hand, you could not, bar revokes, have done worse. I think you must have been having lessons from dear Lulu. Never mind: live and unlearn.’

  There was an awful pause. Even the players at the other table were stricken into immobility and looked at each other with imbecile eyes. Then the most surprising thing of all happened.

  ‘‘Pon my word, partner,’ said Major Benjy, ‘I deserve all the scoldings you can give me. I played it like a baby. I deserve to pay all our losings. A thousand apologies.’

  Elizabeth, though she did not feel like it, had to show that she was generous too. But why didn’t he answer her back in the usual manner?

  ‘Naughty Major Benjy!’ she said. ‘But what does it matter? It’s only a game, and we all have our ups and downs. I have them myself. That’s the rubber, isn’t it? Not very expensive after all. Now let us have another and forget all about this one.’

  Diva drew a long breath, as if making up her mind to something, and glanced at the watch set with false pearls (Elizabeth was sure) on her wrist.

  ‘Rather late to begin again,’ she said. ‘I make it ten minutes to seven. I think I ought to be going to dress.’

  ‘Nonsense, dear,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Much too early to leave off. Cut, Major Benjy.’

  He also appeared to take his courage in his hands, not very successfully.

  ‘Well, upon my word, do you know, really Miss Elizabeth,’ he babbled, ‘a rubber goes on sometimes for a very long while, and if it’s close on seven now, if, you know what I mean . . . What do you say, Pillson?’ It was Georgie’s turn.

  ‘Too tarsome,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid personally that I must stop. Such a delightful evening. Such good rubbers . . .’

  They all got up together, as if some common mechanism controlled their movements. Diva scuttled away to the other table, without even waiting to be paid the sum of one and threepence which she had won from Elizabeth.

  ‘I’ll see how they’re getting on here,’ she said. ‘Why they’re just adding up, too.’

  Elizabeth sat where she was and counted out fifteen pennies.

  That would serve Diva right for going at ten minutes to seven. Then she saw that the others had got up in a hurry, for Susan Wyse said to Mrs Bartlett, ‘I’ll pay you later on,’ and her husband held up her sable coat for her.

  ‘Diva, your winnings,’ said Elizabeth, piling up the coppers.

  Diva whisked round, and instead of resenting this ponderous discharge of the debt, received it with enthusiasm.

  ‘Thank you, Elizabeth,’ she said. ‘All coppers: how nice! So useful for change. Good night, dear. Thanks ever so much.’

  She paused a moment by the door, already open, by which Georgie was standing.

  ‘Then you’ll call for me at twenty minutes to eight,’ she said to him in the most audible whisper, and Georgie with a nervous glance in Elizabeth’s direction gave a silent assent. Diva vanished into the night where Major Benjy had gone. Elizabeth rose from her deserted table.

  ‘But you’re not all going too?’ she said to the others. ‘So early yet.’

  Mr Wyse made a profound bow.

  ‘I regret that my wife and I must get home to dress,’ he said. ‘But one of the most charming evenings of bridge I have ever spent, Miss Mapp. So many thanks. Come along, Susan.’

  ‘Delicious bridge,’ said Susan. ‘And those caviare sandwiches. Good night, dear. You must come round and play with us some night soon.’

  ‘A grand game of bridge, Mistress Mapp,’ said the Padre. ‘Ah, wee wifie’s callin’ for me. Au reservoir.’

  Next moment Elizabeth was alone. Georgie had followed on the heels of the others, closing the door very carefully, as if she had fallen asleep. Instead of that she hurried to the window and peeped out between the curtains. There were three or four of them standing on the steps while the Wyses got into the Royce, and they dispersed in different directions like detected conspirators, as no doubt they were.

  The odd disconnected little incidents of the evening, the lack of appetites, the propitiatory conduct to herself, culminating in this unexampled departure a full hour before bridge-parties had ever been known to break up, now grouped themselves together in Elizabeth’s constructive mind. They fitted on to other facts that had hitherto seemed unrelated, but now were charged with significance. Georgie, for instance, had telephoned the day and the hour of this bridge-party to Lucia, he had accepted an invitation to something at a quarter to eight: he had promised to call for ‘him’ and ‘her’. There could be no reasonable doubt that Lucia had purposely broken up E
lizabeth’s party at this early hour by bidding to dinner the seven guests who had just slunk away to dress . . . And her picture had been returned by the art committee, two of whom (though she did them the justice to admit that they were but the cat’s-paws of a baleful intelligence) had hardly eaten any caviare sandwiches at all, for fear that they should not have good appetites for dinner. Hence also Diva’s abstention from nougat chocolate, Major Benjy’s from whisky, and the Padre’s from shortbread. Nothing could be clearer.

