Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “What’s that nasty smell of burning evergreen?” asked Georgie morosely, as they went into the dining-room.

  In the opinion of friends the loss of prestige had been entirely Lucia’s. Georgie would never have stood for the Council unless she had urged him, and it was a nasty defeat which, it was hoped, might do the Mayor good. But the Mayoress’s victory, it was feared, would have the worst effect on her character. She and Diva met next morning in the pouring rain to do their shopping.

  “Very disagreeable for poor Worship,” said Elizabeth, “and not very friendly to me to put up another candidate—”

  “Rubbish,” said Diva. “She’s made you Mayoress. Quite enough friendliness for one year, I should have thought.”

  “And it was out of friendliness that I accepted. I wanted to be of use to her, and stood for the Council for the same reason—”

  “Only she thought Mr. Georgie would be of more use than you,” interrupted Diva.

  “Somebody in her pocket — Take care, Diva. Susan’s van.”

  The Royce drew up close to them, and Susan’s face loomed in the window.

  “Good morning, Elizabeth,” she said. “I’ve just heard—”

  “Thanks, dear, for your congratulations,” said Elizabeth. “But quite a walk-over.”

  Susan’s face shewed no sign of comprehension.

  “What did you walk over?” she asked. “In this rain, too? — Oh, the election to the Town Council. How nice for you! When are you going to reduce the rates?”

  A shrill whistle, and Irene’s huge red umbrella joined the group.

  “Hullo, Mapp!” she said. “So you’ve got on the map again. Ha, ha! How dare you stand against Georgie when my Angel wanted him to get in?”

  Irene’s awful tongue always deflated Elizabeth.

  “Dear quaint one!” she said. “What a lovely umbrella.”

  “I know that. But how dare you?”

  Elizabeth was stung into sarcasm.

  “Well, we don’t all of us think that your Angel must always have her way, dear,” she replied, “and that we must lie down flat for her to trample us into the mire.”

  “But she raised you out of the mire, woman,” cried Irene, “when she made you Mayoress. She took pity on your fruitless efforts to become somebody. Wait till you see my fresco.”

  Elizabeth was sorry she had been so courageous!

  “Painting a pretty fresco, dear?” she asked. “How I shall look forward to seeing it!”

  “It may be a disappointment to you,” said Irene. “Do you remember posing for me on the day Lucia made you Mayoress? It came out in the Hampshire Argus. Well, it’s going to come out again in my fresco. Standing on an oyster shell with Benjy blowing you along. Wait and see.”

  This was no brawl for an M.B.E. to be mixed up in, and Susan called “Home!” to her chauffeur, and shut the window. Even Diva thought she had better move on.

  “Bye-bye,” she said. “Must get back to my baking.”

  Elizabeth turned on her with a frightful grin.

  “Very wise,” she said. “If you had got back earlier to your baking yesterday, we should have enjoyed your jam-puffs more.”

  “That’s too much!” cried Diva. “You ate three.”

  “And bitterly repented it,” said Elizabeth.

  Irene hooted with laughter and went on down the street. Diva crossed it, and Elizabeth stayed where she was for a moment to recover her poise. Why did Irene always cause her to feel like a rabbit with a stoat in pursuit? She bewildered and disintegrated her; she drained her of all power of invective and retort. She could face Diva, and had just done so with signal success, but she was no good against Irene. She plodded home through the driving rain, menaced by the thought of that snap-shot being revived again in fresco.

  CHAPTER V.

  Nobody was more conscious of this loss of prestige than Lucia herself, and there were losses in other directions as well. She had hoped that her renunciation of gambling would have induced card-playing circles to follow her example. That hope was frustrated; bridge-parties with the usual stakes were as numerous as ever, but she was not asked to them. Another worry was that the humiliating election rankled in Georgie’s mind and her seeking his advice on municipal questions, which was intended to show him how much she relied on his judgment, left him unflattered. When they sat after dinner in the garden-room (where, alas, no eager gamblers now found the hours pass only too quickly) her lucid exposition of some administrative point failed to rouse any real enthusiasm in him.

