Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “You seem to make a practice of it,” remarked the operator severely.

  “Too awkward of me,” said Lucia. “It was the very last thing I wanted to do. Quite the last.”

  “That’ll be another half-crown,” said the victim, “and now I come to look at you, it was you and your pals cocked up on the Bench, who fined me five bob last month, for not being half as unsteady as you.”

  “Indeed! How small the world is,” said Lucia with great dignity and aloofness, taking out her purse. Indeed it was a strange coincidence that she should have disbursed to the culprit of last month exactly the sum that she had fined him for drunkenness. She thought there was something rather psychic about it, but she could not tell Georgie, for that would have disclosed to him that in the course of her daring, unaccompanied ride she had twice upset a fire-pot and scattered tar and red hot coals on the highway. Soon she met him still outward bound and he, too, was riding unsupported.

  “I’ve made such strides to-day,” he called out. “How have you got on?”

  “Beautifully! Miles!” said Lucia, as they passed each other. “But we must be getting back. Let me see you turn, dear, without dismounting. Not so difficult.”

  The very notion of attempting that made Georgie unsteady, and he got off.

  “I don’t believe she can do it herself,” he muttered, as he turned his machine and followed her. The motor was waiting for them, and just as she was getting in, he observed a blob of tar on one of her shoes. She wiped it off on the grass by the side of the road.

  Susan had invited them both to a necromantic séance after tea that evening. She explained that she would not ask them to tea, because before these sittings she fasted and meditated in the dark for an hour. When they got home from their ride, Georgie went to his sitting-room to rest, but Lucia, fresh as a daisy, filled up time by studying a sort of catechism from the Board of the Southern Railway in answer to her suggestion of starting a Royal Fish Express with a refrigerating van to supply the Court. They did not seem very enthusiastic; they put a quantity of queries. Had Her Worship received a Royal command on the subject? Did she propose to run the R.F.E. to Balmoral when the Court was in Scotland, because there were Scotch fishing ports a little closer? Had she worked out the cost of a refrigerating van? Was the supply of fish at Tilling sufficient to furnish the Royal Table as well as the normal requirements of the district? Did her Worship —

  Grosvenor entered. Mr. Wyse had called, and would much like, if quite convenient, to have a few words with Lucia before the séance. That seemed a more urgent call, for all these fish questions required a great deal of thought, and must be gone into with Mrs. Simpson next morning, and she told Grosvenor that she could give him ten minutes. He entered, carrying a small parcel wrapped up in brown paper.

  “So good of you to receive me,” he said. “I am aware of the value of your time. A matter of considerable delicacy. My dear Susan tells me that you and your husband have graciously promised to attend her séance to-day.”

  Lucia referred to her engagement book.

  “Quite correct,” she said. “I found I could just fit it in. Five-thirty p.m. is my entry.”

  “I will speak but briefly of the ritual of these séances,” said Mr. Wyse. “My Susan sits at the table in our little dining-room, which you have, alas too rarely, honoured by your presence on what I may call less moribund occasions. It is furnished with a copious supply of scribbling paper and of sharpened pencils for her automatic script. In front of her is a small shrine, I may term it, of ebony — possibly ebonite — with white satin curtains concealing what is within. At the commencement of the séance, the lights are put out, and my Susan draws the curtains aside. Within are the mortal remains — or such as could be hygienically preserved — of her budgerigar. She used to wear them in her hat or as a decoration for the bosom. They once fell into a dish, a red dish, at your hospitable table.”

  “I remember. Raspberry something,” said Lucia.

  “I bow to your superior knowledge,” said Mr. Wyse. “Then Susan goes into a species of trance, and these communications through automatic script begin. Very voluminous sometimes, and difficult to decipher. She spends the greater part of the day in puzzling them out, not always successfully. Now, adorabile Signora—”

  “Oh, Mr. Wyse,” cried Lucia, slightly startled.

  “Dear lady, I only meant Your Worship,” he explained.

  “I see. Stupid of me,” she said. “Yes?”

