Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “But I don’t know a bat from a ball,” said Georgie.

  “Nor do I, but we shall soon learn. I want to enter into every side of life here. We are too narrow in our interests. We must get a larger outlook, Georgie, a wider sympathy. I understand they play football on the cricket ground in the winter.”

  “Football’s a sealed book to me,” said Georgie, “and I don’t intend to unseal it.”

  They had come back to Mallards, and Lucia standing on the doorstep looked over the cobbled street with its mellow brick houses.

  “Bella piccolo città!” she exclaimed. “Dinner at eight here, isn’t it, and bring some musica. How I enjoy our little domestic evenings.”

  “Domestic”: just the word “domestic” stuck in Georgie’s mind as he touched up his beard, and did a little sewing while it dried, before he dressed for dinner. It nested in his head, like a woodpecker, and gave notice of its presence there by a series of loud taps at frequent intervals. No doubt Lucia was only referring to their usual practice of dining together and playing the piano afterwards, or sitting (even more domestically) as they often did, each reading a book in easy silence with casual remarks. Such a mode of spending the evening was infinitely pleasanter and more sensible than that they should sit, she at Mallards and he at the Cottage, over solitary meals and play long solos on their pianos instead of those adventurous duets. No doubt she had meant nothing more than that by the word.

  The party from the bungalows, the Mapp-Flints and the Padre and his wife, came into Tilling next day to see the cricket match. They mingled with the crowd and sat on public benches, and Elizabeth observed with much uneasiness how Lucia and Georgie were conducted by the town surveyor to reserved deck-chairs by the pavilion: she was afraid that meant something sinister. Lucia had put a touch of sun-burn rouge on her face, in order to convey the impression that she often spent a summer day watching cricket, and she soon learned the difference between bats and balls: but she should have studied the game a little more before she asked Per, when three overs had been bowled and no wicket had fallen, who was getting the best of it. A few minutes later a Tilling wicket fell and Per went in. He immediately skied a ball in the direction of long on, and Lucia clapped her hands wildly. “Oh, look, Georgie,” she said. “What a beautiful curve the ball is describing! And so high. Lovely . . . What? Has he finished already?”

  Tilling was out for eighty-seven runs, and between the inningses, Lucia, in the hat which the Hastings Chronicle had already described, was escorted out to look at the pitch by the merry brothers. She had learned so much about cricket in the last hour that her experienced eye saw at once that the greater part of the field ought to be levelled and the turf relaid. Nobody took any particular notice of Georgie, so while Lucia was inspecting the pitch he slunk away and lunched at home. She, as President of the Tilling Club, lunched with the two teams in the pavilion, and found several opportunities of pronouncing the word Zingâri properly.

  The bungalow-party having let their houses picnicked on sandwiches and indulged in gloomy conjecture as to what Lucia’s sudden appearance in sporting circles signified. Then Benjy walked up to the Club nominally to see if there were any letters for him and actually to have liquid refreshment to assuage the thirst caused by the briny substances which Elizabeth had provided for lunch, and brought back the sickening intelligence that Lucia had been elected President of the Tilling Cricket Club.

  “I’m not in the least surprised,” said Elizabeth. “I suspected something of the sort. Nor shall I be surprised if she plays football for Tilling in the winter. Shorts, and a jersey of Tilling colours. Probably that hat.”

  Satire, it was felt, had said its last word.

  The Hastings Chronicle on the next Saturday was a very painful document. It contained a large-print paragraph on its middle page headed “Munificent Gift by Mrs. Lucas of Mallards House, Tilling.” Those who felt equal to reading further then learnt that she had most graciously consented to become President of the Tilling Cricket Club, and had offered, at the Annual General Meeting of the Club, held after the XI’s match against the Zingâri, to have the cricket field levelled and relaid. She had personally inspected it (so said Mrs. Lucas in her Presidential address) and was convinced that Tilling would never be able to do itself justice at the King of Games till this was done. She therefore considered it a privilege, as President of the Club, in which she had always taken so deep an interest, to undertake this work (loud and prolonged applause) . . . This splendid gift would benefit footballers as well as cricketers since they used the same ground, and the Committee of the football club, having ascertained Mrs. Lucas’s feelings on the subject, had unanimously elected her as President.

