Lucia Victrix

by E. F. Benson

  By three o’clock on Friday there was not a seat to be had at the Institute, and many people were standing. At the same hour every seat was to be had at the garden-room, for nobody was sitting down in any of them. At half-past three Lucia was getting rather mixed about the latitude and longitude of the Gallagher Bank, and the map had fallen down. At half-past three Elizabeth and Major Benjy were alone in the garden-room. It would be fatiguing for her, he said, to read again the lecture she had read him yesterday, and he wouldn’t allow her to do it. Every word was already branded on his memory. So they seated themselves comfortably by the fire and Elizabeth began to talk of the loneliness of loneliness and of affinities. At half-past four Lucia’s audience, having eaten their sumptuous tea, had ebbed away, leaving only Irene, Georgie, Mr and Mrs Wyse, and Mr and Mrs Padre to listen to the second half of the lecture. At half-past four in the garden-room Elizabeth and Major Benjy were engaged to be married. There was no reason for (in fact every reason against) a long engagement, and the banns would be put up in church next Sunday morning.

  ‘So they’ll all know about it, Benjino mio,’ said Elizabeth, ‘when we have our little thanksgiving service on Sunday afternoon, and I shall ask all our friends, Lucia included, to a cosy lunch on Monday to celebrate our engagement. You must send me across some of your best bottles of wine, dear.’

  ‘As if you didn’t know that all my cellar was at your disposal,’ said he.

  Elizabeth jumped up and clapped her hands.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got such a lovely idea for that lunch,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me about it, for I shan’t tell you. A splendid surprise for everybody, especially Lulu.’

  Elizabeth was slightly chagrined next day, when she offered to read her lecture on practically any afternoon to the inmates of the workhouse, to find that Lucia had already asked all those who were not bedridden or deaf to tea at Grebe that very day, and hear an abridged form of what she had read at the Institute: an hour was considered enough, since perhaps some of them would find the excitement and the strain of a longer intellectual effort too much for them. But this chagrin was altogether wiped from her mind when on Sunday morning at the end of the second lesson the Padre published banns of marriage. An irrepressible buzz of conversation like a sudden irruption of bluebottle flies filled the church, and Lucia, who was sitting behind the choir and assisting the altos, said ‘I thought so’ in an audible voice. Elizabeth was assisting the trebles on the Cantoris side, and had she not been a perfect lady, and the scene a sacred edifice, she might have been tempted to put out her tongue or make a face in the direction of the Decani altos. Then in the afternoon came the service of thanksgiving, and the two heroines were observed to give each other a stage kiss. Diva, who sat in the pew immediately behind them, was certain that actual contact was not established. They resumed their seats, slightly apart.

  As was only to be expected, notes of congratulation and acceptance to the lunch on Monday poured in upon the young couple. All the intimate circle of Tilling was there, the sideboard groaned with Major Benjy’s most expensive wines, and everyone felt that the hatchet which had done so much interesting chopping in the past was buried, for never had two folk been so cordial to each other as were Lucia and Elizabeth.

  They took their places at the table. Though it was only lunch there were menu cards, and written on them as the first item of the banquet was ‘Lobster à la Riseholme’.

  Georgie saw it first, though his claim was passionately disputed by Diva, but everybody else, except Lucia, saw it in a second or two and the gay talk dropped dead. What could have happened? Had Lucia, one day on the Gallagher Banks, given their hostess the secret which she had so firmly withheld? Somehow it seemed scarcely credible. The eyes of the guests, pair by pair, grew absorbed in meditation, for all were beginning to recall a mystery that had baffled them. The presence of Elizabeth in Lucia’s kitchen when the flood poured in had never been fathomed, but surely … A slight catalepsy seized the party, and all eyes were turned on Lucia who now for the first time looked at the menu. If she had given the recipe to Elizabeth, she would surely say something about it.

  Lucia read the menu and slightly moistened her lips. She directed on Elizabeth a long penetrating gaze that mutely questioned her. Then the character of that look altered. There was no reproach in it, only comprehension and unfathomable contempt.