  “And if everything isn’t quite clear,” she said, “mind you interrupt me, and I’ll go over it again.”

  But no interruption ever came; occasionally she thought she observed that slight elongation of the face that betokens a suppressed yawn, and at the end, as likely as not, he made some comment which shewed he had not listened to a word she was saying. To-night, she was not sorry he asked no questions about the contentious conduct of the catchment board, as she was not very clear about it herself. She became less municipal.

  “How these subjects get between one and the lighter side of life!” she said. “Any news to-day?”

  “Only that turn-up between Diva and Elizabeth,” he said.

  “Georgie, you never told me! What about?”

  “I began to tell you at dinner,” said Georgie, “only you changed the subject to the water-rate. It started with jam-puffs. Elizabeth ate three one afternoon at Diva’s, and said next morning that she bitterly repented it. Diva says she’ll never serve her a tea again, until she apologizes, but I don’t suppose she means it.”

  “Tell me more!” said Lucia, feeling the old familiar glamour stealing over her. “And how is her tea-shop getting on?”

  “Flourishing. The most popular house in Tilling. All so pleasant and chatty, and a rubber after tea on most days. Quite a centre.”

  Lucia wrestled with herself for an intense moment.

  “There’s a point on which I much want your advice,” she began.

  “Do you know, I don’t think I can hope to understand any more municipal affairs to-night,” said Georgie firmly.

  “It’s not that sort, dear,” she said, wondering how to express herself in a lofty manner. “It is this: You know how I refused to play Bridge any more for money. I’ve been thinking deeply over that decision. Deeply. It was meant to set an example, but if nobody follows an example, Georgie, one has to consider the wisdom of continuing to set it.”

  “I always thought you’d soon find it very tar’some not to get your Bridge,” said Georgie. “You used to enjoy it so.”

  “Ah, it’s not that,” said Lucia, speaking in her best Oxford voice. “I would willingly never see a card again if that was all, and indeed the abstract study of the game interests me far more. But I did find a certain value in our little Bridge-parties quite apart from cards. Very suggestive discussions, sometimes about local affairs, and now more than ever it is so important for me to be in touch with the social as well as the municipal atmosphere of the place. I regret that others have not followed my example, for I am sure our games would have been as thrilling as ever, but if others won’t come into line with me, I will gladly step back into the ranks again. Nobody shall be able to say of me that I caused splits and dissensions. ‘One and all’, as you know, is my favourite motto.”

  Georgie didn’t know anything of the sort, but he let it pass.

  “Capital!” he said. “Everybody will be very glad.”

  “And it would give me great pleasure to reconcile that childish quarrel between Diva and Elizabeth,” continued Lucia. “I’ll ask Elizabeth and Benjy to have tea with us there to-morrow; dear Diva will not refuse to serve a guest of mine, and their little disagreement will be smoothed over. A rubber afterwards.”

  Georgie looked doubtful.

  “Perhaps you had better tell them that you will play for the usual stakes,” he said. “Else they might say they were engaged again.”

  Lucia, with her vivid imagination,
visualised the horrid superior grin which, at the other end of the telephone, would spread over Elizabeth’s face, when she heard that, and felt that she would scarcely be able to get the words out. But she steeled herself and went to the telephone.

  Elizabeth and Benjy accepted, and, after a reconciliatory eighteen-penny tea, at which Elizabeth ate jam puffs with gusto (“Dear Diva, what delicious, light pastry,” she said. “I wonder it doesn’t fly away”) the four retired into the card-room. As if to welcome Lucia back into gambling circles, the God of Chance provided most exciting games. There were slams declared and won, there was doubling and redoubling and rewards and vengeances. Suddenly Diva looked in with a teapot in her hand and a most anxious expression on her face. She closed the door.

  “The Inspector of Police wants to see you, Lucia,” she whispered.

  Lucia rose, white to the lips. In a flash there came back to her all her misgivings about the legality of Diva’s permitting gambling in a public room, and now the police were raiding it. She pictured headlines in the Hampshire Argus and lurid paragraphs. . . . Raid on Mrs. Godiva Plaistow’s gaming rooms . . . The list of the gamblers caught there. The Mayor and Mayoress of Tilling . . . A retired Major. The Mayor’s husband. The case brought before the Tilling magistrates with the Mayor in the dock instead of on the Bench. Exemplary fines. Her own resignation. Eternal infamy. . . .

