Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The most immediate need of having a roof over his head and a chair to sit on was now provided for, and as he had already dismissed his own servants, taking those of Mallards, he must go to another agency to find some sort of cook or charwoman till he could get his establishment together again. They promised to send an elderly lady, highly respectable though rather deaf and weak in the legs, to-morrow if possible. Back he came to his house with such cold comfort to cheer him, and observed on the steps of Mallards half a dozen bottles of wine. ‘My God, my cellar,’ muttered the Major, ‘there are dozens and dozens of my wine and my whisky in the house!’ Again he crept up to the abhorred door and, returning with the bottles, put a kettle on to boil, and began cutting the strings that held the lots together. Just then the church bells burst out into a joyful peal, and it was not difficult to conjecture the reason for their unseemly mirth. All this before breakfast . . .

  A cup of hot strong tea without any milk restored not only his physical stability but also his mental capacity for suffering, and he sat down to think. There was the financial side of the disaster first of all, a thing ghastly to contemplate. He had bought (but not yet paid for) a motor, some dozens of wine, a suit of new clothes, as well as the mourning habiliments in which he had attended the memorial service, quantities of stationery with the Mallards stamp on it, a box of cigars and other luxuries too numerous to mention. It was little comfort to remember that he had refused to contribute to the cenotaph; a small saving like that did not seem to signify. Then what view, he wondered, would his benefactress, when she knew all, take of his occupation of Mallards? She might find out (indeed being who she was, she would not fail to do so) that he had tried to let it at ten guineas a week and she might therefore send him in a bill on that scale for the fortnight he had spent there, together with that for her servants’ wages, and for garden-produce and use of her piano. Luckily he had only eaten some beetroot out of the garden, and he had had the piano tuned. But of all these staggering expenses, the only items which were possibly recoverable were the wages he had paid to the staff of Mallards between Boxing Day and the date of his tenancy: these Elizabeth might consent to set against the debits. Not less hideous than this financial débâcle that stared him in the face, was the loss of prestige in Tilling. Tilling, he knew, had disapproved of his precipitancy in entering into Mallards, and Tilling, full, like Irene, of joy, joy for the return of the lost, would simply hoot with laughter at him. He could visualize with awful clearness the chatting groups in the High Street which would vainly endeavour to suppress their smiles as he approached. The day of swank was past and done, he would have to be quiet and humble and grateful to anybody who treated him with the respect to which he had been accustomed.

  He unrolled a tiger-skin to lay down again in his hall: a cloud of dust and deciduous hair rose from it, pungent like snuff, and the remaining glass eye fell out of the socket. He bawled ‘Quai-hai’ before he remembered that till tomorrow at least he would be alone in the house, and that even then his attendant would be deaf. He opened his front door and looked out into the street again, and there on the doorstep of Mallards was another dozen or so of wine and a walking-stick. Again he stole out to recover his property with the hideous sense that perhaps Elizabeth was watching him from the garden-room. His dental plate — thank God — was there too on the second step, all by itself, gleaming in the sun, and seeming to grin at him in a very mocking manner. After that throughout the morning he looked out at intervals as he rested from the awful labour of laying carpets and putting beds together, and there were usually some more bottles waiting for him, with stray golf-clubs, bridge-markers and packs of cards. About one o’clock just as he was collecting what must surely be the last of these bird-breakfasts, the door of Mallards opened and Elizabeth stepped carefully over his umbrella and a box of cigars. She did not appear to see him. It seemed highly probable that she was going to revoke her will.

  Georgie, as well as Major Benjy, had to do a little thinking, when he returned from his visit at dawn to Mallards. It concerned two points, the cenotaph and the kitchen-table. The cenotaph had not been mentioned in those few joyful ejaculations he had exchanged with Lucia, and he hoped that the ladies had not seen it. So after breakfast he went down to the stonemason’s and begged him to send a trolley and a hefty lot of men up to the churchyard at once, and remove the monument to the backyard of Mallards Cottage, which at present was chiefly occupied by the kitchen-table under a tarpaulin. But Mr Marble (such was his appropriate name) shook his head over this: the cenotaph had been dedicated, and he felt sure that a faculty must be procured before it could be removed. That would never do: Georgie could not wait for a faculty, whatever that was, and he ordered that the inscription, anyhow, should be effaced without delay: surely no faculty was needed to destroy all traces of a lie. Mr Marble must send some men up to chip, and chip and chip for all they were worth till those beautiful lead letters were detached and the surface of the stone cleared of all that erroneous information.

  ‘And then I’ll tell you what,’ said Georgie, with a sudden splendid thought, ‘why not paint on to it (I can’t afford any more cutting) the inscription that was to have been put on it when that man went bankrupt and I bought the monument instead? He’ll get his monument for nothing, and I shall get rid of mine, which is just what I want . . . That’s beautiful. Now you must send a trolley to my house and take a very big kitchen-table, the one in fact, back to Grebe. It must go in through the door of the kitchen-garden and be put quietly into the kitchen. And I particularly want it done to-day.’

