by E. F. Benson
‘But of course I know it; you mean Grebe,’ cried Irene. ‘The cottage I am in now adjoins the garden. Oh, do take it! While you’re settling in, I’ll let Diva have Taormina, and Diva will let Mapp have Wasters, and Mapp will let you have Mallards till Grebe’s ready for you. And I shall be at your disposal all day to help you with your furniture.’
Lucia decided that there was no real danger of meeting the Contessa if she drove out there: besides the Contessa now wanted to avoid her for fear of showing how inferior was her Italian.
‘It’s such a lovely afternoon,’ she said, ‘that I think a little drive would not hurt me. Unfortunately Georgie, who comes back to-morrow, has got my car. I lent it him for his week by the sea.’
‘Oh, how like you!’ cried Irene. ‘Always unselfish!’
‘Dear Georgie! So pleased to give him a little treat,’ said Lucia. ‘I’ll ring up the garage and get them to send me something closed. Come with me, dear, if you have nothing particular to do, and we’ll look over the house.’
Lucia found much to attract her in Grebe. Though it was close to the road it was not overlooked, for a thick hedge of hornbeam made a fine screen: besides, the road did not lead anywhere particular. The rooms were of good dimensions, there was a hall and dining-room on the ground floor, with a broad staircase leading up to the first floor where there were two or three bedrooms and a long admirable sitting-room with four windows looking across the road to the meadows and the high bank bounding the river. Beyond that lay the great empty levels of the marsh, with the hill of Tilling rising out of it half a mile away to the west. Close behind the house was the cliff which had once been the coastline before the marshes were drained and reclaimed, and this would be a rare protection against northerly and easterly winds. All these pleasant rooms looked south, and all had this open view away seawards; they had character and dignity, and at once Lucia began to see herself living here. The kitchen and offices were in a wing by themselves, and here again there was character, for the kitchen had evidently been a coach-house, and still retained the big double doors appropriate to such. There had once been a road from it to the end of the kitchen garden, but with its disuse as a coach-house, the road had been replaced by a broad cinder path now bordered with beds of useful vegetables.
‘Ma molto conveniente,’ said Lucia more than once, for it was now perfectly safe to talk Italian again, since the Contessa, no less than she, was determined to avoid a duet in that language. ‘Mi piace molto. E un bel giardino.’
‘How I love hearing you talk Italian,’ ejaculated Irene, ‘especially since I know it’s the very best. Will you teach it me? Oh, I am so pleased you like the house.’
‘But I am charmed with it,’ said Lucia. ‘And there’s a garage with a very nice cottage attached which will do beautifully for Cadman and Foljambe.’
She broke off suddenly, for in the fervour of her enthusiasm for the house, she had not thought about the awful catastrophe which must descend on Georgie, if she decided to live at Tilling. She had given no direct thought to him, and now for the first time she realized the cruel blow that would await him, when he came back to-morrow, all bronzed from his week at Folkestone. He had been a real Deus ex machino to her: his stroke of genius had turned a very hazardous moment into a blaze of triumph, and now she was going to plunge a dagger into his domestic heart by the news that she and therefore Cadman and therefore Foljambe were not coming back to Riseholme at all …
‘Oh, are they going to marry?’ asked Irene. ‘Or do you mean they just live together? How interesting!’
‘Dear Irene, do not be so modern,’ said Lucia, quite sharply. ‘Marriage of course, and banns first. But never mind that for the present. I like those great double doors to the kitchen. I shall certainly keep them.’
‘How ripping that you’re thinking about kitchen-doors already,’ said Irene. ‘That really sounds as if you did mean to buy the house. Won’t Mapp have a fit when she hears it! I must be there when she’s told. She’ll say’ “Darling Lulu, what a joy,” and then fall down and foam at the mouth.’
Lucia gazed out over the marsh where the level rays of sunset turned a few low-lying skeins of mist to rose and gold. The tide was high and the broad channel of the river running out to sea was brimming from edge to edge. Here and there, where the banks were low, the water had overflowed on to adjacent margins of land; here and there, spread into broad lakes, it lapped the confining dykes. There were sheep cropping the meadows, there were seagulls floating on the water, and half a mile away to the west the red roofs of Tilling glowed as if molten not only with the soft brilliance of the evening light, but (to the discerning eye) with the intensity of the interests that burned beneath them … Lucia hardly knew what gave her the most satisfaction, the magic of the marsh, her resolve to live here, or the recollection of the complete discomfiture of Elizabeth.
