Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Olga was too wonderful,” he said. “Singing divinely and inspiring everybody. She enjoys herself simply by giving enjoyment to other people. A concert both evenings at seven, with the Spanish quartette and a few songs by Olga. Just an hour and a half and then a delicious supper in the garden, with everybody in Riseholme asked, and no Duchesses and things at all. Just for Riseholme: that’s so like her: she doesn’t know what the word ‘snob’ means. And I had the room I had before, with a bathroom next door, and my breakfast on the balcony. And none of those plots and intrigues we used to be always embroiled in. It was a change.”

  A certain stoniness had come into Lucia’s face, which Georgie, fired with his subject, did not perceive.

  “And she asked down a lot of the supers from Covent Garden,” he went on, “and put them up at the Ambermere Arms. And her kindness to all her old friends: dull old me, for instance. She’s taken a villa at Le Touquet now, and she’s asked me there for a week.” I shall cross from Seaport, and there are some wonderful anti-sick tablets—”

  “Did dearest Olga happen to mention if she was expecting me as well?” asked Lucia in a perfectly calm voice.

  Georgie descended, like an aeroplane with engine-trouble, from these sunlit spaces. He made a bumpy landing.

  “I can’t remember her doing so,” he said.

  “Not a thing you would be likely to forget,” said Lucia. “Your wonderful memory.”

  “I daresay she doesn’t want to bother you with invitations,” said Georgie artfully. “You see, you did rub it in a good deal how difficult it was for you to get away, and how you had to bring tin boxes full of municipal papers with you.”

  Lucia’s face brightened.

  “Very likely that is it,” she said.

  “And you promised to spend Saturday till Monday with her a few weeks ago,” continued Georgie, “and then left on Sunday because of your Council meeting, and then you couldn’t leave Tilling the other day because of Miss Leg. Olga’s beginning to realize, don’t you think, how busy you are — What’s the matter?”

  Lucia had sprung to her feet.

  “Leg’s motor coming up the street,” she said. “Georgie, stand at the door, and, if I waggle my thumb at you, fly into the house and tell Grosvenor I’m at home. If I turn it down — those Roman gladiators — still fly, but tell her I’m out. It all depends on whether Elizabeth is with her. I’ll explain afterwards.”

  Lucia slid behind the window-curtain, and Georgie stood at the door, ready to fly. There came a violent waggling of his wife’s thumb, and he sped into the house. He came flying back again, and Lucia motioned him to the piano, on the music-stand of which she had already placed a familiar Mozart duet, “Quick! Top of the page,” she said. “Uno, due, tre. Pom. Perfect!”

  They played half a dozen brilliant bars, and Grosvenor opened the door and said, “Miss Leg”. Lucia took no notice but continued playing, till Grosvenor said “Miss Leg!” much louder, and then, with a musical exclamation of surprise, she turned and rose from her seat.

  “Ah, Miss Leg, so pleased!” she said, drawling frightfully. “How-de-do? Have you met Miss Leg, Georgie? Ah, yes, I think you saw her at Diva’s one afternoon. Georgie, tell somebody that Miss Leg — you will, won’t you — will stop to tea . . . My little garden-room, which you may have noticed from outside. I’m told that they call it the Star Chamber—”

  Miss Leg looked up at the ceiling, as if expecting to see the hosts of heaven depicted there.

  “Indeed. Why do they call it that?” she asked.

  Lucia had, of course, just invented that name for the garden-room herself. She waved her hand at the pile of Departmental tin boxes.

  “Secrets of municipal business,” she said lightly. “The Cabal, you know: Arlington, Bolingbroke . . . Shall we go out into the garden, until tea is ready? A tiny little plot, but so dear to me, the red brick walls, the modest little house.”

  “You bought it quite lately from Mrs. Mapp-Flint, I understand,” said Miss Leg.

  Clever Lucia at once guessed that Elizabeth had given her version of that.

  “Yes, poor thing,” she said. “I was so glad to be able to get her out of her difficulties. It used to belong to an aunt of hers by marriage. What a state it was in! The garden a jungle of weeds, but I am reclaiming it. And here’s my little secret garden: when I am here and the door is shut, I am not to be disturbed by anybody. Busy folk, like you and me, you with your marvellous creative work, and me with my life so full of interruptions, must have some inviolable sanctuary, must we not? . . . Some rather fine hollyhocks.”