  “Did he ask for me personally?” said Lucia.

  “Yes. Knew that you were here,” wailed Diva. “And my tea-shop will be closed. Oh, dear me, if I’d only heeded your warning about raids! Or if we’d only joined you in playing Bridge for nothing!”

  Lucia rose to the topmost peak of magnanimity, and refrained from rubbing that in.

  “Is there a back way out, Diva?” she asked. “Then they could all go. I shall remain and receive my Inspector here. Just sitting here. Quietly.”

  “But there’s no back way out,” said Diva. “And you can’t get out of the window. Too small.”

  “Hide the cards!” commanded Lucia, and they all snatched up their hands. Georgie put his in his breast-pocket. Benjy put his on the top of the large cupboard. Elizabeth sat on hers. Lucia thrust hers up the sleeve of her jacket.

  “Ask him to come in,” she said. “Now all talk!”

  The door opened, and the Inspector stood majestically there with a blue paper in his hand.

  “Indeed, as you say, Major Mapp-Flint,” said Lucia in an unwavering Oxford voice, “the League of Nations has collapsed like a card-house — I should say a ruin — Yes, Inspector, did you want me?”

  “Yes, your Worship. I called at Mallards, and was told I should catch you here. There’s a summons that needs your signature. I hope your Worship will excuse my coming, but it’s urgent.”

  “Quite right, Inspector,” said Lucia. “I am always ready to be interrupted on magisterial business. I see. On the dotted line. Lend me your fountain-pen, Georgie.”

  As she held out her hand for it, all her cards tumbled out of her sleeve. A draught eddied through the open door and Benjy’s cache on the cupboard fluttered into the air. Elizabeth jumped up to gather them, and the cards on which she was sitting fell on to the floor.

  Lucia signed with a slightly unsteady hand, and gave the summons back to the Inspector.

  “Thank you, your Worship,” he said. “Very sorry to interrupt your game, ma’am.”

  “Not at all,” said Lucia. “You were only doing your duty.”

  He bowed and left the room.

  “I must apologise to you all,” said Lucia without a moment’s pause, “but my good Inspector has orders to ask for me whenever he wants to see me on any urgent matter. Dear me! All my cards exposed on the table and Elizabeth’s and Major Benjy’s on the floor. I am afraid we must have a fresh deal.”

  Nobody made any allusion to the late panic, and Lucia dealt again.

  Diva looked in again soon, carrying a box of chocolates.

  “Any more Inspectors, dear?” asked Elizabeth acidly. “Any more raids? Your nerves seem rather jumpy.”

  Diva was sorely tempted to retort that their nerves seemed pretty jumpy too, but it was bad for business to be sharp with patrons.

  “No, and I’m giving him such a nice tea,” she said meekly. “But it was a relief, wasn’t it? A box of chocolates for you. Very good ones.”

  The rubber came to an end, with everybody eating chocolates, and a surcharged chat on local topics succeeded. It almost intoxicated Lucia, who, now for weeks, had not partaken of that heady beverage, and she felt more than ever like Catherine the Great.

  “A very recreative two hours,” she said to Georgie as they went up the hill homewards, “though I still maintain that our game would have been just as exciting without playing for money. And that farcical interlude of my Inspector! Georgie, I don’t mind confessing that just for one brief moment it did occur to me that he was raiding the premises—”

  “Oh, I know that,” said Georgie. “Why, you asked Diva if there wasn’t a back way out, and told us to hide our cards and talk. I was the only one of us who knew how absurd it all was.”

  “But how you bundled your cards into your pocket! We were all a little alarmed. All. I put it down to Diva’s terror-stricken entrance with her teapot dribbling at the spout—”

  “No! I didn’t see that,” said Georgie.