  The very next week there were more of these frightful revelations. Again there was that headline, “Munificent Gift, etc!” This time it was the Tilling Hospital. At a meeting of the Governors the Mayor announced that Mrs. Lucas (already known as the Friend of the Poor) had offered to build a new operating-theatre, and to furnish it with the most modern equipment according to the plan and schedule which he now laid before them —

  Elizabeth was reading this aloud to Benjy, as they lunched in the verandah of their bungalow, in an indignant voice. At this point she covered up with her hand the remainder of the paragraph.

  “Mark my words, Benjy,” she said. “I prophesy that what happened next was that the Governors accepted this gift with the deepest gratitude and did themselves the honour of inviting her to a seat on the Board.”

  It was all too true, and Elizabeth finished the stewed plums in silence. She rose to make coffee.

  “The Hastings Chronicle ought to keep ‘Munificent Gift by Mrs. Lucas of Mallards House, Tilling,’ permanently set up in type,” she observed. “And ‘House’ is new. In my day and Aunt Caroline’s before me, ‘Mallards’ was grand enough. It will be ‘Mallards Palace’ before she’s finished with it.”

  But with this last atrocity, the plague of munificences was stayed for the present. August cooled down into September, and September disgraced itself at the season of its spring tides by brewing a terrific southwest gale. The sea heaped up by the continued press of the wind broke through the shingle bank on the coast and flooded the low land behind, where some of the bungalows stood. That inhabited by the Padre and Evie was built on a slight elevation and escaped being inundated, but the Mapp-Flints were swamped. Nearly a foot of water covered the rooms on the ground floor, and until it subsided, the house was uninhabitable unless you treated it like a palazzo on the Grand Canal at Venice, and had a gondola moored to the banisters of the stairs. News of the disaster was brought to Tilling by the Padre when he bicycled in to take Mattins on Sunday morning. He met Lucia at the church door, and in a few vivid sentences described how the unfortunate couple had waded ashore. They had breakfasted with him and Evie and would lunch and sup there, but then they would have to wade back again to sleep, since he had no spare room. A sad holiday experience: and he hurried off to the vestry to robe.

  The beauty of her organ wrought upon Lucia, for she had asked the organist to play Falberg’s “Storm at Sea” as a voluntary at the end of the service, and, as she listened, the inexorable might of Nature, of which the Mapp-Flints were victims, impressed itself on her. Moreover she really enjoyed dispensing benefits with a bountiful hand on the worthy and unworthy alike, and by the time the melodious storm was over she had made up her mind to give board and lodging to the refugees until the salt water had ebbed from their ground-floor rooms. Grebe was still let and resonant with forty-seven canaries, and she must shelter them, as Noah took back the dove sent out over the waste of waters, in the Ark of their old home . . . She joined softly in the chorale of passengers and sailors, and left the church with Georgie.

  “I shall telephone to them at once, Georgie,” she said, “and offer to take them in at Mallards House. The car shall fetch them after lunch.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Georgie. “Why shouldn’t they go to an hotel?”

 
“Caro, simply because they wouldn’t go,” said Lucia. “They would continue to wade to their beds and sponge on the Padre. Besides if their bungalow collapsed — it is chiefly made of laths tied together with pieces of string and pebbles from the shore — and buried them in the ruins, I should truly regret it. Also I welcome the opportunity of doing a kindness to poor Elizabeth. Mallards House will always be at the service of the needy. I imagine it will only be for a day or two. You must promise to lunch and dine with me, won’t you, as long as they are with me, for I don’t think I could bear them alone.”