  The ghastly silence continued as the lobster was handed round. It came to Lucia first. She tasted it and found that it was exactly right. She laid down her fork, and grubbed up the imperfectly buried hatchet.

  ‘Are you sure you copied the recipe out quite correctly, Elizabetha mia?’ she asked. ‘You must pop into my kitchen some afternoon when you are going for your walk – never mind if I am in or not – and look at it again. And if my cook is out too, you will find the recipe in a book on the kitchen-shelf. But you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Sweet of you.’

  Then everybody began to talk in a great hurry.

  Lucia’s Progress

  1

  Mrs Emmeline Lucas was walking briskly and elegantly up and down the cinder path which traversed her kitchen-garden and was so conveniently dry underfoot even after heavy rain. This house of hers, called ‘Grebe’, stood some quarter of a mile outside the ancient and enlightened town of Tilling, on its hill away to the west; in front there stretched out the green pasture-land of the marsh, flat and featureless, as far as the line of sand-dunes along the shore. She had spent a busy morning divided about equally between practising a rather easy sonata by Mozart and reading a rather difficult play by Aristophanes. There was the Greek on one page and an excellent English translation on the page opposite, and the play was so amusing that to-day she had rather neglected the Greek and pursued the English. At this moment she was taking the air to refresh her after her musical and intellectual labours, and felt quite ready to welcome the sound of that tuneful set of little bells in the hall which would summon her to lunch.

  The January morning was very mild and her keen bird-like eye noted that several imprudent and precocious polyanthuses (she spoke and even thought of them as polyanthi) were already in flower, and that an even more imprudent tortoiseshell butterfly had been tempted from its hibernating quarters and was flitting about these early blossoms. Presently another joined it, and they actually seemed to be engaged in a decrepit dalliance quite unsuitable to their faded and antique appearance. The tortoiseshells appeared to be much pleased with each other, and Lucia was vaguely reminded of two friends of hers, both of mature years, who had lately married and with whom she was to play bridge this afternoon.

  She inhaled the soft air in long breaths holding it in for five seconds according to the Yoga prescription and then expelling it all in one vigorous puff. Then she indulged in a few of those physical exercises, jerks and skippings and flexings which she found so conducive to health, pleased to think that a woman of her age could prance with such supple vigour. Another birthday would knock at her door next month, and if her birth certificate was correct (and there was no reason for doubting it) the conclusion was forced upon her that if for every year she had already lived, she lived another, she would then be a centenarian. For a brief moment the thought of the shortness of life and the all-devouring grave laid a chill on her spirit, as if a cold draught had blown round the corner of her house, but before she had time to shiver, her habitual intrepidity warmed her up again, and she resolved to make the most of the years that remained, although there might not be even fifty more in store for her. Certainly she would not indulge in senile dalliance, like those aged butterflies, for nothing made a woman so old as pretending to be young, and there would surely be worthier outlets for her energy than wantonness. Never yet had she been lacking in activity or initiative or even attack when necessary, as those ill-advised persons knew who from time to time had attempted to thwart her career, and these priceless gifts were still quite unimpaired.

  It was a little over a yea
r since the most remarkable adventure of her life so far had befallen her, when the great flood burst the river bank just across the road, and she and poor panic-stricken Elizabeth Mapp had been carried out to sea on the kitchen-table. They had been picked up by a trawler in the Channel and had spent three weird but very interesting months with a fleet of cod-fishers on the Gallagher Banks. Lucia’s undefeated vitality had pulled them through, but since then she had never tasted cod. On returning home at grey daybreak on an April morning they had found that a handsome cenotaph had been erected to their memories in the churchyard, for Tilling had naturally concluded that they must be dead. But Tilling was wrong, and the cenotaph was immediately removed.