  “Charming!” said Miss Leg, who was disposed to hate Lucia with her loftiness and her Star Chamber, but still thought she might be the Key to Tilling. “I have a veritable grove of them at my little cottage in the country. There was a beautiful study of hollyhocks at your little exhibition. By Miss Coles, I think Mrs. Mapp-Flint said.”

  Lucia laughed gaily.

  “Oh, my sweet, muddle-headed Mayoress!” she cried. “Georgie, did you hear? Elizabeth told Miss Leg that my picture of hollyhocks was by Irene. So like her. Tea ready?”

  Harmony ripened. Miss Leg expressed her great admiration for Irene’s portrait of Lucia, and her withering scorn for the Venus, and promised to pay another visit to study the features of the two principal figures: she had been so disgusted with the picture that one glance was enough. Before she had eaten her second bun, Lucia had rung up the Serjeant at the Town Hall, and asked him to get out the Corporation plate and the Mayor’s book, for she would be bringing round a distinguished visitor very shortly: and before Miss Leg had admired the plate and signed the book (“Susan Leg” and below, “Rudolph da Vinci”), she had engaged herself to dine at Mallards next day. “Just a few friends,” said Lucia, “who would be so much honoured to meet you.” She did not ask Elizabeth and Benjy, for Miss Leg had seen so much of them lately, but, for fear they should feel neglected, she begged them to come in afterwards for a cup of coffee and a chat. Elizabeth interpreted this as an insult rather than an invitation, and she and Benjy had coffee and a vivacious chat by themselves.

  The party was very gay, and a quantity of little anecdotes were told about the absentees. At the end of most of them Lucia cried out:

  “Ah, you mustn’t be so ill-natured about them,” and sometimes she told another. It was close on midnight when the gathering broke up, and they were all bidden to dine with Miss Leg the next night.

  “Such a pleasant evening, may I say ‘Lucia?’” said she on the doorstep, as she put up her round red face for the Mayor to deal with as she liked.

  “Indeed do, dear Susan,” she said. “But I think you must be Susanna. Will you? We have one dear Susan already.”

  They kissed.

  CHAPTER XI.

  Georgie continued to be tactless about Olga’s manifold perfections, and though his chaste passion for her did not cause Lucia the smallest anxiety (she knew Georgie too well for that) she wondered what Tilling would make of his coming visit to Le Touquet without her. Her native effrontery had lived the Poppy-crisis down, but her rescue of Susan Leg, like some mature Andromeda, from the clutches of her Mayoress, had raised the deepest animosity of the Mapp-Flints, and she was well aware that Elizabeth would embrace every opportunity to be nasty. She was therefore prepared for trouble, but, luckily for her peace of mind, she had no notion what a tempest of tribulation was gathering . . . Georgie and Foljambe left by a very early train for Seaport so that he might secure a good position amidships on the boat, for the motion was felt less there, before the continental express from London arrived, and each of them had a tube of cachets preventive of sea-sickness.

  Elizabeth popped into Diva’s for a chat that morning.

  “They’ve gone,” she said. “I’ve just met Worship. She was looking very much worried, poor thing, and I’m sure I don’t wonder.”

  Diva had left off her eyebrows. They took too long, and she was tired of always looking surprised when, as on this occasion, she
was not surprised.

  “I suppose you mean about Mr. Georgie going off alone,” she said.

  “Among other worries. Benjy and I both grieve for her. Mr. Georgie’s infatuation is evidently increasing. First of all there was that night here—”

  “No: Lucia came back,” said Diva.

  “Never quite cleared up, I think. And then he’s been staying at Riseholme without her, unless you’re going to tell me that Worship went over every evening and returned at cock-crow for her duties here.”

  “Olga asked them both, anyhow,” said Diva.

  “So we’ve been told, but did she? And this time Lucia’s certainly not been asked. It’s mounting up, and it must be terrible for her. All that we feared at first is coming true, as I knew it would. And I don’t believe for a moment that he’ll come back at the end of a week.”