  “Quite a pool on the ground. And her lamentable outcry about her tea-rooms being closed. It was suggestion, dear. Very sensitive people like myself respond automatically to suggestion . . . And most interesting about Susan and her automatic script. She thinks, Elizabeth tells me, that Blue Birdie controls her when she’s in trance, and is entirely wrapped up in it.”

  “She’s hardly ever seen now,” said Georgie. “She never plays Bridge, nor comes to Diva’s for tea, and Algernon usually does her marketing.”

  “I must really go to one of her séances, if I can find a free hour some time,” said Lucia. “But my visit must be quite private. It would never do if it was known that the Mayor attended séances which do seem alien [ed. — akin?] to necromancy. Necromancy, as you may know, is divining through the medium of a corpse.”

  “But that’s a human corpse, isn’t it?” asked he.

  “I don’t think you can make a distinction — Oh! Take care!”

  She pulled Georgie back, just as he was stepping on to the road from the pavement. A boy on a bicycle, riding without lights, flew down the hill, narrowly missing him.

  “Most dangerous!” said Lucia. “No lights and excessive speed. I must ring up my Inspector and report that boy — I wonder who he was.”

  “I don’t see how you can report him unless you know,” suggested Georgie.

  Lucia disregarded such irrelevancy. Her eyes followed the boy as he curved recklessly round the sharp corner into the High Street.

  “Really I feel more envious than indignant,” she said. “It must be so exhilarating. Such speed! What Lawrence of Arabia always loved. I feel very much inclined to learn bicycling. Those smart ladies of the nineties use to find it very amusing. Bicycling-breakfasts in Battersea Park and all that. Our brisk walks, whenever I have time to take them, are so limited: in these short afternoons we can hardly get out into the country before it is time to turn again.”

  The idea appealed to Georgie, especially when Lucia embellished it with mysterious and conspiratorial additions. No one must know that they were learning until they were accomplished enough to appear in the High Street in complete control of their machines. What a sensation that would cause! What envious admiration! So next day they motored out to a lonely stretch of road a few miles away, where a man from the bicycle-shop, riding a man’s bicycle and guiding a woman’s, had a clandestine assignation with them. He held Georgie on, while Chapman, Lucia’s chauffeur, clung to her, and for the next few afternoons they wobbled about the road with incalculable swoopings. Lucia was far the quicker of the two in acquiring the precarious balance, and she talked all the time to Chapman.

  “
I’m beginning to feel quite secure,’’ she said. “You might let go for one second. No: there’s a cart coming. Better wait till it has passed. Where’s Mr. Georgie? Far behind, I suppose.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Ever so far.”

  “Oh, what a jolt!” she cried, as her front wheel went over a loose stone. “Enough to unseat anybody. I put on the brake, don’t I?”

  After ringing the bell once or twice, Lucia found the brake. The bicycle stopped dead, and she stepped lightly off.

  “So powerful,” she said remounting. “Now both hands off for a moment, Chapman.”

  The day came when Georgie’s attendant still hovered close to him, but when Lucia outpaced Chapman altogether. A little way in front of her a man near the edge of the road, with a saucepan of tar bubbling over a pot of red-hot coals, was doctoring a telegraph post. Then something curious happened to the co-ordination between Lucia’s brain and muscles. The imperative need of avoiding the fire-pot seemed to impel her to make a bee-line for it. With her eyes firmly fixed on it, she felt in vain for that powerful brake, and rode straight into the fire-pot, upsetting the tar and scattering the coals.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said to the operator. “I’m rather new at it. Would half-a-crown? And then would you kindly hold my bicycle while I mount again?”

  The road was quite empty after that, and Lucia sped prosperously along, wobbling occasionally for no reason, but rejoicing in the comparative swiftness. Then it was time to turn. This was impossible without dismounting, but she mounted again without much difficulty, and there was a lovely view of Tilling rising red-roofed above the level land. Telegraph post after telegraph post flitted past her, and then she caught sight of the man with the fire-pot again. Lucia felt that he was observing her, and once more something curious occurred to her co-ordinations, and with it the familiar sense of exactly the same situation having happened before. Her machine began to swoop about the road; she steadied it, and with the utmost precision went straight into the fire-pot again.