  Lucia adopted the seignorial manner suitable to the donor of organs and operating-theatres. She instructed Grosvenor to telephone in the most cordial terms to Mrs. Mapp-Flint, and wrote out what she should say. Mrs. Lucas could not come to the telephone herself at that moment, but she sent her sympathy, and insisted on their making Mallards House their home, till the bungalow was habitable again: she thought she could make them quite comfortable in her little house. Elizabeth of course accepted her hospitality though it was odd that she had not telephoned herself. So Lucia made arrangements for the reception of her guests. She did not intend to give up her bedroom and dressing-room which they had occupied before, since it would be necessary to bring another bed in, and it would be very inconvenient to turn out herself. Besides, so it happily occurred to her, it would arouse very poignant emotion if they found themselves in their old nuptial chamber. Elizabeth should have the pleasant room looking over the garden, and Benjy the one at the end of the passage, and the little sitting-room next Elizabeth’s should be devoted to their exclusive use. That would be princely hospitality, and thus the garden-room, where she always sat, would not be invaded during the day. After tea, they might play Bridge there, and of course use it after dinner for more Bridge or music. Then it was time to send Cadman with the motor to fetch them, and Lucia furnished it with a thick fur rug and a hot water-bottle in case they had caught cold with their wadings. She put a Sunday paper in their sitting-room, and strewed a few books about to give it an inhabited air, and went out as usual for her walk, for it would be more in the seigniorial style if Grosvenor settled them in, and she herself casually returned about tea-time, certain that everything would have been done for their comfort.

  This sumptuous insouciance a little miscarried, for though Grosvenor had duly conducted the visitors to their own private sitting-room, they made a quiet little pilgrimage through the house while she was unpacking for them, peeped into the Office, and were sitting in the garden-room when Lucia returned.

  “So sorry to be out when you arrived, dear Elizabeth,” she said, “but I knew Grosvenor would make you at home.”

  Elizabeth sprang up from her old seat in the window. (What a bitter joy it was to survey from there again.)

  “Dear Lucia,” she cried. “Too good of you to take in the poor homeless ones. Putting you out dreadfully, I’m afraid.”

  “Not an atom. Tutto molto facile. And there’s the parlour upstairs ready for you, which I hope Grosvenor showed you.”

  “Indeed she did,” said Elizabeth effusively. “Deliciously cosy. So kind.”

  “And what a horrid experience you must have had,” said Lucia. Tea will be ready: let us go in.”

  “A waste of waters,” said Elizabeth impressively, “and a foot deep in the dining-room. We had to have a boat to take our luggage away. It reminded Benjy of the worst floods on the Jumna.”

  “‘Pon my word, it did,” said Benjy, “and I shouldn’t wonder if there’s more to come. The wind keeps up, and there’s the highest of the spring tides to-night. Total immersion of the Padre, perhaps. Ha! Ha! Baptism of those of Riper Years.”

  “Naughty!” said Elizabeth. Certainly the Padre had been winning at Bridge all this week, but that hardly excused levity over things sacramental, and besides he had given them lunch and breakfast. Lucia also thought his joke in poor taste and called attention to her dahlias. She had cut a new flower-bed, where there had once stood a very repulsive weeping-ash, which had been planted by Aunt Caroline, and which, to Elizabeth’s pretty fancy, had always seemed to mourn for her. She suddenly felt its removal very poignantly, and not trusting herself to speak about that, called attention to the lovely red admiral butterflies on the buddleia. With which deft changes of subjects they went in to tea. Georgie and Bridge, and dinner, and more Bridge followed, and Lucia observed with strong misgivings that Elizabeth left her bag and Benjy his cigar-case in the garden room when they went to bed. This seemed to portend their return there in the morning, so she called attention to their forgetfulness. Elizabeth on getting upstairs had a further lapse of memory, for she marched into Lucia’s bedroom, which she particularly wanted to see, before she recollected that it was no longer her own.

  Lucia was rung up at breakfast next morning by the Padre. There was more diluvian news from the shore, and his emotion caused him to speak pure English without a trace of Scotch or Irish. A tide, higher than ever, had caused a fresh invasion of the sea, and now his bungalow was islanded, and the gale had torn a quantity of slates from the roof. Georgie, he said, had kindly offered to take him in, as the Vicarage was still let, and he waited in silence until Lucia asked him where Evie was going. He didn’t know, and Lucia’s suggestion that she should come to Mallards House was very welcome. She promised to send her car to bring them in and rejoined her guests.