  But since then, Lucia sometimes felt, she had not developed her undoubted horse-power to its full capacity. She had played innumerable duets on the piano with Georgie Pillson: she had constituted herself instructress in physical culture to the ladies of Tilling, until the number of her pupils gradually dwindled away and she was left to skip and flex alone: she had sketched miles of marsh and been perfectly willing to hold classes in contract bridge: she had visited the wards in the local hospital twice a week, till the matron complained to Dr Dobbie that the patients were unusually restless for the remainder of the day when Mrs Lucas had been with them, and the doctor tactfully told her that her vitality was too bracing for them (which was probably the case). She had sung in the church choir; she had read for an hour every Thursday afternoon to the inmates of the workhouse till she had observed for herself that, long before the hour was over, her entire audience was wrapped in profound slumber; she had perused the masterpieces of Aristophanes, Virgil and Horace with the help of a crib; she had given a lecture on the ‘Tendencies of Modern Fiction’, at the Literary Institute, and had suggested another on the ‘Age of Pericles’, not yet delivered, as, most unaccountably, a suitable date could not be arranged; but looking back on these multifarious activities, she found that they had only passed the time for her without really extending her. To be sure there was the constant excitement of social life in Tilling, where crises, plots and counter-plots were endemic rather than epidemic, and kept everybody feverish and with a high psychical temperature, but when all was said and done (and there was always a great deal to do, and a great deal more to say) she felt this morning, with a gnawing sense of self-reproach, that if she had written down all the achievements which, since her return from the Gallagher Banks, were truly worthy of mention, the chronicle would be sadly brief.

  ‘I fear,’ thought Lucia to herself, ‘that the Recording Angel will have next to nothing in his book about me this year. I’ve been vegetating. Molto cattiva! I’ve been content (yet not quite content: I will say that for myself) to be occupied with a hundred trifles. I’ve been frittering my energies away over them, drugging myself with the fallacy that they were important. But surely a woman in the prime of life like me could have done all I have done as mere relaxations in her career. I must do something more monumental (monumentum œre perennius, isn’t it?) in this coming year. I know I have the capacity for high ambition. What I don’t know is what to be ambitious about. Ah, there’s lunch at last.’

  Lucia could always augur from the mode in which Grosvenor, her parlourmaid, played her prelude to food on those tuneful chimes, in what sort of a temper she was. There were six bells hung close together on a burnished copper frame, and they rang the first six notes of an ascending major scale. Grosvenor improvised on these with a small drumstick, and if she was finding life a harmonious business she often treated Lucia to charming dainty little tunes, quite a pleasure to listen to, though sometimes rather long. Now and then there was an almost lyrical outburst of melody, which caused Lucia a momentary qualm of anxiety lest Grosvenor should have fallen in love, and would leave. But if she felt morose or cynical, she expressed her humour with realistic fidelity. To-day she struck two adjoining bells very hard, and then ran the drumstick up and down the peal, producing a most jangled effect, which meant that she was jangled too. ‘I wonder what’s the matter: indigestion perhaps,’ thought Lucia, and she hurried indoors, for a jangled Grosvenor hated to be kept waiting.

  ‘Mr Georgie hasn’t rung up?’ she asked, as she seated herself.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ said Grosvenor.

  ‘Nor Foljambe?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Is there no tomato sauce with the macaroni?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  Lucia knew better than to ask if she ached anywhere, for Grosvenor would simply have said ‘No, ma’am’ again, and, leaving her to stew in her own snappishness, she turned her mind to Georgie. For over a fortnight now he had not been to see her, and inquiries had only elicited the stark information that he was keeping to the house, not being very well, but that there was nothing to bother about. With Georgie such a retirement might arise from several causes none of which need arouse anxiety. Some little contretemps, thought Lucia: perhaps there was dental trouble, and change must be made in the furnishings of his mouth. Or he might have a touch of lumbago, and did not want to be seen hobbling and bent, instead of presenting his usual spry and brisk appearance. It was merely tactless when he assumed these invisibilities to ask the precise cause: he came out of them again with his hair more auburn than ever, or wreathed in smiles which showed his excellent teeth, and so one could guess.