  “That would be humiliating,” said Diva.

  “Far be it from me to insinuate that there’s anything wrong,” continued Elizabeth emphatically, “but if I was Lucia I shouldn’t like it, any more than I should like it if you and Benjy went for a week and perhaps more to Le Touquet.”

  “And I shouldn’t like it either,” said Diva. “But I’m sorry for Lucia, too.”

  “I daresay she’ll need our sympathy before long,” said Elizabeth darkly. “And how truly grateful I am to her for taking that Leg woman off my hands. Such an incubus. How she managed it I don’t enquire. She may have poisoned Leg’s mind about me, but I should prefer to be poisoned than see much more of her.”

  “Now you’re getting mixed, Elizabeth,” protested Diva. “It was Leg’s mind you suggested was poisoned, not you.”

  “That’s a quibble, dear,” said Elizabeth decidedly. “You’ll hardly deny that Benjy and I were most civil to the woman. I even asked Lucia and Irene to meet her, which was going a long way considering Lucia’s conduct about the Corporation plate and the Mayor’s book. But I couldn’t have stood Leg much longer, and I should have had to drop her . . . I must be off; so busy to-day, like Worship. A Council meeting this afternoon.”

  Lucia always enjoyed her Council meetings. She liked presiding, she liked being suave and gracious and deeply conscious of her own directing will. As she took her seat to-day, she glanced at the wall behind her, where before long Irene’s portrait of her would be hanging. Minutes of the previous meeting were read, reports from various committees were received, discussed and adopted. The last of these was that of the Committee which had been appointed to make its recommendation to the Council about her portrait. She had thought over a well-turned sentence or two: she would say what a privilege it was to make this work of genius the permanent possession of the Borough. Miss Coles, she need hardly remind the Council was a Tillingite of whom they were all proud, and the painter also of the Picture of the Year, in which there figured two of Tilling’s most prominent citizens, one being a highly honoured member of the Council. (“And then I shall bow to Elizabeth,” thought Lucia, “she will appreciate that.”)

  She looked at the agenda.

  “And now we come to our last business, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “To receive the report of the Committee on the Mayor’s offer of a portrait of herself to the Council, to be hung in the Town Hall.”

  Elizabeth rose.

  “As Chairman of this Committee,” she said, “it is my duty to say that we came to the unanimous conclusion that we cannot recommend the Council to accept the Mayor’s most generous gift.”

  The gracious sovereignty of Lucia’s demeanour did not suffer the smallest diminution.

  “Those in favour of accepting the findings of the Committee?” she asked. “Unanimous, I think.”

  Never, in all Lucia’s triumphant career, had she suffered so serious a reverse, nor one out of which it seemed more impossible to reap some incidental advantage. She had been dismissed from Sheffield Castle at the shortest notice, but she had got a harvest of photographs. Out of her inability to find the brake on her bicycle, thus madly scorching through a crowded street, she had built herself a monument for dash and high athletic prowess. She always discovered silver linings to the blackest of clouds, but now, scrutinize them as she might, she could detect in them none but the most sombre hues. Her imagination had worked out a dazzling future for this portrait. It would hang on the wall behind her; the Corporation, at her request, would lend it (heavily insured) to the Royal Academy exhibition next May, where it would be universally acclaimed as a masterpiece far outshining the Venus of the year before. It would be lithographed or mezzotinted, and she would sign the first fifty pulls. Visitors would flock to the Town Hall to see it; they would recognise her as she flashed by them on her bicycle or sat sketching at some picturesque corner; admiring the mellow front of Mallards, the ancestral home of the Mayor, they would be thrilled to know that the pianist, whose exquisite strains floated out of the open window of the garden-room, was the woman whose portrait they just seen above her official chair. Such thoughts as these were not rigidly defined but floated like cloud-castles in the sky, forming and shifting and always elegant.