  Elizabeth was far from feeling unhappy or deserted, and very very far from feeling beaten. Defiance and hatred warmed her blood most pleasantly, and she spent half an hour sitting by the window, thoroughly enjoying herself. She meant to wait here till twenty minutes to eight, and if by that time she had not seen the Royce turning the corner of Porpoise Street, and Georgie’s car calling at the perfidious Major Benjy’s house, she would be ready to go barefoot to Grebe, and beg Lucia’s pardon for having attributed to her so devilish a device. But no such humiliating pilgrimage awaited her, for all happened exactly as she knew it would. The great glaring head-lights of the Royce blazed on the house opposite the turning to Porpoise Street, its raucous fog-horn sounded, and the porpoise car lurched into view scaring everybody by its lights and its odious voice, and by its size making foot-passengers flatten themselves against the walls. Hardly had it cleared the corner into the High Street when Georgie’s gay bugle piped out and his car came under the window of the garden-room, and stopped at Major Benjy’s. Elizabeth’s intellect, unaided by any direct outside information, except that which she had overheard on the telephone, had penetrated this hole-and-corner business, and ringing the bell for her tray, she ate the large remainder of caviare sandwiches and nougat chocolate and fed her soul with schemes of reprisals. She could not off-hand think of any definite plan of sufficiently withering a nature, and presently, tired with mental activity, she fell into a fireside doze and had a happy dream that Dr Dobbie had popped in to tell her that Lucia had developed undoubted symptoms of leprosy.

  During the positively voluptuous week that followed Elizabeth’s brief bridge-party, no fresh development occurred of the drama on which Tilling was concentrated, except that Lucia asked Elizabeth to tea and that Elizabeth refused. The rivals therefore did not meet, and neither of them seemed aware of the existence of the other. But both Grebe and Mallards had been inordinately gay; at Grebe there had been many lunches with bridge afterwards, and the guests on several occasions had hurried back for tea and more bridge at Mallards. Indeed, Tilling had never had so much lunch and tea in its life or enjoyed so brilliant a winter season, for Diva and the Wyses and Mrs Padre followed suit in lavish hospitality, and Georgie on one notable morning remembered that he had not had lunch or tea at home for five days; this was a record that beat Riseholme all to fits.

  In addition to these gaieties there were celebrated the nuptials of Foljambe and Cadman, conducted from the bride’s home, and the disposition of Foljambe’s time between days with Georgie and nights with Cadman was working to admiration: everybody was pleased. At Grebe there had been other entertainments as well; the callisthenic class met on alternate days and Lucia in a tunic rather like Artemis, but with a supplementary skirt and scarlet stockings, headed a remarkable procession, consisting of Diva and the Wyses and Georgie and Major Benjy and the Padres and quaint Irene, out on to the cinder path of the kitchen-garden, and there they copied her jerks and flexings and whirlings of the arms and touchings of the toes to the great amazement of errand-boys who came legitimately to the kitchen-door, and others who peered through the hornbeam hedge. On wet days the athletes assembled in the kitchen with doors flung wide to the open air, and astonished the cook with their swimming movements, an arm and leg together, while they held on with the other hand to the great kitchen-table. ‘Uno, due, tre,’ counted Lucia, and they all kicked out like frogs. And quaint Irene in her knickerbockers, sometimes stood on her head, but nobody else attempted that. Lucia played them soothing music as they rested afterwards in her drawing-room; she encouraged Major Benjy to learn his notes on the piano, for she would willingly teach him: she persuaded Susan to take up her singing again, and played ‘La ci darem’ for her, while Susan sang it in a thin shrill voice, and Mr Wyse said ‘Brava! How I wish Amelia was here.’ Sometimes Lucia read them Pope’s translation of the Iliad as they drank their lemonade and Major Benjy his whisky and soda, and not content with these diversions (the wonderful creature) she was composing the address on modern art which she was to deliver at the opening of the exhibition on the day following Boxing Day. She made notes for it and then dictated to her secretary (Elizabeth Mapp’s face was something awful to behold when Diva told her that Lucia had a secretary) who took down what she said on a typewriter. Indeed, Elizabeth’s face had never been more awful when she heard that, except when Diva informed her that she was quite certain that Lucia would be delighted to let her join the callisthenic class.