  But a fortnight was an unprecedentedly long seclusion, and Lucia determined to have a word with Foljambe when she came home in the evening. Foljambe was Georgie’s peerless parlourmaid and also the wife of Lucia’s chauffeur. She gave Cadman his early breakfast in the morning, and then went up to Georgie’s house, Mallards Cottage, where she ministered all day to her master, returning home to her husband after she had served Georgie with his dinner. Like famous actresses who have married, she retained her maiden name, instead of becoming Mrs Cadman (which she undoubtedly was in the sight of God) since her life’s work was Foljambizing to Georgie … Then Grosvenor brought in the tomato sauce of which there were quantities, after Lucia had almost finished her macaroni, and by way of expressing penitence for her mistake, became more communicative, though hardly less morose.

  ‘Foljambe won’t say anything about Mr Georgie, ma’am,’ she observed, ‘except that he hasn’t been outside his front door for over a fortnight nor seen anybody. Dr Dobbie has been in several times. You don’t think it’s something mental, ma’am, do you?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Lucia. ‘Why should I think anything of the kind?’

  ‘Well, my uncle was like that,’ said Grosvenor. ‘He shut himself up for about the same time as Mr Georgie, and then they took him away to the County Asylum, where he’s thought himself to be the Prince of Wales ever since.’

  Though Lucia poured scorn on this sinister theory, it made her more desirous of knowing what actually was the matter with Georgie. The news that the doctor had been to see him disposed of the theory that a new chestnut-coloured toupet was wanted, for a doctor would not have been needed for that, while if he had been paying a round of visits to the dentist, Foljambe would not have said that he had not been outside his own front door, and an attack of lumbago would surely have yielded to treatment before now. So, after telephoning to Georgie suggesting, as she had often done before, that she should look in during the afternoon, and receiving uncompromising discouragement, she thought she would walk into Tilling after lunch and find what other people made of this long retirement. It was Saturday and there would certainly be a good many friends popping in and out of the shops.

  Lucia looked at her engagement-book, and scribbled ‘Mozart, Aristophanes’, as post-dated engagements for the morning of to-day. She was due to play bridge at Mallards, next door to Mallards Cottage, this afternoon at half-past three with Major and Mrs Mapp-Flint: tea would follow and then more bridge. For the last year contract had waged a deadly war with auction, but the latter, like the Tishbites in King David’s campaigns, had been exterminated, since contract gave so much more scope for violent differences of opinio
n about honour-tricks and declarations and doublings and strong twos and takings-out, which all added spleen and savagery to the game. There were disciples of many schools of thought: one played Culbertson, another one club, another two clubs, and Diva Plaistow had a new system called ‘Leeway’, which she could not satisfactorily explain to anybody, because she had not any clearness about it herself. So, before a couple of tables were started, there was always a gabble, as of priests of various denominations reciting the articles of their faith. Mrs Mapp-Flint was ‘strong two’, but her husband was ‘one club’. Consequently when they cut together their opponents had to remember that when he declared one club, it meant that he had strong outside suits, but possibly no club at all, but that when his wife declared two clubs it meant that she certainly had good clubs and heaps of other honour-tricks as well. Lucia herself relied largely on psychic bids: in other words when she announced a high contract in any suit, her partner had to guess whether she held, say, a positive tiara of diamonds, or whether she was being psychic. If he guessed wrong, frightful disaster might result, and Elizabeth Mapp-Flint had once been justifiably sarcastic on the conclusion of one of these major débâcles. ‘I see, dear,’ she said, ‘when you declare four diamonds, it means you haven’t got any, and want to be taken out. So sorry: I shall know better another time.’

  Lucia, as she walked up to Tilling, ran over in her head the various creeds of the rest of the players she was likely to meet. The Padre and his wife Evie Bartlett were sure to be there: he was even more psychic than herself, and almost invariably declared his weakest suit first, just to show he had not got any. Evie, his wife, was obliging enough to play any system desired by her partner, but she generally forgot what it was. Then Algernon and Susan Wyse would certainly be there: they need not be reckoned with, as they only declared what they thought they could get and meant what they said. The eighth would probably be Diva with her ‘Leeway’, of which, since she invariably held such bad cards, there was always a great deal to make up.