  “More flooding,” she said, “just as you prophesied, Major Benjy. So Evie is coming here, and Georgie will take the Padre. I’m sure you won’t mind moving on to the attic floor, and letting her have your room.”

  Benjy’s face fell.

  “Oh, dear me, no,” he said heartily. “I’ve roughed it before now.”

  “We shall be quite a party,” said Elizabeth without any marked enthusiasm, for she supposed that Evie would share their sitting-room.

  Lucia went to see to her catering, and her guests to their room, taking the morning papers with them.

  “I should have thought that Diva might have taken Evie in, or she might have gone to the King’s Arms,” said Elizabeth musingly. “But dear Lucia revels in being Lady Bountiful. Gives her real pleasure.”

  “I don’t much relish sleeping in one of those attics,” said Benjy. “Draughty places with sloping roofs if I remember right.”

  Elizabeth’s pride in her ancestral home flickered up.

  “They’re better than any rooms in the house you had before we married, darling,” she said. “And not quite tactful to have told her you had roughed it before now . . . Was your haddock at breakfast quite what it should be?”

  “Perfectly delicious,” said Benjy hitting back. “It’s a treat to get decent food again after that garbage we’ve been having.”

  “Thank you dear,” said Elizabeth.

  She picked up a paper, read it for a moment and decided to make common cause with him.

  “Now I come to think of it,” she said, “it would have been easy enough for Lucia not to have skied you to the attics. You and I could have had her old bedroom and dressing-room, and there would have been the other two rooms for her and Evie. But we must take what’s given us and be thankful. What I do want to know is whether we’re allowed in the garden-room unless she asks us. She seemed to give you your cigar-case and me my bag last night rather purposefully. Not that this is a bad room by any means.”

  “It’ll get stuffy enough this afternoon,” said he, “for it’s going to rain all day and I suppose there’ll be three of us here.”

  Elizabeth sighed.

  “I suppose it didn’t occur to her to take this room herself, and give her guests the garden-room,” she said. “Not selfish at all: I don’t mean that, but perhaps a little wanting in imagination. I’ll go down to the garden-room presently and see how the land lies. . . . There’s the telephone ringing again. That’s the third time since breakfast. She’s arranging football matches, I expect. Oh, the Daily Mirror has got hold of her gift to the hospital. ‘Most munificent’: how tired I am of the wo
rd. Of course it’s the silly season still.”

  Had Elizabeth known what that third telephone call was, she would have called the season by a more serious name than silly. The speaker was the Mayor, who now asked Lucia if she could see him privately for a few moments. She told him that it would be quite convenient, and might have added that it was also very exciting. Was there perhaps another Board which desired to have the honour of her membership? The Literary Institute? The Workhouse? The — . Back she went to the garden-room and hurriedly sat down at her piano and began communing with Beethoven. She was so absorbed in her music that she gave a startled little cry when Grosvenor, raising her voice to an unusual pitch called out for the second time: “The Mayor of Tilling!” Up she sprang.

  “Ah, good morning, Mr. Mayor,” she cried. “So glad. Grosvenor, I’m not to be interrupted. I was just snatching a few minutes, as I always do after breakfast, at my music. It tunes me in — don’t they call it — for the work of the day. Now, how can I serve you?”

  His errand quite outshone the full splendour of Lucia’s imagination. A member of the Town Council had just resigned, owing to ill-health, and the Mayor was on his way to an emergency meeting. The custom was, he explained, if such a vacancy occurred during the course of the year, that no fresh election should be held, but that the other members of the Council should co-opt a temporary member to serve till the next elections came round. Would she therefore permit him to suggest her name?

  Lucia sat with her chin in her hand in the music attitude. Certainly that was an enormous step upwards from having been equal with Elizabeth at the bottom of the poll . . . Then she began to speak in a great hurry, for she thought she heard a footfall on the stairs into the garden-room. Probably Elizabeth had eluded Grosvenor.