  But though, during these days, no act of direct aggression like that of Lucia’s dinner-party causing Elizabeth’s bridge-party to break up had been committed on either side, it was generally believed that Elizabeth was not done for yet, and Tilling was on tiptoe, expectant of some ‘view halloo’ call to show that the chase was astir. She had refused Lucia’s invitation to tea, and if she had been done for or gone to earth she would surely have accepted. Probably she took the view that the invitation was merely a test question to see how she was getting on, and her refusal showed that she was getting on very nicely. It would be absolutely unlike Elizabeth (to adopt a further metaphor) to throw up the sponge like that, for she had not yet been seriously hurt, and the bridge-party-round had certainly been won by Lucia; there would be fierce boxing in the next. It seemed likely that, in this absence of aggressive acts, both antagonists were waiting till the season of peace and good will was comfortably over and then they would begin again. Elizabeth would have a God-sent opportunity at the opening of the exhibition, when Lucia delivered her address. She could sit in the front row and pretend to go to sleep or suppress an obvious inclination to laugh. Tilling felt that she must have thought of that and of many other acts of reprisal unless she was no longer the Elizabeth they all knew and (within limits) respected, and (on numerous occasions) detested.

  The pleasant custom of sending Christmas cards prevailed in Tilling, and most of the world met in the stationer’s shop on Christmas Eve, selecting suitable salutations from the threepenny, the sixpenny and the shilling trays. Elizabeth came in rather early and had almost completed her purchases when some of her friends arrived, and she hung about looking at the backs of volumes in the lending-library, but keeping an eye on what they purchased. Diva, she observed, selected nothing from the shilling tray any more than she had herself; in fact, she thought that Diva’s purchases this year were made entirely from the threepenny tray. Susan, on the other hand, ignored the threepenny tray and hovered between the sixpennies and the shillings and expressed an odiously opulent regret that there were not some ‘choicer’ cards to be obtained. The Padre and Mrs Bartlett were certainly exclusively threepenny, but that was always the case. However they, like everybody else, studied the other trays, so that when, next morning, they all received seasonable coloured greetings from their friends, a person must have a shocking memory if he did not know what had been the precise cost of all that were sent him. But Georgie and Lucia as was universally noticed, though without comment, had not been in at all, in spite of the fact that they had been seen about in the High Street together and going into other shops. Elizabeth therefore decided that they did not intend to send any Christmas cards and before paying for what she had chosen, she replaced in the threepenny tray a pretty picture of a robin sitting on a sprig of mistletoe which she had meant to send Georgie. There was no need to put back what she had chosen for Lucia, since the case did not arise.

  Christmas Day dawned, a stormy morning with a strong gale from the south-west, and on Elizabeth’s breakfast-table was a pile of letters
, which she tore open. Most of them were threepenny Christmas cards, a sixpenny from Susan, smelling of musk, and none from Lucia or Georgie. She had anticipated that, and it was pleasant to think that she had put back into the threepenny tray the one she had selected for him, before purchasing it.

  The rest of her post was bills, some of which must be stoutly disputed when Christmas was over, and she found it difficult to realize the jollity appropriate to the day. Last evening various choirs of amateur riff-raffs and shrill bobtails had rendered the night hideous by repetitions of ‘Good King Wenceslas’ and the ‘First Noel’, church bells borne on squalls of wind and rain had awakened her while it was still dark and now sprigs of holly kept falling down from the picture-frames where Withers had perched them. Bacon made her feel rather better, and she went to church, with a mackintosh against these driving gusts of rain, and a slightly blue nose against this boisterous wind. Diva was coming to a dinner-lunch: this was an annual institution held at Wasters and Mallards alternately.

  Elizabeth hurried out of church at the conclusion of the service by a side door, not feeling equal to joining in the gay group of her friends who with Lucia as their centre were gathered at the main entrance. The wind was stronger than ever, but the rain had ceased, and she battled her way round the square surrounding the church before she went home. Close to Mallards Cottage she met Georgie holding his hat on against the gale. He wished her a merry Christmas, but then his hat had been whisked off his head; something very strange happened to his hair, which seemed to have been blown off his skull, leaving a quite bare place there, and he vanished in frenzied pursuit of his hat with long tresses growing from the side of his head streaming in the wind. A violent draught eddying round the corner by the garden-room propelled her into Mallards holding on to the knocker, and it was with difficulty that she closed the door. On the table in the hall stood a substantial package, which had certainly not been there when she left. Within its wrappings was a terrine of pâté de foie gras with a most distinguished label on it, and a card fluttered on to the floor, proclaiming that wishes for a merry Christmas from Lucia and Georgie accompanied it. Elizabeth instantly conquered the feeble temptation of sending this gift back again in the manner in which she had returned that basket of tomatoes from her own garden. Tomatoes were not pâté. But what a treat for Diva!