Then again the less happy thought of Georgie recurred, and she wondered what arguments she could use to induce him to leave Riseholme and settle here. Tilling with all its manifold interests would be incomplete without him, and how dismally incomplete Riseholme would be to him without herself and Foljambe. Georgie had of late taken his painting much more seriously than ever before, and he had often during the summer put off dinner to an unheard-of lateness in order to catch a sunset, and had risen at most inconvenient hours to catch a sunrise. Lucia had strongly encouraged this zeal, she had told him that if he was to make a real career as an artist he had no time to waste. Appreciation and spurring-on was what he needed: perhaps Irene could help.
She pointed to the glowing landscape.
‘Irene, what would life be without sunsets?’ she asked. ‘And to think that this miracle happens every day, except when it’s very cloudy!’
Irene looked critically at the view.
‘Generally speaking, I don’t like sunsets,’ she said. ‘The composition of the sky is usually childish. But good colouring about this one.’
‘There are practically no sunsets at Riseholme,’ said Lucia. ‘I suppose the sun goes down, but there’s a row of hills in the way. I often think that Georgie’s development as an artist is starved there. If he goes back there he will find no one to make him work. What do you think of his painting, dear?’
‘I don’t think of it at all,’ said Irene.
‘No? I am astonished. Of course your own is so different in character. Those wrestlers! Such movement! But personally I find very great perception in Georgie’s work. A spaciousness, a calmness! I wish you would take an interest in it and encourage him. You can find beauty anywhere if you look for it.’
‘Of course I’ll do my best if you want me to,’ said Irene. ‘But it will be hard work to find beauty in Georgie’s little valentines.’
‘Do try. Give him some hints. Make him see what you see. All that boldness and freedom. That’s what he wants … Ah, the sunset is fading. Buona notte, bel sole! We must be getting home too. Addio, mia bella casa. But Georgie must be the first to know, Irene, do not speak of it until I have told him. Poor Georgie: I hope it will not be a terrible blow to him.’
Georgie came straight to Mallards on his arrival next morning from Folkestone with Cadman and Foljambe. His recall, he knew, meant that the highly dangerous Contessa had gone, and his admission by Grosvenor, after the door had been taken off the chain, that Lucia’s influenza was officially over. He looked quite bronzed, and she gave him the warmest welcome.
‘It all worked without a hitch,’ she said as she told him of the plots and counter-plots which had woven so brilliant a tapestry of events. ‘And it was that letter of Mrs Brocklebank’s which you sent me that clapped the lid on Elizabeth. I saw at once what I could make of it. Really, Georgie, I turned it into a stroke of genius.’
‘But it was a stroke of genius already,’ said Georgie. ‘You only had to copy it out and send it to the Contessa.’
Lucia was slightly ashamed of having taken the supreme credit for herself: the habit was hard to get rid of.
> ‘My dear, all the credit shall be yours then,’ she said handsomely. ‘It was your stroke of genius. I copied it out very carelessly as if I had scribbled it off without thought. That was a nice touch, don’t you think? The effect? Colossal, so Irene tells me, for I could not be there myself. That was only yesterday. A few desperate wriggles from Elizabeth, but of course no good. I do not suppose there was a more thoroughly thwarted woman in all Sussex than she.’
Georgie gave a discreet little giggle.
‘And what’s so terribly amusing is that she was right all the time about your influenza and your Italian and everything,’ he said. ‘Perfectly maddening for her.’
Lucia sighed pensively.
‘Georgie, she was malicious,’ she observed, ‘and that never pays.’
‘Besides, it serves her right for spying on you,’ Georgie continued.
‘Yes, poor thing. But I shall begin now at once to be kind to her again. She shall come to lunch to-morrow, and you of course. By the way, Georgie, Irene takes so much interest in your painting. It was news to me, for her style is so different from your beautiful, careful work.’