  “I appeal to you,” continued he. “To put the matter in a nutshell, I fear my dear Susan will get unhinged, if this goes on. Already she is sadly changed. Her strong commonsense, her keen appreciation of the comforts and interests of life, her fur-coat, her Royce, her shopping, her Bridge; all these are tasteless to her. Nothing exists for her except these communings.”

  “But how can I help you?” asked Lucia . . .

  Mr. Wyse tapped the brown paper parcel.

  “I have brought here,” he said, “the source of all our trouble: Blue Birdie. I abstracted it from the shrine while my dear Susan was meditating in the drawing-room. I want it to disappear in the hope that when she discovers it has gone, she will have to give up the séances, and recover her balance. I would not destroy it: that would be going too far. Would you therefore, dear lady, harbour the Object in some place unknown to me, so that when Susan asks me, as she undoubtedly will, if I know where it is, I may be able to tell her that I do not? A shade jesuitical perhaps, but such jesuitry, I feel, is justifiable.”

  Lucia considered this. “I think it is, too,” she said. “I will put it somewhere safe. Anything to prevent our Susan becoming unhinged. That must never happen. By the way, is there a slight odour?”

  “A reliable and harmless disinfectant,” said Mr. Wyse. “There was a faint smell in the neighbourhood of the shrine which I put down to imperfect taxidermy. A thousand thanks, Worshipful Lady. One cannot tell what my Susan’s reactions may be, but I trust that the disappearance of the Object may lead to a discontinuance of the séances. In fact, I do not see how they could be held without it.”

  Lucia had ordered a stack of black japanned boxes to hold documents connected with municipal departments. The arms of the Borough and her name were painted on them, with the subject with which they were concerned. There were several empty ones, and when Mr. Wyse had bowed himself out, she put Blue Birdie into the one labelled “Museum,” which seemed appropriate. “Burial Board” would have been appropriate, too, but there was already an agenda-paper in that.

  Presently she and Georgie set forth for Starling Cottage.

  Susan and Algernon were ready for them in the dining-room. The shrine with drawn curtains was on the table. Susan had heated a shovel and was burning incense on it.

  “Blue Birdie came from the Spice Islands,” she explained, waving the shovel in front of the shrine. “Yesterday my hand wrote ‘sweet gums’ as far as I could read it, over and over again, and I think that’s what he meant. And I’ve put up a picture of St. Francis preaching to the birds.”

  Certainly Susan, as her husband had said, was much changed. She looked dotty. There was an ecstatic light in her eye, and a demented psychical smile on her mouth. She wore a wreath in her hair, a loose white gown, and reminded Lucia of an immense operatic Ophelia. But critical circumstances always developed Lucia’s efficiency, and she nodded encouragingly to Algernon as Susan swept fragrantly about the room.

  “So good of you to let us come, dear Susan,” she said. “I have very great experience in psychical phenomena: adepts — do you remember the Guru at Riseholme, Georgie? — adepts always tell me that I should be a marvellous medium if I had time to devote myself to the occult.”

  Susan held up her hand.

  “Hush,” she whispered. “Surely I heard ‘Tweet, Tweet’, which means Blue Birdie is here. Good afternoon, darling.”

  She put the fire-shovel into the fender.

  “Very promising,” she said. “Blue Birdie doesn’t usually make himself h
eard so soon, and it always means I’m going into trance. It must be you, Lucia, who have contributed to the psychic force.”

  “Very likely,” said Lucia, “the Guru always said I had immense power.”

  “Turn out the lights then, Algernon, all but the little ruby lamp by my paper, and I will undraw the curtains of the shrine. Tweet, Tweet! There it is again, and that lost feeling is coming over me.”

  Lucia had been thinking desperately, while Ophelia got ready, with that intense concentration which, so often before, had smoothed out the most crumpled situations. She gave a silvery laugh.

  “I heard it, I heard it,” she exclaimed to Algernon’s great surprise. “Buona sera, Blue Birdie. Have you come to see Mummie and Auntie Lucia from Spicy Islands? . . . Oh, I’m sure I felt a little brush of soft feathers on my cheek.”

  “No! did you really?” asked Susan with the slightest touch of jealousy in her voice. “My pencil, Algernon.”