  All went well with these thoughtful plans. Georgie saw with his own eyes the last word of his inscription disappear in chips of marble; and he carried away all the lead letters in case they might come in useful for something, though he could not have said what: perhaps he would have ‘Mallards Cottage’ let into the threshold of his house for that long inscription would surely contain the necessary letters. Rather a pretty and original idea. Then he ascertained that the kitchen-table had been restored to its place while Lucia slept, and he drove down at dinner-time feeling that he had done his best. He wore his white waistcoat with onyx buttons for the happy occasion.

  Lucia was looking exceedingly well and much sunburnt. By way of resting she had written a larger number of post cards to all her friends, both here and elsewhere, than Georgie had ever seen together in one place.

  ‘Georgino,’ she cried. ‘There’s so much to say that I hardly know where to begin. I think my adventures first, quite shortly, for I shall dictate a full account of them to my secretary, and have a party next week for all Tilling, and read them out to you. Two parties, I expect, for I don’t think I shall be able to read it all in one evening. Now we go back to Boxing Day.

  ‘I went into the kitchen that afternoon,’ she said as they sat down to dinner, ‘and there was Elizabeth. I asked her — , naturally, don’t you think? — why she was there, and she said, “I came to thank you for that delicious pâté, and to ask if—” That was as far as she got — I must return to that later — when the bank burst with a frightful roar, and the flood poured in. I was quite calm. We got on to, I should really say into the table — By the way, was the table ever washed up?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Georgie, ‘it’s in your kitchen now. I sent it back.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear. We got into the kitchen-table, really a perfect boat, I can’t think why they don’t make more like it, flew by the steps — oh, did the Padre catch a dreadful cold? Such a splash it was, and that was the only drop of water that we shipped at all.’

  ‘No, but he lost his umbrella, the one you’d given him,’ said Georgie, ‘and the Padre of the Roman Catholic church found it, a week afterwards, and returned it to him. Wasn’t that a coincidence? Go on. Oh no, wait a minute. What did you mean by calling out “Just wait till we get back”?’

  ‘Why of course I wanted to tell you that I had found Elizabeth in my kitchen,’ said Lucia.

  ‘Hurrah! I guessed you mea
nt something of the kind,’ said Georgie.

  ‘Well, out we went — I’ve never been so fast in a kitchen-table before — out to sea in a blinding sea-fog. My dear; poor Elizabeth! No nerve of any kind! I told her that if we were rescued, there was nothing to cry about, and if we weren’t all our troubles would soon be over.’

  Grosvenor had put some fish before Lucia. She gave an awful shudder.

  ‘Oh, take it away,’ she said. ‘Never let me see fish again, particularly cod, as long as I live. Tell the cook. You’ll see why presently, Georgie. Elizabeth got hysterical and said she wasn’t fit to die, so I scolded her — the best plan always with hysterical people — and told her that the longer she lived, the less fit she would be, and that did her a little good. Then it got dark, and there were fog-horns hooting all round us, and we called and yelled, but they had much more powerful voices than we, and nobody heard us. One of them grew louder and louder, until I could hardly bear it, and then we bumped quite gently into it, the fog-horn’s boat I mean.’

  ‘Gracious, you might have upset,’ said Georgie.

  ‘No, it was like a liner coming up to the quay,’ said Lucia. ‘No shock of any kind. Then when the fog-horn stopped, they heard us shouting, and took us aboard. It was an Italian trawler on its way to the cod-fishery (that’s why I never want to see cod again) on the Gallagher Banks.’

  ‘That was lucky too,’ said Georgie, ‘you could make them understand a little. Better than if they had been Spanish.’

  ‘About the same, because I’m convinced, as I told Elizabeth, that they talked a very queer Neapolitan dialect. It was rather unlucky, in fact. But as the Captain understood English perfectly, it didn’t matter. They were most polite, but they couldn’t put us ashore, for we were miles out in the Channel by this time, and also quite lost. They hadn’t an idea where the coast of England or any other coast was.’

  ‘Wireless?’ suggested Georgie.

  ‘It had been completely smashed up by the dreadful gale the day before. We drifted about in the fog for two days, and when it cleared and they could take the sun again — a nautical expression, Georgie — we were somewhere off the coast of Devonshire. The Captain promised to hail any passing vessel bound for England that he saw, but he didn’t see any. So he continued his course to the Gallagher Banks, which is about as far from Ireland as it is from America, and there we were for two months. Cod, cod, cod, nothing but cod, and Elizabeth snoring all night in the cabin we shared together. Bitterly cold very often: how glad I was that I knew so many callisthenic exercises! I shall tell you all about that time at my lecture. Then we found that there was a Tilling trawler on the bank, and when it was ready to start home we trans-shipped — they call it — and got back, as you know, this morning. That’s the skeleton.’

  ‘It’s the most wonderful skeleton I ever heard,’ said Georgie. ‘Do write your lecture quick.’

  Lucia fixed Georgie with her gimlet eye. It had lost none of its penetrative power by being so long at sea.