‘No! That’s news to me too,’ said Georgie. ‘She never seemed to see my sketches before: they might have been blank sheets of paper. Does she mean it? She’s not pulling my leg?’
‘Nothing of the sort. And I couldn’t help thinking it was a great opportunity for you to learn something about more modern methods. There is something you know in those fierce canvases of hers.’
‘I wish she had told me sooner,’ said Georgie. ‘We’ve only got a fortnight more here. I shall be very sorry when it’s over, for I felt terribly pleased to be getting back to Tilling this morning. It’ll be dull going back to Riseholme. Don’t you feel that too? I’m sure you must. No plots: no competition.’
Lucia had just received a telegram from Adele concerning the purchase of the Hurst, and it was no use putting off the staggering moment. She felt as if she was Zeus about to discharge a thunderbolt on some unhappy mortal.
‘Georgie, I’m not going back to Riseholme at all,’ she said. ‘I have sold the Hurst: Adele Brixton has bought it. And, practically, I’ve bought that white house with the beautiful garden, which we admired so much, and that view over the marsh (how I thought of you at sunset yesterday), and really charming rooms with character.’
Georgie sat open-mouthed, and all expression vanished from his face. It became as blank as a piece of sunburnt paper. Then slowly, as if he was coming round from an anaesthetic while the surgeon was still carving dexterously at living tissue, a look of intolerable anguish came into his face.
‘But Foljambe, Cadman!’ he cried. ‘Foljambe can’t come back here every night from Riseholme. What am I to do? Is it all irrevocable?’
Lucia bridled. She was quite aware that this parting (if there was to be one) between him and Foljambe would be a dagger; but it was surprising, to say the least, that the thought of the parting between herself and him should not have administered him the first shock. However, there it was. Foljambe first by all means.
‘I knew parting from Foljambe would be a great blow to you,’ she said, with an acidity that Georgie could hardly fail to notice. ‘What a pity that row you told me about came to nothing! But I am afraid that I can’t promise to live in Riseholme for ever in order that you may not lose your parlourmaid.’
‘But it’s not only that,’ said Georgie, aware of this acidity and hastening to sweeten it. ‘There’s you as well. It will be ditchwater at Riseholme without you.’
‘Thank you, Georgie,’ said Lucia. ‘I wondered if and when, as the lawyers say, you would think of that. No reason why you should, of course.’
Georgie felt that this was an unjust reproach.
‘Well, after all, you settled to live in Tilling,’ he retorted, ‘and said nothing about how dull it would be without me. And I’ve got to do without Foljambe as well.’
Lucia had recourse to the lowest artifice.
‘Georgie-orgie, ’oo not cwoss with me?’ she asked in an innocent, childish voice.
Georgie was not knocked out by this sentimental stroke below the belt. It was like Lucia to settle everything in exactly the way that suited her best, and then expect her poor pawns to be stricken at the thought of losing their queen. Besides, the loss of Foljambe had occurred to him first. Comfort, like charity, began at home.
‘No, I’m not cross,’ he said, utterly refusing to adopt baby-talk which implied surrender. ‘But I’ve got every right to be hurt with you for settling to live in Tilling and not saying a word about how you would miss me.’
‘My dear, I knew you would take that for granted,’ began Lucia.
‘Then why shouldn’t you take it for granted about me?’ he observed.
‘I ought to have,’ she said. ‘I confess it, so that’s all right. But why don’t you leave Riseholme too and settle here, Georgie? Foljambe, me, your career, now that Irene is so keen about your pictures, and this marvellous sense of not knowing what’s going to happen next. Such stimulus, such stuff to keep the soul awake. And you don’t want to go back to Riseholme: you said so yourself. You’d moulder and vegetate there.’
‘It’s different for you,’ said Georgie. ‘You’ve sold your house and I haven’t sold mine. But there it is: I shall go back, I suppose, without Foljambe or you – I mean you or Foljambe. I wish I had never come here at all. It was that week when we went back for the fête, leaving Cadman and her here, which did all the mischief.’