  Lucia gave a swift glance at the shrine, as Susan drew the curtains, and was satisfied that the most spiritually enlightened eye could not see that it was empty. But dark though the room was, it was as if fresh candles were being profusely lit in her brain, as on some High Altar dedicated to Ingenuity. She kept her eyes fixed on Susan’s hand poised over her paper. It was recording very little: an occasional dot or dash was all the inspiration Blue Birdie could give. For herself, she exclaimed now and then that she felt in the dark the brush of the bird’s wing, or heard that pretty note. Each time she saw that the pencil paused. Then the last and the greatest candle was lit in her imagination, and she waited calm and composed for the conclusion of the séance, when Susan would see that the shrine was empty.

  They sat in the dim ruby light for half an hour, and Susan, as if not quite lost, gave an annoyed exclamation.

  “Very disappointing,” she said. “Turn on the light, Algernon. Blue Birdie began so well and now nothing is coming through.”

  Before he could get to the switch, Lucia, with a great gasp of excitement, fell back in her chair, and covered her eyes with her hands.

  “Something wonderful has happened,” she chanted. “Blue Birdie has left us altogether. What a manifestation!”

  Still not even peeping, she heard Susan’s voice rise to a scream.

  “But the shrine’s empty!” she cried. “Where is Blue Birdie, Algernon?”

  “I have no idea,” said the Jesuit. “What has happened?”

  Lucia still sat with covered eyes.

  “Did I not tell you before the light was turned on that there had been a great manifestation?” she asked. “I knew the shrine would be empty! Let me look for myself.”

  “Not a feather!” she said. “The dematerialization is complete. Oh, what would not the President of the Psychical Research have given to be present! Only a few minutes ago, Susan and I — did we not, Susan? — heard his little salutation, and I, at any rate, felt his feathers brush my cheek. Now no trace! Never, in all my experience, have I seen anything so perfect.”

  “But what does it mean?” asked the distraught Susan, pulling the wreath from her dishevelled hair. Lucia waved her hands in a mystical movement.

  “Dear Susan,” she said, beginning to gabble, “Listen! All these weeks your darling’s spirit has been manifesting itself to you, and to me also to-night, with its pretty chirps and strokes of the wing, in order to convince you of its presence, earth-bound and attached to its mortal remains. Now on the astral plane Blue Birdie has been able so to flood them with spiritual reality that they have been dissolved, translated — ah, how badly I put it — into spirit. Blue Birdie has been helping you all these weeks to realise that all is spirit. Now you have this final, supreme demonstration. Rapt with all of him that was mortal into a higher sphere!”

  “But won’t he ever come back?” asked Susan.

  “Ah, you would not be so selfish as to wish that!” said Lucia. “He is free; he is earth-bound no longer, and, by this miracle of dematerialization, has given you proof of that. Let me see what his last earthly communication with you was.”

  Lucia picked up the sheet on which Susan had automatically recorded a few undecipherable scribbles.

  “I knew it!” she cried. “See, there is nothing but those few scrawled lines. Your sweet bird’s spirit was losing connection with the material sphere; he was rising above it. How it all hangs together!”

  “I shall miss him dreadfully,” said Susan in a faltering voice.

  “But you mustn’t, you mustn’t. You cannot grudge him his freedom. And, oh, what a privilege to have assisted at such a demonstration! Ennobling! And if my small powers added to yours, dear, helped toward such a beautiful result, why that is more than a privilege.”

  Georgie felt sure that there was hocus-pocus somewhere, and that Lucia had had a hand in it, but his probings, as they walked away, only elicited from her idiotic replies such as “Too marvellous! What a privilege!”

  It soon became known in marketing circles next morning that very remarkable necromancy had occurred at Starling Cottage, that Blue Birdie had fluttered about the darkened room, uttering his sharp cries, and had several times brushed against the cheek of the Mayor. Then, wonder of wonders, his mortal remains had vanished. Mr. Wyse walked up and down the High Street, never varying his account of the phenomena, but unable to explain them, and for the first time for some days Susan appeared in her Royce, but without any cockade in her hat.