  Now of those fairy edifices there was nothing left. The Venus was to be exhibited at the Carlton Gallery and then perhaps to form a gem in the collection of some American millionaire, and Elizabeth would go out into all lands and Benjy to the ends of the earth, while her own rejected portrait would be returned to Mallards, with the best thanks of the Committee, like Georgie’s sunny morning on the marsh, and Susan’s budgerigar, and Diva’s sardine tartlet. (And where on earth should she hang this perpetual reminder of defeated dreams?) . . . Another aspect of this collapse struck her. She had always thought of herself as the beneficent director of municipal action, but now the rest of her Council had expressed unanimous agreement with the report of a small malignant Committee, instead of indignantly rallying round her and expressing their contempt of such base ingratitude. This was a snub to which she saw no possible rejoinder except immediate resignation of her office, but that would imply that she felt the snub, which was not to be thought of. Besides, if her resignation was accepted, there would be nothing left at all.

  Her pensive steps, after the Council meeting was over, had brought her to the garden-room, and the bright japanned faces of tin-boxes labelled “Museum”, “Fire Brigade” or “Burial Board” gave her no comfort: their empty expressions seemed to mock her. Had Georgie been here, she could have confided the tragedy to him without loss of dignity. He would have been sympathetic in the right sort of way: he would have said “My dear, how tar’some! That foul Elizabeth: of course she was at the bottom of it. Let’s think of some plan to serve her out.” But without that encouragement she was too flattened out to think of Elizabeth at all. The only thing she could do was to maintain, once more, her habitual air of prosperous self-sufficiency. She shuddered at the thought of Tilling being sorry for her, because, communing with herself, she seemed to sense below this superficial pity, some secret satisfaction that she had had a knock. Irene, no doubt, would be wholly sincere, but though her prestige as an artist had suffered indignity, what difference would it make to her that the Town Council of Tilling had rejected her picture, when the Carlton Gallery in London had craved the loan of her Venus, and an American millionaire was nibbling for its purchase? Irene would treat it as a huge joke; perhaps she would design a Christmas card showing Mapp, as a nude, mature, female Cupid, transfixing Benjy’s heart with a riding-whip. For a moment, as this pleasing fantasy tickled Lucia’s brain, she smiled wanly. But the smile faded again: not the grossest insult to Elizabeth would mend matters. A head held high and a total unconsciousness that anything disagreeable had happened was the only course worthy of the Mayor.

  The Council meeting had been short, for no reports from Committees (especially the last) had raised controversy, and Lucia stepped briskly down the hill to have tea in public at Diva’s, and exhibit herself as being in cheerful or even exuberant spirits. Just opposite the door was drawn up a monstrous motor, behind which was strapped a dress-
basket and other substantial luggage with the initials P.S. on them. “A big postscript,” thought Lucia, lightening her heavy heart with humorous fancies, and she skirted round behind this ponderous conveyance, and so on to the pavement. Two women were just stepping out of ye olde tea-shop: one was Elizabeth dripping with unctuous smiles, and the other was Poppy Sheffield.

  “And here’s sweet Worship herself,” said Elizabeth. “Just in time to see you. How fortunate!”

  Some deadly misgiving stirred in Lucia’s heart as Poppy turned on her a look of blank unrecognition. But she managed to emit a thin cry of welcome.

  “Dear Duchess!” she said. “How naughty of you to come to my little Tilling without letting me know. It was au revoir when we parted last.”

  Poppy still seemed puzzled, and then (unfortunately, perhaps) she began to remember.

  “Why, of course!” she said. “You came to see me at the Castle, owing to some stupid misunderstanding. My abominable memory. Do tell me your name.’’

  “Lucia Pillson,” said the wretched woman. “Mayor of Tilling.”

  “Yes, how it all comes back,” said Poppy, warmly shaking hands. “That was it. I thought your husband was the Mayor of Tilling, and I was expecting him. Quite. So stupid of me. And then tea and photographs, wasn’t it? I trust they came out well.”

  “Beautifully. Do come up to my house — only a step — and I’ll show you them.”

  “Alas! not a moment to spare. I’ve spent such a long time chatting to all your friends. Somebody — somebody called Leg, I think — introduced them to me. She said she had been to my house in London which I daresay was quite true. One never can tell. But I’m catching, at least I hope so, the evening boat at Seaport on my way to stay with Olga Bracely at Le Touquet. Such a pleasure to have met you again.”