There was no use in saying anything more at present, and Georgie, feeling himself the victim of an imperious friend and of a faithless parlourmaid, went sadly back to Mallards Cottage. Lucia had settled to leave Riseholme without the least thought of what injury she inflicted on him by depriving him at one fell blow of Foljambe and her own companionship. He was almost sorry he had sent her that wonderful Brocklebank letter, for she had been in a very tight place, especially when Miss Mapp had actually seen her stripped and skipping in the garden as a cure for influenza; and had he not, by his stroke of genius, come to her rescue, her reputation here might have suffered an irretrievable eclipse, and they might all have gone back to Riseholme together. As it was, he had established her on the most exalted pinnacle and her thanks for that boon were expressed by dealing this beastly blow at him.
He threw himself down, in deep dejection, on the sofa in the little parlour of Mallards Cottage, in which he had been so comfortable. Life at Tilling had been full of congenial pleasures, and what a spice all these excitements had added to it! He had done a lot of painting, endless subjects still awaited his brush, and it had given him a thrill of delight to know that quaint Irene, with all her modern notions about art, thought highly of his work. Then there was the diversion of observing and nobly assisting in Lucia’s campaign for the sovereignty, and her wars, as he knew, were far from won yet, for Tilling certainly had grown restive under her patronizings and acts of autocracy, and there was probably life in the old dog (meaning Elizabeth Mapp) yet. It was dreadful to think that he would not witness the campaign that was now being planned in those Napoleonic brains. These few weeks that remained to him here would be blackened by the thought of the wretched future that awaited him, and there would be no savour in them, for in so short a time now he would go back to Riseholme in a state of the most pitiable widowerhood, deprived of the ministering care of Foljambe, who all these years had made him so free from household anxieties, and of the companion who had spurred him on to ambitions and activities. Though he had lain awake shuddering at the thought that perhaps Lucia expected him to marry her, he felt he would almost sooner have done that than lose her altogether. ‘It may be better to have loved and lost,’ thought Georgie, ‘than never to have loved at all, but it’s very poor work not having loved and also to have lost’ …
There was Foljambe singing in a high buzzing voice as she unpacked his luggage in his room upstairs, and though it was a rancid noise, how often had it filled him with the liveliest sati
sfaction, for Foljambe seldom sang, and when she did, it meant that she was delighted with her lot in life and was planning fresh efforts for his comfort. Now, no doubt, she was planning all sorts of pleasures for Cadman, and not thinking of him at all. Then there was Lucia: through his open window he could already hear the piano in the garden-room, and that showed a horrid callousness to his miserable plight. She didn’t care; she was rolling on like the moon or the car of Juggernaut: It was heartless of her to occupy herself with those gay tinkling tunes, but the fact was that she was odiously selfish, and cared about nothing but her own successes … He abstracted himself from those painful reflections for a moment and listened more attentively. It was clearly Mozart that she was practising, but the melody was new to him. ‘I bet,’ thought Georgie, ‘that this evening or to-morrow, she’ll ask me to read over a new Mozart, and it’ll be that very piece that she’s practising now.’
His bitterness welled up within him again, as that pleasing reflection faded from his mind, and almost involuntarily he began to revolve how he could pay her back for her indifference to him. A dark but brilliant thought (like a black pearl) occurred to him. What if he dismissed his own chauffeur, Dickie, at present in the employment of his tenant at Riseholme, and, by a prospect of a rise in wages, seduced Cadman from Lucia’s service, and took him and Foljambe back to Riseholme? He would put into practise the plan that Lucia herself had suggested, of establishing them in a cottage of their own, with a charwoman, so that Foljambe’s days should be his, and her nights Cadman’s. That would be a nasty one for Lucia, and the idea was feasible, for Cadman didn’t think much of Tilling, and might easily fall in with it. But hardly had this devilish device occurred to him than his better nature rose in revolt against it. It would serve Lucia right, it is true, but it was unworthy of him. ‘I should be descending to her level,’ thought Georgie very nobly, ‘if I did such a thing. Besides, how awful it would be if Cadman said no, and then told her that I had tempted him. She would despise me for doing it, as much as I despise her, and she would gloat over me for having failed. It won’t do. I must be more manly about it all somehow. I must be like Major Benjy and say “Damn the woman! Faugh!” and have a drink. But I feel sick at the idea of going back to Riseholme alone … I wish I had eyebrows like a paste-brush, and could say damn properly.’