  There was something mysterious and incredible about it all, but it did not usurp the entire attention of Tilling, for why did Elizabeth, from whom violent sarcasm might have been expected, seem to shun conversation? She stole rapidly from shop to shop, and, when cornered by Diva, coming out of the butcher’s, she explained, scarcely opening her lips at all, that she had a relaxed throat, and must only breathe through her nose.

  “I should open my mouth wide,” said Diva severely, “and have a good gargle,” but Elizabeth only shook her head with an odd smile, and passed on. “Looks a bit hollow-cheeked, too,” thought Diva. By contrast, Lucia was far from hollow-cheeked; she had a swollen face, and made no secret of her appointment with the dentist to have “it” out. From there she went home, with the expectation of receiving, later in the day, a denture comprising a few molars with a fresh attachment added.

  She ate her lunch, in the fashion of a rabbit, with her front teeth.

  “Such a skilful extraction, Georgie,” she said, “but a little sore.”

  As she had a Council meeting that afternoon, Georgie went off alone in the motor for his assignation with the boy from the bicycle shop. The séance last evening still puzzled him, but he felt more certain than ever that her exclamations that she heard chirpings and felt the brush of Birdie’s wing were absolute rubbish; so, too, was her gabble that her psychic powers added to Susan’s, had brought about the dematerialization. “All bosh,” he said aloud in an annoyed voice, “and it only confirms her complicity. It’s very unkind of her not to tell me how she faked it, when she knows how I would enjoy it.”

  His bicycle was ready for him; he mounted without the slightest difficulty, and the boy was soon left far behind. Then with secret trepidation he observed not far ahead a man with a saucepan of tar simmering over a fire-pot. As he got close, he was aware of a silly feeling in his head that it was exercising a sort of fascination over his machine, but by keeping his eye on the road he got safely by it, though with frightful wobbles, and dismounted for a short rest.

  “Well, that’s a disappointment,” observed the operator. “You ain’t a patch on the lady who knocked down my fire-pot twice yesterday.”

  Suddenly Georgie remembered the dab of tar on Lucia’s shoe, and illumination flooded his brain.

  “No! Did she indeed?” he said with great interest. “The same lady twice? That was bad riding!”

  “Oh, something shocking. Not that I’d ever seek to hinder her, for she gave me half-a-crown per upset. Ain’t she coming today?”

  As he rode home Georgie again meditate
d on Lucia’s secretiveness. Why could she not tell him about her jugglings at the séance yesterday and about her antics with the fire-pot? Even to him she had to keep up this incessant flow of triumphant achievement both in occult matters and in riding a bicycle. Now that they were man and wife she ought to be more open with him. “But I’ll tickle her up about the fire-pot,” he thought vindictively.

  When he got home he found Lucia just returned from a most satisfactory Council meeting.

  “We got through our business most expeditiously,” she said, “for Elizabeth was absent, and so there were fewer irrelevant interruptions. I wonder what ailed her: nothing serious I hope. She was rather odd in the High Street this morning. No smiles: she scarcely opened her mouth when I spoke to her. And did you make good progress on your bicycle this afternoon?”

  “Admirable,” said he. “Perfect steering. There was a man with a fire-pot tarring a telegraph-post—”

  “Ah, yes,” interrupted Lucia. “Tar keeps off insects that burrow into the wood. Let us go and have tea.”

  “ — and an odd feeling came over me,” he continued firmly, “that just because I must avoid it, I should very likely run into it. Have you ever felt that? I suppose not.”

  “Yes, indeed I have in my earlier stages,” said Lucia cordially. “But I can give you an absolute cure for it. Fix your eyes straight ahead, and you’ll have no bother at all.”

  “So I found. The man was a chatty sort of fellow. He told me that some learner on a bicycle had knocked over the pot twice yesterday. Can you imagine such awkwardness? I am pleased to have got past that stage.”

  Lucia did not show by the wink of an eyelid that this arrow had pierced her, and Georgie, in spite of his exasperation, could not help admiring such nerve.

  “Capital!” she said. “I expect you’ve quite caught me up by your practice to-day. Now after my Council meeting I think I must relax. A little music, dear?”

  A melodious half-hour followed. They were both familiar with Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony, as arranged for four hands on the piano, and played it with ravishing sensibility.