  ‘Now it’s your turn for a little,’ she said. ‘I expect I know rather more than you think. First about that memorial service.’

  ‘Oh, do you know about that?’ he asked.

  ‘Certainly. I found the copy of the Parish Magazine waiting for me, and read it in bed. I consider it to have been very premature. You attended it, I think.’

  ‘We all did,’ said Georgie. ‘And after all, the Padre said extremely nice things about you.’

  ‘I felt very much flattered. But all the same it was too early. And you and Major Benjy were chief mourners.’

  Georgie considered for a moment.

  ‘I’m going to make a clean breast of it,’ he said. ‘You told me you had left me Grebe, and a small sum of money, and your lawyer told me what that meant. My dear, I was too touched, and naturally, it was proper that I should be chief mourner. It was the same with Major Benjy. He had seen Elizabeth’s will, so there we were.’

  Suddenly an irresistible curiosity seized him.

  ‘Major Benjy hasn’t been seen all day,’ he said. ‘Do tell me what happened this morning at Mallards. You only said on the telephone that he had just gone home.’

  ‘Yes, bag and baggage,’ said Lucia. ‘At least he went first and his bag and baggage followed. Socks and things, you saw some of them on the top step. Elizabeth was mad with rage, a perfect fishwife. So suitable after coming back from the Gallagher Banks. But tell me more. What was the next thing after the memorial service?’

  The hope of keeping the knowledge of the cenotaph from Lucia became very dim. If Lucia had seen the February number of the Parish Magazine she had probably also seen the April number in which appeared the full-page reproduction of that monument. Besides, there was the gimlet eye.

  ‘The next thing was that I put up a beautiful cenotaph to you and Elizabeth,’ said Georgie firmly. ‘“In loving memory of by me.” But I’ve had the inscription erased to-day.’

  Lucia laid her hand on his.

  ‘Dear Georgie, I’m glad you told me,’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact I knew, because Elizabeth and I studied it this morning. I was vexed at first, but now I think it’s rather dear of you. It must have cost a lot of money.’

  ‘It did,’ said Georgie. ‘And what did Elizabeth think about it?’

  ‘Merely furious because her name was in smaller letters than mine,’ said Lucia. ‘So like the poor thing.’

  ‘Was she terribly tarsome all these months?’ asked Georgie.

  ‘Tiresome’s not quite the word,’ said Lucia judicially. ‘Deficient rather than tiresome, except incidentally. She had no idea of the tremendous opportunities she was getting. She never rose to her chances, nor forgot our little discomforts and that everlasting smell of fish. Whereas I learned such lots of things, Georgie: the Italian for starboard and port — those are the right and left sides of the ship — and how to tie an anchor-knot and a running noose, and a clove-hitch, and how to splice two ends of fishing-line together, and all sorts of things of the most curious and interesting kind. I shall show you some of them at my lecture. I used to go about the deck barefoot (Lucia had very pretty feet) and pull on anchors and capstans and things, and managed never to tumble out of my berth on to the floor when the ship was rolling frightfully, and not to be sea-sick. But poor Elizabeth was always bumping on to the floor, and sometimes being sick there. She had no spirit. Little moans and sighs and regrets that she ever came down the Tilling hill on Boxing Day.’

  Lucia leaned forward and regarded Georgie steadfastly.

  ‘I couldn’t fathom her simply because she was so superficial,’ she said. ‘But I feel sure that there was something on her mind all the time. She used often to seem to be screwing herself up to confess something to me, and then not to be able to get it out. No courage. And though I can make no guess as to what it actually was, I believe I know its general nature.’

  ‘How thrilling!’ cried Georgie. ‘Tell me!’

  Lucia’s eye ceased to bore, and became of far-off focus, keen still but speculative, as if she was Einstein concentrating on some cosmic deduction.

  ‘Georgie, why did she come into my kitchen like a burglar on Boxing Day?’ she asked. ‘She told me she had come to thank me for that pâté I sent her. But that wasn’t true: anyone could see that it wasn’t. Nobody goes into kitchens to thank people for pâtés.’

  ‘Diva guessed that she had gone there to see the Christmas-tree,’ said Georgie. ‘You weren’t on very good terms at the time. We all thought that brilliant of her.’

  ‘Then why shouldn’t she have said so?’ asked Lucia. ‘I believe it was something much meaner and more underhand than that. And I am convinced — I have those perceptions sometimes, as you know very well — that all through the months of our Odyssey she wanted to tell me why she was there, and was ashamed of doing so. Naturally I never asked her, because if she didn’t choose to tell me, it would be beneath me to force a confidence. There we were together on the Gallagher Banks, she all to bits all the tim
e, and I should have scorned myself for attempting to worm it out of her. But the more I think of it, Georgie, the more convinced I am, that what she had to tell me and couldn’t, concerned that. After all, I had unmasked every single plot she made against me before, and I knew the worst of her up till that moment. She had something on her mind, and that something was why she was in my kitchen.’